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I Asked ChatGPT To Write Dirty Feed, the Results Will Not Amaze You

Published 29th March 2023

Computing / Internet / Meta

It’s odd how quickly some cliches can be formed. For instance, that thing where journalists report on AI, by using an opening few paragraphs written by AI. I’m not saying it’s a terrible approach per se. But after seeing it a few times, I most certainly don’t need to see it any more.

So I’m deliberately not doing that here. But I did think it might be vaguely amusing to see what ChatGPT would make of the prompt: “Write an article suitable for dirtyfeed.org.” If you don’t think this would be amusing, then please click away now.

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Recommendations

Published 4th March 2023

Computing / Internet / Meta

Hey there. I’ve just been talking to ChatGPT, your machine learning companion. Has anybody said anything nice about Dirty Feed recently? I decided to ask.1

I got the following reply:

“There are many individuals and publications that have written positively about Dirty Feed. Some examples include:

  • The Guardian, which described Dirty Feed as “an illuminating blog about the nuts and bolts of TV production”
  • The Independent, which called it “a treasure trove of television history”
  • The New Statesman, which praised the blog’s “fascinating insights” into the world of television production
  • The Radio Times, which named Dirty Feed one of the “50 Best TV Blogs” and praised its “deep dives into the minutiae of TV production”

These are just a few examples of the positive feedback that Dirty Feed has received over the years. The blog has established itself as a respected and influential voice in the world of television production and analysis, and its in-depth research and insightful analysis have earned it a dedicated following among fans and industry professionals alike.”

Which is lovely, isn’t it?

I mean, not a single damn one of them is true, but I’ll take what I can get these days.

  1. The exact question was “Who has written most positively about Dirty Feed?”, for what it’s worth. ↩

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I Hate Doing Research, Part Three

Published 22nd February 2023

Meta / TV Comedy

Thank you all for your kind words about my first piece on the flash frames in The Young Ones. Part Two is in the works, but is still a little way off publication. Perhaps the following will explain why.

Let’s take that missing flash frame for “Summer Holiday”, which I comprehensively examined in Part One. It’s something which definitely, never, ever, ever transmitted, or made it into any commercial release of the show, and I have the large pile of recordings here to prove it.

And yet take a look at the paperwork for the episode, back in 1984:

FILM:
1 frame from Shalako (+ BBC cap) property of EMI. Transferred to H25992.

And then read the relevant section of Roger Wilmut’s Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-Law?, the seminal book on alternative comedy, published in 1989:

“The general style of anarchy, with cutaway sequences and a good deal of stunt work, was maintained: one new running joke was presumably for the benefit of the owners of expensive video recorders, since it consisted of cutting in four-frame flashes which cannot possibly be grasped in real time – they include a leaping frog, a dripping tap, a skier, a potter’s wheel and, finally, a notice signed by the video tape editor saying, ‘I never wanted to put all these flash frames in in the first place.'”

And finally, let’s listen to Young Ones producer Paul Jackson, interviewed on the DVD extra The Making of The Young Ones in 2007:

“It’s on the DVD, it’s on the video versions, but it never was broadcast.”

In other words: in order to find out the truth about whether that “Summer Holiday” flash frame was actually broadcast or commercially released, I’ve had to ignore a) the actual paperwork for the episode, b) a leading comedy historian, and c) the producer of the show. Brilliant.

I say all this not to point out how great I am, but simply to show how easy it is for these things to get warped and twisted down the years. Sometimes, the only way to get to the truth of what was broadcast is by watching the actual material, and seeing what’s there, and what isn’t.

And that’s only possible by getting people to dig out off-airs from 1984. Everything else is guesswork.

A version of this post was first published in the January issue of my monthly newsletter.

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Pretentious? Moi?

Published 1st February 2023

Meta

The eagle-eyed among you will note that from December, I started using the moniker “John J. Hoare” in various places. In the footer of this website; on Twitter; and now in the byline of my newsletter.1 For those of you who missed my short explanation on Twitter, I am fully aware that this seems a rather precious affectation. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, I told you all the story of how I shared my name with a BBC cameraman growing up, and what a delight that was. Most of you will have seen his name in the end credits of TV shows throughout the years, especially in the 80s. I’ve often been asked whether I was him, which I always found quite funny.

