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It’s boring site admin time again, fans! For anyone wanting to follow this site on the various Twitter replacements, I’ve just added two new ones: Bluesky and Threads. So all the various places you can find Dirty Feed are as follows:

Yes, Threads wouldn’t let me have @dirtyfeed as a username. Yes, I find that incredibly annoying.

I’m still using all the above extremely gingerly; I’m posting site updates only, rather than the steady stream of bollocks that you can find on my @mumoss Twitter account, and I’m currently not following anyone either. Think of them as glorified RSS feeds. This might change in the future, but giving myself four timelines to get pissed off about instead of just one seems like an incredibly bad idea.

You can also subscribe to this site via individual post emails, a monthly newsletter, and yer actual RSS feeds; see the dedicated subscribe page for all of these collated in one neat handy place.

End of boring site admin. Well, it was a nice respite from the McWhirters, at least.

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BBC100: Epilogue

Meta / TV Presentation

Right at the beginning of this project, I gave a bit of context about who these pieces were originally written for. It’s worth adding a bit more clarity to this: it wasn’t actually for the BBC themselves, but rather one of their many service providers.1

But the end result is the same: it was meant to be read by fellow colleagues in the broadcast industry, rather than archive TV nerds. Of course there are some who are both, including yours truly. But I couldn’t assume a huge level of knowledge about the intricacies of old television. Indeed, I couldn’t really assume that everybody reading it was in the United Kingdom.

With that in mind, here’s what I wrote as my introduction to this set of articles, when it was originally published.2

Working in television sometimes requires a special kind of double thinking. It’s both extremely important, and not important at all.

Take a typical Sunday night, when I sit down to direct a busy shift on BBC One. Firstly: there can be millions of viewers watching, so you’d better get it right. Secondly: thinking about that too much will make you so nervous that you can’t actually talk, let alone direct a television channel. For that reason, during huge events like a recent overrunning FA Cup Final, there were only a few people watching in my head… and they were all sitting right next to me. I’ll only think of the rest of the country on the train ride home, thanks.

And yet there is something special about sitting in BBC One’s pres suite, known as NC1. You are essentially transmitting a service which has run uninterrupted since 1946, when television returned to the UK after the Second World War. That’s over 75 years of continuous service. The weight of history occasionally hits you when you sit in that chair, whether you’re broadcasting the latest events from Ukraine, or Homes Under the Hammer.

NC2 is different, of course. BBC2 was launched in 1964, so that’s nearly 60 years. A mere drop in the ocean.

Of course, the BBC is even older than the above would suggest, when you take into account pre-war television broadcasting, and the early days of radio. In fact, 2022 is the BBC’s centenary year. And while I might try and ignore the BBC’s long history during stressful moments of directing, it’s nice to recognise it in some way here.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at some of my favourite programmes the BBC has made over the last few decades. Some of them are still well-known; others are less so. All of them mean a great deal to me, and stand as the reason why I’m proud to be a tiny part of this particular thread of history.

Because none of these programmes would have been seen by the nation, without people doing jobs like ours. And whatever part of the industry we work in, the same is still true today.

Reading it back, it does somewhat seem to be a rallying cry, doesn’t it?

But I post that introduction here because I want you to know. That despite the nonsense that inevitably happens, despite how stressful things get… there are people there who understand that when you’re in that chair, you’re part of something which stretches back over the decades. That your job is, as far as humanely possible, to protect something important.

And if that comes across as vaguely pompus, I’ll choose it over not giving a damn.


  1. This isn’t a secret

  2. Lightly edited to remove a specific detail. 

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BBC100: Introduction

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This week on Dirty Feed, I’m going to try something a little different to usual.

As part of the BBC centenary celebrations in 2022, I was commissioned by my employer at a certain broadcast facility to write something about my favourite BBC TV shows over the years. What was supposed to be only one or two pieces quickly turned into one article per decade, because of course it did, this is me we’re talking about. These ended up being published on the company’s internal intranet, and were never really supposed to be seen by anyone else.

The result was a little different to the kind of stuff I usually post here. These pieces weren’t written for a bunch of archive TV nerds – yes, I’m talking about you. They were intended for a bit of a more general audience, who might not immediately be au fait with old telly. As a result, I found some of them a little tough to write, as they went slightly beyond my usual wheelhouse. But looking back over them now, it seemed there was some stuff that you lot might enjoy, and would be worth republishing here.

