A conviction of similar import has infected the producers of Comic Relief Night. But while Stephen and Hugh went for constructive criticism, the Red Nose brigade prefers the opposite. They believe every Comic Relief Night must have “a Peter Kay in it”. Preferably the man himself, even if, as in 2005 and 2007, he’s not actually live in the studio. Or, as was the case this year, even if he’s not actually done anything new at all, but is still “in it” thanks to a caption that introduces stand-up Jason Manford with the patronising statement “is he Peter Kay’s son?” and a clip from a DVD that was released in the shops a few years ago in which Peter talks about filming his appearance for the 2005 fundraiser which viewers are reminded was “the most famous Comic Relief video ever”.

It’s a box-ticking, event-telly-by-numbers mentality, and it made for the most tedious and unsatisfying Comic Relief Night since…the last one. These jamborees are not getting any better as they get older. They’re not getting any better as you get older either. The silliness of their – and your – early years is long gone. Likewise the easy ideals and the casual pursuit of cash.

Phew, now I know it's OK to laugh at this next bit!

Now there’s a ruthless streak to affairs. No messing around is allowed; everything must be orientated towards the accumulation of money, with reminders of “the real reason we’re here tonight” at least every 10-15 minutes (meaning even more time for you to finish doing the pots); and above all, in order to ensure a punitive a Comic Relief as possible, there must be as much relief from comics as possible.

This year’s effort hit a new extreme in this regard. Not one comic was allowed a go at presenting until three and a half hours had elapsed. And that was Alan Carr. Followed by Graham Norton. That was it. Two comics.

The bulk of the wallet-wounding anchoring was done by people who had nothing to do with comedy. One, David Tennant, had nothing to do with anchoring. The others were just TV faces, some more capable at reading an autocue (Fern Britton, Jonathan Ross) than others (Claudia Winkleman, Davina McCall).

None of these distinguished themselves with much in the way of memorable wit or attention-grabbing antics. Winkleman, McCall and Britton couldn’t muster much composure either, alternately shrieking (“Hiya! Hello! Hiya, hiya! Hello! Hiya! Hiya!”) or blubbing buckets after the serious bits.

Britton hugs herself while sobbing about young mothers

So much for the presenters. What about the bits in-between? Maybe this was where the titular comedy was to be found. Wrong again.

Where were the corporation’s most popular comedies? Why weren’t My Family, The Green Green Grass of Home and Not Going Out involved? Surely if you’re purporting to be “the biggest night of comedy ever” you’d want to cast your net wide enough and rope in fans of the hits as well as more alternative offerings.

Oh, but wait, because they weren’t invited either. No room here for, say, a special one-off episode of The Thick Of It, or a bit of nonsense from Adam and Joe, or Stewart Lee and Dave Gorman, both of whom had new series debuting on the BBC just days later, or a chance in the mainstream spotlight for something like Lead Balloon?

Nope. Nothing too off-the-wall and leftfield was to be found, and with nothing too populist or conventional either, all that remained were relics from a third, weird, hybrid kind of camp that was sold as being big on Big Names and Big Laughs and low on anything unexpected, i.e. fresh, exciting and fun.

Mostly this took the shape of The Collaboration, which has become a wretched obsession of Comic Relief Night. Yet again the thinking appears to have been: let’s marry one thing with another and, er, that’s it. Let’s not bother thinking how or why these two parties should be combined with a view for creating a bit of humour. No, the simple fact that they have been combined is enough. That is the joke. Right there. Look. Two names instead of one! Mwhahahahahahahaha!

Norton explains how Things Are Just Getting Started

Hence Comic Relief “does” The Apprentice; Catherine Tate “meets” Little Britain; Armstrong and Miller “meet” Mitchell and Webb; Harry and Paul “meet” Dragon’s Den; Ronnie Corbett “does” The Sarah Jane Adventures (even though all his bits were filmed separately from the rest of the cast); French and Saunders “do” Mamma Mia (“as you’ve never seen it before!”)…

The number of forced couplings was greater than ever, and consequently fused new compounds of joylessness in the brain of the viewer. In each case form was valued above content. The act of being seen to be doing something was raised above that of actually doing…something. Anything.

But hey, it’s Comic Relief, where isn’t being seen to do something the only thing that matters? Nobody’s bothered about groundbreaking telly! They just want a short-term injection of laughter juice to lubricate their wallets – right? Cue Horne and Corden, whom the BBC is currently spraying everywhere like that foam they use to put out fires at petrol stations. Nobody remembers the flipping thing anyway. Apart from Peter Kay, of course, “Comic Relief’s most famous video”.

