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Fanny, I Want Fanny

Published 2nd July 2023

Other TV

Writing Dirty Feed can lead you down some strange avenues, and making some strange comparisons. Right now, I’m reading about Chris Morris and Fanny Cradock. What the hell do that pair have in common, beyond being “broadcasters” in the most general possible sense?

Answer: both were perfectly happy for the legend to be printed, rather than the truth. Which means disentangling lies told about them, either disseminated by themselves or by others, can initially seem like an exercise in futility. After all, if they didn’t care, surely nobody else should be bothered either.

But such defeatist talk gets us nowhere. So let’s take a look at this Guardian piece from 2006, “Secret drugs menu of TV chef Fanny”. There are a number of rather dubious claims in that article, but I want to focus on one which we can easily investigate:

“Her last public appearance before she died at 85 in 1995 was on the Parkinson Show alongside Danny La Rue who was dressed in drag as Shirley Bassey. Fanny had no idea at first that ‘the woman’ was actually a man, and when she found out she stormed out of the studio.”

This sounds like it should be a huge, classic TV moment, which is well-known about. Sure enough, it was picked up by The Times in November 2007:

“Fanny Cradock, the original TV chef, never presented a show again after she upset viewers by criticising the cooking of a housewife. She stormed off a Parkinson show when she found that Danny Da Rue, her fellow guest, was a man dressed as a woman.”

And in case you wondered why I’m talking about this now, this anecdote is still being told rather more recently. In March 2018, The Mirror gave us “The red-hot private life of temperamental TV chef Fanny Cradock”:

“Consigned to chat shows, her last was on Parkinson when she stormed out after realising Danny La Rue was a man in drag.”

From this, it starts making its way into various blog posts. There’s UCBloggers in November 2020, “Fanny Cradock: Britain’s First Celebrity Chef”:

“She made her last TV appearance on the Parkinson show, but she stormed off set in horror as she realised that the woman on the show alongside her was in fact Danny La Rue in drag.”

And there’s Retro Vixen in March 2023, “A Look Back at Fanny Cradock”:

“In one of her final TV appearances, she appeared as a guest on Parkinson alongside Danny La Rue. When she realised that Danny was a man dressed up as a woman, she stormed off set.”

Of course, it’s inevitably made it onto Wikipedia, directly citing The Guardian as a source:

“Fanny appeared alone on Wogan, Parkinson and TV-am. When she appeared on the television chat show Parkinson with Danny La Rue and it was revealed to her that La Rue was actually a female impersonator, she stormed off the set.”

And bringing us right up to date, the tale even makes it into the book Camp!: The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World, published in May 2023:

“Fanny and Johnnie retired to the south coast and became chat show regulars, with Fanny making her final television appearance in 1995 aged eighty-five on the Parkinson show, alongside the fabulous drag queen Danny La Rue, who happened to be dressed as Shirley Bassey. When Fanny realised that La Rue was a female impersonator she stormed out – a shame, I’m sure if she’d hung around she would have benefited enormously from his makeup tips.”

Yes, yes, very amusing. Just one problem. This anecdote is bollocks.

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BBC100: Paul Daniels Live at Hallowe’en (1987)

Published 20th April 2023

Other TV

For more on this BBC100 series of posts, read this introduction.

BBC 100 logo, with Paul Daniels, Debbie McGee, and an owl

“Tonight is Halloween when strange things can happen, and even here live on BBC1, all is not what it seems.”

And with those foreboding words on Halloween night 1987, the BBC1 globe transformed into a pumpkin, and one of the most remarkable pieces of television ever transmitted began. Because this was the night that Paul Daniels was killed, live before the nation. Nobody who saw it would ever forget it.

Oh, the show starts simply enough, if atypically. The Paul Daniels Magic Show had been running since 1979 on the BBC. But instead of the usual bright, light entertainment studio, we’re greeted with a horse and carriage moving through the smoky blackness. Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee exit the carriage, in what only can be described as gothic evening dress. And after a mild levitation trick outside the main entrance, they enter a grand mansion, where we will be spending the next 40 minutes.