So every day this week, I’m going to bung one of these articles up on Dirty Feed. Here’s what you have to look forward to:

A couple of disclaimers. I’m not usually one for ranking things; my choices here were as much about having a variety of programmes, and whether I have anything even vaguely interesting to say about them, as opposed to really being my “favourite” show from each decade. You’ll note that I manage to cover drama, sitcom, variety, and quiz shows in the list above. (The big missing genre is documentaries; Washes Whiter from 1990 was going to be my choice there, but Smashie and Nicey kicked it out.) So I love every show I mention above, but please don’t take the list literally.

Also, in my opinion, the pieces generally get better as they go along, especially once we hit Fawlty Towers. Regardless, I hope you get something out of this; if this works, it may inspire me to write further articles which can be stripped across a whole week. All my best ideas come from Channel 5 in 1997.

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WordPress: Not Completely Terrible

Internet / Meta

Today, I was idly thinking about the kind of thing I used to spend ages doing: designing loads of different websites, rather than just Dirty Feed. Among them were stuff like Ganymede & Titan, Gypsy Creams, and Noise to Signal, all at one point using the CMS Drupal.

None of those sites still use Drupal, however. The spectre of those sites breaking whenever I tried to update the backend still haunts me to this day. The incompatibility and general unpleasantness was absolutely rife. In the end, Ganymede & Titan and Gypsy Creams were converted to WordPress, and as Noise to Signal was changing from an ongoing site to an archive, I just made it all static HTML pages. Has Drupal improved its upgrade path since then? I haven’t the foggiest. I was burnt multiple times, and was warned off it for good.

Anyway, in an odd bit of coincidence1, today I also spotted designer Greg Storey posting about his current CMS woes:

“In fourteen days the CMS I use to run this site, Forestry, will be shut down for good and until I migrate to another system this site will be frozen in time. Don’t stop the presses here, the world will continue to rotate but this situation sucks. It’s like when a commercial or government entity makes a mistake that you have to now find time to fix. While software as a service makes a lot of sense, someone else’s problems are now my own. And I have to be honest, I’m not thrilled by my options because they either tie me to the same situation or they require time and money to fix.”

This must be especially annoying, as Greg’s site was only rebuilt and relaunched in 2019. In less than four years, the site has gone from relaunched, to stuck in stasis.

*   *   *

Ever since I launched Dirty Feed in 2010, it has used self-hosted WordPress. No Drupal, no Movable Type, and certainly none of the more modern or interesting solutions. Do I love it?

Not really. I like designing my own themes from scratch, but this is now really quite complicated, and has only got worse over the years.2 And it’s not the only thing which is complicated: the whole thing is clearly over-powered for what I need here. I only use a fraction of the features WordPress offers. Of course, everybody needs a different fraction of those features, and that’s where the problem always starts. We’ll find a proper solution to that one in the year 2942.

But WordPress has done two things for me. Firstly, it’s remained remarkably free of upgrade woes; there were a couple of wrinkles with comments and videos a few years back, but nothing like the bad old days of Drupal, and certainly nothing which has stopped me making new posts on here And secondly, it’s got the fuck out of my way, and let me concentrate on the thing I want to do most these days: writing.

Monocultures are bad, and everybody using WordPress would be a terrible thing. I fully admit that I’ve taken the easy way out. But sometimes, you have to pick your battles. My experience with Drupal taught me one thing: I needed software which wouldn’t keep kicking me in the balls.

WordPress isn’t cool. For most needs, it’s bloated. There are far more elegant solutions out there. But upgrades aren’t a hassle, and it ain’t going anywhere.

Sometimes, if all you want to do is write, those are the only things which really matter.


  1. I do realise that this is the kind of coincidence which makes it look like I’m just trying to write a blog post which flows smoothly, but I swear it’s true. 

  2. Partly because the web has got more complicated, of course, but it’s not just that. 

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I Asked ChatGPT To Write Dirty Feed, the Results Will Not Amaze You

Computing / Internet / Meta

It’s odd how quickly some cliches can be formed. For instance, that thing where journalists report on AI, by using an opening few paragraphs written by AI. I’m not saying it’s a terrible approach per se. But after seeing it a few times, I most certainly don’t need to see it any more.

