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Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part One

TV Comedy

Part One • Part TwoPart ThreePart FourPart Five

On the 8th May 1984, at 9:15pm1, something very odd happened on BBC2. As Mike The-Cool-Person sat at the kitchen table, discussing the gang’s laundry situation, The Young Ones briefly flashed to the end caption of Carry on Cowboy. It then flashed back as though nothing had happened. “Dirty duvet, dirty mind.”, says an oblivious Mike.

This wasn’t just random Young Ones anarchy. It was intended as the start of a weekly running gag, with a proper pay-off and punchline at the end of the series. A punchline which would never end up being transmitted, and was cut from the final show just days before air.

This is the story of what happened to that punchline… and how a certain show called Spitting Image managed to cause even more trouble than usual.

*   *   *

The flash frames in Series 2 of The Young Ones are one of those odd bits of sitcom trivia which are seemingly widely known about… but not really widely understood. The reason for this is obvious: there is no way of interpreting the entire point of them just by watching the show itself. Unsurprisingly, this has lead to an awful lot of misinformation about the topic over the years.

So our first point of order is to examine exactly what was broadcast here. We’ll figure out the why later.

This is perhaps more trouble than you might expect. The Young Ones has an extremely complex history of edits, including some versions made in the 90s to fit a half hour slot, numerous music edits for rights reasons on commercial releases, and compliance edits for showings on Gold and the like. To figure out what’s going on with the flash frames, it’s important to go back to the very first version of each episode, as originally broadcast.

So, rather than relying on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or iPlayer releases, I’ve managed to get hold of an off-air recording of every single episode of Series 2 of The Young Ones, exactly as seen by viewers in 1984. The screengrabs below are directly from these 1984 transmissions, so there can be no debate: here is exactly what went out originally.


Carry on Cowboy, The End caption

“Bambi” (8th May 1984)
At 13:59 into the episode, with the gang around the kitchen table, “The End” caption from Carry On Cowboy flashes into view, along with – unusually – audio from the film. This is longer than most of these flash frames; a full 18 frames.

The Young Ones paperwork doesn’t give a tape number for this clip as a source, although it’s worth noting that the film was shown on BBC1 in December 1983, just two months before “Bambi” was recorded.


Skier

“Cash” (15th May 1984)
At 13:10, the image of a skier appears for three frames, just as Neil is serving his “risotto”. This is from Ski Sunday – specifically, the episode broadcast on 16th January 1983. This video is from the subsequent episode from Kitzbuhel on the 23rd, and clearly shows that the shot comes from the opening titles.2


Pottery wheel
Dripping tap


“Nasty” (29th May 1984)
At 13:38 there are three frames of a pottery wheel, near the end of the Spies sketch with Frost and Arden. Then at 21:05, we get two frames of a dripping tap, just after Vyv has wrenched the window out of the wall. Sadly, the source of these two bits of material has proved bizarrely difficult to trace, and so far I’ve had no luck.3


Gurning man

“Time” (5th June 1984)
At 10:14, just after Dawn French’s Easter Bunny leaves the room, there are – and I will quote the Young Ones paperwork directly – “Two frames of gurning from BBC Newcastle”. There are no further details, but the event is clearly the World Gurning Championships at the Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria.4

Some of you, even if you think you know a little about the flash frames in The Young Ones, won’t recognise this one. Don’t worry. All will become clear as we go.


Bird in flight
Leaping frog


“Sick” (12th June 1984)
At 20:34 there are three frames of a bird in flight5, just as Brian Damage attempts to explain his presence. Then at 29:53 we get four frames of a frog leaping, as Rik attempts to explain Neil’s absence. Both of these are from Episode 1 of Life on Earth, first broadcast on 16th January 1979. This is currently available on iPlayer; the bird is at 00:53, and the frog is at 01:13.


Two questions immediately arise from all the above. Firstly: what is the damn point of all these flash frames in the first place? And secondly, why isn’t there a flash frame in the final episode of the series, “Summer Holiday”?

The answer to both of these questions is linked. Because the Young Ones‘s joke was about to come crashing down around its ears.

*   *   *

Mid-1984 was a good time to be a comedy fan. Not only was the second series of The Young Ones on air, but so was the first series of a certain show called Spitting Image. And it was about to screw The Young Ones right over.

