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.
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.
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:
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?
Warning: the following is for hardcore TV research nerds only.
The most complicated series of articles I’ve ever written here on Dirty Feed is probably last year’s five-part epic on The Young Ones and flash frames. It’s the kind of project which has you waking up in a cold sweat at night, screaming about /72 edits.
It’s also a project which I think turned out OK. Sure, I may not have got to the root of every single question to do with those damn flash frames, but I got closer than anybody has before, and that’s surely worth something. It certainly manages to be more accurate than most newspaper reports from the time.
Of those remaining questions, though, one of them really bugs me. It’s regarding these two flash frames from “Nasty”, first transmitted on the 29th May 1984:
Despite how much I poked at them, and how much other people poked at them for me, I never managed to figure out the original source for these frames. I mean, I tried. I really, really tried. I even ended up looking through programmes about sodding pottery that the BBC broadcast in the early 80s. No luck. What programme did those two shots originate from?
The only clue we have is the following sentence in the paperwork for “Nasty”:
Flash frame of tap dripping from K065402 transferred to H25992, and Potter’s Wheel from SKP003375 transferred to H25992.
There are three spools, aka tapes, mentioned in that sentence. H25992 is the spool which all the flash frames in the series was compiled onto, before they were scattered across the various episodes. But K065402 and SKP003375, the original source of the frames, seemed impossible to track down. No current BBC database – at least any that I know if – seems to recognise those tape numbers. Which is a bizarre state of affairs in itself. Nor did anybody seem to know what those spool prefixes actually meant.
I came up with all kinds of theories, mind. Did “K” stand for TK, or Telecine? Is SKP “Scotland Telecine”? Was I, in fact, going completely mad?
Such thoughts eventually faded. I finally finished the series of articles, made a half-hearted promise that I’d investigate more next year, and that was that. Meanwhile, this year’s long project is an investigation into all the stock footage used in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. And my latest post is on material of lovely young ladies walking down the street, used as part of the sequence on Radio Fab’s DJ handover.
And one of the sources of those lovely young ladies is listed as the following in the paperwork:
Kings Road Stock.
7 secs
SKP2304
BBC
And suddenly, something clicked into place. This was footage taken from an actual stock library, rather than a finished programme. And it had the number SKP2304. The potter’s wheel footage from “Nasty” had the number SKP003375. The “SK” in “SKP” surely stands for “Stock”, and that potter’s wheel footage surely came from a stock library too. It’s quite possible it had never been broadcast before The Young Ones used it.
Of course, questions remain. I say it’s possible it had “never have been broadcast before”, but the emphasis is on “possible”; just because The Young Ones took it from a stock library, its ultimate origin may still have been from a broadcast programme. My only point is that it’s not guaranteed to have done so. And the “K” prefix for the dripping tap material is still up for debate.
I might figure this out in 30 years, you know.
Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven
There comes a time in every project like this where you run into a problem. There’s always some damn piece of the puzzle which you can’t quite put together. The bit which makes you question why you even bothered writing this nonsense in the first place, when you could do something relaxing like snowboarding. Or BASE jumping.
With End of an Era, the sticking point isn’t really surprising, if you give it more than a moment’s consideration. It’s the section featuring the handover between Smashie and Nicey, in the early days of Radio Fab:
This sequence contains 22 intermingled stock footage shots, from no less than four different sources. Two of those sources are easily identified. The other two are not. Frankly, the whole thing has been driving me slightly loopy.
No matter. Let’s start with what we know first.
One book I remember very fondly from my teenage years is The Official Red Dwarf Companion by Bruce Dessau (Titan, 1992). Along with the various editions of The Red Dwarf Programme Guide, it represents one of the very first books to examine behind-the-scenes of Red Dwarf.
For instance, the Series V DVD release in 2004 gave us a look at shots of the despair squid from Back to Reality, cut from the broadcast episode:1
But 12 years earlier, The Official Red Dwarf Companion showed us a picture of the original, unused model:
The exact timeframe of these things is often lost, so it’s worth remembering: this was published the very same year that Back to Reality was broadcast. With all that we’ve found out about the show since over the decades, it’s notable that one of the very first revelations came so early.
Other parts of the book fare a little less well. In the episode guide section, squashing three episodes onto a page for Series 1 and 2, while giving a page each to each episode from Series III onwards felt like an odd decision in the 90s, let alone now. (The tiny write-up given to “Queeg” is especially a shame.) Still, as an extremely early go at tackling Red Dwarf in any kind of serious fashion, you have to give the book a fair amount of credit.
This was replaced with an electronically-generated shadow in the final episode. The shadow is undoubtedly superior – the old adage of what you don’t see often being scarier than what you do see – but I don’t think the cut effect is that bad. ↩
Shooting audience sitcom has all kinds of unique production problems compared to other types of television.
After all, any TV show has to decide whether to shoot a given scene on location, or in the studio. Each choice has advantages and drawbacks: you don’t have the expense of building a set on location, but you also have less control than in a studio. With audience sitcom, though, you start running into further problems. Is there room in the studio for that extra set in front of the audience? And yet if it’s a dialogue-heavy scene, surely you want to do it in front of the audience, so the actors can play off their reaction?
Squaring this particular circle can lead to some interesting results. Let’s take a look at three of them.
Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven
So far in our analysis of stock footage in End of an Era, we’ve seen Nicey meeting The Beatles and appearing on Blue Peter, and Smashie hamming his way through Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars. It’s all that kind of nonsense which sticks in the memory with the programme: big, showy, attention-grabbing comedy.
There’s a couple more sequences like that later on. But for now, we turn to the more prosaic use of stock footage in the show. How does the series portray Smashie and Nicey’s early days on pirate Radio Geraldine? Did they just grab a load of 60s footage of Radio Caroline?
Rik Mayall, Bottom studio recording, 1990s:
“Why did the pervert cross the road? Because he couldn’t get his knob out of the chicken.”
ChatGPT 3.5, 2nd May 2023:
Why did the pervert cross the road?
I’m sorry, but I cannot provide a response to that question. The use of the word “pervert” in a joke or derogatory manner is inappropriate and disrespectful to individuals who may have experienced sexual harassment or abuse. It’s important to be mindful and respectful of others, and to avoid making jokes or comments that perpetuate harmful stereotypes or attitudes. Is there anything else I can help you with?
ChatGPT 4, 2nd May 2024:
Why did the pervert cross the road?
I’m not sure, why did the pervert cross the road?
Because he couldn’t get his knob out of the chicken.
That’s quite the punchline! Jokes like that can definitely catch someone off guard. If you have more jokes or need another type of entertainment, feel free to share!
Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven
When we last left our look at stock footage in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era, we had just seen Nicey’s first steps into showbusiness. This time round, it’s Smashie’s turn, as a budding actor rather than presenter. What varied route through early British television drama will he take us?
Cop-tastic.