Radio Comedy – Dirty Feed

A Proper Comedy Fan

Published 18th January 2024

I’m supposed to have grown up with radio comedy, you know. More specifically, I’m supposed to have grown up with a radio underneath my bedclothes. Ideally listening to Blue Jam, if I had been particularly with it.

I wasn’t, so I didn’t. Oh, I just about managed a Hitchhiker’s repeat, at some point in the 90s. Beyond that, there was a whole world out there which I just didn’t bother with. If the best pictures were from radio, I wasn’t really interested in them.

The obvious question is why, and I think the answer is one of love, rather than hate. I didn’t hate radio comedy; I simply didn’t listen to it. No, my love was for the telly. I distinctly remember recording every single episode of the nineties repeats of Fawlty Towers off-air; perhaps that was the start of my love of archive television, but it didn’t feel like archive television back then. It was just TV. And I loved TV. Especially sitcoms, sketch shows, and game shows.

But surely, even if I didn’t listen to radio comedy, I at least listened to the Top 40 and stuff? Not really. The radio was on at various points, but it wasn’t really my thing. My things were obvious and comfortable: when it wasn’t television, it was my computer, a BBC Master.¹ Endless time spent playing games, or programming, or writing silly things on it.

I think, when I was younger, I needed visuals. That’s how I interacted with the world. Something to look at. I watched and loved The Day Today; it wasn’t that I hated On The Hour, it just wasn’t on my radar.

So when, in the early 2000s, I found a forum online, and saw everyone talking about radio comedy… I was slightly nonplussed. That’s what I was supposed to have been doing?

Nonplussed, and inadequate. I wasn’t a proper comedy fan. Damn.

* * *

Fast-forward to some undetermined day in the 2010s. I’m watching the bonus features on the Series 1 DVD of That Mitchell and Webb Look. And in the Making Of documentary, David Mitchell suddenly says the following:

“We’d always wanted to be on TV, ‘cos that’s where I got into comedy really, watching TV. Growing up, watching Blackadder, and Monty Python, and that kind of thing. So yeah, I’d like to say I grew up listening to Radio 4 and The Goon Show and that kind of thing, and I did have a few tapes of The Goon Show, but basically it was TV, so I’ve always wanted to be on TV. That in my own head, is where successful comedians are.”²

I grin. Because that’s me. I wasn’t stupid after all. Somebody who is very, very, very funny felt exactly the same as I had.

And that’s how a heterosexual white male can still experience that unexpected rush of feeling represented.

Better than a BBC Micro. ↩
It’s worth paying attention to exactly what Mitchell says there. He doesn’t say that successful comedians are on television rather than radio; he clearly says “in my own head”. It’s not actually true, and he knows it. He’s talking about feelings, not facts, and carefully flags it as such. ↩

You Stupid Ugly Goit

Published 28th February 2023

Radio Comedy / TV Comedy

Close-up of a pixellated Holly

The origins of Red Dwarf are oft-told. Radio 4 sketch show, Son of Cliché, Dave Hollins, job done, right?

And true, one of the first sparks of life of something which turned into Red Dwarf appeared on Radio 4 on the 30th August 1983, with the very first sketch of Dave Hollins: Space Cadet.¹

Download “Dave Hollins: Space Cadet – The Strange Planet You Shouldn’t Really Land On” (MP3, 3:41)

Nick Maloney’s corpsing at the end of that sketch is brilliant.

Still, Dave Hollins wasn’t a running sketch in that first series of Son of Cliché. We’d have to wait until the following year for that privilege. And when it did come back, on the 10th November 1984, I would argue that it was as something far more recognisable as Red Dwarf.

Download “Dave Hollins: Space Cadet – Norweb” (MP3, 3:35)

“Jan Vogels” in the first sketch did nearly made it into Red Dwarf – most notably, a far shorter version is present in the US pilot (“You know a guy called Harry Johnson?”).² But that second Dave Hollins sketch is stuffed with ideas which later found a home in actual, broadcast Dwarf.