So I’m deliberately not doing that here. But I did think it might be vaguely amusing to see what ChatGPT would make of the prompt: “Write an article suitable for dirtyfeed.org.” If you don’t think this would be amusing, then please click away now.

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Recommendations

Computing / Internet / Meta

Hey there. I’ve just been talking to ChatGPT, your machine learning companion. Has anybody said anything nice about Dirty Feed recently? I decided to ask.1

I got the following reply:

“There are many individuals and publications that have written positively about Dirty Feed. Some examples include:

  • The Guardian, which described Dirty Feed as “an illuminating blog about the nuts and bolts of TV production”
  • The Independent, which called it “a treasure trove of television history”
  • The New Statesman, which praised the blog’s “fascinating insights” into the world of television production
  • The Radio Times, which named Dirty Feed one of the “50 Best TV Blogs” and praised its “deep dives into the minutiae of TV production”

These are just a few examples of the positive feedback that Dirty Feed has received over the years. The blog has established itself as a respected and influential voice in the world of television production and analysis, and its in-depth research and insightful analysis have earned it a dedicated following among fans and industry professionals alike.”

Which is lovely, isn’t it?

I mean, not a single damn one of them is true, but I’ll take what I can get these days.


  1. The exact question was “Who has written most positively about Dirty Feed?”, for what it’s worth. 

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I Hate Doing Research, Part Three

Meta / TV Comedy

Thank you all for your kind words about my first piece on the flash frames in The Young Ones. Part Two is in the works, but is still a little way off publication. Perhaps the following will explain why.

Let’s take that missing flash frame for “Summer Holiday”, which I comprehensively examined in Part One. It’s something which definitely, never, ever, ever transmitted, or made it into any commercial release of the show, and I have the large pile of recordings here to prove it.

And yet take a look at the paperwork for the episode, back in 1984:

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

And then read the relevant section of Roger Wilmut’s Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-Law?, the seminal book on alternative comedy, published in 1989:

“The general style of anarchy, with cutaway sequences and a good deal of stunt work, was maintained: one new running joke was presumably for the benefit of the owners of expensive video recorders, since it consisted of cutting in four-frame flashes which cannot possibly be grasped in real time – they include a leaping frog, a dripping tap, a skier, a potter’s wheel and, finally, a notice signed by the video tape editor saying, ‘I never wanted to put all these flash frames in in the first place.'”

And finally, let’s listen to Young Ones producer Paul Jackson, interviewed on the DVD extra The Making of The Young Ones in 2007:

“It’s on the DVD, it’s on the video versions, but it never was broadcast.”

In other words: in order to find out the truth about whether that “Summer Holiday” flash frame was actually broadcast or commercially released, I’ve had to ignore a) the actual paperwork for the episode, b) a leading comedy historian, and c) the producer of the show. Brilliant.

I say all this not to point out how great I am, but simply to show how easy it is for these things to get warped and twisted down the years. Sometimes, the only way to get to the truth of what was broadcast is by watching the actual material, and seeing what’s there, and what isn’t.

And that’s only possible by getting people to dig out off-airs from 1984. Everything else is guesswork.

A version of this post was first published in the January issue of my monthly newsletter.

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Pretentious? Moi?

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The eagle-eyed among you will note that from December, I started using the moniker “John J. Hoare” in various places. In the footer of this website; on Twitter; and now in the byline of my newsletter.1 For those of you who missed my short explanation on Twitter, I am fully aware that this seems a rather precious affectation. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, I told you all the story of how I shared my name with a BBC cameraman growing up, and what a delight that was. Most of you will have seen his name in the end credits of TV shows throughout the years, especially in the 80s. I’ve often been asked whether I was him, which I always found quite funny.

But I dunno. Over the last year or so, I’ve started to find it rather less amusing, and more just mildly irritating. The more my writing about television on here gets noticed, and the more people find out my job is working on the BBC television channels, the number of people asking me whether I’m “that” John Hoare has increased over the years. To the point where I’m convinced many people just assume I’m the same person.

Seeing another, different, third John Hoare credited as Director of Photography on Doctors recently hasn’t exactly helped matters.