Yet once the show gets going, most of the programme isn’t that much different to a normal episode of Paul Daniels. Paul tells us a story about a Houdini seance, which is an excuse for some messing around with props. Eugene Berger makes two lovely appearances and does some close-up magic. Perhaps the most intriguing section is an extended setup involving a battery powered video camera, television, a representative from Panasonic… and, of course, a ghost. But even this isn’t really outside the bounds of the kind of thing his show usually does; three years earlier, he’d done a “disappearing camera trick” which is really in the same, erm, spirit.

But this is all a lead-up to the final six or so minutes. After some short film of a Houdini escape, Daniels is revealed standing in front of a huge iron maiden, the famous medieval torture device. This is to be an escape trick. “The spikes themselves – there’s 110 of them – and they’re all metal”, Daniels says, matter-of-factly. As he gets get securely fixed into the contraption, he asks Debbie to leave the room entirely. “We have people here from all walks of life. If anything at all goes wrong, don’t move from your seats unless instructed to do so.” A screen is placed in front of the iron maiden, and the escape attempt starts.

Unfortunately, something goes hideously wrong. After a few seconds, the absurdly heavy door slams shut. There is a nasty pause, and no sign of Daniels. The picture fades to black. “Ladies and gentlemen”, an unknown voice intones, “Please leave the room in an orderly fashion.” And the end credits roll, to silence. Paul didn’t complete his escape, and is now rather intimate with those solid, 110 spikes he was boasting about just a few moments ago.

Except, of course, he wasn’t. The lack of escape was the trick; a macabre piece of black theatre, perfect for Halloween. It was, however, not a piece of theatre that some viewers appreciated. Indeed, outrage was so strong that Paul ended up sending in a letter to The Times explaining himself. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and one which not only talks about the specifics of his Halloween show, but also talks in philosophical terms about the problems faced by all television across the decades:

“In television we are, for the most part, in a no-win situation. If we continue to turn out the same format, week in week out, we are heavily criticised along the lines of “same old faces, same old scripts”, “very boring” etc, and yet when someone decides to change the format and step outside the “norm” the criticisms still come.”

As for the show itself, he provides a robust defence:

“Please remember the following facts. You were warned in the final announcement before the show started that all is not as it seems. You received definite instructions to switch off before the final trick happened if you were of a nervous disposition (If you ignored that warning that is your fault not mine). Didn’t you think it amazing that within two or three seconds of the trick ending, the BBC had on standby all the credits on a black background instead of our normal credit sequence…?”

Indeed the thing that strikes me most about the programme is how utterly fair it is on the audience. The continuity announcement all but tells you what is due to happen, if you interpret it correctly. Daniels does indeed warn you before the final trick takes place. (“I have to warn you – this can go wrong. That is not a joke. Switch off if you are of a nervous disposition…”) This is not a programme which pulls a nasty stunt with no warning. It gives you all the information you need, and then does things so perfectly that it still ends up as a shocking piece of television.

Then there’s the final moment, after those silent end credits roll. Paul Daniels himself pops back up, and does a short piece to camera. But it’s no naff “Here I am, don’t worry, I’m fine!” moment. (At least, not yet – the production did have to do one of those to be transmitted after the subsequent programme of the evening, which is a bit of a shame.) Instead, it’s altogether more subtle:

“Well, what you have just been watching was a live magic show. But this, outside here, was recorded yesterday, and all I can say is: I hope that the last illusion goes well tomorrow…”

And Daniels winks to camera. And not only is it a great joke, but it’s the utmost in treating the audience with respect. It relies on people understanding the difference between the live parts of a programme, and pre-recorded inserts in the same show. Clearly, some people didn’t get it. But I’ll choose programmes which overestimate their audience to ones which underestimate them, and maybe we could do with a bit more of the former today.

The show started something of a trend for the BBC to mess with its audience during Halloween. Five years later, the infamous Ghostwatch aired; a drama presented as a live broadcast which slowly becomes haunted itself, ending in a national mass seance. And in 2018, Inside No. 9 produced “Dead Line”, a hoax which many had thought the BBC was incapable of still doing. What other show has not only featured a fake channel breakdown, but our friendly continuity announcer being killed live on air?