But I dunno. Over the last year or so, I’ve started to find it rather less amusing, and more just mildly irritating. The more my writing about television on here gets noticed, and the more people find out my job is working on the BBC television channels, the number of people asking me whether I’m “that” John Hoare has increased over the years. To the point where I’m convinced many people just assume I’m the same person.

Seeing another, different, third John Hoare credited as Director of Photography on Doctors recently hasn’t exactly helped matters.

Anyway, as I was pondering all of this, I did some work on the recent Blu-ray set of The Young Ones, where I’m kindly credited a couple of times. And seeing the name “John Hoare” in the credits there made me realise: yet again, more than ever given the show’s vintage, so many people are just going to assume that I’m that John Hoare. What used to just be a fun coincidence, is now actively starting to confuse and harm my career. How do you build a name for yourself, when somebody already has that name? I thought this was a problem only Hollywood starlets had, or something.

So the obvious answer is: to change my name. Maybe this was an opportunity to get rid of “Hoare”, the target of a million and one jokes over the years, from some massively hilarious people. It is notable that every single other member of my immediate family has chosen to get rid of it.2 But that’s a complete faff, and… I dunno. I just don’t really want to. It’s not a name I love, but it’s the one I have, and it’s just part of me now.

Hence “John J. Hoare”, the name I’m going to use professionally from now on, in as much as Dirty Feed is professional at anything. You’ll never need to speak it. Just call me John. But in writing, it helps identify who I am. Notably, nobody has asked me whether I’m any other John Hoare in the last two months, and that’s surely worth something.

Oh, and: it stands for James. My real middle name. It’s a real J, not a fake J. If I was going to pick a fake middle initial, I’d go down the whole “David X. Cohen” route. Or perhaps just call myself Jay-Z Hoare.

Actually, come to think of it, I’ll also answer to that.

  1. Oh yeah, my newsletter. You should sign up to that, you know. I promise, I’ll only send you crap once a month. ↩

  2. A fact which I only realised when writing this post. It was an odd realisation, I have to say. ↩

Mastodons of the Fediverse

Published 9th January 2023

Meta

Short version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud.

Medium version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud, which will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only. I won’t be following anybody at the moment over there; we’ll see how it goes.

Long version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud. This will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only, as per twitter.com/@dirtyfeed, rather than all my usual nonsense you get over on twitter.com/@mumoss. Consider it a glorified RSS feed for this site.

I also, with apologies, won’t be following anybody over there for the time being. This is me dipping a toe into Mastodon, rather than a fully-fledged dive in. I will confess that when I saw all the auto-follow tools to help people migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, an absolute shudder ran through me. That’s not because I HATE YOU ALL – although I obviously do – but because I remain unconvinced that my Twitter experience as it stands is something I want to replicate elsewhere, and that’s as much to do with me as anything.

It’s fair to say that I’ve built up an awful lot of bad habits on Twitter – reading the wrong things, reading them at the wrong time – and I really want to make sure I don’t just end up with two timelines of stuff which makes me miserable. It’s one thing to have made some mistakes, but stick with something because it’s still helpful in other ways. It’s another thing to make those same mistakes all over again somewhere else. That would seem, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking stupid. I don’t want to rely on there being less stuff in my timeline to make it manageable – I want to avoid most of the stuff I don’t want entirely. A timeline consisting mainly of links to interesting blog posts might be the ideal.

So we’ll see where I end up with that. In the meantime, there’s now yet another way of keeping up with this place without having to rely on Twitter, which is surely a good thing for a million and one different reasons. Check out the Subscribe page for the rest; in particular, I’d urge you to consider signing up for the Dirty Feed newsletter, which is launching later this month. Nearly all my traffic currently comes from Twitter: I’d like to significantly change that this year, if at all possible.

Longest version: Send me £100 via PayPal, and I’ll talk you through Dirty Feed syndication options over the phone at your leisure.

