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:
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.
Fifth on DVD order. ↩
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?
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:
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.
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.
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:
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:
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. ↩
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.
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?
There is something a little mysterious about the Absolutely Fabulous episode “Magazine”, you know. But to understand exactly what, we have to get deep, deep into recording dates. I am giving you ample warning to either strap yourself in, or leave quietly.
Still here? Excellent. So, most of the episode was shot in the normal fashion. There was location shooting done on the 6th February 1992, a studio pre-record day on the 17th March, and then an audience record on the 18th March. So far, so normal.
But one part of the episode needed to be recorded in studio a couple of weeks earlier than the rest of the programme. The paperwork states:
Pre-recorded Sc 4 on Wednesday 4th March 1992 due to Jane Horrocks being unavailable for Studio 5 dates.
The 4th March 1992 was the main studio record day for “Iso Tank”. The paperwork also lists four supporting artists for the office staff, and specifically states:
Used on Wed 4th March 1992 (For Prog 3 & Prog 5)
Don’t worry too much about those episode numbers; a combination of the paperwork treating the pilot as a separate production, and rearranging the final two episodes in the transmission order, means that they don’t match with how we think of that first series. The important thing is that the paperwork is claiming here that there were scenes shot in Edina’s office on the 4th March, and they appeared in both “Iso Tank” and “Magazine”.
As we’re in an Absolutely Fabulous mood at the moment, let’s watch the end credits of Episode 1.4, “Iso Tank”, broadcast on the 3rd December 1992. I promise you there’s a good reason.
The conversation starts off with the reuse of the “Yamishi’s new shop” material from the pilot, as detailed in my previous article. But the really interesting bit is right at the end:
PATSY: You want to hear a new joke, darling? You want to hear a new joke? It’s not in very good taste. The thing is this: you know Elizabeth Taylor? I hear that she is the new ride at Disney World.
So at the risk of frog-dissection, what does the above joke mean?
One element is obvious: a joke about Elizabeth Taylor’s endless marriages and affairs. (The kind of joke I feel a lot more comfortable with when it’s said by a woman.) But there is another thing in the mix here. Because a certain event took place on the 27th February 1992, which was reported in the LA Times the following day:
Elizabeth Taylor’s 60th birthday party took place at Disneyland. An event which captured people’s imagination so much, it was still talked about 25 years later. And all of a sudden, Patsy’s joke gains more resonance – the choice of Disney as opposed to anywhere else no longer feels quite as arbitrary.
Now, Patsy actually gets the location wrong, of course – she says Disney World, not Disneyland. It doesn’t matter; that’s exactly the kind of thing people get wrong in jokes anyway. And reading the above newspaper report, all of a sudden, the joke feels a little less cruel. If someone moves in circles where they can get Disneyland hired out for their 60th birthday party, Patsy’s remark feels like the definition of kicking upwards.
But there’s something even more amusing about all this, if we put the joke into its real-life context. When it finally aired in December 1992, nine months had passed since Elizabeth Taylor’s 60th birthday. But when was “Iso Tank” actually recorded?
Answer: the 4th March 1992. Exactly a week on from the party itself. It’s a genuinely topical gag… well, for the studio audience, anyway.
When Patsy said it was a “new joke”, she really meant it.
Part One • Part Two
Last time, we took a look at an early edit of the pilot for Absolutely Fabulous. Today, we’re going back even earlier: to the original script for the episode, containing scenes – and even characters – which never even made it into that initial version of the show.
This is much easier to do than you might think. I didn’t need to go searching in DISREPUTABLE PLACES which I shouldn’t be hanging around in. The original script for the pilot – alongside the scripts for the other five episodes of that first series – were published by BBC Books in 1993, just a year after the series aired. And thankfully, these really were the actual scripts used in production, rather than boring transcripts.
Let’s go.