Police I.Q. Shocker

In a surprising move, today we’re going to take another look at The Young Ones. But this little tale is a good example of how researching old TV shows can lead you down an alley you never really expected.

Let’s join Mark Arden and Stephen Frost as a couple of gormless policemen in “Boring” (TX: 23/11/82).

As the picture dissolves into the newspaper headline, anyone who has been following my recent nonsense knows what’s coming next. What newspaper did they use as a basis for the prop, and what original story did the “Police I.Q. Shocker” headline replace?

Unlike our previous examples, this one is pretty straightforward. There’s no replaced or altered mastheads here. Not only is the paper an actual copy of The Guardian, but the correct date of the edition is visible, clear as a bell: August 3rd 1982.

Which means finding the original front page of the paper is easy:

The only story the production team changed was the middle one; everything else on the page is identical. The replaced story concerned Philip Williams, a soldier who turned up alive after six weeks, having been presumed dead fighting in the Falklands. In fact, now we know this, the line “was missing, presumed dead” is clearly visible in the broadcast episode, underneath the new headline.

Now that’s comedy.

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newspaper props, the young ones