A marriage of, and which belongs in the, convenience

Such an argument might hold water were it not for the way that at the same time as rustling up fag packet conceits of uber-expediency the programme tries to place so much store on legacy at every possible moment.

You’re implicitly encouraged to think back to previous Comic Reliefs by the references to “record-breaking totals”, old fundraising films and archive trips by Connolly, Henry et al, and the deluge of iconography that resonates through 21 years of red noses, wet sponges, custard pies, bathtubs of baked beans and men dressed as nuns towing cars.

In short they try to have it both ways. They want to make you treat it all as a one-off tin-rattle, but also as an unfolding initiative that has already achieved x number of tangible goals and hopes to nail y number in the future. And it just doesn’t work. Nothing is satisfactorily reconciled. The night becomes just another telethon with grisly mock-sincerity and ghastly unfunny set-pieces.

Maybe that was the worst aspect of all about this year. The fact that it was just another fundraiser. That its personality has been dissolved into an uber-weak solution of salt tears and unctuous sentimentality. That this has become a celebration of negatives, not positives, where:

1. Nothing spontaneous is permitted.

2. Nobody is allowed to run onto stage hooting and causing havoc.

3. Nobody must essay an amusing cameo during one of the pop acts, lest you disturb the likes of The Script and their rent-a-Bono front man dedicating an appalling version of David Bowie’s Heroes to “everybody we’ve helped tonight; you [the audience] are their heroes.”

4. Nobody must deviate from their markings on the stage, despite the roving cameras.

5. Nobody must deviate from their autocue, even if that means uttering phrases like “It’s television, but not as you know it, because it’s slightly better” (McCall); “an hour and a half of the best TV ever”  (Winkleman); “it’s wrong to single people out” (Winkleman, before doing just that); and “look out for a guest appearance by Geoffrey Palmer in this first sketch” (Carr; Palmer was the very first face you saw).

6. Nobody is allowed to refer to previous, better, Comic Relief nights, except when talking about Peter Kay.

Patrick Kielty; he's "a great supporter of Comic Relief"

Naturally there has to be some order to proceedings. You wouldn’t want, say, shots of empty seats, or the camera to catch a member of the audience leaving to go to the toilet, or a film about the impact of alcoholic parents upon their children to be followed directly by a sketch about the impact of alcoholic parents upon their children.

Except you got all of them here. The most inflexible, fiercely-controlled Comic Relief Night failed to even sort out a sensitive running order or common sense camera cues.

£57 million was raised, most of it before the night began. And still they couldn’t find the money for one decent sketch. Good on the mystery donor who gave £6m. They were the only one to emerge from the occasion with any fucking dignity.

Due to air on 13 March, the Doctor Who star will co-present with Davina McCall. In a pre-recorded video screened at this morning’s press launch at The Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, he said: “It’s a great honour for me. I remember the first Red Nose Day when I was at school, buying the t-shirt and everyone joining in, And then, later, at drama school, me and my mate Alan McCue formed a Proclaimers tribute act and went busking in Sauchiehall Street. We were rubbish, but earned £65 in our lunch hour. The people of Glasgow are very generous.”

Also confirmed for this year’s bash, are Steve Jones and Claudia Winkleman, who’ll be hosting the celebrity-packed Let’s Dance for Comic Relief; Fearne Cotton, Denise Van Outen, Alesha Dixon, Cheryl Cole, Kimberly Walsh, Ben Shephard, Chris Moyles, Ronan Keating and Gary Barlow who’ll be attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro; a special episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and – best of all – Comic Relief Does the Apprentice.

Contestant Carol Vorderman introduced the latter to the press. “In the past it was very much ring up friends and get things donated and get people to buy auction prizes. It was fabulous and raised a lot of money. This time it was decided – and we didn’t know till we arrived – that it would be a proper Apprentice project as they would give to those in the normal programme.” So no calling in favours from famous friends.

By the looks of the trailer, it appears the teams are tasked with making a television advert – but for what remains unclear.

Lining up, alongside Vorderman, to do Sir Alan’s bidding are: Jack Dee, Gerald Ratner, Patsy Palmer, Michelle Mone, Ruby Wax (“With whom I became more intimate than I have with any other woman in my life”, said the former Countdown star), Fiona Phillips, Jonathan Ross, Alan Carr and Gok Wan.

