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A Bunch of BBC Studio Schedules 1965-66

Published 13th February 2022

TV Presentation

Sometimes, this site indulges in a complicated analysis of TV shows. And sometimes someone just sends me in some scans that are interesting, and I immediately bung them up. Both approaches are valid. After all, how else would you know how much the rhubarb crumble cost at Wood Norton in 1971?

From an anonymous donor, then, here is a bunch of studio schedules detailing what was recorded in various BBC studios at the tail end of 1965, and the start of 1966. It is not in any way comprehensive, but it is in every sense fascinating. I’ve put the odd note here and there, but I’ve deliberately not said much; the whole joy of these schedules is flicking your eye across them, and seeing what programmes catch your eye.

(Presenting these things is never easy online. Click/tap on each image for a larger version.)


25th – 31st December 1965, TC1/TC2/TC3/TC4

The Doctor Who episode recorded in TC3 on the 31st December was Episode 10 of The Daleks’ Master Plan, “Escape Switch” – one of only three of the twelve episodes which still survives.

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All the News That’s Fit to YouTube

Published 9th February 2022

Life / Meta / TV Presentation

Content warning: sexual assault, but no graphic details.

Yesterday’s article about Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era brought up a problem that I have to contend with every so often. And that problem is: how to deal when a real, horrible thing suddenly intrudes on the silly kind of nonsense I usually write about on here. In yesterday’s case, what was supposed to be a shaggy dog story finding out how a production team adapted a newspaper, turned into a story about a 21-year-old woman being brutally stabbed to death by her husband.

When writing the piece, I had to figure out how to tackle that. Did it make the article inappropriate to publish? Did it at the very least require a warning? In the end, I decided no to both. The story is shocking, but was also ultimately quite short, with no gruesome detail beyond mentioning “multiple stab wounds”. Being over-sensitive can be just as awkward as not considering things enough. I decided to let it stand as it was, and while the piece does actually end as a joke, it’s a joke that acknowledges the awkwardness and hopefully puts everybody on the same page. A joke with a point.

But it did remind me of another issue I had a few years back. It’s something I never wrote about at the time; there is no way of discussing the actual case in question, for reasons that will become apparent. But a conversation on Twitter reminded me of it, and I think it’s an interesting thing to discuss in terms of the problems you can easily run into with examining old telly. So let’s try to examine it… without actually linking to the video in question.

Because this is a case of jigsaw identification.

The video I wanted to write about was a news bulletin. It was a news bulletin with something particularly interesting about its production, which is why I wanted to write about it; the actual news stories were mostly irrelevant to my point. But throughout the bulletin, there was a story about a woman who had been abducted, and then rescued. There was plenty of information given about the abduction: the woman’s name, place names, and the details of how it ended. It’s very, very easy to research what happened with this story after this news bulletin aired.

And when you do that, the woman’s name – so prominent in the bulletin – disappears. And it disappears for a very obvious reason: because she was raped during her abduction. This fact isn’t mentioned during the news broadcast – as much as anything else, it’s too soon for that information to come to light. But once it did, and the rape itself is reported, the woman’s name is entirely excised.

When I found all this out at the time, I was horrified that I’d managed to piece this together. These days, perhaps I’m a little less shocked; given that part of what I do on here is to drag out obscure things, I guess it’s not a surprise that I’d accidentally touch on stuff like this. But it’s a reminder of how easy jigsaw identification is, and you don’t have to be a journalist writing about current criminal cases to mean you have to be careful about it. You can run into these issues even just writing stupid things about old TV.

It’s also a reminder that we’re really not supposed to be able to see that bulletin, here in 2022. It was meant to be watched at that particular moment in time. I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been uploaded; far from it, in fact. But the intent with that piece of reporting was not that any random person would be able to see it in 2022.

There are historic videos and articles like these everywhere online. They’re not intentionally doing anything untoward. But you can piece together all kinds of things using them that you really shouldn’t be able to. I’m not sure there’s an easy solution; any potential “fix” could create a problem ten times worse.

But it’s why, even when writing about old telly… you have to be aware of certain things you might not expect to have to deal with.

DJs Leave Radio Fab

Published 8th February 2022

TV Comedy

JOHNNY BEERGUT: They’re sacked!
SMASHIE & NICEY: We resign!

The internet is not short of praise for Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era (TX: 4/4/94). This is not surprising, given that it’s their masterwork. What the internet is short of, mind, is going through End of an Era with a fine toothcomb, and picking out bits of obscure production detail.

Hello there. After our relaunch, let’s get back to business as usual, right?

So take a look at the newspaper at the beginning of End of an Era, announcing the resignation of Smashie and Nicey in a highly amusing manner.1

Now, clearly they wouldn’t have written an entire edition of a newspaper just for this sequence. So our question for today: what real newspaper did the production team use as a basis for the prop?

