filthy rich & catflap

Looking for Lise

Published 22nd March 2025

The Young Ones was written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, and Lise Mayer, with additional material by Alexei Sayle. One of those names is not like the others.

After all, Ben Elton shows up on-screen in a surprising number of episodes: five, to be exact.¹ Alexei Sayle appears in every single episode, mostly as various offshoots of the Balowski Family. And if you don’t know who Rik Mayall played, then please stop reading this article. But what about Lise Mayer? Surely she shows up in at least one episode?

Certainly, the Comedy Connections episode on The Young Ones, broadcast on the 18th July 2006, seems to think so. Take a look at this linking sequence:

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Baz in “Demolition”, the DJ in “Flood”, Kendal Mintcake in “Bambi”, a Grange Hill student in “Sick”, and the man in the Hawk Lager ad in “Summer Holiday”. Five episodes… but at least six roles, because he also plays the cat in “Flood”. “My wife, she’s a terrible cook, though. Well she would be – she’s dead!”

Can anyone think of any other voice-only roles he had in the series? ↩

Like Two Badly-Parked Morris Minors

Published 6th June 2024

TV Comedy

One book I remember very fondly from my teenage years is The Official Red Dwarf Companion by Bruce Dessau (Titan, 1992). Along with the various editions of The Red Dwarf Programme Guide, it represents one of the very first books to examine behind-the-scenes of Red Dwarf.

For instance, the Series V DVD release in 2004 gave us a look at shots of the despair squid from Back to Reality, cut from the broadcast episode:¹

But 12 years earlier, The Official Red Dwarf Companion showed us a picture of the original, unused model:

A photograph of the despair squid, unused in the final programme

The exact timeframe of these things is often lost, so it’s worth remembering: this was published the very same year that Back to Reality was broadcast. With all that we’ve found out about the show since over the decades, it’s notable that one of the very first revelations came so early.

Other parts of the book fare a little less well. In the episode guide section, squashing three episodes onto a page for Series 1 and 2, while giving a page each to each episode from Series III onwards felt like an odd decision in the 90s, let alone now. (The tiny write-up given to “Queeg” is especially a shame.) Still, as an extremely early go at tackling Red Dwarf in any kind of serious fashion, you have to give the book a fair amount of credit.

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This was replaced with an electronically-generated shadow in the final episode. The shadow is undoubtedly superior – the old adage of what you don’t see often being scarier than what you do see – but I don’t think the cut effect is that bad. ↩

Dinner is Served

Published 5th June 2012

TV Comedy

Filthy Rich & Catflap, end of Episode 3. Richie’s party has been a disaster. And, because it’s Filthy Rich & Catflap, the oven explodes, taking out a large section of the wall…

…and three figures, never seen before, peer through the hole.

Screengrab from end of Episode 3 of Filthy Rich and Catflap

(Video here.)

So, my question is: who are they? They peer into frame very deliberately, so they’re quite clearly supposed to be there.

Something from an earlier scene, which was then cut?
Next door neighbours?
Some kind of fourth-wall breaking malarky – the Visual Effects team, perhaps?

Answers on a postcard*, please.

* In the comments or on Twitter.