the dave nice video show

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Six: “Boys, I Believe You Like Swearwords”

Published 16th July 2024

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

Last time in our look at stock footage in End of an Era, we hung around in the nice clean-cut world of Top of the Pops. Today, Smashie and Nicey throw themselves headlong into… “PUNK!”

This sequence uses only two clips of existing footage… but they just happen to be two of the most interesting clips in the entire show. One of them is extremely well-known. The other, rather less so.

smashie and nicey, the dave nice video show, tx date investigations

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Five: “I’ve Just Eaten a Whole Packet of Toffos!”

Published 12th July 2024

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

At last, something easy with this series of articles looking at stock footage in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. Surely Top of the Pops has been endlessly watched and documented by now. I’ll fly through this, won’t I?

No? Oh well.

End of an Era features material from six different editions of Top of the Pops, from title sequences through to actual performances. All but the last two clips can be seen in the following:

Note that I have conveniently decided to stop that video just before the pair’s “celebration” of “black music”. “You would not believe the complaints that show got…” Or, indeed, websites.

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Four: “Lovely Bouncy Bristols”

Published 15th June 2024

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

There comes a time in every project like this where you run into a problem. There’s always some damn piece of the puzzle which you can’t quite put together. The bit which makes you question why you even bothered writing this nonsense in the first place, when you could do something relaxing like snowboarding. Or BASE jumping.

With End of an Era, the sticking point isn’t really surprising, if you give it more than a moment’s consideration. It’s the section featuring the handover between Smashie and Nicey, in the early days of Radio Fab:

This sequence contains 22 intermingled stock footage shots, from no less than four different sources. Two of those sources are easily identified. The other two are not. Frankly, the whole thing has been driving me slightly loopy.

No matter. Let’s start with what we know first.

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Three: “DJ Overboard, There”

Published 12th May 2024

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

So far in our analysis of stock footage in End of an Era, we’ve seen Nicey meeting The Beatles and appearing on Blue Peter, and Smashie hamming his way through Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars. It’s all that kind of nonsense which sticks in the memory with the programme: big, showy, attention-grabbing comedy.

There’s a couple more sequences like that later on. But for now, we turn to the more prosaic use of stock footage in the show. How does the series portray Smashie and Nicey’s early days on pirate Radio Geraldine? Did they just grab a load of 60s footage of Radio Caroline?

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The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Two: “I’d Be Delighted, Sir”

Published 28th April 2024

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

When we last left our look at stock footage in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era, we had just seen Nicey’s first steps into showbusiness. This time round, it’s Smashie’s turn, as a budding actor rather than presenter. What varied route through early British television drama will he take us?

Cop-tastic.

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

Published 17th March 2024

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.