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While We Have Still Got Some Insanity Left

Published 3rd January 2025

Meta / TV Comedy

Website stats are funny old things. For a start, it’s become deeply unfashionable to actually care about them. “Write for yourself, not for others”, people cry, myself included. This is, on the face of it, an entirely reasonable attitude… but I have to admit that these days, I really want people to read my stuff. So much of my writing relies on other people helping me with my research, and the more people who read my work, the better and more widespread that research gets.

The other odd thing about stats is that what is an extremely successful article by my standards, is a mere rounding error when it comes to some sites. As detailed in my 15 year retrospective, the most popular article I’ve ever written on Dirty Feed has had about 45k hits over the years. The second most popular article I’ve ever written has had nearly 18k hits. A lot of pieces I’m very proud of have 2-3k hits. This piece on the pilot of Fawlty Towers, featuring material which has never been published before, has had less than 1k hits. I don’t lie awake thinking about it too much, but I know damn well plenty of worse sites than this one get exponentially more views. It can get mildly frustrating.

But perhaps not as frustrating as the following.

Back in 2013, I uploaded the following YouTube video. It’s a clip from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, “Showing the Flag”, broadcast on the 2nd January 1975. It’s one of my very favourite moments of the series, featuring Don Estelle corpsing spectacularly. It also contains a masterclass from Windsor Davies on how to ride the the laughter from a studio audience.

That video has had over one million views. It is by far he most popular thing I have ever published online. Never mind in-depth articles about flash frames in The Young Ones which are the result of years of research and thought – just rip a random sitcom clip, shove it on YouTube, and watch the views mount up.

Anyway, I am very mature and sensible and have entirely come to peace with all of this and think it is all brilliant.

Fifteen for Fifteen

Published 1st January 2025

Meta

5 years • 10 years • 15 years

Fifteen years of anything is an odd anniversary to celebrate, really. Five years is a reasonable commitment to anything. Ten years is obviously special. Twenty years is miraculous. But fifteen? What does that actually mean?

Still, I wanted to mark fifteen years of writing Dirty Feed somehow. But just doing a list of my favourite pieces again seemed mildly pathetic, especially when I’m definitely going to do one of those for the 20th anyway. So instead, here is a list of the fifteen most popular articles on the site over the past fifteen years, in terms of traffic.

This sometimes matches with my favourite stuff… and sometimes very much doesn’t.

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Coventry City 0, Mr. Johnson’s Una 3

Published 27th December 2024

TV Comedy

Recently, I embarked on yet another rewatch of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I always find the TV incarnation a slightly odd experience. There are enough episodes, and the shows themselves are so packed with stuff, that no matter how many times I see them, huge swathes of sketches are somehow always a surprise.

So as usual, I’d completely forgotten about International Wife-Swapping. Which among many other highlights, also contains Michael Palin doing his Frank Bough:

“Just a reminder that on Match of the Day tonight, you can see highlights of two of this afternoon’s big games: Mrs. Robinson v. Manchester United, and Southampton v. Mr. Rogers. Unusual game, that. And here’s a late result: Coventry City 0, Mr. Johnson’s Una, 3. Coventry going down at home, there.”

And I laughed at that final line… before stopping to think slightly. Was I just, as I have done many times before when watching comedy, making up my own jokes?

Luckily, we can know for sure. On the extras of the incredible Network Blu-ray release – or bootlegged if you’re one of those people – are the raw pre-recorded inserts for Series 3 Episode 13, commonly known as “Grandstand”.1 And one of these inserts is Michael Palin as Frank Bough, recording the above line.

A chalkboard VT clock for a Monty Python insert

Michael Palin as Frank Bough looking very amused at Eric Idle's dirty joke

And after one particular take, we get Palin grinning widely, followed by…

PALIN: Eric Idle joke. Man of the world, Eric…

So firstly, I now now for sure that it was a deliberate gag. But more importantly: if there’s anything more pleasurable in the world than watching Michael Palin laugh at Eric Idle’s dirty joke, I have yet to discover it.