Luckily, no guesswork is required for the next part of this story. For the truth about early Spitting Image, we need to look no further than the quite marvellous Tooth and Claw: The Inside Story of Spitting Image by Lewis Chester, published by Faber in 1986. If every single comedy show had a book published about it which was as in-depth and truthful as Tooth and Claw, articles like this would be a lot easier to write.

Lewis Chester writes:

“On show eleven, John Lloyd went too far. It all began innocuously enough with Rob Grant drawing his attention to a report that said The Young Ones programme had been having some fun with flash-frames, unexplained split-second messages inserted in their transmission. The images, really only capable of being perceived with a freeze-frame on a video, were said to have included a downhill skier, frog and a dripping tap. Lloyd really thought they could ‘busk’ something better than that.

No further information is given about exactly which report Rob Grant saw. However, it was almost certainly the following piece published in The Sunday Times on the 10th June 1984, titled “How to catch a joke”. This seems to be the very first mention in the national press about the flash frames in The Young Ones, and so is worth quoting in full:

“The Young Ones, whose Tuesday night comedy series on BBC16 attracts a cult following, have been enjoying an in-joke which a handful of viewers – not to mention BBC bosses – are finally catching on to.

Each of the six episodes in the current series contains one or two split-second images cut into the action which appear on the screen as a mere blip. The game for those in the know is to record the programme on a VCR and then, using the freeze-frame control, stop the tape and discover the hidden image – or flash frame as it is called.

Working out the joke is trickier: examples so far include a ⅓ second clip from a Western inserted in the credits of the first episode, and two separate frames of a dripping tap cut into a sequence about video nasties.7

Because flash frames can register subconsciously, politicans and broadcasters have always been concerned about their use since they could be employed for political indoctrination or subliminal advertising. A clause in the BBC Charter forbids broadcasts “influencing the minds of members of an audience without them being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done”.

A BBC spokesman admits the use of flash frames is not normal practice but says that in the case of The Young Ones they are “simply a visual device to intrigue and amuse”.

Paul Jackson, the producer of the series, says: “They are the equivalent of putting messages at the end of the grooves in Sixties record albums, as the Beatles did. You could say this is a new kind of video parlour game”.8

If you want to play the game this Tuesday, watch for the moment when Alexei Sayle leaps across the room to greet hippy Neil’s parents – and freeze.”

That last sentence, of course, accurately describes the first flash frame in “Sick”, broadcast just two days later. And so we now know that particular flash frame was reported on before it actually transmitted.

Back to Tooth and Claw:

Spitting Image was nicely attuned to last minute inspiration. Although the bulk of Sunday’s show had to be shot by the previous Tuesday evening in order to complete the editing and dubbing stages in time, there remained an aperture for what were known as ‘topicals’. These comprised up to four minutes of material that had to go through all the production stages between early Sunday morning and transmission time. Around ten o’clock on the morning of Sunday 10 June, Lloyd got together with Grant and Naylor in Birmingham to compose a superior type of flash frame for inclusion in the topicals that same evening.”

In other words: Rob Grant saw the article on the morning of the 10th, and by the evening of the same day, their joke flash frame had been broadcast. Now that really is topical, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants television.

So, what did this “superior type of flash frame” actually say? Sections of it were reported by the press at the time, but as ever, Tooth and Claw gives the most detailed version, and one which is substantially correct:

“Hi there! You may have seen this sort of thing on The Young Ones. It’s a flash frame, or what Paul calls ‘a good edit’. Personally we think they’re a bit self-indulgent. By the way, love to Jude and the girls. Did you know, flash-frames were outlawed because advertising firms used them to make subliminal suggestions, like hypnosis, you know, so people would go out and buy their products? As if that could possibly work. SCRIPTWRITERS ARE INCREDIBLY GOOD IN BED. YOU FIND THEM IRRESISTIBLE. YOU MUST GO OUT AND SLEEP WITH ONE NOW.”

a) AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

b) Clearly, we need to see this flash frame. And yet we immediately run into a huge problem.

I mean, it should be very easy to research. Episode 11 of that first series of Spitting Image was indeed broadcast on the 10th June 1984, and was released on DVD in 2008. And yet when you watch that episode, either on the individual release or the complete boxset, the flash frame is nowhere to be found.

