Beeb pulls out all the stops (and stars) for Sport Relief

TV Watch with Bernie Ni Fhlatharta

Watching Sport Relief on BBC over the weekend made me nostalgic for the biennial Telethon event that used to be broadcast by RTE.

It was a marathon broadcast on the BBC on Friday night and it turned into an emotional journey of tears and laughter.

Millions of pounds were raised by sportsmen and women aided by BBC presenters and personalities.

And that’s the thing about the Beeb, they have so many vehicles for comedians and entertainers to become even bigger personalities, because without them, events like Sport Relief wouldn’t be the same.

And yes, it was entertaining. In fact it was addictive as we saw David Beckham in an Only Fools and Horses skit, we saw Gary Lineker trying to sing and we saw paralypians doing Strictly Come Dancing.

But of course viewers were reminded throughout show of the reason the money was being raised and some of the footage from developing countries were quite upsetting. Watching starving children and babies dying from malaria, as well as seeing villagers living right beside a river of sewage is hard viewing on any night.

The BBC have been filming fundraisers for months and one of those was of Davina McCall’s gruelling seven day cycle, run and swim which resulted in her being rescued from Lake Windermere when she got hypothermia. That event alone raised £2.2m because the British public love Davina, who has been involved with Sport Relief for 15 years.

But one of the stars of the show had to be David Walliams who is an all rounder.  He sang and danced with Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, he flirted with co-presenter Gary Lineker adding to the guessing game about his sexuality and, basically, kept the show going from 7pm for three hours until Claudia Winkleman and Jack Whitehall took over on BBC 2.

The broadcaster invests time and possibly money on their presenters and for an event like this, it pays off. And hasn’t Clare Balding really glammed up. She has been constantly on our screens since the Winter Olympics.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.