Say My Name

When I started this blog in December 2016, there wasn't really a huge amount of planning involved. I needed to write something about (of course) an adventure gamebook from the 1980s in reply to someone, Blogger was there, for the first few days of its life it had some placeholder name I can no longer remember. Then about a week or so later I wrote another 'proper' post and it took on its current name, chosen because it seemed amusingly self-deprecatory,¹ and without any expectation that it would ever find any kind of widespread audience.

I've mentioned this before, but -- even without the fact that I was proven wrong and, after a bit of time working out exactly what I wanted it to be, the blog has evolved into something with a bit of a following -- I've never been hugely thrilled with the name I ended up with. I've considered having some artwork depicting a reading niche commissioned before. I think maybe it's too late to change it altogether now.

Except writing about comics has made me reconsider how appropriate the name is at all. When I am writing about Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan, The Numskulls, Bananaman or Ivor Lott and Tony Broke, am I not writing about the history of characters who have made a significant cultural impact? Surely that's something with definite mainstream appeal? Is the name of the blog actively handicapping it? Am I not even doing a disservice to the people involved in the making of the thing I'm writing about?

Best of 2025

A lot of this year was taken up with writing about old British humour comics.

Which isn't at all a bad thing. I feel like I've discovered the thing I'm better at writing about than anything else, and it's providing potted histories of British comics and their characters. It's a fun subject to write and research, often throwing up really interesting things nobody has ever noticed before. The resulting posts are often very popular. It puts the massive pile of comics in the spare room to good use. I get to scan in some classic examples of my very favourite strips -- some of which have fallen into obscurity or are unsung heroes of their genre -- and share them with you. Maybe it's just me, but midway through an article you are liable to find something that contradicts a large chunk of your previous research, which is at least a way of honing your writing skills.

It isn't all I wrote about, of course. But it is quite a significant part of the highlights of the last year. Speaking of which...

A Major Milestone in Ludicrously Niche's History

I discovered this evening that this blog is now cited on the Wikipedia page for adventure gamebooks, and I would like it on record that it wasn't even added by me

Blog Questions Challenge

There's a set of questions about blogging going around which originated here and turned into a chain letter type thing, and the existence of which I was made aware by John J. Hoare the other day.

What the hell.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

It's something I'd meant to do for years, but the actual impetus was seeing Andrew Ellard asking on Twitter about an adventure gamebook he'd owned as a child, and if anyone remembered who the author was.

The book in question was one of the Horror Classic Gamebooks, The Curse of Frankenstein, and I was also able to let him know there was a second book in the series, Dracula's Castle, which I'd had as a child and still owned. This ended up with me tracking down a copy of the Frankenstein book, to which Andrew replied when I let him know this "Excellent! Please report your progress?" And so, needing a place to stick my review of them, this blog was born.

(At the time it wasn't called Ludicrously Niche, but had some placeholder name. I'm still not entirely thrilled with the name I settled on after a few more posts, but at some point the blog attracted a genuine following and I think I'm stuck with it now even if I could think of a better one. I have a vague idea I might commission an artist to design a logo depicting a literal reading niche at some point. But I haven't yet.)

Best of 2024

Well, here we are at the end of an incredibly productive year where, barring two short holiday-related rests, I kept this very stupid blog more or less continuously updated throughout, produced some personal favourite pieces, even made a few steps towards professionalism with some tweaks such as sorting out the post tags and adding a proper(ish) "About" page, and now have a bumper selection of links to all the at-least-readable things I wrote across 2024 to share with you.

Much of the year's writing came from the perennial subject of "adventure gamebooks from the 1980s", particularly Fighting Fantasy. Right at the start of the year came a little trilogy of articles looking at the 'demo' versions of some of the books that were first published in Warlock magazine and how they compare to the full-length versions of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, House of Hell and Caverns of the Snow Witch -- a set of pieces which remain quite probably my favourite things I've ever written.

They also inspired some shorter pieces that took a particular interest in anti-cheating traps built into the books, spotlighting Starship Traveller, The Citadel of Chaos, Curse of the Mummy, Kharé -- Cityport of Traps, Masks of Mayhem and The Crimson Tide, as well as an article extensively covering how various different entries in the series included a "time" mechanic, and a comparison of Ian Livingstone's riffing on Mad Max with that of Joe Dever. For more miscellaneous gamebook writing, I also looked at the second of two somewhat lacking adaptations of The Famous Five to the format, a Choose Your Own Adventure book with a surprisingly metaphysical ending and, perhaps a little more tenuously, The Crystal Maze tie-in books.

