Ian’s Newsround – Some bits. Also: bobs.

Mucho activity on the fansites over the last couple of days, so we might as well start by detailing our own snivelly little updates. Following on from the Craig Charles interview, as reported on below, we’ve updated our Rumour Tracker and DVD & Movie FAQ documents. I might as well reveal now that this time next week there’ll be a new section on G&T, which we’ve been keeping under wraps for a while. We’ll give you a clue: it’s not about Red Dwarf…

Much more exciting things are going down at Groovetown at the moment – Rick has reported that he’s totally renovated his search facility and his forums. Now, the Groovetown forums are the only unofficial Red Dwarf ones that either of us bother with (ATVRD doesn’t count), and this update only serves to reinforce this excellence. Better still – Rick has further plans up his sleeve – he wants to expand the search facility to include other fan sites. This is great – a search engine that is both totally Red Dwarf-dedicated, yet still has quite a wide range. We’re looking forward to that a lot.

As virtually every fansite has already mentioned, the second series of The Brittas Empire is now available to pre-order. The DVD will be released on 20th October, a fortnight before Red Dwarf III, in a lovely blue box. Incidentally, the picture on the front cover looks very odd. I don’t recall the episode where Brittas got a perm. Oh well. The extras are a quiz, a GMTV interview with the cast, the ever-important weblinks, a star profile and a stills gallery. Well, seven episodes of vintage Brittas on a pair of shiny discs – anything else is just greediness.

Over on the official site this week, a multitude of small updates. There’s news on the next Friday’s release of the grammar-busting Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, an interview with Stephen Lane, the chap behind The Great Red Dwarf Prop Sale and news on Norman and Hattie’s forthcoming appearance at Dragon*Con. You lucky, lucky Americans. Well, we get Dimension Jump, so up yours.

Finally, we’d like to make our excuses in advance for a bit of a dip in update frequency, which will happen for the next few weeks. John is hard at work on redesigning the site, the main feature of which is an excellent, yet fiddly to programme, news system. And this week I’ll be finishing off our secret new section, launching 23rd August. Which is also the day that John and I will be getting pissed in Manchester. Hooray!