Dirty Feed

Summer Hiatus

Published 20th June 2024

“Some Cheap American Science Fiction Movie”

Published 20th June 2024

20 years ago this month, I interviewed John Pomphrey, the lighting director for the first six series of Red Dwarf. I was going to tidy that interview up and republish it here for its little anniversary, but for various reasons, I’m struggling to get round to it. Maybe that’s for the best. That interview should probably be left in its own time and place.

Rereading it though, there’s a few things in there which I don’t think have come up anywhere else. Not least, the following anecdote about a cheap film which ripped off Red Dwarf‘s sets:

“Some of it did appear in a movie, because me and Mel sat down and looked at it. We came across a cheap American video, a very cheap science thing, and Mel said ‘It’s the control room!’ Someone in America had copied it, and we spoke to Doug and Rob at the time, but there was nothing we could do about it, but it was absolutely identical. Same lighting; it was evident that somebody had got hold of a copy and thought ‘That’s good’ and built it, and it featured in some cheap American science fiction movie. We said “Who do you sue?” and you’d never track them down, you’d never sue them… so we just sat and looked at it. He said ‘Look at that! It’s the octagonal control room!’, and they were all standing round, and we said ‘Bloomin’ ‘eck!'”

This would have been the control room from Series III through to V:

Red Dwarf control room/drive room, with Cat, Lister and Rimmer

Red Dwarf control room/drive room, with Holly and skutters

It perhaps seems a little odd that John and Mel were so outraged at the rip. Mel Bibby has often gone on record as saying that his work on Red Dwarf was inspired by Alien; frankly, it’s difficult to overstate exactly how inspired it actually is. But I guess there’s “inspired by”, and “absolutely identical”.

Regardless of all that, question is: exactly which cheap science fiction movie ripped off the Red Dwarf control room above? John Pomphrey sadly couldn’t remember. Anyone have any ideas?

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red dwarf, red dwarf sets

The Ballad of SKP003375

Published 15th June 2024

Meta / TV Comedy

Warning: the following is for hardcore TV research nerds only.

The most complicated series of articles I’ve ever written here on Dirty Feed is probably last year’s five-part epic on The Young Ones and flash frames. It’s the kind of project which has you waking up in a cold sweat at night, screaming about /72 edits.

It’s also a project which I think turned out OK. Sure, I may not have got to the root of every single question to do with those damn flash frames, but I got closer than anybody has before, and that’s surely worth something. It certainly manages to be more accurate than most newspaper reports from the time.

Of those remaining questions, though, one of them really bugs me. It’s regarding these two flash frames from “Nasty”, first transmitted on the 29th May 1984:

Despite how much I poked at them, and how much other people poked at them for me, I never managed to figure out the original source for these frames. I mean, I tried. I really, really tried. I even ended up looking through programmes about sodding pottery that the BBC broadcast in the early 80s. No luck. What programme did those two shots originate from?

The only clue we have is the following sentence in the paperwork for “Nasty”:

Flash frame of tap dripping from K065402 transferred to H25992, and Potter’s Wheel from SKP003375 transferred to H25992.

There are three spools, aka tapes, mentioned in that sentence. H25992 is the spool which all the flash frames in the series was compiled onto, before they were scattered across the various episodes. But K065402 and SKP003375, the original source of the frames, seemed impossible to track down. No current BBC database – at least any that I know if – seems to recognise those tape numbers. Which is a bizarre state of affairs in itself. Nor did anybody seem to know what those spool prefixes actually meant.

I came up with all kinds of theories, mind. Did “K” stand for TK, or Telecine? Is SKP “Scotland Telecine”? Was I, in fact, going completely mad?

Such thoughts eventually faded. I finally finished the series of articles, made a half-hearted promise that I’d investigate more next year, and that was that. Meanwhile, this year’s long project is an investigation into all the stock footage used in Smashie and Nicey: the End of an Era. And my latest post is on material of lovely young ladies walking down the street, used as part of the sequence on Radio Fab’s DJ handover.

And one of the sources of those lovely young ladies is listed as the following in the paperwork:

Kings Road Stock.
7 secs
SKP2304
BBC

And suddenly, something clicked into place. This was footage taken from an actual stock library, rather than a finished programme. And it had the number SKP2304. The potter’s wheel footage from “Nasty” had the number SKP003375. The “SK” in “SKP” surely stands for “Stock”, and that potter’s wheel footage surely came from a stock library too. It’s quite possible it had never been broadcast before The Young Ones used it.

Of course, questions remain. I say it’s possible it had “never have been broadcast before”, but the emphasis is on “possible”; just because The Young Ones took it from a stock library, its ultimate origin may still have been from a broadcast programme. My only point is that it’s not guaranteed to have done so. And the “K” prefix for the dripping tap material is still up for debate.

