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You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?

Published 20th November 2024

TV Comedy

“This is it! It’s THE FAST SHOW as you’ve never seen it before – literally! This special video compilation has sketches you will not have seen on TV featuring all your favourite characters as well as loads of completely new ones, so fresh and raw they don’t even have proper names – Mid-life-Crisis Man, Road Rage Man, Up All Night Shagging Man. Plus the New York Eskimo, Ponce In The Garden, The King, The Over-Sensitive Dad and Danny Klein, a cop like no other cop you’ve ever seen before, because he’s Conventional Cop.”

Back of VHS cover, You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?

The problem with something like The Fast Show – a programme which for many years has essentially lived on DVD – is that the origins of various things can become a little murky in your brain. Or at the very least, my brain.

So let’s quickly nail down the facts:

  • In 1999, The Fast Show put together a fantastic compilation of previously unseen sketches, titled You Ain’t Seen These… Right? This was broadcast on BBC Two as part of Fast Show Night on the 11th September 1999, in a 30-minute edit.
  • A couple of months later, on the 15th November 1999, it was released on VHS in an extended 50-minute edit, as part of the Series 3 Fast Show boxset.1 This version was called You Ain’t Seen All of These… Right?
  • Finally, this 50-minute edit was also part of the Ultimate Collection DVD boxset, released on the 5th November 2007. Both the VHS and DVD edits are identical.

For my part, I have fond memories of watching the show on the original broadcast on Fast Show Night… but never owned the commercial VHS at all. In 1999, I just couldn’t afford to keep up with every brilliant BBC Video release back then. So the first time I saw the extended edit was on the Ultimate Collection boxset years later, where the 20 minutes of extra material took me by complete surprise, despite the fact that the extended edit was first released eight years earlier.

You know where this is going. Last time, we looked at the 30-minute edit of the show. Let’s take a look now at the 50-minute commercial release. Sadly, I don’t have access to the same kind of production paperwork this time round; the BBC’s commercial releases are generally much harder to research than broadcast material. This means that for the extra sketches, we don’t know the official titles, authors, or even which series they were originally recorded for. Although on that latter question, trying to figure it out from the sketches themselves is half the fun.

Regardless, here is a complete list of every single difference between the broadcast 30-minute edit of the show, and the commercial 50-minute edit. I do find this extra material fascinating, because it was essentially rejected twice; once for the main series, and then again for the broadcast version of You Ain’t Seen These. If any Fast Show material was going to be of questionable quality – at least when it comes to stuff that the public got to see – then the material listed here is going to be it.

All times given are for this 50-minute edit of the show. This version isn’t available online, at least legally and in good quality, but I suspect the crossover between “people who read Dirty Feed” and “people who don’t own The Fast Show Ultimate Collection on DVD” is fairly small.

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  1. It never had a separate release. ↩

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You Ain’t Seen These… Right?

Published 10th November 2024

TV Comedy

NO OFFENCE: Anyway, you’re about to see a show that has been cobbled together using bits of shoddy old material previously thought unworthy for your eyes, but now in a desperate attempt to stuff their schedule with any old tat, the once trustworthy BBC is pretending it’s something really quite exclusive. No offence.

Introduction to You Ain’t Seen These… Right?, The Fast Show Night

On the 11th September 1999 at 9pm, BBC Two broadcast two hours of programming under the title The Fast Show Night. If you can get over the idea of two hours being called a theme night – I always think three is the bare minimum – it really was a splendid collection of shows, and one I remember very fondly from first transmission. I still have my off-air on VHS somewhere.