A version of this post was first published in the December issue of my newsletter.

  1. RX: 18th May 1972. TX: 18th January 1973. ↩

That’s Entertainment

Published 26th December 2024

Life

I somehow feel it’s bad etiquette to go on about the brilliant holiday I had in LA this year. So I won’t talk about the brilliant Warner Bros. Studio Tour I went on, visiting Vasquez aka Star Trek Rocks, or eating at the oldest McDonald’s in the world. Look, the last one is exciting to me, leave me alone.

I also spent a day at Universal Studios Hollywood, the best part of which me was my second studio tour of the week, with a highlight being a look around the beautiful set for upcoming comedy St. Denis Medical. Walking from a soundstage into a completely realistic four-wall set will never cease to be a magical thing.

But it wasn’t the most magical thing I saw that day.

The actual theme park section of Universal I found less interesting; the “action sequences” you get on the tour in your tram are brilliant, but more than enough for me. I certainly didn’t bother going on The Mummy or Transformers rides, and nothing I have read about them since makes me wish I’d tried them. So while it was interesting to see the ongoing construction of the new Fast & Furious rollercoaster, due to open in 2026, I know I will never actually ride the damn thing.

As we walked past the construction site, there was a construction worker standing there, in full uniform. He looked vaguely annoyed. And he was holding up a sign.

I AM HOLDING UP THIS WALL WITH MY BARE HANDS

We walked past him again later on. This time, his sign read:

DON’T READ THIS

And checking on Twitter, his sign has also been known to say:

SUPER SECRET BLUEPRINT

Universal Studios literally paid someone to stand around all day outside a construction site, holding up stupid signs.

In a park where show business is the name of the game – where even a studio tour gets a couple of mini thrill-rides thrown in – this strikes me as the most brilliant showbiz touch of all. To take a necessary evil – an ugly construction site in the middle of your theme park – and turn it into something funny, is everything I love about entertainment.

And like all the best showbiz touches, the fun is in the scale. It’s in paying someone to stand there all day, purely in the service of a joke. Of all the jobs that need to be done every hour of every day at that park… somebody knows that it’s also deeply important to give somebody the silliest job in the world.

Just to add that tiny bit of extra magic. Because without that magic, entertainment is nothing.

A version of this post was first published in the October issue of my newsletter.

Dirty Feed: Best of 2024

Published 11th December 2024

Meta

2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023 • 2024

Well, another year, another complete failure to get my big Christmas music mix ready for you all. I’ve got various incomplete edits of it stretching back over a decade now. And I was so looking forward to annoying people because it starts with a Chris Moyles clip.

Never mind, let’s take look at what I have managed to get round to doing. Here’s the best of Dirty Feed from the past year. Suitable musical accompaniment is embedded below.

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A Comedy Spray

Published 2nd December 2024

TV Comedy

While we’re on an anonymous questions kick, here’s something else I was asked recently: “Favourite behind-the-scenes moment?” Which gives me an excuse to talk about something brilliant.

Take a look at this scene from Red Dwarf, “Stasis Leak”, broadcast on the 27th September 1988.

This was shot on location in the Midland Hotel in Manchester, on the 5th/6th May 1988.1 Note the plaque for “The Ganymede Holiday Inn” is clearly above one for the Midland Hotel. Although the really interesting thing about that plaque is that it includes a close approximation of the Holiday Inn logo, which is perhaps a little odd for a BBC show of the time!

Now let’s turn to The Bodysnatcher Collection, a Red Dwarf DVD release from 2007 which I’ve talked about many times before on here. One of the features on that release was an in-depth behind-the-scenes making of documentary of Series 2, It’s Cold Outside, which features plenty of previously unseen clips from the raw recordings, both studio and location.

