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Carry On Exploding

Published 20th September 2020

Film

Hello there. Join me once more, for another of my TV memories… and another insight into my warped and generally unpleasant mind.

*   *   *

As usual, I can’t remember exactly how old I am. Around 10, maybe? I’m upstairs in bed, and I should be asleep; it’s past midnight. But for some reason, I am awake, and I hear my Dad laughing away downstairs. I rarely hear this. Not because Dad doesn’t laugh much, but because in general, I’m a very good sleeper.

I don’t know what made me get up. I rarely did that, either. But I distinctly remember creeping downstairs, and finding Dad chortling away in his chair. He’s watching a film. Unlike some of these memories, I need no help identifying what he’s watching. It’s etched clearly onto my memory: Carry On Again Doctor. Probably the first bit of Carry On I ever saw. It won’t exactly be the last.

For some reason, Dad doesn’t send me immediately back to bed. We end up talking. He tells me that the Carry On films were known for their low budget. Why haven’t I been sent upstairs back to bed at this point? He really must have been in a good mood. Maybe Kenneth Williams pulled a face.

And this is probably the point where I share a touching moment with my Dad, about a shared experience of comedy. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Because what appears on the screen disturbs me.

There’s something wrong with the electrics in the hospital. There’s a fusebox, with sparks pouring out of it. A lady is listening to earphones, which blow up in a shower of yet more sparks. I distinctly remember thinking: “How can this film be low budget? Surely it costs loads of money to do that and not hurt someone!”

And worst of all, there’s some kind of scary pump attached to a person. And that pump starts moving faster and faster. I really, really, really don’t like this. Something highly unpleasant is about to happen to that person in the bed. Will they explode in a shower of guts? I have no exact memory of what happens next, and I can’t say for sure that I ran screaming from the room. But no doubt I’m back upstairs safely in bed before too long.

Carry On films were clearly just too disturbing for me to deal with.

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Epiphanies.

Published 19th September 2020

Life

I remember. That visceral childhood sense of an adult being unfair.

Take a random primary school assembly, in what was surely near the beginning of 1991.1 Our headteacher – an unpleasant woman who even the other teachers whispered about – was holding court. At one point, she announced that as the school had already done something for charity this school year, we wouldn’t be engaging in any more charitable activities. This caused a bit of consternation. Clearly, some students had been planning. Someone meekly put up their hand, and asked about Comic Relief that year. Surely we could still do something for that?

No, we could not still do something for that. And our headteacher did not give a friendly, kind response. You know, “I’d love to, and I’m pleased you want to do something, but…” The response was rather harsher. Shouting, even. Did the pupil not listen to what she just said? Our headteacher was angry. Angry at someone who, erm, wanted to help out a charity.

And sitting there, on that bare floor in assembly, I just knew that… it was unfair.

*   *   *

Four years or so later, I’m on my paper round. An iron railing looms into view. Oh God. Time for that house again.

Sometimes, things happen in life which justify all the bad sitcoms in the world. And my nemesis on this paper round really is a dog . A nasty, vicious dog, who – unless you’re very fast – will race to the gate and start barking like it wants to eat you. The saving grace of the house is that I don’t have to go to the door – a letterbox is helpfully placed at the gate. It’s a sign of how violent this dog actually was that delivering the paper is still a challenge.

I distinctly remember complaining to my boss back at the post office. He was unsympathetic. People have the right to defend their own house, you know. “Maybe”, I thought bitterly. “But if they want to do that, they could at least walk 20 metres down the road to pick up their own newspaper.” But whatever. I continued to dread, deliver, and dash.

Until one day, as I gingerly approached the gate, the owner appeared. To be fair, she seemed a nice lady. I handed her the newspaper. She asked if I ever had any problems with the dog. I admitted that yes, I did.

Not to worry. She had a solution. All I had to do was bring some treats, and the dog would soon grow to love me.

Bring some treats. Buy some treats, unless I wanted to become another juvenile crime statistic. With, presumably, my own paper round money.

I did not earn a lot of money on this paper round. And now somebody I was delivering papers to expected me to spend some of it on their dog, just to avoid getting attacked.

At the time, I didn’t get that this was an allegory. I do now. But one thing I did know: it was damn well unfair.

*   *   *

Back to my primary school. It’s assembly time again, with my favourite headteacher. And at the end of most assemblies, we usually sing a song, with us all squinting at a blurry projector. We had a standard repertoire of songs, including a version of “I Can Sing A Rainbow”, rewritten to mention all the colours of the rainbow correctly, according to science.

