The lights swoop and the audience whoops. The Saturdays - a band made up of the offcuts from the Girls Aloud factory - scrape through a rendition of this year's Comic Relief single, Just Can't Get Enough (oh, but my dears, you can), and then we're off. Davina McCall in a Relief-red dress bounds out, accompanied by - tan-ta-rah! - David "Everybody's favourite Doctor Who ever" Tennant. For a moment it looks as if the head girl has dragged a startled fawn out of the bushes behind the lacrosse pitch, but they are soon into the swing of things.
"Enjoy yourselves totally," says Tennant, "But it would be great if sometime tonight you could give what you can." "Because," continues McCall seamlessly, "You can be absolutely sure that when times get tough, they get toughest for the people Comic Relief helps." And there you have the essence of this now 21-year-old fundraiser in a nutshell. The carrot of entertainment dangled, but no stick - just a measured, intelligent appeal to sense and reason. The whole thing is infused with the notion of fair play. It is a terribly British event.
