Dirty Feed

“There Are Herrings on the Roof Again!”

Published 19th September 2025

Doing a parody of Fawlty Towers would, at first glance, seem a most inadvisable thing. Parodies of comedy are always a tricky proposition; parodies of one of the funniest comedies ever made is even more so.

This hasn’t stopped many of the great and the good attempting it over the decades. So to celebrate 50 years of Basil and the gang, let’s take a look at all the different take-offs of Fawlty Towers over the years. The good, the bad, and The Laughter Show.¹

The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show

TX: 27th December 1976 • BBC1

Mike Yarwood went through a spate of Basil Fawlty impressions, but this sketch from his 1976 Christmas show is the one to focus on. Partly because it’s so early; just a year after Series 1 of Fawlty Towers first aired, it’s by far the earliest parody of the show I could find.

Oh, and partly because the sketch clearly uses parts of the actual Fawlty Towers set, albeit rejigged to take less space in the studio:

The Mike Yawood Show: Yarwood as Basil, with Ballard Berkely as the Major

Fawlty Towers: John Cleese as Basil, and Trevor Adams as Alan. Although the main point here is that the set in both pictures is extremely similar.

Note that in the above, the window in the door to the office has been blanked out, so you can’t see that they haven’t erected the office set. And saving space in the studio is the clear rationale behind combining the lobby and the dining room, which gives a peculiar sense of visiting Fawlty Towers in an alternate universe:

The Mike Yawood Show: Yarwood as Basil, with various guests sitting along the wall to the dining room

Fawlty Towers: John Cleese as Basil, and of course nobody sitting in the lobby, because that's not how the show worked

Sadly, all the set nonsense above is pretty much the most interesting thing about the sketch, which is one of the the least effective parts of Yarwood’s 1976 show. I guess the ventriloquist stuff is making the point that Cleese occasionally talks through clenched teeth? Precious little of it is anything like Fawlty Towers at all; rather, it’s just an excuse for Yarwood to do his own material in a slightly different setting.

Nice to see Ballard Berkeley and Renee Roberts, though.²

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Look, I allow myself one cheap shot per year on this site. ↩
Speaking of Ballard Berkeley, I saw him in The Playbirds the other day. Sadly, he didn’t get to have sex with Mary Millington. Pity, it would have livened the film up a bit. ↩

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best of, fawlty towers, the peter serafinowicz show

“Lucky Old Bin, I Say”

Published 7th September 2025

TV Comedy

What is the most famous ending to an episode of Fawlty Towers? Surely “Gourmet Night” has to be up there, first broadcast on the 17th October 1975.

“Duck’s off, sorry.”

Great stuff, yes? Well, one of the delights with Fawlty Towers is hearing John Cleese endlessly tear apart classic moments of the show on his DVD commentary. It always bugged me that Basil doesn’t quite put the lid of the dish down correctly in the above scene, and Cleese concurs:

“When I put the dish down I should have cleanly covered the trifle. Then I should have waited longer before I leaned down and peeped…”

On the famous “Duck’s off, sorry” line, he’s happier:

“And that’s all you need at that moment – it’s almost a dying fall ending, there’s not a big laugh, but it rounds it off nicely.”

Yet there’s a mystery about this particular ending, which I first touched on a couple of years ago. And Cleese unfortunately doesn’t tackle it in the DVD commentary at all. Sitting on Getty Images is this intriguing photo, taken by Don Smith for the Radio Times, during the afternoon dress rehearsal of the episode.¹

What the bloody hell is our drunken chef Kurt doing there on the right, in Mrs Hall’s lap? At no point in the broadcast episode does he appear in that final scene. What’s going on?

[Read more →]

Note that they clearly didn’t want to waste a real trifle during the dress rehearsal. ↩

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best of, fawlty towers

“Beam Us Up, Scotty…”

Published 23rd August 2025

TV Comedy

There are, in general, two kinds of TV script books. The first is when the book is based on a draft of the script used in the actual production of the show, such as Father Ted: The Complete Scripts (Boxtree, 1999). The second is when they bodge together a load of transcripts and pretend it was something worth publishing, like with Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty (Penguin, 1998). Perhaps the former is more common than the latter, but damn, that Blackadder one still hurts.

Luckily, The Best of Men Behaving Badly (Headline, 2000) is one of the former, only losing points for not actually including every single episode… but to be fair, with 42 of them, that would have been a big ask. It also includes brilliant introductions to every included episode by Simon Nye, all of which make me want to sit down to tea with him and have a massive chat where we talk about exactly how comedy works.

