It's all for a good cause, but it doesn't always make good telly. Does it?
Sport Relief, the spin-off from Comic Relief (they even re-use the clown's red nose logo, strangely) returned last night for an evening "extravaganza" – well, as the BBC describe it. But, like all telethons, it didn't amount to much entertainment-wise -- being practically an episode of Strictly Come Dancing rudely interrupted by Davina McCall for the first few hours...
Out hosts were sporty (Gary Lineker), shouty (Davina McCall), and shorty (Richard Hammon), three people whose sporting credentials are on a sliding scale. Lineker's a former international footballer (fine), McCall pays her winter bills by selling fitness videos (we'll let it pass), and Hammond achieved widespread fame by crashing a jet-powered car on Top Gear (tenuous).
The charity's slogan is "Rise To The Challenge" and, after weeks of free advertising on The One Show, dour host Adrian Chiles and football legend Alan Shearer completed a gruelling 300-odd mile cycle ride from Newcastle to London, via West Bromwich.
It was a two-day endurance challenge worthy of praise and a sterling effort from both men – but that only made it more of a pity the finish was so limp. A few fireworks and two yellow jerseys courtesy of Gary Lineker outside BBC Television Centre, eh? You could see a look of slight disappointment on Shearer's face when the cash they'd raised was revealed as being £371,000. That’s still very good, but maybe Shearer realized that's less than a month's wages for many Premiership players! I think he expected at least a cool million to make up for his saddle sores...
And that’s long been a sticking point with the relationship between overpaid celebs trying to squeeze cash from average joe's on telethons. They're the ones making millions every year, not us. And scheduling Sport Relief a few days after Budget Day wasn't the best idea, either.
But back to the show. If you don't like Strictly Come Dancing, chances are Sport Relief lost a viewer for the night. Yes, Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly presented a special show where past celebrity contestants danced with new famous faces. I think it should have been made clearer we wouldn't be watching a full episode, though. Anyway, Mark Ramprakash and EastEnder Kara Tointon eventually won the cheap-plastic trophy.
The studio audience were awful throughout; not laughing at (admittedly weak) gags from the presenters, having to be prompted to applaud at various times, and generally lowering the atmosphere. Trouble is, I don't blame them: all the entertainment was coming from events that had already been achieved days before, or were being watched as pre-recorded TV shows. The only worthwhile studio-based entertainment for them came from singers Westlife and Leona Lewis. The audience were so starved of live entertainment, they even applauded when Westlife left the stage off-camera!
One thing you can always guarantee on telethons are TV shows being given slight comedic twists. So here we had A Question Of Sport Relief, hosted by Jimmy Carr, with panellists Sue Barker, Ricky Hatton, Frank Skinner, David Mitchell, Gary Lineker and Patrick Kielty. It was actually a fairly decent show, even if Carr is fast-becoming a predictable bore in such roles. How often will he follow-up a risqué gag with a shrugging "—what?"
Radio 1 were also involved in a big challenge this week, with Chris Moyles' sidekick "Comedy" Dave and Scott Mills' sidekick Mark "Chappers" Chapman running 1 mile at all 33 Premiership football grounds. Like the Chiles/Shearer bike ride, all of the fun was over with, but at least they were challenged to run an extra mile in the studio – with cash backing from 4 of the 5 multi-millionaires from Dragons' Den.
The excellent Apprentice Does Sport Relief was wrapped up by Sir Alan Sugar, with defeated men's team leader Lembit Opik choosing to bring Kelvin MacKenzie and Hardeep Singh Kohli back into the board room for Sir Alan to fire one of them. Hardeep (the dry-witted, insufferably smug one) was duly booted out, after plain-speaking MacKenzie rallied against him.
James Cracknell and David Walliams had done another physical feat (nearly a week ago) – where they swam the Strait Of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa. Walliams has already made a name for himself as a "Sport Relief legend" by swimming the English Channel in 2006, so the novelty factor wasn't quite so high this time. Still, the way the swim highlighted that "Africa is closer than you think" was nicely handled, and the clips of them swimming with whales were entertaining. But why not dedicate a whole special episode to it – instead of repeating Walliams' Channel swim at 1.30 am?
