Tony Slattery RIP News Posted by Ian Symes on 14th January 2025, 14:12 We have some very sad news to report. As announced by his team on his Patreon, Tony Slattery has passed away following a heart attack, aged just 65. Tony was at one stage one of the most ubiquitous figures on British television, having risen to fame as the breakout star of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Panel show infamy soon followed, including multiple guest slots in the early days of Have I Got News For You, a stint as a team captain on the TV version of Just A Minute and hosting Channel 4’s The Music Game. His acting roles included the movies The Crying Game and Peter’s Friends, his own sitcom Just A Gigolo and of course Red Dwarf. One of the rare performers to have played two different characters on the show, he started off as the voice of the android actor in Kryten, before returning as Rimmer’s nemesis dispensing machine in Only The Good… He’ll be remembered as one of the most talented improvisers the world of comedy has ever seen. Sadly, he’ll also be remembered for his well-documented fall from these huge heights. He suffered terribly with depression and substance addiction, eventually being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Those who attended Dimension Jump in 2018 can’t have failed to spot that these issues were still evident at that point. There was a very clear sense that he wasn’t being supported in the way he both needed and deserved, and that those who were supposed to be looking after him were doing nothing of the sort. Things seemed to be improving in recent years, with Tony’s public appearances becoming both more common and more coherent. It’s an absolute tragedy – if not a total surprise – that this brilliant genius has left us so soon, and that he’s done so without ever getting the opportunity to bounce all the way back. It’s abundantly clear from the tributes being left online in the last hour or so that Tony was incredibly well loved, with fans and fellow comedians alike sharing their stories. If nothing else, the incongruity of his current Twitter banner would have amused him, I think. Rest in peace, Tony.
The G&T Review of the Year 2024 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2024, 14:58 Ah yes, it's time for our annual opportunity to take a breather from the relentless pace of Red Dwarf news, and reflect back on the last twelve months' worth of exciting developments. Or at least it would be had there been any. Something nearly happened in the late Spring, but that was about it. Oh well, thanks for coming anyway. While you're here, we might as well look back on the things that nearly happened anyway, plus some bits that did happen but weren't deemed interesting enough for a proper news post at the time, and a reminder of the nonsense that we ourselves churned out to help fill the void. By which I mean: Welcome to the Ganymede & Titan Review of the Year 2024! Read more →
DwarfCast 174 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #13 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 14th December 2024, 15:50 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes "Flicky Mint Cake" Welcome back to the Rack! The latest installment in our periodical drama takes us back to March 1993, a time when perhaps too much information about the forthcoming Series VI is being made public, Rob and Doug's relationship is definitely absolutely fine, and the elephant in Hattie Hayridge's room goes unaddressed. Join us as we witness a space monkey genocide, "enjoy" a double length Androids and contemplate life as a living fridge, a sentient armchair and a big fish-frog thing. Plus spend far too long indulging in nostalgia for analogue-based editing systems. Seriously, that's most of the podcast. In order for any of the above to make sense, you'll need a copy of the mag to refer to, which you can find via archive.org or Stasis Leak. Read more →
Doctor Dwarf: Who’s Who? Features Posted by Ian Symes on 23rd November 2024, 09:00 The world's longest running science-fiction series (if you ignore the sixteen years where only one actual episode was made) turns 61 today. Doctor Who is without doubt the second best British sci-fi show ever, and unsurprisingly there are multiple connections between it and Red Dwarf. In this article, we list the whopping fifty-five actors who have appeared in both shows, or in the case of Doctor Who, one of its official televised spin-offs. Not all of these people were credited on both shows, and some of them took some significant tracking down, but thanks to resources such as TARDIS Wiki, TOS's Complete Guide, IMDb's collaborations search, Movie Dude's Pictorial Filmography and our very own Smega-Drive, we think we've caught them all. Read more →
G&TV: Carrott’s Lib (22/10/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 6th November 2024, 09:50 As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years, let's take the opportunity to hark back to a far happier time, ie before many of us were even sodding born. We're heading back to 1983 to take in a crucial component of the Grant Naylor oeuvre. Having pretty much mastered the art of radio comedy with the first series of Son of Cliché, it was time to take on television, and the pair began successfully submitting sketches for the likes of Paul Squire, Cannon & Ball and Three of a Kind. But arguably the most quintessentially Rob-and-Doug feeling project of this era was Carrott's Lib. Starring Jasper Carrott, one of this country's greatest ever stand-ups, this was a pre-Spitting Image topical, satirical comedy, broadcast live on Saturday nights on BBC One. Paul Jackson produced the first series, but we're going to focus instead on the first episode of series two, for reasons that will become apparent. The first thing to note is the date - the series started just eleven days after the first series of Son of Cliché concluded on Radio 4, and given how last-minute a lot of those scripts were, Rob and Doug presumably had very little time to breathe between projects. This series also established a new supporting cast for Jasper: future Cadbury's Caramel bunny Jan Ravens, alongside the trio of Nick Wilton, Nick Maloney and Chris Barrie. Now where have I seen those guys together before? Huge thanks to Jonsmad for pointing us in the direction of this YouTube upload: Read more →
