Brazil Needs the Doctor’s Help as Soon as Possible by David Hill

Doctor Who and charity seem to go hand in hand. In past articles, we have mentioned examples of this, such as Children in Need and John Barrowman’s charity auctions. One of the most well-known examples of Doctor Who related charity events is Comic Relief‘s Red Nose Day.

Founded in 1985, Comic Relief has been raising money to eliminate poverty in the United Kingdom and Africa. Every two years starting in 1988, they have organized Red Nose Day, a BBC televised fundraising event featuring many celebrities. This evening of programing highlights both donation appeals by various familiar faces and comedic sketches, usually spoofing and crossing over popular shows and characters.

Naturally, some of the most popular Red Nose Day content is either Doctor Who related, or has actors who have been on Doctor Who. There are two famous Red Nose Day sketches of which most Whovians are aware. One is the 1999 two-part special The Curse of Fatal Death. The other is the 2009 sketch with Catherine Tate as her cheeky character Lauren Cooper from The Catherine Tate Show and David Tennant as her English teacher Mr. Logan.

Catherine Tate has actually made quite a few Red Nose Day appearances in past years. Among these was a sketch in 2009 with Little Britain‘s David Walliams portraying his rude character Carol. This year, they joined up again Little Britain style along with Stephen Hawking. In this sketch, Tate plays a nun while Walliams plays his endearing character Lou. Hawking sits in place of Lou’s usual best friend Andy. Lou lovingly refers to Hawking as “Stevie.” Here is a segment of the sketch, with Lou lovingly talking down to Stevie the way that he does to Andy.

The sketch continues with the nun and Lou disregarding everything that Hawking has to say and, eventually, he becomes fed up with all of the condescension. This results in his transforming into a large mecha, destroying the other two with lasers, and saying “Computer says die!” which is a spoof of the infamous Carol catch phrase. The most complete video that I was able to find for this part of the sketch is over at Mirror.

On a much more serious note, we saw both David Tennant and Peter Capaldi imploring us to donate.

In total, there are five segments of Capaldi in Malawi. You can watch them all on Red Nose Day’s Youtube channel.

Red Nose Day 2015 may have come to a close, but it is never too late to give. Head over to Comic Relief’s website and donate what you can.