Find out more about Red Nose Day at the official site: www.rednoseday.com

It’s quite possible a substantial minority of people watching him open this year’s Comic Relief Night didn’t know who he was. It’s almost certain a considerable portion of people in the studio audience didn’t know who he was, for they were under the age of 10 and would only have read of the man in history books.

Comic Relief recently passed into its third decade, meaning there’s now an entire generation for whom it has always been a part of life. They have no knowledge of a world free of its existence. And there’s another generation who should by rights remember society before red noses, but are angry and suspicious at the fact they can’t.

Both parties will have been equally bemused by the choice of Lenny Henry to launch 2007′s effort. Looking puffed-up, haggard and sweaty, this rare excursion into live television seemed to him on a par with a trip to an undiscovered country. Unfamiliar senses and experiences appeared to overwhelm him. Words failed his lips. Who was this strange, bumbling man, wondered viewers in a million front rooms – before their kids asked them the very same question. Those under the age of 10 who weren’t trapped in the studio would have hung around the amount of time it took Fearne Cotton to walk on and look petrified, which was two seconds, before switching off.

Criticising Comic Relief feels akin to slagging off the likes of the 2012 London Olympics. To indulge in it renders you, in certain people’s eyes, selfish, immoral, even unpatriotic. Those people, however, have not just concerns but reputations invested in the very thing you’re so lightly querying. “Don’t you know it’s doing a lot of good?” they charge. “How can you possibly consider it a bad thing?”

Such logic, or rather illogic, is built upon the assumption that by questioning the means to which an end can be reached, you’re rubbishing the end as well. It’s a trite process of reasoning, and one as facile as a fair portion of this year’s Comic Relief Night, including the doomed first hour as Lenny and Fearne did as much as they could to subtract all momentum from proceedings, ably assisted by Mr Bean, Patrick Kielty and a cameo from Joe Pasquale.

For more years than memory permits, Comic Relief Night has rarely lived up to its groundbreaking initial premise, forever summed up by the press as comics joining forces in a live telethon to raise money for good causes. Nowadays “comics” are thin on the ground; “entertainers” and bog standard celebrities have taken their place. Nobody “joins forces” either, at least not for amusing crossovers or special sketches or group efforts; now the only thing teaming up are formats and faces of a singularly non-comic nature.

Indeed, this year’s roster of non-comic shows was bigger than ever, including Fame Academy (for the third time), The Apprentice, Pimp My Ride, Beat the Boss and Top Gear. Non-comedian collaborations were of a similarly sprawling scale, with Sting on “the last ever” Vicar of Dibley (until the next one), Daniel Craig, David Tennant and Tony Blair with Catherine Tate, and the world and his wife grasping at the chance to show their face and plenty more besides in Little Britain.

Thanks to the enduring presence of all such third parties, there is now very little that is properly “live” in this notionally live telethon. Long gone is the magnificent spontaneity, surprise and edge-of-the-sofa anything-could-happen expectation that graced those great Comic Reliefs of the late 80s and early 90s.

Lastly, there is demonstrably less money raised on the night itself than in the days when the totaliser rolled upwards every hour on the hour, something self-evident by the sheer volume of contributions already in the bank come transmission time.

Does any of this actually matter? Institutions evolve to best serve and exploit the environment around them. Surely Comic Relief is wiser to embrace a multi-media multi-faceted model of fund-raising than behave like the equivalent of a televised charity stand-up gig?

There would be no cause to quibble with such a potent argument were Comic Relief Night not still presuming to be a night of comic relief when it has, for at least the last decade, resembled nothing more than a belligerently straightforward variety show of the kind mounted at the London Palladium every Sunday night back in the days of national service.

Although – not that this would matter much – those variety shows were generously populated with talented individuals supplying imaginative entertainment. Here, the likes of Kate Thornton, Paul O’Grady and Fearne Cotton try to helm proceedings, none of whom befit the stature of such an occasion nor muster enough excitement, authority or ability to demand you stay tuned.

You then get Kielty shouting the name of the Celebrity Fame Academy champion into his microphone at such bafflingly-high volume you can’t actually make out who’s won; Mitchell and Webb performing not one but two routines which elicit not a single laugh from the audience; Chris Evans sitting at his old TFI Friday desk perpetuating a joyless bit of business about guests coming on, saying one word, then disappearing; the Mighty Boosh performing an act containing not one funny line; Justin Lee Collins and Alan Carr doing likewise; Chris Moyles, Kielty (again – why wouldn’t he go home?!) and Jimmy Carr singing My Way; Russell Brand carrying on like a bad Larry Grayson impersonator; and Peter Kay phoning in exactly the same quasi-karaoke schtick as two years ago, right down to the “ironic” “appearance” of “cult” “celebrities”.