Nichekeeping

Just a quick housekeeping post to note I have (hopefully) significantly improved the labelling system. A few posts from the ill-defined "miscellaneous" category have been moved into their own thing, including the new "miscellaneous children's tv" label, but the big update is in posts about adventure gamebooks.

Previously there was one tag for the "Broken Gamebooks" series and another for everything else; if this was useful in 2017 when the blog was so much smaller, it certainly isn't now, so the latter has been split up and we now have a dedicated Fighting Fantasy category, a dedicated J.H. Brennan category, and several others you may discover if you go through the blog's archives. Hopefully this makes it much easier to find everything, but please let me know if you have any feedback.

Coda

This post marks the end of a quite remarkable period of almost seven months where I managed to keep this very stupid blog updated on a weekly basis; I figured I'd leave more in-depth analysis for the end-of-year roundup, but just wanted to note that golden age is now over, especially since this post coinciding with two weeks' holiday and the release of Kingdom Rush 5 means it may be a little while before you hear from me again.

But I think I kept a very high standard, and whether you are just discovering the site for the first time or think you might have missed something, please do go back and see what I've written so far this year. (Whilst I promised just one paragraph ago to go into more detail at the end of the year, I will point you in the direction of the trilogy of articles from the start of the year on the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, House of Hell and Caverns of the Snow Witch and their alternative versions published in Warlock magazine, which are quite possibly my favourite things I've ever written.)

I'm sure you'll find something that's worth your time.

Best of 2023

I got quite a lot of writing done this year -- by far the most since I moved the blog to an "ideally once a month" update schedule -- and some of it I'm really quite proud of.

Whilst 2021 and 2022's round-ups were mostly taken up with my quest regarding the 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series, that sort of hit a wall this year, because when I finally accomplished the goal of actually seeing it last year I was faced with an issue pertaining to the fact that episode 3 fell off-air halfway through its one and only UK broadcast: I still don't know who all of the actors in that episode are, and any further writing I want to do on the subject can't really proceed until I do. My offering from the 2022 round-up is still open: The full series is now on YouTube, and any thoughts you might have on the subject would be gratefully received. Someone must recognise those last few unidentified players...

Fantastic Advertising Opportunity

Having been alerted to the fact that "Cwickham" sounds like the name of a brand of microwave ham dinners, I would like to inform any executives from Findus that I will consider any and all offers regarding this blog's URL

Best of 2022

It was exactly one year ago today that my round-up of everything vaguely readable posted to this blog in 2021 was posted, meaning that that post technically qualifies for inclusion in this, my round-up of everything vaguely readable posted to this blog in 2022. That's some Inception-level stuff there.

But also, that post effectively served as a round-up to a story that had taken over the blog in 2021, having spent the previous three years as an occasional running thread: my quest to track down The Diamond Brothers: South by South East, a television series that, despite being written and directed by a hugely successful and prolific novelist and featuring an all-star cast, had fallen into such obscurity as a result of airing exactly once and never being repeated or released on home media that not so much as a single still image from it was available online at the time. And obviously the big story of the blog this year is that, in March, thanks to the hard work of Neil James and Simon Drake, I was finally able to see it for myself, and discovered a new mystery: what the cast list for episode 3 should have been, given that it was affected by a transmission error that, in short, meant it was broadcast without any end credits.

I had a follow-up on that enigma in April, where I'd been able to fill in most of the cast list but still had a few gaps left. And before I write any more, I want to find out if I can get the missing names at the very least (as well as a few other things, such as where exactly episode 3 cut off during its failed transmission). And this is where you come in. Possibly.

Best of 2021

In a way, there were two types of post on this blog last year: one about an extremely obscure CITV series from 1991 that was never repeated or released on home video, and everything else. So when making a list of the best posts, I sort of have to split it in two... but let's begin with a full recap of the remarkable story of The Diamond Brothers: South by South East.

Five Years

It was exactly five years ago today that the very first post was published to cwickham.blogspot.com. It was, of course, a review of an obscure series of adventure gamebooks from the 1980s.

I'd only started writing that review the day before; as I note in it, I got into a conversation with Andrew Ellard on Twitter about an adventure gamebook he'd had as a child but was struggling to identify, and at his suggestion I ended up writing a review of the series. And suddenly I needed a place to post it. I'd always meant to start a blog some day, and this was the impetus I needed to finally get around to doing so. I decided to see how long I could keep updating it on a weekly basis, which turned out to be almost exactly three years; for the two years since then, I've had a similarly totally arbitrary target of keeping it updated monthly. And, to my mild surprise, some people have been quite interested in what I've written.

To mark the fifth anniversary, then, I thought I'd look at the ten most-read posts according to Blogger's stats page, and see if I can work out why these pieces are so popular and if I have anything new to say about them. If you've been a regular reader over the last half-decade, why not try to guess which posts they are before reading on?

