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Looking for Lise

Published 22nd March 2025

TV Comedy

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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  1. 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? ↩

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Strange Anarchic Happenings

Published 19th March 2025

TV Comedy

Recently, I’ve been rewatching quite a lot of documentaries about The Young Ones, seeing as I can’t seem to stop writing about that damn show. This is why I find myself watching The Making of The Young Ones from the 2007 DVD release… for the 2000th damn time.

One little section of that documentary stood out in particular to me this time round, about one of the early reviews the show got in the press:

ALEXEI SAYLE: There was a guy called Ray Connolly, he was the TV critic for the Evening Standard. He’d always disliked me, I think, he’d called me “as funny as a funeral” either before or in this review. But he said something really interesting. He said ‘There’s something going on in my house.’ He said ‘My kids are sneaking off to watch this show that I don’t understand at all, called The Young Ones. And yet they find it hilarious. I don’t get it.’ But clearly, it was like this idea that something was going on.

PAUL JACKSON: I think he almost made the analogy – of course, Ray came through as a writer in the 60s music generation I was talking about – I think he almost made the analogy to, you know, we had our music, this feels to me a bit like that. Like we had the Stones, they’ve got The Young Ones. Which was fantastic.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually read this review, rather than going on Sayle and Jackson’s memories? Of course it would. Luckily, because they got the name of the TV critic correct – it was indeed Ray Connolly – it wasn’t very hard to find.

The review appeared in the Evening Standard on the 8th December 1982. This is the day after the first broadcast of “Interesting” from Series 1, and is a genuinely valuable snapshot of initial reactions to the show, from someone who wasn’t really its target audience.

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The Voice of Youth

Published 15th March 2025

TV Comedy

It somehow seems fitting that the very first thing recorded in studio for The Young Ones was one of its most well-remembered sketches. On the 23rd January 1982 at 7:30pm, without a studio audience – it was played in for their reaction the following night – Nozin’ Aroun’ was put in front of the cameras.

“Well, I’m standing up here on this scaffolding because that’s what this programme is all about – shock.”

The inspirations for Nozin’ Aroun’ are clear: a parody of TV “for young adults, made by young adults”, most obviously Something Else (1978-82) and the Oxford Road Show (1981-85). The latter is often mentioned in connection to The Young Ones, as Ben Elton made several appearances on it. A person contributing to the real thing… and also doing a parody of it. The link is irresistible.

Irresistible… and yet often slightly confused, especially when it comes to the chronology. For instance, BFI Screenonline tells the following story:

“But by the late 1980s Elton had decisively emerged from behind the typewriter. Although he had had some onscreen experience (even parodying his Oxford Road Show appearances in The Young Ones‘ mock youth TV programme Nozin’ Aroun’), it wasn’t until he became the regular host of Channel 4’s alternative comedy variety show Saturday Live (1985-87) and its successor Friday Night Live (1988) that his face became as famous as his scripts.”

So the Oxford Road Show appearances came first, and then The Young Ones. And yet on the DVD commentary for “Demolition”, the Young Ones pilot, with Paul Jackson and Geoff Posner1, we get:

PAUL JACKSON: Funnily enough, he [Ben Elton] went on to present the Oxford Road Show of which this is in fact a parody.
GEOFF POSNER: Absolutely. Oxford Road Show used to be a sort of youth show, done from Manchester, Oxford Road studios in Manchester, and he ended up sending himself up.
PAUL JACKSON: And then, having sent himself up, presenting the show.

Jackson and Posner seem to be talking at cross-purposes here; Jackson thinks The Young Ones came before Ben’s Oxford Road Show work, while Posner seems to think it came afterwards. It’s all a bit confusing. After all, how can you send yourself up in this fashion before you’ve appeared on the real show?

Still, the idea that Ben is directly making fun of his own work in Nozin’ Aroun’ is a fun one. It’s not difficult to imagine the thought process here, once you’ve disentangled the temporal confusion. Ben did some embarrassing early appearances on the Oxford Road Show, finally got a show of his own, and used it to mercilessly take the piss out of how awful he was on it. Or at the very least, how awful everybody was around him.

The truth is altogether more interesting.