But Paul Daniels was first. And for my money, best. He could have settled for doing a spooky version of his normal show, with a few pumpkins dotted around. It still would have been great fun: even his standard shows were superb TV. Instead, he pushed the boundaries of television as far as they could possibly go. All under the innocuous guise of light entertainment.

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The Laughing Vulcan

Published 15th July 2022

Other TV

It’s funny how an anecdote can be mostly correct, and yet give entirely the wrong impression of an event.

So it is with this story from Cliff Bole, the most prolific director of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a full 25 episodes to his name. Recently, I was reading this interview with Bole on the official Star Trek site. And something stood out to me as an obvious little mystery.

How much interaction did you have with Gene Roddenberry?

Initially, quite a bit. We met two or three times a week, creatively. He gave his input and, of course, I gave my input. I had quite a bit of Roddenberry, and with Rick and the rest of the group. Roddenberry was totally committed to it. I did one episode with a Spock-like character in it, and this character laughed. Roddenberry saw the dailies and said, “That was the biggest mistake you ever made.” I said, “Well, I was only following the script, because it was written.” Vulcans don’t laugh or smile, but it got by everybody. This laugh was kind of a broad laugh, but it was written. Anyway, we did a retake of it and it was fine, and it never happened again, I can assure you. But that was Roddenberry who picked it out.

All very interesting. Of course, Bole didn’t actually give us any of the useful information in order to identify the scene, like the name of the episode or anything. We’re forced to do the donkeywork for ourselves.

Luckily, it doesn’t end up being too difficult. Bole clearly says this happened at the beginning of his time on TNG: all we have to do is find which of his early episodes had a Vulcan in it. This turns out to be “Conspiracy” (TX: 9/5/88)1, late in Season 1, and the third episode Bole directed.

Ah, yes, the notorious “Conspiracy”, where Picard and gang foil a parasitic invasion of Starfleet. It’s one of my favourite kinds of Star Trek, alongside episodes like DS9’s “Valiant” (TX: 6/5/98) and especially Voyager’s “Course: Oblivion” (TX: 3/3/99), where being doom-laden and unpleasant is a huge part of the point. Cue much discussion of packing head moulds with real meat and blowing them up.

But we’re interested in a different kind of transgression. “Conspiracy” features a Vulcan named Savar, played by Henry Darrow. At no point in the episode does he laugh, but that’s as expected: according to Bole, the moment was reshot due to Roddenberry’s objections. But remember: Bole does claim that the laughing moment was in the original script.

And here’s where we get lucky. Brilliantly, every single script for TNG is available online. And I really do mean script, not transcript. These are the actual drafts used for production, stage directions and all.

So, does a Vulcan laugh in the script for “Conspiracy”, or is it all a load of rubbish?2

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  1. All TX dates in this article are of the first US broadcast. ↩

  2. Excerpt reformatted for ease-of-reading here. ↩

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John’ll Fix It

Published 22nd June 2022

Other TV

You may wonder why I have spent some time recently watching videos of Jimmy Savile on YouTube. This is a very good question, and one that I am unable to fully answer. I guess this is what happens when I get fed up of new Star Trek and get desperate for something to watch.

Nonetheless, here is yer evil bastard himself, on BBC2’s Open to Question in the 80s, being interrogated by a bunch of high school kids. Warning: video contains Jimmy Savile.

If you don’t want to watch the above – which is perfectly understandable – the below hilarious video condenses it down to three minutes. And while it’s clearly made partially for comedy purposes, it does accurately represent much of the content and feeling of the full interview:

Anyway, our question for today: when exactly was this interview broadcast?

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“It doesn’t rain in TV studios!”

Published 28th April 2021

Other TV

It’s odd, how some shows fade from the common memory.

Take How Do They Do That?, a magazine show which aired on BBC1 between 1994-97. You do not require a long explanation of what the point of the show was: the format of the programme is contained entirely within its title. Just ask that question a few hundred times per episode, give some answers, and you have yourself a television programme.

