Red Nose Day 2005 launched

Howard Lake | 1 February 2005 | News

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Comic Relief’s major fundraising event will take place on 11 March 2005 with a seven-hour telethon, with the theme “Big Hair and Beyond”.

Davina McCall, Matt Lucas and Chris Evans were among the comedians and celebrities who launched this year’s Comic Relief campaign in central London.

The theme of this year’s Comic Relief campaign is “Big Hair and Beyond”. In addition to buying red noses, supporters will be asked to change the way they look to raise money.

As usual the campaign will be supported by a music single. This year McFly will release their double A-side Comic Relief single All About You/You’ve Got a Friend on 7 March.

The event has considerable commercial sector support from retailers such as TK Maxx and Sainsbury’s. The latter is encouraging its customers to donate in four ways:

• by buying products from which a percentage of the sale price will be donated to the appeal. These include New Covent Garden Comic Relief Squished Tomato Soup. The supermarket has even published a handy shopping list of Comic Relief items and how much each will earn for the charity: the list can be downloaded from its website.
• by buying this year’s Red Nose, or Clothes Nose (a badge) and Car Air Freshener, which are available only from Sainsbury’s and Oxfam. This year’s Red Nose includes face paints, red hair gel and fun stickers, with a 70p donation going straight to Comic Relief.
• by using Sainsbury’s ‘Save-back’ facility, a charitable version of ‘cash-back’ whereby, when paying by debit card, shoppers can ask for a fixed amount to be added to their bill at the checkout or they can round up their bill to the nearest £5. The donation will then be swiped into the Comic Relief donation account. Donors will be given a receipt confirming the amount they have donated.
• by donating online at the rednoseday.com website

In 2003 Sainsbury’s customers and staff raised £6.3 million for Comic Relief.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.