It’s official: I talk about Red Dwarf too much on here. But sometimes it’s just too difficult to resist, if only to make a point about how absurdly lucky Red Dwarf fans actually are.
For example, with Dwarf‘s first series, glimpses of footage beyond the actual episodes themselves are plentiful. Across various VHS and DVD releases over the years, we can see an earlier version of the opening scene of the show… and an outtake from the closing moments of the final episode in that first run too. Both ends of the series, represented with extra footage giving insight into the production of the show.
Sadly, with the first series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie – shot and broadcast just a year later – we’re not so lucky. There are no DVDs full of deleted scenes available here, nor any outtakes. Indeed, the only bit of extra footage beyond the the broadcast shows that I’m aware of for Series 1 is this trail, shown in the week leading up to broadcast.1
To get our deleted scenes for A Bit of Fry & Laurie, we have to work a little harder. And yet they exist, at least in written form. The script book for Series 1, first published in 1990, might frustrate some completists a little, as not every sketch from the series was included. I confess to being mildly irritated that it doesn’t contain a single sketch from the 1987 pilot, which is one of my favourite single shows Fry & Laurie ever did.2
But that is tremendously unfair, when I’d kill for a book like this for most shows. It’s worth it for the brilliant stage directions alone – these are the actual scripts, not dodgy transcripts. Moreover, the vast majority of sketches in Series 1 are there, along with plenty of sketches which never made the broadcast episodes. So while we may not have our deleted scenes in video form, we do have them, sort of. And while I suggest you pick up a secondhand copy of the book if you don’t have one – Fry & Laurie practically demands to be read in a civilised manner – all the sketches have been transcribed and are available online, albeit extremely unofficially.
Having wallowed in Series 1 of Fry & Laurie for the last month, the unused sketches spring out at me like a… spring. So if you love the series but have never read the book, I’ll say that you should be reading “Operations”, “Toaster”, “Maternity Ward Ten”, “Remembering Lines”, “Little Chat”, “Sex Change”, “Forward to the Past”, “The Old Folks”, “Ignorance”, “A Bit of a Pain in the Bottom”, “Orthodoxy”, “A Frank Talk”, “Café”, “Fascism”, “Jeremiah Beadle”, “Architect”, “Naked”, and – most famously – “Spies Five”. And that’s plenty to be getting on with.
Still, what interests me today is: can we imagine what any of these sketches actually looked like on the screen, rather than merely on the page? Indeed, can we figure out which audience sessions they might have been recorded in? In two cases3, I think we can get a pretty damn good idea.
* * *
First of all, let’s take a look at “The Old Folks”. The entire sketch features below, because I thought you might want to read something funny on here for a change.
Stephen is behind the reception desk of an old people’s home. Hugh enters.
HUGH: Hello.
STEPHEN: You’re not very old.
HUGH: Sorry?
STEPHEN: I say you’re not very old.
HUGH: No, I…
STEPHEN: This is an old folk’s home, you see, and consequently we do ask that people wishing to stay here are, at the very least, old. It’s in our charter.
HUGH: I don’t want to stay here.
STEPHEN: Oh. Then I must instantly demand that you pardon me. Have we been talking at cross purposes do you suppose?
HUGH: Possibly, yes.
STEPHEN: Whoops. My fault, quite dreadful of me. You’d better start again then.
HUGH: Right.
STEPHEN: Right.
HUGH: I wondered if…
STEPHEN: You’re not very old.
HUGH: What?
STEPHEN: This is an old folk’s home, you see, and consequently…
HUGH: No, I don’t want to stay here. I’ve come to see my aunt.
STEPHEN: Oh. No. Oh no. What a shame. She died.
HUGH: Who did?
STEPHEN: Your aunt. If you’d only been a few hours earlier.
HUGH: Wait a minute. You don’t know who I am yet.
STEPHEN: I don’t have to. We only had one aunt, you see and she passed away last night. Oh, we shall miss her indeed. Her cheerfulness, her sense of fun…
HUGH: Hold on. Do you mind if we just check the name first, to make sure we’re talking about the same person?
STEPHEN: If there’s the slightest chance that it’ll help you to confront some of the painful unanswered questions that must be weighing upon you at this most difficult of times, then all of a surely.
HUGH: Thank you.
STEPHEN: Please don’t thank me, nephew.
HUGH: Wh…?
STEPHEN: I do this job because I love it. How many people can say that? Less than a dozen I fancy rotten. Yes, here it is. Room 14, aunt, died at ten o’clock last night.
