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Neil Gaiman, Lauren Laverne, Tim Minchin, Mitch Benn And Budgie Give You 24 Hour Comic Relief

Published Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:00:23 -0500

Last updated Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:10:35 -0500

Neither Mitch Benn nor Lee "Budgie" Barnett are strangers to Bleeding Cool.

A mainstay of Radio 4's The Now Show, Mitch is well known as a geek, has performed at British comic cons singing about 2000AD and the like, and has his debut science fiction novel, Terra, being published by Gollancz in July.

Budgie, of course, is an old friend; co-creator with Dave Gibbons of the much-loved, and much-missed, hypotheticals panels of British cons past and Bleeding Cool contributor as The Adult In The Room, he's recently specialised in fast fiction challenges: supplied with a four word title and a word to use in the tale, he drafts glorious stories of precisely 200 words. After two published collections, he wrote twelve tales just before last Christmas for Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Jamie McKelvie, Warren Ellis and others… Check here for all the stories.

Now both Mitch and Budgie have something planned for Comic Relief: both are undertaking 24 hour challenges, starting at 12:30pm on Red Nose Day, Friday 15th March.

Mitch will be creating a comedy album from scratch, with the song titles chosen by members of the public. He won't get to see the titles until… yep, 12:30 on Red Nose Day. Full details here.

At the same time, in the same room, Budgie will be handed a separate list of titles and words. Twenty-four of them, as he's challenged by Neil Gaiman (again), Ian Rankin, Kim Newman, Tim Minchin, Robert Llewellyn, Lauren Laverne and eighteen other celebrities. As Budgie says, "Twenty-four hours… twenty-four stories… way too many coffees." His full plans are here.

Both the resulting album and ebook will be available for download after the challenges are complete, with all proceeds going to Comic Relief.

But you don't have to wait until the challenges: if you want to sponsor Mitch Benn or Budgie to do the challenge, or just donate to Red Nose Day/Comic Relief, their individual 'Giving' Pages are here: Mitch Benn and Budgie.

Unfortunately, you can only donate directly via the Giving Page if you're in the UK. If you're outside the UK, you can donate via Paypal to them at mitchbenn@me.com or budgie@hypotheticals.co.uk and they both promise that all funds (net of Paypal commissions) will be donated to Comic Relief on your behalf.

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