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Published 29th May 2022

TV Comedy

Right now, I’m buried in a load of research on early Spitting Image. In particular, I have been carefully examining an original off-air of Series 1, Episode 11 (TX: 10/6/84), for reasons which will prove extremely interesting. But we’ll get to that in its own sweet time.

Instead, I want to talk about the two sketches in this episode before and after the ad break. Before the break we get our very first look at the puppet of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had hitherto just been heard off-screen. After the break, we get the ad parody “There’s an indifference at McGregor’s you’ll enjoy”, about the contemporary head of the National Coal Board, Ian MacGregor. The miner’s strike had started just three months previously.

Below is the sequence as presented on the DVD, released in 2008:

The link the sketch draws between the Scottish-American MacGregor, and applying certain American business practices to the UK, gives it a little more depth than a fair number of ad parodies manage.

While it’s obvious that the McGregor’s sketch is a McDonald’s parody, and of a very famous ad campaign which had been running for years, it’s still startling to compare an ad from the actual campaign, and realise the jingle really is virtually identical.

Finally, let’s take a look at this sequence in Spitting Image as it originally transmitted – ad break fully intact – on LWT in 1984:

And all of a sudden, what the production was doing with the McGregor’s sketch is obvious. By putting it at the start of Part Two, it’s right up against a load of other ads, and feels part of them. I highly suspect that it’s only the Spitting Image logo at the beginning keeping the thing compliant with IBA rules. What was merely amusing on DVD starts to feel genuinely subversive when viewed in its originally broadcast form.

Now sure, if you’re actually thinking about the material, you could make the link anyway. It is easy to forget that back in 1984, you didn’t tend to get trailers for other programmes during the centre ad breaks like you do now, which would completely ruin the effect. But if you did remember that, you could easily put two and two together and understand what the programme was up to.

But it’s one thing knowing that logically. It’s another actually seeing the effect it has on the show. It’s the difference between having merely having the facts at your disposal, and feeling them. Original off-airs for Series 1 of Spitting Image are very difficult to come by. Things like this give me a new appreciation for just how cheeky the show was being at this point.

And it’s a reminder that when making comedy, you need to consider how everything feeds into it. Context is vital. If you can get the format of your chosen medium to add meaning which is impossible to achieve in any other way, then so much the better.

With thanks to Nigel Hill for the original recording of this episode of Spitting Image.

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Clocking Out

Published 27th May 2022

Life

For five years between 2003 and 2008 – with a brief, self-enforced break in the middle – I worked for a certain UK-based Cash & Carry company. I will not dignify them with a name. It remains one of the worst employment experiences of my life, rivalled only by the job I had making dental moulds for the NHS where I kept breaking all the teeth off.

My list of anecdotes from that time is long and unpleasant. Yes, I had the obligatory moment where I was told I was no good at the job, and sat sobbing in the manager’s office. But there were worse things afoot. How about the time a customer ordered a pallet of rice, and I witnessed them being referred to in a stupendously racist manner by someone in the order office? That seemed particularly awful – not just the racist abuse itself, but that the racist abuse was about someone who was literally giving us money and keeping us in work.

Or maybe there was the time where I passed an interview to move from the shop floor to the order office. I was given a start date, and all was well… until the job was pulled out from under me the evening before I was due to start, just because someone in management didn’t like me. Moreover, I hadn’t even been told by my manager that the move had been stopped. Someone else let me know, and I had to confront my errant manager about it myself.

Then there was the morning where I was given a sheet of instructions by that same manager, and found on the back the instructions given to him by his manager. The phrase “I am not convinced about John Hoare” is etched onto my mind to this very day. I mean, I’m not convinced about myself either, but I don’t usually have to see it written down by somebody else.

From the above, I may give the impression that I was awful at the job. This isn’t actually true. I may not have blown people away with my work, sure. But after I left, did something else for a bit, and then needed my job back, they gave it to me, and they sure didn’t do that out of the goodness of their hearts. I would suggest that the place was so badly run that doing the job well was a virtually impossible task. With years of hindsight, and experience of a half-decent work environment, I can see that now. But at the time, my self-esteem took a wholly unnecessary beating.

