Home • About • Archives • Best Of • Subscribe

You Rang, M’Lord: The Missing Seven Minutes

Published 18th June 2021

TV Comedy

8.00 – 9.00pm
You Rang, M’Lord?
By JIMMY PERRY, DAVID CROFT.
Starring Paul Shane as Alf
Jeffrey Holland as Jim
Su Pollard as Ivy
featuring Donald Hewlett as Lord George Meldrum
Michael Knowles as the Honourable Teddy
Bill Pertwee as PC Wilson
Brenda Cowling as Mrs Lipton.
A new hour-long comedy performed in front of an audience, in which Lord Meldrum takes on a new butler who in turn engages his daughter as a parlour-maid.

Radio Times, BBC1, Thursday 29th December 1988

What do Hi-de-Hi!, ‘Allo ‘Allo!, and You Rang, M’Lord? have in common?

Yes, they were all sitcoms produced and co-written by David Croft, and yes, they all have a penchant for punctuation marks in the title. Moving closer to the point, they all had proper pilot episodes that were shot separately from the rest of their first series. And they are all truly excellent pilots.

What’s more, all these pilots were also transmitted before their first series proper arrived. Hi-de-Hi!‘s pilot was broadcast in January 1980; the series arrived in February 1981. ‘Allo ‘Allo‘s pilot was shown in December 1982; the series didn’t arrive until September 1984. And the pilot for You Rang, M’Lord? was shown in December 1988, but the series didn’t arrive until January 1990.

You Rang, M’Lord? trail (for December 1988)

Today, you can easily see two of these pilots essentially as audiences saw them the first time round; the DVD releases for Hi-de-Hi! and ‘Allo ‘Allo contain the shows as they were initially broadcast.1 You Rang, M’Lord? is very much a different story. And it’s a story which has – with the odd honourable exception – gone virtually undocumented.

The clue is in the Radio Times listing above. One of the most notable things about You Rang, M’Lord? is the fact the show had a 50 minute duration, which allowed for – as David Croft put it – “a good opportunity to develop characters and scenes more thoroughly”2 And indeed, if you pop in the DVD, that pilot episode lasts for 49’07”.

In which case, why does that 1988 Radio Times capsule promise an “hour-long comedy”?

The answer: because when that pilot was first shown on the 29th December 1988, it wasn’t 49’07. It was 55’58”. But when the programme was repeated on the 7th January 1990 – the week before Series 1 of the show started properly – it magically fitted a 50 minute slot. What gives?

You Rang, M’Lord? trail (for January 1990)

The obvious explanation is that the show was edited down between its initial showing and its repeat. But what’s unusual for a Croft comedy is that this longer edit never had another outing. The show has – as far as I can tell – never been repeated or commercially released in its original longer version. Meaning that the way the British public first experienced You Rang, M’Lord? has been all but lost to history.3

I don’t like things being lost to history. For the first time, then, here is exactly what was edited out of the 1988 pilot of You Rang, M’Lord? for all subsequent repeats and DVD releases. A piece of David Croft that never usually sees the light of day. Many thanks to Elaine Musselwhite who dug out her copy of this very rarely seen part of Croft’s oeuvre, without which this piece would have been impossible to write.

All times included are for the 50 minute version released on DVD, so you can play along at home.

[Read more →]

  1. The occasional additional caption or so aside. ↩

  2. David Croft’s autobiography You Have Been Watching…, p. 231. ↩

  3. The only book I’ve found which even gives the broad strokes of this story of the longer edit is Rob Cope & Mike Fury’s Hi-de-Hi! Companion, from 2009. ↩

Read more about...

, ,

Seventh Heaven

Published 2nd June 2021

TV Comedy

For years, we didn’t know the true story of how Red Dwarf‘s first episode was made. Not really.

I mean, we thought we did. Blah blah script rejected by the BBC for years, blah blah eventually accepted at BBC Manchester, blah blah electrician’s strike, blah blah remounted in late 1987, blah blah atom bomb. We also knew the rough pattern for the recordings: rehearse at Acton for four days, go up to Manchester for two days of recording – a pre-record day on the Saturday, then the audience record day for the Sunday. Then most people had Monday off, and then back to work rehearsing the next episode on Tuesday. Simple.

That is, until the big revelation. In 2007, a rather curious DVD set was released. Titled Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection, this was a grab bag full of Dwarf stuff which – for various reasons – didn’t make it onto the original DVD releases. And one of these features was a proper, in-depth documentary about Series 1 of the show.

