Dirty Feed

Dave: The Home of Shitty Edits

Published 2nd October 2012

Over the last few years, the following pattern has occurred in our household. a) Stick Dave or Gold on the telly. b) Spot some stupid edit in a beloved sitcom. c) SHOUT ABOUT IT ON TWITTER OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

For the last four weeks, to prepare for the upcoming broadcast of Red Dwarf X (Thursday 4th, 9pm folks!), Dave have been showing each series of Red Dwarf – backwards. (Don’t ask.) So, I thought, why not use my capacity for moaning and extreme anality and document all of the edits? Here you go, then:

The conclusion to the last article is especially worth reading for how I think Dave could have dealt with things better. The easiest solution all round, however, would be: don’t schedule post-watershed sitcoms pre-watershed. But let’s face it – if Dave can’t treat what is now its biggest property with respect, they’re not likely to do it with anything else.

Whenever you watch a sitcom on Dave or Gold, more likely than not you’re watching some version that’s been hacked about with. That’s no way to treat our comedy heritage.

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edits, red dwarf, uktv

Lost.

Published 28th September 2012

Internet / Life

I am not an internet celebrity.

Still, type my name into Google, and – if you can get past cameramen and trumpet players – you can find a fair few traces of me online. There’s this site, where I bang on about nonsense. There’s Noise To Signal, where I used to bang on about nonsense. There’s Ganymede & Titan, where I bang on about Red Dwarf-related nonsense. And so on.

Now, I used to go to school with someone who was pretty similar to me. Not identical – he stuck his finger in places where I could only hope to stick it at that point – but we liked a lot of the same things. He was cooler, though. He had his own shed. He was a far better programmer than me (as in, he wrote things that could do more than play a CD roughly half the time you pressed the play button). Sure, I once beat him at a calculus question, but that was about it.

I lost touch with him years ago, but I sometimes wonder what happened to him. So occasionally, I type his name into Google. And what do I find? Precisely nothing.

This is something I come across time and time again. All the people I used to know – the nerds, who you’d think would have a fairly widespread net presence – I can find nothing. There are people I would expect to have reams and reams of blog posts attached to their name, or writing for some website or another, or even just have a page which listed a few electronics projects they were working on… but I can find absolutely sod all. And from conversations I’ve had with other people online, it seems I’m far from alone on this – a lot of old friends they would have expected to have a presence online have just disappeared into the ether.

What happened to them?

# Good Morning to you Britain… #

Published 26th September 2012

Jingles

I’ve been meaning to post these for a while, and Grimmy’s first week doing the Radio 1 breakfast show has given me the perfect excuse – as a little glimpse of what Radio 1 has lost. Here’s a few jingle-related things from The Chris Moyles Show, which I first put together in 2010. These are some of my favourite UK-made jingles ever, and my favourite imaging from a UK radio station in the past 10 years.

“Chris, Dave, Dom, Tina, Aled, Matt Fincham, and this week’s allocated Unit Assistant…” An entire three-and-a-half-hour show, boiled down to just the jingles and other imaging – opening with the fantastic cheesy song, and ending with the closing “National Radio One!” Highlights here have to be the beautiful strings-only version of one of the beds, and the jingle for Aled’s Summer Surgery: “Chlamydia and itchy bits, they are not much fun: so why not tell the whole wide world, here on Radio 1?”

[mejsaudio src=”https://dirtyfeed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/moyles-220710.mp3″]

The Chris Moyles Show (22/07/10) – Imaging (45MB MP3, 23:26)

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chris moyles

Welcome Home to ITV?

Published 22nd September 2012

TV Presentation

My first reaction when I heard ITV1 was going to change back to ITV in early 2013 was the same as most presentation fans of a certain era – a collective yawn. Ya boo sucks, who cares what boring old ITV is doing these days?

That is, until a couple of things caught my eye. Firstly, this little tidbit from the Broadcast article linked to above:

“The changes are being led by ITV’s group marketing and research director Rufus Radcliffe, who joined the broadcaster from Channel 4 in April last year. Radcliffe’s in-house strategy at C4 saw him relaunch E4 and More 4, as well as introducing C4’s floating logo idents.”

