Not more celebrities crying...

I groaned when I saw an advert for another celebrity driven, "really difficult" fund raising challenge for Sports Relief. Fearne Cotton was crying. Again.

David Walliams, Davina Mcall, Fearne Cotton, Patrick Kielty, Russell (average comedian who's last name I can't remember), Jimmy Carr and another actress/comedian who's not very well known were all cycling from John O Groats to Lands End. This annoyed me. Not more celebrities weeping on TV for a good cause, surely.

There is reason behind this cynicism. The momentous climbing of Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief made me angry. Gary Barlow and his chums including Ronan Keating, Fearne Cotton and 2 fifths of Girls Aloud climbed it back in February 2009. It wasn't that it wasn't for a good cause. Looking at the website just now they raised £3,400,000 which is pretty amazing. No, I was left wondering, is this challenge really that hard? I came across this BBC article at the time.

Tourists usually climb Kilimanjaro in 5-6 days. The team did it in 8 and had a huge group of at least 30 local porters to carry their top of the range kit and set up camp each night. As Simon Mtuy puts it, climbing Kilimanjaro "is nothing that a reasonably fit person shouldn't be able to do. The path is a pretty gentle gradient. It is not technically challenging." So why so much pain if this is something tourists choose to do? I have to admit, I was strangely transfixed by the programme. But after half an hour I became tired of Cheryl Cole crying and Chris Moyles unexpectedly making it without too much of a problem (To everyone's surprise, turns out overweight people can climb mountains too).

On the other end of the spectrum is Eddie Izzard. He ran 43 consecutive marathons in 51 days. An incredible feat even for professional athletes, which took a huge amount of mental strength and gave his body a major battering. This deserves respect and is well worthy of sponsorship. Yet it went by with not nearly as much publicity. Do the names involved count for more than the challenge they take? Anyway this was difficult and he suffered for charity (for more on Eddie's 51 days of pain see here). Which brings us back to the cycle ride.

After watching the programme on iPlayer my mind was changed. David Walliams - who organised the ride - chose a tough challenge. He also swam the channel not long ago (very impressive). The celebs cycled in a non-stop relay over 4 days through wind, rain and snow, which wasn't great considering they'd chosen racing bikes. The idea was to sprint in shifts of about 20 miles at a time with an average speed of 14mph. The hills looked huge. It was so cold one night that one of the professional pace setters almost got pneumonia. Davina McCall carried on without him. This was hard and needed training, highlighted by the two that didn't train properly and paid for it with pain. There was a certain integrity about their suffering which I didn't feel while watching the Kilimanjaro expedition.

It seems celebrities are needed these days to highlight charitable causes and people will give more willingly if a cause has celebrity endorsement. We shouldn't need celebrities to highlight global poverty and gross inequality yet they're deemed necessary (remember Live 8?). Why does it take the rich and famous to remind us of the issues regarding the poor and needy? This question unsettles me.

I am not against celebrities raising money. But if they do want people to sponsor them would they please stretch themselves and do something extraordinary. Like cycling in freezing temperatures. And running 1,100 miles in 51 days. That was insane.