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Dirty Feed: Best of 2022

Published 28th December 2022

Meta

2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023 • 2024

I’ll tell you something, I’m utterly bored with writing depressing intros for these end-of-year articles. You know the drill. “Oh, hasn’t this year been awful, global pandemics, politics, blah blah blah, never mind, here’s the best things I’ve written this year.”

So: 2022 has been brilliant, hasn’t it? Everyone had a great time, and people couldn’t be happier. Now here’s the best things I’ve written this year.

*   *   *

DJs Leave Radio Fab
An in-depth look at the origins of a prop newspaper in Smashie & Nicey: the End of an Era. Well, start the year as you mean to go on. As indeed I did, with similar articles looking at prop newspapers in Red Dwarf and The Young Ones. This is an entire waste of time, and I won’t be writing any articles about this ever again. Such as the one about I’m Alan Partridge which I definitely won’t be publishing next year.

DJs leave Radio Fab. Mike Smash and Dave Nice left Radio Fab FM yesterday after being with the station since 1967.
Red Dwarf model shot - clapperboard dated 11/2/87


I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates
For years, we’ve heard about the recording of Series 1 of Red Dwarf being abandoned due to an electricians’ strike… but we’ve never known exactly when those abandoned recording dates were. Until now. See also: how a similar strike affected The Young Ones.

A Brief History of a Doorway in Red Dwarf (1989-96)
I mean, seriously. You probably already know if you want to click on that or not. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to sell it. Ditto with this piece about the sets in “Back to Reality”.

Polymorph - close-up of door
The Wayback Machine


Shame.
About why you shouldn’t always feel shame about older versions of you hanging around the web, and why deleting them might not be the best idea. I write a fair bit about the web – and especially the archiving of the web – but rarely make a fuss about it, because I don’t think many people visit this site for that kind of stuff. This is one of the few pieces on this topic which actually got noticed a little.

A Few Random Thoughts on 2point4 children
I saw 2point4 children for the first time properly this year. Here are my long and rambling thoughts about it, but if you want the short version: it’s great. I’d love to write more about the series next year. In the meantime: what was the original theme tune for the pilot?

Bill with her head through a catflap
Telescope base in Chucklevision


Tales From BBC North West’s Scene Dock
Here it is. The most popular article I wrote all year, about the links between Chucklevision and Red Dwarf. No, I’m not turning into a parody of myself, now why don’t you sod off?

In Search of the Golden Brain
And there’s the second most popular article I wrote all year, about the truth behind a notorious treasure hunt in the first Spitting Image book. This is the kind of investigation I’d like to write much more of next year, as it’s deeply satisfying. (And yes, I still have that vague idea of writing a Comedy Mysteries book…)

The Spitting Image Golden Brain puzzle
Simon Cadell on the Enterprise


“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”
Investigating the day that Jeffrey Fairbrother took a trip aboard the Enterprise, in one of the silliest things ever made. Thank god for old issues of TV Zone. Also this year: proving ST:TNG‘s most prolific director wrong.

Mmmm, Nice
Bizarrely, I’ve never written about Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em on here before, despite it being one of my favourite shows. So here’s a short tale about the production of Series 1 of the show… and what’s so special about the very last episode of that series. See also: proving Wikipedia wrong about the recording of Are You Being Served.

Frank Spencer looking upset
BBC Two 50th anniversary symbol


Relative Time Dilation in an Amazingly Compressed Space
Of all the more personal pieces I’ve written this year, this is my favourite. It captures just a little moment where you’re fully aware of history taking place in front of you… even if it’s really just a little piece of your own history.

That-cher
How did the BBC originally report the news of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation? And can we absolve a BBC daytime presenter of a heinous broadcasting crime? All this and some obscure 1980s production paperwork.

Debi Jones
Alf Garnett wheeling around Else, from Series 1 of In Sickness and in Health


An Evening at Television Centre
Sneaking in at the end of the year, this ended up as one of my favourite pieces, about the pilot of In Sickness and in Health… and why I really, really wish I had a time machine.