It’s 10pm, so time for a break. At 10:45, the show resumes under the guidance of Patrick Kielty and Claudia Winkleman (the most insane woman to ever grace a TVscreen). They announced the news that an anonymous donator has given Sport Relief an incredible £5.5 million! Sadly, the £5m was pledged minutes after Claudia mentioned she'd go naked for £70,000 – so I bet the mystery donator was kicking himself!
A "chat-off" next, with Jonathan Ross interviewing Sir Michael Parkinson. "The Grumble In The Jungle", as Ross put it. It was basically a shorter version of Ross' chat show, with the talk focusing on sport-related matters. Not bad, but the real problem with Sport Relief is its lack of pace. So, unless you were particularly interested in hearing Parky go on about his cricketing youth and thoughts about interviewing Muhammad Ali (for the zillionth time), there wasn't really much point.
Heading into the night, filler material started to arrive: Alan Carr mincing around the Arsenal ladies football training session. Annie Lennox playing piano. Duncan Bannatyne getting his mug on TV to plug Sport Relief and his own gyms. Angus Deayton "interviewing" clips of famous sportsmen on a giant screen to not-so-amusing effect. Ray Stubbs as one half of the Blues Brothers, etc.
But, tucked away around midnight was probably the night's best entertainment: GMTV presenter Ben Shepherd versus Rn'B singer Lemar in a celebrity boxing match! The training videos were good fun (Shepherd trained by Ricky Hatten, Lemar trained by Amir Khan) and the fight was entertaining – even if it did resemble a ridiculous pub car park brawl at times. But the atmosphere was there, the audience were packed full of more celebs than the Sport Relief studio, and we had sexy Kirsty Gallacher holding up the "Round" cards. But no bikini for her, sadly. This should have been on much earlier.
Jonathan Ross and Jimmy Carr appeared again, in a pre-recorded tennis match at the Royal Albert Hall. It was doubles: Ross and Greg Rusedski versus Carr and Pat Cash. It wasn't particularly funny or exciting to watch, sadly, but it filled some time.
Around 1 am, things got very desperate indeed: artists painting sporting celebs in a section called "Sport Portraits" ("Sportraits", surely?) and the god-awful sight of the wholly talentless Four Poofs & A Piano from Jonathan Ross' chat show doing a woeful rendition of "Let's Get Physical" in bright pink leotards. Not funny, badly sung, the backing track was too loud, the microphones weren't always working... real bottom of the barrel stuff.
The Top Gear Does Ground Force segment was bumped from the schedule (was it really worse than Four Poofs?), as the night drew to a close around 1.40 am. Kielty and Winkleman introduced some "outtakes" that needn't have been cut, before announcing the grand total raised on the night: £19,640,321! Hey, not bad -- but £5m of that was from some mystery millionaire, so it was actually £14 million from the common man. The blonde one from G Force sang "Nessun Dorma" (because of its World Cup connotations) to end the show.
So there you have it. You can't take away from the amazing amount of money these programmes generate for worthy causes, but Sport Relief is only just ahead of Children In Need -- in terms of entertainment value. The problem with Sport Relief on TV is that the fund-raising comes from daytime sporting activities performed earlier in the week, or about to be undertaken at the weekend. So Friday's TV show, sat in the middle of all the real fun and activities outside, has to rely on pre-recorded stuff – most of which is either awful, or just overstays its welcome.
There's also the problem that Comic Relief really feels like it's something Britain's comedians all get behind, and pull out all the stops to make a success. Whereas Sport Relief seems like the weak relation, to be carried by comedians/presenters – with sporty types reduced to guests. I heard it mentioned that the Premiership (a "Sport Relief friend") has agreed to donate around £230,000 over three years to the charity – which is actually a pittance in their multi-million pound world.
Oh well, it wasn’t too much of a shambles. The Apprentice and the celebrity boxing were good highlights... I applaud the efforts of Chiles, Shearer, Cracknell and Walliams... and Kielty and Winkleman did a better job at hosting than bland Lineker, screechy McCall and safe-hands Hammond. A few of the interludes showing the plight of African children and disabled people in the UK were also quite moving – but they always become a bit numbing after a few hours, especially if you've already donated.
Basically, unlike Comic Relief and Children In Need, Sport Relief (as its name suggests) demands that people go outside and do some physical activity to raise cash and have fun -- meaning watching a telethon and donating via telephone just can't compete.
14 March 2008
BBC1, 7.00-10.00 pm & 10.45-1.30am
donate.comicrelief.com/donation/
