DJs Leave Radio Fab

JOHNNY BEERGUT: They’re sacked!
SMASHIE & NICEY: We resign!

The internet is not short of praise for Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era (TX: 4/4/94). This is not surprising, given that it’s their masterwork. What the internet is short of, mind, is going through End of an Era with a fine toothcomb, and picking out bits of obscure production detail.

Hello there. After our relaunch, let’s get back to business as usual, right?

So take a look at the newspaper at the beginning of End of an Era, announcing the resignation of Smashie and Nicey in a highly amusing manner.¹

Now, clearly they wouldn’t have written an entire edition of a newspaper just for this sequence. So our question for today: what real newspaper did the production team use as a basis for the prop?

First of all, let’s take a look at that front page:²

“THE DAILY NEWS” is obviously a made-up masthead; no point trying to do anything with that. The lead story on the front page is “Whitehall top jobs opened to outsiders”. This is, in fact, a slightly unusual headline, and typing it into Google reveals its source: it was in The Independent, 23rd November 1993.

Even more promisingly, if we take the other big story on that page, “Nigerian leader seeks a strategy”, that story is from exactly the same edition of The Independent. Case closed, right?

You would think. Things are never that easy. Here’s the front page of that edition of the paper.

Well, the Whitehall headline is present and correct… but the rest of the front page is entirely different. Back to the drawing board.

Let’s scour the rest of the sequence for clues. Hmmm, what’s that at the top of the second page in the sequence?

Blurry though it is, it looks suspiciously like “THE TIMES”. And how about this shot, from the point where we zoom into the page?

There’s the date, as clear as a bell. And intriguingly, it’s the same date we identified for The Independent earlier: 23rd November 1993. Amusingly enough, the newspaper title itself is blanked out in the above shot – they clearly knew it would be far too obvious once we zoomed in!

The above gives us enough clues to suggest it would be worth looking at the front page of The Times for this date. And sure enough…

This is a lot closer to the front page used in End of an Era. The “To Play the King/Go Places/Body and Mind” section at the top is identical, as is the story on the right: “Major backs prince’s business envoy role”. Over the lead story “Acquittal puts police at war with lawyers” was pasted The Independent‘s Whitehall headline.

This just leaves us with the middle picture and Mussolini story. This isn’t present in the End of an Era prop; instead, it’s a story from The Independent about Nigeria. A quick flick through The Independent for the 23rd November reveals the source:

In other words: the front page used in End of an Era is a composite of The Times and The Independent from the 23rd November 1993, with a brand new fake masthead. Phew. No wonder it took a bit of time to work out. That is a remarkably non-obvious thing to do.

And the brilliant thing about this date? Let’s go right back to the start of the programme:

NICEY: On the 22nd Nov 93, an event was to happen of such earth-shattering proportions that it was to shatter the earth to its very proportions…

Nicey reiterates this date in the press conference scene; the duo’s resignation took place on the 22nd November 1993. The two papers they used to make the composite are from the 23rd November 1993… the date the paper would actually have reported on the resignation. The production didn’t just grab any paper off the shelf and start cutting and pasting. They made sure the right date and stories were present on the prop.

Brilliant.

*   *   *

Which leaves us with one final, intriguing question. If the newspaper mocked up for End of an Era was based on existing editions of The Times and The Independent, then what do we make of the final shot in the sequence?

The answer: the production must have replaced a pre-existing story in the paper with one of their own. So which story did they replace?

Luckily, the rest of the sequence is far easier to work out than the front page. There seems to be no messing about with composites, beyond the final gag: it’s just an edition of The Times from the 23rd November. So let’s trace our way through the shots; first with a screengrab of End of an Era, followed by the actual page from The Times.

Page 3:

Page 5:

Page 9… that’s the one.

And time to zoom in…

…oh. A brutal story about somebody murdering their wife.

I do love a feel-good ending.

UPDATE (9/2/22): There’s one question all the above doesn’t answer, of course. And that is: why exactly did the programme pick the date of the 22nd November for Smashie and Nicey’s resignation?

I have to admit, I had absolutely no idea. The 23rd November – the date of the paper itself – is the anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who, and bearing in mind there is a specific parody of it in the programme, perhaps it could be linked. But I don’t think it is.

No, I suspect the answer – first suggested to me by @SamWatt111 on Twitter, but many others pointed it out too – is that the 22nd November is also the date of the assassination of JFK. And if we look again at Nicey’s opening narration to the show:

NICEY: On the 22nd Nov 93, an event was to happen of such earth-shattering proportions that it was to shatter the earth to its very proportions…

The joke being, the event of earth-shattering proportions was… the resignation of Smashie and Nicey, rather than JFK’s assassination. Or as @jeawallace points out: “in Nicey’s head, it’s the thing everyone will remember that day for”. Again, we don’t have absolute proof that it’s what Enfield and Whitehouse were intending, – unless someone has read an interview I haven’t – but doesn’t it seem incredibly likely?

Although I will point out one other thing: it is perhaps amusing to note that the 22nd November was also the date in 1990 when Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative leadership election…

1. Incidentally, I also enjoy the Hippies take on this joke: HIPPIES IN POINTLESS, STUPID PROTEST AT OBSCURE SANDPAPER EXHIBITION. ↩

2. Forgive the slightly dodgy picture quality of the screengrabs and video in this article. Without a proper DVD release, a slightly dodgy off-air is the best I have available. ↩

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best of, newspaper props, smashie and nicey