These days, the show mainly known for two things. Among TV presentation fans, it’s known for this behind-the-scenes look at the making of the BBC2 idents. And among Red Dwarf fans, it’s known for this behind-the-scenes look at the model effects for Series VII. And that’s pretty much your lot.

But I have one very, very strong memory of the show. Something which stuck with me for 25 years. The other day, I decided to see if anybody had uploaded it anywhere, not expecting to be rewarded. And blow me down, somebody else had remembered it too.

Here’s the day – the 24th January 1996, although the explanation part of the clip comes from the following week – when the How Do They Do That? studio was flooded.

Usually, when writing about my TV memories, I make an effort to note down what I remember about a show before watching the resulting video. This time, however, I was caught off-guard. I never really expected it to be online, let alone to find it so easily. So my memories of watching this stunt in 1996 are now thoroughly blended with me watching the video in 2021, and they’re difficult to disentangle.

But there is one moment I 100%, absolutely do remember. And that’s the point 36 seconds in, where we cut from studio VT to film.1 It blew my mind when I first watched it, aged 14. It still fairly blows my mind now. Suddenly, with that one shot change, we see the barriers between different kinds of television breaking down. Magazine shows just aren’t supposed to turn into films on a whim. But this one had. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

I’ve always had a love for television which send genres crashing into each other. Red Dwarf is a sitcom crossed with science fiction. Ghostwatch is a drama, done as a live documentary. And here is a normal magazine show, crossed with a disaster movie. There’s nothing that is more designed to send my brain flying off in weird directions than that. It’s exactly the kind of TV that I adore. The fact they actually then went behind-the-scenes in order to tell us how it all worked was the icing on the cake, but that wasn’t the thing I truly loved about the sequence. I loved the initial genre-bending, legitimately odd piece of television.

Wide shot of studio
Flooded studio


And this is exactly the kind of thing which TV finds it difficult to do in 2021. No evening magazine show on BBC One is going to have the money to go off to Pinewood Studios and shoot a sequence like this in their water tank. With a few honourable exceptions such as The One Show, evening magazine shows are an endangered species full stop these days, let alone anything else. The budget for television to go out and do spectacular, stupid things like this just isn’t there any more, at least for this kind of show.

Which makes me sad. Because this is one reason why I loved the kind of TV that was around when I was 14. Not because I was 14. Not because of rose-tinted spectacles. But because truly odd, spectacular things like this could happen on a Wednesday evening on BBC1.

And I miss it.

With thanks to KillianM2 for the original YouTube upload. Their YouTube channel has loads of great stuff, that you could – and should – get lost for hours in.

  1. Sadly a little obscured by the upload, as the VT sequence has been folded down to half the temporal resolution it would have had on broadcast. But you still get some of the effect. ↩

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New York by Design

Published 9th December 2020

Film / Other TV

Khoi Vinh, “Movies Watched, 2017”, January 2018:

“That beats my 2016 total by five and averages out to just under sixteen a month, a pace I credit to my continued adherence to a largely television-free diet. I’m going into my third year doing this now and I don’t miss TV much at all, especially as eschewing it has afforded me the time to watch and re-watch so many great or obscure or fondly remembered movies that I’d never be able to otherwise. Television is a waste of time, people.”

Khoi Vinh, “New York Design and Me on Television”, December 2020:

“Two things that you don’t normally see on television very often are now on television: design and yours truly. The new series “New York by Design” (which follows last summer’s “California by Design“) is five episodes of stories about all kinds of design innovation: architecture, industrial design, consumer products, electronics, software and UX, and more. As it happens, I appear on the show as a presenter and a judge […]

The show airs Saturday evenings on CBS Channel 2 New York and the full season will stream on Amazon Prime next February.”

I don’t know, sounds like a waste of time to me.

The Spelling Machine

Published 22nd June 2020

Other TV

Earlier this year, I wrote about how I traced down an early childhood TV memory. It seems to be quite the year for it, because blow me down, somebody’s helped me track down another one. And today’s story involves a certain Paul Daniels.

Not his famous Halloween stunt from 1987, which I have precisely zero memory of, and almost certainly never saw. (That’s the kind of thing which makes you feel cheated of a really good TV memory. Luckily, I fully remember Ghostwatch, five years later.) No, my memory of Paul Daniels is rather more low-key.