But with all the chaos above, there’s one incident which truly makes me realise that the place was a pathetic place to work.

I eventually did get that job in the order office. And part of that job was to talk to all the sales reps. The transaction wasn’t complicated: they tried to convince us to order more of their products, and I had to make sure we didn’t over-order and end up with stock we couldn’t sell. I remember having an argument once with the Cadbury rep about the outrageous withdrawal of Wispa from the market.

Occasionally, the reps would bring in some merchandise; I once got to try a flavour of Tic Tacs which hadn’t gone out on sale yet. This remains the highlight of my working career to date. This practice of accepting things wasn’t banned: nobody was going to order something they couldn’t sell, just because they got some free Tic Tacs. Not even me.

But one day, I had an idea. If the reps could bring in silly things like pens and the like, then maybe they could bring in something a little bigger. Like, say, a wall clock, branded with their company’s logo. Then I could put them all on the wall of the order office, and we could get an international time zones thing going. LONDON – PARIS – NEW YORK, and the like.

We could look like an important news room. In a scruffy order office somewhere in Exeter, sure. But we could have some fun. And our walls needed something interesting to put on them.

So I set to work asking the reps, and set the plan in motion. I believe we got to a grand total of two clocks on the wall before it was stopped from above. No reason given; certainly no worries about bribery, however idiotic that would have been when it came to clocks. Just a general air of “Obviously, we aren’t going to do that.”

And that’s what I remember most from working at that company. Not the sobbing in the manager’s office. Not the racism. Not the insults, given to me personally by hand. No: it was that I tried to have a little bit of fun in what could be a fairly boring job, and it was immediately stamped down on with no explanation. Because who would want to enjoy themselves at work?

Retail jobs usually suck. But the worst thing is: they don’t have to. Sometimes, fun is disallowed, because people are suspicious of it. Even something as harmless as a wall of clocks in an order office.

It crushes the soul something rotten.

*   *   *

In a transmission suite for a certain television channel in London, there is a poster on the wall. A poster of… a mirror globe. And if you walk just across the way to the opposite suite, there is a striking, stripy, numeral 2.

And last Christmas, a certain festive-themed Ceefax poster made its annual appearance for the third year running.

Just a tiny scrap of fun, to get you through the shift. It helps.

Still Not Writing

Published 26th May 2022

Internet

Over the last few months, I’ve spent far too long slagging other people off for pretending to write. I worry that some people have misunderstood my point on this, and that I think everybody should be writing shit for free on the internet. Needless to say, this is very much not the case. Most people have better things to do.

My argument has always been a little more subtle: it’s about people who seem to want to write, but put needless barriers in their way. It could be because they’re worried that their chosen topic isn’t “important” enough. It could be a bad site design which looks cool, but makes actually publishing your thoughts difficult. It could be the idea that you can “reclaim the open spirit of the web” simply by publishing a manifesto, rather than actually writing something interesting. If people who want to write could break past their own self-imposed obstacles to writing, then the net as a whole would be a lot better off.

But it’s amazing the excuses people will find not to do so. For instance, I saw this on Twitter just recently:

“I do sometimes miss my blogging days. But for it to come back, I’d really need some kind of directory like Technorati used to be. I want to follow who I know but also have some kind of awareness of the landscape as well.”

Now, would I like to see a brand new, modern blog directory? Of course I would. It would be a bloody great thing to have. I’m not the person to make it, but I wish someone would.

But here’s the thing: if the only reason you’re not writing is because you can’t find a decent blogging directory, you don’t really want to write. That’s fine: nobody is obliged to. But it’s not the lack of good directory that’s the problem. You can fill in the blanks it would provide in other ways: RSS feeds, social media, and the like. I let people know about my posts through Twitter, and learn about other people’s blogs and personal sites there too.

Is that perfect? Of course not. But what is?

