The National Treasure job interviews sketch was canny, with Stephen Fry, Miranda Hart and Sheridan Smith interviewing potential candidates from Robbie Williams to Thierry Henri. Plenty of scope for gags here – the Queen polishing Ronnie Corbett’s shoes was unexpected – even if the Liam Gallagher pay-off didn’t quite work.

David Walliams popped up a number of times over the evening, including his much-trailed Little Britain sketch with Stephen Hawking and Catherine Tate, but I imagine his highlight might have been breaking the World Record for being kissed the most times in 30 seconds. It was certainly a lot easier than swimming the Thames. I enjoyed Steven Toast/Matt Berry’s quick walk-on trying to chat up Claudia Winkleman more, but then I wasn’t the one being kissed.

There were some duds. The One Direction send-up, No Direction, was on the flat side. And the Four Yorkshiremen sketch updated to feature Bishop, Walliams, Izzard and McCall boasting about how difficult their various Comic Relief feats had been did not always click. Daniel Craig with a little girl’s voice was just plain weird. And Russell Brand was very good but disappointingly on his best behaviour when I’d have liked to have seen him shake things up a bit more.

I think staging the evening at the Palladium rather than at the BBC helped. It had more of a feel of a live gig rather than a TV recording. The main thing of course, is that Comic Relief raised a record £78,082,988  this year, taking the 30 year total to over £1 billion – £1,047,083,706 to be precise. I guess that’s something that should make us all dance. 

*Actually I just noticed that according to the National Treaure Sketch winners board he picked up the title in 1988, but like Wimbledon I assume you can win it more than once.

Watch Liam Gallagher on Comic Relief here.

]