Dirty Feed

Mastodons of the Fediverse

Published 9th January 2023

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“Of Course There’s Too Much Duck!”

Published 8th January 2023

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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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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best of, fawlty towers

Foreign News Sketch

Published 2nd January 2023

TV Comedy

One of my favourite things about The Fast Show is how many different textures it has.

For instance: it isn’t just a programme which knows which sketches need to be shot on location, and which sketches should be shot in the studio. This is a programme which knows that certain location sketches should be shot on film (Ted & Ralph, Unlucky Alf), and certain location sketches should be VT (The Off-Roaders, Fat Sweaty Coppers). And while I could wax lyrical about how shooting each sketch the right way helps sell the joke better, part of the joy here is even simpler: your eyes don’t have time to get bored.

And then we have Chanel 9. A parody of every foreign news broadcast you might imagine you’d seen on holiday, with accompanying dreadful picture quality, it adds yet another texture to the show. Let’s take a look at the first Chanel 9 sketch, from the very first episode of The Fast Show, broadcast on the 27th September 1994.

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best of, the fast show

Absolution.

Published 30th December 2022

Internet

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read a number of different blog posts from many different people, all saying roughly the same thing. “Oh, now that dickhead is running Twitter, I’d best start updating my personal site again.” Some of them are more considered than others. Indeed, a fair few of them make some extremely good points.

And yet every time, I have the same reaction. A peculiar combination of hope… and my eyes slowly rotating to the back of my skull.

Now, look, I admit it. Part of the reason for this is because I’ve been writing on Dirty Feed for well over a decade, and writing consistently online since 2003. The idea that you should own your words, and not just rely on social media, has been talked about for years, well before Musk got his wrecking ball out. But this line of thinking doesn’t really get you very far. The person who realises everything at the earliest possible opportunity would be some kind of superhuman indeed.

No, there’s another reason for my eye-rotating antics. Let me give an example of one particular site which I’ve read recently.¹

Yesterday, they did a brand new post, stating that they were going to start blogging again. This was their first new post in nearly two years. Their previous posts, from early 2021, were about the following topics:

Procrastinating with their writing.
A long-abandoned manifesto for their blog.
A short piece about Substack.
The software they use for their writing.
How their writing workflow doesn’t work any more… which explains why they aren’t writing.
And finally, another post which promises some more writing, at some point.

Now, I’m going to be absolutely fair here: the blog I’m talking about above does have some self-awareness about all this. They know it’s silly. But that doesn’t stop it being a perfect catalogue of writing about the possibility of doing some writing, and then not really doing any writing. It’s an utter waste of time.

Or, as I called it once, pretend blogging.

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I’m not linking to it, for obvious reasons. It’s still Christmas. ↩

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social media, writing

Dirty Feed: Best of 2022

Published 28th December 2022

Meta

2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023

I’ll tell you something, I’m utterly bored with writing depressing intros for these end-of-year articles. You know the drill. “Oh, hasn’t this year been awful, global pandemics, politics, blah blah blah, never mind, here’s the best things I’ve written this year.”

So: 2022 has been brilliant, hasn’t it? Everyone had a great time, and people couldn’t be happier. Now here’s the best things I’ve written this year.

* * *

DJs Leave Radio Fab
An in-depth look at the origins of a prop newspaper in Smashie & Nicey: the End of an Era. Well, start the year as you mean to go on. As indeed I did, with similar articles looking at prop newspapers in Red Dwarf and The Young Ones. This is an entire waste of time, and I won’t be writing any articles about this ever again. Such as the one about I’m Alan Partridge which I definitely won’t be publishing next year.

DJs leave Radio Fab. Mike Smash and Dave Nice left Radio Fab FM yesterday after being with the station since 1967.

Red Dwarf model shot - clapperboard dated 11/2/87

I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates
For years, we’ve heard about the recording of Series 1 of Red Dwarf being abandoned due to an electricians’ strike… but we’ve never known exactly when those abandoned recording dates were. Until now. See also: how a similar strike affected The Young Ones.

A Brief History of a Doorway in Red Dwarf (1989-96)
I mean, seriously. You probably already know if you want to click on that or not. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to sell it. Ditto with this piece about the sets in “Back to Reality”.

Shame.
About why you shouldn’t always feel shame about older versions of you hanging around the web, and why deleting them might not be the best idea. I write a fair bit about the web – and especially the archiving of the web – but rarely make a fuss about it, because I don’t think many people visit this site for that kind of stuff. This is one of the few pieces on this topic which actually got noticed a little.

A Few Random Thoughts on 2point4 children
I saw 2point4 children for the first time properly this year. Here are my long and rambling thoughts about it, but if you want the short version: it’s great. I’d love to write more about the series next year. In the meantime: what was the original theme tune for the pilot?

Tales From BBC North West’s Scene Dock
Here it is. The most popular article I wrote all year, about the links between Chucklevision and Red Dwarf. No, I’m not turning into a parody of myself, now why don’t you sod off?

In Search of the Golden Brain
And there’s the second most popular article I wrote all year, about the truth behind a notorious treasure hunt in the first Spitting Image book. This is the kind of investigation I’d like to write much more of next year, as it’s deeply satisfying. (And yes, I still have that vague idea of writing a Comedy Mysteries book…)

“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”
Investigating the day that Jeffrey Fairbrother took a trip aboard the Enterprise, in one of the silliest things ever made. Thank god for old issues of TV Zone. Also this year: proving ST:TNG‘s most prolific director wrong.