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  1. Paul Jackson produced the pilot, so is an obvious choice for this commentary. Posner is perhaps slightly odd; he only joined the production for the rest of Series 1, as Associate Producer/Director. But we do get the story of Posner overhearing Jackson editing the pilot of The Young Ones deep within the bowels of the BBC, which probably makes it worth it. ↩

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The Ballad of SKP003375

Published 15th June 2024

Meta / TV Comedy

Warning: the following is for hardcore TV research nerds only.

The most complicated series of articles I’ve ever written here on Dirty Feed is probably last year’s five-part epic on The Young Ones and flash frames. It’s the kind of project which has you waking up in a cold sweat at night, screaming about /72 edits.

It’s also a project which I think turned out OK. Sure, I may not have got to the root of every single question to do with those damn flash frames, but I got closer than anybody has before, and that’s surely worth something. It certainly manages to be more accurate than most newspaper reports from the time.

Of those remaining questions, though, one of them really bugs me. It’s regarding these two flash frames from “Nasty”, first transmitted on the 29th May 1984:

Pottery wheel
Dripping tap


Despite how much I poked at them, and how much other people poked at them for me, I never managed to figure out the original source for these frames. I mean, I tried. I really, really tried. I even ended up looking through programmes about sodding pottery that the BBC broadcast in the early 80s. No luck. What programme did those two shots originate from?

The only clue we have is the following sentence in the paperwork for “Nasty”:

Flash frame of tap dripping from K065402 transferred to H25992, and Potter’s Wheel from SKP003375 transferred to H25992.

There are three spools, aka tapes, mentioned in that sentence. H25992 is the spool which all the flash frames in the series was compiled onto, before they were scattered across the various episodes. But K065402 and SKP003375, the original source of the frames, seemed impossible to track down. No current BBC database – at least any that I know if – seems to recognise those tape numbers. Which is a bizarre state of affairs in itself. Nor did anybody seem to know what those spool prefixes actually meant.

I came up with all kinds of theories, mind. Did “K” stand for TK, or Telecine? Is SKP “Scotland Telecine”? Was I, in fact, going completely mad?

Such thoughts eventually faded. I finally finished the series of articles, made a half-hearted promise that I’d investigate more next year, and that was that. Meanwhile, this year’s long project is an investigation into all the stock footage used in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. And my latest post is on material of lovely young ladies walking down the street, used as part of the sequence on Radio Fab’s DJ handover.

And one of the sources of those lovely young ladies is listed as the following in the paperwork:

Kings Road Stock.
7 secs
SKP2304
BBC

And suddenly, something clicked into place. This was footage taken from an actual stock library, rather than a finished programme. And it had the number SKP2304. The potter’s wheel footage from “Nasty” had the number SKP003375. The “SK” in “SKP” surely stands for “Stock”, and that potter’s wheel footage surely came from a stock library too. It’s quite possible it had never been broadcast before The Young Ones used it.

Of course, questions remain. I say it’s possible it had “never have been broadcast before”, but the emphasis is on “possible”; just because The Young Ones took it from a stock library, its ultimate origin may still have been from a broadcast programme. My only point is that it’s not guaranteed to have done so. And the “K” prefix for the dripping tap material is still up for debate.

I might figure this out in 30 years, you know.

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I Love Doing Research, Part Two

Published 10th April 2024

TV Comedy

One of the ongoing projects bubbling away in the background here on Dirty Feed is an extensive piece on Keeping Up Appearances. Just exactly what is broadcast on Onslow’s telly in various episodes of the show? It’s a question which somebody has to answer, anyway.1

So I obviously began my research with the pilot, now commonly known as “Daddy’s Accident”, first broadcast on 29th October 1990. This is the very first time we see Onslow turn on the TV in his own inimitable fashion.

He’s clearly watching a film, but which film? The paperwork reveals the answer:

Film used on television screen:
‘SHALAKO’: Weintraub Screen Entertainment
Taken off VT, spool nos: H82311 & H82301
Duration used:
Sound only: 2’21”
In vision: 0’10”
SLA number: 14777.

Ah yes, Shalako, the 1968 Western with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. Not a film I really know… and yet the name seemed strangely familiar, somehow.

And then it hit me. Right back at the start of my investigation about The Young Ones and flash frames, the climax of that very first piece was about the frame which was cut from the final episode, “Summer Holiday”. And what was that flash frame supposed to be of?

