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Two Amusing Grant Naylor Sketches from Spitting Image

Published 6th February 2023

TV Comedy

The problem with being a mouldy old Red Dwarf fan is that you end up viewing every bloody comedy show from around that time through a Dwarf-shaped prism. With something like early Spitting Image, with Grant Naylor as script editors as well as Chris Barrie doing impressions, the links become utterly inescapable.

For instance, take this joke in the first episode of Series 2 of Spitting Image (TX: 6/1/85)1, in a sketch about Zola Budd:

VOICE 1: 2 hours 56 minutes! That’s a world record for a marathon.
VOICE 2: Pity she’s running the 100 metres.

And then remember this joke from Red Dwarf‘s “Future Echoes” (TX: 22/2/88), where Rimmer does a spot of running himself:

RIMMER: 6:47. Not a bad little time for the mile. Pity I was only doing the 300 metres.

Of course, it’s not just Red Dwarf. How about this sketch from the first episode of Grant Naylor’s Radio 4 sketch show Son of Cliché (TX: 23/8/83), and “20 Golden Indian Restaurant Tracks”?


Download “20 Golden Indian Restaurant Tracks” (MP3, 1:09)

Which bears a startling resemblance to this Spitting Image sketch from Series 2, Episode 10 (TX: 17/3/85), where KGB-TEL promise “20 Golden Pieces of Sombre Music”:

The rewrite on that sketch is fascinating in its own right, taking the same basic idea – how foreign music can sound identical to untrained ears – and adds a whole extra layer of political jokes. I don’t have writing credits for individual sketches here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if other writers were involved.2

Either way, as a fan of Grant Naylor’s work, it’s a very odd feeling to watch Spitting Image, and see shards of their earlier and later work suddenly pop up. And it’s also proof that people who say they wouldn’t bother watching the show as the topical references mean it’s “dated” – and this isn’t a straw man argument, I have literally seen exactly that – are somewhat missing the point.

Because the above examples show both a topical joke being re-used in a decidedly non-topical way… and a non-topical joke being transformed into a topical one. It’s all part of the same thing. Which is a far more fascinating realisation than merely sulking about a reference to Zola Budd.

  1. In all these posts about Spitting Image on Dirty Feed, I’m going by the DVD numbering for the series, rather than Mark Lewisohn’s rather different numbering in the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy. In particular, Lewisohn states there are two different series in 1984 rather than one, and ditto in 1986. The series numbers aren’t really that important anyway; just go by the TX dates. ↩

  2. Possibly Hislop and Newman? ↩

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My Friend Flicker

Published 5th February 2023

Life / TV Presentation

The other night, I was sitting in a anonymous playout suite in West London, in charge of an anonymous channel. It was around 1am. Some people are surprised to learn that there is, in fact, plenty to do in a darkened playout suite at 1am. Thoroughly checking the next day’s schedule is one of those things. It’s better to find out you have a problem with your 3pm programme a full twelve hours before it airs, rather than twelve minutes.

So there I was, watching a programme – yes, an anonymous programme – which was going out in a few hours’ time. In general, we watch the opening minute and the closing minute of each show, to make sure all is well. Opening minute, fine. Closing minute, fi… hang on, what was that? A brief flicker on the end credits? What caused that? It wasn’t the credit squeeze, was it? Or the monitor wall having a funny? Let’s run it through again.

No, it’s still there. Hmmmmm.

I load the material up on the desktop PC in the suite, and step through the offending section frame-by-frame. There we have it. A single erroneous frame in the end credits, where the moving background jumps ahead unexpectedly.

A single erroneous frame. A flash frame, in fact. Completely 100% unintentional; just an editing error, rather than any kind of deliberate nonsense. But nonetheless, there it is: a sodding flash frame. I spend months and months researching and writing about them at home, and then one pops up at work too.

I need a new hobby. One that has nothing to do with my job. In fact, one that absolutely, categorically does not involve any kind of screen.

Knitting, maybe. Or orienteering. Cheesemaking?

Pretentious? Moi?

Published 1st February 2023

Meta

The eagle-eyed among you will note that from December, I started using the moniker “John J. Hoare” in various places. In the footer of this website; on Twitter; and now in the byline of my newsletter.1 For those of you who missed my short explanation on Twitter, I am fully aware that this seems a rather precious affectation. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, I told you all the story of how I shared my name with a BBC cameraman growing up, and what a delight that was. Most of you will have seen his name in the end credits of TV shows throughout the years, especially in the 80s. I’ve often been asked whether I was him, which I always found quite funny.