As for the scripts themselves, they are very specifically described as the versions taken into rehearsals, and include plenty of juicy differences from the televised episodes. So juicy, in fact, that I kinda feel like writing a whole series of articles listing them all. While I try and figure out whether I can be bothered doing that, here’s one of my favourite revelations from the book.

The episode “Watching TV” from Series 6 has a bit of an odd ending as it stands. Here’s what was actually broadcast, on the 27th November 1997:

So as they’ve been watching Star Trek all episode, we do… a beaming-up joke. Which is both a bit crap, and doesn’t fit in with the world of Men Behaving Badly in the slightest.¹ The show may be broad at times, but exploding garden sheds can happen in real life. This can’t.

The thing is, Simon Nye knows that. In his introduction to the episode in the script book, he says:

“Difficult endings, part 13: the last line we ended up with, ‘Beam us up, Scotty’ is all wrong, but it’s too late to change it now…”

But there’s a hint in the above: the broadcast version is the last line “we ended up with”. Which wasn’t what they actually took into rehearsal. Which means that the book preserves the originally intended final moments of the show:

Deborah turns the TV back on, in time to hear the end of the theme music for Star Trek. Tutting, rolling of eyes, etc. A silence.

TONY: That was good. What’s on next?

DEBORAH: No, we’re going to talk for a change.

She snatches the remote away and turns off the TV. They sit in silence, trying to think of something to say. A long silence.

DEBORAH/DOROTHY: Okay. / Go on, then.

Tony gratefully turns the TV on again. Gary comes in with the pizzas. They watch TV. Gary puts a Coke down on top of the TV, then tips it accidentally into the back of the set. It explodes, hugely. The smoke clears.

TONY: Well, we don’t watch much telly anyway…

I’d perhaps be wary of proclaiming the above to be the best ending of a sitcom episode ever, but it sure is better than what ended up being broadcast, with Tony’s final line being especially amusing after a whole episode of being slumped in front of the telly.

Sometimes, it’s all too easy to write past where you really should have stopped.

A version of this post was first published in the April issue of my monthly newsletter. But don’t bother signing up, I just killed it.

One of the non-Fegen/Norriss episodes of The Brittas Empire, “Body Language”, broadcast on the 12th March 1996, pulls a similar gag. That doesn’t work either. ↩

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men behaving badly, script books

Location, Location, Location Redux

Published 5th August 2025

TV Comedy

Some videos in this article contain racist views and language.

Of all the things I expected to write on this site in 2025, “The unbroadcast Love Thy Neighbour pilot is really interesting” wasn’t top of the list.

Anyway, the unbroadcast Love Thy Neighbour pilot is really interesting. Completely reshot for the first episode of the series proper, the pilot starts with a lovely unbroken two-minute location shot of the Reynolds leaving their new house, and the Booths arriving at theirs:

[Read more →]

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love thy neighbour

Insults, Cups of Tea and Quips

Published 1st August 2025

TV Comedy

Recently, we had some tradesmen round to our house to fit a new hob. Before they arrived, my partner decided to hide our newly-purchased copy of the complete Love Thy Neighbour DVD boxset. After all, they might think we were massive racists. Or even worse, start telling us that Enoch was right.

Now, I’m most certainly not the right person to mount a full-throated defence of the show, not least because parts of it don’t deserve a full-throated defence. But while watching it for an article recently, I have to admit that the series kept surprising me. Partly because, away from the racial slurs, how line-by-line funny it can be.

EDDIE: I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted.
JOAN: Well, if you kept to that, you’d never go anywhere.

But also: the show kept going to areas that I didn’t quite expect. The fourth episode of Series 1¹ does a great parallel story between the men striking at work and the women striking at home, which is far more intelligent politically than most of the racial material. The first episode of Series 2, after opening with the usual sitcom shenanigans, contains a startling moment where Barbie, the black neighbour, bawls her eyes out at Eddie calling the police on her housewarming party. A scene which is not played for laughs in any way.

Oh, and the second episode of that series? I could have guessed that Eddie would be convinced to make a fool of himself by his black neighbour. I could have guessed this might involve a stupid fake voodoo dance around a tree at midnight. I might even have guessed that this dance would be naked. What I wouldn’t have guessed is that Jack Smethurst would fully commit to the bit, and we would get lots of luxuriant shots of his bare arse. All shot in a way where it’s very clear that it’s him, and not a stand-in.

