Memento Mori
Vulnerability, Optimisation, and the Fear of the Unknown
Though it was filmed less than 15 years ago, this Comic Relief sketch, Smithy to the Rescue, feels like it is from another lifetime.
It was March 2011. A boardroom packed with celebrities, all vying to front Comic Relief’s appeal film in Africa. The sketch unfolds with the dry, sardonic wit that only the British have truly mastered, part parody, part cultural critique.
We have: Seb Coe, reminding everyone of his success in bringing the 2012 Olympic Games to London; Davina McCall who in the summer of 2010 had presented her final addition of Big Brother; Rupert Grint and Tom Felton, just three months away from the release of the final Harry Potter film; Gordon Brown, warned that he’ll be wearing a microphone the whole time, a nod to well-documented mishaps; Rio Ferdinand smacked down by Keira Knightly, ‘he can’t cry on camera…and if you can’t cry, you can’t go’; and Paul McCartney ruthlessly advising James Corden, “You can’t go because you’re a bloater. People don’t like tubbies in Africa.”
They are supported by the usual crowd of Lenny Henry, Richard Curtis, and Dermot O’Leary, with appearances from Professor Robert Winston, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Richard Madeley, Clare Balding, a half naked Tom Daley, Ringo Starr, Justin Bieber, and JLS.
And of course, the peerless George Michael, reminding Smithy about picking up his photos, a reference to his infamous vehicle collision with a branch of Snappy Snaps in Hampstead in July 2010. Smithy’s reply, “I can’t walk into Comic Relief with you. Comic Relief is about helping people like you.”
It is impossible to imagine such a sketch airing now.
Comic Relief, once one of the UK’s most culturally resonant fundraising initiatives, combined the reach of mainstream television with the moral legitimacy of charity. It is easy to suggest its diminishing relevance reflects a broader cultural shift of growing scepticism towards celebrity activism, heightened awareness of global power dynamics, discomfort with the juxtaposition of humour and human suffering, and mounting critiques of the white saviour complex.
But that isn’t the whole picture.
Instagram was launched in October 2010, just six months before this sketch aired, marking a cultural inflection point that profoundly reshaped our engagement with celebrity, activism, and the spectacle of suffering. What was once mediated by shared television experiences like Comic Relief specials or national charity broadcasts, was rapidly replaced by fragmented, individualised feeds. This shift was not just technological, it was epistemological. Instagram restructured visibility, authority, and emotional proximity. Emerging platforms were able to do what Comic Relief could not. That is to account for the nuances of climate justice, the structural nature of migration, the lived realities of systemic racism, and the psychic toll of global precarity.
Comic Relief’s decline was not simply a failure of relevance, but a failure of adaptation.
Until this year.
Jaime Laing, an ex-Made in Chelsea cast member turned Radio 1 DJ, ran 150 miles over 5 days between London and Salford to raise money for Comic Relief. He is not an athlete, nor a polished campaigner. He had previously appeared in a 2014 BBC factual documentary series on food poverty called Famous, Rich and Hungry. It was moving to watch him try to coax his host, Mohammed, a father who regularly skips meals so he can afford to feed his two children, into eating.
In 2025 he was again visibly human; struggling, sweating, persisting. In an era saturated with curated perfection and performance, he was strikingly unguarded, breaking down repeatedly over those five days, reminding himself aloud that it was only running, simply putting one foot in front of the other. The illusion of ease and control evaporated, replaced by the bare honest visibility of someone pushing through pain, self-doubt, and physical exhaustion. His inner reality on full display for the young Radio 1 listeners.
It was a rare moment of televised, sincere vulnerability. Just the simple act of keeping going in front of the nation, a willingness to be undone and remade in front of others, supported by his colleagues and the listeners, making space for a new male role model, a new masculinity. Instead of hiding his struggle, Laing offers it as a form of connection. A reminder that effort, when made visible, can itself be a form of service.
It marked a departure from the wellness of chronos, the calibrated time of progress, optimisation, and perfection, and a deepening into the wellness of kairos: the loosening, untying, and untethering that comes from surrendering to what is present.
The race against death
From intravenous drips delivering high-dose nutrients directly into the bloodstream, to biohacking protocols designed to fine-tune the body's physiological systems, the offerings are both seductive and overwhelming. We can purchase cellular regeneration therapies, customised hormonal treatments, and increasingly sophisticated analyses of the microgut biome. Blood testing for food intolerances has become routine, and genetic readouts promise personalised blueprints for optimal living. Proteinification abounds and each intervention presents itself as a key to unlocking not just more time, but a better, sharper, more resilient self.
The longing to transcend mortality is not new, it is ancient. Across time and civilisation, from the Holy Grail, to the Philosopher's Stone, and to the alchemist’s elixir of life, these myths were never just about the body, they speak to an urge to see what is around the bend, to have certainty where there is doubt, to control the unknown. Brian Johnson is only a recent acolyte, claiming to have slowed down the speed of ageing.
But the clinical precision of longevity products and services invites a deeper cultural question, one that is logical following a pandemic. One that resonates with concerns people had after the Black Death.
What happens to a culture that can no longer bear the unknown?
Since the 14th century, humans have sought to control the unknown, particularly death, through evolving rituals of immortality. The trauma of the Black Death, which decimated half of Europe’s population, seeded a cultural obsession with mortality. Alchemical and Hermetic traditions flourished, offering hidden knowledge and spiritual transformation as pathways to transcendence.
Today the spiritual services market, which includes religion, spiritual healing, astrology, divination, witchcraft, energy cleansing, is valued at US$376 billion and estimated to reach US$787 billion by 2035. And India is poised to respond.
“India’s religious tech sector has experienced a meteoric rise in the last half a decade especially after the covid-19 pandemic. It is now drawing increased attention from investors, fueled by growing demand for digital religious services. Startups in the space raised more than $50 million in venture funding in 2024, up sharply from $4.3 million the previous year.” - Hanan Zaffar
With the Scientific Revolution, the unknown was no longer approached through ritual alone, but through measurement, anatomy, and the rationalisation of fate itself. Today’s biohacking, cryogenics, and technological dreams of life extension continue this lineage. Across each era, the desire to master the unknowable has endured.
What was once pursued through sacred metals and celestial configurations is now sought through biometrics and behavioural upgrades. Beneath it all Chronos still fuels the desire to transcend decay, outwit time, and master the unknown.
Until the next dispatch,
Tina