But I dunno. Over the last year or so, I’ve started to find it rather less amusing, and more just mildly irritating. The more my writing about television on here gets noticed, and the more people find out my job is working on the BBC television channels, the number of people asking me whether I’m “that” John Hoare has increased over the years. To the point where I’m convinced many people just assume I’m the same person.

Seeing another, different, third John Hoare credited as Director of Photography on Doctors recently hasn’t exactly helped matters.

Anyway, as I was pondering all of this, I did some work on the recent Blu-ray set of The Young Ones, where I’m kindly credited a couple of times. And seeing the name “John Hoare” in the credits there made me realise: yet again, more than ever given the show’s vintage, so many people are just going to assume that I’m that John Hoare. What used to just be a fun coincidence, is now actively starting to confuse and harm my career. How do you build a name for yourself, when somebody already has that name? I thought this was a problem only Hollywood starlets had, or something.

So the obvious answer is: to change my name. Maybe this was an opportunity to get rid of “Hoare”, the target of a million and one jokes over the years, from some massively hilarious people. It is notable that every single other member of my immediate family has chosen to get rid of it.2 But that’s a complete faff, and… I dunno. I just don’t really want to. It’s not a name I love, but it’s the one I have, and it’s just part of me now.

Hence “John J. Hoare”, the name I’m going to use professionally from now on, in as much as Dirty Feed is professional at anything. You’ll never need to speak it. Just call me John. But in writing, it helps identify who I am. Notably, nobody has asked me whether I’m any other John Hoare in the last two months, and that’s surely worth something.

Oh, and: it stands for James. My real middle name. It’s a real J, not a fake J. If I was going to pick a fake middle initial, I’d go down the whole “David X. Cohen” route. Or perhaps just call myself Jay-Z Hoare.

Actually, come to think of it, I’ll also answer to that.

  1. Oh yeah, my newsletter. You should sign up to that, you know. I promise, I’ll only send you crap once a month. ↩

  2. A fact which I only realised when writing this post. It was an odd realisation, I have to say. ↩

Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part One

Published 27th January 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part 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.

[Read more →]

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

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Mastodons of the Fediverse

Published 9th January 2023

Meta

Short version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud.

Medium version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud, which will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only. I won’t be following anybody at the moment over there; we’ll see how it goes.

Long version: you can now find Dirty Feed here: @dirtyfeed@mastodon.cloud. This will contain links to Dirty Feed articles only, as per twitter.com/@dirtyfeed, rather than all my usual nonsense you get over on twitter.com/@mumoss. Consider it a glorified RSS feed for this site.

I also, with apologies, won’t be following anybody over there for the time being. This is me dipping a toe into Mastodon, rather than a fully-fledged dive in. I will confess that when I saw all the auto-follow tools to help people migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, an absolute shudder ran through me. That’s not because I HATE YOU ALL – although I obviously do – but because I remain unconvinced that my Twitter experience as it stands is something I want to replicate elsewhere, and that’s as much to do with me as anything.

It’s fair to say that I’ve built up an awful lot of bad habits on Twitter – reading the wrong things, reading them at the wrong time – and I really want to make sure I don’t just end up with two timelines of stuff which makes me miserable. It’s one thing to have made some mistakes, but stick with something because it’s still helpful in other ways. It’s another thing to make those same mistakes all over again somewhere else. That would seem, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking stupid. I don’t want to rely on there being less stuff in my timeline to make it manageable – I want to avoid most of the stuff I don’t want entirely. A timeline consisting mainly of links to interesting blog posts might be the ideal.

So we’ll see where I end up with that. In the meantime, there’s now yet another way of keeping up with this place without having to rely on Twitter, which is surely a good thing for a million and one different reasons. Check out the Subscribe page for the rest; in particular, I’d urge you to consider signing up for the Dirty Feed newsletter, which is launching later this month. Nearly all my traffic currently comes from Twitter: I’d like to significantly change that this year, if at all possible.

Longest version: Send me £100 via PayPal, and I’ll talk you through Dirty Feed syndication options over the phone at your leisure.

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“Of Course There’s Too Much Duck!”

Published 8th January 2023

TV Comedy

Assumptions are the enemy of research everywhere. Beware of anything which is “obviously” true. You can find yourself in a whole world of trouble.

For instance, take the two Fawlty Towers script books below.

Two Fawlty Towers scriptbooks - all relevant information in the article

For years, I owned the one on the left, The Complete Fawlty Towers (Guild Publishing, 1989), which contains the scripts for all 12 episodes. I never bothered getting the one on the right, simply called Fawlty Towers (Contact Publications, 1977), because despite only covering three episodes1 – “The Builders”, “The Hotel Inspectors”, and “Gourmet Night” – the actual content was going to be identical, right?

