2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023
Man, people whinged too much about 2016. True, there was Trump, Brexit, and celebrity deaths aplenty, and on a personal note I nearly died of pneumonia. Still, I published some fun stuff on Dirty Feed, and isn’t that what really counts?
Time for my traditional self-regarding list, then. Below are a few of my favourite things I published here last year. (If you enjoyed any of it and can afford it, please consider donating to the Internet Archive.)
Fawlty Towers: A Touch of Class
Tracking down which parts of the first episode of Fawlty Towers were reshot between the original pilot recording, and the programme’s actual broadcast the following year. The second most popular piece on the site all year, and contains possibly the only time Dirty Feed will ever concentrate on somebody’s hairstyle.
The Fragility of the Web
I’ve written a lot of stuff about the web this year, most of it to general disinterest. This piece can stand to represent all of them: on how easy it is to destroy the web even when you think you stand to protect it. Not my best-written piece of the year, but a piece which gets to the heart of why I care about this stuff.
Who Framed Michael Eisner
Did the creators of Who Framed Roger Rabbit really manange to sneak in a flash-frame of Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s phone number into the film? (No.) Can I use this topic to talk about Python edits instead? (Yes.)
Blade Runner Afternoons
Ever wondered about how the famous Blockbusters cityscape opening titles were created? The show’s 1989 annual reveals all, with some beautiful behind-the-scenes pictures. This was the most read piece on the site all year. (I also posted some more behind-the-scenes stuff from the annual here.)
Hi-de-Hi! Edits #1, #2, #3
Comparing the DVD release of Hi-de-Hi! and its afternoon repeats on BBC Two. I maintain that Mr. Partridge really did once tell Peggy to “fuck off”. (Comparing all 58 episodes of the show is probably the biggest undertaking I’ve done on here all year. Final piece coming in January.)
“Network, we’ll have to come back and do the draw…”
About the lottery breakdown Bob Monkhouse dealt so expertly with back in 1996… and my own personal relationship to it. But not quite as wanky as that sounds. Nearly as wanky. But not quite.
A George & Mildred Christmas
A late entry, sneaking in at the very end of the year, about George & Mildred‘s Christmas episodes… and how the last episode manages to question the entire setup of the whole show. I’d love to write more stuff like this in the coming year.
Other things I wrote which I think turned out well: about the cut Diana joke in Men Behaving Badly, a skilful piece of presenting, the weirdest abandoned website ever, Elstree being silly, a guide to social media for game developers, why I dislike Digital Spy, old documentaries getting things wrong on purpose, and about ghosts of the internet.
However, my favourite piece I wrote all year wasn’t even on Dirty Feed. Instead it was published over on Ganymede & Titan, the Red Dwarf fansite once described as “a crock of shit” by Iain Lee. That piece was Hancock’s Half Hour: The Tycoon, and is all about the similarities between the Hancock episode The Tycoon, and the Red Dwarf episode Better than Life. It’s (nearly) everything I’d like my writing to be, but don’t always manage.
Back to Dirty Feed. Last year ended up being a bit of a mixed bag for the site. Sadly, I didn’t manage to get back to doing this, or finish this. On the other hand, I did publish more pieces on the site than any previous year, and for various reasons the year didn’t really lend itself to bigger projects in the end.
Thanks to everyone who has said nice things about the site over the past 12 months – I really do appreciate it. And I have lots of plans for the upcoming year. I may even finish the article I teased at the end of my Best of 2015 piece. Who knows?