C4’s floating logo idents? AKA, the best current terrestial idents by a mile? INTERESTING. (Mind you, Channel 4 may be unique in never having a bad identity. Yes, even the circles era. Shut up.)

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design, presentation

Dirty Feed Podcast #3: Junior Jackpot

Published 9th September 2012

Podcast / Radio

Dennis McCarthy

Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, for the months long absence of this podcast. Join me now, as we travel back through the mists of time to BBC Radio Nottingham in the early 90s, and meet fantastic local broadcaster Dennis McCarthy. Oh yes, and me when I was 9.

[mejsaudio src=”https://www.dirtyfeed.org/downloads/podcast/dirtyfeed-3r.mp3″]

Download Podcast #3: Junior Jackpot (27MB MP3, 13:53)
(Subscribe using RSS / iTunes)

What a swotty little prick.

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podcast

A Few Notes on the Recording of the First Episode of the New Series of Yes, Prime Minister

Published 23rd August 2012

TV Comedy

There is a pattern happening over at UKTV. Last year, they commissioned a new series of Red Dwarf – a show that the BBC had decided they didn’t want any more. This year, they commissioned a new series of Yes, Prime Minister for Gold, still written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn – and does anyone remember the stories about the BBC rejecting a proposed series Yes Commissioner a few years ago, based around the EU?

This week, I attended the first of six recordings for the new series. (They’re happening through September, so there’s plenty of chance to grab a ticket.) Interested in a little run-down, in lazy bullet-point form?

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recording report, uktv, yes minister

Cock Piss Partridge, etc

Published 24th July 2012

TV Comedy

In a world of DVDs and downloads, one advantage television still has is when it comes to rights issues. Negotiating rights to music for commercial release can be especially tricky – series like Life on Mars and Skins are especially hurt by it. Even a show like I’m Alan Partridge isn’t quite the same on the DVD release as it was on broadcast. So, when Dave decided to do an I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 marathon last Sunday night, it was an ideal way of seeing the programmes as they were originally transmitted, yes?

Anyone reading this blog who has spent more than five minutes watching any of Gold or Dave will know the answer to that question. In fact, the episodes were edited for content for transmission pre-watershed – and then also shown in this state post-watershed. (The first two episodes were shown before the watershed, as the marathon started at 8pm – but they were repeated later in the evening with exactly the same cuts.) Here then, is a list of all the edits made to these episodes – indicated [like this] – and tune in for the commentary at the end.

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alan partridge, edits, uktv

A Fascinating Post About I’m Alan Partridge Title Sequences

Published 23rd July 2012

TV Comedy

Yesterday Dave decided to have an I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 marathon. Only I can spin two blog posts out of this fact. It’s the boring one today, and then the really boring one tomorrow.

So, here’s the title sequence – taken from the Series 2 DVD – from the episode I Know What Alan Did Last Summer:

…and here’s the version taken from the Dave broadcast on the 22nd July at 10:40pm:

The same clips, but without all the graphics added. Not even the title of the show! OK, so it’s not up to the standards of this, but still. (It does at least afford us a proper look at the set used for Alan’s pieces to camera which close each sequence.)

Checking the rest of the episode, barring deliberate edits for language (see tomorrow for more on that), the rest of the episode was identical to the DVD version. I’d be fascinated to know how the wrong version of the episode was even delivered to UKTV. Not that it should ever have got to air anyway…

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alan partridge, edits, uktv

Regarding Brand New’s “Why I hate Helvetica”

Published 12th July 2012

Internet

I love Brand New. Describing its purpose as to “chronicle and provide opinions on corporate and brand identity work”, a huge part of the site simply presents logos before a redesign and after, and invites comparisons. You could get lost in those archives for hours.

However, I have to – admittedly belatedly – take issue with the following post – New University of the Arts London Logo, or Why I Hate Helvetica. Click the link, read the article, especially the rant at the bottom – I’ll wait.

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design

Dinner is Served

Published 5th June 2012

TV Comedy

Filthy Rich & Catflap, end of Episode 3. Richie’s party has been a disaster. And, because it’s Filthy Rich & Catflap, the oven explodes, taking out a large section of the wall…

…and three figures, never seen before, peer through the hole.

Screengrab from end of Episode 3 of Filthy Rich and Catflap