Starbug Spotting Features Posted by Ian Symes on 10th October 2024, 12:20 Since its introduction in Series III, Red Dwarf's shuttle craft Starbug has become almost as iconic as the eponymous ship itself, spawning t-shirts, models, playsets, televised competitions and even a giant life-sized version as part of an elaborate ad campaign. Both its interior and exterior have changed dramatically in looks over the years, and it's established almost immediately that there are actually multiple Starbugs in existence, allowing us to headcanon away those inconsistencies with relative ease. When a new set was built for Series XI, a knowing reference to this was included as part of the set design, with the ship's interior baring branding that reads "Starbug 19". But is this number accurate? Does it correlate to the number of Starbugs we've seen on screen, or was it chosen arbitrarily for the purposes of the gag? Let's investigate, as we delve through the episodes to tally up just how many times the ship's been destroyed and then reappeared, and track some of the changes and features which are unique to each iteration. Read more →
Mini Newsround – 01/10/24 News Posted by Ian Symes on 1st October 2024, 15:06 Ah, it's October. The month where the new Red Dwarf special(s) go into production. After all, it was reported extensively online back in May, and none of the publications that giddily jumped on the bandwagon have since issued any updates or corrections, so we assume it's all going ahead. We should be getting the official announcement any moment. Here it comes. Any moment. Aaaaaany moment. Any moment... NOW. It hasn't worked. It's almost as if you should take what the cast say about any new projects with a pinch of salt, as even if the details are correct to the best of their knowledge at the time, plans change, and nothing is official until it's announced by the appropriate channels. This is a lesson that desperately needs to be learned by the entire population of comments sections everywhere else that Red Dwarf is discussed online. Nevertheless, the latest unconfirmed whisper is in, and this time it comes from Chris Barrie, via ITV Anglia: We hope next year to, in 2025, to shoot a special. That's the plan I've heard. The others might throw more light on it, I don't know, but yeah, that's the plan. I think all four of us are up for it, yeah. Read more →
DwarfCast 173 – Bottom Parade – Commentary DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 18th September 2024, 14:59 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes U&UKTVPlayG2U&Dave&Knuckles Righty dokey matey bloke flap old salty seadog amigo skip-jack jockstrap piano tuners, we're back with another in our occasional series of Dwarf-adjacent commentaries, this time covering Bottom Series 2, Episode 4, Parade. Not only is the series produced and directed by Ed Bye, this particular episode guest stars both Robert Llewellyn and Lee Cornes, which is as good an excuse as any to rabbit on over this episode and tackle your Bottom-shaped waffles. We cover pretty much all the affiliated spin-offs - the live shows, the Fluff video, Guest House Paradiso - as well as discussing what happens when TV schedules are affected by real life events, how Rik and Ade could have fitted in to Red Dwarf and trying to figure out if there's any modern equivalents to this madness. Read more →
DwarfCast 172 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #12 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 21st August 2024, 11:35 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes "Clifford the Big Bastard of a Dog" With apologies for the delay, it's finally time to get back on the rack! Our Smegazine odyssey reaches February 1993, a very interesting time in Red Dwarf history, as the magazine's news page documents. In this episode, we uncover the origins of Entangled, some foreshadowing of The Promised Land and the first ever use of the smeg hammer. Other super relevant and definitely on-topic discussion points include the Bottom Exposed documentary, various 1990s adventure game shows, and the state of the Hitchhikers franchise after Douglas Adams's death. Oh, and the results of a caption competition from two years ago. We may not be fast... Read more →
Video DwarfCast #5 – Are You Smarter Than A G&Ter? Byte Two Features Posted by Jonathan Capps on 22nd July 2024, 13:27 We've set a lot of Red Dwarf quizzes in our time, but are we any good at answering them? Well, Part 1 of this video should give you a decent idea but unless we are still in any doubt, it's time to find out... again! Want to play along? You'll find a big list of quizzes underneath the video - take them, then watch the vid, then tell us how you did. Oh, and you're probably better off clicking through to YouTube and going full-screen if you want to see what we're typing properly. <span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span> Read more →
