A near-the-knuckle Spitting Picture skit involving the previous prince Andrew. The Younger Ones performing their chaotic single Dwelling Doll with Cliff Richard. Kate Bush in some way being coaxed on to a stage to duet with Rowan Atkinson. It was 40 years in the past this month that Comedian Aid staged its inaugural occasion at London’s Shaftesbury theatre, and whereas immediately it’s a fundraising juggernaut (the 2026 occasion, held final month, raised £30m for charity), its origin story stays delightfully scrappy and exploratory.
In 1984, a 12 months earlier than Reside Assist completely recalibrated what a showbiz charity occasion may appear like, there was a outstanding gathering of what was quick changing into the brand new British comedy elite at a tiny village in Hampshire. The situation, Nether Wallop, was chosen seemingly on the idea of its amusing title, and the intention was to create a comedy various to the Edinburgh pageant.
However there was additionally a charity component to the Nether Wallop worldwide arts pageant. Actually, it launched co-organiser Jane Tewson’s idea of “the golden pound” (the concept that each penny donated to a trigger by the general public ought to go on to that trigger, reasonably than being swallowed by administrative prices), which might quickly grow to be a foundational concept. However greater than that it was, most likely inadvertently, a check; establishing proof of idea.
It was additionally, clearly, a riot. Tewson, whose organisation Charity Initiatives would grow to be elementary to the story of Comedian Aid, remembers a wild and windy day, “watching Invoice Wyman enjoying on the stage with the Younger Ones. I had not a contact on the earth however we had been fearless in calling the great and the good. And guess what? They got here. The soprano Jessye Norman sang with the village choir. The Royal Ballet choreographer Lynn Seymour directed the native faculty ballet group. Jenny Agutter and Sir Michael Horden led the village pageant.”
Comedy producer John Lloyd, whose CV included Not the 9 O’Clock Information, Blackadder and Spitting Picture, recollects Nether Wallop as “truthfully one of many biggest nights of my life”. His artistic contribution was Mel Smith and Peter Cook dinner enjoying synchronised swimmers on stage, sporting hats and nostril clips. It’s straightforward to think about how this may need performed out within the context of such a hilariously advert hoc occasion. “They needed to wait fairly a very long time earlier than happening,” Lloyd says. “In order that they’d had a bit an excessive amount of to drink.” Nonetheless, he doesn’t underestimate the occasion’s significance when it comes to what was to come back. “Once you have a look at Nether Wallop,” he says, “you may see the skeleton of issues forming.”
And so to Christmas 1985. Put up-Reside Assist and Band Assist – however nonetheless, sadly, with sub-Saharan Africa experiencing appalling want – Tewson bumped right into a younger comedy author known as Richard Curtis at a dinner, and advised him she was planning to go to Sudan. He provided to accompany her however, after a gathering with Save the Youngsters, discovered himself despatched to Ethiopia on his personal. It was a revelatory expertise.
“I had a really sophisticated time in Ethiopia,” Curtis explains. “It wasn’t the height of the famine however there have been nonetheless massive fields full of individuals, a lot of whom had been very undernourished. There was one specific place the place they’d three huts, considered one of which was for individuals who would positively not survive, one for individuals who may, and one for individuals who they hoped would. So I used to be amid the type of photographs we’d seen on Reside Assist.”
However the emotional affect was nonetheless extra complicated. “I had experiences that jogged my memory that laughter was nonetheless attainable and never unnatural in these conditions,” he says. “I noticed a small little one being weighed in a plastic nappy who was so undernourished that they slipped by way of the left leg. And I keep in mind the individuals round them laughing, as a result of it was a bodily humorous factor. They didn’t really feel like they had been in a scenario the place they needed to sacrifice that aspect of their personalities.”
This perception instantly impressed Comedian Aid, as a method of each helping the victims of famine in a sensible sense and acknowledging their company and humanity in a extra common manner. Curtis and Tewson, who had shortly recruited comedian Lenny Henry as a 3rd founder, had been clear that this needed to be a collaborative effort, involving the individuals who the occasions had been serving to. As Lloyd places it, “the mixture of searing tragedy and comedy was such a intelligent concept. Individuals as much as that time had seen famine nearly as a sequence of stick figures in a panorama. All of the sudden, they had been human beings with a household and a way of humour.”
