Charity begins... on your Sky box

The Community Channel is to launch an interactive service giving viewers the ability to make donations to their favourite charities from the comfort of their armchairs.

Using the red button, viewers of the channel will be able to launch an interactive application allowing them to make donations 24/7.

Sinead Hughes, Community Channel's interactive TV editor, said: "We want to make this kind of opportunity available to all charity organisations, regardless of size or resources.

"The Home Office's Active Communities Unit has funded the project and Sky has donated the capacity to broadcast it, thus enabling us to cut the cost of providing an interactive TV fundraising campaign down to a tiny fraction of regular commercial costs."

The channel has already signed up the British Red Cross, Barnardo's, the Dogs Trust, Youth Music, the National Trust, Wildlife Aid, Spinal Research and Save The Children.