Funny Radio Times listings for comedy shows. We've talked about them before. The ones for Not the Nine O'Clock News are great, so go and look at them.
I find this one, written in the style of a Doctor Who episode, particularly interesting, however. That listing is for an episode broadcast in May 1980. In October 1978, then-script editor of Doctor Who Douglas Adams commissioned his frequent collaborator John Lloyd (with whom he had co-written part of the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) to write a serial for the show, but in January 1979, Lloyd informed Adams he would be unable to finish his script, as he had been appointed producer of Not the Nine O'Clock News. However, Adams was still keen on Lloyd's storyline - entitled The Doomsday Contract - and tried to get another writer, Allan Prior, to adapt his detailed story outline into scripts. Prior's scripts were rejected and seemingly no longer exist, and when Adams departed Doctor Who in late 1979 Lloyd's story would never see broadcast.
Is this listing in some way referencing the show's producer's unrealised Doctor Who story? Or is it more innocuous?
Also, just as a little end-note to this otherwise extremely brief post, take a look at this one, which does not include the name of the show anywhere - except in brackets, right at the end. Is this how it was originally printed, with the RT refusing to let the capsule's writer go as far as to not actually identify the show at all, or has it been added by a Genome editor? If you look at some of the later funny listings for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, they always include the show's title somewhere, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was the former... (Update! Thanks to Steve Williams for informing me that the original Radio Times listing did indeed have the title in brackets in the original listing; this is itself a joke, as that is how they billed Welsh-language programming.)
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