[Gary Baldy]

Watching back the Best Bits section and Paddy and AJ are sticking very rigidly to the autocue, and they're coming across very robotic as a result. Improvise, do something unpredictable, be rebellious- both of them are more than capable of holding their own as presenters so why have the autocue for them? Imagine telling someone in the 90's that in 30 years time Comic Relief will just be presenters reading out from an autocue to link into their films- nobody would have believed it.

I saw a comment on here that said Paddy fluffed one of his lines- why not just leave that in? Those unpredictable moments should be what makes Comic Relief great- it's all gone far too safe. For these best bits style programmes, which are filmed in a live style (despite them being pre-recorded) , what's the problem with leaving the bloopers in? it helps make the show more fun for a start- and also people stumble over their words in everyday life all the time, I really don't get why they'd cut them out of something like this. I could understand re-filming if it was a sketch or something, but the lines to introduce the videos surely don't warrant re-filming? If Paddy stumbled, leave the stumble and his correction in... what did he stumble over? Did he change the word "really" to "very" or something? Because that seems to be how fussy TV execs get nowadays- simply changing one word of a sentence to another word that means the exact same thing seems to be a no-no, because it's not *exactly* what's on the autocue.

And yes, Comic Relief likely would have always been scripted to some degree, but it never used to feel that way. Watch any of the telethons from the 90's or even 00s and so much effort was put into the show, things seemed to flow very naturally- the jokes were seldom forced. The Beeb don't seem to know what to do with it anymore- despite it not being perfect, they still somewhat get Children In Need right (although as others have mentioned, it has lacked that figurehead since dear Terry's passing) but when it comes to Comic Relief, they seem to really be struggling. I'm guessing they now have the same production team working on both or something? Whereas before, I think they were quite clearly different products- the only thing they had in common was the appeal videos- the content of both telethons was very different. Also, why did it have 5 presenters this year for a 3 hour show? It's too many. I could understand having a load of different presenters when the show used to go into the early hours of the morning, so that each presenting team put in their shift, but surely 2 or 3 would suffice for a 3 hour show. It needed a comedian on the team too- Paddy McGuiness though having a comedy background, Is more known to people as a TV presenter these days. It missed Lenny desperately, and I say that as someone who doesn't find him that funny these days either (for the same reason that he seems to lack that cheeky rebellious side these days and comes across more children's TV presenter)- but Comic Relief needed that comic relief which was missing this year.