DwarfCast 173 – Bottom Parade – Commentary

33 comments on “DwarfCast 173 – Bottom Parade – Commentary”

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• Bottom’s alright and all, but it’s not a second-rate Hitchikers novel with no RD ties, is it? 

  (Thanks for another lovely pod, you lot.)

• I haven’t even listened to the Dwarfcast yet and I’m already laughing at the “& Knuckles” gag.

• Bottom’s alright and all, but it’s not a second-rate Hitchikers novel with no RD ties, is it?

  Interesting that the first thing that came to mind was a hang-up you had about the subject of the previous, not directly related DwarfCast.

• This was a hugely enjoyable listen. I loved Bottom at the time but haven’t watched it in years – and listening to this has made me want to revisit it again.

  As for the Red Dwarf characters that Rik and Ade could have played, I can’t believe Confidence & Paranoia weren’t mentioned. I’d have Rik as Confidence and Ade as Paranoia, but either way works really.

• Totally agreeing with everything Ian says about Guest House. I saw it in the cinema, and the audience wasnt that full, and it was a split much like the general opinion of that film.  I was loving it, and people near us were laughing and having a great night out. A few left and there were pockets of silence, definitely deciding they didnt like what was done with it. Part of it might that thing of laugh track TV changing to Films. It was more gross and some didnt find that as funny as the TV series, and I think maybe some Fawlty Tower fans thing was going on with it being a hotel film comedy, and that widening didnt really work out that that audience connected. But i loved it. And as a passionate and defensive fan of bottom back then, seeing all the live shows etc I used to hate hearing the bad reviews, and I remember Stephen Fry being on a BBC 2 review show, with a load of intellectual arts type savaging the film and he did a great job of explaining how there is an audience out there for this film and that it’s good for that audience. 

• The breakdown of the ‘Hooligan’s Island’ show is even sadder than stated – it was more that Ade found post-accident Rik to be impossible to work with due to the changes in his personality after the brain injury. There’s a bit in the book (or possibly his Desert Island Discs interview) where he talks about how they were reading through a script and Rik was counting on each hand how many jokes each character had and then would complain that Eddie was getting more laughs.

  
  

  So Ade pulled the plug whilst Rik wanted to do it and that pretty much ended their friendship, I believe Ade said in the documentary “he absolutely hated me for it”.

• Great episode, though and fun commentary. It was very much like listening to the 1-7 RD commentaries where I know the show so well I can have it running in my head alongside the chat.

• What a weird series.

  

  

  I enjoyed that a lot (both the show and the podcast), although unfortunately “drunk man stays asleep while he’s actively having the shit beaten out of him” was a bit further than my comedy disbelief is capable of being suspended. I mean they may as well have just used their telekinetic powers to remove the false leg at that point.

  Is it called “Bottom” to mean that they’re at the bottom rung of society, or is it just because random rude word = funny?

  I also realise I’ve been lucky that all of the non-Dwarf commentary choices have been for shows I have access to on streaming. If and when you do cover Brittas, I may be in trouble.

• Is it called “Bottom” to mean that they’re at the bottom rung of society, or is it just because random rude word = funny?

  Both, leaning towards the latter.

  Bottom caught me impressionably early too. Staying up secretly to watch it on my fuzzy bedroom telly at 9 years old in the downbeat atmosphere of an imminently divorcing household is somehow a cherished memory.

  Series 1 is almost perfect to me, except ‘Smells’ gives me a similar, slightly uncomfortable feeling to the Young Ones house party episode in feeling like they’re interacting with people from the real world rather than their usual wacky cartoon universe.

• The breakdown of the ‘Hooligan’s Island’ show is even sadder than stated – it was more that Ade found post-accident Rik to be impossible to work with due to the changes in his personality after the brain injury. There’s a bit in the book (or possibly his Desert Island Discs interview) where he talks about how they were reading through a script and Rik was counting on each hand how many jokes each character had and then would complain that Eddie was getting more laughs.

  So Ade pulled the plug whilst Rik wanted to do it and that pretty much ended their friendship, I believe Ade said in the documentary “he absolutely hated me for it”.

