Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Sir Lenny Henry in response to the famine in Ethiopia. The concept of Comic Relief was to get British comedians to make the public laugh, while raising money to help people around the world and in the United Kingdom. A new CEO, Samir Patel, was announced in January 2021.
Davina Lucy Pascale McCall is an English television presenter. She was the presenter of the reality show Big Brother during its run on Channel 4 between 2000 and 2010. She also hosted Channel 4's Streetmate, The Million Pound Drop (2010–2015), Five Minutes to a Fortune (2013), and The Jump (2014–2017), as well as ITV's The Biggest Loser (2011–2012), Long Lost Family (2011–present), and This Time Next Year (2016–2019). McCall was a regular co-presenter of the Comic Relief annual telethons from 2005 to 2015.
Jonathan Peter Culshaw is an English actor, comedian and impressionist. He is best known for his work on the radio comedy Dead Ringers since 2000.
Josephine Grace Brand is an English comedian, writer, presenter and actress. Starting her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appear on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI, Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You?. She also makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 in programmes such as The News Quiz and Just a Minute. Since 2014 she has been the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice. In 2003, Brand was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
Reginald Yates is a British writer and director with a career spanning three decades on screen as an actor, television presenter and radio DJ. Yates played Leo Jones in Doctor Who and has worked at the BBC in radio and television–presenting various shows for BBC Radio 1 for a decade as well as hosting the BBC One singing show The Voice UK, hosting the first two series with Holly Willoughby.
Angela Mellissa Griffin is an English actress and television presenter who has been active on British television since the early 1990s. She is best known for portraying the roles of Fiona Middleton in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, Kim Campbell in the BBC One school-based drama series Waterloo Road, and DS Lizzie Maddox in the final two series of ITV's detective drama series Lewis (2014–2015). Griffin was also an original cast member of Holby City, playing nurse Jasmine Hopkins (1999–2001).
Edward Cathal Byrne is an Irish actor and comedian. He has presented the British television shows Just for Laughs and Uncut! Best Unseen Ads, has been a guest on numerous television panel games and has appeared on a number of television cooking shows.
Hardeep Singh Kohli is a British presenter, writer and director of Sikh heritage who has appeared on various radio and television programmes. Having moved to Scotland at a young age he has had a long association with the arts in Scotland, he is known more widely across the United Kingdom as a presenter on the BBC across television and radio, and Channel 4. He was also a finalist on Celebrity MasterChef in 2006 and a contestant in Celebrity Big Brother in 2018. Kohli was arrested and charged in 2023, in connection with alleged non-recent sexual offences and is awaiting a trial date.
Theodoros Paphitis is a Greek-Cypriot British retail magnate and entrepreneur. He is best known for his appearances on the BBC business programme Dragons' Den and as former chairman of Millwall Football Club.
Sport Relief was a biennial charity event from Comic Relief, in association with BBC Sport, established in 2002.
Comic Relief Does The Apprentice is a special celebrity version of British reality television series The Apprentice, initially produced to raise money for Comic Relief. The first edition aired in March 2007. In 2008, the same format was broadcast until the title Sport Relief Does The Apprentice. Each series involves five male and five female celebrities competing in a single Apprentice task.
Jason Gardiner is an Australian choreographer, singer, and theatre producer best known for his role as a caustic and controversial judge on the ITV shows Dancing on Ice, Born to Shine and Stepping Out.
Helen Elizabeth Skelton is an English television presenter and actress. She co-presented the BBC children's programme Blue Peter from 2008 until 2013, and since 2014 has been a presenter on Countryfile. She also co-presented two series of the BBC One programme Holiday Hit Squad alongside Angela Rippon and Joe Crowley. She also presented the daytime series The Instant Gardener that ran for two series.
Marvin Richard James Humes is an English singer songwriter disc jockey, radio host, television presenter, and former actor. Before rising to prominence as a member of the British boy band JLS, he had an acting role in Holby City. As part of JLS, he achieved five number-one singles on the UK Singles Charts and a number-one album on the UK Albums Charts. As of December 2013, they have sold over 10 million records worldwide.
Charlotte Alexandra Jones is a Welsh television presenter, best known for co-presenting the BBC One magazine programme The One Show. She presented Tumble (2014), Close Calls: On Camera (2015–2016) and Shop Well for Less? (2016–2020).
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the lasting global inflation in the price of food that began in late 2006 and especially since the financial crisis of 2009, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
Benefits Street is a British documentary series broadcast on Channel 4. It followed the lives of benefit claimants and showed them committing crimes, including a demonstration of how to shoplift, and portrayed a situation in which people are dependent on benefits and lack the motivation to seek reliable employment.
Poverty porn, also known as pornography of poverty, development porn, famine porn, or stereotype porn, has been defined as "any type of media, be it written, photographed or filmed, which exploits the poor's condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers, increasing charitable donations, or support for a given cause". It also suggests that the viewer of the exploited protagonists is motivated by gratification of base instincts. It is also a term of criticism applied to films that objectify people in poverty for the sake of entertaining a privileged audience.
Sport Relief's Top Dog is a British BBC Two game show hosted by Gaby Roslin. The first series began airing on 3 March 2014 and ended on 21 March 2014.
Sport Relief 2014 is a fundraising event organised by Sport Relief. A number of run-up events took place and the main event consisted of a live telethon broadcast on BBC One and BBC Two from the evening of Friday 21 March 2014 to early the following morning. Due to the closure of BBC Television Centre, the live studio event is now broadcast from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.
