TV Comedy

The problem with being a mouldy old Red Dwarf fan is that you end up viewing every bloody comedy show from around that time through a Dwarf-shaped prism. With something like early Spitting Image, with Grant Naylor as script editors as well as Chris Barrie doing impressions, the links become utterly inescapable.

For instance, take this joke in the first episode of Series 2 of Spitting Image (TX: 6/1/85)¹, in a sketch about Zola Budd:

VOICE 1: 2 hours 56 minutes! That’s a world record for a marathon.
VOICE 2: Pity she’s running the 100 metres.

And then remember this joke from Red Dwarf‘s “Future Echoes” (TX: 22/2/88), where Rimmer does a spot of running himself:

RIMMER: 6:47. Not a bad little time for the mile. Pity I was only doing the 300 metres.

Of course, it’s not just Red Dwarf. How about this sketch from the first episode of Grant Naylor’s Radio 4 sketch show Son of Cliché (TX: 23/8/83), and “20 Golden Indian Restaurant Tracks”?

Download “20 Golden Indian Restaurant Tracks” (MP3, 1:09)

Which bears a startling resemblance to this Spitting Image sketch from Series 2, Episode 10 (TX: 17/3/85), where KGB-TEL promise “20 Golden Pieces of Sombre Music”:

The rewrite on that sketch is fascinating in its own right, taking the same basic idea – how foreign music can sound identical to untrained ears – and adds a whole extra layer of political jokes. I don’t have writing credits for individual sketches here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if other writers were involved.²

Either way, as a fan of Grant Naylor’s work, it’s a very odd feeling to watch Spitting Image, and see shards of their earlier and later work suddenly pop up. And it’s also proof that people who say they wouldn’t bother watching the show as the topical references mean it’s “dated” – and this isn’t a straw man argument, I have literally seen exactly that – are somewhat missing the point.

Because the above examples show both a topical joke being re-used in a decidedly non-topical way… and a non-topical joke being transformed into a topical one. It’s all part of the same thing. Which is a far more fascinating realisation than merely sulking about a reference to Zola Budd.

1. In all these posts about Spitting Image on Dirty Feed, I’m going by the DVD numbering for the series, rather than Mark Lewisohn’s rather different numbering in the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy. In particular, Lewisohn states there are two different series in 1984 rather than one, and ditto in 1986. The series numbers aren’t really that important anyway; just go by the TX dates. ↩

2. Possibly Hislop and Newman? ↩

Read more about...

red dwarf, spitting image

It’s odd how things in your life can suddenly connect, completely unexpectedly.

Take the Red Dwarf episode “Timeslides” (TX: 12/12/89), which I’ve already written about recently. Short version of the plot: Kryten finds some photographic developing fluid which has mutated, and it now makes photographs come to life. Interestingly, this is one of the few times the series actually uses the fact things have been sitting around on the ship for three million years, and odd things might happen during that time.

But before we get into the meat of the episode proper – Lister going back and changing his own history – we get a series of gags about the kind of things you could do with the concept of living photos. So as well as causing trouble at Rimmer’s brother’s wedding, or pondering what they could do with a set of naughty beach photographs, we get the following amusing idea.

What if Lister had sent some photos to be developed, and got someone’s skiing holiday snaps back by mistake?

The official Red Dwarf site offers the following amusing titbit about this scene:

“But even the writers aren’t infallible, as Timeslides clearly proved. As production on the episode began, the scene where Lister claims he got somebody’s skiing holiday picture back by mistake was discovered to have an error by none other than Craig. The skiers had scripted lines about how they got Lister’s rather scary birthday snaps – which would have been fine, except, at that point in time, the skiers would not have received them yet. The lines were summarily cut.”

Very good Craig, well done. But this is no longer my favourite fact about this scene.

*   *   *

Recently, I’ve been doing some research on the very first Spitting Image book, published in 1985. Not that it was new to me. It was a favourite of mine as a teenager in the 90s. I once lent a girl my copy of it in one of my last years at secondary school, who I then proceeded to fail to have sex with.¹

Now, I knew that Rob Grant and Doug Naylor wrote Red Dwarf; even back then, I was as interested in who wrote something as who starred in it.² I also vaguely knew that they had something to do with Spitting Image, and clocked their names mentioned in the book. These days, I know all about how Grant Naylor essentially waded in halfway through Series 1 of Spitting Image and saved the show, but I didn’t really know the details at the time.

Nor did I notice the following. One of the double page spreads in that first Spitting Image book is a parody of teen photo story magazines; specifically, My Guy. They did a bloody good job too; the layout is identical. Click/tap for a bigger version:

But hang on, what’s that silliness, happening right at the end of the strip?

Yes, the story falls apart, because… the wrong film came back from the chemist, and they got some skiing holiday snaps instead!

Which is fascinating for all kinds of reasons. Partly because of something else I posted about recently; about how easily some of Red Dwarf‘s supposedly science fiction ideas turn out not to be rooted in science fiction at all. It’s also interesting because it specifically marks the photo story parody as being at least partially the hand of Grant Naylor; none of the individual pages in the book have author credits.

But most of all, I love it because I’ve always loved that Spitting Image book. Like The Young Ones spinoff book Batchelor Boys, it was part of my comedy education growing up; a way of experiencing the show without the cost of endless blank tapes, or expensive commercial videos. Yet somehow, I’d never linked that skiing joke in the photo story to the Red Dwarf moment before, despite the knowledge that Grant Naylor worked on both shows. A brand new path suddenly opened up in my brain, connecting two things completely unexpectedly.

I find it utterly delightful.

1. Most of my teenage anecdotes end like this. I did once lend a girl a copy of Craig Charles’ The Log, in exchange for a feel of her breasts. This is the best thing that book ever achieved for anybody. ↩

2. If I’m honest, it still bemuses me today that everybody doesn’t think like this. ↩

Read more about...

red dwarf, spitting image