Although, like many of my early TV memories, it involves an explosion.

*   *   *

It’s around 1990, and I’m about nine years old. Could be a couple of years earlier or later. Paul Daniels is doing a card trick on the telly, as he is wont to do. But this is a slightly unusual card trick. Some kind of strange machine is spitting out cards at Paul. What is he doing – guessing which cards will come out? I can’t quite remember.

But something wrong. The machine keeps spitting out cards faster and faster. Paul is concerned, and tries to stop it. But it’s to no avail. The machine explodes, leaving Paul with a cartoon-like blackened face. He looks straight to camera, with a look of resignation, and throws the remaining cards away. End of routine.

I’m intrigued… and mildly disturbed. Electric things going wrong are already a slight fascination with me. I remember nothing of the rest of the show, but this one moment is seared into my memory. And I never saw it again.

*   *   *

Well, until now.

This is one of those memories where I made a few half-hearted searches over the years, but never made any serious effort. (There is a lot of Paul Daniels on YouTube.) I occasionally mentioned it, but had kind of resigned myself to never seeing it again.

Until I idly mentioned all this on Twitter… and hello, Timothy Roger Talbot came up with the goods. Here it is, from the very opening of the episode:

There are clearly many things I didn’t remember, or remembered wrongly – I’d even forgotten about the fundamental conceit of a “spelling machine”. But it came flooding back as soon as I watched it; this is definitely the programme in question. I got a Proustian rush when the cards came flying manically out of the machine, and when Daniels blows the flames out; images I couldn’t quite dredge from my head until now, but were clearly buried deep within my skull.

As for the routine itself, I’m the world’s worst person at figuring out magic tricks. From my exceedingly untrained eye, presumably the following is happening:

  • The cards Paul puts in the machine at the top are nothing to do with the rest of the trick, and are never seen again.
  • The dial at the front is pure misdirection, and also does nothing.
  • The pure power of suggestion gets the required words out of the audience member. The obvious rhyme for bow is “cow”, and the obvious rhyme for mouse is “house”.

It’s a fun piece of television, and certainly the kind of thing you don’t get much of on BBC One any more, unfortunately. Though let me extremely clear: the reason this particular routine stuck in my head is because it was something electrical which exploded, which I found faintly unnerving.

So, the final question: when exactly was this broadcast, and how old was I? The video says the show is from 1988, and luckily, BBC Genome made it very easy to track down the exact episode, as luckily it specifically mentions the spelling machine. Unfortunately, The Paul Daniels Show routinely got a repeat on BBC2 – which is, incidentally, where the video above comes from. So I either saw it on its original BBC1 showing on the 30th January 1988, or the BBC2 repeat on the 11th August 1988. Both these showings are earlier than I thought; I would have been aged 6 on the first showing, and 7 on the repeat. I’m slightly amazed that the memory still lingers.

I’m not going to end this post with “now that’s magic”, because I simply have too much respect for you.

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Soapy Tits

Published 13th April 2020

Other TV

I’ve written before about vivid TV memories of mine that nobody else seems to remember. Here’s another one.

It’s The Big Breakfast, during the Rick Adams era. So this must have been in ’96 or ’97, when I was aged 15 or 16. (This is important for reasons which will soon become apparent.) It’s coming up to the end of the news, and the silly “and finally” item. What will we get? A duck on a skateboard? A dog on a skateboard? Any kind of animal on a skateboard, in fact?

Erm, no. My eyes widen, as we cut to footage of… a topless car wash. The details escape me. But it’s a car wash, and the girls are topless. Soapy boobs and everything. If I recall, they were pressed up against the windows at one point, as we looked on from inside the car. But one thing was for sure: this really, really shouldn’t be being broadcast at this time of morning while kids are watching. This wasn’t the non-sexual nudity you occasionally got on Holiday. This was rude.