For many, the language alone will render the series forever unwatchable. I won’t argue those people are wrong, and I certainly won’t argue that anybody reading this article is obligated to give it a go. But I will say that I went into the show expecting to watch the bare minimum for research purposes… and instead, I found far more of interest than I expected.

To be honest, that’s the main thing I want out of television these days.

[Read more →]

Fifth on DVD order. ↩

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best of, love thy neighbour, newspaper props

“From Here?”

Published 30th July 2025

Film / TV Comedy

Over the years, I’ve written plenty about comedy writers reusing jokes. Today’s topic is one of the most famous and most-quoted examples of the lot.

So let’s turn to ersatz Bond film Never Say Never Again, which premiered in the US on the 6th October 1983. Oh dear, James Bond isn’t having much fun.

NURSE: Mr. Bond? I need a urine sample. If you could fill this beaker for me?
BOND: From here?

The tale surrounding this is well-known by now. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais did some emergency rewrite work on Never Say Never Again, coming in three weeks after the film had started shooting, and staying with the production for three months.¹ Of course, they nicked the above joke from their own Porridge, and both writers have openly and repeatedly discussed this.

For instance, in the Omnibus edition “Whatever Happened To Clement & La Frenais?”, broadcast on the 20th July 1997:

DICK CLEMENT: We’re always tempted to recycle jokes, We did use one… it’s not a similar joke, it’s the same joke, in Never Say Never Again as in Porridge. If you see them back-to-back, it’s quite amusing.
IAN LA FRENAIS: We call it homage. We don’t call it recycling. (laughs) But it doesn’t happen very often.

The joke was actually taken from the very first episode of Porridge², “New Faces, Old Hands”, which first aired on 5th September 1974:

DOCTOR: You see those flasks over there? I want you to fill one for me.
FLETCH: What, from ‘ere?

For me, it’s the lightning-fast reaction from Barker which really sells it. He knew when you shouldn’t have time to anticipate the gag.

Obviously, this scene has become one of those clips over the years – if not quite rivalling Del Boy falling through the bar, then definitely in the ballpark. You do get to the point where at least as many people remember the clip from documentaries and anecdotes as they do from the actual show.

With that in mind, it’s worth noting at least one newspaper reviewer enjoyed the joke so much on first transmission, that they quoted it in their column the very next day. Peter Fiddick, in The Guardian:

“The jokes are there though both verbal and visual. (“I want you to fill that glass” says the prison doctor to Barker. “What – from here?” – and the camera cuts away from them precisely to emphasise the distance.)”³

So far, so standard. But the big question is: can we trace the joke back even further?

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More than Likely: A Memoir (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2019). ↩
Not including Seven of One‘s “Prisoner and Escort”, obviously. ↩
Not a perfect quotation, sure, but in 1974 without the aid of home video, let’s not be too picky. ↩

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best of, love thy neighbour

Snookered

Published 22nd July 2025

TV Comedy

As I’ve spoken about many times before on this site, I’m constantly surprised at how often the generally accepted transmission dates for various TV shows turn out to be a load of rubbish. Sometimes, the confusion is understandable – a last-minute schedule change not reflected in the Radio Times, say. Other times, I struggle to see the thought process.

This time? Well, we have ourselves a bit of a strange one.

As part of the research for my last piece on Terry and June, I had cause to look at the transmission dates for the series broadcast in late 1983. Here’s what epguides.com thinks:

Season 7
40. 7-1 31 Oct 83 Photo Finish
41. 7-2 07 Nov 83 One Little Pig
42. 7-3 14 Nov 83 The Raft Race
43. 7-4 21 Nov 83 Too Many Cooks
44. 7-5 28 Nov 83 Pardon My Dust
45. 7-6 05 Dec 83 The Artistic Touch

Six episodes, broadcast weekly from the 31st October 1983. Simple enough. And at the time of writing, this is also exactly what Wikipedia, IMDB, and the British Comedy Guide think happened too.

But on bbc.co.uk, we have a different story. The first four episodes of the series are indeed broadcast weekly… but then the show skips a week. The BBC has “Pardon My Dust” airing on the 5th December, and “The Artistic Touch” airing on the 12th December.