ROB GRANT: At the end of the recording of the first series, we had a spare recording day – including a day’s pre-VT – so we could do a whole other show.
PAUL JACKSON: I knew it was there. And I think I maybe even discussed with them [Rob Grant and Doug Naylor], you know, we might have to do a seventh script, and that wasn’t really very practical. So we devised this rather cunning plan of using that last week to go back and do pick-ups for the rest of the series. And again, because the BBC worked in these blocks and then didn’t really monitor it very carefully, nobody noticed, in effect. And we just delivered six.

“The Beginning”, Red Dwarf: The Bodysnatcher Collection

Most of those pick-ups were for that first episode, “The End”; in fact, well over half of the episode was reshot. And in an instant, this changed a vast chunk of what we thought we knew about the production of that first episode of Red Dwarf. From a programme recorded on the weekend of the 26th/27th September 1987, it now also became a programme where huge sections were re-recorded on the 7th/8th November 1987.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

A Short Discursion About Sets in You Rang, M’Lord

Published 26th May 2021

TV Comedy

It is the 3rd December 1988 in studio TC6, and David Croft has a problem. The pilot of You Rang M’Lord? is about to start two days of recording, and things just aren’t ready.

As he recounts in his autobiography:

“We were due to record the pilot programme at Television Centre. Unfortunately, we hit a very bad period when the BBC was plagued by strikes, go-slows and walk-outs. When I arrived at the studio, the sets were barely standing. We rehearsed and recorded as they were completed. When we arrived on the second day for the public show, the audience seating had not been set and only the hall staircase was standing. The drawing room, dining room and kitchen had yet to be built and dressed. Nothing was to be gained by abandoning the recording, so I went ahead, determined to get all we could. It was far and away the most difficult day in the studio I have ever had. […]

When the audience arrived for the recording, Felix Bowness did the warm-up as if nothing had happened and the actors bravely played their parts. It was an excellent performance but, for instance, the walls of the dining room, which should have been festooned with oil paintings, were completely bare. There was no question of doing the show again so, in that condition, it went out over the air. The paucity of the set dressing didn’t affect the laughs, and Gareth1 went ahead and ordered the series.”

David Croft, “You Have Been Watching…”, p. 232

[Read more →]

  1. Gareth Gwenlan, then the head of BBC comedy. ↩

Read more about...

,

A Revised Schedule of Programmes

Published 25th May 2021

TV Comedy

One thing I’ve become vaguely obsessed with over the past year is how often the things that “everyone” knows about a TV show turn out to be incorrect. Of course, by “everyone”, I don’t actually mean everyone. The person on the street doesn’t mutter Brittas Empire TX dates as they go about their shopping. At least not in my local Tesco.

Somewhere which should know its Brittas Empire TX dates is epguides.com, mind you. Here is their page for the show, although I’ve screengrabbed the relevant section below, for reasons which will soon become apparent.

Series 1 Brittas Empire TX dates - don't worry, this is just for illustrative purposes, the actual information you need will be present in the body text

According to epguides.com, Series 1 of The Brittas Empire aired weekly from the 3rd January 1991, ending on the 14th February, skipping a week on the 31st. Wikipedia has the same details, as does The Brittas Empire Wiki. For complete transparency, seeing as I was writing for the site when it was published, Ganymede & Titan‘s guide has the same broad dates, but skips the 10th rather than the 31st; IMDB follows these latter dates too.

Every single guide mentioned above is wrong.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

, ,

40.

Published 23rd May 2021

Life / TV Presentation

I was born on the 23rd May 1981, at Peel Street Hospital in Nottingham. Six months later, that hospital closed for good. I don’t think the two instances were linked.

Third child of the family, I weighed 3.73kg, and popped out at precisely 2:46pm. Which means we can ignore the rest of the gory details, and figure out the really interesting thing: what was on BBC television at precisely the moment I was born?

On BBC1 was Grandstand – specifically, the build-up to England v Scotland at Wembley. Meanwhile, over on BBC2, the afternoon film The Wonder Kid (1952) had just started. Make up your own jokes.

*   *   *

I am blessed with an absolutely fucking diabolical memory. My entire childhood exists as ever-disintegrating glimpses of quarter-remembered events.

But TV was always there. I distinctly remember running around the school playground with a camera, shooting the ongoing football match. I mean, I didn’t have a real camera. We couldn’t even afford Sky at that point, let alone have the money for something like that. I had to improvise. This improvisation consisted of a plastic ice cream tub, with stickers all over it for the buttons, and a toilet roll tube sticking out the side for the lens. This was placed on my head, so I could look through the tube. Sadly, this did not make Kerry Carter immediately fall in love with me.

I also distinctly remember watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit on Central… and then catching it again a year or so later, and noting that the shoe dip scene seemed to have been further cut. “Why would that happen?”, I wondered, not realising that it was the start of a lifelong obsession.