“Richard Curtis and I spent a variety of time speaking about what we’d witnessed on TV,” recollects Henry. “Out of these conversations got here the idea that comedy may convey individuals collectively and transfer them to behave – not simply snicker.”
Comedian Aid’s first salvo was the Younger Ones’ recording of Dwelling Doll, with Cliff Richard. “I considered the thought on one of many lengthy, bumpy highway journeys in Ethiopia,” says Curtis. “It was at No 1 for 4 weeks, although it’s fairly cacophonous. It had a humorous video, although. I appear to recollect being in Cliff’s home at one level. He was very sport and sang very nicely, not like the remainder of them.”
A stay present was clearly the following step and, for sensible causes, the Shaftesbury theatre was an apparent venue. “We had entry as a result of Rowan [Atkinson] was doing his present there,” says Curtis. “So we used his set. We began at 10.30pm and as I recall, ended at 3am. We did these two lengthy, outstanding, chaotic nights.”
Considered from a contemporary perspective – the present was recorded for VHS and a BBC broadcast – the primary Comedian Aid is thrilling. From the brilliantly deadpan scatology of French and Saunders and the outrageous power of Rik Mayall to the absurdist mastery of Billy Connolly, it’s a definitive snapshot of a selected period of British comedy, arguably at its pre-crossover peak. Charity could have been the intention, but it surely serves as an important cultural doc, too.
“It was an awesome snicker,” recollects Henry, of the primary present. “And it reveals how willingly the performers got here collectively from the very begin. The concept of serving to individuals we don’t know and working as if they had been our neighbours throughout the road appeared to resonate. Individuals wished – and nonetheless do need – to assist their neighbour wherever they’re.”
“Billy [Connolly] was in his most superb kind,” says Curtis. “I keep in mind it was 3am and I mentioned to him: ‘Invoice, you are able to do quarter-hour?’ And he mentioned to me: ‘Ben Elton’s not going to do 40 minutes and me 15! I’m going to do precisely so long as I would like!’ I don’t assume anybody participating was conscious of the form of the entire thing – not even me. It was simply nonetheless many individuals we may throw on, for so long as they’d give us. As a result of it wasn’t stay on tv, with the rigour that, for instance, Reside Assist needed to have, individuals – significantly standup comedians – felt free to roam. You didn’t must say to individuals: ‘You’ve bought seven minutes.’”
Simply as Nether Wallop had inspired its performers to create one thing new, reasonably than counting on highlights from their established routines, so Comedian Aid provided a platform for a certain quantity of risk-taking. Along with Connolly’s habitually sturdy language (the TV broadcast apparently concerned a sequence of awkward edits because of the sheer quantity of swearing), it was clear Comedian Aid provided a platform for a level of experimentation. The course of Paul Jackson (who additionally directed The Younger Ones) was an indication of a willingness to embrace artistic chaos. A look on the lineup of the opening present (Stephen Fry performing a sketch with Midge Ure and Bob Geldof; boxer Frank Bruno making an attempt a scene from Romeo and Juliet with Lenny Henry) suggests that nearly something went.
Properly, not fairly something. As Lloyd factors out, the prevailing tone of what, at the moment, was nonetheless nearly thought to be “various comedy” was, within the language of the time, admirably politically appropriate. “We had been fairly progressive, so that you’d be stunned what number of issues are nonetheless broadcastable,” he says. “It wasn’t racist or homophobic. Not even flippantly so. So it was fairly forward of its time. The factor they’d have struggled with at Comedian Aid was not political stuff however issues of style. Wouldn’t it be too gruelling to place in one thing that made some extent forcibly, however may make individuals flip off the telly? To get the segue proper between a extremely transferring movie and a humorous bit?”