  Yeah, I think I remember him talking about this on his Desert Island Discs, I think it was when he was talking about them writing the new (ultimately abandoned) revival of Bottom for the BBC.

  There was also something I either read from his book or heard on that same show about Rik’s approach to playing Richie in the later stage shows, basically saying that Rik was getting increasingly happy playing up his love-god Flashheart-type persona for the audience (essentially breaking character), but Ade was pointing out to him that it wasn’t in character for Richie, and while he got short-term laughs (albeit with quickly diminishing returns) it hurt the show overall.

• What if they made The Young Ones when they were older? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxHzVxMiixA

• Bottom’s alright and all, but it’s not a second-rate Hitchikers novel with no RD ties, is it? 

  (Thanks for another lovely pod, you lot.)

  

• It was nice to laugh along with you chaps, but I thought it was meant to be a commentary?

  Enjoyed all the waffles a lot. My feelings on Bottom:

  Series 1 & 2: magnificent. Series 3: patchy. I like half of it, but Terror, Dough and either Break or Finger (I can never remember which) I really don’t get along with, almost all of the tragic bleakness and bizarre dialogue is missing and it’s just the full on violent slapstick with little else. I found this was more and more the case with the live shows, and especially Guest House Paradiso, which I think is utterly abysmal. I’m kind of glad the Hooligan’s Island series never got off the ground, because I can’t imagine it would have been any good. That Comic Relief dance thing they did, their last ever work together, I found really embarrassing, absolutely none of the finesse of their earlier work and just really clumsy, awkward and badly timed violence. Whether it was Rik’s accident, Ade’s move away from comedy, both of them simple losing it as they aged, or a combination, I dunno, but I just think they stopped being funny a very long time ago now. 

  I love the Dangerous Brothers, The Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap, their Comic Strip stuff and most of the Bottom TV series, and I think it’s a shame they got stuck in that mode rather than moving on and developing their output as they got older. 

• The stuff about the BBC to pull certain content (vs. other channels not bothering) is quite timely, as it happened again just a few days ago.

  Jay Blades from the Repair Shop was charged with coercion of his estranged wife, and it was noted that a repeat of an episode of his show with David Jason had been pulled from BBC One that evening. Literally ten seconds after reading the article, the TV gets switched to ITV2 and Jay Blades is right there, halfway through an episode of Catchphrase. 

  I presumed that was down to it being a scheduled playout on a lower-wattage station in an access prime slot and either nobody at ITV had spotted it/seen the story yet/deemed his situation worthy of pulling/figured nobody would complain about it either way and/or decided he was more of a “BBC Star” anyway and it didn’t matter. 

  —

  On an entirely unrelated strand from the same fork, there is a fascinatingly horrific story about the aftermath of the Wimbledon Common murder, in which the Met Police used a lonely hearts column to to honeytrap the guy who they decided had done it by setting him up with an undercover officer, who tried to coerce him into admitting he’d done it.

  He never did, but they arrested him anyway, and he was subsequently cleared by the Old Bailey, but by this point the press had villainised him so badly (News of the World wrote stories about him being a sex weirdo, and the Daily Mail called for the government to scrap double jeopardy and give him another trial) and convinced the victim’s grief-stricken family that he’d definitely done it. 

  Then Jeremy Beadle said he should face a public trial in front of the television cameras, to which he bizarrely agreed, so Roger Cook put him on ITV on a lie detector while a baying audience booed and hissed at him. Naturally he passed, because he was innocent, so they tried to get him to take truth drugs (from fantasy land, presumably), but he declined because he was scared of needles, so Cook spent the rest of the interview goading him about having something to hide. 

  In 2008, they finally caught the real killer, and the S*n were furious about him being awarded £750,000 compensation, then about ten years later did a follow up moaning about how he’d spent some of it on a Darth Vader costume and blown all his cash, then did ANOTHER follow up in 2021 with a load of candid pictures that amounted to “Look at this sadsack, working in a fucking Tesco Express even though he got loads of money for nothing.” And then wrote an article about all the stuff he didn’t actually do, before mentioning the real killer as a footnote in the last paragraph. The cunts. 

