Dirty Feed

Radio 1 Vintage: The Methadone Weekend

Published 8th October 2017

A week on from Radio 1 Vintage – the BBC’s joyous three-day celebration of 50 years of Radio 1 – my brain is still buzzing. Much like 2011’s Radio 1’s Longest Show Ever, or 2014’s Phillip’s Live 24 Hour TV Marathon, I felt like this was something which was made just for me.¹ My diseased brain often ponders the production values of old episodes of the The Radio 1 Chart Show: here was Radio 1 Vintage doing the same thing. My little obsessions were acknowledged… if only for a little while.

The sheer amount of stuff the station pumped out over those three days – 54 hours, across 53 separate programmes – is a treasure trove of material which deserves time to sit, ponder and reflect on. Though one thing is for sure: as delightful as Radio 1 Vintage was, it’s almost more delightful to see how happy it made people – people way beyond the usual radio anorak crowd. I love imagining brain synapses firing off across the UK, when a jingle someone hasn’t heard for 30 years comes blaring out the radio.

Ah yes, those jingles. Sure, they were far from the only great thing about Radio 1 Vintage, but they were a huge part of the fun. And if you loved those jingles, you might love this. Back in 2015, I linked to “The Jingles I Grew Up With” by my great mate Duncan Newmarch, celebrating his radio experiences across the years. For 2017, and in celebration of Radio 1’s 50th anniversary, he’s re-edited it to include loads of Radio 1 and Radio 2 stuff he missed the first time round.

So if you’re suffering from Radio 1 Vintage withdrawal symptoms, this might be just what you’re looking for. (If you get to the end of it, you might hear something fun to do with Dirty Feed too. But the real meat is those glorious Radio 1 and Radio 2 jingles.)

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Hopefully in 2020, I’ll get Chris Moyles dangling his bollocks in my mouth while singing a selection of Swansea Sound jingles. ↩

A Public Service Announcement on Trev and Simon

Published 24th September 2017

TV Comedy

The final episode of Going Live! aired on the 17th April 1993. I was distraught. My favourite TV show: gone forever. I made sure I recorded the whole thing, and it was a treasured possession for years, until I gave the tape to a girl I tried – and failed – to have sex with. That’s the kind of symbolism which gets you chucked out of film school for being too obvious.

Regardless: let’s get back to being 11 years old. The one thing to cling onto from Going Live! ending was Trev and Simon’s tour – starting just a month later.¹ I got my tickets for the Nottingham Theatre Royal date on the 30th May, a week after my birthday, and waited patiently.

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And cheekily advertised by Trev and Simon themselves in their final sketch, which was then reiterated by Sarah Greene. “Just say it”, she says, in glorious contravention of the entire spirit of the BBC. ↩

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best of, edits, trev and simon

Cruz Control

Published 13th September 2017

Internet

Have we all finished laughing yet at Ted Cruz’s Twitter account liking a porn video? I haven’t, you know. Just give me a second.

Right, I’m back. Now, I haven’t got anything useful to say on the actual incident. (Though I feel duty-bound to point out that I only find it funny because of hypocrisy, not because Sex Is Wrong. Go and check through the people I follow on Twitter and play spot-the-pornstar if you don’t believe me.) What I want to concentrate on is The Independent‘s reporting of the story.

We’ll skip past their description of “posted the pornography” – I don’t think likes count as posting, but whatever – and skip straight to the bit which is categorically wrong:

“Twitter prohibits pornography on its platform.”

Erm, no it bloody well does not. See Twitter’s media policy:

“…you may not feature graphic content (such as media containing pornography or excessive violence) in live video, or in your profile image or header image.”

So: no porn allowed in your profile image, header image, or live video streams. Fine. But there is absolutely no prohibition on posting pornographic images or normal videos.

The thing is, this isn’t some kind of obscure point. Twitter allowing porn is something which distinguishes it greatly from other services such as Instagram or Facebook. Surely a journalist tasked with writing a story about social media should know this? It’s pretty damn basic stuff.

It’s also important stuff. And it’s important because of the very next line in The Independent‘s article:

“Catherine Frazier, senior communications adviser to Mr Cruz, tweeted: ‘The offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter.'”

Again, we’re going to have to ignore the clunky wording here – I don’t think a like counts as it being “posted”, but whatever. The crucial thing here is: Frazier stating the liked tweet was “reported to Twitter”. But the tweet wasn’t forbidden by Twitter’s rules of conduct. Catherine Frazier is bullshitting us all by pointing somewhere else and hoping we’ll all look over there instead.

