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> The Big Buzzjack Red Nose Rate, Voting closed - results start on page 1
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ThePensmith
post Mar 8 2015, 04:44 PM
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"Let's stonk, to the rhythm of the honky tonk / And stick a red nose on your conk..."

19. HALE & PACE - The Stonk
(1991, 21 points)



Released: 17th March 1991
Highest UK chart position: #1


And so we arrive at Comic Relief's first single release of the 90's - and its second chart topper to boot - but probably not its most remembered. A quick view of the video below may be all the explanation you need. Hale & Pace had already been a ratings hit with their Thames TV sketch show at the end of the 80's, having worked their way round the alternative stand up circuit as jobbing supply teachers by day.



They tempered the humour down a bit though, for a still quite raucous offering produced by no less personage than Queen's Brian May that drove across the message of Red Nose Day, plain and simple. But you still couldn't help but feeling that it was somewhat forced jollity. And there's no real comic relief from that - hence its brief stay at the top and inside the UK chart and appearance at the bottom end of our rate.
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ThePensmith
post Mar 8 2015, 05:07 PM
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Last one today - and our first meeting with a certain Mr Kay is up next...

"Nothing is so good it lasts eternally..."

18. GERALDINE MCQUEEN & SUSAN BOYLE - I Know Him So Well
(2011, 39 points)



Released: 21st March 2011
Highest UK chart position: #11


Zipping forward 20 years now - and whilst Hale & Pace had long been consigned to the showbiz scrapheap, the undisputed daddy of Comic Relief in the mid 00s, Bolton born stand up comedian Peter Kay was preparing to release his third outing for the charity after a year's break in 2009.

We'll of course return to his chart busting fundraisers twice more in this rate, but the chart peak and run for this one saw a trend he had started for his releases to outsell the actual 'serious' release by the mainstream music acts come to an end. So the question begs, therefore, as to why this didn't follow in 'Amarillo' and '500 Miles' footsteps.



After all, it featured Kay in his infamous 'Britain's Got the Pop Factor' Michelle McManus spoof persona Geraldine McQueen (herself the owner of two UK top 10 hits in 2008), alongside Susan Boyle who was still dominating charts worldwide at this point (it's also, interestingly, her second highest charting UK single to date) covering the track Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson had already made a chart topping hit in 1985.

But it ultimately lacked the unbridled silliness of his previous efforts, and when put up against the real highlights of that year's telethon - THAT sketch with Smithy, JLS, Gordon Brown and Rupert Grint in the boardroom for instance - it felt like the joke had long worn thin. It's no wonder then, that this ultimately called time on Kay's chart ventures for the charity.


This post has been edited by ThePensmith: Mar 8 2015, 05:15 PM
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ThePensmith
post Mar 14 2015, 11:31 AM
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Sorry for the delay peeps...onwards we go now. And you'll be glad to hear there's not a peep of a wailing singer songwriter in sight...

"Techno, techno, bloody techno darling!"

17. PET SHOP BOYS - Absolutely Fabulous
(1994, 47 points)



Released: 23rd May 1994
Highest UK chart position: #6


And from our first encounter with Comic Relief's king of the charts, its queen now makes her first appearance on our rate. Emanating from a sketch on her show with comedy partner Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders' merciless lampoon of the fad obsessed world of fashion PR, with its louche, politically incorrect central figureheads of Edina and Patsy, made 'Ab Fab' one of Britain's best loved sitcoms of the 90's.



It won the show BAFTAs, Emmys and even recognition for Jennifer and co-star Joanna Lumley as honorary New Yorkers during Gay Pride week in 2000. The Pet Shop Boys were duly approached, after tinkering around with some soundbite samples from the show (something that also had been done by Junior Vasquez's "I Am Thin (And Gorgeous)") to bring out the record as a Comic Relief release shortly after the show's second series finished airing.

Coupled with a hilarious video where Jennifer and Joanna join Neil and Chris in full Edina & Patsy get up, and though never technically credited to Pet Shop Boys on release (as per the cover artwork above), it still provided them with their 15th UK top 10 single in the early summer of 1994. Dull, soulless dance music it was not.
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ThePensmith
post Mar 14 2015, 11:49 AM
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"One way or another / I'm gonna find ya, I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya..."

