No Laughing Matter

‘DOES it make you a bad person if you don’t watch Comic Relief on the BBC?

Time to lance the boil?

There is something about this fund-raising extravaganza that encourages a viewer to think that in watching it you are in some way helping those less fortunate than yourself.

And, of course you are – you’re helping some poor and hungry celebrity raise their profile.

Hey, folks, it’s all for charity. So what if whatshisface of whatsthatshow can’t sing for toffee; he’s having a good go at it and you should get behind him.

Who are you to judge, you cynical swine? What did you ever do for charity other than mock and give an old label-less tin to the Harvest Festival appeal when you were eight?

So, duly shamed you sit well back in your leatherette armchair, tune in and zone out to Comic Relief Does Fame Academy.

It’s charity TV, only in this instance it’s the show that’s in need of the handout.

Fame Academy was always the poor relation to the coruscating, well-fed Pop Idol.

It seems natural that it should be the wannabe-studded vehicle to help Britain’s TV-watchers empathise with the world’s downtrodden and abused.

The only thing it’s lacking is a ubiquitous presence, a figurehead to stand in for a despot hell-bent on making every room, person, car, actor, comedian and TV presenter in the land the same.

Someone like Saddam Hussein. Someone like Lenny Henry. Someone like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen…’

Posted: 6th, March 2005 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink