Oooh, What a Skimpy Garment News Posted by John Hoare on 29th July 2007, 21:13 I’m back, feeling good, feed me. Ah, thanks Norm. And, excellently, his two updates have answered some questions we’ve been wondering about for a while. Firstly, his standup DVD of Bags & Biscuits will be sold at his Edinburgh shows next month, his Autumn tour, and also by mail order – with more details of the latter to come. Excellently, as well as the show itself (90 minutes long – substantial in itself), the DVD also includes “lots of extras”. No details of what, yet, but no matter – this sounds like it should be a great release. Secondly, remember the following question I asked in this article about whether his planned release of I, Lovett was official or not: “Isn’t it weird, though, that there’s a lot of “I” in that post? Is this being done with the cooperation with the BBC, who obviously own the copyright, or not? It probably is, of course, and I’m reading far too much into it, but there seems to be something slightly strange with the wording. We’ll see, I guess.” Well: “I’m sorry I haven’t put the I, Lovett pilot on youtube yet but I’m currenly talking with the BBC about getting the rights to the pilot and series so that I can make it available in good quality as opposed to not very good if it’s copied from VHS. This will delay things but ultimately it will be worth the wait, I hope. I will keep you updated.” So, he wasn’t going to get official permission, and has since changed his mind – although he’s only saying it’s because of quality, rather than copyright issues. Whether copyright issues did play a part in his decision it’s impossible to say. He probably could have got away with sticking up the pilot on YouTube without much trouble – but selling a DVD of the episodes would have been an entirely different matter, and I suspect it would have to have been withdrawn rather sharpish once the BBC found out. Anyway, I really hope he manages to make it happen – it’s not exactly easy to do. To be honest though, I find the whole situation rather confusing. Why did he ever think it would be practical in the first place to sell a poor quality DVD of the series copied from a set of VHS tapes, without permission from the BBC?
At the stand up gig he did with Hattie, he suggested that the show he did that night, talking through his photos, would be an extra in itself. It was funnier than it might sound.
That’s not a bad idea in itself, but, as WomanWizard shows (or doesn’t, depending on how you want to see it), you need to have decent sound and vision to make it worthwhile.
