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comic relief
TV fundraiser Red Nose Day will make its debut in the US later this year.
Red Nose Day on NBC will raise money for charities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the US.
Comic Relief in the UK has raised more than £1billion ($1.5 billion) since the charity was co-founded by filmmaker Richard Curtis 30 years ago.
Richard Curtis, an executive producer for the NBC special, said he hoped it would make a “massive difference” to millions of children around the world.
Since the first TV fundraiser in 1988, the biennial Red Nose Day in the UK has seen celebrities and normal people do something funny for money on TV, at home, school, and work.
Emma Watson, Daniel Craig and Orlando Bloom were among the stars appearing in the 2015 special, which aired last week, helping to raise £78 million ($117 million) by the end of the live show.
NBC has yet to announce who will appear on the show, but Mad Men star Jon Hamm starred in an advert that aired during the Super Bowl.
The 12 charities that will benefit from donations to the US show include the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Children’s Health Fund and United Way.
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Sam Smith has recorded a special version of his single Lay Me Down with John Legend for this year’s Comic Relief Red Nose Day show.
Sam Smith recorded the single in Los Angeles with John Legend earlier this year.
They will perform the ballad during Comic Relief: Face the Funny on Friday, March 13, on BBC One.
The one-off performance will be broadcast live from the London Palladium.
A digital download of the special track has been released ahead of their performance.
Sam Smith said: “Lay Me Down holds a very special place in my heart.
“Not only did I perform it at the Brits, I’m now going to perform it live on the Red Nose Day show with the extremely talented John Legend.”
John Legend said: “Sam is such a talented artist. We’ve been looking forward to working together for a while now.
“I’m so glad we could collaborate on such a great song and for such a great cause.”
All the profits from the sale of Lay Me Down will go to Comic Relief.
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Daniel Craig will appear in a special James Bond sketch for Comic Relief, to be broadcast as part of Red Nose Day on March 13.
The skit will feature in Face the Funny, the charity’s first show to be broadcast live from the London Palladium.
Professor Stephen Hawking will appear in a new Little Britain sketch, featuring David Walliams as carer Lou.
The physicist will take Matt Lucas’s role as the fake wheelchair-bound Andy.
It is the second Comic Relief sketch for Daniel Craig, who is currently filming new James Bond movie Spectre.
Daniel Craig appeared in a sketch with Catherine Tate in 2009, which saw her character Elaine Figgis dating a spy played by the actor.
Stephen Hawking’s Little Britain cameo follows Kate Moss’ appearance during a Comic Relief show at Hammersmith Apollo in 2006, when she joined Matt Lucas on stage as Katie Pollard, the sister of Vicky Pollard.
Other previously announced sketches to feature during this year’s charity appeal include Rowan Atkinson’s return as Mr. Bean, Dawn French in the Vicar of Dibley and highlights of Peter Kay’s live Phoenix Nights show.
John Bishop, Eddie Izzard, Davina McCall and David Walliams will also take to the stage for a reinvention of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch.
Dermot O’Leary will complete his 24-hour dance marathon live at the London Palladium.
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This year’s Comic Relief presented a sketch featuring Rowan Atkinson as the Archbishop of Canterbury which has drawn more than 2,200 complaints to the BBC.
In the pre-21:00 watershed sketch, Rowan Atkinson – playing a fictional version of the Archbishop of Canterbury compared boyband One Direction to Jesus’s disciples.
He also claimed praying “doesn’t work”.
According to a BBC statement, the sketch “was intended to amuse and entertain,” adding, “we did not mean to cause any offence”.
Around a quarter of the complaints were specifically about religious offence, with the rest concerned with pre-watershed language.
Archbishop sketch has since been removed from the BBC’s iPlayer.
Comic Relief sketch featuring Rowan Atkinson as the Archbishop of Canterbury has drawn more than 2,200 complaints
The BBC received almost 3,000 complaints in total over the charity fundraising night of programming.
Other complaints over the event – which drew a peak audience of 12.2 million people – involved another sketch involving the popular series Call The Midwife.
A statement said Comic Relief was “known for pushing at the boundaries of comedy alongside heartfelt appeal films”.
It added that “getting the language, tone and content of the evening is extremely important to us… to any viewers we may have offended, we apologize”.
A host of British stars were involved in this year’s event which marked Comic Relief’s 25th anniversary.
Other sketches featured X Factor mogul Simon Cowell rejecting advances from David Walliams and Louis Walsh only to marry himself, while Ricky Gervais resurrected The Office’s David Brent for an appalling new song promoting racial diversity called Equality Street.
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David Brent made his big return on Comic Relief after he was off screens for 10 years.
David Brent made famous appearing on The Office used his time back in the limelight to debut a political reggae song called Equality Street.
Ricky Gervais resurrected his popular character for the fundraising fun and viewers learned that the former General Manager of Wernham–Hogg paper merchants is now a cleaning sales man with musical aspirations.
David Brent made his big return on Comic Relief after he was off screens for 10 years
David Brent teamed up with a young male artist Dom Johnson and persuaded him to duo on a track called Equality Street.Lyrics include: “Come with me down Equality Street, you don’t know who you’re going to meet.”
“At the end there’s a golden gate, it let in love it don’t let in hate.”
Another line included: “Black people aren’t crazy, Fat people aren’t lazy. And dwarves aren’t babies.”
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