And then there was another song we used to sing. A song full of hope for the future, for our future, the future of children. A rousing song, a beautiful song, a song to stir our emotions and lead us forward into the light.

That song was “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. Yes, that one.

Stripped of the context of the film, and placed into a brand new, intensely worrying one, you have to wonder just what was going on in her mind.

After all, there’s being unfair, and then there’s thinking the holocaust was a grand idea.

  1. It could be ’89, but I would have been seven, and that just seems a little too early. ↩

The Journey

Published 18th September 2020

Life

It’s 11pm, as I leave a certain broadcasting centre in West London. Time to go home. I take the tube; partly for cost reasons, and partly because of a rather nasty case of claustrophobia. The larger tube trains don’t set that off, you see. Either way, taking a taxi home after every late shift isn’t an option.

I get on the tube, and sit down. To my right are three people. None of them are wearing a mask. But hey, I’ve been the person saying that lung issues can be invisible, and that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions about people. Maybe they’re all exempt. I sit back with my book, and try not to think about it.

I’m soon at my interchange, and I quickly change lines. Annoyingly, my next train is at a different platform to normal; I have to run up some stairs. My lungs protest – I have some nasty scarring from pneumonia back in 2016 – but I manage to make it with about half a minute to spare.

We move off. At the next station, somebody comes aboard and sits in front of me. They’re wearing a mask. Good. I concentrate on my book. Until I suddenly become aware of somebody else sitting to my right… without a mask. But, y’know. I have lung issues myself – I manage to wear a mask, but it can be uncomfortable at times – but you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Maybe they’re exempt.

My stop. Thankfully. I can relax a little. I walk briskly out of the station… and into a group of people playing football with a plastic pint glass, and yelling. Well, we’re outside, masks aren’t really required, are they? I pick myself through the group – a little too close for comfort when there’s a lot of them, but whatever – and head for home.

But as I get to the traffic lights, two people cut across me. They’re not wearing masks, either… and they’re heading directly for the pub opposite. “You got your mask?”, asks one to the other.

The other bursts out laughing. “No!” And off they trot.

And that was my journey home from work tonight. A journey made by a key worker, who has zero opportunity to work from home. A journey made just at the point where a second wave of Covid has frankly already started. A journey made by someone who already has lungs which are shot to hell and back.

*   *   *

By the way, they were all men.

# Now I Work for the BBC… #

Published 11th September 2020

TV Comedy / TV Presentation

Just how many quotes from “Elstree” by The Buggles can I use as headlines on Dirty Feed? (It’s two and counting, so far. There will be more.)

But in 2014, I did indeed used to work for the BBC, at BBC Elstree Centre on Clarendon Road.1 That stopped at the end of 2017 unfortunately, which means I don’t get to accidentally walk through a Holby City shoot and get yelled at. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

As for what I actually did at Elstree, that’s a tale for 30 years time. Still, while I wandered those corridors, I began to piece some things together in terms of the television shot there over the years. Which meant that I could take a look at this shot from Series 2 Episode 4 of Alexei Sayle’s Stuff (TX: 09/11/89):

A corridor in Elstree

And notice that the same corridor was used 27 years later in Eric Idle’s The Entire Universe (TX: 26/12/16):

The same corridor in Elstree

But that’s not really what I’m talking about today. This is a short story of a very specific prowl around the building. Although it is linked to the above corridor.2

What is now known as BBC Elstree Centre has a long and illustrious history, starting in 1914 as the site for the studios of Neptune Films. For the full version of that history, check out this section of Martin Kempton’s excellent ‘History of TV studios in London’; but here’s the short version. ATV used the site between 1958 and 1983, and then the BBC took it over in 1984. And being a TV geek of a certain flavour, I am rather interested in anything to do with ATV.

My challenge: could I find any obvious remnants of ATV at Clarendon Road, even though they had left the site 30 years before I got a chance to take a look around?

I can’t say I had a free run of the place. As much as I’d have loved to poke around in the galleries, plenty of doors were locked. And I was always wary of a burly security guard or two appearing behind me and giving me a good telling off. Still, I looked in the places I had access to. And for a while, it seemed like I wouldn’t find anything.

And then, I saw it. Tucked away in the same corridor pictured in the TV shows above – although little further down, just outside Studio C – I came across the following. With apologies for the terrible image quality…

Wide shot of ATV label

Close-up of ATV label

And if you actually got to the end of this post, I’m sure you got just as much of a kick out of that as I did.

