• Comic Relief is a British charity organization which was found in the United Kingdom in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis in response to famine in Ethiopia.The idea for Comic Relief came from the noted charity worker Jane Tewson

• The first "Red Nose Day" was on 5 February 1988, and raised £15 million. The TV show was hosted by Lenny Henry, Griff Rhys Jones and Jonathan Ross. More than £300 million has so far been distributed to projects by Comic Relief.

• Red Nose Day was also copied in other countries. One of note was New Zealand, which actually introduced a brief mania in 1990 selling over-sized red-noses for car grilles for charity

• It now raises money for Africa and for disadvantaged people in the UK. It was launched live on Noel Edmonds's Late, Late Breakfast Show on BBC1, on Christmas Day. 1985 from a refugee camp in Sudan.

Since then,£425 million has been raised for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people across the U.K and Africa.