Simon Dunn

As the 70s turned into the 80s, a little story unfolded quietly in the local Reading paper.

Here’s the first mention of Alexei Sayle that I can find on the British Newspaper Archive.

On this day, in 2002, the cover of Broadcasting & Cable Magazine featured this photograph: Broadcasting & Cable, April 15th 2002 The cover seems only to be justified by two sentences in the whole magazine.

Here’s an interesting little curio.

You know when you’re browsing old copies of American television industry magazines, and you come across something that makes you stop and scratch your head with Simian-like confusion?

I wrote another book about television.

Thanks to the excellent Why Don’t YouTube, over on Bluesky, I was made aware of another short-lived Noel Edmonds curio.

I mean, it’s impossible to write about The Fast Show without quoting it.

My current ear worm is this.

Here’s one of those little snippets you often stumble across in old magazines.

Here’s an interview with Geoffrey Perkins, from The Stage, after he was appointed Head Of BBC Comedy.

Why does Richie from Bottom resonate with me?

This is the story of Timothy Burton Anderson, who in 1986 sued Sylvester Stallone and MGM/UA because, he argued, they had stolen his idea for Rocky IV, and then failed to compensate him for it.

Here’s a story about the analysis powers of industry insiders, presented in three parts.

Before his House Party, Noel did a Saturday Roadshow.

It’s hard to overstate the way Sylvania Waters changed the landscape of British television, so I won’t.

If you imagine the phrase ‘Bite The Wax’ as spoken by Armando Iannucci, then your day will be all the better for it.

Here’s a great article from the Liverpool Echo, on Saturday 10th December 1983.

A small fact nugget keeps popping up about Seinfeld – that the show was renamed after the pilot to avoid allusions to the ABC show The Marshall Chronicles.

It’s always fun when two disparate things collide.

Inevitably, during the late 1990s, British broadcasters were looking for something a bit like Seinfeld.

I was slightly amazed to learn that the Cadbury’s Boost bar is older than I thought.

I had a little lament the other evening, that it’s such a shame Kathy Burke never appeared in The New Statesman.

There’s a line on page 73 of Proctology: A Bottom Examination which reads: Rik also made a corporate video in 1988, but his was for John Cleese’s Video Arts production company.

On 1st November 1986, the BBC celebrated 50 years of television, with its themed strand TV50.

Let’s preface this nonsense with two things.

The final joke of Bomb, the fourth episode of The Young Ones, never gets the laugh I think it deserves.

Yesterday, whilst looking at clippings about ‘Allo ‘Allo, the last line of this review jumped out at me.

You’d be forgiven now for not knowing that ‘Allo ‘Allo was a straight up parody of the flagship BBC drama Secret Army.

Mr Swainey is an excellent supporting character in One Foot In The Grave.