The evening consisted of the following, all of which ended up on The Ultimate Collection DVD in some form or another:

  • Links from the Fast Show gang, bizarrely shot against a very unflattering grey background.1 One of the highlights comes early on, with Lyndsay of the Off-Roaders yelling “Suits you, sir!” repeatedly.
  • Fast Show Fanatics, three sequences featuring various fans of the series. Thank you Johnny Depp, I heard enough from you back in 1999.
  • The very first episode of The Fast Show. It helps that it’s a pretty good one, with few of the problems often encountered when pulling out the first episode of something for an evening of celebration, and it turns out to be weird and/or actively bad. See: Spitting Image.
  • A 40 minute documentary, Suit You, Sir! The Inside Leg of the Fast Show, which I’ve always really enjoyed, especially the baiting of Harry Enfield.2
  • And finally, our topic for today: You Ain’t Seen These… Right?, a 30-minute compilation of previously unseen sketches from across the first three series.

It’s become a cliche to say that the offcuts of some programmes are better than what other shows deem their best material. It’s a cliche which I’m afraid I can’t shatter here. The material in You Ain’t Seen These… Right? is well up to scratch, with some brilliant sketches included, and one moment which is a serious contender for the very funniest moment in the whole of The Fast Show. It’s so good, in fact, that it deserves a closer look.

What follows then, is a list of all the sketches in the show, including their proper titles, authors, and crucially, which series they were originally shot for, which is the bit I find most interesting.3. The 30-minute broadcast edit of the show is available on iPlayer, and is the version we’re dealing with here, so feel free to watch along.

You can insert the Off-Roaders catchphrase here if you like. I can’t quite bring myself to.

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  1. These links were shot on the 9th August 1999, at Broadley Studios in London. ↩

  2. I’ll never write something proper about this documentary, so: are you up for a list of people who were interviewed for it, but never made the final edit? Leslie Ash, Bryan Ferry, and Dannii Minogue. I kinda want to see what Dannii Minogue had to say about The Fast Show. ↩

  3. The titles, authors and originating series come from the production paperwork. Sometimes the paperwork gives secondary titles identifying the specific sketch; others use the umbrella title only. ↩

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Fun With Daisy and Onslow

Published 23rd October 2024

TV Comedy

When you’re a Red Dwarf fan, it’s easy to forget how spoilt you are. The DVDs bombard you with deleted scenes and unused material. Want an early version of the opening episode, featuring an entirely different introduction to The Cat? The DVDs have you covered.

Sadly, Red Dwarf is an outlier; a rare example of a series which started in 1988 which still had a production office at the time of the DVD revolution. Moreover, it was understood that there was a large geek audience who would lap this kind of thing up. The chance to see this kind of material for programmes of Red Dwarf‘s vintage on an official release is rare, especially when it comes to audience sitcom. Sometimes, you have to rely on other means.

Or, just occasionally… mistakes.

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“Specially Shot for Onslow’s Telly”

Published 29th September 2024

TV Comedy

DAISY: There was a time when you used to chase me all over the house.
ONSLOW: That was before we got colour, wasn’t it.

— Keeping Up Appearances, “The Art Exhibition”, TX: 11/10/92

Here on Dirty Feed, we like to answer people’s burning questions about television occasionally. So let’s look at two related queries1 from friend of the site Rob Keeley, who wants to know the following about Keeping Up Appearances:

  1. What’s the scary movie Onslow’s always watching, and
  2. What movie is in the QE2’s cinema in the “Sea Fever” special?

I can answer these questions… but it gets complicated. Strap yourself in. Here is each and every film which Onslow watches from the comfort of his armchair. The lazy bastard.

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  1. Yes, from two years ago. I never said we like to answer people’s burning questions about television quickly. ↩

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“And What About the Vegetables?”

Published 30th August 2024

TV Comedy

I have to be honest, I didn’t exactly have a rule against embedding GB News material on here. I didn’t think I really needed one. What was the likelihood that I’d ever have cause to do it?