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The research for Son of Cliché in this article comes almost entirely from material written in 2003 by Ian Symes, on an early incarnation of Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan. It’s a measure of how well that research was done that it hasn’t yet been surpassed as reference material for the series. ↩
The 2007 Red Dwarf DVD release The Bodysnatcher Collection also includes a never-shot version of the sketch, recreated using storyboards. ↩

Wally Who, What, When, Where, Why?

Published 15th February 2021

Radio Comedy

It’s odd, the things which can become obscured so easily.

Take Wally Who?, an early Grant Naylor radio sitcom from 1982, which I’ve written a bit about recently. It is not, to be fair, a series which is currently part of the pop culture zeitgeist. I am not expecting to find huge screeds written about the show in Digital Spy, nor am I expecting BBC Sounds to commission Obsessed With… Wally Who? But there are certain things which you think would be easy enough to nail down.

For instance: the number of episodes of the programme broadcast. That’s fairly basic. In fact, it might be the single most basic fact you could expect to know about a series. And yet every source online seems to have a different answer.

The BBC website lists 5 episodes. My old hangout Ganymede & Titan says 10 episodes. radiohaha also says 10, although erroneously gives the network as Radio 4 rather than Radio 2. The British Comedy Guide gives 5 episodes. Rob Grant himself says 8 were commissioned. Somebody even sent me a copy of what is listed internally at the BBC; they have 5 episodes, although the last one is confusingly labelled Episode 6.

What the bloody hell is going on?

[Read more →]

“Arg.”

Published 3rd February 2021

Radio Comedy / TV Comedy

Today, I have another story for you. And like all the best stories, it starts with the DVD menu for At Last Smith & Jones: Vol. 1.

At Last Smith & Jones: Vol. 1 is a slightly odd but extremely watchable Best Of release for the duo, released in 2009. It comprises of material from all four series of the BBC2 incarnation of the show – two episodes per series, making a total of eight compilation episodes – along with the complete 1987 and 1988 Xmas specials.¹ None of these compilation shows have end credits of their own, just a BBC logo and a copyright date – everyone who originally worked on the show is listed on the separate credits elsewhere on the DVD.

And as I was reading those DVD credits for Series 4, a certain part of my brain sparked into life.

A consequence of hanging around in Red Dwarf fandom for too long is a minor obsession with early Rob Grant and Doug Naylor material. I knew they had written stuff for The Grumbleweeds and Jasper Carrot, but I never knew they had written anything for Smith & Jones. And yet there were their names, large as life.

What the hell did they write?! I had to know. Time for some investigation.²

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Sadly, Vol 2. – intended for material from their six series over on BBC1 – never made it to the shelves. ↩
Investigating this, investigating that. General investi… sorry, force of habit. ↩

Rewiring.

Published 30th November 2014

Radio Comedy

Next year, I am going to learn how to watch television and listen to the radio.

Or more specifically: next year, I am going to learn how to watch television and listen to the radio by myself.

Of course, I used to do nothing but this. My fond memories of watching TV when I was growing up aren’t as a family: it was my own shows, alone. My formative experiences with comedy, watching Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf and Trev and Simon’s Stupid Video over and over and over again, were solitary experiences. There was nobody about in the middle of the night, where I sat watching Pets on 4Later. And those 10 minute Television X free-to-air promos… actually, let’s skip that one.

Still, over the years, things changed. I moved in with my girlfriend, and we started watching more TV together. And gradually, watching stuff by myself got less fun. If a show was really that great, I’d want to share it with her. Sure, I might enjoy a show by myself… but it was far more fun to watch it together, to laugh together, to stare in horror together, to talk about it afterwards together. And slowly, it became a habit… to the point where, without really even thinking about it that much, I barely watch anything by myself any more. It just doesn’t appeal to me at all.

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