  1. Well, more or less. I won’t bore you with the details of outsourcing, at least not today. ↩

  2. I seem to spend my entire life writing about corridors in some fashion or another. A trait I share with most Doctor Who fans. ↩

The Facts Speak for Themselves, My Friends

Published 31st August 2020

Music / TV Comedy

Before I knew what library music was, I used to get awfully confused, you know.

There was the time when I was watching Live & Kicking, and music used in Red Dwarf suddenly appeared. Then there was the time when I was at a show in Cadbury World, and, erm, music used in Red Dwarf suddenly appeared. (If you think I have a limited range of reference now, that’s nothing on me at 17.) More amusingly, there was the time when I was listening to Trent FM, and an advert came on… using the music from Central News East a few years previously. (Was that deliberate, to give the ad some already-bought legitimacy in the minds of the audience? Probably not, but it’s fun to ponder.)

These days, I know exactly what library music is, thank you very much, and the world seems a less puzzling place. And recently, a particularly pleasing strand was joined up in my head, as I was clicking around searching for library tracks used in The Young Ones.

That track was “Drama Heights” by John Scott. I first heard it on Spotify, on a 1976 library album called Drama – Tension, but the entire thing is available on Soundcloud for easy embedding::

One Way Static Records · Drama Heights (John Scott * Mark Of The Devil 2 * 1973 Soundtrack)

And it’s a track virtually anybody of a certain age who lived in the UK will recognise, as the main theme for Trev and Simon’s eternally amusing “World of the Strange” sketches:

So, let’s trace things back a little. Where did “Drama Heights” actually come from originally?

The Soundcloud embed above gives a clue as to at least one use: in the film Mark of the Devil Part II, a 1973 German horror/exploitation film that very few people seem to have anything positive to say about. (“Medieval torture and witch-hunting have never been so boring” seems to be the general gist.) The film is so well-loved by its rights owners that, erm, the whole thing has been uploaded to YouTube, and nobody seems to give a damn.

To be honest, the film is exactly the kind of film I don’t want to watch, so I hope you APPRECIATE the fact that I have gone through it, and found the section which uses the track:

Which means that hilariously, we now have a link between German exploitation flicks, and, erm, Fruitang:

At 29 seconds into that advert, Trevor Neal is this: funny.

So, was “Drama Heights” written for Mark of the Devil Part II? Certainly, the official soundtrack release seems to indicate that it was, without outright stating it:

“John Scott too contributed some music for the score, Scott who is now a seasoned film music composer respected by many, began his career in film scoring as a composer by writing the music for another horror movie A Study in Terror, which was released during the mid 60s. John also had another career as being the legendary sixties producer who recorded several artists like Tom Jones, The Hollies, The Beatles, etc. John is also known for his saxophone work on films like Goldfinger and several Henry Mancini projects. Mr. Scott won 3 Emmys throughout his career.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that John Scott wrote the track specifically for the film, from that paragraph. But “contributed” isn’t the same as “written”, and I was suspicious.

So, the obvious thing is to turn to Discogs. That turns up one very obvious-looking release – the album called Drama – Tension from Conroy in 1976. This is an album which has escaped out into the digital age – indeed, it’s the album I mention above which is on Spotify, which is where this whole little tale started. So, that’s the answer then, yes? That it actually was written for the film, and then became library music a few years afterwards?

No. We can trace it back further. To 1968, in fact – five years before Mark of the Devil Part II. It’s still a Conroy release, and it doesn’t appear to have a name, just a catalogue number. So hello to BMLP 056:

Cover of album
Side 2 of album


It’s worth noting that “The best of the backgrounds” isn’t the album title – it’s a slogan which was also used on other releases – so we can save ourselves a rabbit hole of thinking this was some kind of Best Of release. As far as I can tell, this was the very first release of “Drama Heights”. Not 1976, not 1973, but 1968.

And who would have guessed in 1968 that the same piece of music would be used in dodgy horror films featuring gratuitous torture scenes, and a Saturday morning kids TV show?

The joy of where library music ends up never seems to fade.

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“Pedestrian, camp fantobabble”

Published 28th August 2020

Children's TV / Meta / TV Gameshows

There are many pieces of terrible pop culture writing online. I’ve done plenty of it myself. But sometimes, a piece of work is so dreadful, that it lingers in your head for well over a decade. To the point where it actually falls offline, and you need to use the Wayback Machine to find it.

Such was the case with this piece on Knightmare from 2002. And it really is absolutely bloody awful.

