What in the Very World?

According to BBC Genome, on 13 August 1998 at 11pm, the very first of what would be many, many pun-heavy Radio 4 series starring Milton Jones began airing, with the opening episode of The Very World of Milton Jones.

13 August 1998, 23:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM

The Very World of Milton Jones

A four-part comedy series starring Britain's funniest Milton.
Written by and starring Milton Jones
With Alexander Armstrong and Melanie Hudson. Producer David Tyler

And the listings for the remaining three episodes are as follows:

20 August 1998, 23:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM

The Very World of Milton Jones

Second dollop of the four-part comedy series starring Britain's funniest Milton. Written by and starring Milton Jones. With Dave Lamb and Melanie Hudson. Producer David Tyler

27 August 1998, 23:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM

The Very World of Milton Jones

Part three of the four-part comedy series starring Britain's funniest Milton. Written by and starring Milton Jones
With Joanna Scanlan and Alexander Armstrong

Producer David Tyler

3 September 1998, 23:00 on BBC Radio 4 FM

The Very World of Milton Jones

Last of the comedy series written by and starring Britain's funniest Milton. With Joanna Scanlan and Dave Lamb

Hang on, what's this?

6 September 1998, 12:30 on BBC Radio 4 FM

The Very World of Milton Jones

Second in the new comedy series written by and starring Milton Jones. Repeated from Monday

Okay, let's try and work this out. 06/09/98 was a Sunday, and this repeat goes out in the lunchtime slot reserved for the repeat of Monday's 18:30 comedy which is strongly associated with Just a Minute, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and The Unbelievable Truth. So if we believe the later Radio Times listing as being more up-to-date, the second episode of The Very World did not debut on 20/08/98 at 11pm, but on 31/08/98 at 6.30pm. What does the Radio Times claim was broadcast on that date?

Check, Please

Goodness Gracious Me was a groundbreaking sketch show that popularised British-Asian comedy and helped make household names of people like Sanjeev Bhaskar.

In the fourth episode of Series 1 (TX: 02/02/98), in the "Bhangra Muffins" sketch, Kulvinder Ghur is reading a copy of the Beano.

We get a nice close look at it at the start of the sketch, so through the magic of iPlayer it's pretty easy to tell it's issue #2882, dated 11/10/97:

A valuable clue as to the recording dates of Goodness Gracious Me, to be sure, but this issue was originally sold with a free lolly, and the issue seen onscreen appears to have had the sticky tape attaching the free gift to the issue very carefully removed to avoid ripping or damaging the cover.

So we can figure that a production runner sent to the nearest newsagent's had an interesting afternoon, if nothing else.

It's So Bloody Nice!

The comic strip It's a Nice Life, drawn by Reg Parlett, originated in IPC Magazines' (later known as Fleetway Publications) weekly comic Jackpot. It was a mainstay throughout the comic's modest run of just over two and a half years from May 1979 to January 1982, and regularly finished near the top of reader polls during that time. It survived Jackpot's merger into Buster, where it lasted for over six further years, finishing in the issue dated 30th April, 1988; a pretty decent innings for a story that originated in another comic.

Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. It wasn't (and indeed isn't) unusual for strips in weekly humour comics to parody or take inspiration from current films and TV shows; other strips that ran alongside this story in Jackpot include Angel's Proper Charlies, The Incredible Sulk, The Teeny Sweeney and Jake's 7. But It's a Nice Life, a strip about Stan and Babs Nice attempting to live a sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle whilst their next door neighbours, snooty social climbers Ollie and Maddie Jones, watch on in bafflement, seems to take things a step away from finding inspiration from or spoofing The Good Life, and a step closer to, well, just being a comic strip version of The Good Life, down to not only the very similar title but also one of the characters having the same name as their equivalent in the series; that said, there were some notable differences, perhaps the biggest being that both families have children in the strip.

It's tempting to imagine that IPC might have had some kind of arrangement with the BBC in this instance; such a thing would not be without precedent, as they ran several strips based on licensed properties or even real people over the years. Perhaps most pertinently, a strip starring the Goodies had run in Jackpot predecessor Cor!! earlier in the seventies, and the short-lived School Fun (33 weekly issues, October 1983 to May 1984) featured both Coronation Street School and Grange Hill Juniors (the latter of which has a copyright notice expressly crediting Phil Redmond). Officially licensed stories continued to feature right up until the end, with a strip based on the animated series Dr. Zitbag's Transylvania Pet Shop being one of the last new stories to appear in Buster near the end of its life from 1994-96.