Of course it’s for charity and of course it does good, but why does it have to be such hard work for the viewer? Especially as it could – should – be so easy? The “serious” bits in between do their job the same as always, and you can take or leave them as you please. All that’s needed is the very best comedy, or rather (as seems to be the policy now) the very best entertainment, to carry you seamlessly through one night every two years.

Which is why the appearance of Lenny Henry was so baffling. Kicking off a showpiece of British broadcasting should be the duty of somebody who doesn’t go to pieces the moment the red light is switched on. Perhaps somebody who appears on telly slightly more frequently than the BBC swingometer or the bit of music that always turns up at the end of the Eurovision Song Contest may also have made sense.

As happens on every Comic Relief Night, though, a moment to cherish did make it onto the air. You had to wait till gone 2am, mind, and it only lasted around four seconds. But the sight of Dick and Dom In Das Boot, with the eponymous twosome squashed in the trunk of a car rambling in cod-German about submarines, was priceless. Well, almost: £40m had changed hands by the time Armando Iannucci’s contribution was bundled out, a Time Trumpet-esque affair that also boasted the memorable line, “Someone shouted out: ‘This is better than Saturday Zoo!’”

If only such sentiments had been true of the preceding seven hours.

At least this year we were spared the sight any nervous management executives inching their way gingerly onto stage clutching giant novelty-sized cheques. For once the practice of allowing a few words from Comic Relief’s many sponsors had been swapped for some carefully-timed, indifferently-dispatched voiceovers from our various hosts, making for an even more celebrity-saturated evening’s telly, albeit one where it was easier than ever to lose sight of just how much (or how little) of the eventual total of £37.8m had been raised on the night itself.

There are probably statistics hidden away somewhere that reveal precisely how much Comic Relief raises through campaigns and stunts both before and after Red Nose Day compared to how much actually comes rolling in prompted by the latest extravagantly-filmed Rowan Atkinson spoof or shots of a comedian looking mournful in a tin hut in Africa. Both of these have become just as much hallmarks of recent Comic Relief Nights as Lenny Henry and Griff Rhys Jones arsing around in a bare-looking studio epitomised by much earlier efforts, but you do get to wondering – on seeing the same footage of teary comics in sandy streets or moody monochrome scenes of lonely-looking kids on a council estate come rolling round again and again – whether these TV shows really are as remunerative as they felt like they once were.

Once there was real tension at watching the totalizer creep up, hour by hour, towards an unpredictable, unfathomable final amount. Once the passing of each additional million was gained by the promise of seeing Andy Crane gunged, or Stephen Fry thrashing round the studio with his photo of Bob Holness. Once the reeling off of six- and seven-digit numbers seemed to unfold in something passing for a logical sequence, and you’d want to stay watching right to the end of transmission to see if they could possibly get as high as you secretly, though never publicly, wished.

This year’s Comic Relief Night confirmed, as had been the case in 2001 and 2003 and no doubt further back, that yet again all such things are long long gone. The total spirited upwards in fits and starts whenever our various hosts sought fit to tell us. You knew before you even switched on at 7pm that by the end of the night the amount raised would be something-or-other-millions of pounds, and that it’d beat the existing record: not a lazy or facile reason to rubbish the whole enterprise, of course, but just a bit of a shame as far as a whole evening of potentially-entertaining TV goes.

And if suspense and tension were thin on the ground, you might have at least hoped for a generous dose of spontaneity and that particular kind of memorable wit that is traditionally the preserve of live telly. Well, in this instance Comic Relief Night did break with tradition as once more history warned otherwise and once more it was unhappily proved right.

This year’s proceedings were by far the most disciplined, controlled and rigid ever. It made for an admirably smooth and glitch-free broadcast, but at the expense of much in the way of sparkle and atmosphere. Nobody wandered on stage to indulge in a bit of off-hand business that would or could instantly become this year’s highlight. Those portions of the evening set aside for events rather than sketches – a Blind Date spoof (again), the final of Celebrity Fame Academy (again) – offered up nothing but shouting and fearsome displays of emoting. The latter dragged on interminably – again! – re-appearing what felt like five times, each occasion Patrick Kielty’s same lugubrious delivery (“We … are … here, we … are … live …”) robbing the night of still more dwindling reserves of excitement.

