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“And What About the Vegetables?”

Published 30th August 2024

TV Comedy

I have to be honest, I didn’t exactly have a rule against embedding GB News material on here. I didn’t think I really needed one. What was the likelihood that I’d ever have cause to do it?

Unfortunately, back on the 18th March 2024, something happened which forces me to briefly acknowledge the channel’s existence. Piers Pottinger, public-affairs consultant and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, makes a bit of a twat of himself:

As was widely reported at the time, Pottinger seems to be confusing reality with a famous Spitting Image sketch. But rather than judge the entire thing from a 19 second Twitter video, you can see the whole contribution from him below. It starts from 37:38 in, with the anecdote itself at 44:36:

Just for the record – and in case either of the above videos disappear at any point – here is a transcript of the relevant section:

PIERS POTTINGER: I mean, there was a famous time when she was having dinner with her cabinet in the Ritz, and they were taking the order for the main course, and they all ordered beef or lamb or fish, and the waiter said to Margaret “And the vegetables?” She said “They’ll have the same as me.”
ANDREW PIERCE: I don’t know if that story’s true, but it’s a lovely story.
PIERS POTTINGER: Well I like to think it’s true.
ANDREW PIERCE: Certainly apocryphal. Certainly apocryphal.

“Apocryphal” is one way of putting it, yes. Maybe it’s just too much to expect Andrew Pierce to be able to quote chapter and verse when it comes to famous Spitting Image sketches. To be fair, when it comes to the reporting of all this, vanishingly few people could identify the actual episode of Spitting Image in question. Most contented themselves with linking to a blurry YouTube video of the sketch with no date attached, in the wrong aspect ratio.

So our first point of order is to correct that. The sketch which Pottinger mistakenly presents as a true story appeared right at the very end of Series 2, Episode 3, broadcast on the 20th January 1985; the traditional place for putting a great sketch to leave the audience wanting more. So after a rousing rendition of “Robson’s Glory Boys”1, we get the following:

Very droll, Minister. But here’s the thing: the above joke is most certainly not original to Spitting Image.

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  1. Yes we’ll go go go
    All the way to Mexico
    And we’ll stay stay stay
    ‘Til the second game we play
    Then we’ll fly fly fly
    Back to London by July
    We don’t expect you’ll thank us
    ‘Cos we’re all Bobby’s bankers
    A load of petrol tankers
    We’re Robson’s Glory Boys! ↩

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Light-Hearted & Fun

Published 20th August 2024

Music / Other TV / TV Comedy

One of the great things about library music is the unexpected links it can create across some of my favourite comedy.

For instance, take the Carlin release Light-Hearted & Fun from 1989.1 Every single track on that album was written by Andrew J. Hall. So, there’s the vaguely terrifying “Clowns”:

Which was, of course, used in Alexei Sayle’s Stuff and Monsieur Aubergine, first broadcast on the 3rd October 1991:

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  1. The Warners site gives the release date as 1990, but every other source I’ve seen says 1989. ↩

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1996.

Published 12th August 2024

TV Comedy

I don’t usually spend my time whinging about current television on Dirty Feed. I don’t find it much fun to write, and this is supposed to be a pleasant hobby. I’ll write about the stuff that depresses me if somebody wants to pay for it.

But today, I randomly found myself researching material broadcast on the 16th February 1996. Not a special date, particularly. And I realised on that night on BBC2, you got:

  • The first episode of Series 2 of The Fast Show,
  • The first episode of Series 2 of Fist of Fun, and
  • Series 2 Episode 8 of Fantasy Football League.

And it strikes me that you don’t need to be the most miserable person in the world, or hate all of pop culture in 2024, or even to love all three shows listed above, to suggest that we’ve lost something. The reasons for that are long and complex, and could fill thousands of words.

But stuff the reasons. Sometimes, all I can feel is the loss.

Oh, Nice!

Published 8th August 2024

TV Comedy

OK, so my planned Summer hiatus really didn’t work. To be fair, would you rather have a nice walk outdoors enjoying the sunshine, or spend your free time working out what is showing on Onslow’s television in every single episode of Keeping Up Appearances?