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  1. Incidentally, I also enjoy the Hippies take on this joke: HIPPIES IN POINTLESS, STUPID PROTEST AT OBSCURE SANDPAPER EXHIBITION. ↩

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The Button

Published 7th February 2022

TV Presentation

When I worked in Channel 5 transmission, a long time ago now, there was an old lag. The kind you often find in TX. He’d been doing the same job for absolutely years; if I recall correctly, he’d worked on Channel 5 ever since its launch in 1997. Nothing fazed him, or at least seemed to faze him, which is the same thing. He was the kind of person you wanted to soak up every single last bit of knowledge from.

One day, we got talking about mistakes. Specifically, on-air mistakes. In my line of work, we’ve all made them. That horrible moment where your heart sinks, as something stupid happens to the channel you’re supposed to be protecting the output of. It’s a horrible, awful experience; you go home feeling like absolute shit. Sometimes you’re still thinking about it days later. I still have flashbacks to a mistake I made in 2014.

But I’ll never forget what this old lag told me, as a way of putting it all in perspective.

“Just imagine a button. Your job is to press that button at a certain time each day. That’s the only thing you have to do. Nothing else.”

I looked at him. “Yeah?”

“One day, you’d forget to press it.”

Dirty Feed IV

Published 6th February 2022

Meta

Yo, babes. After nearly five years, it’s time for a bit of a change around here. Welcome to the fourth incarnation of Dirty Feed.1 So what’s new?

In many ways: not much. Tags have been rethought somewhat; I was getting rather bored of writing “television, sitcom, comedy” for every single bloody post, so that nonsense has gone. In its place are a far more streamlined set of tags, along with a proper category system labelling articles as TV Comedy and the like. Far more pleasant and useful, I hope.

You’ll also note that the Twitter link in the header has permanently gone. I’m still around on Twitter, but the idea is to try and move away from it as the sole way of telling you all what I’m up to on here. The new Subscribe page is fairly basic at the moment, but over the next few months it should hopefully grow into something a little more interesting. I’ll keep things as vague as that for now.

But the main idea behind this redesign is to try and give this place a little more life. A splash more colour, quirkier but hopefully still readable fonts… and a brand new logo. Yes, that is a T. I think this spruce-up is more garish than the last design, and that is entirely deliberate. I’ll write a little more about this side of things in the days to come.

The usual health warnings apply; I’m still going through old posts to convert them to the new format, so don’t worry about any dodgy stuff there for now. In fact, while I say this every time, this design really is meant to be a work-in-progress rather something which sits there going mouldy. Let’s see if I manage to actually commit to that this time round, but I have plenty of ideas. Having said all of that, if you spot anything obnoxiously wrong, please let me know.

And for those of you who don’t give a tinker’s fuck about redesigns… hey, how about some brand new stuff on Smashie and Nicey: The End of an Era? OK, I’ll see what I can do.

  1. Previous incarnations: 2010, 2011, and 2017. ↩

Tedious Site Update

Published 29th January 2022

Meta

As anybody who has followed either me or this site knows by now, I have a rather nasty habit of deciding one thing on here, only to do the exact opposite. This reached its ultimate expression last year, where the site went on hiatus in January… only to give up two weeks later and then have the busiest and most prolific year in the site’s history.

Therefore, despite having plans, I was wary of promising exactly where the site was going at the start of this year, lest I completely change my mind as per fucking usual. But a month in, it’s become rather clearer what’s actually happening. So, in the spirit of actually wanting to communicate with you all properly, here’s the deal.1

1) The big news is that after years of promises, I’m finally in the middle of a proper redesign of this place. In fact, the main part of it is actually finished, and I’m currently picking away at fixing all the annoying little corners. I’m not going to give a launch date – I’ve learnt my lesson on that one at least – but it’ll probably be in the next few weeks.

New Dirty Feed logo

2) While this redesign takes place, Dirty Feed is on Reduced Power. There might be the odd post here and there, but nothing in-depth. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of fun stuff planned as soon as the redesign is complete. I’m itching to get started on them already.

3) Some of you will have noticed that I’m not currently on Twitter. I always planned to take a bit of a break at the start of the year, but I’m usually desperate to get back on there after a month away. I’m really, really not feeling like that at the moment. In fact, I’m happier than I’ve been for some considerable time as a direct result of not being there, and I’m getting more things done into the bargain.2

When Dirty Feed relaunches, I’ll end up reactivating my account, in order to catch up with various people, and let everyone know about updates on here. I’ll probably end up tweeting various silly things as well. But after years of trying, I’ve finally managed to break the habit of checking Twitter as soon as I wake up and getting into a spiral of feeling terrible for the whole day, and I don’t intend to go back to that.

