Recently, I have come across something rather disquieting. Every time I check out the accepted TX dates of a programme I’m researching, something turns out to be awry. Last time it was The Brittas Empire; this time, A Bit of Fry & Laurie comes under the microscope, if you’ll pardon the pun.1
The story behind Series 4 of A Bit of Fry & Laurie is oft-told; transferring back across to BBC1, with celebrity guests in all but one episode, it’s generally regarded as the weakest of the four series, with its reputation not helped by Fry’s disappearance and flight to Belgium near the beginning of the run. I personally love it, but now isn’t the time for my brilliantly iconoclastic and dangerous comedy opinions. Let’s stick to the facts.
And the facts, at first glance, seem to be clear. Plenty of websites seem to think that the series was transmitted in the most straightforward manner possible: seven episodes, weekly on Sunday nights, from the 12th February through to the 26th March 1995. For example, Wikipedia, the British Comedy Guide, and IMDB all state that this is the case.
Unfortunately, a bit more poking reveals some discrepancies. epguides.com still thinks the series started on the 12th February, but also that it skipped a week on the 5th March; meaning the final episode transmitted on the 2nd April. The BBC itself, meanwhile, also indicates the series skips a week; however, their missed week is the 12th March. The Beeb also unhelpfully list the series as six episodes long in the episode descriptions, rather than the correct seven.
Our mission is clear. Can we disentangle this load of old nonsense?
8.00 – 9.00pm
You Rang, M’Lord?
By JIMMY PERRY, DAVID CROFT.
Starring Paul Shane as Alf Jeffrey Holland as Jim Su Pollard as Ivy
featuring Donald Hewlett as Lord George Meldrum Michael Knowles as the Honourable Teddy Bill Pertwee as PC Wilson Brenda Cowling as Mrs Lipton.
A new hour-long comedy performed in front of an audience, in which Lord Meldrum takes on a new butler who in turn engages his daughter as a parlour-maid.
Radio Times, BBC1, Thursday 29th December 1988
What do Hi-de-Hi!, ‘Allo ‘Allo!, and You Rang, M’Lord? have in common?
Yes, they were all sitcoms produced and co-written by David Croft, and yes, they all have a penchant for punctuation marks in the title. Moving closer to the point, they all had proper pilot episodes that were shot separately from the rest of their first series. And they are all truly excellent pilots.
What’s more, all these pilots were also transmitted before their first series proper arrived. Hi-de-Hi!‘s pilot was broadcast in January 1980; the series arrived in February 1981. ‘Allo ‘Allo‘s pilot was shown in December 1982; the series didn’t arrive until September 1984. And the pilot for You Rang, M’Lord? was shown in December 1988, but the series didn’t arrive until January 1990.
You Rang, M’Lord? trail (for December 1988)
Today, you can easily see two of these pilots essentially as audiences saw them the first time round; the DVD releases for Hi-de-Hi! and ‘Allo ‘Allo contain the shows as they were initially broadcast.1 You Rang, M’Lord? is very much a different story. And it’s a story which has – with the odd honourable exception – gone virtually undocumented.
The clue is in the Radio Times listing above. One of the most notable things about You Rang, M’Lord? is the fact the show had a 50 minute duration, which allowed for – as David Croft put it – “a good opportunity to develop characters and scenes more thoroughly”2 And indeed, if you pop in the DVD, that pilot episode lasts for 49’07”.
In which case, why does that 1988 Radio Times capsule promise an “hour-long comedy”?
The answer: because when that pilot was first shown on the 29th December 1988, it wasn’t 49’07. It was 55’58”. But when the programme was repeated on the 7th January 1990 – the week before Series 1 of the show started properly – it magically fitted a 50 minute slot. What gives?
You Rang, M’Lord? trail (for January 1990)
The obvious explanation is that the show was edited down between its initial showing and its repeat. But what’s unusual for a Croft comedy is that this longer edit never had another outing. The show has – as far as I can tell – never been repeated or commercially released in its original longer version. Meaning that the way the British public first experienced You Rang, M’Lord? has been all but lost to history.3
I don’t like things being lost to history. For the first time, then, here is exactly what was edited out of the 1988 pilot of You Rang, M’Lord? for all subsequent repeats and DVD releases. A piece of David Croft that never usually sees the light of day. Many thanks to Elaine Musselwhite who dug out her copy of this very rarely seen part of Croft’s oeuvre, without which this piece would have been impossible to write.