Reside Assist, in fact, had evocatively combined musical leisure with frequent, usually transferring or harrowing reminders of why it needed to exist within the first place. On the get together after the primary Comedian Aid occasion, Curtis recollects a realisation that they had been solely firstly of one thing. “I keep in mind having a dialog with Lenny and Daybreak [French], the place we mentioned it was so unusual that for fundraising, comedians had at all times finished issues within the theatre. Nearly all of us had been TV individuals, not theatre individuals. So we had the thought of attempting to do what we’d finished that evening, however on the tv.”
So, with the approval of the then controller of BBC One, Michael Grade, Comedian Aid transitioned from stay profit present to telethon. Though even this course of wasn’t easy. “Having put the cash apart for Comedian Aid, he [Grade] left his job a few month later,” Curtis recollects. “And he left no report of which pot of cash it was meant to come back from.” Reside Assist had, in fact, set a precedent. However this was a really completely different type of high-wire act. Curtis was grateful for the assistance of veteran producer Michael Hurll (an overseer of the whole lot from Prime of the Pops to The Two Ronnies), who, he recollects, “discovered me drowning sooner or later and provided to present me his knowledge”.
As soon as it had grow to be obvious that Comedian Aid was an concept with legs, a steadiness wanted to be discovered between comedy and seriousness. Lenny Henry and Griff Rhys Jones had been dispatched to Africa with Helen Fielding (who, pre-Bridget Jones, had been working as a researcher on Noel Edmonds’ Late Late Breakfast Present), given the job of directing brief movies from famine-affected areas.
It’s clear that style points had been a continuing consideration. “Lenny discovered a tone,” says Curtis, “which was very unpretentious, very humane and nonetheless, at instances, humorous. Which was a shock. There’s a rare little bit of movie the place he’s attempting to do a chunk to digital camera with an Ethiopian teenager they usually each get the giggles and we left that in.”
“Comedian Aid had a really grounded heartbeat,” says Tewson. “We relied on the individuals on the bottom to tell and educate us. We had been at all times listening to African individuals and giving them their very own voice. But it surely was a difficult steadiness to realize, and a continuing dialog between all of us concerned within the organisation.”
And so, the fashionable template for Comedian Aid was born. It’s a mix of irreverence and coronary heart and in varied, normally understated methods, a barometer of the tradition that surrounds it. Which means inevitably, it often intersects with extra political battles. It hasn’t at all times prevented controversy: in 2019, a minor storm erupted round accusations (together with from the present deputy prime minister David Lammy) of “white saviour” syndrome. Problems with illustration are seemingly a continuing consideration. “I’ve at all times had considerations about this,” says Tewson. “These points are ever-present in my thoughts now as they had been then; the concept that we all know finest, that we do issues for individuals not with them and that we make selections about issues we don’t know sufficient about.”
“We’ve modified the way in which we inform tales,” Henry says. “Actually placing the individuals we help proper on the coronary heart of the whole lot we do. We’ve made big progress in modernising our storytelling and movies over the previous few years – from working with native crews on worldwide shoots to creating positive individuals can share their experiences in their very own phrases.”
The sense of adjusting instances doesn’t solely apply to political points. With the decline of sketch reveals, the content material of Comedian Aid has needed to keep versatile, too. Curtis factors to spoofs of reveals resembling The Traitors and movie and TV parodies starting from Mamma Mia! to Sport of Thrones. However he means that, in purely artistic phrases, it stays an outlet for uncommon mixtures and concepts that wouldn’t fly in every other context. He recollects the duet between Steve Coogan (in character as Tony Ferrino) and Björk on the 1997 Comedian Aid as a excessive level. “There are moments when individuals’s dream eventualities are allowed to occur as a result of it’s for Comedian Aid.”
This appears like a wistful callback to the earliest days of the enterprise with its odd mixtures and sense of chaos. Comedian Aid is an establishment now, occupying massive chunks of primetime, taken out of TV studios and into faculties and sports activities golf equipment and, certainly, anyplace the place a purple nostril could be worn and cash could be raised. The notion that leisure and consciousness could be a clumsy match has disappeared. “There are very good-hearted individuals on the core of this,” says Lloyd. “No one is doing it as an opportunistic factor. Everyone seems to be doing it for the love.”
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