OK, so you thought the Brittas Empire ticket and programme leaflet were obscure? Back in 1993, my girlfriend attended a recording of BBC sitcom Every Silver Lining. On a British Legion trip. A rude comment about the blue rinse brigade would be demeaning but accurate.
Luckily, being the type of person she is, she kept the programme leaflet given out at the recording, a scan of which follows below. Click to enlarge. Anyone care to guess how many of these still exist?
Piss poor. But move on.
I presume it’s not just me who has a list of sitcoms they wish they’d been at recordings of. From Fawlty Towers to Blackadder to Men Behaving Badly, for me the list extends even to specific episodes of a series. The fact I will never see the Red Dwarf episode Back To Reality recorded pains me immensely.
Another sitcom on the list is the vastly underrated The Brittas Empire. A few years back, however, someone eBayed their audience ticket and leaflet given out at the show – and I now present this material which I have refused to allow to become ephemera. Click for bigger versions:
When I think back to 2003, two things stick in my mind. Firstly, that was the year when I dropped out of uni a complete and total failure. Secondly, it was when I got involved with a Red Dwarf fansite run by a certain Ian Symes – Ganymede & Titan.
A lot’s happened in the intervening years – whether it’s arguing with Iain Lee, nearly getting sued by Grant Naylor Productions, or… well, arguing with Norman Lovett. Yet oddly, for me, one of the most exciting things we’ve done is a repackaging of old stuff. Because last month, we put a book out.
Look, mum, I did an interview!
http://www.ganymede.tv/indepth/the-beginning
Nic Farey, founder of The Official Red Dwarf Fanclub, and ex-team member Maxine Lehmann, discuss early Red Dwarf fandom – something I’ve always been fascinated by. Even if you’re not a hardcore Dwarf fan, though, there’s some interesting stuff there about the nature of fandom before most people had the internet.
Also: it contains my favourite answer to any interview question I’ve ever asked…
A thought crossed my mind the other day. (This is quite rare, so savour it.) When talking about favourite telly theme tunes, people often mention ones from the 90s and earlier. Which is eminently understandable – apart from any perceptions about quality, television is less and less likely to give programmes time to have a decent theme tune these days.
Still, it’s not like they don’t exist. So, as a celebration of great theme tunes post-2000, I asked the Twitter hive mind for their opinions. Their thoughts follow; before I carry on with the next stage of my little plan, are any of your favourite 21st century theme tunes missing? Let me know below…
Update (26/01/11): Loads more of your suggestions added!
Update (31/01/11): More suggestions added!
In a rare guest article here on Dirty Feed, script editor and writer Andrew Ellard takes issue with the poor quality of debate around the subject of studio audience sitcom…
This little piece in The Telegraph caused a minor kerfuffle just before Christmas. Catherine Gee gave her (negative) opinion on Miranda and Miranda’s fans, lent voice by Twitter and the ever-present ‘comment’ option, responded angrily.
Some things I write, I know at least some people will be interested. At other times, I decide to write articles about Gimme Gimme Gimme and aspect ratios.
Still here? Amazing. Buckle up, here we go.
UPDATE (02/04/17): The link below is now dead, and this album now resides here.
Found lying at the bottom of a drawer at the now-defunct Peartree Productions…
I’m Alan Partridge Soundtrack (142MB, 256kbps MP3)
This afternoon, between 12:30pm – 6pm, Sky1/Sky1 HD are showing three of the four Futurama movies. (Missing out Bender’s Game, but for various reasons, if you were going to not show one of them, that’s probably the one I’d drop.) Now, you’d think that would be difficult to mess up, yes?
Don’t be stupid. This is television. They can mess up anything.
Well, things have been quiet around here for a while, haven’t they? Whilst we prepare for upcoming “stuff”, take a look at something I posted on Twitter a while back, from 70s Bill Maynard vehicle Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt. (Which, incidentally, has a dodgy pilot, is really good for the first series, and then sadly tails off a bit.) Yep, you’re waiting around for the Yorkshire endcap at the end, although feel free to enjoy the end theme, which proves that Blackadder II isn’t the only sitcom which had different lyrics for the end of each episode…