Three nights of comedy and music came to a close last night as stars including Michael McIntyre took to the stage in aid of an Oxford hospice charity.

Childish Things, a fundraiser for Helen and Douglas House in Magdalen Road, is now in its eighth year and for the first time a special music night was held in addition to two evenings of comedy.

Jamie Cullum, Beardyman, Eliza Doolittle and KT Tunstall kicked off the inaugural music event on Monday, while comedians including Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, Isy Suttie, Jason Mansford, Marcel Lucont, Jason Byrne and Matt Richardson performed over the last two nights.

Organiser Lizzie Pickering said the event had been a huge success and the charity was on target to raise £100,000. That will bring the total raised since Childish Things began to more than £400,000.

She said: “We are just absolutely thrilled by how it has gone. The audience seem to have loved it.

“We keep trying to make it a bit different.”

Matt Richardson, 20, from Didcot, has been asking for a spot on the bill since he was a schoolboy but this year they agreed he was ready to share a stage with some of the biggest names in comedy.

And his fast-paced set including in-jokes about the respective attractions of Oxford, Abingdon, Didcot and Blackbird Leys went down a storm.

Michael McIntyre was forced to improvise when a balloon popped overhead and he ‘died’ on stage, but he turned it around with a quip that the Royal Family had tried to take him out following jokes about the Queen.

Oxford a capella group Out of the Blue performed at both comedy nights for the fourth year running, while many of the other acts were also returning for repeat performances.

Mr Richardson said: “It’s my local big theatre and I’ve always wanted to play it. It was such good fun.”

Marcel Lucont is the stage persona of Alexis Dubus.

He said: “It was wonderful – I don’t think I’ve ever done a charity gig when the crowd hasn’t been anything other than lovely.”

A film about the hospice, which costs £4.5m each year to run, was screened during each night and the audience urged to text in donations.

By yesterday, £5,000 was donated and more than 1,300 people had viewed the video on the Helen and Douglas House website, helenand douglas.org.uk Out of the Blue are selling downloads of their performance of Elbow’s Lippy Kids in aid of the hospice, via their website ootb.org.uk The New Theatre donated 100 per cent of all proceeds for one of the nights, and a proportion of ticket sales for the other two, with many staff volunteering for the night as a donation.