[Read more →]

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terry and june, tx date investigations

Being Charming, Debonair

Published 21st July 2025

Animation / Children's TV

Many years ago now, I had to study Seamus Heaney for A-Level. All a bit pointless, really. Sure, “Death of a Naturalist” is all very well, but did he ever write anything as good as the opening theme to Heathcliff?

“So join in the jubilee / The cats are great they’ll all agree / You’ll find in each calamity / The cat’s superiority”. Wise words, mate.

In fact, the lyrics to the theme have been widely questioned over the years. I always thought one of the lines was “They’ll make some history”, but after some careful listening to a high quality version of theme on Shuki Levi’s website, I believe the lyrics are actually the following:

The gang will reign supreme
And no-one can deny-y-y-y
They’ll make ’em history
And always have an alibi

Which is actually more appropriate – there is a fine line between gang and gangster – but the combination of “make ’em history” and “alibi” does sound rather murderous. Don’t run into Riff-Raff after dark, he’ll tear your face off.

Anyway, I remember very little about Heathcliff aside from the brilliant Levy/Saban theme tune, and I’m not sure I paid much attention to the rest of the show when I saw it at the time. But watching the end credits of the show recently, something new struck me.

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“I Know How Much You Like It at Ross…”

Published 6th July 2025

TV Comedy

Right, after my last piece about mocked-up newspapers in sitcoms, time to get on with some real work. Anyone got any suggestions? How about friend of the site Rob Keeley, have you got anything?

“If you’ve still got an appetite for mocked-up newspapers, John, I saw a subject for you the other day in the Terry and June episode ‘The Raft Race’. The end credits play over a local newspaper from Ross-on-Wye, telling about Terry’s river antics, and there’s a photo, headline and two quite convincing paragraphs, then the article suddenly turns into the original one, about drink-driving! They obviously thought no one would read any further. I did.”

Oh, alright then. Let’s do one more.

The Terry and June episode in question, indeed called “The Raft Race”¹, was first broadcast on the 14th November 1983. Location filming took place on the 13th and 15th of April, and it was recorded in studio on the 14th May, exactly six months before transmission.

The episode sees the pair take a trip away from Surrey, and into the dark, jungle-like depths of, erm, Herefordshire.

TERRY: Oh, by the way June, would you press the trousers of my brown suit for me?
JUNE: Well of course, but can they wait until Friday when I do the ironing?
TERRY: If you want me arrested for walking around Ross-on-Wye in me shirt tails, yes.
JUNE: You’re going to Ross-on-Wye?
TERRY: Yes, Sir Dennis has arranged an important business meeting for me on Friday, and I’m travelling down tomorrow afternoon.

I wonder if anybody has figured out exactly what percentage of Terry and June episodes involve Terry attempting to impress his boss.

Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, Terry ends up embarrassing himself in the eponymous raft race, and gets in the local paper. We don’t have to squint at the screen in order to read it – the programme helpfully makes it full-frame over the end credits:

A close-up of a newspaper. The masthead reads: THE ROSS G... (the rest is not visible)
Headline: BELLS KITCHENS SPLASH OUT

The title of the newspaper isn’t difficult to work out either. This is The Ross Gazette, the real local paper of Ross-on-Wye. And luckily, there is a digital archive of the paper available online. With the date of the paper clearly in view – it was the edition published on the 28th April 1983, a couple of weeks after the location filming – it doesn’t take too long to find the original edition of the paper which the prop was based on:

[Read more →]

Other places give the episode different names; Wikipedia, for instance, calls it “In the Navy”. However, the paperwork for the episode clearly states the episode title as “The Raft Race”, so this was its actual title during production. ↩

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newspaper props, terry and june

Hayers to Sweep Away ‘Dead Wood’ at BBC

Published 26th June 2025

TV Comedy

The opening episode of the first series of I’m Alan Partridge, “A Room with an Alan”, was broadcast on the 3rd November 1997. What is the first thing we see Alan Partridge doing in his room at the Linton Travel Tavern?

Oh, the usual stuff. Some bad programme ideas. The first of many dream sequences. But the very first thing we see is him doing is reading a newspaper article about Tony Hayers… the person who is about to deny him his second series.

Close-up of article. Headline: Hayers to sweep away dead wood at BBC. On the left, there is a corner of a Cult TV front page.

A wider shot of the two pages.

If you squint, the folio at the top of the first image identifies the paper as The Guardian. So let’s ask our usual question: which edition of the real paper did they modify, in order to create their prop with the fake Tony Hayers story?