If we want a lively, open, independent web, the one thing we can’t do is to sit and wait for somebody to provide it. And if you want to write, you have to write first. The act of writing and publishing is the important part. And that writing will inspire other things to slot into place. To fold our arms and say we won’t write until the blogosphere is thriving is simply an admission of defeat.

Nobody will provide your preferred way of linking blogs together, without having the blogs to link together in the first place. And the first step to improving the independent web isn’t to put together anything complicated. It’s to write something interesting, and hit publish.

We’ll sort out the rest later.

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Bad Teenager

Published 14th May 2022

Life / TV Comedy

It’s funny, the things you remember. The things you remember when everything else surrounding is a dull haze. Standing out in the middle: a conversation with someone who I used to know at primary school, but saw less often now I was at secondary.

I can’t even remember how old I was. I got into Red Dwarf in 1994 when I was 13, so it must have been after then. A couple of years later? We’d talked about the show before, anyway. And then once, during a normal conversation, he suddenly informed me that he didn’t like Red Dwarf any more. He’d grown out of it, you see. The show was for kids.

I was confused. I mean, the show definitely wasn’t made for kids. Even forgetting its teenage audience, the show was clearly made for adults. But he was adamant. He’d grown out of the show, and – by heavy implication – I was a baby for still liking it. Oh well.

Looking back, that was the moment when I realised that some people won’t be honest with you about this stuff. That some people will worry more about how they look, than about what they like.

This guy’s contempt for a show he used to enjoy was just teenage posturing.

*   *   *

A few years later, I was standing in a bowling alley, attempting to be an American teenager. I was in a group. A… mixed group.

Somehow, the conversation got onto the Spice Girls. My best friend slagged off “Mama”. I was confused.

“But I thought you said you liked that one!”

Awkward silence. My friend was livid. But I fancy that even the girls thought I hadn’t really played ball with society’s expectations.

I never was very good at that pesky teenage posturing.

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Dear Diary

Published 13th May 2022

Internet / Meta

Some things I write would be better left unread, buried at the bottom of a drawer, thrown into the sea, and then blown up by an naval mine. This is one of them. If you’re really interested in my thoughts about where Dirty Feed might be going over the next year or so, by all means grab a cup of tea and settle down.

If you’re not, then don’t worry: something fun about The Young Ones will be along before you know it.1

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  1. Seriously. An off-air of something from 1984 which has been lost for years popped through my letterbox the other day. ↩

Design for Creation

Published 7th May 2022

Internet

A shade over two years ago, someone’s personal website had a very high profile redesign. Well, high profile among a certain kind of Very Online web design crowd, anyway. And that gang were falling over themselves to praise it. A “lovingly hand-carved redesign”, one person called it. “New, gorgeous, funky-fresh”, said another. It caused a stir for good reason: it really was was an interesting, bold piece of work. In a world where so many have abandoned their own little place on the web, it really did stand out a mile.

A year ago, it stopped updating. The person who designed it is still around, and still regularly posts on Twitter. But their site – launched in a blaze of glory – is essentially dead.

*   *   *

No, I’m not going to name the person, or their website. The specific example isn’t important. Let’s talk about me instead.

Earlier this year, I launched the current design of Dirty Feed. Throughout the design process, I had plenty of ideas which I considered, and then rejected. Many of these involved grids of pictures, much like the current design of Anil Dash’s site. Other ideas involved splitting my writing into two types: longer “Articles”, and shorter “Notes”, much like the old Noise to Signal that I designed over a decade ago. The idea being: give more prominence to the really big pieces on here, without them being shoved aside too easily by the smaller blog posts.

In the end, I abandoned both ideas, for very similar reasons. In terms of just going with one huge picture grid for the front page, I just don’t think they really work when you have shorter posts too. A clickthrough picture for a tiny blog post feels over-egged and wrong, selling it as something bigger and more important than it actually is.