Why? Because the sketch caused legal troubles for Spitting Image, Central, and the IBA. Back to Tooth and Claw:

“It was not many hours before a viewer with a freeze-frame facility brought it to the attention of the IBA. Stephen Murphy, the IBA programme officer who had been so indulgent with Spitting Image in the early days, called up John Lloyd with a new tone of voice: ‘My dear boy, you’ve broken the law. Haven’t you read the Broadcasting Act?’ Lloyd confessed that he hadn’t but said he had read the offending text over to Central’s duty lawyer who had cleared it and had, in any case, thought the prohibition related specifically to advertising. Murphy, apparently unimpressed, hung up with: ‘You’ll be hearing from me at some future date.'”

With the Spitting Image “superior type of flash frame” landing everyone in potential legal hot water as soon as it was broadcast, no wonder it doesn’t appear on the DVD release. Indeed, the frame’s removal probably wasn’t done for the DVD itself; an edit was likely made to the master tape of the episode at the time, in order to stop it ever being repeated in that form ever again. Certainly, there is no evidence that it was ever present in the Granada Plus repeats in 2001. Which means video of the actual flash frame hasn’t been seen publicly for nearly four decades.

Until now, that is. From an off-air recorded from the Crystal Palace transmitter on the 10th June 1984, here is a video of the offending sketch. The flash frame is just before the colour bars and the (brilliant) fake breakdown.9

And here is your actual flash frame:

White text on black background, this is the actual text of the flash frame which was quoted earlier in the article

It’s this image, visible for just one single frame, which screwed over The Young Ones.

*   *   *

Two days after this episode of Spitting Image, the Young Ones episode “Sick” was transmitted, containing the flash frames of the bird and the frog. By that point, there simply wasn’t time for the topic to have caused that much controversy. Unfortunately, luck for The Young Ones was about to run out.

On the same day, the 12th June 1984, the Evening Standard published the following report, “Puppet show scolded for sexy TV trick”:

“ITV’s satirical programme Spitting Image is at the centre of another controversy – for hoodwinking television chiefs and watchdogs.

In last Sunday’s show, a sex message was flashed on to the screen so fast that it was not noticed by viewers.”

I love the fact that they describe it as a “sex message”, as though Spitting Image had broadcast some deeply explicit description of a sex act. I would argue it’s not really a sex joke at all, it’s a “pathetic men” joke.10

“A Central TV spokesman said that although the flash-frame message was a joke, the Spitting Image team have been ordered not to do it again.

Mr Lloyd said that the flash-frame message was a joke.

He added: ‘Nobody knew it was illegal as such or we wouldn’t have done it.'”

The phrase “Nobody knew it was illegal as such” is this: very, very funny.

Still, we’ve put it off long enough. It’s at this point that we finally need to examine the actual why of The Young Ones and its flash frames.

Part of the joke is obvious when you stand back to consider it: in a world where the technique is associated with “political indoctrination or subliminal advertising”, putting in pointless flashes that mean absolutely jack shit is funny on a meta-level in its own right. The only problem is, it’s not immediately obvious that the flashes are genuinely pointless. The first thing your brain does with these kind of things is attempt to make sense of them. It doesn’t say: “Oh, a dripping tap, how pointless”. It says: “Oooh, a dripping tap, what does that mean?”

Paul Jackson has gone on record about the topic many times. In the 2018 Gold documentary How the Young Ones Changed Comedy, he had this to say:

“We’d heard that students were obsessing over the VHSes. The flash frames were a silly thing really. I thought to myself: ‘Well, let’s try and give them a little something, a little private joke for the real fans.’ And it was just pictures: there was a jumping frog, there was a dripping tap, there was a big end credits from a cowboy movie… We put them in to see if anybody would notice or say anything, assuming it probably would get picked up, and people would start to try and freeze-frame on the VHS, which would be a long process.”

But there’s more to it than just pure randomness. The real point of the flash frames is fundamentally intertwined with what happened to “Summer Holiday”, and the removal of the final flash frame of the series. Back to How the Young Ones Changed Comedy:

“So Bill Cotton11 called me into his office and he said: “What is this nonsense, you’ve been putting flash frames…” I started to explain, and say “Yes Bill, and then the very last episode, which was the only episode which hadn’t broadcast, we’re going to have one frame which says something like ‘I never wanted these stupid flash frames in the first place, [VT editor] Ed Wooden” / “Shut up and do what you’re told farty breath’. So that would have been the punchline to the whole thing. It was actually a constructed joke over the six episodes, but we were never allowed to punch it.”