[Read more →]

  1. A “Book 2” published in 1979 covers the rest of Series 1. Series 2 was never published in this form, and had to wait for The Complete Fawlty Towers to make it onto the shelves. ↩

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Foreign News Sketch

Published 2nd January 2023

TV Comedy

One of my favourite things about The Fast Show is how many different textures it has.

For instance: it isn’t just a programme which knows which sketches need to be shot on location, and which sketches should be shot in the studio. This is a programme which knows that certain location sketches should be shot on film (Ted & Ralph, Unlucky Alf), and certain location sketches should be VT (The Off-Roaders, Fat Sweaty Coppers). And while I could wax lyrical about how shooting each sketch the right way helps sell the joke better, part of the joy here is even simpler: your eyes don’t have time to get bored.

And then we have Chanel 9. A parody of every foreign news broadcast you might imagine you’d seen on holiday, with accompanying dreadful picture quality, it adds yet another texture to the show. Let’s take a look at the first Chanel 9 sketch, from the very first episode of The Fast Show, broadcast on the 27th September 1994.

[Read more →]

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Absolution.

Published 30th December 2022

Internet

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read a number of different blog posts from many different people, all saying roughly the same thing. “Oh, now that dickhead is running Twitter, I’d best start updating my personal site again.” Some of them are more considered than others. Indeed, a fair few of them make some extremely good points.

And yet every time, I have the same reaction. A peculiar combination of hope… and my eyes slowly rotating to the back of my skull.

Now, look, I admit it. Part of the reason for this is because I’ve been writing on Dirty Feed for well over a decade, and writing consistently online since 2003. The idea that you should own your words, and not just rely on social media, has been talked about for years, well before Musk got his wrecking ball out. But this line of thinking doesn’t really get you very far. The person who realises everything at the earliest possible opportunity would be some kind of superhuman indeed.

No, there’s another reason for my eye-rotating antics. Let me give an example of one particular site which I’ve read recently.1

Yesterday, they did a brand new post, stating that they were going to start blogging again. This was their first new post in nearly two years. Their previous posts, from early 2021, were about the following topics:

  1. Procrastinating with their writing.
  2. A long-abandoned manifesto for their blog.
  3. A short piece about Substack.
  4. The software they use for their writing.
  5. How their writing workflow doesn’t work any more… which explains why they aren’t writing.
  6. And finally, another post which promises some more writing, at some point.

Now, I’m going to be absolutely fair here: the blog I’m talking about above does have some self-awareness about all this. They know it’s silly. But that doesn’t stop it being a perfect catalogue of writing about the possibility of doing some writing, and then not really doing any writing. It’s an utter waste of time.

Or, as I called it once, pretend blogging.

[Read more →]

  1. I’m not linking to it, for obvious reasons. It’s still Christmas. ↩

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Dirty Feed: Best of 2022

Published 28th December 2022

Meta

2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023 • 2024 • 2025

I’ll tell you something, I’m utterly bored with writing depressing intros for these end-of-year articles. You know the drill. “Oh, hasn’t this year been awful, global pandemics, politics, blah blah blah, never mind, here’s the best things I’ve written this year.”

So: 2022 has been brilliant, hasn’t it? Everyone had a great time, and people couldn’t be happier. Now here’s the best things I’ve written this year.

*   *   *

DJs Leave Radio Fab
An in-depth look at the origins of a prop newspaper in Smashie & Nicey: the End of an Era. Well, start the year as you mean to go on. As indeed I did, with similar articles looking at prop newspapers in Red Dwarf and The Young Ones. This is an entire waste of time, and I won’t be writing any articles about this ever again. Such as the one about I’m Alan Partridge which I definitely won’t be publishing next year.

DJs leave Radio Fab. Mike Smash and Dave Nice left Radio Fab FM yesterday after being with the station since 1967.
Red Dwarf model shot - clapperboard dated 11/2/87


I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates
For years, we’ve heard about the recording of Series 1 of Red Dwarf being abandoned due to an electricians’ strike… but we’ve never known exactly when those abandoned recording dates were. Until now. See also: how a similar strike affected The Young Ones.

A Brief History of a Doorway in Red Dwarf (1989-96)
I mean, seriously. You probably already know if you want to click on that or not. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to sell it. Ditto with this piece about the sets in “Back to Reality”.