One further result of all this was that the endless whooping from the studio audience just proved more and more of a distraction and a turn off. In fact, the studio didn’t even look like it was the sort of place you wanted to be. The carefully tiered seating and obvious layout of previous years had been junked for a set-up more akin to a jumble sale. The crowd milled about on their feet between various podiums upon which hosts and guests did their stuff and flogged their wares. It didn’t feel much like a family affair either, most of the audience unashamedly twentysomething or under. Presumably they had an uproarious time watching the My Family sketch and the all-too short lived Smith and Jones reunion.

There wasn’t much by way of all-age, cross-generational fun to be had at all, really, bar Dick and Dom’s spirited appearance in the first half hour leading to a Creamy Muck Muck fight with Lenny Henry (cue Len’s screeching, clocking in a whole 20 minutes earlier than usual). Not to sound too prudish, but early evening references to Dermot O’Leary’s head looking like “an elephant’s scrotum”, people pissing themselves and Jack Dee indulging in premature ejaculation can’t have been that enjoyable for anybody still polishing off their tea.

Meanwhile McFly, dressed as 1950s rockabillies, seemed to sleepwalk through this year’s official song, and were completely upstaged by a tambourine-wielding Chris Evans. It should be said that the rehabilitation of Evans as the effortlessly capable TV host is now complete. He seemed thoroughly likable all evening, and anchored the last two hours of the night with the kind of aplomb and naturalness that harked back to the best of Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush (aided by the convenient presence of Jools Holland and co as a house band). There’s bound to be a regular Evans-fronted show back on television before Christmas. It does seem the man can simply switch his presenting abilities on and off when he chooses.

It was he who also supplied the entire night with something approaching a proper conclusion, unlike on past occasions when proceedings have spectacularly fizzled out (most famously in the shape of a hapless Ben Elton cueing in a selection of archive clips from an empty studio). A mass singalong of Tony Christie’s Is This The Way To Amarillo? didn’t really have much to do with what had gone before, other than the fact it had already turned up twice in the form of a Peter Kay-mimed video, but at least it was something in which everybody could take part. By way of an epilogue came the now-obligatory compilation show, this time hosted by a familiarly heavy-handed Johnny Vaughan and Keira Knightley.

Comic Relief is now the only kind of TV, Children in Need aside, where people come on screen to do a turn then go off again. Maybe there’s simply not many around who know how to do this anymore, or at the very least do it well, hence the way the last few years have seen a slide into more heavily-scripted, event-based shows. If that’s the case perhaps Comic Relief should simply go all the way and dispense with turns altogether, especially if it’d mean no more excruciating Absolutely Fabulous “moments”, Jack Dee “stunts” or badly-received Alan Partridge revivals. As it was, this year’s Comic Relief Night didn’t feel quite so much like the strange and frustrating out-of-time corny cavalcade it has before, but it was still nowhere near the phenomenon of a McCain humble potato.

By its very nature, of course, Comic Relief invites reflections on past times; after all, it derives most of its impact from cumulative impressions in our memories to reinforce its familiar exhortation to raise more money than before. Trouble is, for those with long memories and who’ve watched each one since it began, it means each new effort increasingly ends up measured against an ever-illustrious past, when there was some thrill in staying up late to watch a TV programme that never finished, and where Fry and Laurie might come back on and do a bit more swearing.

Comic Relief‘s ability to evoke a sense of the unexpected and the unusual has long been replaced with reliance upon the predictable and the glossy. This hasn’t always meant a decline in its ability to entertain – think of 2001′s Celebrity Big Brother – but it has meant the organisation has created a whole range of problems for itself, such as how to ensure something chock full of convention stays memorable, and how to head off seasoned viewers’ skepticism at being greeted with the same premises over and over again.

So settling down to watch this year’s programme, kicking off with an excellent spoof BBC1 ident replete with Peter Kay as wheelchair bound Brian Potter, it was hard not to feel that the Corporation had played their best hand of the entire night in the opening 20 seconds. The sight of a garishly boisterous Jonathan Ross, addressing viewers from in front of a gigantic photo depicting himself pulling his patented and all-too ubiquitous “bemused” face, did little to dispel this. Neither did his weary incantation “It’s going to be the best Comic Relief ever!”, nor the subsequent invasion of the stage by a bunch of noisy screaming kids who jumped around for a bit while singing along to Busted’s Year 3000.

