Stick on your red nose, here’s Comic Relief 2023

Comic Relief 2023 (BBC One, 7pm)
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The scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry established Comic Relief back in 1985 to help raise funds for those suffering during the famine in Ethiopia.

While ‘Red Nose Day’ looks very very different these days, and the charities who benefit are more diverse and wide-ranging, its core mission remains the same: which is to help people, and have fun doing it.

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This year, broadcast live from MediaCityUK in Salford, David Tennant, Zoe Ball, Paddy McGuinness, Joel Dommett and AJ Odudu present all the action as well as reports from up and down the country featuring people doing their bit for the charity. There’ll be clips from around the world too, from the worthwhile causes who are in need of the assistance.

As always, we’re promised a wealth of guests, sketches, skits and live music in what is always billed as the UK’s biggest night of comedy and entertainment.

Claudia Winkleman will be on hand for a special edition of The Traitors featuring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, while the cast of Ghosts join forces with Kylie Minogue for a one-off sketch.

In what will be an eagerly anticipated bit of TV history, Tony Robinson revisits his much-loved comedy character Baldrick for the first time in years as he reads his very own Blackadder bedtime story, and Chabuddy G from People Just Do Nothing enters the Love Island villa as a bombshell.

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As well as the comedy, the cast of Mrs Doubtfire take to the stage to perform one of the songs from the show, and there is live music from chart stars Tom Grennan and Zara Larsson.

Should your thirst for entertainment not be slaked after the three-hour marathon, BBC Two has the one-off documentary When Comic Relief Did Big Brother at 10pm, recalling the landmark 2001 series in which celebrities entered the reality competition’s famous house for the first time.

Its winner, Jack Dee, and fellow housemates Vanessa Feltz, Claire Sweeney, Keith Duffy and Anthea Turner all take part as they look back at what was an extraordinary moment in television history – which included everything from dancing in underpants to Vanessa writing on the furniture and Dee’s great escape.

Then back on BBC One at 10.40pm, the channel marks more than 35 years of Red Nose Day in Comic Relief: The Best of the Best Bits, with a look back over some of the unforgettable moments that the fundraiser has gifted us.

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Since its inception it has raised more than £1billion for a range of vital causes. Among this year’s beneficiaries will be people up and down the UK who are struggling to afford food and relying on food banks, as well as the people of Turkey and Syria who have been affected by the recent devastating earthquake – plus many, many more!

With so much raised, year after year, Henry and Curtis’s creation really has been a force of good in the world of which all of us can feel proud.

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