Comic Relief Change – Big Difference". The event raised over £27m for charitable causes. The Spice Girls song "Who Do You Think You Are" became the official Comic Relief single of this event and sold 672,577 copies. The telethon was hosted by Father Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan) and Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon), characters from the sitcom "Father Ted". The 1999 Red Nose Day was held on 12 March and raised over £35m. Perennial hosts Jonathan Ross and Lenny Henry were joined by Davina McCall, Chris Evans, Ben Elton, Jack Dee and Julian Clary, with Peter Snow providing regular updates on donations.
Father Ted Crilly Geoffrey Perkins asked Linehan and Mathews to discard the mockumentary format and expand the Father Ted episode to a traditional sitcom. Linehan found the character of Ted easier to write if he imagined Mathews's version delivering the lines. "Every time I wrote Ted in the early days, I'd hear Arthur's voice... Ted was this very bland character who'd never curse except for saying a very quiet 'feck' to himself. That panic and turmoil under the surface defined Ted before we even started writing him. Years later, when we did, it was just like pressing 'play' on a tape recorder." One