If I was really interested in getting hits here on Dirty Feed, I would write a long series of articles detailing every last edit made to the new iPlayer version of Little Britain.
Ostensibly, it’s exactly in this site’s ballpark. Edits made to old comedy shows? I’ve dabbled once or twice in that topic. It’s something that deeply interests me. Why they are made, who has the right to make them, what the end result on any given show is. With the edits made to Little Britain being part of the news agenda right now, I imagine I could write something which would end up being the most popular thing I’ve ever written on the site. It seems an obvious thing to do.
I ain’t touching this one with a bargepole.
Sure, in terms of subject matter, it’s absolutely the kind of thing Dirty Feed would cover. But in terms of everything else, it’s as far away from anything I want to publish as you can get. Over the last two years especially, I’ve aimed to make this site some kind of calm retreat from the nonsense you get elsewhere. In particular, I took pride in updating this site with free, fun stuff during the height of the pandemic. It just felt like the right thing to do.
Little Britain edits aren’t a calm retreat from anything. They’re shrill, and in the news. And if I wrote about them on here, I would get swarms of bad faith arguments of all persuasions battering this site something rotten. Even if I thought what I had to say about the topic was valuable, I 100% cannot face turning this site into something which will attract that kind of attention. The thousands of hits I would get would absolutely not be worth it.
This is also why I never wrote anything about the edits made to “The Germans” episode of Fawlty Towers either. I have a great number of opinions about that – probably enough to piss everybody off – but I think this website might be a bit more useful as place away from that kind of thing. If the only opinions you have about edits made to comedy consist of the squawking you get in some areas of the media or on Twitter, then this place isn’t really for you. And the people I might convert to the cause to look at things a bit deeper wouldn’t be worth sticking my head into the shitstorm. I’ll stick to Thin Blue Line edits, thanks.
So if you think a place which avoids that kind of thing is valuable, and you like anything I’ve written on here, then I’m grateful for anything you can do to spread the word about this site. Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or rude messages daubed on bus shelter walls. It’s difficult to get noticed if you deliberately stay away from the heat… but I like to think that’s a worthwhile thing to do sometimes. And not just for my mental health. Talking about stuff other people aren’t talking about has its own rewards.
As for Little Britain… well, maybe I’ll write something about it in twenty years, when nobody cares any more. Anyone interested in the toned-down BBC One edits of Series 3 that most people have forgotten about?