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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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Dwarf on Film

Published 14th February 2023

TV Comedy

I used to have a brilliant little trivia question about Red Dwarf, you know. One that you could ask to really try and trip people up. It’s not perhaps one you’d bring out at polite parties with normal people, but hey, we’re all friends here. And that question is:

“What is the only footage of actual actors shot on film in Red Dwarf?”1

The answer is perhaps not immediately obvious. Whether studio or location, the live action scenes in the show have always been shot on videotape – or from Back to Earth onwards, digital video, directly to file. There’s no “film outdoors/video indoors” look, like many sitcoms still had, even in 1988.2

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  1. Excluding stock footage, so things like this don’t count. ↩

  2. Indeed, One Foot in the Grave was still doing it in 2000. ↩

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Savage Garden Cuttings

Published 7th February 2023

TV Presentation

One of the joys of researching The Young Ones and flash frames is scouring through people’s old tapes. And sometimes, you find something just too good not to share. Last time, it was an ad-break from a 1984 episode of Spitting Image.

This time? A three minute trail shown in April 2001 on UK Gold, just after a showing of the Young Ones episode “Cash”.

I can’t in all honesty say that “To the Moon and Back” is one of my favourite songs.1 But it works in the context of the above trail, which is really rather wonderfully put together. The mix at 0:47 is particularly effective.

It’s also a reminder that the television of the late 90s/early 00s really does have a distinctive look about it now, entirely distinct from how TV looks today. A certain kind of film stock and transfer, with of course our obligatory 14:9 letterbox.

Anyway, I thought it was something worth sharing, from a time when UK Gold had some absolutely spectacular trails. I really do love it when a channel goes all out and uses virtually the entire length of a song to do something fun, rather than always chopping it down to 30 seconds. It occasionally happens today. But nowhere near enough.

Although maybe I just love that trail purely with my professional, TV channel director hat on. Seriously, do you know how useful three minute trails are, when a live programme finishes unexpectedly early? It can help get you out of a whole world of shit, believe me.

With many thanks to Dan Tootill for digging out this recording. Dirty Feed relies on many people providing access to their old off-airs for research, and I’m absurdly grateful.

  1. I did have a Savage Garden phase c. 1998, and believe it or not, that is not a euphemism. I wanted to make it look like I had cool music to listen to when I was feeling down. There are at least three things wrong with that sentence, and I have no justification for any of them. ↩

Two Amusing Grant Naylor Sketches from Spitting Image

Published 6th February 2023

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? ↩

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My Friend Flicker

Published 5th February 2023

Life / TV Presentation

The other night, I was sitting in a anonymous playout suite in West London, in charge of an anonymous channel. It was around 1am. Some people are surprised to learn that there is, in fact, plenty to do in a darkened playout suite at 1am. Thoroughly checking the next day’s schedule is one of those things. It’s better to find out you have a problem with your 3pm programme a full twelve hours before it airs, rather than twelve minutes.

So there I was, watching a programme – yes, an anonymous programme – which was going out in a few hours’ time. In general, we watch the opening minute and the closing minute of each show, to make sure all is well. Opening minute, fine. Closing minute, fi… hang on, what was that? A brief flicker on the end credits? What caused that? It wasn’t the credit squeeze, was it? Or the monitor wall having a funny? Let’s run it through again.

No, it’s still there. Hmmmmm.

I load the material up on the desktop PC in the suite, and step through the offending section frame-by-frame. There we have it. A single erroneous frame in the end credits, where the moving background jumps ahead unexpectedly.

A single erroneous frame. A flash frame, in fact. Completely 100% unintentional; just an editing error, rather than any kind of deliberate nonsense. But nonetheless, there it is: a sodding flash frame. I spend months and months researching and writing about them at home, and then one pops up at work too.

I need a new hobby. One that has nothing to do with my job. In fact, one that absolutely, categorically does not involve any kind of screen.

Knitting, maybe. Or orienteering. Cheesemaking?

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. ↩

Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part One

Published 27th January 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

On the 8th May 1984, at 9:15pm1, something very odd happened on BBC2. As Mike The-Cool-Person sat at the kitchen table, discussing the gang’s laundry situation, The Young Ones briefly flashed to the end caption of Carry on Cowboy. It then flashed back as though nothing had happened. “Dirty duvet, dirty mind.”, says an oblivious Mike.

This wasn’t just random Young Ones anarchy. It was intended as the start of a weekly running gag, with a proper pay-off and punchline at the end of the series. A punchline which would never end up being transmitted, and was cut from the final show just days before air.

This is the story of what happened to that punchline… and how a certain show called Spitting Image managed to cause even more trouble than usual.

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  1. At exactly 21:15:12, if my calculations are correct. ↩

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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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“Of Course There’s Too Much Duck!”

Published 8th January 2023

TV Comedy

Assumptions are the enemy of research everywhere. Beware of anything which is “obviously” true. You can find yourself in a whole world of trouble.

For instance, take the two Fawlty Towers script books below.

Two Fawlty Towers scriptbooks - all relevant information in the article

For years, I owned the one on the left, The Complete Fawlty Towers (Guild Publishing, 1989), which contains the scripts for all 12 episodes. I never bothered getting the one on the right, simply called Fawlty Towers (Contact Publications, 1977), because despite only covering three episodes1 – “The Builders”, “The Hotel Inspectors”, and “Gourmet Night” – the actual content was going to be identical, right?

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  1. A “Book 2” published in 1979 covers the rest of Series 1. Series 2 was never published in this form, and had to wait for The Complete Fawlty Towers to make it onto the shelves. ↩

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