RED Nose day is on its way on Friday, March 13.

Comic Relief, now in its 30th year, raises money to beat poverty at home and abroad.

It is an admirable cause set up by the comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis.

What a pity some of our MPs don't get the message that giving is better than taking.

Now two former foreign secretaries are un-wittingly the focus of what can be best described as Comic Disbelief ... or their own red face day.

Channel 4's Dispatches hit a raw nerve with the public, exposing two influential MPs’ responses to a fictitious Chinese company seeking access to parliamentary decision makers.

Jack Straw (Labour) and Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Conservative) fell for it hook, line and stinker.

Recorded by a hidden camera, they arrogantly declared how much they charge for “consultancy” away from their day jobs.

It showed just how far removed their perceptions of their roles are from voters’ expectations.

Sir Malcolm even misremembered that he receives a salary as a constituency MP. You're joking aren't you? Aren't you?

It was no laughing matter.

Meanwhile, in the real world, ordinary folk go out of their way to help others, such as Katie Cutler who raised hundreds of thousands for disabled pensioner Alan Barnes after he was mugged, and equally self-less art student Dominique Harrison-Bentzen who raised over £60,000 after a homeless man, known only as Robbie, gave her his last three pounds so she could get home after losing her bankcard.

Modern day Samaritans who used social media to help raise money without any thought of benefit to themselves.

Both MPs - now suspended from their respective parties while parliamentary standards investigations are undertaken – take note.

Are we really all in it together?

**

THE Americans do award ceremonies much better than we Brits do ...

Happily in the UK, we are coming to the end of the awards season (there are only the silly soap awards to come). In our award shows the whole crew amble on stage - someone makes a rambling speech - and they all amble off.

What a waste of air time.

Why not show longer clips of their work and have less of the platitudes where they reel out ‘thank yous’ to agents, producers, family members, pets.

The Oscars run like clockwork - our versions always over-run and are mundane showcases that, ironically for the medium they celebrate, are decidedly un-entertaining affairs.

And can someone please give ubiquitous grinning Ant and Dec a sabbatical from our screens?

If they are not picking up trophies they are usually presenting them.

Talking of the Oscars, It was reported that people attending the ceremony were given “goodie bags” worth hundreds of thousands of pounds each.

It has all manner of priceless perks.

Yet I believe the most appealing gift to the tinsel town crowd was not Botox vouchers but “an exclusive horoscope reading with a psychic.”

It’s one handy way of finding out if they will be walking on the red carpet next year.

**

WHERE did the iconic Beatle haircut come from?

Many make claim to this image-making sensation including one deluded author who says it was from a picture of his mum that the lads saw in his Liverpool house.

I believe the haircut look was created by Astrid Kirchherr - girlfriend of tragic Stuart Sutcliffe. She photographed the Beatles in Hamburg.

So I was bemused this week to read that actor James Fox, brother of Edward, says that he was instrumental in the hairstyle a decade earlier.

He spoke fondly of a photograph he has which was taken on location during the filming of Ealing comedy "The Magnet" in Wirral in 1950.

Mr Fox described the black and white picture to a Sunday paper.

He recalls: "I am standing on New Brighton pier. I notice I have a Moptop hairstyle that was later copied by The Beatles in the Sixties. I was a trailblazer." 

Really!

Peter Grant