• Non-important/self-important stuff – I liked Bottom when it was on, but never enough to go out of my way to tape it coherently like I did for Dwarf (in part due to being young and tapes being harder to come by in the days of pocket money).

  I’d pretty much stopped watching after Hooligan’s Island, and was completely out by the time of Guest House Paradiso, and despite a few attempts over the years, and Bottom revisit usually fizzles out after one episode. There’s bits that I really love about it, and I think like Ian, it was probably due to being a child and Bottom being a bit naughty that made me a fan, but a lot of the broader stuff like the shouting, the slapstick violence and the unsubtle knob gags don’t really get much of a chuckle from me any more. 

  On the other hand, I totally fell for The Young Ones during one of the repeat runs, taped some of the episodes off TV and bought an official VHS at a car boot sale, and re-watched the shit out of those for years and years after the fact. Having said that, the last time I watched the DVDs a few years ago, it did finally start to feel a bit silly and over the top in places too, so maybe it’s just that my tastes are changing. Or I’ve watched them too many times, either way. 

• Oh, I’ve just remembered, I wanted to recommend the podcast “Talking Bottom” if you’ve not heard it, where they’ve had Ed Bye on for nearly 90 minutes, and 2 hours with Paul Jackson, both of which are as excellent as you’d imagine.

  (I’ve just had a look, and since then, they’ve also interviewed Robert Llewellyn and Lee Cornes, as well as Roger Sloman (who I always think was in Red Dwarf but then I remember was actually in Blackadder), Helen Lederer (who I always used to confuse with Toyah Wilcox) and Peter Richardson, as well the usual episode and live show commentaries). Which is nice. 

  https://podtail.com/en/podcast/talking-bottom/paul-jackson-interview-part-1/

  — 

  Also just remembered to moan about the lack of mention of Robert’s claims about earning more money from Bottom VHS royalties than the entirety of the Red Dwarf tapes. Should have asked a waffle about it. 

  — 

  One last thing from me – Turns out there’s another problematic twerp in the Halloween episode, currently doing a 19 stretch at King Prince Charlie’s pleasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_%27Des%27_Ballard

• My feelings on Bottom:
  Series 1 & 2: magnificent. Series 3: patchy.

  ‘Hole’ (‘Ferris wheel one’) and the apocalyptic ‘Carnival’ are top tier from series 3, though they’re also the ones I watched the most on video growing up and can play almost verbatim in my head like Red Dwarf and early Simpsons videos.

  I somehow never saw ‘Gas’ until years later than the rest on the series 1 DVD and was blown away by how funny and intense it was, instant new favourite episode, so new Bottom still did the trick at around 18.

• ‘Gas’ was always top for me. One of the funniest sitcom episodes I can think of.

• The ferris wheel and the camping one are my top two.

  I’m also a little confused about the camping one being broadcast last (which I was aware of already) because I remember being absolutely mad about that episode as a kid but I also have a very vivid memory of the “last episode” ending with them being shot to death, but I’m not sure how that can be possible since I must have seen the camping one later and I don’t think I would have known that it was not the actual “last episode” at the time. I’m sure that’s just something in my memory banks going wonky but that’s always confused me.

• I also have a very vivid memory of the “last episode” ending with them being shot to death, but I’m not sure how that can be possible since I must have seen the camping one later and I don’t think I would have known that it was not the actual “last episode” at the time. I’m sure that’s just something in my memory banks going wonky but that’s always confused me.

  Same for me, I was definitely left with the impression that they’d killed them off for good when Carnival first went out, and admired the bold move (never mind that they’d already died five episodes previously and returned the next week). But it looks like there was a two month delay before the camping one aired, so I would have taken it as a random repeat of an episode I hadn’t seen, maybe you did too?

• That was exactly what I thought when I first saw it, that it was just a repeat of an earlier episode that I had missed the first time around.

