I hate Comic Relief
There was a time when Comic Relief was constrained to a single Friday, with the evenings TV event being easily avoided by staying down the pub, which is where you would have been anyway. You’d probably get some arse head in a bunny outfit begging from people he thinks are his friends, ‘I’ve walked all the way from Walton on the Naze like this! All for Comic Relief! I know, crazy aren’t I?’
That was it, you chuck a quid in his bucket and he takes his wacky little attention stunt to the next person. By the end of the night the country has raised a few million, most of which Oxfam will spend on employing a load more graduates to harass people in the street. The rest gets sent to Africa so we can happily forget about the hundreds of years of rape, pillage and exploitation. Until next year anyway.
Now of course it’s all changed for the worst, and the whole debacle starts after Christmas and lasts until well after the FA Cup Final. And more than ever, Comic Relief is about airtime for inane TV presenters and 80s comedians. I nearly choked on my Spag Bol the other night when, would you believe it, Billy fucking Connelly appears at a school in Africa wearing a white suit with stars on it! You could see all the kids thinking, ‘Who the hell is this cock? Just how the hell did this bunch of Muppets fuck us over for so long?’
The next time I switch the box on, Dame bloody Judy will be hanging out the top of a Land Rover in The Gambia with a white muslin scarf flowing in the wind. You can see her now, waving as hundreds of barefooted kids fight each other to get closer to some old bag that as far as they’re concerned could run the local Post Office. Surrounded by BBC types with clip boards, cargo pants and sandals, the whole little excursion is the stuff of Volvo wet dreams.
You couldn’t write it any better.
‘You can get involved!’
Yes by handing over your cash, that’s if you’re luckily enough to have any left after being mugged by greedy Gordon had his sweaty little mitts. Meanwhile Lenny and the team of wealthy graduates can get involved by taking a comfortable little working holiday in one of the safer parts of Mauritius. ‘I wish you at home, the general public, could be here and experience the joy and hope of these little children’. Comic Relief is of course Lenny Henry’s full time job, he must spend the rest of the year on a retainer waiting for his jolly to Mozambique like Christmas. ‘Cheers Lenny, same time next year?’
Back at the studio, Wossy and Davina will be piling on the laughs as the BBC newsreaders do a tap routine in the car park, again. Ricky Gervais will be giggling stupidly in the corner like a ten your old whose found a wank mag up the allotments, and as a special treat Dermott O’Leary will be taking us behind the scenes at Broadcasting House. So patronising.
After that McFly, the mums favourite, will be surprising a spotty teenage girl in Rotheram by turning up at her school, unannounced. Then back to Bill sodding Nighy cracking everyone up by mumbling and trying to dance at a Young Offenders Institution in Soweto.
Aren’t we the lucky ones.
Again, just like award ceremonies, it’s the same old TV faces turning out for a bit of self promotion in the name of charity. People without proper jobs thinking that their self important hobby is somehow an example to viewing public. And this year there’s another way for us mortals to get involved. With the joys of reality TV. Please, don’t get me started on that one.
What I object to most, is the trivialisation of charity. The idea that the benevolence and decency has to be piggybacked onto an inane TV event for the general public to realise how important it is. When in reality this whole situation should have been sorted out decades ago by men in suits in shiny buildings. Not by the BBC and its self appointed saviours of culture as an exercise in entertainment.
That’s all for now.