Centrepiece of Municipal Display Stolen

Having just done a full rewatch of Men Behaving Badly, I thought it was about time to do a multi-part article on the series, really nailing exactly what it is that makes the show tick, what Simon Nye was trying to say about how people worked, and why we seem to find it impossible to make audience sitcom like it today.

Nah, just kidding, I want to poke at a newspaper prop again.

So let’s take a look at “Gary in Love”, the penultimate episode of Men Behaving Badly, broadcast on the 26th December 1998.¹ As a reminder, the gang have gone to Worthing, and Gary and Tony steal a massive ornamental fish and stash it in their hotel room, for reasons. Unfortunately, this drunken bender does not go unnoticed, not least by the local paper.

So, what paper is Dorothy reading above? Brilliantly, it’s an actual edition of Worthing’s local paper, the Worthing Herald. Specifically, the edition published on the 12th November 1998, as we can tell from the front page headline:

“Gary in Love” was recorded in studio on the 22nd November 1998², just ten days after publication of this edition. Indeed, as the following was published in the Worthing Herald on 5th November, we know that the paper they used as the basis for the prop was actually published well after the location sequences where Gary and Tony first encounter the fish had been recorded.

But that’s not all. We also get a close-up of the story on the fish-stealing itself, which obviously means they’ve had to paste in a new story into the real edition of the newspaper:

In the show itself, Dorothy – correctly – reads from the report:

“The head of the council’s Leisure Committee said angrily “If I get hold of…”

But the prop itself gives a fuller version. It’s slightly difficult to read, but I think it’s something akin to the following:

“The head of the council’s Leisure Committee said angrily “If I get hold of the toe rag that did this I’ll make them clean the pigeon **** of [sic] whole pier, then I’ll hand them over to the police.

Very amusing. But the rest of the story doesn’t seem to be about Gary and Tony’s exploits at all, and instead starts banging on about a dangerous road. That’s because the rest of the story, along with the byline, is taken from a story on Page 2:

This is a proper cut-and-shut job; the rest of the page layout, including the story about ice cream, the “TV Taken” headline, and the advert, is all clearly taken from Page 3. So what real story did Men Behaving Badly replace with their fake story about Gary and Tony being knobheads? I hope it’s something fun.

A woman’s pets dying from a house fire. Brilliant.

I’m glad my writing is always good at cheering you all up.

1. Incidentally, please appreciate the effort I have gone to in order to provide proper widescreen screengrabs from this episode. Despite the final three episodes being made and broadcast on digital in widescreen, the DVD is a 4:3 centre cutout… and has never been reissued in widescreen format. Later streaming releases, like YouTube, are widescreen… but are half the frame rate they should be, as per all interlaced material released on every streaming site aside from iPlayer. Meaning you cannot actually buy a proper version of the final three episodes of Men Behaving Badly, which is utterly ludicrous.

   We’ll have to hope for an iPlayer boxset at some point. ↩

2. I’ve had to work this out via a process of deduction, but I am fairly confident it is correct. The paperwork specifies that the first episode of the series, “Performance”, was recorded on the 15th November. It also specifies that the last production date of the series was the 29th November, which must have been the studio date for the final episode, “Delivery”. It therefore follows that the three episodes were recorded on Sundays throughout November, with “Gary in Love” being bang in the middle on the 22nd November. I guess there’s a chance the final two episodes were swapped round in the recording order for some reason, but it feels unlikely. ↩

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men behaving badly, newspaper props