So the flash frames were never intended to be just a random piece of nonsense. They were meant as a running gag throughout the six episodes, which cumulated in a punchline. And, indeed, like many things in The Young Ones, what appears to be pure anarchy ends up being a very traditional piece of material.12 This is just a shaggy dog story, albeit told in a rather unusual way.

But why did Bill Cotton order their removal at that point, when the flash frames had already been transmitting for five weeks without any problem? This is the part which is constantly misreported, by virtually everybody. On the 2007 DVD documentary The Making of The Young Ones, Paul Jackson has this to say:

“Unfortunately, what happened was that John Lloyd who was a good friend of mine… had by this time moved onto doing Spitting Image on ITV, and he’d had a major battle with a man called Norris McWhirter, who was a right-wing commentator. And they’d done a sketch about him, Norris had got very angry, sued, and there was a big row going on. And in an episode they had put a flash frame of a naked woman’s body with Norris McWhirter’s head, transposed onto it, lying out in Venus De Milo pose. And McWhirter had gone berserk.”

In fact, Jackson is jumping the gun a little here; the head-on-a-naked-woman’s-body flash frame actually happened on Spitting Image in 1985, not 1984, and wouldn’t have been part of any discussion on the first TX of The Young Ones. (We’ll get to discussing the 1985 flash frame in all good time, don’t worry.) But it’s an easy mistake to make; McWhirter did in fact complain about the initial “Script writers are incredibly good in bed” flash frame, as confirmed in Tooth and Claw, and also by the IBA archive.13 Indeed, that flash frame seems to have been the true beginning of McWhirter’s vendetta against the show.

But we’ll meet Norris McWhirter all in good time. Here, I simply want to state the following: the dates indicate it’s the 10th June flash on Spitting Image which caused worry at the Beeb, and with Bill Cotton. Which makes sense, given that it’s this flash frame which specifically mentions The Young Ones.

Indeed, Jackson repeats part of the Cotton anecdote in the Making of extra:

“There was a huge complaint about it, and our shows were on air at the same time. 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. I said: “You can’t, it the whole point…” “Paul, stop arguing, it’s got to come out.”

All of which meant that when “Summer Holiday” was broadcast on the 19th June 1984, it was shorn of its intended flash frame, and the punchline to the whole joke. This was actually noticed by some keen-eyed journalists. Margaret Forwood, in The Sunday People, 24th June 1984:

“I sat through a tape of the last-ever Young Ones three times, looking for the week’s “flash-frame” joke, before I realised it simply wasn’t there.

It seems the BBC eventually got their knickers in a twist about the split-second gags, which are officially in breach of the rules, and removed the ‘flash’ from Tuesday’s show.

They thought it might be construed as being in “breach of the BBC licence agreement”.

Seems to me a bit unnecessary when the whole thing was only ever intended as a joke, but the decision came from the highest level, so that’s that.”14

This removal was done so late – and such a rushed and presumably grumpy fashion – that the details for the intended flash frame are still listed in the paperwork for “Summer Holiday”:

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

Shalako is a 1968 Western film15, and the “BBC cap” is clearly the caption Paul Jackson mentions above. We have no idea which frame from the film they were going to use.

But we do know what the caption would have looked like.

Because as Paul Jackson talks about all this on How the Young Ones Changed Comedy, they show the actual caption which would have aired. When I first watched the documentary, I thought it was just a mocked-up version, done by the documentary’s production team. But no. In a conversation with Young Ones VT editor Ed Wooden, he made it clear that this really was the actual physical caption which was made in 1984 and then never broadcast, and now forms part of his private collection.16

So the caption we were supposed to see in “Summer Holiday”, and the intended punchline of the running gag, is:

And there you have it.17 The actual punchline to the whole flash frame joke. Slipped onto the airwaves in 2018… and virtually nobody knew that it was the real deal. Which seems appropriate somehow.

But this story is only just getting started. And before we see Spitting Image dragged through the courts, we need to take a little trip back to 1970 first. Join me next time, for a long-forgotten Party Political Broadcast.

With thanks to Phil Chappell and Andrew Wiseman for the Young Ones 1984 off-airs, Nigel Hill for the Spitting Image off-air, Richard Latto and John Williams for help with research, Andrew Moir for graphics wizardry, and Tanya Jones, Darrell Maclaine and Mike Scott for editorial advice.


