Once every other year, British people watch 8 hours of sad clips of starving children in Africa.
The clips are part of a telethon called Red Nose Day, which raises money for the Comic Relief charity. The skinny/bloated children are interspersed with skits by the best British comedians. I guess the idea is to perk you up between the scenes of destitute subsistence in Sudan and Ethiopia.
The end result, of course, is tears followed by laughter, which we all know is a very messy combination indeed. The tears start running… and then you laugh, sucking all of your sad-snot down the back of your throat into your lungs causing you to cough. Rinse and repeat.
For some reason we go through this ritual for 8 hours every year, just to raise a few million pounds. I suspect Comic Relief would make more money if they created a system where you could stop the clips of impoverished children from playing if the audience donated enough money.
One of the other ways Comic Relief raises money is by selling red noses, which you stick on the end of your nose. I didn’t buy one this year, so I substituted it for a Coke can.
Sebastian's mother
Mar 19, 2011
Actually, it raised 74 million!
Watch this sketch, it is very clever, it gets better towards the end….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW12S4-KB1I
sebastian
Mar 19, 2011
I thought it was Children in Need that raised the big bucks!