HUGH: Yes, what was her name?
STEPHEN: Fourteen.
HUGH: No, her name.
STEPHEN: Well now, I don’t think we actually have a record of her name. There isn’t much space on these cards, you see? I keep on saying to the Trustees – did I say “saying”? Beseeching on bended legs, rather – “give me bigger cards” but…
HUGH: What was her name?
STEPHEN: Well before you rush headlong down that tree-lined avenue, let me just say that we’re very much given to using nicknames, here.
HUGH: Nicknames?
STEPHEN: Indeed, yes. To myself and the rest of the staff your aunt will always be remembered as “fourteen”. Sounds a bit informal, I know. But that’s our style here. We leave formality very much outside on the doorstep, together with a cheerful note to the milkman. From the day she arrived, “fourteen” just seemed so right somehow.
HUGH: Are you saying that a woman died here last night and you don’t even know her name?
STEPHEN: I know it’s hard sometimes for an outsider to enter a home like this, and it is a home – did I mention that? Did I make that abundant? – and straight away understand what it is we’re really trying to do here.
HUGH: My aunt’s name is Amanda Thighkiss.
STEPHEN: Well there you are, you see. Amanda Thighkiss. How could we have called her that? It’s so cold, so unfriendly. And you can see how small the cards are. I’d lucky to squeeze “A. Thigh” on one of these.Deborah, as a very old lady, appears next to Stephen.
DEBORAH: Please…
STEPHEN: Whoops! Hahaha…Stephen tries to push Deborah’s head down.
DEBORAH: Just a piece of bread, a biscuit, anything.
HUGH: Aunt Amanda?
DEBORAH: (Popping up) Neville! Oh thank God!
HUGH: Are you alright?
STEPHEN: (Standing in front of her) Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.
HUGH: What’s the matter?
DEBORAH: I’m starving. Have you brought any food?
STEPHEN: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I’ll never forgive myself for this. You should have been spared this. I’d give anything for you to have been spared this.
HUGH: You told me she was dead.
DEBORAH: Who was dead?
STEPHEN: As if the shock of the news was not enough, you’ve now had to see this. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.
HUGH: What are you talking about?
STEPHEN: I’m sorry that you should be confronted with the body in this fashion. It’s all very distressing.
HUGH: Body?
STEPHEN: Still, spiritually she’s in a better place now. Let’s be grateful for that.
HUGH: She’s standing right there.
STEPHEN: Well of course her body is right there, but her soul… Who knows what beautiful journey…?
DEBORAH: Please, Neville, have you got any food?
HUGH: Food? No. Are you hungry?
DEBORAH: I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.
HUGH: Lunchtime yesterday? What’s the matter, don’t you feed people here at all?
STEPHEN: Of surely course.
HUGH: You do?
STEPHEN: Indeed yes. Our guests have had more hot dinners than you’ve had… than you’ve had.
HUGH: Then why hasn’t my aunt been fed since yesterday?
STEPHEN: Ah. You’re a stranger to death, I can see. Let me just say, as simply as I can, that it is deeply unusual to give food to dead people.
HUGH: What?
STEPHEN: Unless, of course, it is specified in the will. Otherwise we tend to look upon it as a needless extravagance. However, if it is your wish…
HUGH: What are you talking about? My aunt is not dead.
STEPHEN: Are you a medical person?
HUGH: No.
STEPHEN: Ah.
HUGH: Look, she’s standing there, talking and breathing…
DEBORAH: (Faintly) Aaagh…
HUGH: …just… and you’re telling me that she’s dead.
STEPHEN: I can readily understand that the effect of the shock taken with the friendly brightness of our decor would make it hard for you to grasp…
HUGH: She is not dead. (To Deborah) Are you?
DEBORAH: No.
HUGH: There.
STEPHEN: Oh I know how much you want to believe it. Otherwise how could you stand the loss? But you see, I too have lost. When dear old fourteen died, a little part of me died with her.
HUGH: Did it?
STEPHEN: Yes, I shall be burying that little part of me this afternoon after a simple but affecting ceremony in the garden. Would you like to come?
HUGH: Look. Why do you keep saying that she’s dead? Just tell me…
STEPHEN: Well, if it won’t be too painful…
HUGH: No go on. I’m keen to know.
STEPHEN: Brave, brave nephew. What happened was this. I sent out a final reminder, thirty days after the last payment fell due, and believe me, even at that stage I still hoped that all might be well …
HUGH: Wait a minute. Payment for what?