Unfortunately, back on the 18th March 2024, something happened which forces me to briefly acknowledge the channel’s existence. Piers Pottinger, public-affairs consultant and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, makes a bit of a twat of himself:

As was widely reported at the time, Pottinger seems to be confusing reality with a famous Spitting Image sketch. But rather than judge the entire thing from a 19 second Twitter video, you can see the whole contribution from him below. It starts from 37:38 in, with the anecdote itself at 44:36:

Just for the record – and in case either of the above videos disappear at any point – here is a transcript of the relevant section:

PIERS POTTINGER: I mean, there was a famous time when she was having dinner with her cabinet in the Ritz, and they were taking the order for the main course, and they all ordered beef or lamb or fish, and the waiter said to Margaret “And the vegetables?” She said “They’ll have the same as me.”
ANDREW PIERCE: I don’t know if that story’s true, but it’s a lovely story.
PIERS POTTINGER: Well I like to think it’s true.
ANDREW PIERCE: Certainly apocryphal. Certainly apocryphal.

“Apocryphal” is one way of putting it, yes. Maybe it’s just too much to expect Andrew Pierce to be able to quote chapter and verse when it comes to famous Spitting Image sketches. To be fair, when it comes to the reporting of all this, vanishingly few people could identify the actual episode of Spitting Image in question. Most contented themselves with linking to a blurry YouTube video of the sketch with no date attached, in the wrong aspect ratio.

So our first point of order is to correct that. The sketch which Pottinger mistakenly presents as a true story appeared right at the very end of Series 2, Episode 3, broadcast on the 20th January 1985; the traditional place for putting a great sketch to leave the audience wanting more. So after a rousing rendition of “Robson’s Glory Boys”1, we get the following:

Very droll, Minister. But here’s the thing: the above joke is most certainly not original to Spitting Image.

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  1. Yes we’ll go go go
    All the way to Mexico
    And we’ll stay stay stay
    ‘Til the second game we play
    Then we’ll fly fly fly
    Back to London by July
    We don’t expect you’ll thank us
    ‘Cos we’re all Bobby’s bankers
    A load of petrol tankers
    We’re Robson’s Glory Boys! ↩

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Location, Location, Location

Published 4th June 2024

TV Comedy

Shooting audience sitcom has all kinds of unique production problems compared to other types of television.

After all, any TV show has to decide whether to shoot a given scene on location, or in the studio. Each choice has advantages and drawbacks: you don’t have the expense of building a set on location, but you also have less control than in a studio. With audience sitcom, though, you start running into further problems. Is there room in the studio for that extra set in front of the audience? And yet if it’s a dialogue-heavy scene, surely you want to do it in front of the audience, so the actors can play off their reaction?

Squaring this particular circle can lead to some interesting results. Let’s take a look at three of them.

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Where’s Wally Who?

Published 14th May 2024

Radio Comedy

One problem with writing Dirty Feed is that there are so many strands of research here, that I end up losing track of some of them. Such was the case with early 80s Radio 2 sitcom Wally Who?, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. In 2020-21, I wrote a few pieces on the show… and then it entirely fell off my radar.

A reminder, then. When we last talked about the series, I couldn’t even figure out exactly how many episodes of the show there were. It’s worth reading that whole article for all the details, but I’ll give you the short version. Here are the episodes that we knew were broadcast, and that we had copies of:

Episode First TX Repeat TX
Just the Way You Are 7th Nov 1982 12th Nov 1982
The Whiz Kid 14th Nov 1982 19th Nov 1982
I Want to Be In Movies 21st Nov 1982 26th Nov 1982
The Painting 28th Nov 1982 3rd Dec 1982
The Caravan 5th Dec 1982 10th Dec 1982
All I Want for Christmas 12th Dec 1982 17th Dec 1982

And here are the rest of the episodes as listed in the Radio Times, that we didn’t have copies of:

Episode First TX Repeat TX
Episode 7? 19th Dec 1982 (unrepeated)
Episode 8? 2nd Jan 1983 7th Jan 1983
Episode 9? 9th Jan 1983 14th Jan 1983
Episode 10? 16th Jan 1983 21st Jan 1983

Not only did we not have copies of them, but none of them were given titles or an episode-specific synopsis in the Radio Times either, making them feel uncannily like “ghost” episodes. Did these remaining four shows really exist, or not?