But The Independent doesn’t mention any of that. Because the writer of The Independent‘s piece thinks that porn isn’t allowed on Twitter. And so Catherine Frazier isn’t held culpable for her nonsense.

As someone pointed out to me: The Independent‘s story was written by someone who couldn’t even work out that if Twitter prohibited porn, this whole story wouldn’t exist. A failure of research, a failure of logic, and a failure to bring people to account who should to be brought to account.

Excellent work, The Independent, well done.

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journalism, pornography, social media

How to Be Better Than Tim Berners-Lee

Published 31st August 2017

Internet

I’ve written a lot in the past year or so about what I like to call internet archeology. Whether it’s revered web designers destroying communities, podcasts destroying their archives, or simply historically important web tutorials disappearing, there’s one recurring idea: hey, don’t just yank your stuff offline, man.

But you don’t need to take my word for it about how bad this is. A certain Tim Berners-Lee, in his seminal 1998 essay “Cool URIs don’t change”, covers everything you need to know on the subject.

“In theory, the domain name space owner owns the domain name space and therefore all URIs in it. Except insolvency, nothing prevents the domain name owner from keeping the name. And in theory the URI space under your domain name is totally under your control, so you can make it as stable as you like. Pretty much the only good reason for a document to disappear from the Web is that the company which owned the domain name went out of business or can no longer afford to keep the server running.”

But why should I care, Tim?

Why should I care?

When you change a URI on your server, you can never completely tell who will have links to the old URI. They might have made links from regular web pages. They might have bookmarked your page. They might have scrawled the URI in the margin of a letter to a friend.

When someone follows a link and it breaks, they generally lose confidence in the owner of the server. They also are frustrated – emotionally and practically from accomplishing their goal.

Enough people complain all the time about dangling links that I hope the damage is obvious. I hope it also obvious that the reputation damage is to the maintainer of the server whose document vanished.

Yep, makes sense to me. We’re all agreed, yes?

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Scrapings from underneath somebody’s crusty bellend

Published 30th August 2017

TV Comedy

Ah, it’s been rather quiet over here on Dirty Feed recently, hasn’t it? Sorry, I’ve been busy over on Ganymede & Titan, the Red Dwarf fansite I write for because I hate Red Dwarf.

Here’s what I’ve been up to over there, if you’re interested.

Better Than Reality
A short piece looking at the genesis of some of Red Dwarf‘s most popular episodes, as found in Radio 4 sketch show Cliché – Rob and Doug’s first solo writing credit. (I didn’t get much feedback on this one, and I don’t think it’s the best-written piece I’ve ever done, but the fundamental point is fascinating, I think.)

End of Part One, Red Dwarf XI Edition
A look at the placing of ad breaks in Red Dwarf XI, because I’m the only person in the world who would actually bother to write that article. (I did enjoy the person who told me on Twitter that ad breaks shouldn’t be used to set up cliffhangers in British TV shows. I told them they lost that argument in 1955.)

Observation Dome: Back From The Dead
About bringing an old part of Red Dwarf fandom back from the dead. (I’ll be writing more about this on Dirty Feed shortly.)

Red Dwarf and Me: Artificial Reality
On my relationship with Red Dwarf these days, which has been percolating in my mind for five years… and I only just figured out how to write it. The comment thread is lovely and well worth a read too.

Red Dwarf, there.

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my other stuff, red dwarf, uktv

On Ostentatiousness.

Published 11th August 2017

Internet / Meta

I’ll admit it. Whenever I write an article I’m particularly proud of, I enjoy going on Twitter and yelling about it at the top of my voice. I don’t know whether that’s a particularly brilliant side of my personality, but it’s there. I’d be a bloody liar if I said I didn’t enjoy people telling me something I’ve written is good. TELL ME SOMETHING I’VE WRITTEN IS GOOD, DO IT.

And yet sometimes… that’s just not what I’m aiming for. Sometimes I write something I want to write, but I know most people who follow me on Twitter just aren’t going to be interested. Or sometimes I write mainly to work a few things out in my head, and if anyone else enjoys the piece, that’s a bonus. Or sometimes I just want to write something small – a piece which might be fun for a reader to come across randomly when browsing a site, but not something anyone would want to visit a site just to read.

When I first ran a blog – now stupidly deleted off the web, but partially available on The Wayback Machine – things were different. Social media was far less of a thing: people would see you had written a new piece through your RSS feed, or even – shock horror – just from visiting your site. Amazing. These days, very few people see any of my stuff unless I tweet about it, or somebody links to it on Facebook.