STEPHEN: Why, room and board. Payment comes due on a monthly basis. Most of our guests favour an arrangement whereby…
HUGH: You mean she hasn’t paid her bill?
STEPHEN: Sadly, no. We’re all so very sorry. My deepest and most heartfelt condolences to you.
HUGH: How much?
STEPHEN: Your very pardon?
HUGH: How much does she owe?
STEPHEN: A very tragic one hundred and nineteen pounds and seven pence.
HUGH: (Getting out cheque book) Well for goodness sake, (Writing) one hundred… nineteen pounds and seven… pence. There.
STEPHEN: (Taking it without looking – his gaze is fixed on Deborah, who has started to eat the desk blotter) Fourteen! Can it be true? Can I be believant of my eyes! I’m sure I saw… (To Hugh, briskly) Would you mind putting your card number on the back?Hugh does so and hands over the cheque.
Yes! She moves, she stirs, she seems to feel the breath of a life beneath her keel. It’s a miracle! A miracle!
A porter enters wheeling a conspicuously dead person on a trolley.
Number twelve! Look at this! Number fourteen has come back to life! Oh wonder of wonders!
HUGH: Now come on, that woman really is dead.
STEPHEN: On the contrary, sir. She has a standing order.
Very droll, Minister. Now, how would have this sketch actually have looked, on-screen?
The answer lies in the Series 1 script book itself. Buried within its pages – very easy to miss, in fact – is a selection of photos from the series. These have hilarious comedy captions which give precisely zero useful information, so we have to work out what they represent for ourselves. And one of these photos is the following:
That most certainly is not a sketch which ended up being broadcast in the show. And a quick examination of the sketch quoted above – particularly the description of Deborah Norton appearing as “a very old lady” – matches perfectly. This is indeed a photo of “The Old Folks”, probably taken during rehearsals.
Closer examination of the photo reveals that this is the same set – with a few minor differences – as that used in “Sound Name”, broadcast in Episode 2:
Our next question, then: from the above, can we work out which date “The Old Folks” was shot?
The photos in the book are credited to the Radio Times – indeed, photos from the same source can be found on Getty Images, although the book and Getty contain a different selection of photos. The sketches pictured in both the book and Getty are mostly from the second recording session on the 17th December, with a couple of sketches from the 10th.4 We already know that “Sound Name” was shot on the 17th, and that there were relatively few sketches shot in that session which ended up in the broadcast episodes.
Therefore, I would suggest that there is a high probability this unbroadcast sketch was shot on the 17th December 1988, with an outside chance that it was shot the week before on the 10th. It almost certainly wasn’t shot later; there’s no evidence that Radio Times photographer Don Smith was present at the final four sessions of the series.
* * *
Our second and final unbroadcast sketch for today is “A Frank Talk”.
Stephen is getting out a couple of glasses and a bottle of whisky in the kitchen of his house. Hugh is sitting at the table looking faintly embarrassed.
STEPHEN: We’ll wait for the ladies to get back from the theatre shall we?
HUGH: Yes, yes – good idea.
STEPHEN: I don’t know what they see in it myself. Sitting there in the dark watching a lot of old nonsense.
HUGH: Oh well, they seem to enjoy it.
STEPHEN: I don’t know about you, but I go to the theatre to be entertained.
HUGH: Well, I think they do too.
STEPHEN: If I want to see a lot of swearing and pretentious drivel I can stay at home.
HUGH: Still, anyway. They’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.
STEPHEN: (Pouring out the drinks) Right. Right.
HUGH: I’ve been looking forward to this, as a matter of fact, Matthew: this opportunity for a frank talk.
STEPHEN: Yes. Good. It’s always nice to have a good – water?
HUGH: Thanks.
STEPHEN: (Adding water to Hugh’s drink) – chat, isn’t it?
HUGH: Mm. How long have I known you and Sarah now?
STEPHEN: Hoo, ch. What, must be nigh on.
HUGH: More I should think.
STEPHEN: Right. Possibly even more.
HUGH: You and Sarah are quite a couple.
STEPHEN: Well, I’ll tell you this, Dominic. I don’t know where I’d be without Sarah.
HUGH: Ah.
STEPHEN: Amazing woman. I think I love her more now than when I first met her. Be nothing without her. Lost. A shadow. Nothing. A blank. A zero.
HUGH: Mm.
STEPHEN: God I love her.
HUGH: Right. Thing is. Mm. Well. You know Mary and I have been going through a sticky patch lately?
STEPHEN: (Surprised) No. No, I didn’t know that. A sticky patch.
HUGH: Yes.
