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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.

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  1. Fifth on DVD order. ↩

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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:

The Ross Gazette Main headline: Mayor Writes to Mrs. Thatcher on Town's Plight - Call for special development status

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  1. 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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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?

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“Mr Bedford! Mr Bedford!”

Published 5th May 2025

TV Comedy

What’s the best episode of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em? Probably not the one where Frank is busted for distributing hardcore porn, which is always a good one to throw at people to see if they really remember the show properly.

For my money, the show probably never bettered “Have a Break, Take a Husband” from Series 1, first broadcast on the 8th March 1973. There’s so much to love about the episode, featuring Frank and Betty’s disastrous second honeymoon. Not least a boiling undercurrent of sexual frustration throughout, beautifully played by Michele Dotrice:

FRANK: Now don’t do anything while I’m gone.
BETTY: Well I can hardly start without you, can I?

I highly suspect, Baby Jessica or not, Betty eventually figured out that she could actually start without Frank. She probably also figured out that she could finish without Frank as well.

But today’s topic isn’t Betty’s sexual organs. Instead, I want to focus on Kenny, “a nervous and outrageously camp dabbler in spiritualism”1, a brilliant performance by Cyril Shaps.2 And what prop would you give such a character?

A copy of Psychic News. Main headline: Medium turns table on sceptical TV team

We reveal that the copy of Psychic News is being held by Kenny. He's looking upwards at Frank and Betty's room in a faintly alarmed manner.

A copy of Psychic News, of course. Which was a real newspaper. And God help me, if you know this site, you know what nonsense I’m about to come out with. Exactly which edition of Psychic News is Kenny holding?

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  1. © Steve Phillips. ↩

  2. Who also appears in the pilot of The Young Ones… playing the medium next door. So if you want to say that The Young Ones and Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em take place in the same universe, there’s your excuse. ↩

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Centrepiece of Municipal Display Stolen

Published 23rd April 2025

TV Comedy

Having just done a full rewatch of Men Behaving Badly, I thought it was about time to do a multi-part article on the series, really nailing exactly what it is that makes the show tick, what Simon Nye was trying to say about how people worked, and why we seem to find it impossible to make audience sitcom like it today.

Nah, just kidding, I want to poke at a newspaper prop again.

So let’s take a look at “Gary in Love”, the penultimate episode of Men Behaving Badly, broadcast on the 26th December 1998.1 As a reminder, the gang have gone to Worthing, and Gary and Tony steal a massive ornamental fish and stash it in their hotel room, for reasons. Unfortunately, this drunken bender does not go unnoticed, not least by the local paper.

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  1. Incidentally, please appreciate the effort I have gone to in order to provide proper widescreen screengrabs from this episode. Despite the final three episodes being made and broadcast on digital in widescreen, the DVD is a 4:3 centre cutout… and has never been reissued in widescreen format. Later streaming releases, like YouTube, are widescreen… but are half the frame rate they should be, as per all interlaced material released on every streaming site aside from iPlayer. Meaning you cannot actually buy a proper version of the final three episodes of Men Behaving Badly, which is utterly ludicrous.

    We’ll have to hope for an iPlayer boxset at some point. ↩

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Everyone We Know Loves The Dandy

Published 22nd January 2025

TV Comedy

Recently, I’ve been burying myself in Radio Times letters pages of the 1970s. It can be a grim place to be, with its long, outraged analysis of various current affairs programmes. It’s almost as bad as Bluesky.

So thank heavens for the following shaft of light, published in Issue 2575, cover date 17th-23rd March 1973:

What comic does Eric read?
In the Morecambe and Wise Show (BBC1) of 23 February, Eric was reading a comic which stated that it was the Dandy, but the phrasing on the cover was: The Comic with Minnie the Minx.’ Minnie is one of the most popular characters in the Beano.

Other Beano characters are Biffo the Bear, Grandpa, Lord Snooty, and Dennis the Menace (not forgetting his dog Gnasher).

Also, in a comic which was so clearly the Beano, what on earth was Desperate Dan of the Dandy doing?

The ultimate in stupidity was reached when Eric mentioned Pansy Potter, who is a regular feature of the Sparky!

