I’ll Tell You a Story…

Today, we’re going to answer a huge burning question about The Young Ones. No, nothing to do with flash frames, or hidden fifth housemates. This is the really important stuff.

Exactly what is the farty neighbour watching on her television in “Cash”, just before she switches over to Andy De La Tour doing a public information film?

Squinting at it, it seems impossible to tell. Some kind of drawing of a car? Unless it’s some well-known cartoon, or mentioned in the paperwork for rights reasons, or specified in the script, how could we ever figure it out?

Spoiler: it’s not a well-known cartoon, or mentioned on the paperwork for rights reasons, or specified in the script. We have only our wits to go on here.

Well… wits, and a certain video of Young Ones raw studio footage, sitting patiently on YouTube. I wrote recently about the section of this video containing material for the episode “Nasty”, but the second half of the video is entirely dedicated to “Cash”. And crucially, it includes the entire recording session for this scene.

Here are the same two images as above, this time taken from that raw footage:

Take a look at the burnt-in timecode at the bottom. This actually represents the time of day. So, we now know the exact time the scene was shot: 4:28pm. Does this help?

Possibly. Because if we skip back three minutes, and watch them setting up to record the scene:

Hang on, is that a BBC1 mirror globe ident I see? Why is that there?

The answer is simple. If the ident is there, that means that all this footage isn’t being played in from VTR to the television prop, like you might expect. Instead, it means that BBC1 network output is being routed to the television set: literally, exactly what was on BBC1 at the time the scene was being recorded. This actually does make sense considering when the show was made; in 1984, VTRs were a precious resource. You wouldn’t want to tie one up unless you had to. When watching the raw studio footage, it’s obvious that even Andy De La Tour is being shot live in another part of the studio, and simply routed to the TV prop; they didn’t pre-record any of that, either.

So, we now know that whatever was playing on that television is what was on BBC1 at 4:25pm. So the final part of this puzzle is figuring out the date. When was this episode shot? Let’s consult the paperwork…

“Cash” was shot on the 30th and 31st of January 1984, in Studio 3 at Television Centre. The 30th would have been the pre-record day, where they shot all the complicated effects-heavy sequences, and the 31st would be the audience record session. The raw footage video is clearly from the pre-record day; there is no audience present.

Which means the programme we are searching for was on BBC1 at 4:25pm, on the 30th January 1984. We don’t even need to resort to a paper Radio Times to nail this down; we can go straight to BBC Genome. And we now have our answer.

The programme on farty woman’s telly was Jackanory. Specifically, Episode 1 of an adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster’s 1961 book about a kid and his, erm, magic tollbooth. It was read by Christopher Guard, and at the precise moment it showed up on The Young Ones the episode was getting its only repeat ever; it was originally shown on the 14th March 1983.

And if you want final proof of all this, I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of this exact episode of Jackanory. So let’s go back to the raw studio footage one final time, and compare what’s on the TV screen straight after the globe ident with the very beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth:

So if you want to see exactly what was on farty woman’s television in the final, broadcast scene in “Cash”:

Which just leaves us with the following to ponder: how technical limitations in 1984 meant that the easiest way of capturing this scene was simply including whatever was randomly on BBC1 at the time of recording. Today, with it being far easier to play back whatever material you like, it’s hard to imagine that ever happening. Something specific would be chosen. If only for rights concerns as much as anything.

But in 1984, with The Young Ones? Completely at random, Farty Woman just doesn’t like Jackanory.

I think this article is the best thing published on the entire internet.

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