Polymorph - close-up of door
The Wayback Machine


Shame.
About why you shouldn’t always feel shame about older versions of you hanging around the web, and why deleting them might not be the best idea. I write a fair bit about the web – and especially the archiving of the web – but rarely make a fuss about it, because I don’t think many people visit this site for that kind of stuff. This is one of the few pieces on this topic which actually got noticed a little.

A Few Random Thoughts on 2point4 children
I saw 2point4 children for the first time properly this year. Here are my long and rambling thoughts about it, but if you want the short version: it’s great. I’d love to write more about the series next year. In the meantime: what was the original theme tune for the pilot?

Bill with her head through a catflap
Telescope base in Chucklevision


Tales From BBC North West’s Scene Dock
Here it is. The most popular article I wrote all year, about the links between Chucklevision and Red Dwarf. No, I’m not turning into a parody of myself, now why don’t you sod off?

In Search of the Golden Brain
And there’s the second most popular article I wrote all year, about the truth behind a notorious treasure hunt in the first Spitting Image book. This is the kind of investigation I’d like to write much more of next year, as it’s deeply satisfying. (And yes, I still have that vague idea of writing a Comedy Mysteries book…)

The Spitting Image Golden Brain puzzle
Simon Cadell on the Enterprise


“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”
Investigating the day that Jeffrey Fairbrother took a trip aboard the Enterprise, in one of the silliest things ever made. Thank god for old issues of TV Zone. Also this year: proving ST:TNG‘s most prolific director wrong.

Mmmm, Nice
Bizarrely, I’ve never written about Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em on here before, despite it being one of my favourite shows. So here’s a short tale about the production of Series 1 of the show… and what’s so special about the very last episode of that series. See also: proving Wikipedia wrong about the recording of Are You Being Served.

Frank Spencer looking upset
BBC Two 50th anniversary symbol


Relative Time Dilation in an Amazingly Compressed Space
Of all the more personal pieces I’ve written this year, this is my favourite. It captures just a little moment where you’re fully aware of history taking place in front of you… even if it’s really just a little piece of your own history.

That-cher
How did the BBC originally report the news of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation? And can we absolve a BBC daytime presenter of a heinous broadcasting crime? All this and some obscure 1980s production paperwork.

Debi Jones
Alf Garnett wheeling around Else, from Series 1 of In Sickness and in Health


An Evening at Television Centre
Sneaking in at the end of the year, this ended up as one of my favourite pieces, about the pilot of In Sickness and in Health… and why I really, really wish I had a time machine.

*   *   *

This year has been a bit of a mixed bag. I wrote less than I did in 2021 – more individual posts, sure, but fewer words, and perhaps fewer articles I’m really proud of. On the other hand, in writing this end-of-year piece, I find I’ve actually done a little more I liked than I thought. And at least I finally got the redesign of this place done, which I’ve been putting off for years.1

Truth be told, I’ve found this year quite tough, for reasons that I don’t really want to go into. So I’ll just say: thank you if you read any of my stuff this year, especially if you sent any other visitors my way, or sent me any nice comments, or indeed helped with some of the research. Despite my troubles this year, writing in this place is one of the things which has kept me sane. The fact that other people enjoy my nonsense too makes me very happy. And I have plenty of plans for fun stuff next year.2

Oh yeah, next year. For all the obvious reasons, my desire is to use Twitter less. Hopefully a lot less. So if you want to give me a late Christmas present, then please sign up for my monthly newsletter, which is launching in January:

I guess I should really write a paragraph here to tie this whole article up and provide a climax. But having watched a quite incredible amount of Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health over the last couple of months, I can say with some confidence that Johnny Speight didn’t always bother. So I’ll just leave this piece hanging shoddily in mid-air–

[awkward silence, audience applause]

  1. I’m still proud of my new logo, which I must write something about next year. ↩

  2. YES, INCLUDING FLASH FRAMES IN THE YOUNG ONES. ↩

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An Evening at Television Centre

Published 16th December 2022

TV Comedy

There is a certain kind of deranged comedy fan, who has a very particular kind of deranged list. It’s a list which can bring you nothing but pain. “Which sitcom episodes would you love to have been in the studio audience for, but weren’t?” Bonus points if you hadn’t even been born at the time of the recording.

I am a deranged comedy fan. And my deranged list includes the Fawlty Towers episode “The Kipper and the Corpse”, the Red Dwarf episode “Marooned”, and the One Foot in the Grave episode “The Trial”. Somebody seriously needs to invent a time machine. Screw killing Hitler, I’ll spend most of my time hanging around various TV studios.

But one show has just leapt right to the top of my list. Not because it’s a seminal episode of sitcom, although it is very, very good. But because of what I’ve discovered about the studio recording itself.

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