The scene is set in the third paragraph, with possibly the least promising sentence ever written:

“Actually, as I write, I realise that I haven’t seen Knightmare for sodding years.”

An admission which leads to beautiful moments like this:

“It got rubbisher, as well: in a desperate attempt to fiddle with the formula, the producers ditched many of the more atmospheric locations and charismatic characters (notably Pickle, Treguard’s wonderful gay elf sidekick) in favour of comic hangers-on and tedious gimmicry. The eyeshield, anyone? Pah.”

Unfortunately, the facts are as follows: both the eyeshield and Pickle debuted in the same series. Series 4, to be exact.1

After that, deconstructing the article is like shooting fish in a barrel, to the point where it’s pretty much worthless. For instance, take this, on why Knightmare ended:

“It died because its niche fanbase eventually either a) got older, b) got computers or c) got sex – in any case, the market for its pedestrian, camp fantobabble was never going to last.”

This article was published in 2002. Three years earlier, creator Tim Child had already written a history of the show on Knightmare.com, which gave detailed reasons for why the show wasn’t recommissioned. But the writer of this piece isn’t interested in the actual facts; they’re interested in a pithy turn of phrase. Which also explains the bizarre line about “pedestrian, camp fantobabble”, which comes out of absolutely nowhere.

I could go on – what the hell is the bit about the “niche fanbase” all about, when it was an absurdly popular show, and a touchstone for a generation? – but you get the point. The main reason I bring all this up is because I realised the other day exactly how much this article influenced me when it came to writing my own piece about Knightmare, published last month. A piece that yes, has its fair share of reminiscing about the show.

It also throws in plenty of cold hard facts, as well. It transcribes actual sections from the show. It quotes Tim Child twice, from two separate sources. It’s a piece which proves you can still write about your memories, and fact check them at the same time without destroying anything.

That old piece from 2002 makes a point of acknowledging “nostalgia’s rose-tinted eye”, but doesn’t actually do anything about it. The way to avoid nostalgia is to watch and research what you’re writing about. And who knows? You might find that what you’re writing about doesn’t “look a bit, erm, crap”. You might just find it’s still fucking great. And if you don’t think it’s great, at least you can explain why, rather than guessing.

And I write this not because I want to say I’m brilliant. Well, not entirely. But it did shape something in my approach to writing that I think is worth noting: that just because you’re writing about pop culture, it doesn’t absolve you from doing the legwork. Just because you liked a kid’s TV show when you were younger, it doesn’t mean your half-remembered guff about it is enough.

Realising that at least sets you on the right path, however well you ultimately manage to traverse it. I think I get to the start of Level 2 before being killed off, but at least that’s better than dying in the first room.

  1. There’s also no evidence that Pickle was gay, either, but I have no issue with slash being written about him. ↩

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The Dull Religious Music Programme

Published 12th August 2020

Music / TV Comedy

Back in June, I published the first part of my Young Ones Music Guide, detailing every single piece of music heard in Series 1 of The Young Ones. Some of you may be wondering why the second part is taking so long to appear.

By way of explanation, I have a tale for you today. It is a thrilling tale, tracing a piece of comedy history, full of twists and turns, with a stunning climax. It also features Gregorian chanting and incorrect paperwork, but don’t let that put you off.

Here is how complicated tracing the specific music used in television programmes can be.

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Condition: Red

Published 5th July 2020

Children's TV / TV Gameshows

Bomb room in Knightmare

It’s 1990, or something vaguely close to it. I’ve cleaned my teeth like a good boy, and am now running to my room. Something is going to get me, you see. I mean, I have a happy home life. So happy that my parents even make sure I clean my teeth. But right now, I’m in danger.

I barge into my bedroom, flinging the door open, and dive under the covers. I lie, panting. I strain my ears, but of course, everything is fine. As long as I’m under the covers, I’m safe.

But I’d best not come out. I can see it in my head. A decomposing skull. It followed me into the room, and is now sitting against my bedroom wall. If I come out, it’ll zoom into my face and kill me.

It’s hot under the duvet. Far, far too hot. It’s the height of summer. Sweat covers my body. I do an experimental waft of the duvet to cool me down. It’s frightening enough – it gives the manifestation on my wall a moment of opportunity – but I get away with it. I drift into a fitful sleep. I might even dream about that… thing.

It’s just waiting for me, you know.

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That’s the Joke

Published 29th June 2020

TV Comedy

With all my WILD and CRAZY opinions, what do you think the most pushback I’ve ever had to something I’ve posted here on Dirty Feed? Saying something nice about That Puppet Game Show? Slagging off a beloved element of Animal Crossing? Posting BBC Micro porn in living colour? (Please believe me when I say that last link is genuinely NSFW.)