Then, there was Going Live! A show which got me out of bed early every Saturday morning – for half the year, at least. That show was mine, and Trev and Simon were the best thing in the world. I may never fall in love with a TV show in quite the same way again.

And one day, I noticed something interesting. A certain name showed up in those end credits. Erm, my name.1

Going Live! credits - Camera Supervisor John Hoare

Even at that age, it got me thinking. What would happen if I wrote into the show, told them that my name was the same as that guy who did the cameras, and that’s it’s what I wanted to do when I grew up? Surely they’d have me on the show, and I’d get to meet everyone? Wouldn’t that be amazing?

I never did it. I’m not exactly sure why. I mean, I can tell you that I was a lazy little shit. I also thought that thousands of letters would be sent into Going Live! each week. I suspect I didn’t think it was worth trying. These days, my gut feeling is that it was more likely something amazing might have happened than I expected at the time, but who knows, really.

So I never got to go anywhere near the Going Live! studio, unfortunately. I had to settle for lurking behind the camera at a Nottingham OB for one of the ITV Telethon programmes, and yelling out excitedly when I saw the Central logo on the camera. I distinctly remember the cameraman turning to me, and giving me an indulgent smile. To be fair, that was great too.

But none of this – not even the ice cream tub camera – meant I really thought I’d ever work in television. As much as it was a huge part of my life, working on the other side of the screen seemed somehow completely impossible. Anyway, I was obviously going to end up as a computer programmer or something. No, not a software developer. A computer programmer, that’s what it was called.

*   *   *

Six days after I was born, on the 29th May 1981, the Did You See…? team filmed a segment going behind-the-scenes in the BBC presentation department. Delightfully, somebody has uploaded this segment to YouTube. And at 5:49 into the video, we get to spend a bit of time in NC1, where BBC1 network originates. Warwick Cross is your network director, and the man in charge.

I find watching that video an incredibly weird experience. Because sitting in Warwick’s chair is where I find myself, 40 years later. Some of the job is different these days, and I could write a book about exactly what. But that’s all for another day. Instead, I want to draw your attention to the following.

The hunch forward. The hum to the theme tune. The tiniest hint of world-weariness. None of that is changed, 40 years on. I do all of them. The genetic memory of how to be a network director lives on.

And as for what I might be transmitting on any given day? Who knows. Maybe football on BBC1. Or an old film on BBC2.

Some things never change, 40 years later.

  1. With thanks to Mark Simpson for the screengrab. This particular edition was broadcast on the 4th February 1989. ↩

Read more about...

A Day in the Life of The Young Ones: 30th January 1984

Published 2nd May 2021

TV Comedy

Oh, hello there. Now where were we?

Last time we investigated a day in the life of The Young Ones, we took a look at the pre-record studio day for the episode “Nasty”, which took place on the 6th February 1984. (Read that piece first if you haven’t already for the background information; I’m not going to repeat myself.) But that’s only half the story when it comes to the raw studio recordings sitting on YouTube. The other half of that video is the pre-record day for “Cash”. Oddly enough, despite being the second half of the video, this actually took place the week before, on the 30th January 1984.

Unlike “Nasty” which was in TC4, “Cash” was shot in TC3, and is still an extant studio at Television Centre; Good Morning Britain and This Morning now come from there live every weekday morning. Such is the odd life of a TV studio across the decades.

So, what can we glean from the above recording? As before, nothing can match just sitting and watching the video for yourself. But I thought a few notes about things I’ve spotted could be interesting. So join me as we leap back across the decades, and safely ensconce ourselves in a corner of Television Centre to spy upon proceedings.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

Nice To Be Here, Mr. Rimmer, You Son of a Gun

Published 29th April 2021

TV Comedy

This year has ended up being a rather odd one for Dirty Feed. I initially intended to write precisely nothing for the first half of this year at all. So what better time to accidentally publish one of the most popular things I’ve ever written, and end up deeper in the sitcom salt mines than ever before?

Well, today’s little fact isn’t as good as that one. Or as good as this one. It is, however, something brand new about early Red Dwarf, and clears up a little mystery that has dogged fandom for decades. And by “dogged fandom for decades”, I mean “five or so people wondered about it every so often”.

So let’s take a look at the Series 1 episode “Balance of Power”, broadcast on the 29th February 1988. Specifically, the start of the cinema scene with the skutters.

The question is: what exactly are they watching?

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,

“It doesn’t rain in TV studios!”

Published 28th April 2021

Other TV

It’s odd, how some shows fade from the common memory.

