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I Love Doing Research

Published 3rd May 2023

TV Comedy

Every so often, I post one of those “Send me anonymous messages!” things to Twitter, and let people do their worst. I usually receive a mix of responses, including plenty of questions I wish I could answer but can’t. Yes, here is my exact opinion about certain bits of television I don’t like, and here is my inevitable sacking a day later. And no, I ain’t telling you all the juicy details about obits.

But I do also get some great questions which I can actually answer. My favourite this time round was the following:

“What’s the best bit of TV trivia you know, but haven’t been able to include in an article (yet)?”

To which my answer was: two days before Red Dwarf‘s “Waiting for God” was recorded, Studio A at New Broadcasting House in Manchester was used for a Board of Governors lunch. “Waiting for God” was recorded on the 10th/11th October 1987; the Board of Governors lunch was the 8th October. Which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, the most exciting paragraph I have ever written.

Still, had I waited a few days, I might have given a different answer.

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An Evening at Television Centre, Part Two

Published 16th April 2023

TV Comedy

The problem with writing this site is that I seem to go off on endless tangents, rather than writing what I’m supposed to be writing about.

Oh well, here we go again. On the 14th November 1997, a brand new series of The Fast Show started airing on BBC2. That first episode featured the debut of a new Paul Whitehouse character Archie, the pub bore. This first sketch is fairly normal; they get progressively odder.

Now, hidden away on the final disc of The Ultimate Fast Show Collection DVD, is a behind-the-scenes feature on Series 3 by yer man Rhys Thomas. And as part of this feature, we see a little snatch of this sketch being recorded:

At the end of that clip, you can see them setting up for the Chess sketch in Episode 6, which looks like it was recorded directly after.1 But the bit I want to concentrate on is the following bit of amusingness:

PAUL WHITEHOUSE: Coogan’s in tonight. What do you reckon we go round and do him?
MARK WILLIAMS: And then who’s left over? Then we go and do Shooting Stars!
PAUL WHITEHOUSE: Come on Lamarr, come on. You greaseball throwback…

Coogan was indeed in that night; but Whitehouse doesn’t mean he’s in the Fast Show audience. These two Archie sketches were shot on the 5th September 1997… the same night as an audience recording for I’m Alan Partridge. Specifically, Series 1 Episode 3, “Watership Alan”. Yeah, the one with Chris Morris. This episode was broadcast on the 17th November 1997, just three days after Series 3 of The Fast Show debuted.

As for Shooting Stars? The very first episode of Series 3 was recorded this night too, and broadcast on the 26th November 1997 This is the episode featuring Mariella Frostrup, Antony Worrall Thompson, Leo Sayer, and Tania Bryer. I find the latter particularly amusing, as back at the start of 1997, she had appeared in the “Science” episode of Brass Eye, warning us of the dangers of mutant clouds. I wonder if she was tempted to pop round to TC1 and lamp Morris one.

Regardless: The Fast Show, I’m Alan Partridge and Shooting Stars, recording at TV Centre in the same evening. And all broadcast in the same month too.

If I may permit myself a note of melancholy that I don’t usually indulge in here on Dirty Feed: I think we’ve lost something, guys.

  1. There appears to be an invisible edit 24 seconds in; the chessboard magically appears on the table. ↩

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Chanel 9: Unplugged

Published 12th April 2023

TV Comedy

Just occasionally, it seems the comedy historian gods are smiling down at me.

Back in January, I wrote about the Chanel 9 sketches in The Fast Show, and how the degraded picture effect on the sketches was generated. In a pleasing piece of serendipity, the BBC have just uploaded every episode of The Fast Show to iPlayer, making it look like I’m writing about something vaguely of the zeitgeist for a change.1

There are a few strange things about these iPlayer uploads, though. In particular, Episode 1.4 seems to be an early edit, completely different to the DVD release! In the first minute of the programme, we have:

  • Unmixed sound on the initial “Ed Winchester” sketch,
  • A click track and no visuals instead of the opening montage of the title sequence, and
  • No cast member credits during the Kenny Valentine number.

A full list of the differences between the version released on DVD, and this incomplete version on iPlayer, I shall leave as an exercise for the reader.2 But I do want to talk about one major difference later on in the programme. And here is where our smiling comedy gods come in.

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  1. Look, a show which is only 30 years old counts as part of the zeitgeist around here. ↩

  2. I really can’t be arsed. ↩

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Foreign News Sketch

Published 2nd January 2023

TV Comedy

One of my favourite things about The Fast Show is how many different textures it has.

For instance: it isn’t just a programme which knows which sketches need to be shot on location, and which sketches should be shot in the studio. This is a programme which knows that certain location sketches should be shot on film (Ted & Ralph, Unlucky Alf), and certain location sketches should be VT (The Off-Roaders, Fat Sweaty Coppers). And while I could wax lyrical about how shooting each sketch the right way helps sell the joke better, part of the joy here is even simpler: your eyes don’t have time to get bored.

And then we have Chanel 9. A parody of every foreign news broadcast you might imagine you’d seen on holiday, with accompanying dreadful picture quality, it adds yet another texture to the show. Let’s take a look at the first Chanel 9 sketch, from the very first episode of The Fast Show, broadcast on the 27th September 1994.

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The Fast Show: Series 2 DVD Edits

Published 24th November 2015

TV Comedy

The Fast Show Series 2 - selected article

Some people fantasise about power. Some people fantasise about money. Some people fantasise about getting their genitalia constantly sucked by a steady stream of people they have specially recruited. Me? I fantasise of comparing the original broadcasts of every single episode of The Fast Show with the versions released on DVD, and noting down each and every difference. Every so often, someone will pop up on a forum and query something which has changed on the commercial releases of the programme; it’d be nice to get all the facts together in one place.

Sadly, it was difficult enough to track down the original broadcast of a single episode of One Foot in the Grave, let alone every last episode of The Fast Show. But back in September of this year, BBC Two repeated the first six episodes of Series 2. And these repeats are certainly the closest we can easily get to the original versions without disinterring some dusty old off-air VHS tapes.1

Let’s take a look and see what’s different, shall we? Just for clarity, we are comparing the 2015 repeats with the version released on The Ultimate Fast Show Collection DVD set. If this doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, then feel free to go and read the exact opposite of this article.

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  1. It is possible, of course, that the BBC have done some minor edits to the programmes for the 2015 repeat run. They would be interesting to document, certainly, but are unlikely to have a great effect on the differences detailed here. ↩

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