STEPHEN: What sort of sticky patch?
HUGH: Well, just a general sort of, you know, sticky patch really.
STEPHEN: Oh dear. Nasty things sticky patches.
HUGH: They can be, certainly. You and Sarah have never…?
STEPHEN: What? No. Not us. We’re a team. Never had a sticky patch between us. Do you know in the fifteen years we’ve been married, I’ve never so much as looked at another woman.
HUGH: Really?
STEPHEN: Well, except my mother of course.
HUGH: Um…
STEPHEN: But then you have to look at your own mother, don’t you. Rude not to. And I know Sarah’s the same.
HUGH: She’s never…?
STEPHEN: No. She’d never betray me.
HUGH: She’d never, for instance, have a ten year love affair with, say, your best friend, for the sake of, say, argument, say?
STEPHEN: Sarah? No. She’d rather cut the legs off her favourite table. Faithful as the day is long.
HUGH: Right.
STEPHEN: Anyway. This frank talk.
HUGH: Ah.
STEPHEN: You had something you wanted to say?
HUGH: Right. Yes.
STEPHEN: Fire away then.
HUGH: This isn’t easy. It’s just that – well, that ten year-old love affair I mentioned –
STEPHEN: Mary.
HUGH: What?
STEPHEN: Oh no. Don’t tell me. You’ve discovered that your wife Mary has been having an affair. Dominic, I don’t know what to say.
HUGH: No, no. Mary wouldn’t betray me, I know that – that’s what makes it all so difficult.
STEPHEN: I was going to say. I was pretty sure Mary and I have kept it pretty discreet.
HUGH: It’s the other way round, I – what?
STEPHEN: What?
HUGH: What did you say just now?
STEPHEN: Oh nothing. Just that I was sure Mary and I had been far too discreet for you to notice that we’ve been having a wild affair under your very nose for the last – twelve years I should say. At the very least.
HUGH: You and Mary have been…
STEPHEN: Oh God yes.
HUGH: But you said you would never look at another woman apart from Sarah and your mother.
STEPHEN: And Mary, obviously. That goes without saying.
HUGH: Well, that makes what I was going to say a lot easier then.
STEPHEN: Oh yes?
HUGH: It may interest you to know that your beloved Sarah and I have also been having an affair for… well for eleven years anyway.
STEPHEN: I beg your pardon? You and Sarah?
HUGH: Yes, I thought that might shake you up a bit.
STEPHEN: You pair of deceitful, two-timing –Enter Sarah and Mary.
MARY: Hello, you two.
SARAH: Look at them both, up with the whisky bottle. I don’t know.
HUGH: Mary. Darling, is it true that you and, that the pair of you have been…
STEPHEN: Sarah, tell me. It isn’t true that the two of you have… is it? Tell me it isn’t.Sarah and Mary look at each other and sigh.
SARAH: We were going to tell you anyway, weren’t we darling?
MARY: Yes, we were. Tonight in fact.
SARAH: Mary and I have been having an affair for the last fourteen years.
MARY: A very passionate affair.
SARAH: Strikingly passionate.
HUGH: You what?
MARY: I don’t know how you found out.
SARAH: (To Mary) You didn’t leave the thingy lying around did you?
STEPHEN: No, I meant you and Dominic. You and Dominic have been having an affair for the last eleven years at least.
HUGH: And you and Matthew, Mary.
SARAH: Oh that. Well that was just a diversion really.
STEPHEN: Oh was it? Well, Dominic, it makes it a lot easier for us to tell them, doesn’t it?
HUGH: It certainly does. It may interest you to know that Matthew and I have been – how shall I phrase it?
STEPHEN: Bed-mates?
SARAH: Lovers?
MARY: Sex-friends?
STEPHEN: Joy-partners?
SARAH: Bliss buddies?
HUGH: Yes, well, any one of those for the past – what?
STEPHEN: Hoo, it’s got to be at least eighteen or twenty hasn’t it?
HUGH: Yes, for the last eighteen or twenty years.
SARAH: Well.
MARY: Frankly.
SARAH: So. you’re saying that we have all been to bed with each other.
STEPHEN: That seems to be about the size of it, yes.
MARY: Though separately.
HUGH: Yes, separately, obviously.
STEPHEN: In every possible combination.
SARAH: Well. What a kerfuffle. What a business.
MARY: I don’t know what to say.
STEPHEN: It is something of a how-do-you-do, isn’t it?
HUGH: Well. So. What do we do?
STEPHEN: I should have thought it was obvious.
MARY: You mean…?