As for splitting my writing into two types, that superficially feels like a much better idea. But then I thought a little more about how I write. Something like this is clearly a long article, and something like this is clearly a short blog post. But what about this piece, which sits in a weird hinterland between the two: too short to be a full article, but too long for a tiny blog post?

In the end, I abandoned both ideas entirely, in favour of a more traditional front page layout. Maybe it’s not stunningly exciting, but I’m not forced to either shrink my writing to fit a blog post, or expand it to be a proper article. Each piece of writing can be exactly the length it needs to be, without forcing it into a shape that it doesn’t fit.

My point is obvious. That when designing your personal site, don’t design for how you wish you wrote. Design for how you actually write. A good design isn’t there for people to coo over for being bold and original; a good design helps you write and publish.1 And a bad design is one which gets in the way, and makes sharing your ideas difficult.

And why does this matter? Let’s go back to the “hand-carved redesign” which opened this piece. The overall reaction from the Very Online web designer crowd was: “How great that people are moving away from social networks and back to their own place on the web. It’s important to have ownership of your own work.” Which I 100% agree with.

But unless you keep your site updated with your thoughts and ideas, having your own place on the web doesn’t really mean that much. It doesn’t have to be updated every day, every week, or even every month, especially. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that a site lying stagnant for a year isn’t going to be fresh and exciting, no matter how funky your design is.

If you do that, no wonder people will just stick to Twitter to keep up with what you’re doing.

  1. Or upload images and publish, or link to podcasts and publish. Whatever it is that you make. ↩

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A Few Random Thoughts on 2point4 children

Published 1st May 2022

TV Comedy

What is the first thing that comes into your head when I say 2point4 children to you?

There is one obvious answer. “Great show, which never got the credit it deserved.” I’ve heard this said over and over in different ways. And I don’t think it’s wrong, per se.

But whenever I’ve talked about the show over the years – on Twitter and elsewhere – I’ve found something slightly different. So many people have told me that it was… erm, a great show, which never got the credit it deserved. Moreover, enough people watched it and loved it at the time that it managed to rack up eight series.

At some point, does it not stop becoming a great show which never got the credit it deserved, and merely become a great show?

Of such questions are comedy flame wars made. The answer, of course, is that it depends which people you hang around with. And it proves the risk of generalising about the kind of reaction to any given show. Among plenty of my friends, I’m not sure 2point4 children even needed any reappraisal when it was made available on iPlayer earlier this year. It got the right appraisal from them at the time.

If that isn’t a universal truth either, then we should be wary of trusting any one narrative of the show. There are a million of them.

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I Hope I Never Post Anything Which Mentions Elon Musk Ever Again

Published 29th April 2022

Internet

John Gruber, on the report that under Musk’s (potential) ownership, people on the left are leaving Twitter:

“Conservative-leaning users joining (or re-joining) Twitter in anticipation that under Musk’s ownership, Twitter will be more to their liking makes some sense. I don’t really get why liberal-leaning users are deleting or deactivating their accounts now, though. Nothing has changed. We don’t know what will change. It seems so defeatist, which, alas, is on-brand for the active-on-Twitter left.”

There are plenty of reasons I could give here why I think some people consider Elon Musk owning Twitter to be a tipping point. And I’m sure it would all be very justifiable, and that tipping points always look weird in isolation anyway, and all that jazz.

I do wonder whether we have something else here though, at least in part. A fair few people are sick of Twitter, for a million and one different reasons. I know I am. To take just one example of many: a steady stream of misery being pelted into my eyeballs on a daily basis – even from people who I agree with – doesn’t do me any good at all. I get enough exposure to misery elsewhere.

See also: shitbags popping up into my mentions and causing me trouble. Which has happened to me literally this evening. I don’t need it. I got enough of that in the playground three decades ago.

I think some people are seeing Elon Musk’s acquisition1 as a jumping off point. That it isn’t just about what the platform will or will not become. It’s just that they dislike Musk, and it’s a good excuse to cut something out of their lives which they no longer enjoy, but has become a habit.