As ever, this project has become a complete nightmare, and I quickly realised why nobody else has ever bothered doing it before. Let’s take an example. Watch this scene from Series 3 Episode 4, commonly known as “How to Go on Holiday Without Really Trying”, broadcast on the 27th September 1992:

I am amused that Mary Millar gets a bit of an American sitcom-style reaction when she enters in that get-up.

But onto important matters: what music is playing there on Onslow’s telly? The production paperwork should reveal all. They list it as “Street Action”, Track 1 of the Chappell library album American Drama. Well for a start, “Street Action” is on the album American Drama 2, but the catalogue number matches up: Chap 142. Let’s give it a listen.

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“It’s Just So Crypto-Fascist!”

Published 6th August 2024

Children's TV / TV Comedy

Where were you when Napalm Death appeared on Children’s BBC?

For me, the answer was… not watching Napalm Death on Children’s BBC. Music show What’s That Noise? was not a favourite of mine. Perhaps I detected the vague whiff of education, and I’d already had enough of that by that point in the afternoon. At 4:35pm on the 10th October 1989 I was probably watching Sooty and Count Duckula on the other side. Or on my computer. Or eating tea. Anything, in fact, than watching BBC1.

Oh well, my loss. See how great Craig Charles is here. “This is music for young lovers, step aside Kylie Minogue!”

The question is: what has the above moment got to do with Red Dwarf, beyond the involvement of Craig?

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

Published 22nd July 2024

TV Comedy

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:

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Six: “Boys, I Believe You Like Swearwords”

Published 16th July 2024

TV Comedy

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

Last time in our look at stock footage in End of an Era, we hung around in the nice clean-cut world of Top of the Pops. Today, Smashie and Nicey throw themselves headlong into… “PUNK!”

This sequence uses only two clips of existing footage… but they just happen to be two of the most interesting clips in the entire show. One of them is extremely well-known. The other, rather less so.

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Five: “I’ve Just Eaten a Whole Packet of Toffos!”

Published 12th July 2024

TV Comedy

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

At last, something easy with this series of articles looking at stock footage in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. Surely Top of the Pops has been endlessly watched and documented by now. I’ll fly through this, won’t I?

No? Oh well.

End of an Era features material from six different editions of Top of the Pops, from title sequences through to actual performances. All but the last two clips can be seen in the following:

Note that I have conveniently decided to stop that video just before the pair’s “celebration” of “black music”. “You would not believe the complaints that show got…” Or, indeed, websites.

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“Some Cheap American Science Fiction Movie”

Published 20th June 2024

Film / TV Comedy

20 years ago this month, I interviewed John Pomphrey, the lighting director for the first six series of Red Dwarf. I was going to tidy that interview up and republish it here for its little anniversary, but for various reasons, I’m struggling to get round to it. Maybe that’s for the best. That interview should probably be left in its own time and place.

Rereading it though, there’s a few things in there which I don’t think have come up anywhere else. Not least, the following anecdote about a cheap film which ripped off Red Dwarf‘s sets:

“Some of it did appear in a movie, because me and Mel sat down and looked at it. We came across a cheap American video, a very cheap science thing, and Mel said ‘It’s the control room!’ Someone in America had copied it, and we spoke to Doug and Rob at the time, but there was nothing we could do about it, but it was absolutely identical. Same lighting; it was evident that somebody had got hold of a copy and thought ‘That’s good’ and built it, and it featured in some cheap American science fiction movie. We said “Who do you sue?” and you’d never track them down, you’d never sue them… so we just sat and looked at it. He said ‘Look at that! It’s the octagonal control room!’, and they were all standing round, and we said ‘Bloomin’ ‘eck!'”

This would have been the control room from Series III through to V:

Red Dwarf control room/drive room, with Cat, Lister and Rimmer

Red Dwarf control room/drive room, with Holly and skutters

It perhaps seems a little odd that John and Mel were so outraged at the rip. Mel Bibby has often gone on record as saying that his work on Red Dwarf was inspired by Alien; frankly, it’s difficult to overstate exactly how inspired it actually is. But I guess there’s “inspired by”, and “absolutely identical”.

Regardless of all that, question is: exactly which cheap science fiction movie ripped off the Red Dwarf control room above? John Pomphrey sadly couldn’t remember. Anyone have any ideas?

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