Every other year, spring sees the arrival of Comic Relief/Red Nose Day in the UK. A money-raising event of truly national proportions, Comic Relief events are everywhere as celebrities make fools of themselves on television and radio whilst average Joes hold events in every school, nursery and workplace in the country. Culminating in a full night of coverage on the BBC which for the past few years has included a Dr Who comedy short, the Comic Relief charity leviathan raises truly incredible amounts of money. This year's "on the night" total (that is just the money donated on Red Nose Day - March 18th - itself) was a staggering £74,360,207; that's well over $121 million, the most money ever raised in the event's 23 year history. One of the popular ideas this year was known as Twitrelief. Over one hundred celebrities who are regular posters on Twitter, were available to "buy" on eBay; the winning bidders would be followed by their chosen celebrity for three months, along with being retweeted and mentioned. Many geeky celebrities signed up and made themselves available including Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Professor Brian Cox. Along with the Twitter based prize, many celebrities also offered extras for their winners; restaurant critic Giles Coren would take his winner out for a meal while Ruby Wax would take hers along to her next botox session. The concept was an enormous success and raised thousands of pounds.
One celebrity available to buy was Red Dwarf's Robert Llewellyn, now presenter of online chat show Carpool, some episodes of which have also been broadcast on UK TV channel Dave. Carpool is an unusual chat show, with each episode filmed inside an electric car which Robert drives around the UK as he chats to his guests in the passenger seat. The result is a friendly, light-hearted show with no room for big egos to fit in. I got quite a surprise when I discovered that the winner of Robert's auction was an old acquaintance of mine, Relly Annett-Baker; a content-writer for web design house Supernice Studio which she runs with her husband Paul. The extra offered by Robert was to be a guest on Carpool and yesterday saw the launch of the episode filmed with Relly on his website LlewTube. The resulting interview will be a joy for any geek to watch. Relly is a true GeekMom to two beautiful children and discusses her line of work with such enthusiasm that you can't help being fascinated, even by the dull sounding subject of Government web content-writing. Her mother was one of the first programmers for a commercial company and Relly discusses the ridiculous procedures she had to go through at a time when women were not even considered capable of being left unsupervised at work. Other topics in the twenty-two minute interview include Japanese "tentacle sex" erotic art, using BASIC to flirt at high school and Relly's attempts at writing text adventure games as a nine year old. If you need more reasons to watch, Robert has agreed to donate 1p to Comic Relief for every single view the episode receives, so please spread the word.
The interview can be viewed at LlewTube and is also available to download on the iTunes Store.
