Comic Relief may have done a lot of good over the last 15 years, but it has committed some heinous crimes too. The demystification and subsequent over exposure of Monty Python's Flying Circus rides high in the list of unspeakable Comic Relief offences. Never more can like-minded groups indulge in pub-based recreations of their favourite Pythonesque moments. Where once those lines might have dripped with an unknown potency that would turn the head of eavesdroppers, now their currency is devalued and passé. Exponents of Python recitation are stonking great plonkers (see John Hannah in Sliding Doors for confirmation). We now all say, "Pants to Python".
Glancing through the back pages of Comic Relief, one cannot help but become struck as to how perniciously and totally the televised event has influenced the evolution of mainstream comedy in the '80s and '90s. Yet, it is - in many ways - an antiquated and second hand concept. Band Aid and subsequently, Live Aid may owe a great deal of their success to the single-minded belligerence of ever-faded-green pop star Bob Geldof, but the juxtaposition of a youthful, counter-cultural movement taking responsibility for the well-being of others provided good, easy publicity as well as a cause which could attract an incredibly broad section of the public. If you were establishment you could assuage your cultural guilt by contributing, if you were uncool you could pay up and gain brief membership to a positive, youth-orientated movement; and if you were subversive, then your contribution would help undermine and expose an uncaring right wing government.
Live Aid though, was never really that "cool". The fruitful juxtaposition of rebellion and responsibility could never be fully realized by a bunch of established rock stars (Geldof himself conceded that Live Aid was reliant on big, established acts to ensure its success). Comic Relief aside, the next most prominent charity initiative in the mid-'80s was Sport Aid. Again, the central activity and affiliated celebrities were designed to appeal mostly to the young. Yet this too was not quite as "hip" as it might have been. In many ways, Comic Relief was to be the event to make the most out of the union between charity and credibility. The contrasting values represented by Cliff Richard and The Young Ones, gave recognition and resolution to those wishing to embrace the Comic Relief ethos - yet unwilling to sacrifice their credibility. Unlike Do They Know It's Christmas here was a charity single that was actually good. As important as Living Doll was in establishing the profile of Comic Relief, it also provided the blueprint for its subsequent formula. The trick of throwing establishment and anti-establishment together has served Comic Relief's scriptwriters well. Only when the division between Tarby and Laurie completely disappeared in the '90s was this ploy finally dropped. Nowadays, of course, the Comic Relief joke is to use the inclusion of a high profile celebrity as a throwaway gag.
Comic Relief launched on Christmas Day 1985 as part of Noel Edmonds' Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show. Establishing a tradition it would doggedly maintain forever afterwards, it waded in to punctuate high spirits with a sombre report from a refugee camp in the Sudan. There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas, obviously and from the off Comic Relief would remain committed to educating the public about the good causes it supported as well as raising money. The charity set out its mandate clearly. The intention was not to simply buy food for those suffering famine, but equip them to combat the problem themselves. Charity organizer Jane Tewson had set up Charity Projects in 1985 after she left Mencap. Tewson CBE is now a Director of Pilotlight (chaired by ex-BBC Controller of Entertainment, Paul Jackson), a charity initiative that's spawned TimeBank and a member of Taskforce 2002, which "believes that business and the voluntary/community sectors can work together in equal partnerships which bring identifiable, practical advantages to those involved."
For us though, things really began in April 1986. A pretty anarchic bunch got together at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London to stage a night of alternative comedy and music. Eagerly anticipated due to promotion by Radio 1, the eventual television broadcast was preceded by a subversive Yes, Prime Minister skit. Jim Hacker endorsing Comic Relief, whilst conceding that his government would not actually be contributing any money was a smart point on which to begin the charity's television life. If the stamp of approval of Mayall, Elton et al had not been sufficient to resolve any credibility issues you might have had, the chance to gain the moral high ground over (even a fictional representation of) the government was surely enough to convince you that contributing to charity was not just the preserve of church jumble sales, but could be actually be seen as a subversive act.