FILM:
1 frame from Shalako (+ BBC cap) property of EMI. Transferred to H25992.

Of all the films Keeping Up Appearances could have chosen, it had to be that one, didn’t it?

  1. No it isn’t. ↩

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Flash Frames Redux

Published 12th January 2024

TV Comedy

Having spent an entire year writing about flash frames in The Young Ones, you really would think I was done with the whole damn thing now. And I nearly am, I promise.

However, I have one last thing to talk about. Let’s watch the first couple of minutes of “Boring”, broadcast on the 23rd November 1982.

Here’s a fun fact which I don’t think has ever been mentioned before: the entire house sequence above, up to and including “Morning has broken”, was originally supposed to be placed before the opening titles, according to the camera script. It’s probably a good idea this was changed; Neil’s line is funny as a stupid throwaway, but placing it just before the titles would give it a weight it simply couldn’t support.

Right, enough fun, back to the flash frames. At 1:25 in the above video, something rather odd happens. We get this image, of a flying carpet, for a single frame:1

A flying rug in the hallway

What’s going on? Despite this being from Series 1, is this related to the whole Series 2 flash frames business?

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  1. Tech note: it’s a single frame in that video, deinterlacing the original material to 50fps. In fact, it was a single field in the original interlaced material. ↩

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Balls.

Published 23rd December 2023

TV Comedy

Every so often, there’s a comment on this site which deserves a wider audience. Today, it’s Rob Blackmon, asking this question on The Young Ones, “Interesting”:

“Finally, if anyone has access to shooting scripts or otherwise, what was it that Mike was clearly about to say after “Cinderella” entered the flat? Such an obvious, jarring cut and he just gave us that look, like.”

It certainly is one of the most obvious and clunky edits in the whole of The Young Ones. Here’s a reminder:

It is indeed very clear that Mike is about to say something, and we rudely cut away. But what, exactly?

I do, in fact, have access to the script. And the bon mot we were so cruelly deprived of is the following:

CINDERS: I’m looking for my prince.
MIKE: (POINTING UPSTAIRS) Maybe they’re upstairs with my etchings baby. (TO CAMERA) At least I didn’t make a joke about balls or fairy queens.

Certainly not a joke worth keeping. Although what’s vaguely annoying is that if they’d cut away from Mike a second earlier, before he’d had a chance to start looking at the camera, the moment would be far less jarring.

Yes, next year on Dirty Feed, expect more lectures about editing in sitcoms from 1982.

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Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Five

Published 20th December 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

When I started this set of articles about flash frames, right back at the beginning of the year, I never thought it would end up taking five parts to tell this story properly. In particular, I never really wanted to get into the nitty gritty of endless Young Ones repeats.

Unfortunately, as Demosthenes would say: tough shit. It is actually relevant; or, at least, one particular repeat run is. In August 1995, something happened which we can’t entirely avoid. Because not only did The Young Ones begin a fresh, almost-complete run from the start on BBC2… but half the episodes were broadcast in a version never seen before.

“Oil”, “Boring”, and “Bomb” aired in their original, 35 minute versions. “Time” aired in its usual 1985 edit, with the flash frame cut out. But the rest of the episodes aired in brand new 30-minute edits, designed at least partially to make the series easier to repeat by fitting into a standard half hour slot.

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Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Four

Published 12th November 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

It feels like ages since we last checked in with The Young Ones. A brief recap, then. Back in 1984, the BBC had just transmitted the show’s second and final series… but not without some problems. In particular, the final flash frame intended for inclusion in “Summer Holiday” was cut entirely, much to the displeasure of the team. But surely the show was now home and dry?

Well, what do you think?

A hint of what was to come can be found in the following from Hansard. It isn’t normal for questions to be asked of Ministers about a sitcom.1 And yet on the 27th June 1984, just eight days after Series 2 of The Young Ones had finished airing, that is exactly what happened. Conservative MP for Cardiff West, Stefan Terlezki, was our ersatz Norris McWhirter.

“Mr. Terlezki asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what safeguards there are against subliminal messages appearing on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and if he is satisfied that these are adequate.”

