The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Seven: “Well Nationwide Did!”

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven

Welcome to the final part of my series of articles looking at stock footage in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. Something which was meant to only be a single piece, then two, and eventually ballooned to seven. Yet again, why nobody ever wrote about this before became clear as soon as I started the damn thing.

So let’s stagger gasping and sweaty across the finish line. This is a grab bag of all the remaining bits of stock footage in the show, mostly from the second half. And surely the climax of this series of articles is the best time to highlight a few of my CRITICAL RESEARCH FAILURES.

Such as:

*   *   *

(22:17) “News – 70s fashion” • Unknown
“The early 70s was a cultural high point, culturally-wise.” But sadly, not a particularly high point to kick this article off with. I can find absolutely no record of the following shots whatsoever, used just before the Deptford Draylons sketch. They are simply labelled as “News – 70s fashion” in the production paperwork. Does anybody recognise them?

The only other information is two spool numbers: NP77701, and NP79248. I can’t find any record of those numbers on any current BBC system. I don’t even know what NP stands for. News Pictures?

(27:01) Nationwide • BBC1 • TX: 3rd January 1973
Never mind. Back on to firmer ground for Smashie’s appearance on Nationwide, and the slightly controversial material surrounding Smashie’s marriage breakup.¹

The opening titles are taken from the edition of Nationwide broadcast on the 3rd January 1973. But brilliantly, so are the backgrounds for the studio material! I thought End of an Era had simply built its own recreation of the set for this segment, but take a look at this:

And of course, they got Michael Barratt back as presenter, and even put him in a virtually identical suit, which is above and beyond the call of duty. They also have him recreate his “looking backwards at the CSO screen” shot:

One other shot is recreated in End of an Era; it’s difficult to tell exactly which piece of footage they used as the basis, but it’ll be a shot similar to this:

I think in many ways, this sequence is one of the most astonishing in the entire show. Stuff like the Sex Pistols interview is clearly meant to be a big, attention-grabbing sketch, despite its short duration. Here, they really could have cheated the Nationwide section; few people would have cared if they’d just done a quick-and-dirty build of an anonymous studio set. But they did it properly.²

(30:15) Riverside • BBC1 • TX: 8th November 1982
One of the great understated jokes in End of an Era is its invoking of the New Romantic movement as a way of bringing Mike Smash back into the fold at Radio Fab. As though his ridiculous antics were clearly the best reaction Radio Fab could have had to a brand new youth culture.

And to set the scene, we get some archive footage of the New Romantics:

The above sequence is made up of material from two sources. One of them is Riverside, a BBC2 youth arts programme broadcast between 1982-83. And here we run into a much-needed stroke of luck; the edition in question, broadcast on the 8th November 1982, is actually sitting on YouTube. Predictably enough, this particular edition was about about the fashions of various youth tribes from the time:

And sure enough, the following shots from the programme were used in End of an Era:

I could probably get away with leaving it there, but I feel duty-bound to admit that the final shot isn’t in the video embedded above. What gives?

Simple: Riverside had a 25 minute slot on BBC2… but the above video is only 17’28” long. Clearly, the YouTube upload has been edited for whatever reason, and in fact there are clear edit points throughout the programme. But we can be fairly sure the shot featuring the woman in the rather ludicrous pink hat was originally part of the fashion show sequence; the background clearly indicates it’s from the same event as the previous two shots.³

(30:17) Newsnight • BBC2 • 23rd January 1981
As for the remaining four shots in the sequence, given they all have the same distinctive picture quality, they must all come from the same source. But where?

The answer: a Newsnight report broadcast on the 23rd January 1981, on the “new youth cult” of the New Romantics. Luckily, Newsnight uploaded the whole report to their YouTube channel back in 2015; cropped to hell, but you can’t have everything.

