Bwa-ha-ha: John’s Newsround!

John’s Newsround? Yes. Whilst Ian was fitting a DVD-ROM drive to his computer today, he, erm, managed to break something. Therefore, he’s not on the net, and it’s left to me to do this week’s newsround. I’d laugh my head off and spend ages slagging him off, but I’m on my backup computer at the moment as I broke my computer last week by poking out the reset button with a screwdriver. WE ARE COMPETENT, HONEST.

Anyway, a great update to the official site today. Firstly, their Cast & Crew list has also been updated with the info for the last four series, including the names of uncredited extras. It’s superb – did anyone else know that The Official Red Dwarf Companion writer Bruce Dessau was a GELF extra in Emohawk? There is also some fascinating info about Epideme – four unused actors are listed: John Gower (as King Soloman), Mike O’Mally (as Einstein), Ian Masters (as Herbert J. Spilliker), and Helen Leigh (as Caroline Carmen’s Arm). This would indicate a fairly major scene cut out. And in Terrorform, the James Last (ha ha!) version of Copacabana was only used on the first transmission… I could go on. Great stuff, that only truly anal fans would be interested in. Excellent.

Next, the offical site reports on Red Dwarf appearing on the Canadian channel BBC Kids, with an excellent headline (although it would have been better if the joke wasn’t ruined by acknowledging it at the start of the article). We reported on this a while back, but as usual GNP have obviously got rather more details than we managed to scrounge. Unfortunately, the poor Canadians have to put up Re-mastered shite; and I have to say that the jolt between a Re-mastered Series III and your normal Series IV would confuse the hell out of me if I didn’t know what was going on. It’s an odd situation when (apart from Japan), you have the original series going out on DVD, and the Re-mastered version clogging up the airwaves. Anyway, enough ranting; check out the schedule details. Excellently, there is also now a UK section of the Dwarf Tracker (nice new graphics, too). Honestly, what with this and the crew list, the official site is beating us at everything. Wah.

There’s also news of Norm’s latest show (Thursday September 4th, at the Norwich Arts Centre). And www.normanlovett.co.uk should arrive “any day soon”. Yay! Finally, there is news on the Brittas Series II DVD, which we’ve already covered earlier in the week – though it’s noticable that even GNP have commented on the rather strange cover. Never mind; I’m just estatic that it’s being released. Brittas is so underrated…

Check back tomorrow for a content update, involving our much trailed brand new section. Hooray!