I can deal with that. But sometimes tweeting about something I’ve written feels right… and sometimes it just kinda feels wrong.

Some pieces don’t want to be tweeted about. Some pieces don’t want that attention foisted on them. Some things absolutely do not warrant me waving my arms around above it, yelling “Look at me!” Some pieces just want to exist… ready for the right people to stumble across them. That used to be so easy. Now, it isn’t. Social media is about yelling to get attention in a way that an RSS feed is not. These days, something has to be made a fuss about… or it disappears into the ether. And that’s a shame.

I will not be tweeting a link to this post.

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social media

Bob Says It’ll Be Alright on Carrott’s Commercial Wars

Published 6th August 2017

Other TV

Ah, Sunday. Where the vast majority of my Twitter feed seems to want to sit around and read/watch/talk about telly. So in lieu of anything else new here, I thought I’d point you towards a load of articles and videos other people have done instead.

Enjoy.

i.
First off, we have some brilliant analysis of Robot Wars by Christopher Wickham. Fancy learning about a robot which was renamed between the BBC Choice showing, and its BBC Two repeat? Or what about a rigged trial round? Or, indeed, a rigged Grand Final? Or a bunch of other obscure trivia about the show? Most of the CONTROVERSIAL BITS discussed have associated YouTube links, and I highly recommend you don’t rush through them – sit back and watch the fights in full alongside the articles. It’s worth it. Even when it’s difficult to nail down exactly what happened, some of those fights look very strange indeed in the final edit.

Out of all of the above, perhaps the thing which blows my mind the most is the existence of Robot Wars Revealed – a 1998 BBC Choice behind-the-scenes spin-off series. It being the early days of digital television, hardly anyone saw it – and seemingly only one episode is in general circulation. It’s incredible how easily things can slip away; even programmes made in the last 20 years. What programmes are you watching now that in 2037 you’ll think “Oh, I wish I could see that again”, and be unable to?

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edits

Red Dwarf: An Accidental Trilogy

Published 31st July 2017

TV Comedy

When I’m not writing over here, you can find me over on Ganymede & Titan – the Red Dwarf fansite started in 1999 which is unaccountably still running. Having just published a brand new piece of mine over there today, it strikes me that over the past three years I seem to have accidentally written myself a little trilogy about the history, influences and themes of the show.

As they’re some of my better pieces, with a strong linking thread, if you feel like diving into my Red Dwarf writing you could probably do worse than check out the following. They do go into the show in a little more depth than “Dave Hollins was on the radio, and then it turned into Red Dwarf“.

History of a Joke (2015)
Tracing the history of a single joke Rob and Doug have used in various forms, right from their first solo radio show Cliché in 1981, to their novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers in 1989.

Hancock’s Half Hour: The Tycoon (2016)
A look at how the basic structure of the Red Dwarf episode Better Than Life was done by Hancock’s Half Hour thirty years earlier: even the supposedly science fiction element.

Better Than Reality (2017)
A brand new piece, which takes a look at how a single sketch in Cliché informed ideas that Red Dwarf would use time and time again – in Better Than Life, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, and beyond.

If any of my Red Dwarf writing interests you, give the above a go. They’re some of the best stuff about the show I’ve written over the past few years, so if you don’t like them then for fuck’s sake don’t hunt down any of my other shit.

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my other stuff, red dwarf

How To Write, Courtesy of The Outline

Published 25th July 2017

Internet

Man, I’ve been having a bit of trouble here on Dirty Feed recently. A combination of lack of time and writer’s block¹ has left this site feeling a little barren.

Never mind! The Outline – self-described as “a new kind of publication for a new kind of human” – has shown us all the way. Their piece entitled “Who are your problematic faves?” shows that you don’t need to actually write an article in order to have something to publish. Merely writing a short list with no explanation or reasoning – and adding some weird spacing – is more than enough.

With that in mind, I thought instead of actually writing some proper articles on here, I’d just publish my preliminary notes for one of them instead.

Hi-de-Hi!: The Christmas Episodes

Intro!

Eruptions (TX: 26th December 1982)
Bong!

Raffles (TX: 25th December 1984)
Bing!

The Great Cat Lottery (TX: 25th December 1985)
Bibble!

September Song (TX: 27th December 1986)
Bash!

Tell It To The Marines (TX: 26th December 1987)
Blah!

There you go. The site has been updated, and I didn’t actually have to put any effort in at all. Thank you, The Outline. You’re the best.