FROM a gruelling all-day exercise to baking hundreds of cakes, the people of Notts got right behind Red Nose Day yesterday in a bid to raise thousands of pounds for charity.
Staff at the Barker and Stonehouse furniture store, on the Giltbrook retail park, completed an eight-hour "spinathon" which saw each of the store's ten staff put on a Red Nose, and pedal on an exercise bike for as long as they could.
Customers, colleagues, friends and family were encouraged to support the team, or their favourite staff member, with the hope of generating £1,000 for the cause.
Store manager, Imran Tai, said: "Red Nose Day does such a great job of raising funds and awareness for those less fortunate throughout the country and around the world.
"We're proud to be able to do our part to help the charity, in any way possible."
Staff at Sainsbury's, in Castle Boulevard, also got in the Red Nose Day spirit by staging a customer donut-eating competition, doing Elvis impersonations and taking part in a contest on rowing machines against pupils from the Bluecoat Academy, in Aspley.
And earlier in the week staff at the Bunny Appliance Warehouse in Gotham Lane, Bunny raised £938.09, for Comic Relief by baking cakes and donating two per cent of the sale price of any range cooker sold to Red Nose Day.
Vernon Coaker MP joined staff and pupils at Pinewood Infant School, in Arnold, to judge their cake competition, while children at Blue Bell Hill Primary School, in St Ann's, watched a live charity bake-off between two of their teachers.
And later in the day over 200 staff at the E.on offices, at Phoenix Park, fielded donation calls during Comic Relief's live BBC broadcast.
The call centre's team of volunteers manned 70 phone lines from 6.45pm until midnight.
David Bird, customer operations director at E.on, said: "We've a long-standing tradition of donating our call centre and volunteering our time and services to Red Nose Day, and the whole team were raring to go.
"We received hundreds of calls an hour, while helping to raise lots of money for Comic Relief."
More pictures from this year's Red Nose Day events online and in the Nottingham Post on Monday.
