Category: Comedy
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Laugh Track Partridge
Just where did the seemingly prevalent misconception that the first series of I’m Alan Partridge didn’t have a laugh track, while series two did, actually come from? I remember a friend bemoaning this fact to me at the time of the second series being broadcast, and I was perplexed by it. I didn’t have a…
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Alan Behaving Badly
In the week that I’m Alan Partridge first aired, we also got to see a new series by Ray Galton (Get Well Soon), and a new series of Men Behaving Badly. Maggie Brown wrote about all three sitcoms in The Stage on Thursday 13th November 1997.
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Did Alan B’Stard Have A Daughter?
On the 2nd August 1987, a full month before the first series of The New Statesman began on ITV, The Sunday Mirror was already trying to stir up a controversy. They even appeared to be trying to bait one Norman Tebbit into a reaction. Campaign wouldn’t air until 1988, and was written by Gerard MacDonald,…
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A Third Rate Little Comedy
Like most towns with a sports centre that lay claim to being the inspiration for The Brittas Empire, there must be a lot of towns with a quirky corner shop that believe it to be the basis for Open All Hours. My home town certainly does (it even makes the page on Wikipedia). It may…
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Porridge Was Originally A BBC Two Show
There’s a reason I keep trawling old newpaper articles about comedy, and that’s partly to see what contemporaneous reviews really said, partly to see how shows were being publicised, and perhaps more so to find little nuggets of lost information (or new information to me, at least) like this about Porridge. I wonder how it…