Sending Ross out first certainly made for a more assured start than two years ago. But one thing Comic Relief‘s never seemed quite able to get sorted is the routine business of setting out its stall. Even with seven hours to play with and a pot pourri of celebrities to namedrop, it was still all too easy to sit through the endless numbers of previews and rundowns of what’s up later yet come away with no tangible feeling of either expectation or dedication. The net result was the decidedly stoic conclusion, yeah, you’d stick around for the special edition of EastEnders, or Rowan Atkinson as Martin Bashir, even what you’d think would be the enticing promise of a one-off Auf Wiedersehen, Pet sketch; but only out of routine, of duty – not because you’d been convinced, or even convinced yourself, that any of them were really going to be that good.

As it turned out, aside from the notable announcement, “Three cheers to BBC Nations and Regions for all their help,” little that Jonathan Ross said or did set the course for Comic Relief to rise above the sum of its parts. Which it desperately needed to do, cursed with another below par official single – hamfistedly recreated in the studio – and the frankly boring recurring motif of Jack Dee standing on top of a pole outside Television Centre. If the pole had been, for instance, designed to rise or fall in step with the amount of money coming in, it would’ve leant the evening more of a momentum. As it was every time we went back to Dee proceedings were instantly held up for another protracted stream of glum looks and insults, until ultimately you didn’t care whether he stayed up the pole or not.

Despite a few brief look-ins from some of Comic Relief’s old guard, and a noticeably scant trace of any kind of “new generation” preparing to inherit their mantle, what dominated this year’s labours was an obsessive dependency upon big set-piece events and conceits. This was not the formula for an involving, out-of-the-ordinary and therefore unforgettable TV event; rather, it drifted perilously close to resembling an unexceptional, very run-of-the-mill BBC evening schedule.

Indeed, instead of a fast-moving, snappy patchwork of sketches and spoofs, intermingled with more substantial offerings, the programme panned out via a sequence of sprawling chunks of monotonous goings-on utterly devoid of variety. The headline spoof feature, French and Saunders’ Harry Potter pastiche, unpacked its tired gags and creaky behind-the-scenes premise over two cumbersome 15 minute slots: way too long for a show which, pitched at marathon length, works best when comprised of ultra-concise items to hook in channel-hopping viewers and retain those already in for the long haul. Too much of too little manifested itself over and over again, but while special celebrity editions of Driving School and Streetmate tested the patience further, the nadir came with the conclusion of Comic Relief Meets Fame Academy which lasted the best part of a whole bloody hour and remained totally without any sense of dénouement.

If these half dozen or so respective segments had themselves been particularly engaging or imbued with a bit of energy there might have been more reason to start treating the programme with a bit more attention and respect. Instead, sadly, none of these franchises, or for that matter your staple big budget vignettes, ever really delivered or felt properly integrated within the whole. It was up to the linking hosts to try and stitch everything together and generate a sense of the spectacular, sometimes getting away with it – Ross, Graham Norton – other times failing miserably – Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer via a lamentable run through all their now thoroughly exhausted mannerisms, and also Ant and Dec who looked totally lost amidst a format where they had to be something a little more than themselves.

As the night wore on, the overall effect left on the viewer was a bit grisly. A feeling set in of things not really unfolding anywhere, and of the evening not building to any particular climax. Certainly the totaliser didn’t prove anything like the exciting bellwether of old; it piled on the millions in fits and starts, and was so generously fed with regular injections of massive corporate donations as to render the notion of viewers being under pressure to help reach a certain target by the end of the night dangerously pointless. Precious sense was contrived of those watching at home being part of some great communal big heave to beat the previous grand total; instead our individual pounds and pennies paled in significance as each new sum was rung up with casual nonchalance by an uncomfortable-looking Carol Vorderman.

The sense of being somewhat shut out of having any immediate influence on proceedings, and then faced with navigating round the various bulwark features, sucked almost all energy out of the show. Despite the nature of the content, with its fair share of on the spot resolutions and revelations, the upshot was – ironically – that this was certainly the Comic Relief night that felt least like a live event. Some items stood out from the rest, notably the superbly underplayed Blankety Blank spoof (“No need to use language like that – this isn’t Channel 4″), and the surprisingly competitive celebrity edition of University Challenge pitting non-graduates against alumni over on BBC2 while the news was on. Yet there was never a spirit of exhilaration imbuing the night, or – more worryingly – of accomplishment. The announcement of the final total of £35 million wasn’t met with that much of a celebration even in the studio; and the remainder of the show failed to live up to its promise: Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish nervously linking random archive comedy, followed by an unbilled repeat of 2001′s closing clips package introduced as if it were new for 2003.