All times included are for the 50 minute version released on DVD, so you can play along at home.
David Croft’s autobiography You Have Been Watching…, p. 231. ↩
The only book I’ve found which even gives the broad strokes of this story of the longer edit is Rob Cope & Mike Fury’s Hi-de-Hi! Companion, from 2009. ↩
For years, we didn’t know the true story of how Red Dwarf‘s first episode was made. Not really.
I mean, we thought we did. Blah blah script rejected by the BBC for years, blah blah eventually accepted at BBC Manchester, blah blah electrician’s strike, blah blah remounted in late 1987, blah blah atom bomb. We also knew the rough pattern for the recordings: rehearse at Acton for four days, go up to Manchester for two days of recording – a pre-record day on the Saturday, then the audience record day for the Sunday. Then most people had Monday off, and then back to work rehearsing the next episode on Tuesday. Simple.
That is, until the big revelation. In 2007, a rather curious DVD set was released. Titled Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection, this was a grab bag full of Dwarf stuff which – for various reasons – didn’t make it onto the original DVD releases. And one of these features was a proper, in-depth documentary about Series 1 of the show.
ROB GRANT: At the end of the recording of the first series, we had a spare recording day – including a day’s pre-VT – so we could do a whole other show. PAUL JACKSON: I knew it was there. And I think I maybe even discussed with them [Rob Grant and Doug Naylor], you know, we might have to do a seventh script, and that wasn’t really very practical. So we devised this rather cunning plan of using that last week to go back and do pick-ups for the rest of the series. And again, because the BBC worked in these blocks and then didn’t really monitor it very carefully, nobody noticed, in effect. And we just delivered six.
“The Beginning”, Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection
Most of those pick-ups were for that first episode, “The End”; in fact, well over half of the episode was reshot. And in an instant, this changed a vast chunk of what we thought we knew about the production of that first episode of Red Dwarf. From a programme recorded on the weekend of the 26th/27th September 1987, it now also became a programme where huge sections were re-recorded on the 7th/8th November 1987.
It is the 3rd December 1988 in studio TC6, and David Croft has a problem. The pilot of You Rang M’Lord? is about to start two days of recording, and things just aren’t ready.
As he recounts in his autobiography:
“We were due to record the pilot programme at Television Centre. Unfortunately, we hit a very bad period when the BBC was plagued by strikes, go-slows and walk-outs. When I arrived at the studio, the sets were barely standing. We rehearsed and recorded as they were completed. When we arrived on the second day for the public show, the audience seating had not been set and only the hall staircase was standing. The drawing room, dining room and kitchen had yet to be built and dressed. Nothing was to be gained by abandoning the recording, so I went ahead, determined to get all we could. It was far and away the most difficult day in the studio I have ever had. […]
When the audience arrived for the recording, Felix Bowness did the warm-up as if nothing had happened and the actors bravely played their parts. It was an excellent performance but, for instance, the walls of the dining room, which should have been festooned with oil paintings, were completely bare. There was no question of doing the show again so, in that condition, it went out over the air. The paucity of the set dressing didn’t affect the laughs, and Gareth1 went ahead and ordered the series.”
One thing I’ve become vaguely obsessed with over the past year is how often the things that “everyone” knows about a TV show turn out to be incorrect. Of course, by “everyone”, I don’t actually mean everyone. The person on the street doesn’t mutter Brittas Empire TX dates as they go about their shopping. At least not in my local Tesco.
Somewhere which should know its Brittas Empire TX dates is epguides.com, mind you. Here is their page for the show, although I’ve screengrabbed the relevant section below, for reasons which will soon become apparent.
According to epguides.com, Series 1 of The Brittas Empire aired weekly from the 3rd January 1991, ending on the 14th February, skipping a week on the 31st. Wikipedia has the same details, as does The Brittas Empire Wiki. For complete transparency, seeing as I was writing for the site when it was published, Ganymede & Titan‘s guide has the same broad dates, but skips the 10th rather than the 31st; IMDB follows these latter dates too.