Anyway, as I was pondering all of this, I did some work on the recent Blu-ray set of The Young Ones, where I’m kindly credited a couple of times. And seeing the name “John Hoare” in the credits there made me realise: yet again, more than ever given the show’s vintage, so many people are just going to assume that I’m that John Hoare. What used to just be a fun coincidence, is now actively starting to confuse and harm my career. How do you build a name for yourself, when somebody already has that name? I thought this was a problem only Hollywood starlets had, or something.

So the obvious answer is: to change my name. Maybe this was an opportunity to get rid of “Hoare”, the target of a million and one jokes over the years, from some massively hilarious people. It is notable that every single other member of my immediate family has chosen to get rid of it.2 But that’s a complete faff, and… I dunno. I just don’t really want to. It’s not a name I love, but it’s the one I have, and it’s just part of me now.

Hence “John J. Hoare”, the name I’m going to use professionally from now on, in as much as Dirty Feed is professional at anything. You’ll never need to speak it. Just call me John. But in writing, it helps identify who I am. Notably, nobody has asked me whether I’m any other John Hoare in the last two months, and that’s surely worth something.

Oh, and: it stands for James. My real middle name. It’s a real J, not a fake J. If I was going to pick a fake middle initial, I’d go down the whole “David X. Cohen” route. Or perhaps just call myself Jay-Z Hoare.

Actually, come to think of it, I’ll also answer to that.


  1. Oh yeah, my newsletter. You should sign up to that, you know. I promise, I’ll only send you crap once a month. 

  2. A fact which I only realised when writing this post. It was an odd realisation, I have to say. 

Mastodons of the Fediverse

Meta

Short version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud.

Medium version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud, which will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only. I won’t be following anybody at the moment over there; we’ll see how it goes.

Long version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud. This will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only, as per twitter.com/@dirtyfeed, rather than all my usual nonsense you get over on twitter.com/@mumoss. Consider it a glorified RSS feed for this site.

I also, with apologies, won’t be following anybody over there for the time being. This is me dipping a toe into Mastodon, rather than a fully-fledged dive in. I will confess that when I saw all the auto-follow tools to help people migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, an absolute shudder ran through me. That’s not because I HATE YOU ALL – although I obviously do – but because I remain unconvinced that my Twitter experience as it stands is something I want to replicate elsewhere, and that’s as much to do with me as anything.

It’s fair to say that I’ve built up an awful lot of bad habits on Twitter – reading the wrong things, reading them at the wrong time – and I really want to make sure I don’t just end up with two timelines of stuff which makes me miserable. It’s one thing to have made some mistakes, but stick with something because it’s still helpful in other ways. It’s another thing to make those same mistakes all over again somewhere else. That would seem, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking stupid. I don’t want to rely on there being less stuff in my timeline to make it manageable – I want to avoid most of the stuff I don’t want entirely. A timeline consisting mainly of links to interesting blog posts might be the ideal.

So we’ll see where I end up with that. In the meantime, there’s now yet another way of keeping up with this place without having to rely on Twitter, which is surely a good thing for a million and one different reasons. Check out the Subscribe page for the rest; in particular, I’d urge you to consider signing up for the Dirty Feed newsletter, which is launching later this month. Nearly all my traffic currently comes from Twitter: I’d like to significantly change that this year, if at all possible.

Longest version: Send me £100 via PayPal, and I’ll talk you through Dirty Feed syndication options over the phone at your leisure.

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Dirty Feed: Best of 2022

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2015201620172018201920202021 • 2022 • 2023

I’ll tell you something, I’m utterly bored with writing depressing intros for these end-of-year articles. You know the drill. “Oh, hasn’t this year been awful, global pandemics, politics, blah blah blah, never mind, here’s the best things I’ve written this year.”

So: 2022 has been brilliant, hasn’t it? Everyone had a great time, and people couldn’t be happier. Now here’s the best things I’ve written this year.

*   *   *

DJs Leave Radio Fab
An in-depth look at the origins of a prop newspaper in Smashie & Nicey: the End of an Era. Well, start the year as you mean to go on. As indeed I did, with similar articles looking at prop newspapers in Red Dwarf and The Young Ones. This is an entire waste of time, and I won’t be writing any articles about this ever again. Such as the one about I’m Alan Partridge which I definitely won’t be publishing next year.

DJs leave Radio Fab. Mike Smash and Dave Nice left Radio Fab FM yesterday after being with the station since 1967.
Red Dwarf model shot - clapperboard dated 11/2/87


I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates
For years, we’ve heard about the recording of Series 1 of Red Dwarf being abandoned due to an electricians’ strike… but we’ve never known exactly when those abandoned recording dates were. Until now. See also: how a similar strike affected The Young Ones.

