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:
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newspaper props, terry and june