SARAH: Only thing to do?
HUGH: What?
SARAH: Let’s all go to bed.
HUGH: Oh. Right.They all trot off to bed.
To my knowledge, there are no publicly available photos of this unbroadcast sketch. We do have something almost as good, however – indeed, in many respects, better. Regular commenter on this blog, Billy Smart, recently gave an account of going to a recording to A Bit of Fry & Laurie, which would have been the fourth recording session on the 15th January 1989.
“I don’t know if its in the script book, but the unused sketch that I (think I) remember was a polymorphously perverse routine (probably on the same set as ‘Girlfriend’s Breasts’) where Stephen and Hugh are a pair of husbands whose wives have gone out to the theatre together that evening. The men reveal that they have both had affairs with the other’s wife, and we then realise that they are sexually involved with each other. The wives return and Deborah Norton’s reaction is “Oh God, you’ve found out about us.” (i.e. the two wives are also having an affair with each other). The rather lame punchline was the quartet deciding to all go to bed together, which was less interesting than the shifting permutations that got up to that point. I’ve occasionally found myself idly wishing that I could see that sketch again over the last thirty years. I don’t know who the other actress was.”
Billy quite rightly gives qualifiers about the vagaries of memory and the dangers of creating false links in the mind. But the above really does seem highly likely to me, with everything matching up and making sense. Which means we can get a good idea of how “A Frank Talk” looked, simply by, erm, looking at “Girlfriend’s Breasts”:
Certainly, the idea of the kitchen set is backed up by the script book. And it also explains why one of the more elaborate sets in Series 1 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie only appears once in the finished shows: at least one more sketch was shot on that set, and ended up being cut.
And there we have it. When life doesn’t give you DVD extras full of deleted scenes, make your own. And just try not to think about the fact that Fry & Laurie producer Roger Ordish kept a whole tape of unused sketches from the show… which got lost in an office move.
I said don’t think about it.
Just don’t.
From the Boat Show 89 slide, we can ascertain that this particular broadcast of the trail was on the 10th January 1989, at around 7:25pm – just before The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years. As for when it was shot, the set is the same as “Gordon & Stuart Eat Greek”, so it was almost certainly done during the very first recording session of the series, on the 10th December 1988.
The mention of “January and February” is a little odd for a series when you’re already in January; it would have made a lot more sense broadcast in December. Productions providing material for trails which doesn’t quite fit with what’s required is an evergreen problem, it seems. ↩
“Blimey, you’re ugly.” ↩
In fact, more than two, but we’ve covered “Inspector Venice” and “Naked” before. ↩
The only photos in the book which are sketches shot on the 10th are of “Spies One” and “Christening”. All the photos on Getty Images are labelled as being from the 17th. It is very, very tempting to suggest that all the photos are in fact from the 17th, and “Spies One” and “Christening” were also shot on the 17th, and just mislabelled on the paperwork. We’re into the realms of pure guesswork here, though. ↩
4 comments
Kris Carter on 10 September 2021 @ 10am
Fantastic work!
Mateja Djedovic on 15 September 2021 @ 11pm
I’m really enjoying these in-depth looks at specific shows over several parts. I love Fry & Laurie but I’ve not seen the show in years. You’ve inspired me to go back to it.
In other news, I woke up last night in a panic, unable to sleep, thinking about the layout of the Trotters apartment in “Only Fools and Horses”. Have you ever thought about taking a closer look at that show?
John Hoare on 19 September 2021 @ 6am
Sorry, meant to reply to this a lot earlier!
Now, I hate to admit this, but… me and Only Fools and Horses is a bit of a blind spot. I’ve never quite managed to click with it. The boxset is sitting on the shelf, though, and I keep meaning to give it a proper go from the start.
Mateja Djedovic on 23 September 2021 @ 12am
“Only Fools and Horses” was huge in Serbia when I was growing up so over the years I’ve seen it more than any other show and it’s probably my favourite TV series of all time. John Sullivan pulls of the mixture of kitchen-sink drama and farce more cleanly than any other sitcom writer I know of. Anyone who can pull off a heartbreaking miscarriage subplot and two plonkers dressed as Batman and Robin in the same year is a genius in my books.
There’s also a nice bit of mystery about how much of series 4 was changed after Lennard Pearce died. We know “Hole in One” was shot with Pearce and then subsequently reshot with Buster Merryfield. However, John Sullivan claims that “Happy Returns” was written after Pearce’s death to give the production team time to recast even though there’s evidence that bits of location footage were filmed before Pearce’s death.
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