Take How Do They Do That?, a magazine show which aired on BBC1 between 1994-97. You do not require a long explanation of what the point of the show was: the format of the programme is contained entirely within its title. Just ask that question a few hundred times per episode, give some answers, and you have yourself a television programme.

These days, the show mainly known for two things. Among TV presentation fans, it’s known for this behind-the-scenes look at the making of the BBC2 idents. And among Red Dwarf fans, it’s known for this behind-the-scenes look at the model effects for Series VII. And that’s pretty much your lot.

But I have one very, very strong memory of the show. Something which stuck with me for 25 years. The other day, I decided to see if anybody had uploaded it anywhere, not expecting to be rewarded. And blow me down, somebody else had remembered it too.

Here’s the day – the 24th January 1996, although the explanation part of the clip comes from the following week – when the How Do They Do That? studio was flooded.

Usually, when writing about my TV memories, I make an effort to note down what I remember about a show before watching the resulting video. This time, however, I was caught off-guard. I never really expected it to be online, let alone to find it so easily. So my memories of watching this stunt in 1996 are now thoroughly blended with me watching the video in 2021, and they’re difficult to disentangle.

But there is one moment I 100%, absolutely do remember. And that’s the point 36 seconds in, where we cut from studio VT to film.1 It blew my mind when I first watched it, aged 14. It still fairly blows my mind now. Suddenly, with that one shot change, we see the barriers between different kinds of television breaking down. Magazine shows just aren’t supposed to turn into films on a whim. But this one had. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

I’ve always had a love for television which send genres crashing into each other. Red Dwarf is a sitcom crossed with science fiction. Ghostwatch is a drama, done as a live documentary. And here is a normal magazine show, crossed with a disaster movie. There’s nothing that is more designed to send my brain flying off in weird directions than that. It’s exactly the kind of TV that I adore. The fact they actually then went behind-the-scenes in order to tell us how it all worked was the icing on the cake, but that wasn’t the thing I truly loved about the sequence. I loved the initial genre-bending, legitimately odd piece of television.

Wide shot of studio
Flooded studio


And this is exactly the kind of thing which TV finds it difficult to do in 2021. No evening magazine show on BBC One is going to have the money to go off to Pinewood Studios and shoot a sequence like this in their water tank. With a few honourable exceptions such as The One Show, evening magazine shows are an endangered species full stop these days, let alone anything else. The budget for television to go out and do spectacular, stupid things like this just isn’t there any more, at least for this kind of show.

Which makes me sad. Because this is one reason why I loved the kind of TV that was around when I was 14. Not because I was 14. Not because of rose-tinted spectacles. But because truly odd, spectacular things like this could happen on a Wednesday evening on BBC1.

And I miss it.

With thanks to KillianM2 for the original YouTube upload. Their YouTube channel has loads of great stuff, that you could – and should – get lost for hours in.

  1. Sadly a little obscured by the upload, as the VT sequence has been folded down to half the temporal resolution it would have had on broadcast. But you still get some of the effect. ↩

Read more about...

What The Papers Say

Published 15th April 2021

TV Comedy

HACKER: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
HUMPHREY: Prime Minister, what about people who read The Sun?
BERNARD: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.

– Yes, Prime Minister, “A Conflict of Interest” (TX: 23/12/87)

The above is one of the most famous sequences in the whole of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. And like so much of the best comedy, it’s many things at once. A forthright piece of satire on the media, a character moment for Bernard… oh, and a rude joke into the bargain.

It was also, in some circles, a well-worn piece of material by the time it was broadcast on the 23rd December 1987. And the original version of that material was certainly not written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Not that any of this comes under the Official Secrets Act. It’s often been talked about on Twitter, people have asked about it on forums, and it’s also briefly discussed in Graham McCann’s excellent book, A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister. But nobody seems to have collated all the different strands of this little story together in one place.

So here is the tale of where this routine comes from… or, at least, as close as we can get. I can’t promise you that I have found the true origin of this material. But I believe I have managed to get further back than anybody ever has before. And if you already think you know definitively where this material comes from, then prepare to be surprised.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,

Talking Stock: Hi-de-Hi’s Closing Credits, Part Two

Published 8th April 2021

TV Comedy

Dear reader, I fear that with my last article, I may have pushed your goodwill too far. Moreover, I may yet do so again before the end of this article. So before you click away and resolve to never to read another word of this dumb website, let’s quickly dive into some of the good stuff I’ve been promising.

So, where exactly does the stock footage used in the end credits of Hi-de-Hi! come from? Well, let’s throw ourselves straight into some Pathé archive, shall we? And immediately, something rather exciting makes itself obvious…

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,