16. ONE DIRECTION - One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)
(2013, 51 points)



Released: 17th February 2013
Highest UK chart position: #1


Time to leap back just two years now with our next song on the rate, and our first encounter with a boyband. It's also a song that does prompt the overall response of why anyone thought this was a good idea even back then.

That's not to be glib, as most charity singles are, at heart, meant to be something a bit silly, yes. A cover version, maybe but not necessarily. But the (still to date) biggest boyband on the planet, One Direction, were it has to be said, poorly mismatched to the choice of song(s) selected when they were the obvious frontrunners to take on 2013's single for the campaign.



Blondie's 'One Way or Another'? Excellent track, and when covered well (see Sophie Ellis-Bextor's 2002 take on it for 'The Guru' soundtrack) works well. Likewise with The Undertones' 'Teenage Kicks'. But the lazy splicing of the songs together set to a slightly sped up version of a drum beat and production utilised on their previous singles made it by far one of the worst Comic Relief singles by a 'serious' pop act since...well. We'll come to that a bit later on (clue: it was 10 years prior to this).

Nevertheless, 1D mania was still sweeping all in its path at this point, and it duly gave the boys their third UK #1 single, and with a worldwide release it also became one of the few Comic Relief releases to chart in America, peaking inside the top 15 of the Billboard Hot 100.
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Jade
post Mar 14 2015, 06:29 PM
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Oh I forgot to vote! But 'Spirit In the Sky' for the win lmao, technically awful but SUCH a guilty pleasure oops, love the instrumentation as well ph34r.gif The sitar is the way to my heart
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Fgiboy2511
post Mar 16 2015, 02:41 AM
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QUOTE(ThePensmith @ Mar 8 2015, 04:25 PM) *
"I'm your top prime cut of meat, I'm your choice / I wanna be elected..."

20. SMEAR CAMPAIGN - (I Wanna Be) Elected
(1992, 18 points)



Released: 7th April 1992
Highest UK chart position: #9


Now for a record that is easily the biggest curveball in all of Comic Relief's musical canon. Spring of 1992, and the UK was a mere matter of weeks away from its Parliamentary General Election, which would see John Major and the Conservatives voted in for another 5 years - much to the chagrin of a country still in the throes of a recession.



20 years prior to that, legendary US rockers Alice Cooper had scored a Transatlantic hit in the run up to that year's US general election with 'Elected', a radical re-write of an old album track 'Reflected' from their 1969 album 'Pretties for You'.

Thus came this bizarre collaboration that saw Bruce Dickinson of UK rock outfit Skin (not to be confused with the frontwoman of Skunk Anansie) providing vocals to a cover of the song, interspersed with soundbites of Rowan Atkinson in his infamous 'Mr. Bean' persona, doorstopping for votes.

Again, as with Right Said Fred, not the most easily remembered track for the charity (it was, as we'll come to with a few of our other singles later, released outside of Comic Relief's traditional even numbered year campaign cycle) but an interesting footnote nonetheless - and considering who has been in office in the 22 years since this record came out, well. It may not have been a bad idea having Mr. Bean running the country after all...



Are you sure you don't mean Bruce Dickinson the lead singer of Iron Maiden?
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ThePensmith
post Mar 16 2015, 07:33 AM
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QUOTE(Fgiboy2511 @ Mar 16 2015, 02:41 AM) *
Are you sure you don't mean Bruce Dickinson the lead singer of Iron Maiden?


I'm just purely going on what the Wikipedia entry said, don't shoot the researcher...
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richie
post Mar 16 2015, 09:08 AM
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Damn, I totally missed this vote - could have saved most of those older records from being below one Direction too.

Cliff Richard and the Young Ones have to win this, the first and best.
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Fgiboy2511
post Mar 16 2015, 10:48 AM
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QUOTE(ThePensmith @ Mar 16 2015, 07:33 AM) *
I'm just purely going on what the Wikipedia entry said, don't shoot the researcher...


That's a huge error on Wikipedia then.
Iron Maiden are one of the biggest bands in the world. It's kind of like saying Mel C was the lead singer of B Witched.
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