No. The most pushback I’ve ever had is when I said I agreed with John Cleese. No, not about those comments. About a perfectly innocuous Fawlty Towers joke. Specifically, the bit in “Gourmet Night”1, where Basil faints while trying to introduce the Twichens to the Halls.

MR. HALL: No, no, we still don’t know the name.
BASIL: Oh, Fawlty, Basil Fawlty.
MR. HALL: No, no, theirs!
BASIL: Oh, theirs! So sorry! I thought you meant yours! [maniacal laughter] My, it’s quite warm, isn’t it? I could do with a drink, too. So, another sherry?
MR. HALL: Aren’t you going to introduce us?
BASIL: Didn’t I?
MR. HALL: No!
BASIL: Oh, sorry. This is Mr and Mrs… [mumbles]
MR. HALL: What?
BASIL: Er, Mr and Mrs…

Basil faints.

For years, I thought the joke was that Basil simply forgot the Twitchens’ name – him having forgotten his own name in the previous scene. But no. John Cleese explains all in the DVD commentary:

CLEESE: Now, what’s interesting here is that one of the best-loved jokes in Fawlty Towers, which is Basil fainting, is I’m afraid totally misunderstood by everyone who’s ever seen it, because – it is entirely Connie’s and my fault – it’s not set up properly. When Basil faints because he cannot remember Mr. Twitchen’s name, it’s not actually because he can’t remember Mr. Twitchen’s name. He can – but he’s talking to a man whose head is constantly twitching… and he doesn’t like to say “this is Mr. Twitchen” to someone whose head is twitching because that might annoy that person. So that’s actually what the joke is.

Anyway, in this piece on those commentaries, I made the error of admitting that I had misunderstood the joke too. And despite John Cleese literally explaining that it was a bad joke because too many people misinterpreted it, I’ve never had more people hinting that I was a bit of a moron. Someone even called me a “dunce”. I can only hope that my subsequent work examining exactly what was reshot of the Fawlty Towers pilot, and a long investigation into an early incarnation of the show now absolves me of dunce status.

All this got me thinking recently. If I sat here detailing all the jokes in sitcoms I’ve misunderstood over the years, I’d be here all day. But one particular example has always stayed with me, because it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out. And unlike the above example, it’s set up entirely correctly, and I should have no excuses.

So let’s take a trip to Red Dwarf – specifically, “Kryten”, and learn about decimalised music2:

RIMMER: It’s because you’re bored, isn’t it? That’s why you’re both annoying me.
HOLLY: I’m not bored. I’ve had a really busy morning. I’ve devised a system to totally revolutionise music.
LISTER: Get out of town!
HOLLY: Yeah, I’ve decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it’s the decative. And I’ve invented two new notes: H and J.
LISTER: Hang on a minute. You can’t just invent new notes.
HOLLY: Well I have. Now it goes: Doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, woh, boh, ti, doh. Doh, ti, boh, woh, lah, soh, fah, me, ray, doh.
RIMMER: What are you drivelling about?
HOLLY: Hol Rock. It’ll be a whole new sound. All the instruments will be extra big to incorporate my two new notes. Triangles will have four sides. Piano keyboards the length of zebra crossings. Course, women will have to be banned from playing the cello.
LISTER: Holly: shut up.

For an embarrassingly long time, I didn’t understand that last cello joke. I first saw the episode in February 1994, when I was 12, and maybe I should have got it then. Regardless: I didn’t. I can’t remember exactly when I did, but it had clicked by 2007.

There’s an odd thing, when you’ve watched a sitcom from an early age. An age where you get the idea of the programme, and many of the jokes… but miss a few obvious ones along the way, as well. Because my mind has a tendency to get a little – for want of a better word – stuck. When watching the same show as an adult, I hear the words, but the joke isn’t always heard afresh. The result: a joke that you would have got if you were coming to it for the first time remains impenetrable, long after you should understand it.

Well, that’s my excuse, anyway, and I’m sticking to it. Leave me alone.

  1. “Gourmet Night” also contains perhaps the harshest and bleakest joke in the whole of Fawlty Towers. “How’s that lovely daughter of yours?” / “She’s dead.” Very rarely remarked upon amid the rest of Basil’s nonsense, but it’s properly horrific. ↩

  2. A joke that Grant Naylor used in various forms for years. ↩

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