  1. At exactly 21:15:12, if my calculations are correct. 

  2. With thanks to Stephen Jackson, the skier has been identified as Steve Podborski

  3. The pottery wheel originates from tape SKP003375, and the dripping tap comes from K065402. The internal records at the BBC which I’ve managed to check have no entry for either of these tapes. If anyone clever has any ideas, do let me know. 

  4. Tracing this footage has again proved tricky, although there was a report on the competition on Nationwide on the 13th January 1981, which this could quite possibly come from. Sadly, I haven’t been able to get hold of a copy of the report to check. 

  5. Often incorrectly referred to as a dove – including in the Young Ones paperwork – this is actually a white tern. 

  6. They mean BBC2, obviously. Certain journalists’ constant ability to get channel names wrong is worth an article all by itself. 

  7. Note that even at this point, there is a tendency for the facts to get slightly distorted. The “clip from a Western” wasn’t in the credits of the first episode; a clip from the end credits sequence of a Western was inserted, which is a slightly different thing. Nor were the two frames of a dripping tap “separate” instances. 

  8. I’m particularly taken with the description “video parlour game”, and it almost became the title of this article. 

  9. Incidentally, when viewing the edited episode on DVD, I predicted exactly where the flash frame would have been, before I ever saw the unedited episode itself. It just seemed obvious that they’d slip it in near the colour bars. 

  10. It’s worth thinking through the joke to its inevitable end point: surely part of the reason it’s funny is because the character of the “script writers” felt the need to hijack their comedy show to implant messages like this. If they were getting enough sex, they wouldn’t need to do it, and surely that is what’s actually funny about it. 

  11. At that point, Managing Director of BBC Television. 

  12. The Young Ones is so anarchic that Ben Elton finds time for an extended rant about bank queueing systems in the show’s last episode. 

  13. That box of letters specifically confirms that McWhirter had complaints about the 10th June episode of Spitting Image

  14. Out of interest, the rest of the review was very positive about The Young Ones, saying it “went out in style”, and was a “devastating, chilling end to a wonderful rude, anarchic crazy series”

  15. Incidentally, isn’t it odd that the very first flash frame transmitted was also from a Western? 

  16. How the Young Ones Changed Comedy also credits Ed Wooden for archive in their end credits. 

  17. Note that the text is even in a Western-style font, in order to match the intended Western film. 

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35 comments

Lewis Cuthbert on 27 January 2023 @ 10am

Outstanding!


Lee Wall on 27 January 2023 @ 11am

The misspelling of ‘irresistible’ would have been a bad influence on the kids.


Chris on 27 January 2023 @ 11am

A very thorough investigation! One pedantic note – I think the bird from Life on Earth is a white tern rather than a dove.


Mateja Đedović on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

Oooh, this is the kind of stuff I read Dirty Feed for. What a way to kick off the year!

Btw, do you know where in Summer Holiday the flash frame would have gone? Maybe it could be reconstructed.


Rob Keeley on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

Another fascinating article, John. TV certainly had some nerve in those days.

The “fake in-vision continuity” gag was a popular one at the time – it had been done by Kenny Everett and even Morecambe and Wise (at the end of their very last Christmas show) before Spitting Image. Both with the same Thames announcer, Philip Elsmore. They always seemed to forget how odd it would look to anyone who didn’t live in that ITV region – they would have seen/heard their own announcers during a real breakdown or continuity!


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

The misspelling of ‘irresistible’ would have been a bad influence on the kids.

Along with the dodgy left alignment, of course. (Hey, they were in a rush…)


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

A very thorough investigation! One pedantic note – I think the bird from Life on Earth is a white tern rather than a dove.

Thank you! My bird knowledge is woeful. I’ve corrected it and added a footnote, as the paperwork for The Young Ones also gets this wrong.


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

Oooh, this is the kind of stuff I read Dirty Feed for. What a way to kick off the year!

Thank you, and thanks to everyone for all your kind comments. Thank God all that hard work wasn’t wasted, it did take bloody ages.

Btw, do you know where in Summer Holiday the flash frame would have gone? Maybe it could be reconstructed.

Good question. Someone mentioned in another article that it was when Vyv crashes the car, but I couldn’t find exactly where the reference to this was. I’ll try to dig it out and update the piece if I find it.


