Alexander Armstrong: my week in South Africa and staying sober at the circus I am just back from a Comic Relief trip to South Africa. My first as it happens. Not my first time in South Africa, of course; oh no, many are the happy times I've spent in the Cape. Sometimes filming (a lot of that goes on), sometimes looking at famous animals in the wild (that too), or idly mooching along the Garden Route and wine lands, and usually staying in hotels at whose gates men in pith helmets have saluted and presented arms as our car turned in - a startling commingling of selective historical colour and security. Imagine a pair of pearly kings opening their buttony coats to show a jaunty sidearm stuffed into their waistband every time you walked into The Savoy. You will be unsurprised to hear that Comic Relief trips tend to follow a somewhat different model (the sedan chair, for example: hardly in evidence). Possibly by design, more probably because time is always short, they prefer to throw you straight into the heart of the matter. After an overnight flight to Jo'burg and a cup of coffee at the airport, we were into our minibus and straight off to the townships. So my first - strongest - impression was of how close to home many of Comic Relief's South African projects are. Literally hours from London. The telly is unequalled as a charitable resource. Nothing else raises awareness, funds, or coordinates mass participation on anything like the same scale. But my problem with television is that it also somehow removes my sense of connection or responsibility. Sure, I'll still get involved, but in the same way that I'll never worry unduly about whether Kevin McCloud's grand designers will get their mortgages approved, unfolding tragedies in another hemisphere appear similarly pre-resolved and safe, and as imponderable in the context of my life as a vajazzle or a penny-farthing. We took our older two boys to see a matinee performance of Cirque du Soleil this week. I've never been to a circus matinee before but the crucial difference is you watch it completely sober. Where Cirque du Soleil after a glass of wine gives you the illusion you are watching something stunningly close to magic, sober, it is two hours with your heart in your mouth watching high-wire acts of shocking immediacy, superhuman bravery and skill, every second aware how easily and lethally they could crash down to earth. It was the second time in a week that I had learnt to see something in that light.