TL;DR: Redesign coming, no in-depth posts until that happens, and Twitter is a fucking nightmare. See you soon.

  1. At this point, I like to think of a certain site who welcomed aboard a new writer, had them post for a couple of years, until they went on hiatus… and never returned. And never told their audience where they had gone, or what they were doing. And to top it off, silently deleted their last few posts. That is called treating your readers with contempt. ↩

  2. Fifty hours and counting on a replay of Final Fantasy XII qualifies as “getting things done”, right? ↩

The Wrong Wavelength

Published 28th January 2022

Life

When I was a kid, I went through a period of being obsessed with light bulbs.

Not in a useful way, mind. I wasn’t really obsessed with how they worked, or how they were made. No, I was interested in types of light bulbs. I’d wander any given department store, investigating. What’s this, a 40 watt bulb? 60W? 100W? 150W? When do you use which type of bulb, Dad? Why? Why?

And if the wattage alone was exciting, then you can imagine the state I was in when I discovered that you could buy bulbs of different colours. And, of course, I wanted one in my bedroom immediately. Why would I put up with a boring white bulb, when I could have something far more interesting instead?

*   *   *

Nottingham, in the early 90s. A detached house in the beautiful leafy suburb of Wollaton. There’s a primary school just over the road. It’s as respectable a scene as you could ever hope to find.

But beware. Every night, one window of the house glowed a curious, inviting red.

The Open Web

Published 14th January 2022

Internet

The new, relaunched blog of a “web developer and designer”, somewhere near the start of 2020:

“The open web is a husk of its former self, conceded to the corporate ventures whose aim is to collect as much data as possible and leverage it in the most profitable manner possible. I want to reclaim my portion of it that dream of an open web of sharing ideas, culture, and imagination.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

“I’m not happy with the result, but I will never be. Designing for oneself is an artistic act, and dissatisfaction for me in that sense is foundational. But again, that’s not the goal. The goal is to take back my part of the web.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

“And with that, I will pledge to improve this site steadily and to contribute to the content regularly. To not let it die.”

Spoiler: they did.

*   *   *

I think caring about the open web is a good thing. I think sharing ideas, culture, and imagination is to be commended.

But you don’t do that by redesigning your blog, posting a manifesto, and then leaving it to rot. The design and manifesto are the least important thing. If you want to take back your part of the web, then you need to share your ideas and thoughts for real, on an ongoing basis.

It doesn’t have to be every day. Or even every week. And it certainly doesn’t have to be in blog posts stretching to thousands of words. There are so many different ways of doing it. It doesn’t matter.

But however we do it: if we truly want to take back control from those “corporate ventures”, then we need to actually say something. Not get trapped in that old redesign-languish-redesign cycle.

You want people to step outside Facebook? Have something which makes it worthwhile for people to step outside Facebook. Walled gardens are only worth leaving if there’s something nice on the other side of the wall. And your latest site redesign just isn’t going to be enough.

Contributing to the open web doesn’t need much. It doesn’t need 1337 design skillz. It doesn’t need hours of your time a day. And it most certainly doesn’t need any kind of manifesto.

It just needs you to start writing, and see what happens.

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A Brief Investigation into Recording Dates for Are You Being Served?

Published 13th January 2022

TV Comedy

At the end of last year, we talked a little about how some sitcoms were shot far closer to transmission than I ever expected. But sometimes, such stories just seem a little too unbelievable. Take Are You Being Served? – or, specifically, Wikipedia’s episode guide for the show. If you scan your eyes down that list until you reach Series 5, you will come across something rather odd.

Apparently, every single episode of Series 5 was recorded the day before it aired. For example, “Mrs Slocombe Expects”, shown on the 25th February 1977, was recorded on the 24th February 1977. This continues right up until the last episode of Series 5, “It Pays to Advertise”; this was shown on the 8th April 1977, and was apparently recorded on the 7th April 1977.

Something smells fishy. Being recorded close to transmission is one thing. The entire series being shot the day before TX is quite another. So let’s take a sneaky look at the paperwork for that first episode of the series, “Mrs Slocombe Expects”.

Paperwork for episode Mrs Slocombe Expects - all relevant information transcribed in main body text

Through that haze of atrocious reproduction, we can just about read the recording date for the episode: 18th February 1977. Actually very close to transmission – exactly a week before, in fact – but certainly not the previous day.

And the same holds true for the rest of the series. “The Old Order Changes” was recorded on the 11th March for transmission on the 18th March, “Goodbye Mr. Grainger” was recorded on the 25th March for transmission on the 1st April, and “It Pays to Advertise” was recorded on the 1st April for transmission on the 8th April. And while I’m missing information on two of the episodes, it’s not too difficult to work out from all this that “A Change is as Good as a Rest” was almost certainly recorded on the 25th February for transmission on the 4th March, and “Founder’s Day” was recorded on the 4th March for transmission on the 11th March.