Douglas Hurd, then a Minister of State for the Home Office, gave the following reply:

“I am satisfied that clause 13(6) of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement of 2 April 1981, which requires the corporation not to include subliminal messages in its programmes, provides an adequate safeguard. It is for the BBC’s board of governors to ensure that the provision is observed. I understand that the corporation considers that some brief, unrelated inserts included in a recent BBC comedy series might have been regarded as in breach of the spirit of the provision, and steps were taken to prevent a recurrence.”

Which brings up an interesting question: were subliminal images really banned on the BBC at the time? The above suggests that they were. And yet Paul Jackson, on the 2007 DVD documentary The Making of The Young Ones, seemed to disagree:

“And although it wasn’t illegal at the BBC because the commercial issue didn’t arise, it was raised, and it went up to Bill Cotton… and the edict came down you’ve gotta take it out.

Meanwhile, the Nottingham Evening Post, on the 16th June 1984, reported the following:

“A BBC spokeswoman said the BBC’s Charter does cover subliminal techniques, from the political and advertising point of view, but that these pictures could not be deemed harmful.

“This is a joke flash-frame technique which is harmless”, she said.”

There’s only one way to find out the truth. We need to get hold of a copy of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement. Not this damn thing, dated December 2016, but the document quoted by Hurd from April 1981.

I have a copy. Clause 13(6) states the following:

“The Corporation shall at all times refrain from sending any broadcast matter which includes any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”

Which sounds suspiciously familiar. Let’s compare this to Section 4(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1981, which IBA-licensed stations were supposed to abide by:

“It shall be the duty of the Authority to satisfy themselves that the programmes broadcast by the Authority do not include, whether in an advertisement or otherwise, any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”

The similarity in language is obvious. At the very least, the intent for the BBC was exactly the same as for the IBA: to strongly discourage the use of flash frames. Whether it would have stood up in a court of law is a different question, and one which was never answered in practice.

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  1. Or indeed a variety show, but let’s not start all that again. ↩

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Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Two

Published 6th August 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

It’s the 8th April 1970 at 9pm, and BBC1, BBC2 and ITV are all transmitting the same thing. It is, of course, a Party Political Broadcast: this one by the Labour Party, titled “What’s at Stake?”. It seemed pretty normal, on the face of it. I mean, the promise of MP trio George Brown, Anthony Crosland, and Robert Mellish might sound a bit too exciting, but I’m sure the country could keep itself under control.

The very next day, the papers were in uproar.

The Daily Mail is typical, in its piece “Complaints on Labour broadcast”:

“Both the BBC and ITV had callers last night complaining that the first one or two minutes of the Labour Party’s political broadcasting contained subliminal advertising.

The programme had been recorded and the BBC explained: ‘We are not responsible for the content of party political broadcasts, it is entirely up to the parties concerned. We provide the facilities.'”

Uh-oh. So what did Labour have to say about this?

“‘Subliminal advertising?’ said a Labour Party spokesman. ‘No, not really.

What happened was that we opened the programme with an anti-switch off factor to grab people’s interest. It went on for not more than 30 seconds with film shots and some raucous voice saying: ‘We don’t expect you to vote.’

I understand that the complaint is that the words “Labour Tomorrow” appeared twice very quickly, so quickly that they registered on the eye and not the brain.'”

Hmmmmm. Regardless of anything else, I would suggest statements like “registered on the eye and not the brain” are liable to make people more suspicious about what was broadcast, not less.1

Regardless of that, for a while it looked like nothing else would happen. The Daily Telegraph published the following on the 10th April, under “Subliminal advertising by Labour denied”:

“Neither the BBC nor the Independent Television Authority is to take any action over allegations that the Labour party political broadcast on Wednesday contained subliminal advertising.

Both organisations maintained yesterday that no such advertising was included in the programme. They said no action would be taken about complaints from viewers.”

But a week later on the 16th April, the front page of The Times reported the following, under “Investigation on Labour TV film”:

“The Labour Party political broadcast on television which used a quick flash technique and brought claims that subliminal methods were being used is to be investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The men behind the inquiry are Mr. Norris McWhirter and Mr. Ross McWhirter, the publishing twins.”

Oh, hello there. Well, we’ve been avoiding this topic for about as long as is practical. We need to talk about the McWhirters.

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  1. Some newspapers, like the Lincolnshire Echo, report this quote as “the brain and not the eye”, which actually makes more sense. But either way round, the quote seems ill-judged. ↩

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