What I needed is someone to show up in my email, and give me the magic answer I’ve been looking for, without any real effort on my part. So step forward Alan Power, who did precisely that, and to Holocron who rediscovered it in the first place. Anyone fancy an episode of Wally Who? that precious few people have heard since 1983?

Download Wally Who?, Episode 8

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The Bucket List

Published 18th April 2024

TV Comedy

Some of you may think I’m a little too obsessed with studio recording dates for sitcoms. It is surely something deeply unhealthy, which makes me look less like a proper TV historian, and more like someone who enjoys wading through irrelevant trivia.

To which my answer is: if Harold Snoad is allowed to do it, then so am I. His book, It’s Bouquet – Not Bucket! (The Book Guild, 2009), is mainly known for his rather pointed remarks about Roy Clarke every other paragraph. But he also has this to say about the fifth series of Keeping Up Appearances in 1995:

“Because of Patricia’s involvement with the series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, the start date for the making of this series of Keeping Up Appearances had been moved on by six weeks but, in spite of this, the powers-that-be still wanted to begin transmitting the series on the original agreed date, which created quite a few problems. In the past I had always been able to record the episodes (studio-wise) in the order that was the most economical. This was particularly the case when an episode involved additional artistes who would be needed both on location and in the studio, which meant they had to be paid a retainer fee for the period between the two elements – unless they happened to have other work (which, quite often, wasn’t the case).

In the past, to reduce this period – and the relevant payment – as much as possible, I had always planned things so that the studio recordings of these episodes were the first ones that we did when we returned from location filming. This meant that there was as small a gap as possible between the two elements, which saved the BBC a lot of money in retainer fees. Also, in the past, by having quite a few of the episodes fully completed by the date when the series started to transmit, I was able to arrange for them to go out in an order that reduced the chances of the public realising that elements of some of the storylines were shall we say, rather similar… well, all right, repetitive! I was now being forced into a corner where I was only ever going to be one episode ahead of transmission, which made life extremely difficult.”

You will, of course, note that Snoad can’t even get into a discussion about this topic without slagging off Roy Clarke.1

The question then: is what Snoad says above correct? Was the fifth series of the show really made only one week ahead of transmission? Let’s consult some interesting paperwork and find out. And for extra fun, let’s also go back right to the beginning of the show in 1990, and see exactly how far in advance each series of the programme was recorded.2

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  1. I’m making fun, but I think what Snoad says about Clarke throughout the book has the ring of truth. Your mileage may, as they say, vary. ↩

  2. A word about episode titles. There are precisely no episode titles given in either the original broadcast versions of each episode, or the Radio Times. Even the official paperwork simply states “Episode 1”, “Episode 2”, and so on. All the episode titles I use in this article were bestowed upon the show much later on, although most of them are currently used on bbc.co.uk, aside for Series 5, for some reason. I don’t really like using titles which weren’t applied to the episodes originally, but for the sake of clarity I’ve grit my teeth and included them. ↩

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The Voice of the Balls

Published 12th April 2024

TV Presentation

Saturday the 12th April, 2014. I’m sitting in NC1, BBC One’s transmission suite. I’m not yet fully running things by myself; I’m still training. And one thing I’m still learning is how to safely and effectively transmit a live show on the channel.

Such as: The National Lottery. Specifically, the first episode of a new series of In It to Win It.

In It to Win It is a perfect example of why the idea of a “live” show can be more complicated than many might think. All the quiz section of the programme with Dale Winton was pre-recorded, but the lottery draw itself hosted by Kate Garraway is live. And yet in NC1, I wasn’t involved in cutting between the live and pre-recorded sections; as far as I was concerned, it was packaged up to me by production as a complete live show, coming in down the line like any other live programme.1

And as it was a live programme, that meant: talking to the programme’s PA, to go through all the details about that evening’s broadcast. Nothing is left to chance with these things. Of course we talk about some of the obvious things: crucial information like exactly what time they’re on air, and the duration of the show. We also do a clock check to make sure we both agree what the actual time is. (Yes, sometimes that is wrong.)