Gruber again:

“I also don’t get deleting your account. Why not just stop using Twitter for now, but keep your account in case you change your mind down the road?”

I used to say this all the time. In fact, I used to make fun of people deleting their accounts – even temporarily – only to then reappear. “Just stop posting for a bit. Anything else looks attention-seeking.”

And then I realised that if I wanted to take a break from Twitter, but didn’t deactivate my account, it was much harder for me to do. Deactivating Twitter for a month put in that extra barrier which forced me to step away. The same will be true for people wanting to leave the service for good: it simply makes it less easy to pop back and get sucked in again.

It’s worth noting: I think the above makes me sound like a dickhead. The idea that I struggle to step away from Twitter for a bit without deactivating it seems completely ridiculous, when written down. What, am I really that addicted to the site, when it gives me so much misery sometimes?

Erm, it seems I am. And maybe that’s yet another reason to step away from it for good.

  1. Probable acquisition? Potential acquisition? Who the hell knows? ↩

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Back to Basie

Published 26th April 2022

TV Comedy

Some people probably think I compile lists of recording dates for sitcoms in lieu of having anything interesting to say about them. These people are entirely correct.

Nonetheless, as I’ve just had a delightful time watching the whole run on iPlayer, let’s take a look at Series 1 of Andrew Marshall’s brilliant 2point4 children.

Episode RX TX
Leader of the Pack 21/4/91 3/9/91
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 11/8/91 10/9/91
When the Going Gets Tough
the Tough Go Shopping		 18/8/91 17/9/91
Love and Marriage 25/8/91 24/9/91
Dirty Bowling 1/9/91 1/10/91
Young at Heart 8/9/91 8/10/91

The above are the main audience record dates for the series. Location work for the pilot was done between 10th – 12th April 1991, and location for the rest of the five episodes was done between 15th – 27th July 1991.

There are a few things to note about the above. Firstly: yes, “Leader of the Pack” was a genuine pilot, shot nearly four months before the rest of the series. This pilot was shot in the main Studio A at Pebble Mill, before the show moved down to TV Centre for the rest of the programme’s run.

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Shame.

Published 17th April 2022

Internet

I’ve written many times in the past about how I think people should keep their website archives online. In fact I’ve talked about it to the point of obnoxiousness, and then far beyond that. About how old stuff can suddenly become found and loved, about the history of the web disappearing, about what remains of the public record, about accidentally destroying a web community, about losing memories… or simply about letting things live.

It’s all true. But today I want to talk about another reason I feel so strongly about this. A reason I haven’t really touched on before, but I think is one of the most important of all.

Take a look at this interview from 2013, with designer Frank Chimero. It’s actually worth reading in full; it touches on many interesting topics. For instance, I highly identify with this:

“I think I’m similar to a lot of other creative people in that I’m deeply uncomfortable with attention. It’s one of those things where if you gain any attention, you start to subconsciously — or maybe even consciously — make creative choices to have people stop paying attention to you. […]1

Attention creates expectations that feel like a saddle. And most horses buck the first time a saddle is put on them. It is a natural inclination. Maybe it’s immature behavior to want to shake off other people’s expectations? I don’t know. But, if I’m really honest about where I am creatively, that’s what I want to do — I just want to buck.”

This reminds me very much of when I decided I didn’t want to write about sitcoms for a while, because somebody mildly hinted that was all they enjoyed about my writing. It also reminds me that whenever this place gets attention for something beyond my usual audience – my Yes Minister piece last year, for instance – I feel a disconcerting mix of pleasure and uncomfortableness. Is my lack of a really popular article on Dirty Feed so far this year down to luck, people having less time for my nonsense as the world opens up again… or my choice?

But there’s another part of this interview which I can’t quite get on board with.

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  1. All the quotations in this article are edited a little to avoid the back-and-forth with the interviewers, which works brilliantly in the piece itself, but less well when quoting from it. I hope I’ve been fair with my edits, but it’s worth reading the full interview to capture the true flavour of the conversation. ↩

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