Rick Adams confirms my thoughts. As we cut back to the house, he’s standing in front of the television on which the newsreader appears, trying to block it from view. “It’s a family flippin’ show!”, he screeches. I blink, unable to quite comprehend what I’ve just seen. I’m 15 or so, and have just seen unexpected boobies. OK, so it’s not exactly how I’d choose to see unexpected boobies when I was 15, but I’d take what I could get.

And like that, it was over. I didn’t record it. And nobody I’ve ever mentioned it to remembers this thrilling piece of television. But I definitely, definitely didn’t imagine it. There were boobs. Definitely actual naked boobs. There were no bikinis, I promise.

Which leaves me wondering… just how did that item get approved for broadcast? Was it someone’s last day at ITN?

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Tales from a Dystopian Future

Published 6th August 2019

Other TV

Netflix headquarters, 15th September 2031. Despite people’s doom-laden predictions, the company is doing very nicely, thank you. But it’s doing nicely because they’ve finally started making smart financial decisions.

Across the road is where all those smart financial decisions are made. Right next to programme development, in fact. We’re not in the cool section of the place, though. We’re in a nondescript office block. Overspill, where all the boring projects go. It’s surprising it hasn’t been knocked down, and all these people just work from home. In a couple of years, exactly this will happen.

Until then, boring meetings take place here. And today’s boring meeting is about what to do with the latest selection of legacy content, where the rights are running out. David Smith presides over a room of greyness.

“Morning everyone. Let’s get this over with, we all have other things to do. What’s coming up next month, Mary?”

All eyes turn to Mary. She speaks, though it’s clearly an effort to give a flying fuck. “OK. We have Survivor, but the new rules kick in with this season – we only had the rights for this season for a year anyway, due to the new right-to-be-forgotten ruling….”

David rolls his eyes. That one had been a fucker for every company making programmes involving the general public.

Mary continued. “The Price is Right we won’t bother with – that hologram of Bob Barker was a disaster. And then there’s this thing called Black Mirror.”

David frowns. “What? Should I recognise that?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It was a show we commissioned years back. Science fiction, all very dated now, of course. The main problem is the music rights – they run out next month.”

“Worth bothering with? How many views do we get on that show now, anyway?”

Mary consults her iPad Lisa. She looks up. “It actually gets a fair few streams a month, but the cost of those rights… take a look.”

She hands him the iPad. David glances at it. “Hell, no.”

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And Finally…

Published 21st February 2019

Other TV

So many of us have vivid TV memories than seemingly nobody else remembers.

Here’s mine.

*   *   *

Nottingham, in either the late 80s, or more probably the early 90s. The teatime edition of Central News East is on. I’m watching it, because not only am I fascinated by television, but I’m very specifically fascinated by television which is being transmitted live just up the road from where I live.

Anna Soubry is presenting, in the days when she was a journalist, long before she was an MP. I remember very little about the programme. I can’t even remember who she was presenting with. I just remember the very end of the programme. Anna and her co-presenter are sharing their usual banter. Her co-presenter said something. I can’t remember what. But as the lights dimmed and the closing credits appeared, I vividly remember Anna’s reply:

“You bastard.”

I actually remember that the sound was slightly dipped at the end of the word as we went to the wide… but it was very clear what she said. I also remember the general air of embarrassment in the studio on that final shot. It was bloody great.

*   *   *

I can’t imagine this particular gem ever being unearthed. Anna must have presented hundreds of editions of Central News East; I can’t even give you a year, or the name of her co-presenter, or any of the stories featured in that edition. My memory tells me I actually recorded it on VHS; my memory also tells me I recorded over it shortly afterwards, like a damn fool.

Nowadays, that clip would probably end up all over YouTube. Back then, unless it made it onto It’ll Be Alright on the Night – and I’m sure this didn’t, or else we’d all know the clip – it would often just disappear into the ether. I don’t think it even made it onto one of Central’s blooper-filled Christmas tapes. Unless someone who worked on the show remembers it and made a note of when it was, I can’t imagine it’ll ever be seen.

Which is a little unsatisfying. So instead, I can offer you the following Anna Soubry clip from Central’s 1985 Christmas tape1. At 11:42, dealing with people who look old enough to know better:

“You shites!”

  1. Found using this this detailed listing of various Christmas tapes. ↩

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