Brussel sprout-eating contests, abseiling teddy bears and industrial-sized pants could mean only one thing - Comic Relief had hit Sussex again.

money-raising schemes were stranger than ever this year, as people in the county endured red faces for red noses.

Staff at Specsavers in Worthing ate 1,000 Brussels sprouts in three hours to raise money.

Outside Bar Centro, in Ship Street, Brighton, teddy bears were saying "pants to poverty".

Staff at the bar strung 1,500 bears together to form a huge pair of pants to hang from the building.

The teddies were then flung from the top of the bar before being auctioned off.

Staff at Filofax in Victoria Gardens, Burgess Hill, asked celebrities to fill in pages from one of their diaries with secrets and a day in their lives.

The completed journal, which will be auctioned on their web site www.filofax.co.uk, has entries from the likes of Craig David, Jamie Oliver, Norman Cook and Chris Eubank.

Children at Downs View School in Warren Road, Woodingdean, dared their headteacher, Jane Reed, and deputy head, Charlie Phillips, to go on scary rides on Palace Pier.

Pupils at Mile Oak Primary School in Graham Avenue, Portslade, are old hands at raising money for charity, having raised almost £1,400 in the last school year. They raised £225 by wearing red clothes instead of uniforms.

Headteacher Tony Bullock said: "Mile Oak pupils really understand that there are children out there less fortunate than themselves."

More than 80 children at Early Years Nursery, Dyke Road Avenue, Hove, paid 50p for face-painting and to throw water down the pants of a member of staff.

And a seven-legged sponsored walk took place between Palace Pier and West Pier. Staff from American Express in Bri-ghton stumbled along wearing pants outside their trousers.

Even directors at an IT conference in the Hilton Metropole hotel bared their underwear.

Richard Murphy, director of IT services at the University of Dundee, wore his pants with pride to raise £1,700.

Crawley Mayor Mohammed Qamaruddin allowed himself to be held to ransom for the event.

A third of cash raised through Comic Relief will go to causes in the UK. Since 1999, £117,696 has been donated to five charities in East Sussex.

These include a Brighton-based Relate project, which offers vulnerable young men a support service; the Anglo Japan Social Welfare and Education Society, which gives advice to Asian women experiencing domestic violence and a same-sex domestic violence project run by Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media.