Of course the key to sustaining this argument had to be - not just the quality of the comedy - but the overall stance taken by Comic Relief in respect to contemporary popular culture. Here perhaps we felt the first dilution of Comic Relief's comedic force. Much of its success as a charitable organization is derived from the associated kudos that those who donate gain from being part of the phenomenon. Alternative comedy has always been about a representation of a set of ideals, yet Comic Relief had a difficult balancing act to perform. As early as 1988 it had become far more than just a comedy programme: in fact even then it was more akin to a ninth National Bank Holiday. As such, its presence on each Red Nose Day could be felt (literally in the case of those who sported red noses) on practically every street in Britain. True subversion cannot survive such exposure. Furthermore, comedy is about standing on the sidelines and commenting on passing events that have a recognizable social impact. Comic Relief though, is such a strong presence it becomes impossible for it to adopt a position of mere onlooker.
For those who watched that first Night of Comic Relief back in 1988, the realization that this was not be an elongated edition of Saturday Live was galling. Still two weeks to go until the start of Friday Night Live, and here frustratingly, our favourite performers were failing to produce the kind of anarchy we all knew and loved. Their targets were too obvious and treated too lightly. In retrospect if we were disappointed it was because we failed to understand the night's true purpose. Whereas exclusivity is often a key determinant in forging comedy affiliations, a charity cannot afford to alienate anyone. As such its targets need to be as recognizable to as many people as possible. Ever concerned with capturing (and often satirizing the zeitgeist) A Night of Comic Relief tells us that back in 1988 we were all talking about A Question of Sport, Spitting Image, Blackadder and Radio 1 DJs. Cannon and Ball and Little and Large both made appearances that night, providing a strategically important broadening of the programme's base audience, yet further diluting the rebellious allure of the product. As if to acknowledge such impurities, Comic Relief foisted upon us worthy relics from its favoured performers and antecedents in the shape of "comedy classics". The reverence afforded to pieces of old tat such as Monty Python and The Young Ones was initially rather refreshing. Here, we could see that the underlying "alternative" spirit of Comic Relief was still alive and well (that Dead Parrot died to absolve Comic Relief of its comedic sins it seems), yet the trick of easy credibility through affiliation with acknowledged classics (much the same trick that we used to use in the pub) was to wear out through repetition. I truly no longer care how "brilliant" Lenny Henry thinks The Young Ones' University Challenge episode is and have been forced into seeking more obscure material to satisfy my elitism.
Disastrously, Comic Relief was to return just a year later. Obviously, originally conceived as a springtime counterpoint to Children In Need, its return seemed somehow premature. From a comedic perspective the alarming trend of treating comedy products in an "Oh what the hell" attitude (first glimpsed by the inclusion of a parodic version of Prince Charles in Blackadder) set hold with Carla Lane's The Last Waltz (a meeting of characters from Bread, Butterflies, Solo and The Liver Birds). In years to come we would be subjected to Four Birds of a Feather (French and Saunders and Sharon and Tracy), Have I Got Sports News For You, Torvill and Bean and Prime Cracker - marrying off two separate, popular programmes or personalities must have seemed truly hilarious to some people. "Event comedy" took other forms though, but really came into its own with A Night of Comic Relief 2. Lenny Henry's self-indulgent Theophilus P Wildebeeste, and Phil Cool's horror spoof The Night of the Comic Dead were comedic attempts very much in the "Christmas special" mould.
Although a transient and insubstantial vehicle for comedy, the demise of Enfield's Loadsamoney provided one of the few moments of Comic Relief that can withstand viewing outwith the context of the night, retaining some significance in it's own right. Culturally, if not amusingly, the life and death of this iconic character seems to define a passing social revolution. This coup aside, Comic Relief already seemed weary to me. Perhaps we had simply had too much too soon. Or perhaps it was the rather elderly collection of comedians that seemed to have been roped in to ever widen the charity's appeal (Comic Relief 2 included relatively major contributions from Ken Dodd, Little and Large, Frank Carson and Paul Daniels). A rather oddly motivated article written by Ben Elton for the Comic Relief edition of Radio Times seemed to inadvertently encapsulate this feeling of tiredness and dissatisfaction. "I hope it's all right if I catalogue one or two of the woes of my profession" he began. "Perhaps the principal hazard of being involved in comedy is that there is a certain type of person who believes that, like the President of the United States, you are never off duty. 'What do you do?' they will say, and, on getting the reply, 'I write comedy', they snap contemptuously, 'Well you haven't made me laugh yet.' ... The words, 'Go on, tell us a joke then' will be written on the graves of all comedians and all comedy writers. Sad to say, the phrase is an ironic one, poignant in its own futility because, nine times out of 10, the sort of person who says, 'Go on, tell us a joke then' is also the sort of person who would not know a joke if it moved in next door to them and shot their dog."