I might figure this out in 30 years, you know.

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smashie and nicey, the young ones

The Dave Nice Video Show, Part Four: “Lovely Bouncy Bristols”

Published 15th June 2024

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five • Part Six • Part Seven

There comes a time in every project like this where you run into a problem. There’s always some damn piece of the puzzle which you can’t quite put together. The bit which makes you question why you even bothered writing this nonsense in the first place, when you could do something relaxing like snowboarding. Or BASE jumping.

With End of an Era, the sticking point isn’t really surprising, if you give it more than a moment’s consideration. It’s the section featuring the handover between Smashie and Nicey, in the early days of Radio Fab:

This sequence contains 22 intermingled stock footage shots, from no less than four different sources. Two of those sources are easily identified. The other two are not. Frankly, the whole thing has been driving me slightly loopy.

No matter. Let’s start with what we know first.

[Read more →]

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smashie and nicey, the dave nice video show

Quick to Angers

Published 13th June 2024

TV Gameshows

Give Us a Clue is such a glorious, fun, friendly show, that part of me doesn’t want to do what I’m about to do. Can we not just enjoy a fun show without dragging it through the mud, or worse yet, perilously close to the dreaded “culture wars”? Why don’t I write an article about how the timing of the cue dots spoils the outcome of some of the rounds instead?

Sadly, in this case, I can’t help being annoying. Out of the first 105 episodes of the show, seven episodes are missing on the 2022 DVD release.¹ Well, we weren’t going to get through 105 episodes of the show without a few disgraced celebrities, were we?

Our three problems are Dave Lee Travis (one episode), Rolf Harris (three episodes), and Freddie Starr (three episodes). The editions missing from the DVD are the following:

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Most sources say eight episodes are missing, but there appears to be a dummy episode in some guides dated 14th May 1981, which was probably a repeat rather than a new episode. With thanks to Billy Smart for clarification on this. ↩

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give us a clue

Nudie Prod Games

Published 10th June 2024

TV Gameshows

What’s the most entertaining way of starting a post about an old gameshow? How about a piece about how my cat died last month? That’s hilarious, maybe I could follow it up with some talk about my miserable teenage years as an encore.

But much as I could write a long eulogy about my poor Tom – and he was a really good cat – that’s not really what this place is for. Instead, here’s a related question: what TV is best to watch in order to cheer yourself up when things like this happen?

My first answer would be a favourite sitcom, but that doesn’t seem to be quite right. When sitting in mourning for a kitty who’s become part of the family, you don’t really want TV screaming at you to laugh; you’d feel like telling it to sod off. Likewise, another initial idea was Kenny Everett’s Thames shows, but much as I love that man to bits, I suspect a concentrated burst of zaniness isn’t quite what I need right now.

So what is the answer? A drama? No, I can’t deal with anything remotely serious. A vaguely light, comedic film? No, I can’t sit still and concentrate for that long. A cookery show? No, I still want to remain awake.¹

In the end, the solution was already sitting on my shelf, awaiting exactly the right moment: Network DVD’s boxset of the first few years of Give Us a Clue. A show seemingly designed to cheer you up, without haranguing you. And with a parade of pleasant faces on offer, it’s a little like a continuous group of friends popping round to raise your spirits.

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You may think I’m being unfair on cookery shows here. They do, of course, have a perfect right to exist. I might even watch and enjoy them occasionally. I just think 53 hours of MasterChef in various forms across the BBC in 2022 is a bit much, when Ofcom claims they only did 108 hours of scripted comedy in the same year. And that doesn’t include MasterChef Australia, or any signed broadcasts. ↩

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give us a clue

Like Two Badly-Parked Morris Minors

Published 6th June 2024

TV Comedy

One book I remember very fondly from my teenage years is The Official Red Dwarf Companion by Bruce Dessau (Titan, 1992). Along with the various editions of The Red Dwarf Programme Guide, it represents one of the very first books to examine behind-the-scenes of Red Dwarf.

For instance, the Series V DVD release in 2004 gave us a look at shots of the despair squid from Back to Reality, cut from the broadcast episode:¹

But 12 years earlier, The Official Red Dwarf Companion showed us a picture of the original, unused model:

A photograph of the despair squid, unused in the final programme

The exact timeframe of these things is often lost, so it’s worth remembering: this was published the very same year that Back to Reality was broadcast. With all that we’ve found out about the show since over the decades, it’s notable that one of the very first revelations came so early.

