How do you donate to Comic Relief?

How to send money to Comic Relief today

It’s Red Nose Day! Donations can be made throughout the evening by visiting bbc.co.uk/rednoseday, calling 03457 910 910 or to donate 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40 pounds, simply text the word FIVE, TEN, TWENTY, THIRTY or FORTY to 70702.

Comic Relief on BBC One and iPlayer

Red Nose Day is back tonight, live from Media City UK, Salford from 7pm on BBC One and iPlayer. It’s the UK’s biggest night of comedy and entertainment, so make sure you don’t miss it!

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Having honed their survival strategies over millennia, mammals have evolved to be masters of the cold. In this episode, we journey across the globe, exploring a frozen world, from icy seas to snow-capped mountains and meet the unique mammals that call them home. For most, the cold is a killer. But for mammals, with their unique physical traits like warm thick fur and rich nourishing milk, and remarkable behaviours like hibernation, conquering the cold is possible.

We begin our journey on the Arctic islands of Svalbard, where polar bears, synonymous with this cold archipelago, dominate this remote frozen world. But as their world warms, and the frozen seas that are their hunting grounds disappear, they are being forced to find new sources of food. For the first time, we follow a polar bear hunting on land as it heads high up into the mountains in a rarely seen long-distance pursuit of Svalbard’s reindeer.

Mammals have been forced to adapt to the cold for millions of years. Whereas other species avoided the series of thick ice sheets that once covered a quarter of all land, mammals were able to survive the freezing conditions, and by adapting their behaviour, many are now completely at home in these inhospitable lands.

One land that has little changed since the last ice age is the tundra of northern Alaska. In this remote, hostile landscape, a mythical and rarely seen mammal endures: the wolverine. They rely completely on snow to survive, providing them meat from animals that have succumbed to the cold and dens in which to raise their young. Whilst other animals either flee or hibernate to avoid the coldest time of year, they stay active all winter, traversing the vast landscape in search of food. This privileged view reveals a surprisingly caring side of a highly elusive animal.

Knowledge can play a huge role in surviving the cold. Rather than roaming huge distances, some smart mammals will return annually to places they know will provide them with food. In Canada’s northern Yukon, a unique community of bears has been passing knowledge down the generations of a special ice-free river. While most bears are already hibernating, this late flowing river allows chum salmon to spawn into the winter months, giving the bears an opportunity for one last feast before hibernation that they simply cannot resist.

Mammals’ ability to hibernate is a clever way to avoid winter, and deep underground in an abandoned mine, little and big brown bats are well into their hibernation. But not all stay asleep. One sneaky bat wakes in order to mate while the rest of the colony sleeps on.

Bringing newborns into a world of snow and ice has many challenges, but mammals’ unique ability to produce fat-rich milk allows harp seal mothers to have one of the shortest weening periods of all. In just 12 days, off the coast of Greenland, they race to fatten their pups to independence as the icy nursery melts around them.

Far above sea level, the remote Kluane Mountains of North America support the largest ice field outside the poles. In this rugged landscape of rock and ice, pika, a relative of the rabbit, patiently wait for summer. Having stayed awake all winter, surviving on food they collected last year, once summer does return, they will all have just a few weeks to harvest nearly a year’s worth of food before the winter lockdown begins again. But storing your hard-earnt supplies all in one place comes at a risk if you can’t trust your neighbour.

Averaging 4,000 meters above sea level, the thin air of the lofty mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China struggle to retain much heat at all. As a result, life here always feels cold. Snow leopards are the top predator and have lived here for millions of years, but recently their lives have become linked with humans and the domestic yak they herd. It’s too good an opportunity to ignore. But through a community initiative, they have found a way to live alongside each other, even when the yak are taken by the leopards.

Back at sea level, on the shores of Canada’s Hudson Bay, for mammals specialised for life in the cold, a warming world is now the biggest challenge. Here, arctic fox and polar bears wait together by open water where there should be ice. For arctic foxes living here, as food ashore runs out, they would normally move and follow the polar bears onto the ice in order to scavenge off the bears’ kills. But as the winter freeze, and arrival of the ice is delayed, the bears cannot hunt, and life becomes more and more desperate. This has led to the foxes resorting to cannibalism, desperately fighting with each other to feed on the unfortunate foxes that have succumbed to hunger.

The epic three-hour fundraising favourite will entertain the nation with hilarious sketches, live performances, big surprises and stunning music while raising much-needed cash for good causes at home and across the world.

Joining Sir Lenny Henry (for one last time live in the Comic Relief studio) will be Romesh Ranganathan, Maya Jama, David Tennant, Davina McCall, Joel Dommett, Rosie Ramsey and Paddy McGuinness.
Unmissable moments will include a very special trailer for The Traitors, the Movie, with an iconic cast. It’s a star-studded sketch that promises to deliver all your favourite Traitor moments from series two of the smash hit reality show.

We will also see the exclusive return of one of the nation’s most beloved radio legends – Alan Partridge. Alan will be riding the regional airwaves all the way from his studio and updating our hosts across the night with his fundraising efforts and listener phone-ins.

The cast of W1A return to help to find a worthy replacement for Sir Lenny Henry. The stars of BBC sitcom W1A, Hugh Bonneville (Ian Fletcher), Jessica Hynes (Siobhan Sharpe), Hugh Skinner (Will the Intern) and Monica Dolan (Tracey Pritchard), have exclusively reconvened for the first time on TV in seven years for Comic Relief, holding interviews to find a suitable replacement for Sir Len.

And if that wasn’t enough, the cast of hit musical Just for One Day will be taking to the stage to perform a medley of their hit tracks from the show. Plus, live music from chart-topping rockers Mcfly.

We’ll see Sara Davies, Vicky Pattinson, Alex Scott and Laura Whitmore return after their epic battle against the elements in the Arctic Circle, and live appearances from Martin Lewis, Luke Littler and The Gladiators.

During the night, there will also be films highlighting incredible and inspiring stories of the people supported by some of Comic Relief’s projects in the UK and around the world.