Brian Spursell (aged 10)
Manchester

Sure enough, if we check Series 7 Episode 8 of The Morecambe and Wise Show, broadcast on the 23rd February 1973:

Eric and Ernie in bed, Eric reading the Dandy, and Ernie reading the Financial Times

The same, from a different angle

That most definitely is an issue of The Beano with a horrible fake Dandy masthead clumsily pasted over the top. This one, in fact: Issue 1578, dated 14th October 1972.

Full cover of The Beano, Issue 1578

Moreover, it really is supposed to be The Dandy – as Brian Spursell (aged 10) says, Eric specifically mentions Desperate Dan, a Dandy character:

ERNIE: It’s got my beat, I just can’t make it out. I just can’t understand it at all. The market’s down four points.
ERIC: It’s got me beat as well. Desperate Dan’s just eaten four cow pies and he’s still hungry.

Although Eric does then start talking about Lord Snooty later in the sketch, a Beano character. I want my licence fee refunded.

As for why they badly mocked-up a Dandy, rather than simply using a real issue: who knows. I very much doubt it’s product placement worries; we can clearly see Ernie reading the Financial Times, and a Beano is featured in the following sketch anyway. It smacks of an emergency fix by the prop department, but you’d think it’d still be easier just to pop down the shops than to start mocking up mastheads.

Never mind. Maybe we should just ask Eric Morecambe, as the Radio Times did back in 1973:

ERIC MORECAMBE replies:
I have received several letters making the same complaint, and I am delighted, because I was just testing you.

And there’s an Eric Morecambe joke few people have read for over 50 years. You’re welcome.

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Great Brain Robbery

Published 16th September 2024

Film

FREDERICK: The study of birds and their habits is quite fascinating, Mrs. Gamely. I was only reading about it in stir… Sir Benjamin Stir, I mean… he’s the leading author on the subject, you know.
MILDRED: Oh yes?
FREDERICK: For instance, did you know there are some species of birds which are now practically extinct?
MILDRED: Really?
FREDERICK: Now, you take the little bustard. Now it seems that 50 years ago, the south part of England was overrun with little bustards.

The standard line about The Big Job (1965) is that it’s an ersatz Carry On. It’s generally a fair enough comment, great fun though the film is in is own right. A caper movie directed by Gerald Thomas, produced by Peter Rogers, co-written by Talbot Rothwell, and starring Sid James, Joan Sims, and Jim Dale, how could it really be anything else than Carry On Nicking?

Yet I’d argue there are a few differences. While it’s certainly a genre film, it’s certainly less of a genre parody than most Carry On films were around this point; we’re not really in Spying, Cleo, Cowboy or Screaming territory here. Secondly, it does rather feel like we’re missing one more key Carry On face; you could well imagine Hattie Jacques in the place of Sylvia Syms, or Charles Hawtrey instead of Lance Percival.1 Or, indeed, Kenneth Williams in place of Deryck Guyler, as the police sergeant more interested in choir practice than policing.

Another thing which sets the film aside from most of the Carry Ons is the opening. The first fifteen minutes are set in 1950, and the gang’s bungled robbery. Unusually, we then skip ahead a full fifteen years to 1965, and their release from prison. As part of this opening sequence, we get a Daily Express front page, featuring news of the gang’s exploits:

Daily Express as seen in The Big Job. Headline: GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY

It’s difficult to tell the exact date from the DVD, but the paper is clearly supposed to be from March 1950; entirely correct in terms of the plot. So do you think the production went out and grabbed a period-correct copy of the Daily Express?

The real version of the Daily Express, with the headline now reading TORY REBELS' ROW. The date is Tuesday March 2nd 1965.

Nah, they just grabbed one from when the film was in production, of course. Lazy bastards.

Yes, this was all just an excuse to do one of those articles again. Sorry.

  1. Yes, I know Percival is in Carry on Cruising, but that was his only Carry On – you don’t really associate him much with the series. ↩

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Not In My Paper

Published 4th September 2024

Film

MAYOR BUMBLE: I do feel that Councillor Fiddler has a point there, considering our very high seasonal rainfall figure.
PRODWORTHY: Oooh really, Mr Mayor? Personally, I think it is quite an average one.
FIDDLER: If you think nine inches is an average one, you’ve been spoilt.

I’ve always had rather an, erm, soft spot for Carry On Girls. When I was younger, it was because I fancied Margaret Nolan. Now I’m older, it’s because I really fancy Margaret Nolan.