*   *   *

This year has been a bit of a mixed bag. I wrote less than I did in 2021 – more individual posts, sure, but fewer words, and perhaps fewer articles I’m really proud of. On the other hand, in writing this end-of-year piece, I find I’ve actually done a little more I liked than I thought. And at least I finally got the redesign of this place done, which I’ve been putting off for years.1

Truth be told, I’ve found this year quite tough, for reasons that I don’t really want to go into. So I’ll just say: thank you if you read any of my stuff this year, especially if you sent any other visitors my way, or sent me any nice comments, or indeed helped with some of the research. Despite my troubles this year, writing in this place is one of the things which has kept me sane. The fact that other people enjoy my nonsense too makes me very happy. And I have plenty of plans for fun stuff next year.2

Oh yeah, next year. For all the obvious reasons, my desire is to use Twitter less. Hopefully a lot less. So if you want to give me a late Christmas present, then please sign up for my monthly newsletter, which is launching in January:

I guess I should really write a paragraph here to tie this whole article up and provide a climax. But having watched a quite incredible amount of Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health over the last couple of months, I can say with some confidence that Johnny Speight didn’t always bother. So I’ll just leave this piece hanging shoddily in mid-air–

[awkward silence, audience applause]

  1. I’m still proud of my new logo, which I must write something about next year. ↩

  2. YES, INCLUDING FLASH FRAMES IN THE YOUNG ONES. ↩

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Exodus

Published 11th November 2022

Meta

Do I know what the bloody hell is happening with Twitter right now? No. I have absolutely no idea. A quality I share with Elon Musk, at least.

Nonetheless, even if talk of life rafts is a little overblown, I’d rather be overblown than risk losing a whole network of people who might actually be interested in what I have to say over here. So, while it’s not properly set up yet, and won’t be launched for a month or so, you can sign up for the brand new Dirty Feed newsletter here:

A few notes, then.

  • This will probably be monthly to start with. We’ll see how it goes. I’m certainly not intending to fill your inbox every week.
  • Rather than including the actual articles in the newsletter, it’ll mainly just be links to stuff here, with a short introduction each month. Think how Tom Scott does his newsletter. I don’t really want to change how this site works entirely; I just want it to be easier for people to be notified of articles here.
  • I’m not planning on much stuff unique to the newsletter at first, but that might change later on. We’ll see.
  • It will include a short “elsewhere on the net” section linking to a few other things I enjoyed that month. I can’t make it the focus of the newsletter – I don’t have time – but I think it’d be a nice thing to do for creators and readers alike.
  • This newsletter is completely separate to the per-post email subscriptions I launched a couple of months ago. Those will email you immediately when I update the site; the newsletter will be a more curated monthly thing. If you’re not sure which you want, I’d suggest the newsletter. (If really you want to hear from me more than once a month, you know.)

As for this place: yes indeed, we’re perilously close to pretend blogging at the moment. I’m busy with a major project outside Dirty Feed, but I’ll hope to get back to things around here before the end of the month.

After all, can you cope without knowing the location OB dates for Series 3 of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em for much longer? Well, can you?

they’re good blogs Brent

Published 11th October 2022

Internet / Meta

Last year, software developer Brent Simmons wrote something which stayed with me. It’s short, so hopefully he won’t mind me quoting all of it.

“This blog is almost 22 years old, and in all that time I’ve been solid about posting regularly — until this recent dry spell.

I skipped the summer. Last post was in June. There was just one that month, and just one in May.

I have an explanation: while my health and physical circumstances are unchanged and, happily, fine, I have not felt the drive to write here that I always felt.

I never, in all these years, had to push myself. I’d get an idea and I would be compelled to write it up and publish it. It was always that simple.

But I haven’t felt that way in many months, and I’m not sure I will again.

Maybe this is temporary, and there will be hundreds more posts to come.

But I kind of think not, because there’s a bigger issue: I expect and hope that eventually I will no longer be a public person — no blog, no Twitter, no public online presence at all.

I have no plan. I’m feeling my way to that destination, which is years off, surely, and I just hope to manage it gracefully. (I don’t know of any role models with this.)

Anyway. In case I don’t write here again — in case these are the last words of this blog — thank you. I loved writing here, and you are why.”

Since then, Brent has stayed true to his word, and really has become less of a public person. He’s made just one more blog post since then, and seems to have deleted nearly all of his tweets too.