Such as the following. A discussion between Danny John-Jules and Doug Naylor, taken from the shooting of the Ganymede Holiday Inn scene, about spraying the nice lady with water… and who gets to do it. And it’s fantastic.

There’s something about the way Doug acknowledges comedy in that clip that is just magical. Comedy as its own thing, as something worth fighting for, as something that matters.

There are a great number of TV shows made now which would benefit from somebody stepping forward and saying: “It’a a comedy spray.”

  1. Two days for the material at the Midland Hotel seems excessive, but that’s what the paperwork states. Other location material featuring Mark Williams as Petersen was shot at the Albert Dock on the 11th May 1988. ↩

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Duck, Everyone

Published 25th November 2024

TV Comedy

Recently, I asked people to send me anonymous questions again, which is always good fun until someone sends you something unpleasant. Anonymity and nasty messages, what are the odds?

Anyway, I particularly enjoyed this one, as it gives me an excuse to link to one of my favourite things ever.

“Favourite audience reaction in a sitcom? I know it’s difficult to choose. The reaction at the end of Seinfeld’s The Marine Biologist when George pulls Kramer’s golf ball out of his jacket has to be one of mine, love that woman who does the shriek when she realises what he’s holding.”

Having finally got round to a full rewatch of Seinfeld this year – yes, I know – I fully concur. The actual laugh is at 4:00 in the below video, in an episode which first aired in the US on the 10th February 1994.1

As for my own suggestions, my mind immediately turns to Red Dwarf. The obvious answer is the shrinking boxer shorts scene in “Polymorph”, followed by the reveal of the crew meeting the skeletons in “Kryten”. In fact, nearly all the huge audience reactions in the show come from the show’s early years in Manchester, which might be a riposte to anyone who says that the audience got louder in later years when the fans started attending recordings.

A less obvious answer, but still utterly glorious, is the following from “Bodyswap”, broadcast on the 5th December 1989. You don’t need to worry about the body swap shenanigans themselves – all you need to know is that thanks to a wiring fault, Lister’s order of “a milkshake and a crispy bar” ten minutes earlier set off the ship’s auto-destruct system:

It is, of course, the utter release of tension, as well as the joke itself, which creates such a hysterical reaction.

But for my money, one of the best audience reactions of all time is in Drop the Dead Donkey. In “Sally’s Libel”, broadcast on the 4th February 1993, we get the sad tale of footballer Pat “The Panther” Pringle, played by Paul Clarkson. Well, he was called “The Panther” until a horrendous own goal in the last minute of a semi-final, where he became known as “The Plonker” instead.

Luckily, after years in the wilderness, he’s finally got a job as Globelink’s new sports presenter. And so the gang make him feel comfortable in their usual inimitable fashion.

Interestingly, it works slightly differently to the Red Dwarf example above. It’s not about a release of tension; the tension is already released by the bathetic “Oh well, there you go!” So you think that’s the main joke… and then wham, David Swift comes on and leaves you gasping for breath.2

It’s as joyful and magical as television gets for me. And it creates the case for audience sitcom in and of itself.

  1. Although annoyingly enough, despite including some of the lead-up, it doesn’t include any of Kramer playing golf on the beach earlier in the episode, which is key to the punchline. ↩

  2. And leaving Stephen Tompkinson gasping for breath, covering his face to hide his corpsing. Which brings to mind Simon Day in the final Mid-Life Crisis sketch of You Ain’t Seen These, Right? ↩

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This Guy Are Sick

Published 21st November 2024

Meta

Recently, I was going through some of my old emails from 2009. That’s from before Dirty Feed was even launched. In fact, those of you with very long memories may remember that Dirty Feed didn’t even start out as Dirty Feed; it was originally called “Transistorised” for most of the launch year of 2010, after an old Kenny Everett line about “transistorised people”.

Transistorised doesn’t work at all as a name, but I have to say I rather like one of my other proposed ideas, which I never used: “This Guy Are Sick”, after a notorious piece of Engrish in Final Fantasy VII. I still think that’s pretty good.

