Sport Relief Box Office Top 10

In 2008, British Olympian legend Sir Steve Redgrave talked Mark and Simon into going for a run to raise money for Sport Relief. This then morphed into something in which they would do movie reviews while running. Not only that, Mark would run in his full suit and flip-flops, on the grounds that "if you were being chased by a woolly mammoth or something, you wouldn't say, "I'm not in training, I haven't got the right gear on"."

Mark claimed he had pushed for seven miles, and that Simon had talked him down to three. Victoria Derbyshire - on whose programme they were appearing (due to Racing from Chilcot) - asked him what his point was, and he replied "I'm fitter and more strapping." Victoria then pointed out that Adrian Chiles and Alan Shearer had just been seen on the A45 cycling 300 miles, although Mark argued this was an unfair comparison because Chiles and Shearer had been in training. This was somewhat contradicted by the fact that Mark had, the previous week, been in Philadelphia and trained by running up and down the Rocky steps.

In order to get a movie reference in, they wanted to do it in homage to Chariots Of Fire - and so headed to Eton, where the sequence was filmed (although this was not where it happened in real life, as Trinity College Cambridge did not grant permission at the time). Simon played Nigel Havers, making Mark Ben Cross - although Mark wanted to be Anthony Andrews, even though he is actually not in Chariots Of Fire but in Brideshead Revisited. The run, therefore, consisted of eight laps of Eton's quad while counting down the Box Office Top 10 and reviewing Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus In The Best Of Both Worlds: Concert Tour - 3D.

That week's Box Office Top 10 was:

There / Will / Be / Blood - "and in fact in this case, there might be more than that, there might be resuscitation involved."
Samey Pro - "yet another Will Ferrell does exactly the same thing he always did before.

It's a sporting movie, so it ties into what we're doing here... it's not funny."

Juno - "I really love it, big fan of Juno.

Love Ellen Page. Really pleased that Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Everybody should go and see it."

Be Kind Rewind - "Michel Gondry lite."
Jumper - "If we were Hayden Christensen and Jamie Bell, we wouldn't be running round this track; we would be jaunting in a Tomorrow People stylee, in which you suddenly imagine where you want to be - which in this case is down that end of the track - and you just mysteriously materialise there."
The Accidental Husband - "Irma Theakston - very, very bad actress.

Colin Firth - looks terribly embarrassed. Whole film is about a radio DJ, and her version of a radio DJ is less convincing than the version that you're doing now whilst running round a track"

The Bath Job - "It's Jason Statham innit, gor blimey, I've got to break into this bank and when we get in there, well, there's a bunch of readies but you know what, there's all these compromising pictures of the Royal Family.

Blimey."

Gameplan - "I missed Dwayne The Rock Johnson's marvellous new movie Gameplan, so if anyone's seen it, please email in and tell us whether it is indeed fun for all the family"
The Other Boleyn Girl - "it's a problem."
Vantage Point - "Hollywood's answer to Rashomon... by the time you get to the fourth version of those central events, you start to feel like it's Groundhog Day"

Simon revealed during the countdown that when Chariots Of Fire was being filmed, in the crowd were Sir Ken Chuckles Branagh, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, "just doing a bit of rah."

As the Top 10 countdown came to an end, Simon challenged Mark to a sprint to the end. With a cry of "I'm Nigel Havers, make way!", Simon beat Mark to the finish line - but, it turned out, only did so by cutting the last corner. Mark then complained about this until the end of the programme.

Simon said he had been told that four times around the quad at Eton was a mile. The Top 10 countdown lasted eight laps - and took eight minutes. Therefore they had two four-minute miles.

The Sport Relief Top 10 was later included in Pick Of The Week on Radio 4.

Incidentally, Simon had a pasty on the train coming down to the recording. After the first lap, he began to question if that was wise.