Live Aid was the singular event that made humanitarianism fashionable on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s. In the United Kingdom, it was Comic Relief that sustained and institutionalised this new form of mass giving on a regular basis. In 1988, the comedian Lenny Henry hosted the Red Nose Day telethon which became a regular event and raised £1 billion over the next thirty years. Comic Relief symbolised a new era of humanitarian giving in a televisual age. It shifted attitudes to poverty overseas which then constrained prior government intentions to reduce aid and development spending. And it also helped change public attitudes to charity more generally. Surveys of public opinion evidenced continued high levels of support for overseas aid, and the scepticism towards charity observed at the expansion of the post-war welfare state dissipated. Respondents expressed their views no longer in terms of charity versus the state but in terms of the importance of both public and voluntary provision in the relief of poverty, at home and overseas. The popularity of humanitarianism had increased the acceptability of charity as a solution to poverty more generally.