The relevant shots are 3:22 into the video:

Obviously, the pictures in End of an Era have a garish red tint compared to what was broadcast by Newsnight originally. Perhaps they sourced the footage the actual film insert which had since deteriorated, rather than the VT copy of Newsnight. Or maybe the material was reused elsewhere, and End of an Era took it from this secondary source?⁴

(37:41) 1992 London Marathon • BBC1 • TX: 12th April 1992
This seems to follow a bit of a trend with the End of an Era paperwork; the closer you get to the end, the less detailed the information seems to be. The footage with Smashie and Nicey running in the rhino costumes is only labelled as “London Marathon” and “1992”, with the spool number MS164480 attached. There’s no indication whether End of an Era took the material from the main BBC1 broadcast of the marathon on 12th April 1992, or the highlights that evening.

It doesn’t really matter. Material from this marathon is sitting nicely on YouTube; it won’t let me embed it here, but the rhino footage that End of an Era used is 15:03 into the video. Some of the context of this material has been somewhat lost over the years; End of an Era was broadcast in 1994, so this London Marathon footage was only two years old that that point. And 1992 was the very first time anybody had run in the rhino costumes, in aid of the charity Save the Rhino. It was all a fairly topical joke in 1994!

We can even find out who was in the famous costume in this footage. From the Save the Rhino website:

“Originally created for a play at the Chichester Festival, the costumes were donated to Save the Rhino by British puppet designer William Todd-Jones. Todd became aware of the fundraising efforts of Dave Stirling and Johnny Roberts (our founders) who, while taking part in a ‘Rhino Scramble’ across Africa, witnessed first-hand the severity of the global poaching epidemic. At the time, there were thought to be fewer than 2,400 black rhinos left in the world.

Not ones to shy away from adventure or the unusual when they received the phone call from Todd, Dave and Johnny gladly accepted the donation and challenged him to join them in running the London Marathon – in the 12 kg costume. Realising its potential in raising awareness for rhino conservation at a time when many people were unaware of the existential crisis facing rhinos, Todd accepted the challenge and became the first ever runner to wear the suit in 1992. Of course, that wasn’t enough for Todd, and he decided to run the 26.2 miles in leather brogues… did someone say blisters?”

At first, this looks confusing; surely there are two rhinos running in that race? But if you look carefully, only one rhino costume is wearing a running number. Presumably, the other rhino is merely an, erm, support rhino.

I think it’s a very good thing we’re nearly done, you know.

(37:48) Comic Relief • BBC1 • TX: 12th March 1993
And finally, to introduce the amazing Comic Relief sketch with Angus Deayton⁵, we have a couple of establishing shots from a real Comic Relief show. The production paperwork states this is from 1993, and the studio matches that year’s event exactly.

Given the show is hours long, it’s highly unlikely I would actually comb through the entire thing just to find the two shots, of course.

Anyway, I found the two shots. They both come from after the second Mr. Bean Blind Date sketch, just after he proposes to Cilla; an hour and 53 minutes into the first part of the programme.

Now, would you like some chutney to take home?

With thanks to Simon Mclean for Nationwide help, Jonny Morris for info on the Blitz Kids footage, Milly Storrington for archive research, Darrell Maclaine and Mike Scott for various bits of inspiration, and Tanya Jones as my usual unpaid editor.

1. For a little more on this, see my End of an Era music guide. ↩

2. Though it has to be admitted that there is weirdness in getting back Michael Barratt to do this section… clearly looking twenty years older than he did back in the 70s. End of an Era deftly avoids anything else like that in any of its other sketches. Presumably, the team just couldn’t resist the idea. ↩

3. In fact, there’s an obvious edit at 11:21 at the “end” of the fashion show section. ↩

4. The production paperwork for End of an Era doesn’t state Newsnight directly; it simply lists the material as “Blitz Kids”, with no TX date attached. ↩

5. For my money, one of the standout bits of End of an Era. Not only is the script for Deayton perfect – the kind of sneering yet amusing monologue he was famous for – but Nicey’s reaction is one of the best pieces of acting in the whole show from Enfield, and genuinely disturbing. All topped off with the deeply unpleasant gasp from the crew, snapping us back from light entertainment, into grim reality.

   While we’re supposed to be laughing at Nicey here – his threats of legal action are clearly ridiculous – we’re also supposed to be sympathising with him too. Like so much of End of an Era, the result is a piece of comedy which refuses to simplify into crude stereotypes of who is “right”. ↩

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smashie and nicey, the dave nice video show