Is it wrong to hate Comic Relief?

“Is it wrong to hate Comic Relief” was a question posted on Friday on Twitter.

Apparently IN ALL PROBABILITY, it was.

Comic Relief has raised over £1 billion in 30 years.  Richard Curtis, co-founder of Comic Relief, acknowledges the generosity of the British public.  That is an amazing amount and incredibly generous of us.  There is nothing to hate about that.

The part that I cannot stand is the continuing worship of the cult of celebrity that accompanies it.  Celebrities telling us how much they are doing voluntarily and suggesting that in itself should make us all keep donating.   Millions of people give more time each day for worthy causes without expecting a standing ovation for doing so.  Palliative care hospices, care homes, hospitals, community centres and animal shelters all have volunteers working for them and supporting them.  Unpaid carers ‘save’ the UK over £100 billion every single year, according to figures from carers.org (article here).  The sad reality is that they don’t save us anything, they are struggling on alone because there is no other choice, the organisations that should be helping them either cannot afford to, no longer exist or have never been set up.  The saving is actually what it would cost taxpayers if we had our priorities in the right place.   Thumbs up for the carers, get them on the stage and the Z List brigade off. 

An argument for Comic Relief and other charities’ telethons is that they raise awareness.  I can understand and agree with that.  It is much of the content that I can’t be doing with.   If many of the sketches associated with Comic Relief were actually any good, Ben Elton would have written a musical by now featuring Davina, Lenny and Dermot disappearing up their own backsides.   Luckily for us all, he hasn’t.  I also can’t help suspecting that charity awareness days are doing as much for the Onesie industry as they are for good causes.  If only the producers of shell suits had thought to accessorise with a few charity buckets, we’d all still have a few fluorescent nylon tracksuits in our wardrobes.  

I admire the amount Curtis and Henry’s idea has raised.  I particularly admire and respect the generosity of us, the British people.  Over-taxed, overworked, disenfranchised – but we still give an amazing amount to charitable causes.  I just don’t want some smug, talentless celebrity screeching at me that I must keep giving.  So no, I don't think it is wrong to hate Comic Relief, no more than I think it is wrong to love it, to be ambivalent about it or to be mildly entertained by it because you've just got in from the pub and there isn't much else on.  It is for each of us to choose to which charity we give our time and our money.  I am merely amongst those who prefer not to be pressured into it by people who on any other day make me reach for the remote control to change channels with a speed that might suggest my life depended upon it.

Following on from originally writing this blog, I was discussing Comic Relief with a colleague who agreed with much of what I had said and added that Comic Relief is limited in the regions in which it chooses to help, it is mainly the UK and Africa.  My colleague asked why so much money was diverted to Africa but so little to other countries, I could only agree.  Neither of us objected to the amount of money given to Africa, but there are so many other poor regions in India, Asia and South America - and also in Europe.  Why just the UK and Africa?   We then had a look at their website.  They have a map of where they have projects (link here).   In Asia, only Cambodia (£400,000) and the Philippines (£150,000) receive any help.  In the whole of India there are 12 projects, totalling donations of around £9 million since 2011.  Across Africa there are hundreds of projects, for example, 32 projects in South Africa alone totalling £23 million.  India, with a population of 1.25 billion receives only 40% of the amount donated to South Africa, population 53 million and yet India's GDP per capita is less than 25% of that of South Africa.  It goes without saying that it is better to help some than none, I just wonder why Comic Relief focuses so much on Africa.