Mmmm, Nice
Bizarrely, I’ve never written about Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em on here before, despite it being one of my favourite shows. So here’s a short tale about the production of Series 1 of the show… and what’s so special about the very last episode of that series. See also: proving Wikipedia wrong about the recording of Are You Being Served.

Relative Time Dilation in an Amazingly Compressed Space
Of all the more personal pieces I’ve written this year, this is my favourite. It captures just a little moment where you’re fully aware of history taking place in front of you… even if it’s really just a little piece of your own history.

That-cher
How did the BBC originally report the news of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation? And can we absolve a BBC daytime presenter of a heinous broadcasting crime? All this and some obscure 1980s production paperwork.

Alf Garnett wheeling around Else, from Series 1 of In Sickness and in Health

An Evening at Television Centre
Sneaking in at the end of the year, this ended up as one of my favourite pieces, about the pilot of In Sickness and in Health… and why I really, really wish I had a time machine.

* * *

This year has been a bit of a mixed bag. I wrote less than I did in 2021 – more individual posts, sure, but fewer words, and perhaps fewer articles I’m really proud of. On the other hand, in writing this end-of-year piece, I find I’ve actually done a little more I liked than I thought. And at least I finally got the redesign of this place done, which I’ve been putting off for years.¹

Truth be told, I’ve found this year quite tough, for reasons that I don’t really want to go into. So I’ll just say: thank you if you read any of my stuff this year, especially if you sent any other visitors my way, or sent me any nice comments, or indeed helped with some of the research. Despite my troubles this year, writing in this place is one of the things which has kept me sane. The fact that other people enjoy my nonsense too makes me very happy. And I have plenty of plans for fun stuff next year.²

Oh yeah, next year. For all the obvious reasons, my desire is to use Twitter less. Hopefully a lot less. So if you want to give me a late Christmas present, then please sign up for my monthly newsletter, which is launching in January:

I guess I should really write a paragraph here to tie this whole article up and provide a climax. But having watched a quite incredible amount of Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health over the last couple of months, I can say with some confidence that Johnny Speight didn’t always bother. So I’ll just leave this piece hanging shoddily in mid-air–

[awkward silence, audience applause]

I’m still proud of my new logo, which I must write something about next year. ↩
YES, INCLUDING FLASH FRAMES IN THE YOUNG ONES. ↩

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end of year review

An Evening at Television Centre

Published 16th December 2022

TV Comedy

There is a certain kind of deranged comedy fan, who has a very particular kind of deranged list. It’s a list which can bring you nothing but pain. “Which sitcom episodes would you love to have been in the studio audience for, but weren’t?” Bonus points if you hadn’t even been born at the time of the recording.

I am a deranged comedy fan. And my deranged list includes the Fawlty Towers episode “The Kipper and the Corpse”, the Red Dwarf episode “Marooned”, and the One Foot in the Grave episode “The Trial”. Somebody seriously needs to invent a time machine. Screw killing Hitler, I’ll spend most of my time hanging around various TV studios.

But one show has just leapt right to the top of my list. Not because it’s a seminal episode of sitcom, although it is very, very good. But because of what I’ve discovered about the studio recording itself.

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alf garnett, an evening at television centre, best of, pilots

Something New

Published 11th December 2022

Internet

On a Google Sheets document, I have a list of articles planned for Dirty Feed. As it stands today, there are 236 items on it. The chances of getting round to writing all of them are zero. The chances of getting round to half of them are also zero. What makes it even worse is that it isn’t even my only list of potential Dirty Feed projects.

But one potential article seemed so vanishingly unlikely to get done, it never even made it onto any of my lists. That article was a history of a little show called Parallel 9. A Saturday morning kid’s show from my childhood, which I vaguely remembered, clearly had a hugely interesting story attached to it… and yet nobody had really done any research on it at all.

Well, now they have. My old pal Jonathan Bufton is currently writing a multi-part history of the show. Part 1 and Part 2 deal with how that first series of Parallel 9 looked on-screen, but it’s Part 3 where things begin to get really special. Having been given access to plenty of never-before-seen documentation, Jonathan has put together the true story of how the programme was made. A story which has never, ever been told before, that people have wondered about for years… and suddenly, there it all is, 30 years later.

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writing

That-cher

Published 24th November 2022

TV Presentation

I do love reading stories by people who worked in the BBC Presentation department in times gone by. Especially all the hair-raising tales about breakdowns or near-misses. What always strikes me is how while some things have obviously changed over the years, many other things have stayed exactly the same. Believe me, I speak from experience.

For instance, take this page of stories, on the Tech-ops History Site. I’m not yet in a position to tell many of my stories, but versions of most of those things have certainly happened to me while I’ve been directing BBC One and Two. Why yes, I am in therapy right now, why do you ask?

But one particular story stands out. In just a few short words, it builds up a real image of a dreadful piece of transmission, on a supremely important day when BBC1 needed to get things right:

“Margaret Thatcher resigning and having to go the News off an intro from some idiot presenter on a daytime prog in Birmingham who said ‘Now for news of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation, here’s Moira Stuart…'”

In my head, I could see it clearly. News are supposed to be the ones actually breaking the story. A daytime presenter is not supposed to gazump the national newsreader and tell the viewer first. It sounds like a hideous piece of television, at least from a professional point of view.