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

The “fake in-vision continuity” gag was a popular one at the time – it had been done by Kenny Everett and even Morecambe and Wise (at the end of their very last Christmas show) before Spitting Image. Both with the same Thames announcer, Philip Elsmore. They always seemed to forget how odd it would look to anyone who didn’t live in that ITV region – they would have seen/heard their own announcers during a real breakdown or continuity!

This is indeed something I was pondering myself. I was thinking whether it was just John Lloyd being a BBC person, so just translating a “BBC breakdown” into a “Central breakdown” without necessarily appreciating the difference, but as you say, Everett did it as well, and that production team wasn’t especially a BBC influenced thing.

I think it’s probably just a forced issue – if you’re going to do a breakdown gag on ITV, how else were you going to do it?


Rob Keeley on 27 January 2023 @ 12pm

It would have been better to do it with a plain background and no company logo, then it would have been easier to fool people (though it obviously worked anyway!). It could always have been an announcer you hadn’t seen before.


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 1pm

Although weirdly, I think I’d be *more* suspicious if they did that, although that might be just how my brain works!

It’s always difficult to figure out what the average viewer would think in this situation. Lots of talk in BBC pres last year about getting the new BBC One idents. I then talk to my mother after they’ve been on a few weeks. She never noticed any change. So I guess most viewers wouldn’t make much distinction with any of this, however it was done.


Zoomy on 27 January 2023 @ 3pm

This is exactly the kind of thing I come here to see! Brilliant! I remember watching at university with a big crowd, someone spotted the frog, rewound and paused, and we all laughed and never thought about it again. But now, thanks to this blog, I can explain the full story if those Young Ones flash frames ever come up in conversation in the future! Thank you for this important service!


Darren B on 27 January 2023 @ 8pm

I always thought the pottery clip came from an intermission they used to show on BBC between shows, back when fewer programmes were on? Like that clock that used to tick down before childrens programmes in the 70s.


John Hoare on 27 January 2023 @ 8pm

I always thought the pottery clip came from an intermission they used to show on BBC between shows, back when fewer programmes were on? Like that clock that used to tick down before childrens programmes in the 70s.

I think a lot of people assumed that, but as far as I know, the BBC only ever had a black and white version of that clip:


Applemask on 27 January 2023 @ 9pm

To the extent that Carry On Cowboy counts as a Western.

Anyway thanks for this, I always wondered. I figured it was just dada-style absurdism, hence the lack of any explanation or acknowledgement.


Steve Carey on 27 January 2023 @ 10pm

There’s something meta-meta about the punchline – ‘I never wanted these stupid flash frames in the first place, [VT editor] Ed Wooden” / “Shut up and do what you’re told farty breath’ – being thwarted by Bill Cotton’s edict and Jackson’s protest: “I said: “You can’t, it the whole point…” “Paul, stop arguing, it’s got to come out.”


Mitch Benn on 27 January 2023 @ 10pm

Shame (and bloody typical) though it is that the BBC bottled it and cut the last flash frame, I think I prefer the flash frames just being left unexplained and inexplicable, rather than a lengthy set up to an okay punchline. As it is they’re just another element of the weird Young Ones universe.


Steve Palmer on 28 January 2023 @ 9am

What a fascinating article John! Loved it! This is why I read Dirty Feed! Thank you for your precision and attention to detail. Loved ‘The Young Ones’ and the flash frames thang was something I was aware of but I never got around to pursuing the specifics. More of this stuff please!!


Greg on 28 January 2023 @ 9am

Outstanding piece John.


John Rivers on 28 January 2023 @ 3pm

Just amazing as usual, John. Superb!


John Hoare on 28 January 2023 @ 6pm

Thank you all, I really appreciate it.

Part 2 will take a bit of time to come – there’s still research to do on it, and this one has melted my head a little. Probably a couple of months.


Robert Wringham on 30 January 2023 @ 4pm

Superb. Very much looking forward to Part 2. You’re at the height of your powers.


bruce dessau on 31 January 2023 @ 2pm

Brilliant work!

looking forward to part two and hopefully you’ll do the definitive account of the Chris Morris ‘Michael Grade Is A…’ subliminal at some point.

PS. As soon as I saw the Gurning Man I thought of Nationwide, but that’s just my memory, no hard facts.


