Stars unite for Children in Need

Pop stars, actors and TV presenters are joining forces to raise money for BBC Children in Need. The annual fundraising event culminates in a seven-hour BBC One show with performers including The Spice Girls, Kylie Minogue and Annie Lennox.

Irish boy band Boyzone are reforming for the event and Doctor Who star David Tennant will meet his predecessor Peter Davison in a specially-written sketch.

Children in Need raises funds for disadvantaged young people in the UK. This year it encouraged the public to "do something different" to raise money for the charity

Organisers hope to beat the £18.3m pledged on the night in 2006. This rose to more than £33m once all donations were collected.

The reunited Spice Girls will perform Headlines (Friendship Never Ends), the official Children in Need single, from Los Angeles during the programme.

Newsreaders including Fiona Bruce will perform a song from Chicago

BBC news readers Fiona Bruce, Dermot Murnaghan, Andrew Marr, Nicholas Owen, Bill Turnball and Ben Brown will perform a song from the West End musical Chicago.

The cast of BBC One soap EastEnders will appear and there will be special editions of TV shows Dragon's Den, Hotel Babylon and music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

The cast of musical Dirty Dancing will also appear, as will singer David Gray, actor John Barrowman and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat star Lee Mead.

National and regional BBC radio and television stations have also been raising money for Children in Need.

On Thursday, BBC Radio 2 listener Kenneth Donnell, from Glasgow, paid £83,000 for two tickets to Led Zeppelin's reunion gig in December in a Children in Need auction.

Presented by Terry Wogan and Fearne Cotton, the TV programme begins at 1900 GMT on Friday.