A Brief History of a Doorway in Red Dwarf (1989-96)
I mean, seriously. You probably already know if you want to click on that or not. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to sell it. Ditto with this piece about the sets in “Back to Reality”.

Polymorph - close-up of door
The Wayback Machine


Shame.
About why you shouldn’t always feel shame about older versions of you hanging around the web, and why deleting them might not be the best idea. I write a fair bit about the web – and especially the archiving of the web – but rarely make a fuss about it, because I don’t think many people visit this site for that kind of stuff. This is one of the few pieces on this topic which actually got noticed a little.

A Few Random Thoughts on 2point4 children
I saw 2point4 children for the first time properly this year. Here are my long and rambling thoughts about it, but if you want the short version: it’s great. I’d love to write more about the series next year. In the meantime: what was the original theme tune for the pilot?

Bill with her head through a catflap
Telescope base in Chucklevision


Tales From BBC North West’s Scene Dock
Here it is. The most popular article I wrote all year, about the links between Chucklevision and Red Dwarf. No, I’m not turning into a parody of myself, now why don’t you sod off?

In Search of the Golden Brain
And there’s the second most popular article I wrote all year, about the truth behind a notorious treasure hunt in the first Spitting Image book. This is the kind of investigation I’d like to write much more of next year, as it’s deeply satisfying. (And yes, I still have that vague idea of writing a Comedy Mysteries book…)

The Spitting Image Golden Brain puzzle
Simon Cadell on the Enterprise


“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”
Investigating the day that Jeffrey Fairbrother took a trip aboard the Enterprise, in one of the silliest things ever made. Thank god for old issues of TV Zone. Also this year: proving ST:TNG‘s most prolific director wrong.

Mmmm, Nice
Bizarrely, I’ve never written about Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em on here before, despite it being one of my favourite shows. So here’s a short tale about the production of Series 1 of the show… and what’s so special about the very last episode of that series. See also: proving Wikipedia wrong about the recording of Are You Being Served.

Frank Spencer looking upset
BBC Two 50th anniversary symbol


Relative Time Dilation in an Amazingly Compressed Space
Of all the more personal pieces I’ve written this year, this is my favourite. It captures just a little moment where you’re fully aware of history taking place in front of you… even if it’s really just a little piece of your own history.

That-cher
How did the BBC originally report the news of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation? And can we absolve a BBC daytime presenter of a heinous broadcasting crime? All this and some obscure 1980s production paperwork.

Debi Jones
Alf Garnett wheeling around Else, from Series 1 of In Sickness and in Health


An Evening at Television Centre
Sneaking in at the end of the year, this ended up as one of my favourite pieces, about the pilot of In Sickness and in Health… and why I really, really wish I had a time machine.

*   *   *

This year has been a bit of a mixed bag. I wrote less than I did in 2021 – more individual posts, sure, but fewer words, and perhaps fewer articles I’m really proud of. On the other hand, in writing this end-of-year piece, I find I’ve actually done a little more I liked than I thought. And at least I finally got the redesign of this place done, which I’ve been putting off for years.1

Truth be told, I’ve found this year quite tough, for reasons that I don’t really want to go into. So I’ll just say: thank you if you read any of my stuff this year, especially if you sent any other visitors my way, or sent me any nice comments, or indeed helped with some of the research. Despite my troubles this year, writing in this place is one of the things which has kept me sane. The fact that other people enjoy my nonsense too makes me very happy. And I have plenty of plans for fun stuff next year.2

Oh yeah, next year. For all the obvious reasons, my desire is to use Twitter less. Hopefully a lot less. So if you want to give me a late Christmas present, then please sign up for my monthly newsletter, which is launching in January:

I guess I should really write a paragraph here to tie this whole article up and provide a climax. But having watched a quite incredible amount of Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health over the last couple of months, I can say with some confidence that Johnny Speight didn’t always bother. So I’ll just leave this piece hanging shoddily in mid-air–

[awkward silence, audience applause]


  1. I’m still proud of my new logo, which I must write something about next year. 

  2. YES, INCLUDING FLASH FRAMES IN THE YOUNG ONES. 

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