Dirty Feed: Best of 2024

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Well, another year, another complete failure to get my big Christmas music mix ready for you all. I’ve got various incomplete edits of it stretching back over a decade now. And I was so looking forward to annoying people because it starts with a Chris Moyles clip.

Never mind, let’s take look at what I have managed to get round to doing. Here’s the best of Dirty Feed from the past year. Suitable musical accompaniment is embedded below.

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Downtown Toontown
The tale of a deleted scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit which took on a life of its own, and why Robert Zemeckis IS WRONG. We’re surely due a proper Blu-ray of Roger Rabbit, pulling out every last scrap of deleted material, aren’t we? COME ON BOFFINS.

Smashie and Nicey – the End of an Era: Music Guide
This year I wrote an awful lot about Smashie and Nicey – the End of an Era. Which is fair enough, with the show celebrating its 30th anniversary. So there was this piece, identifying all the music used in the programme…

Smashie’s Saturday Smiles
…and then this, about the making of the Smashie’s Saturday Smiles sketch. This is one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, and it never would have happened without a random comment from somebody on Twitter. Sometimes, the best research ends up in your lap with minimal effort.

Battle Plans
I really did think I might have stopped writing about Red Dwarf by this point, but I seemingly can’t erase that stupid show from my stupid head. So enjoy this, poking at the two Red Dwarf script books Primordial Soup and Son of Soup.

The Dave Nice Video Show (Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven)
My big project of 2024, and something I’ve been meaning to write for years: a look at the source of every single piece of stock footage used in Smashie and Nicey – the End of an Era, from Blue Peter through to Comic Relief. I really liked how this turned out, and I don’t think it was read as widely as it would have been a couple of years ago, thanks to Twitter blowing itself up. Oh well.

The Voice of the Balls
I’ve written very little personal stuff this year. Part of the reason for that is this was the year I finally left BBC pres, and while there’s plenty I could say about that, there’s rather less that I should. But this is a very nice story about something which happened in the job a decade ago now, and I can’t get into trouble for that.

Location, Location, Location
Yet another of those articles which has festered away in my head for years, and I finally managed to get out there: the oddities with audience sitcoms which have parts of scenes shot on location, and parts in the studio.

“And What About the Vegetables?”
About one of the most famous sketches ever broadcast on Spitting Image. I’m sure the origin of this joke can be traced back even earlier than I manage to here, if you want a challenge, but I at least managed to get further than most.

SWTV
More film writing, and the link between Carry on Girls and Confessions of a Pop Performer. You’ll have to wait a little longer for my piece on Citizen Kane.

“Specially Shot for Onslow’s Telly”
A look at every “film” Onslow watches throughout Keeping Up Appearances. By far the most difficult thing I wrote this year; there was an abandoned version of this which took up hours and hours of my time, and I had to virtually delete the whole thing and start again. But I think it turned out pretty well in the end. See also: Onslow’s penchant for watching the same sporting events over and over.

Fun With Daisy and Onslow
I clearly went on a mild Keeping Up Appearances kick this year. Here’s everything you need to know about an early version of a scene shot in 1995, which was eventually transmitted in 2022… by mistake.

You Ain’t Seen These… Right? / You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?
And finally, a look at The Fast Show‘s “collection of B-sides”¹ from 1999. A pair of articles literally fifteen years in the making. I like it when Paul Whitehouse talks about spunking on someone’s tits.

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And if that wasn’t enough, see also: more cut material from Red Dwarf, a coda to my flash frames nonsense, on “the year of the blog”, Keeping Up Appearances recording dates, another episode of early Grant Naylor radio sitcom, tracing another Red Dwarf myth, Give Us a Clue and the missing Avril Angers, the benefits of changing your opinion in public, the link between Red Dwarf and Napalm Death, Shazam and television research, and prop papers in Carry on Girls.

Looking back at Dirty Feed over the year, I’m both pleased and a little dissatisfied. Pleased, because I think I’ve written some good stuff, including a number of articles I’ve meant to get round to for ages. Thanks, as ever, to everyone who helped me with various bits of research over the past twelve months. Especially to the people I just wholesale ripped interesting opinions from. You know who you are.

As for my dissatisfaction: a clue regarding that comes in the middle of the year, with a planned summer hiatus… which never happened. I resumed posting 22 days later, and didn’t really stop for the rest of the year. For someone who has wanged on in the past about people not writing enough, the poultry has come home to perch; I feel uncannily like I’m on a content treadmill. I write so much here – stuff that takes a great deal of research – that I simply don’t find the time to do enough other things.

The question is, of course, why. Force of habit? A desperate desire for attention? A substitute for a personality? Perhaps all three. But I choose to believe something a little different: that I’m just a little too comfortable writing on here. This place has ended up as my comfort blanket. That’s fine, and has helped me a lot over the past few years, especially in the midst of a global pandemic… but sometimes you need to stretch yourself a little more. I gaze at other people doing different kinds of creative things, stuff that I’ve never given myself a chance to have a go at, and I feel that maybe I’ve snuggled up and written silly articles about comedy a little too much recently.

So my aim for next year is an odd one: write less, at least on here. I’m not going on hiatus, and I’ll hopefully still publish interesting things, but I have to have a go at some new things too. Some of those will be public – hey, maybe my Christmas mix really will finally make an appearance. But I also need to do some things which aren’t immediately plastered across the internet.

Have a good Christmas all. See you next year… in some form or another.

1. © Darrell Maclaine. ↩

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