Nonetheless, one thing which struck me on my recent watch is how successfully the film manages to have its cake and eat it. Sure, Sidney Fiddler and Hope Springs make a successful getaway, and their grinning faces are the final thing we see in the film, but don’t forget that Operation Spoilsport was also a success; the feminists get their own victory too. Even Connie Philpotts manages to get her money. Everybody wins, in some form or another, and that’s one of the things which gives the film its charm.1

But as ever, we’re not here to discuss the film properly in any sensible way. What interests me today is the following sequence of newspaper headlines, after the filming of the news report descends into chaos:

You know where this is going. Which real newspapers did the production use in order to make the three props for the above scene?

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  1. Thought experiment: imagine a version of the film where Sid foils the feminists, in the same way that he does with the hippies at the end of Carry on Camping. It would add a deeply unpleasant note to the film, and render it almost unwatchable. ↩

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That Squalid Little Rag

Published 15th October 2023

TV Comedy

On the 9th March 1981, BBC2 first broadcast the Yes Minister episode “The Death List”. It’s a particularly good episode for many reasons, not least Graeme Garden marching into the programme for one show-stealing scene, and turning it into The Goodies.

But that’s comedy, and we don’t deal with comedy around here. We deal with far more important things. Such as: which issue of Private Eye is Jim Hacker reading from here?

Is it a real issue of the magazine? Or is it a prop, made from scratch?

Let’s see what we can dig up. Our first point of call is, of course, Private Eye‘s covers library, which usefully gives us an image of every single cover since the magazine’s first issue. And to help narrow down the search, we also know that “The Death List” was recorded in studio on the 1st February 1981. Did they just grab the latest issue of the Eye and bung it in Paul Eddington’s hands?

Not quite. The above cover doesn’t appear in Private Eye‘s cover archive. But Issue 497, dated the 2nd January 1981 – just a month before the studio date – looks rather suspicious:

Private Eye cover with purple background

Private Eye issue held in episode, with purple cover

That purple background is very distinctive. Which gave me ideas. But there was only one way to know whether I was right. Luckily, the back page of the magazine is very prominent in the episode as well, with the obvious wording of CAMP AFRICA in the top left.

A quick eBay later, and I held a copy of Issue 497 in my sweaty, desperate hands. Was my gut feeling correct?

Actual issue of Private Eye, showing purple cover and CAMP AFRICA advert

Yes indeed. The prop department simply got a recent issue of Private Eye, stuck a new picture on the front over the old one, and job done. Lovely.1

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  1. The question is: why exactly did Yes Minister bother to change the picture? Is it because the original cover has TV-am stars on? Could they not get the rights? Or did the Beeb literally not want to advertise ITV?

    It’ll be something like that, anyway. But I would suggest there’s another reason why it makes sense to have a mocked-up Private Eye cover. The world of Yes Minister isn’t quite our world. Sure, there are newspapers dotted around the series which have real-life headlines, but they aren’t usually plot-relevant props. As soon as something gets drawn into the story, it makes sense for the issue of Private Eye to not be a “real” one. Things are supposed to be slightly askew. ↩

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Police I.Q. Shocker

Published 8th April 2022

TV Comedy

In a surprising move, today we’re going to take another look at The Young Ones. But this little tale is a good example of how researching old TV shows can lead you down an alley you never really expected.

Let’s join Mark Arden and Stephen Frost as a couple of gormless policemen in “Boring” (TX: 23/11/82).

As the picture dissolves into the newspaper headline, anyone who has been following my recent nonsense knows what’s coming next. What newspaper did they use as a basis for the prop, and what original story did the “Police I.Q. Shocker” headline replace?

The Guardian newspaper - lead headline Police I.Q. Shocker

Unlike our previous examples, this one is pretty straightforward. There’s no replaced or altered mastheads here. Not only is the paper an actual copy of The Guardian, but the correct date of the edition is visible, clear as a bell: August 3rd 1982.

Which means finding the original front page of the paper is easy:

Full front page of The Guardian Tuesday August 3rd 1982

The only story the production team changed was the middle one; everything else on the page is identical. The replaced story concerned Philip Williams, a soldier who turned up alive after six weeks, having been presumed dead fighting in the Falklands. In fact, now we know this, the line “was missing, presumed dead” is clearly visible in the broadcast episode, underneath the new headline.

Now that’s comedy.

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