Last time we investigated a day in the life of The Young Ones, we took a look at the pre-record studio day for the episode “Nasty”, which took place on the 6th February 1984. (Read that piece first if you haven’t already for the background information; I’m not going to repeat myself.) But that’s only half the story when it comes to the raw studio recordings sitting on YouTube. The other half of that video is the pre-record day for “Cash”. Oddly enough, despite being the second half of the video, this actually took place the week before, on the 30th January 1984.
Unlike “Nasty” which was in TC4, “Cash” was shot in TC3, and is still an extant studio at Television Centre; Good Morning Britain and This Morning now come from there live every weekday morning. Such is the odd life of a TV studio across the decades.
So, what can we glean from the above recording? As before, nothing can match just sitting and watching the video for yourself. But I thought a few notes about things I’ve spotted could be interesting. So join me as we leap back across the decades, and safely ensconce ourselves in a corner of Television Centre to spy upon proceedings.
This year has ended up being a rather odd one for Dirty Feed. I initially intended to write precisely nothing for the first half of this year at all. So what better time to accidentally publish one of the most popular things I’ve ever written, and end up deeper in the sitcom salt mines than ever before?
Well, today’s little fact isn’t as good as that one. Or as good as this one. It is, however, something brand new about early Red Dwarf, and clears up a little mystery that has dogged fandom for decades. And by “dogged fandom for decades”, I mean “five or so people wondered about it every so often”.
So let’s take a look at the Series 1 episode “Balance of Power”, broadcast on the 29th February 1988. Specifically, the start of the cinema scene with the skutters.
HACKER: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is. HUMPHREY: Prime Minister, what about people who read The Sun? BERNARD: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.
– Yes, Prime Minister, “A Conflict of Interest” (TX: 23/12/87)
The above is one of the most famous sequences in the whole of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. And like so much of the best comedy, it’s many things at once. A forthright piece of satire on the media, a character moment for Bernard… oh, and a rude joke into the bargain.
It was also, in some circles, a well-worn piece of material by the time it was broadcast on the 23rd December 1987. And the original version of that material was certainly not written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.
Not that any of this comes under the Official Secrets Act. It’s often been talked about on Twitter, people have asked about it on forums, and it’s also briefly discussed in Graham McCann’s excellent book, A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister. But nobody seems to have collated all the different strands of this little story together in one place.
So here is the tale of where this routine comes from… or, at least, as close as we can get. I can’t promise you that I have found the true origin of this material. But I believe I have managed to get further back than anybody ever has before. And if you already think you know definitively where this material comes from, then prepare to be surprised.
Dear reader, I fear that with my last article, I may have pushed your goodwill too far. Moreover, I may yet do so again before the end of this article. So before you click away and resolve to never to read another word of this dumb website, let’s quickly dive into some of the good stuff I’ve been promising.
So, where exactly does the stock footage used in the end credits of Hi-de-Hi! come from? Well, let’s throw ourselves straight into some Pathé archive, shall we? And immediately, something rather exciting makes itself obvious…
Last time, I talked at length about the stock footage used in the opening titles of Hi-de-Hi! They took us on a whirlwind tour of important news stories from the late 50s/early 60s, and do a beautiful job of setting up the mood of the show before Ted even mentions his latest scheme.
The closing credits take a different tack. We’re still in newsreel land, but they’re not of important news stories of the day. Instead, it’s a trip through actual footage of holiday camps from the period. It’s the perfect goodbye to each episode, and again adds a real sense of verisimilitude to the show. It also seems to look like a gift to any researcher tracing down the origin of the clips used; surely, if anything, clips of people having fun would be even more delightful to wallow in?
Sort of. In fact, I’ve had a few problems researching this footage, which makes it rather more irritating than I’d hoped. You may eventually get a dopamine hit with this one, but it’ll take a while to get there. Before all that, we have to deal with some exciting sitcom admin. And the major reason for this admin is that unlike the opening titles, which stay the same for every single episode, the footage used in the end credits keeps changing.