For Comic Relief, finding that point where convention can meet topicality and still be laugh out loud funny seems to be proving an ever frustrating and elusive task. Those undertaking it didn’t make it a quite so pleasant or intriguing process to watch either. Healthy cynicism is the prerogative of the television audience, and for any host, writer or producer to presume otherwise usually signals a rather depressing concoction of half-arsed paternalism and patronising rhetoric is on hand. Comic Relief has striven long, if not that very hard, to head off such a collision of intentions via regular doses of self-deprecation – chiefly by poking fun at the gall and dubious sincerity of well-paid stars encouraging members of the public to give generously.

Over time, however, this has itself become a tiresomely emblematic aspect of comedy-based charity telethons; there are only so many variations on the world-famous star doing a wry turn about digging deep and exposing their vanity in the process. But it’s also reflective of an terribly nagging flaw within Comic Relief‘s formula: namely, the need for its progenitors to forever reconcile all its baggage – the traditions, the presenters, the repertoire (“Great Big” this, “Utterly Stupid” that) – with the TV landscape and attitudes of the present day, in order to make the end product feel fresh and strikingly contemporary. And going off the evidence of this year’s effort, it’s a predicament a long way from being resolved.

We had to wait just 45 minutes for Lenny Henry to start screeching.

Dispatched from the wings to rescue a miserable first hour that had touched bottom with Westlife’s reedy nasal whining, Len dutifully ran about a bit, jumped on a couple of the Irish clothes props, then dashed off again hooting. But it was in vain for enough damage had been done to saddle Comic Relief with its worst opening ever.

It wasn’t really the fault of our hosts, Ant and Dec. Their usual polished exchanges and carefully applied cheekiness unfolded as you’d expect. What ruined it was a management decision: they were simply the wrong choice to begin the evening, and couldn’t overcome the dreary studio set, the unappealing slickness of proceedings, and a line-up of items so overwhelmingly dreadful as to positively encourage you not to donate money.

The final of 1000 To 1? If you hadn’t already nipped out for a piss during one of the Serious Bits, aka Tea Breaks, then this was the moment. The EastEnders “Who Shot Phil?” celebrity carnival was particularly woeful, with Mel Smith, Harry Enfield, Danny Baker and others falling foul of that perennial Comic Relief strategy, the put-someone-famous-in-an-unusual-context-and-that’s-it. So we had Ted Rogers, and Nicholas Parsons, and Barry Cryer, because, well, they’re Ted Rogers, and Nicholas Parsons, and Barry Cryer, and they don’t have to say or do anything funny, no, because, well, they’re Ted Rogers, and Nicholas Parsons, and bloody Barry Cryer …

With Comic Relief what was once unconventional has become the norm, the expected, the inevitable – just like Lenny running on to “spontaneously” disrupt another act. Absent this year were those minute-long scattergun celeb cameos which while extremely variable in quality used to play a big part in keeping up the momentum during the evening. But that appalling humorous-by-association thinking still reared its head in items such as the atrocious My Herosketch. A ditched sitcom should not be a central part of Comic Relief night anyway, no matter how many politicians or newsreaders or Noel Edmonds pay-off lines a script editor can conjure up.

A full 90 minutes passed with little that actually worked, save Stephen Fry making a welcome appearance, glass of brandy in hand, to play Wonkey Donkey. At 8.30pm Len returned, but with Zoë Ball, a hopeless pairing that never gelled and was embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch. The really really last ever One Foot in the Grave wasn’t that bad, but then Richard Wilson and Annette Crosbie could’ve taken any crap and made it shine, even if David Renwick hadn’t delivered his usual commendably quality material. But it was telling that others who you’d have thought might have had a high profile by way of their reputation – Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, the sulking John Cleese – stuck to forgettable two-minute inserts. There were other notable absentees – Ben Elton, Griff Rhys Jones, Hugh Laurie, Tony Robinson … A greatPopstars pastiche starred Rowan Atkinson as a freakishly convincing Nigel Lythgoe, but was somewhat let down by Lenny playing himself playing Lenny Henry the Soul Singer. Again. It was also telling that the film inserts stripped with tiresome regularity through the evening didn’t feature any comedians: instead we got Davina McCall, Robbie Williams, and journalist Fergal Keane encouraging us to give generously. This actually undermined the whole point of Comic Relief: for where were the comics?