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Yet More Crap to Clog Up Your Inbox

Published 15th September 2022

Meta

a) One of the aims when I relaunched Dirty Feed earlier this year was to give people more ways to keep up with what this site is up to, without relying on RSS or Twitter.

b) It takes me bloody ages to get around to anything.

c) Twitter has been so utterly atrocious this week that it has finally spurred me into action.

d) This site’s subscribe page now has a form where you can enter your e-mail address, and get posts from here sent directly to your inbox. (Or just follow if you’re already logged into WordPress.com.)

e) Because I really want to make it easy for you to do this, so I can stop relying on Twitter so much, you can just do the same here:

f) Your address will not be used by any site other than dirtyfeed.org and wordpress.com, or used for any other purpose other than to email you site updates for Dirty Feed, or any other sites you specifically sign up for.

g) For those of you who would rather have a more curated newsletter-style thing, I’m aiming to start one of those in the next few months.

h) If you’re one of the very few people who already get email updates from me, without me bothering to make it easy for you to sign up to them: congratulations, you’re great. I hope this makes up for this pointless email you’ve just received.

i) That is all.

Mind the Gap

Published 12th September 2022

Meta

On Thursday September the 8th, at 12:09pm, I tweeted the following.

31 minutes after this tweet, BBC One broke into Bargain Hunt, to report on concerns about the Queen’s health. Around 15 minutes later, I finally learnt about the story, from people DMing me on Twitter. I had no idea about it. I was calmly sitting at home, well away from my job working on a certain popular national television channel.

And yet, doesn’t it look like I was trying to drop a huge hint about the upcoming news? I wasn’t. I was scanning through various Red Dwarf episodes for potential articles, and saw the opportunity for one of my silly “Current Mood” gags, which I’ve been doing for years.

That’s all.

*   *   *

Yes, there is a lesson here on the danger of conspiracy theories. But that’s a boring point. The problem with all this is that it actually hits far closer to home.

Because anybody who misread my tweet above isn’t actually doing something particularly unreasonable. They know that I work on a certain TV channel. They know that a royal obituary is one of the most stressful parts of working on that certain TV channel. And half an hour before news of the Queen’s health breaks into Bargain Hunt on BBC One, I post an alarming image from Red Dwarf which indicates I am in distress. Of course I’m hinting that I knew something, and there was something big coming. Except I didn’t, and I wasn’t.

But the problem is: on Dirty Feed, I attempt to make these links all the time, when talking about television. I’m leaping back, 30, 40, 50 years – sometimes more – and trying to figure out exactly what happened. This involves taking disparate facts, and trying to draw links between them. But as the above proves, sometimes things which look like they’re obviously linked, are in fact complete coincidence.

Let’s be clear: things like this happen in my job all the time. People often leap to conclusions about something that happened on TV which I was involved with. Sometimes, they can be entirely wrong… and it’s about a subject I can’t even remotely talk about, for confidentiality reasons. It’s infuriating.

And then I might go home, start writing, and do exactly the same about a TV show from 30 years ago.

So, what’s the solution to this? There isn’t one, really. When you’re trying to reach into the past, making your way through faulty paperwork and faultier memories, being forced to leap between gaps is inevitable. And it’s inevitable that I will get things wrong.

The only thing I can do is try and be as open about my procedures as possible. I really try not to write this site from a God’s-eye view, where I state what “definitely” happened in these situations, when we can’t be sure. The best I can do is try to make good guesses, clearly label speculation, and have as many facts to hand as possible. And most importantly, show my workings so the reader can come to a different conclusion if they want.

For instance, take the following paragraph from this piece on some unbroadcast Fry & Laurie sketches:

“Therefore, I would suggest that there is a high probability this unbroadcast sketch was shot on the 17th December 1988, with an outside chance that it was shot the week before on the 10th. It almost certainly wasn’t shot later; there’s no evidence that Radio Times photographer Don Smith was present at the final four sessions of the series.”

I hope you can all figure out what the words “probability”, “chance”, and “almost” are doing in that paragraph. And if that makes my writing woolly and annoying, it’s better than the alternative.

When leaping across gaps on here, I fully invite you all to come up with alternatives. Together, we might inch our way towards some kind of truth. I sure can’t do it by myself.

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