Less good, perhaps, was one of my early logo ideas:

This Guy Are Sick logo - all lowercase, letters bunched up together, in black/blue/maroon

Hmmmm. To be fair, I think the above design was mainly because I only had access to Microsoft Word during a boring workday. Although I’m not sure there’s any excuse for that bilious shade of maroon.

The same document also has some of my article ideas for what eventually became Dirty Feed. For instance, here’s the rough, high-level outline for a planned piece on The Fast Show:

You Ain’t Seen These, Right?

  • Introduction, what the show is
  • Radio Times article – what the team say
  • Comparison between Fast Show Night and DVD release versions
  • Conclusion – better than most teams manage in their regular shows, Harry Enfield lost material

And lo and behold, I’ve finally written about You Ain’t Seen These… Right? this month. And exactly as planned, right down to the granularity of comparing the broadcast and DVD versions. I even quote extensively from the Radio Times article, and the conclusion is still about lost Harry Enfield material!

I was originally going to write all that 15 years ago. So if you ever wondered how long it takes me to get round to doing things… now you know.

You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?

Published 20th November 2024

TV Comedy

“This is it! It’s THE FAST SHOW as you’ve never seen it before – literally! This special video compilation has sketches you will not have seen on TV featuring all your favourite characters as well as loads of completely new ones, so fresh and raw they don’t even have proper names – Mid-life-Crisis Man, Road Rage Man, Up All Night Shagging Man. Plus the New York Eskimo, Ponce In The Garden, The King, The Over-Sensitive Dad and Danny Klein, a cop like no other cop you’ve ever seen before, because he’s Conventional Cop.”

Back of VHS cover, You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?

The problem with something like The Fast Show – a programme which for many years has essentially lived on DVD – is that the origins of various things can become a little murky in your brain. Or at the very least, my brain.

So let’s quickly nail down the facts:

  • In 1999, The Fast Show put together a fantastic compilation of previously unseen sketches, titled You Ain’t Seen These… Right? This was broadcast on BBC Two as part of Fast Show Night on the 11th September 1999, in a 30-minute edit.
  • A couple of months later, on the 15th November 1999, it was released on VHS in an extended 50-minute edit, as part of the Series 3 Fast Show boxset.1 This version was called You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?
  • Finally, this 50-minute edit was also part of the Ultimate Collection DVD boxset, released on the 5th November 2007. Both the VHS and DVD edits are identical.

For my part, I have fond memories of watching the show on the original broadcast on Fast Show Night… but never owned the commercial VHS at all. In 1999, I just couldn’t afford to keep up with every brilliant BBC Video release back then. So the first time I saw the extended edit was on the Ultimate Collection boxset years later, where the 20 minutes of extra material took me by complete surprise, despite the fact that the extended edit was first released eight years earlier.

You know where this is going. Last time, we looked at the 30-minute edit of the show. Let’s take a look now at the 50-minute commercial release. Sadly, I don’t have access to the same kind of production paperwork this time round; the BBC’s commercial releases are generally much harder to research than broadcast material. This means that for the extra sketches, we don’t know the official titles, authors, or even which series they were originally recorded for. Although on that latter question, trying to figure it out from the sketches themselves is half the fun.

Regardless, here is a complete list of every single difference between the broadcast 30-minute edit of the show, and the commercial 50-minute edit. I do find this extra material fascinating, because it was essentially rejected twice; once for the main series, and then again for the broadcast version of You Ain’t Seen These. If any Fast Show material was going to be of questionable quality – at least when it comes to stuff that the public got to see – then the material listed here is going to be it.

All times given are for this 50-minute edit of the show. This version isn’t available online, at least legally and in good quality, but I suspect the crossover between “people who read Dirty Feed” and “people who don’t own The Fast Show Ultimate Collection on DVD” is fairly small.

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  1. It never had a separate release. ↩

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