You might also notice that It's a Nice Life debuted nearly a year after the final episode of The Good Life was broadcast in June 1978, and continued for almost a decade after that. This seems unusual for a strip referencing a specific TV show; similar strips generally began whilst their inspirations were still on screens, and if their inspiration were to drop out of the zeitgeist they tended to be lucky if they lasted a year afterwards.

A thought comes to mind: what about repeats?

Excellent Fun From the Noisiest Basement

The Wayne's World sketches on Saturday Night Live, chronicling the adventures of metalhead Wayne Campbell and his friend Garth Algar as they hosted a public-access television show from his parents' basement, ran from 1989 to 1994 (the character having originated on the CBC variety series It's Only Rock & Roll two years earlier), inspiring the surprise hit film of the same name in 1992 (by some distance the most successful film based on an SNL sketch) and its sequel a year later. Wikipedia's article on the sketches states the following:

In the United Kingdom, where Saturday Night Live is rarely shown, Wayne's World sketches were extracted from SNL broadcasts and individually packaged as 10-minute episodes which aired on BBC Two as part of the DEF II programming strand, simply as a tie-in with both Wayne's World movies.

But you're not happy just knowing that, are you?

DEF II was an early-evening programming strand aimed at teenagers which broadcast twice weekly between 1988 and 1994. It frequently featured American imports ranging from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Mission: Impossible, and, yes, in 1992 the Wayne's World sketches were the first Saturday Night Live material to be seen on the BBC. Consulting BBC Genome, we can see that the descriptions of each broadcast in the Radio Times (Britain's premier TV listings magazine, for any Americans reading) were as follows:

1. 2 September 1992: The original sketches from America's famous Saturday Night Live TV series that inspired the teen film Wayne's World and countless catchphrases. It's bogus.... not!

2. 9 September 1992: More excellent fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois. Join Wayne, Garth and a celebrity guest partying on down. It's all babelicious fun.... not!

3. 16 September 1992: More excellent fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois. Join Wayne, Garth and a celebrity guest partying on down.

4. 23 September 1992: More fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois.

5. 30 September 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois, as Tom Hanks plays Aerosmith's head roadie.

6. 7 October 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois. With actress Debra Winger.

7. 14 October 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois.

8. 21 October 1992: Mary Tyler-Moore is the new babe in the basement.

9. 28 October 1992: Last in the series from Wayne and Garth's basement.

A Bit of the Radio Times Listings for A Bit of Fry & Laurie

Amusing Radio Times listings from the 80s and 90s, as written by the show's production team, before the practice sadly stopped, are great. As taken from the BBC Programme Index, then, here are the ones that concern A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

A Table Indicating How Many Episodes of Each Series Recurring Characters Appear in in Peep Show

For the record: I defined "recurring character" as someone appearing in at least two different series - disqualifying a large number of one-series characters who appear in multiple episodes, including Elena (who appears in all 6 episodes of Series 6), Zahra (all but one episode of Series 7) and Megan (all but one episode of Series 9).

* Credited, but does not appear, on one episode (not counted on this table)
** Paul Clayton recorded a scene for "Kid Farm" which was cut from the broadcast programme (it can be seen on the deleted scenes on the DVD)

Just a Minute: Deviation of a Listing

When Just a Minute began on 22 December 1967, its very first Radio Times listing described it as "a panel game controlled by Nicholas Parsons".

By the time of its very next billing, on 29 December, the RT had seen fit to add "(!)" after the word "controlled", perhaps indicating sarcasm or disbelief at the choice of words.

The Blackadder Radio Times Synopsis Guide

Remember a while ago, I said that back until some point in the mid-nineties, TV producers used to write their own synopsises for the Radio Times, and the makers of sitcoms used to have a bit of fun with this? Well, the ones for Blackadder are particularly good. So much so, in fact, I’ve used the power of the BBC Genome to compile them all in one place for easy reading. Enjoy!