to be put off by the amount of money spent to make programs for comedy relief?

[purplemonkeydishwasher]

Surely they could just put that money to good use here and abroad.

AND I'm absolutely DISGUSTED by the gluttony and drunkeness in the Fame Academy house. they are doing this for STARVING people. Get a grip on reality.

that was in reponse to pmdw - It wasn;t meant to sound like I think we ought to know - purely a statement of fact that we don;t know so I fail to see how we can judge them

As long as it is profitable and the charities benefit who cares?

What I object to is the "calls cost £1 and at least 70p goes to Comic Relief"

excuse me - where does the other 30p go? It doesn't cost that much to process it!

Another example - Sainsburys - Red Nose gingerbread man - 99p. As one of the staff pointed out, the normal gingerbread man costs less than 40p. OK, fine, it's more expensive but it is raising money - except that the sticker on it says 10p is going to Comic Relief (I didn't buy it - I would rather just give my money to Comic Relief than give 50p extra profit to Sainsburys so that they can give 10p...

rant over

It really annoys me when people come out with statements like ?if those celebs just donated some of their money instead of donating their time??. How do you know that they don?t make donations? Charity is a private thing, just because they?re in the public eye doesn?t mean that they have to make public how much they donate and to what cause. At least they?re getting up and doing something to help raise awareness, how many of you would go on national television and make an arse of yourself in the name of charity?

If it raises their profiles so what, as long as it makes people aware of what?s actually going on in the world around them.

yes expat I do object to that too. esp the phone vote type programmes, and not just talking about the comic relief ones - the soapstar superstar one a couple of months ago raised £200000 for charity out of ... over 2 million phone votes. so where did the rest of the money go...

at Sainsburys and the gingerbread man. Truly (and I've read all those books about how evil supermarkets are so I already have quite a low opinion of them).

Noddy - yes, I hate it but will grudgingly ignore it as long as I'm not expected to participate. The trouble is that in a lot of schools and workplaces everyone is.

it should be a personal choice as to whether to give.. a few years ago I worked for a company who were very big on their donations to charity, so on red nose day you had to pay £1 to come in wearing something red, £2 if you just wore casual clothes, and if you came in in smart work clothes you had to pay £3, so you had to give regardless of whether you wanted to. now that i do object to.

wannabe! Hows the old mothers day arrangements going?

true, wannabe, i'm really glad that the matter of phone votes is being looked into. i remember it occurred to me yonks ago when i was watching Pet Rescue, do you remember? they used to say 'ring in and adopt little fluffy, calls cost £1'. i actually rang the programme, cos i'm a bit like that, to find out if all the £1s from the people who didn't get to adopt fluffy went to the RSPCA. they didn't, they went to the production. so i'm very cautious about ringing tv programmes...

If they spent no money making programmes, barely anyone would give anything.

If Sainsbury's didn't give 10p to Comic Relief for the GBM, you think it'd be 10p cheaper? Nope!

Comic Relief does masses of good work in this country and abroad.

I agree, not all the programmes are ones I necessarily want to watch, but you can't please everyone, can you?!

for the record, The Apprentice last night was hysterical. cheryl cole, comedy goddess.

Purplemonkey, perhaps we on MN could sponsor you for not swearing..

I can't forget Trinny and her obscenely wealthy friends in that Apprentice thing last night.

What are the administration costs for comic relief?

i know, at least Maureen Lipman and Cheryl Cole had the decency to look shocked.

"calls cost £1 and at least 70p goes to Comic Relief - excuse me - where does the other 30p go? It doesn't cost that much to process it!" erm. yes it does. just look at what you;re looking at - you can;t make tv for free, you can;t man call centres for free. it all costs money.

actually, the call centres do it for free, i happen to know. or at least the staff do.

they'll still be costs even if the staff are volunteers

sure. but i know that BT makes a big thing of its donation to comic relief and i've always understood that to be in 'services rendered'. given that the staff are giving up their time individually i'd assumed that BT were pitching in as well. there will be admin however for processing the forms through the banks, which presumably has to be paid for.

"If Sainsbury's didn't give 10p to Comic Relief for the GBM, you think it'd be 10p cheaper? Nope!"

That was my point, actually - the normal, non-red nose GBM was 60p cheaper than the red nose one - and Sainsbury's presumably make a profit on that. So if they were giving 60p to Comic Relief, fine, but they're not, and there is no way it costs 50p more to make one with a red nose... so explain your logic, Hunker?

I know its not Comic Relief, but is anyone else annoyed by those chuggers. The people that stop you in the high st and try to get you to sign up for direct debit charity donation. They get paid for doing it!!!!

I'd ratehr donate to the poppy people or similar where its a volunteer shaking a tin.

When I told the last chugger that I was a student and couldn't afford it she said "that's ok we have a secial student rate of £10 a month"

Hello - its voluntary, not a discounted rate for students??? Grrrrrrr

You've got it all wrong. I love Red Nose Day. It's lovely to see the poor and starving of Africa getting together to save the careers of failing comedians, actors and 'celebrities'.

Complain to Sainsbury's if you're that bothered! Would be interesting to hear what they had to say. Were they identical in size, ingredients, decoration, packaging, etc?

I disagree. this ain't expensive programming and the bbc would be paying out for the programmes on tonight anyway. the publicity gets issues public attention.

as for the phone lines: bt gets the 30p. that is a con.

Roskvawantingsomesunshine is flat wrong, big charities almost always have lower expense ratios.
CR does fly celebrities to shit places, and make TV progs, but the vast bulk of the cost of TV progs is labour nearly all of which is given free.
All charities do marketing. gobshite knows a charity that is able to function without it, but even then it could do more.
I've done quite a bit more tin rallting than most people, including poppies and the bloke who did the London marathon in a diving suit, but it's hard to get large scale money that way.

Yes of course, Sainsburys, Lenny Henry et al get side benefits. But Mr. Henry puts in a lot of work most of which never makes it to screen. Sainsbury use their considerable marketing clout to suck in enough to save literally thousands of lives.
They could just as spend more on the celebs they already use, and maybe a couple more. But they choose to do well for their shareholders and poeple in deep shit by helping comic relief. I don't see that make them bad.
What have you done ?

lawks, I agree with dc. what is the world coming to?