Yes, obviously I know why not, but play along, OK?

Best of 2020

The blog has been running for four years now, and this is the first yearly roundup since I ended my target of updating once a week for as long as I could. Perhaps not coincidentally, I feel the hit rate of articles has been higher, and I had a harder time than usual narrowing them down to a list of my particular favourites. But I managed anyway.

Weekly Ending / Best of 2019

It was always my intention to start writing a blog some day. Several of the pieces I have written over the last few years have existed as ideas in my head for anything up to a decade before I finally got around to them here; it was not until I answered a question Andrew Ellard had about an adventure gamebook on Twitter that I found I needed a space to write something, and once I had the space I decided to set myself the totally arbitrary target of seeing how long I could keep it updated at least once a week for.

To my surprise, that has turned out to be very slightly more than exactly three years and (including this one) exactly 200 posts, and the magic of pre-scheduled posts has finally run out; going forward, the blog will not be updated weekly, but whenever I happen to have a new thing to talk about, or I can finally afford to shell out for the eighties obscurity I want to discuss, or when the BBC finally start answering my e-mails about releasing all two thousand hours of Robot Wars rushes.

Until then: Much thanks to, apart from Mr Ellard for providing the impetus to start the thing in the first place, John Hoare, Wesley Mead, Steve Williams, Ian Symes, Darrell Maclaine-Jones, Tim Byrne, Jonathan Green, Rebecca Fisher and everyone else who has ever left a nice comment on an article, linked to something I've written on somewhere far more widely-read, checked a specific copy of an adventure gamebook to see if it still has a mistake the earlier printings did or given me some interesting information about late changes to a TV schedule. You've all been very kind, and I doubt the blog would have kept going for so long without you. Beneath the cut, you will find a selection of my favourite pieces from the last year; hopefully, there'll be something new along soon.

Long Reads #4

We've reached the end of another year, so now seems a good a time as any to round up the best of the blog since the last time I did one of these. See you in 2019!

Unsolved Mysteries

A bit of a break this week so I can recap some outstanding mysteries the blog has covered in the past and hopefully bring some fresh attention to them:

Edit Wars: I am still looking for a copy of the original BBC Choice broadcast of this episode. (All I have ascertained since the post was originally written is that America and Challenge have the revised copy, which isn't a huge surprise.)
Edit Wars #4: There are a number of points in this article I'm unsure on that would probably need somebody involved in the production or in the audience of the original episode(s) to clarify, for example the Evil Weevil vs Triterobot one.
Just Ask For South By South East, Just Ask For South By South East... Again and Just Ask For South By South East... Yet Again: I am still looking for any footage from the television series I search for in these articles.

Long Reads #3

Time for the periodic roundup of the best of the blog over the last few months, I think, especially since over the summer there's a possibility I might not be able to post a new thing every week. Sorry about that.

Random Acts

Rather than write a proper piece this week, here's a selection of random facts that were cut from various other articles on this blog during the editing process (some of these were part of articles that got written, others I decided partway through were unusable). Enjoy!

Merry Christmas / Long Reads #2

Merry Christmas, one and all! All being well, my review of the Doctor Who Christmas special should be up at some point between broadcast and New Year's Eve. Until then, it's been a few months since I last rounded up all the blog's long (or long-ish) reads, so now seems a good time to do so with the new articles written since then. Take the two posts together for a sort of review of the year, if you like.

Celebratory Niche

Exactly one year ago today (to the minute), the first ever article was posted on Ludicrously Niche (which was then known as Something Witty, since retitled to better reflect the blog's contents). To celebrate, here's the story so far.

The very first article arose out of a discussion with Red Dwarf script editor Andrew Ellard on Twitter about an adventure gamebook he was trying to identify. You can find that discussion here, here and here. I was thus inspired to write about those gamebooks, and needed somewhere on the Internet to discuss it; the blog was thus born with this article. Then I got the idea for something else - reviewing more gamebooks off the back of the first article actually being quite interesting, and then other stuff, such as a game taking the piss out of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn I'd first had the idea for several months previously, and now it finally had a home to go to. I have since managed to keep it updated at least once a week with whatever I've thought of and then subsequently thought "hm, I could get something out of that", mostly to distract myself from the horror of the news. The blog has had over 7,000 pageviews, and only 6,987 of those were me. It's a success!

So, then, just a quick piece to mark the occasion. Much thanks to all the readers, and everyone who's linked to it elsewhere and ensured that I can be sure that at least some of those pageviews are actually real people. Here's to many more posts about broken adventure gamebooks.