Radio review: Safe and Sound - The Guardian

The televised part of Comic Relief tends to get all the attention, but radio also supports the event and did so in headline-grabbing fashion this year. Chris Moyles (Radio 1) broke the world record for the longest-running radio show presented by a team, raising an impressive £2.4m in the process.

Rather less dramatically, Blue Peter's Helen Skelton explored the work of one small charity in Derby supported by Comic Relief in Safe and Sound (Radio 5 Live, Friday). You need both strands for Comic Relief: the mega fundraising feats from household names and the powerful stories of lives changed by the charity's work. One of the sobering things about this documentary looking at the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of children, though, was its lack of unequivocally happy endings.

The reason for this, as Skelton made clear, is that the damage done to the children involved and their families ricochets on long after the abuse ends. Their accounts were full of harrowing details, given an awful impact by their young voices and recalled naivety, now long gone. "Maybe that's just how sex is," one said, remembering what she thought as she was raped by more than 100 men in two years. Where she'd be without her terrific-sounding parents and the work of that tiny charity doesn't bear thinking about.