Recently, I wrote this ridiculous article about The Young Ones episode “Cash”. So while we’re on the subject, here is something else about the episode which has bugged me for years.
To recap: in order to earn some bread, the gang decide to send Neil to the Army Careers Information Office. In no short order, he is flung right back out onto the pavement.
NEIL: I only said I was a pacifist.
And as the gang help Neil to his feet again, there is a very peculiar edit. The following are two consecutive frames from this moment in the episode:
Everyone has changed position; most obviously Planer, who suddenly has his hands in his pockets. Clearly, something was cut at this point. But what?
Unlike our previous investigation, the raw footage is of no help to us here; no location material is present on that tape. Nor does the paperwork I personally have access to shed any light. But the answer is out there, if you look hard enough.
And I honestly think the cut moment could have gone down in history as one of those TV moments a whole generation remembers.
“I alter people’s perception of reality.” – Dr. Hypnosis
One recurring theme in Red Dwarf has always been the rather tenuous grip on real life the crew have. Whether it’s the Total Immersion Videogame of “Better Than Life”, the hallucinations suffered in “Back to Reality”, those damn reality pockets in “Out of Time” – to name three of many – people’s perception of reality is something which Grant Naylor return to time and time again.
What’s interesting, however, is that Red Dwarf is far from the first time Grant Naylor have explored this idea. In fact, we can trace their fascination with it right back to their very first solo writing credit: the first episode of Radio 4 sketch show Cliché, broadcast on the 16th March 1981. Though unlike Red Dwarf, it isn’t framed in terms of science fiction.
I present to you the strange adventure of Dr. Hypnosis: his real name… Dr. Hypnosis.
Today, we’re going to answer a huge burning question about The Young Ones. No, nothing to do with flash frames, or hidden fifth housemates. This is the really important stuff.
Exactly what is the farty neighbour watching on her television in “Cash”, just before she switches over to Andy De La Tour doing a public information film?
Squinting at it, it seems impossible to tell. Some kind of drawing of a car? Unless it’s some well-known cartoon, or mentioned in the paperwork for rights reasons, or specified in the script, how could we ever figure it out?
Spoiler: it’s not a well-known cartoon, or mentioned on the paperwork for rights reasons, or specified in the script. We have only our wits to go on here.
Well… wits, and a certain video of Young Ones raw studio footage, sitting patiently on YouTube. I wrote recently about the section of this video containing material for the episode “Nasty”, but the second half of the video is entirely dedicated to “Cash”. And crucially, it includes the entire recording session for this scene.
It’s the 6th February 1984 in studio TC4, and Rik Mayall is having a circular saw aimed at his knackers.
I write a lot about comedy on here. Sometimes I write some very silly things about comedy indeed. Take, for instance, this analysis of one of the main sets in Blackadder Goes Forth, and how it showed up in various forms throughout the series. You have to have a certain kind of mind to find that interesting, and admittedly, part of it is a pure puzzle box mentality: “What bit goes where?”
But there is also something a little deeper going on there. For all the careful explanations of what writers were hoping to achieve with their work – which for the avoidance of doubt, is something I’m also extremely interested in – what I really want to be able to do is transport myself back, and be present in the room where the comedy was actually made. I get obsessed with wanting to know how a room felt, either in the writing, or in the shooting. Trying to figure out what piece of wood went where while recording a sitcom is an attempt at nothing less than time travel, however ludicrous that sounds.
Which is where your good old fashioned studio recording tapes come in. Whether it’s just clips in documentaries, longer extracts released as DVD extras, or bootlegs passed quietly around as though we’re all crack dealers, there’s nothing quite seeing the raw footage of how a show is made to get a sense of how things felt. An incomplete sense, of course. Nothing can quite replace a real time machine. But it’s something.
All of which preamble is leading up to this glorious video on YouTube. Two hours of raw studio recordings of The Young Ones, precisely none of which is officially sanctioned for release, and precisely all of which is fascinating.
Let’s be very clear about what the above footage represents. Each episode of The Young Ones – unusually for a sitcom of the era – had two days in the studio. These consisted of a pre-record day for the complicated technical bits, without an audience, followed by an audience record the very next day. The above footage is the bulk of the pre-record days for the episodes “Nasty” and “Cash”. The fact that these are the pre-record days explains the lack of audience laughter on the footage, something a few people in the YouTube comments are a little confused by. An edited version of this material would have been shown to the audience the next day on the studio monitors, along with recording the rest of the show in front of them, in order to get the laughs.
Not that what we are seeing is the edited footage that the audience would have seen, either. This is the complete – or near-complete – recording of the day, featuring multiple takes of the material. In short: this really is as close as we can get to skulking around in the studio for the day, silently watching as the team shoot one of the best sitcoms ever made. We even know exactly when everything occurs; the timecode at the bottom of the screen is literally the time of the recording.
There is no substitute for simply watching the video embedded above. But I thought it might be useful to write some notes to go alongside it. Here then, are some observations on the first half of the video, covering the pre-record day for “Nasty”. In particular, I’ve tried to identify any part of the script which don’t make it into the final edit, along with which of the multiple takes were actually used in the finished show.
“Beam me up Scotty” was never said in original Star Trek. “Play it again, Sam” was never said in Casablanca. Or how about my least favourite example: “Don’t tell him your name, Pike” is not the actual line in Dad’s Army. A sentence which is so lacking in comic rhythm that I could punch somebody… so obviously, it had to be plastered in large letters inside the audience foyer of New Broadcasting House.1
This article is about another misquote. But unusually, it’s about a very recent misquote. One which we can see spreading before our very eyes.
So let’s take a look at this article in the Metro on the best Basil Fawlty lines in Fawlty Towers, published February 2018. I have to be honest: it is not an especially good article. I don’t plan to eviscerate it; I will leave that fun as an exercise for the reader, if you so desire.2 I merely want to point you all towards the very first quote that the article gives as an example of Basil at his best:
“For someone called Manuel, you’re looking terribly ill…”
Here’s the thing. That line doesn’t appear in any of the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers.
Previously on Dirty Feed, I took an in-depth look at the music used in Series 1 of The Young Ones. This turned out to be a surprisingly popular move. So, how about Series 2?
No preamble, let’s get on with it. Only pop music can save us now…
As before, there are some tracks that I just haven’t been able to identify yet. If you have any ideas, let me know in the comments or elsewhere.
Sometimes a joke in a sitcom isn’t just funny, and doesn’t just reveal character. Sometimes, a joke is so good it literally seems to define your character. When Father Ted protests “that money was just resting in my account”, or Lieutenant Gruber sheepishly admits that “it was very lonely on the Russian front”, it somehow seems to be everything you need to know about them. A whole life, in a few short words.
For instance, take this joke in Series 1 of Red Dwarf (1988). As Lister prepares to watch Rimmer’s auto-obituary in “Me²”, he notices the following caption at the start.
HOLLY: “BSc, SSc?” What’s that? LISTER: Bronze Swimming certificate and Silver Swimming certificate. He’s a total lunatic.
In that moment, you feel like you know everything there is to know about Arnold J. Rimmer. His abject failure to achieve anything, and his desperation to hide that by any means possible.
The thing is with these kind of jokes: they stick. When a joke means that much in terms of defining a character, the writers often can’t quite let go of it.
Short version: along with people far cleverer than me, recently I’ve been involved in rescuing an old BBC Micro game from oblivion, after 25 years of it not being playable.
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.
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.