Bexley Heath on 31 January 2023 @ 3pm

“I predicted exactly where the flash frame would have been, before I ever saw the unedited episode itself”

OR MAYBE you watched the original transmission in 1984, and the placement of the flash frame has been subliminally implanted in your mind ever since…

Fascinating stuff as ever! Looking forward to the next instalment.


David Boothroyd on 31 January 2023 @ 8pm

Excellent article, looking forward to part 2. As an aside I think most people in 1984 would have known about flash frames from the seminal episode of Columbo, ‘Double Exposure’ (s3 ep4) in which the plot relies on the (basically disproven) theory that flash frames work as subliminal advertising.


George Kaplan on 31 January 2023 @ 10pm

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I know you are sometimes down on your work here/on yourself but you are doing – what I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call – God’s Own Work and should be proud. It’s heart-warming to see so many comments too!
This was fascinating and hilarious (“Nobody knew it was illegal as such(…)” You can only make a such a deliciously funny and ironic joke if you have full control of the English language), very impressive. Norris Effing McWhirter, for years I only knew him as “man from Guinness Book of World Records” on Record Breakers!, it was a surprise – and not a pleasant one – to discover he was one of them (“Is he one of us?”, “No, he’s one of them!”). What a petty fu- charming chap.
Interesting that that particular clause in the BBC charter exists when in recent years the BBC seems to be pushed into influencing minds by the expedient of acting as anything but the unthinking acceptance of right-wing/extremist Conservative ideology and behaviour (no matter how illegal) is verboten/unBritish. (Altho’ in fairness ageism and samey mulchiness is also promoted. None of which is good.) *steps off soap box, put it in recycling bin, walks away whistling Citizen Smith theme tune*
Pat yourself on the back, Mr Hoare. Remain a master of webloggery, one of the few oases in what has become wasteland. Show the way!


John J. Hoare on 23 February 2023 @ 11am

Just realised I never thanked everybody later on in this thread for your kind words. I do truly appreciate it, thank you.

Part Two next month, hopefully.


Martin Fenton on 6 March 2023 @ 8pm

The Potter’s Wheel clip might be taken from the BBC series “The Craft Of The Potter.”


John J. Hoare on 13 March 2023 @ 7am

Cheers Martin. I did investigate that one and couldn’t find the clip, but it is possible that I just missed it. Worth another look just in case, I think.


James C on 16 March 2023 @ 8pm

There’s something very unusual, and related to the topic at hand, that occurs in one 1984 instalment of Spitting Image, although I suspect it appears in the episode in error, and so to that extent it probably doesn’t qualify as a “flash frame”, but I digress:

Go get your Spitting Image Series 1 DVD and toward the end of the final episode of the series, sandwiched in between the Open University and ITN parodies (something like 21 and a half minutes in), there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of what appears to be silhouettes of the puppets of Arthur Scargill and Brian Walden. My suspicion is this was a finished sketch that was edited out, for reasons I cannot altogether fathom – the easy answer would be time constraints, but it’s all guesswork ultimately. I’m just especially amused that this occurs in an episode that aired almost immediately after one where the producers got their collars felt over flash frames…


Spiny Norman on 24 May 2023 @ 9pm

Finally for once I may have stumbled on something you didn’t know. This must have briefly been a running gag, because one episode of Pushing Up Daisies (1984) contains THIS: https://i.postimg.cc/HnhQK485/Pushing-Up-Daisies-SUBLIMINAL-FRAME.png


John J. Hoare on 25 May 2023 @ 9am

Fucking hell! No, I absolutely did not know that. That’s incredible. Brilliant work.

For people waiting for Part 2 of this, it *is* coming, but this year has been a bit of a nightmare for me in various ways. Not least moving house. I will get there, I promise.


John J. Hoare on 5 August 2023 @ 4am

The final paragraph of this article has been updated to reflect the content of the *true* next part of this series. I realised I couldn’t just leap straight into the Spitting Image stuff – there’s an important story from 1970 to deal with first!


Martin Fenton on 24 December 2023 @ 11pm

Another candidate for your potter’s wheel is In The Making with Joanna Fuchs. The framing isn’t quite right in this clip, but her wheel has something my previous suggestion lacked: a blue splash guard.

It was also repeated in the spring of 1984, and therefore to hand in the TVC library.

https://youtu.be/7tqOO7fu-Ss?si=KiFnZeTK7wP8hGKy


Martin Fenton on 24 December 2023 @ 11pm

*Tessa Fuchs. Apologies. Could have been worse.


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