Elton has always been a good benchmark by which to judge the public's attitude towards that generation of comedians central to the founding ethos of Comic Relief, and by this stage he had begun to move away from his traditional audience and attain wider popularity. Like the charity, he had an abrasiveness that belied a real concern for environmental issues and humanity. Unfortunately it was this abrasiveness that his early admirers seemed to have liked best, and Elton - like Comic Relief - seemed set on a course for comedic emasculation. Here though, the similarities end: Elton was ubiquitous throughout 1990 and 1991, Comic Relief, on the other hand, was mercifully reclusive. A scant report broadcast late in 1989, ensured that viewers and donators were aware that the charity was still ongoing, yet wisely there seemed to be recognition that Comic Relief was too large an event to sustain public enthusiasm on an annual basis. So two years passed this time. By 1991, Comic Relief seemed now ever more determined to finally attain truly populist appeal and leave behind any last vestiges of its earnest (and rather teenage) past. As such The Stonk seemed more like a statement of intent than a rather weak pop song sung by two men with a very limited range. Utilizing the talents of Hale and Pace, Brian May, Mike Moran and Bruce Forsyth to propagate the increased usage of a nonsense word was a strategy surely only likely to appeal to fans of Children's BBC's Broom Cupboard or - indeed Hale and Pace. My earliest recollections of the word "stonk" seem to emanate from the direction of Jonathan Ross. Regardless, by the time we had finished "sticking a red nose to our conk" Comic Relief had well and truly entered "embarrassing dad territory" and "stonk" had replaced "farty" as the favoured buzzword of the office bore.
Comic Relief The Stonker found little worth lampooning in 1991, because there didn't seem much going on. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Postman Pat represented the sum total of the zeitgeist. Comedy too, was rather bereft of innovation. Tarrant's home videos, Vic Reeves and Smashy and Nicey represented the progress that British comedy had made in the last two years, with Enfield as perhaps our most talked about comedian. Things got so desperate that the poor man's Spinal Tap, Bad News, were revived some three years after not being a very popular Comic Strip Presents ... film. Comic Relief seemed happy just to know that it was transmitting material worthy of a repeat showing by Philip or Sarah on the next day's Going Live! (upon which Lenny Henry could get overexcited all over again). Still it was nice to see that some of the Comic Relief stalwarts were still going strong. Aside from the last proper "Val, Pete and John" line-up of Messrs Henry, Ross and Rhys-Jones, we were again able to enjoy clips of classic comedy (which now seemed no longer directed at young comedy enthusiasts, but rather their dads), fast-paced celebrity packed sketches and Lenny self-indulging as Theo P.
Yet happily at last, with the final remnants of hip kudos departing Comic Relief we saw a resolution to one of the concept's longest running underlying tensions. Comic Relief's headlong charge into a "comedic middle age" meant that it was no longer a serious choice for those looking for subversion or credibility. Pretty much all of the programme was embarrassing now, and not just the occasionally mawkish serious bits. From this point on the rather frivolous debate of "Is it cool to watch this?" was replaced with the simple guilty frustration of wishing you could get back to watching Victoria Wood singing The Smile Song as Griff tried to tell you about the need for clean water among the Masia in Kenya. Perhaps if you donated a couple of quid, they would cut straight back to the studio hi-jinks? In the midst of all of this it seemed to go almost unnoticed that Little and Large were contributors no more. Now that alternative comedy had finally assumed the status of mainstream popularity, these previous stalwarts found themselves marginalized by Comic Relief. This, though, was surely becoming a feeling familiar to those who could no longer find favour within the corridors of Powell and Yentob's BBC.