It was a desperate run up to the 10pm news, with an entirely unfunny Fast Show Ted & Ralph sketch with Robbie Williams, and Harry Hill as Eminem – again, more of that base mentality which dictates that sticking someone unexpected in an unusual context then doing nothing else for five minutes is amusing. Lenny desperately tried to revive signs of a pulse within an increasingly obstinate studio audience. Life ebbed away from Television Centre with each missed cue and camera link by Zoë. It all came to a head, literally, with Billy Connolly’s genitals and the site of several hundred swaying knobs belonging to a crowd of naked men. This was Eurotrash material, and anyway it’d been done before (in 1999), so felt all the more self-indulgent. The alternative to the News, BBC2′s Have I Got Buzzcocks All Over, reflected badly on all who took part, and was neither that funny, original or exciting. Roy Hattersley was brought on in a reference to a joke that first started almost a decade ago.

Part 2 on BBC1 began at 10.35pm, mercifully with a decent host. Jonathan Ross, veteran of these occasions, proved still right for the job, obviously not entirely enamoured with proceedings so far (as he was to make clear on his radio show the following morning), but up for a few good one-liners (most memorably after The Corrs delivered a dreadful performance of The Long and Winding Road) and some gratuitous swearing (“look at this ugly fucker!”) Traditionally once the news is out the way Comic Relief gets more, hey, unpredictable. It took a while but the quality of this year’s entertainment did improve, boosted by the great finale toCelebrity Big Brother, and the welcome return of Alan Partridge, “live” in Manchester from a sports club run by Peter Kay. Vic and Bob were good too, even though their “unplanned” stunt was clearly just intended to get EastEnders‘ Charlie Brookes to stick breadsticks and bits of celery up her arse. This was far better than the much hyped Ali G meets the Beckhams interview, which had the misfortune to be leaked to the press weeks ago, and then turned out pretty ineffective and lacking any real spark.

Come midnight David Baddiel and Frank Skinner attempted to re-create their Unplanned show in the studio, to little success thanks to a stubbornly unresponsive celebrity audience. There was excitement when David’s beard was shaved off, and a great shambolic link to some London nightclub where a ludicrous Battle of the DJs had taken place hosted by an amusingly hassled Pete Tong. This half hour was the most ragged and therefore addictive section of the whole evening, partly by design, with even the celebrity “band” (Ian Broudie, Alex James, Jamie Oliver) proving spectacularly unable to accompany a childishly simple rendition of Uptown Girl (“This is almost as bad as Westlife’s version …”)

The last leg was capably anchored by Graham Norton, helped by a selection of decent features – including a surprisingly affable Sarah Ferguson, and some great “Rock Profiles” from Matt Lucas and David Walliams. The League of Gentlemen were saddled with the same punitive audience which exacted such dreariness on Baddiel and Skinner, but Graham soldiered on to supply a frantic finale which thankfully saw Lenny back but unfortunately saw the appearance of S Club 7. The genuinely staggering grand total (£22,501,43) was announced to shots of rows of empty seats in the audience, a reminder of how this year’s programming had gone on much longer than usual (by the time Graham bowed out at 1.50am we’re normally onto the comedy film). A fine collection of archive clips took the official coverage through to 3.10am, linked by Dermot O’Leary and Cat Deeley from the BBC Des Lynam Memorial Sauna.

There’s only so far you can go in accommodating a particular act, song or event in the name of charity. At a given point the entire set-up and organisation starts undermining itself, no matter what the money is being raised for, and unforgiving unswerving cynicism takes over. With this year’s Comic Relief that point was reached far earlier than ever before, thanks to a poor running order, muted studio audience and misguided choice of hosts. We needed Len and Jonathan and other big-hitters out there from 7pm hyping up the occasion and turning the regular rattling of the Comic Relief plastic dog collection box into something worth sticking with.

The closing clips package also highlighted another factor: how much the essence of Comic Relief has changed, especially over the last few years – fewer sketches, far fewer comedians seemingly involved “on the ground” – and how incredibly funny a lot of those early shows still remain. It’s hard to think of anything from this year’s line-up that will have such an impact a decade or so down the line. Just to rub it in, the entire night closed with a burst of the worst Comic Relief song ever, Love Can Build A Bridge. Any chance of Fry and Laurie thrashing wildly around the studio holding a framed photograph of Bob Holness next time?