As to how somebody updated Wikipedia with this particular piece of incorrect information, who knows. It could perhaps be a simple confusion between “a day” and “a week”. But despite it triggering my Spidey-sense, this kind of misinformation is all too easily believable to some, because it’s so damn specific. There’s no actual need to quote the recording dates in the first place; if somebody has bothered to do so, it’s extremely easy to just assume that they are the real deal. Indeed, this “fact” about some episodes of the show being recorded the day before TX has been quoted to me at least twice before.

It ain’t true. And to be fair, given past experience, Wikipedia will probably be corrected by somebody within an hour of me posting this.1

  1. I’ve been asked before why I don’t fix things on Wikipedia myself. Without going into too many details, I struggle a little with Wikipedia’s guidelines on various things. Not to the point where I want to do some massive rant about them… but I’m not going to get involved myself. Sorry, Wikipedians, but my work is best done here. ↩

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81 Take 2

Published 12th January 2022

TV Comedy

For 2022, I saw the New Year in right. Yes, I watched some comedy from exactly 40 years ago. Why, what did you think I was up to?

So thanks to Ian Greaves, here is 81 Take 2, a sketch show produced by Sean Hardie which was originally broadcast on BBC1 on 31st December 1981 at 11:20pm. Described by the Radio Times at the time as “guaranteed unrepeatable”, that is in fact exactly what it was.

I’m not about to do a lengthy, in-depth review of the programme. It fully deserves one, of course, but not today. Suffice to say that the Not the Nine O’Clock News and A Kick Up the Eighties DNA is supremely apparent. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, and it’s worth watching for the The Hee Bee Gee Bees segment alone.1

I do, however, want to draw your attention to the final segment at 27:43, after the fake end, where we join “Caesars Palace in Las Vegas”… and a certain Dicky Dynasty. Where Rik Mayall gives a quite astonishing performance. It’s by far the best part of the whole programme.

And anyone who knows anything about The Young Ones will recognise the character instantly. Nearly a year later in “Bomb”, broadcast on 30th November 1982, we get…

As has been pointed out by Mike Scott, amongst others: the whole programme, and the Dicky section in particular, really is a bit of a missing link when it comes to early 80s comedy. A programme which should have been clipped up and talked about endlessly, but really hasn’t.

It reminds me that there’s always something new to discover. No matter how much The Young Ones has been talked about over the years, the above has remained genuinely obscure for four decades now. Instead of going over the same old anecdotes, we should be digging up things like this.

*   *   *

In the spirit of the above then, here’s a brand new piece of information about 81 Take 2 which is relevant to this site’s interests. Because despite their absence in the credit roller, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor contributed a sketch to this programme. It isn’t their first broadcast TV material; for a start, they had contributed to Series 1 of A Kick Up the Eighties a few months previously. But it certainly counts as some of their very earliest.

Tracing exactly which material they wrote is slightly tricky. The paperwork for the programme doesn’t give the names of each sketch, but just lists the duration and its writer roughly in order. Moreover, some of the durations don’t 100% match… because of course they bloody don’t.

I think we can have a stab, though. Here’s the last few credits listed in the paperwork:

Andy Hamilton: Sketch: Dur 2.35
Simon Holder/Dudley Rogers: Oneliner: 12″
Colin Gilbert: Oneliner: Dur 23″
Donnie Kerr: Oneliner: Dur 12″
Donnie Kerr: Oneliner: Dur 15″
Peggy Evens: Oneliner: Dur 8″
Niall Clark: Quickie: Dur 25″
Philip Differ: Oneliner: Dur: 10″
Rob Grant/Doug Naylor: Sketch: Dur: 39″
Mike Radford: Oneliner: Dur: 10″
Ian Pattison: Quickie: Dur: 15″

The big Hamilton sketch at the top of that list is at 21:38 into the YouTube video, and is the Godfather parody. Skipping a few, I think the 25″ Clark quickie is at 25:43, and the lethal package sent to Mrs. Thatcher. We then have the 10″ one liner written by Differ… meaning that the Grant Naylor sketch is almost certainly the cricket scores sketch at 26:22. It lasts 34″ and not 39″, but I put that down to the usual inaccuracies you get with this kind of thing. Moreover, the sketch feels very Grant Naylor to me.

Happy 2022 everyone.

  1. It is tempting to complain that BBC One should be showing new comedy on New Year’s Eve now, and that a best of Have I Got News For You doesn’t quite cut it. Then I just thought I’d check what BBC One Scotland were up to, and noticed that they not only had a brand new episode of Scot Squad, and also had a brand new sketch show Queen of the New Year. ↩

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