But we also need to know some less-obvious things, such as how the programme starts. This is crucial for a number of reasons. Firstly, it helps presentation choose the correct visual transition into the programme: “Oooh, that title sequence would probably look nice with a 10 frame mix.” It means you can check that what the continuity announcer is going to say makes sense into the start of the show. It also means you can make sure the production is cued up on the right thing a couple of minutes before air.

So, about half an hour before the live transmission, I buzz through to the The National Lottery PA over talkback. I’m a little nervous; I still haven’t done loads of live shows on the BBC yet. Not to worry – tonight the PA is very friendly, as they always were on the lottery shows. She says she doesn’t recognise my voice; I reply that I’m a new channel director, and I’m training today. We do most of our checks, and say goodbye for now.

A while later, she asks me if I’d like to see their rehearsal of the start of the show. This is common practice; I’ll often watch the rehearsals down the line to make sure all is OK with sound and vision. I agree, and turn the volume up on the incoming line.

In It to Win It‘s opening is a little complicated anyway; all the Dale Winton stuff at the top is pre-recorded, but Alan Dedicoat’s voiceover at the top is actually live. After all, he’s got to voice the lottery numbers later on, so why not do it live?

Below is the entire show on that particular day, as transmitted. “Now please welcome your host – it’s Dale Winton!”

But that’s not what Alan said at the top of the show during rehearsal. Because that production wanted to do something special for me, as I was new. Instead, he uttered the immortal words:

“Now please welcome your host – it’s John from Presentation!”

In my ten years of directing the BBC channels, it remains one of the nicest, kindest things anybody has ever done for me. Going out of their way to do something like that, just because they knew I’d get a kick out of it.

It made me feel part of something special. And I’ve never forgotten it.

  1. This leads to a dichotomy between how some people at home consider things, and how you think of it in presentation. For the educated viewer, they may feel very pleased with themselves that they’ve figured out that part of any given show is live, and part isn’t. But in NC1, for practical purposes, all of that programme is probably considered to be live. What matters most to the channel director is how the programme gets into NC1, not whether all the action is literally happening at that moment or not. ↩

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part One: “A 60s Version of The Word”

Published 17th March 2024

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven

NICEY: Freddie was my most glorious introduction to pop. I remember the morn after the show, I got up and looked at myself in the mirror and said: “Mate, you’re a great bloke. You really are a great bloke. Open your gorgeous eyes and look. Pop’s here. Look, I pondered to myself, look, you great big beautiful blue-eyed lovely man. You were put ‘pon this earth to be one of the world’s great philosophers. To teach people about the meaning-of-life-type stuff. To show ’em how to make a curious sense of this crazy-world-in-which-we-live-in-type scenario. With pop as your vehicle1, you can speak to the nation. For that is your purpose.”

Nicey belches.

What is the most memorable part of Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era?

I would argue the show sets out its stall early on. Firstly, there’s the glimpse of Dave Nice seamlessly dancing with Freddie Garrity on Blue Peter. This is followed shortly afterwards by Nicey blatantly hitting on Paul McCartney during an interview. If End of an Era had provided nothing of interest but those two scenes, it would still have earned its place in comedy history. A perfect blend of archive footage, and brand new material, fused together to form comedy nirvana.

But where does the archive footage in these scenes originally come from? Surely we can do better than “a 60s episode of Blue Peter” and “footage of a Beatles concert”? Yes. Yes, we can. Much better.

All timings given are from the broadcast version of End of an Era, although I’ve tried hard to give enough video reference here that you shouldn’t need to find whatever dodgy copy you have of it.

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  1. Mere text cannot quite convey how Harry Enfield pronounces this word. ↩

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