Other parts of the book fare a little less well. In the episode guide section, squashing three episodes onto a page for Series 1 and 2, while giving a page each to each episode from Series III onwards felt like an odd decision in the 90s, let alone now. (The tiny write-up given to “Queeg” is especially a shame.) Still, as an extremely early go at tackling Red Dwarf in any kind of serious fashion, you have to give the book a fair amount of credit.

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This was replaced with an electronically-generated shadow in the final episode. The shadow is undoubtedly superior – the old adage of what you don’t see often being scarier than what you do see – but I don’t think the cut effect is that bad. ↩

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filthy rich & catflap, red dwarf

Location, Location, Location

Published 4th June 2024

TV Comedy

Shooting audience sitcom has all kinds of unique production problems compared to other types of television.

After all, any TV show has to decide whether to shoot a given scene on location, or in the studio. Each choice has advantages and drawbacks: you don’t have the expense of building a set on location, but you also have less control than in a studio. With audience sitcom, though, you start running into further problems. Is there room in the studio for that extra set in front of the audience? And yet if it’s a dialogue-heavy scene, surely you want to do it in front of the audience, so the actors can play off their reaction?

Squaring this particular circle can lead to some interesting results. Let’s take a look at three of them.

[Read more →]

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alan partridge, alf garnett, best of, keeping up appearances

The Making of Parallel 9

Published 25th May 2024

Children's TV

Due to complicated work stuff, it may be a bit of time before the next significant article here on Dirty Feed. So now seems a excellent chance to point you towards Jonathan Bufton‘s series of articles on 90s Saturday morning kids show Parallel 9. These started way back in 2022, and the final piece went up in April, which seems an good excuse to read them all over again.

Part 1 – Series 1 on-screen
Part 2 – Series 1 on-screen, continued
Part 3 – The Making of Series 1
Part 3a – An interview with a guest on Series 1
Part 4 – The Making of Series 2
Part 5 – The Making of Series 3

I’ve linked to some of these pieces before, both on the main site and my newsletter, but the reason they deserve so much love is because really are gold-standard stuff on how to write about the TV programmes of your youth: interviews, paperwork, and examining the actual material properly. So many people are content with a sneer, or half-remembered nonsense, and in unfortunate cases both. Jonathan does things properly.¹

I found Part 5 particularly interesting; it’s about Series 3 of the show, long after I’d drifted away from the series. (I remember precisely nothing about The Little Green Man, by all accounts one of the most popular features the show ever had.) But if you’ve not read any of the above before, set aside a couple of hours, and throw yourself into some of the best pop culture writing you’ll ever find.

And as I always say – if you want writing like that online about your favourite forgotten show, and it’s conspicuous by its absence… there’s only one way to solve that one. Get scribbling. The thing I’ve learnt most from writing Dirty Feed is that it’s easier than many think to find a unique take on something. It hasn’t all already been written.

In fact, sometimes virtually nothing has been written.

Disclaimer: I did give Jonathan some minor help on these pieces, but that’s not why they’re amazing. ↩

Where’s Wally Who?

Published 14th May 2024

Radio Comedy

One problem with writing Dirty Feed is that there are so many strands of research here, that I end up losing track of some of them. Such was the case with early 80s Radio 2 sitcom Wally Who?, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. In 2020-21, I wrote a few pieces on the show… and then it entirely fell off my radar.

A reminder, then. When we last talked about the series, I couldn’t even figure out exactly how many episodes of the show there were. It’s worth reading that whole article for all the details, but I’ll give you the short version. Here are the episodes that we knew were broadcast, and that we had copies of:

Episode	First TX	Repeat TX
Just the Way You Are	7th Nov 1982	12th Nov 1982
The Whiz Kid	14th Nov 1982	19th Nov 1982
I Want to Be In Movies	21st Nov 1982	26th Nov 1982
The Painting	28th Nov 1982	3rd Dec 1982
The Caravan	5th Dec 1982	10th Dec 1982
All I Want for Christmas	12th Dec 1982	17th Dec 1982

And here are the rest of the episodes as listed in the Radio Times, that we didn’t have copies of:

Episode	First TX	Repeat TX
Episode 7?	19th Dec 1982	(unrepeated)
Episode 8?	2nd Jan 1983	7th Jan 1983
Episode 9?	9th Jan 1983	14th Jan 1983
Episode 10?	16th Jan 1983	21st Jan 1983

Not only did we not have copies of them, but none of them were given titles or an episode-specific synopsis in the Radio Times either, making them feel uncannily like “ghost” episodes. Did these remaining four shows really exist, or not?

What I needed is someone to show up in my email, and give me the magic answer I’ve been looking for, without any real effort on my part. So step forward Alan Power, who did precisely that, and to Holocron who rediscovered it in the first place. Anyone fancy an episode of Wally Who? that precious few people have heard since 1983?