• Another interesting thing I just learned today, Bottom’s Out was published as a script in the 1993 tour program: 

• There were some script books, too, my friend had one which I deeply coveted in which I’m positive “Bottom’s Out” was included so I guess that came later?

• There were some script books, too, my friend had one which I deeply coveted

  Well who hasn’t coveted a friend’s Bottom occasionally. 

• There were some script books, too, my friend had one which I deeply coveted in which I’m positive “Bottom’s Out” was included so I guess that came later?

  It’s in More Bottom: The Scripts (1994) with the rest of series 2. Oddly no mention of it being banned, but it was already out on video in 1993, so diminishingly rare by that point.

• Oh I wasn’t expecting this so soon. Top notch stuff as usual. 

  I’m pretty sure they wanted to do a fourth series but the BBC said no. Shortly after the third one, I mean, not years later when it was going to be revived and set on Hooligans Island. I agree it’s probably for the best that it was never brought back even though it seems like that was down to them just not being able to work together any more, for various reasons, and it’s a real shame that their friendship suffered because of it too. 

  The live shows are a real mixed bag for me. I’ve only ever seen them on DVD which is obviously a different experience than actually watching them live, but even the earlier ones have too much pissing about and gallery-playing for my liking. Finding out that all the cock-ups and adlibs were faked put me off them even more. Having said that, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the second half of Arse Oddity where they’re trapped in some kind of bunker and it gets really meta, with references to Rik’s quad bike accident, Spudgun being in a crap sitcom with Lee Evans etc. The last live show also had that kind of thing (iirc that’s the one where they turn into their Young Ones characters at one point), but also had virtually no plot and ultimately felt very tired and lazy, even ending in exactly the same way as the previous show with that bloody awful pants song.

  My school used to take us to the pictures shortly before we broke up for the Xmas holidays and I saw GHP one year and had a whale of a time. That Mr Thwaite/Twat/Cunt gag is fantastic. I can still quite enjoy the film for what it is. I remember Rik and Ade on The Big Breakfast promoting it and being at pains to point out that it wasn’t a Bottom movie, and of course they’ve got different surnames for some reason. Not sure what that was all about.

  I like the idea of Rik as Birdman if he’d played him like Mad Gerald.

  Butterfield live was ace. I’m currently really enjoying his book too. 

• As a direct result of this Dwarfcast I finally watched the Bottom Exposed documentary. Although I was a fan of Bottom on TV I missed a lot of the live shows and outtakes so lots of that material was new to me, and the contributions from Ade, Ed Bye and Paul Jackson were all interesting and often moving. Plus the talking-heads stuff was better than the standard for these kinds of things.

  A good documentary and celebration of a show that never really had anything like it ever come along again (I agree with the Dwarfcast comments that House Of Fools was about as close as we ever got).

• I remember Rik and Ade on The Big Breakfast promoting it and being at pains to point out that it wasn’t a Bottom movie, and of course they’ve got different surnames for some reason. Not sure what that was all about.

  Yeah I remember this from the time too. I ultimately assumed it must be a legal thing to technically distinguish it from Bottom and make it its own thing.

• Oh I wasn’t expecting this so soon. Top notch stuff as usual. 

  I’m pretty sure they wanted to do a fourth series but the BBC said no. Shortly after the third one, I mean, not years later when it was going to be revived and set on Hooligans Island.  

  Yeah, I believe former BBC Two controller Jane Root turned it down. Rik once said “She destroyed mine and Adrian’s baby. The last series of Bottom, she didn’t like it. They never made it because she didn’t like it. It was the finest series of Bottom we’d written.“

  Richard Herring also said about her “In 1999 when we were waiting to hear if there was another series of TMWRNJ in the pipeline I was at a party talking to Steve Coogan about possibly writing for him. Jane Root approached Steve and said hello. Steve said “Do you know Richard Herring?” and Jane Root didn’t say anything but instead immediately turned her back on me. I don’t think anyone has ever been that rude to me. It was at this point that I pretty much guessed that there wasn’t going to be another series of TMWRNJ.”

  Some legacy.

• Blimey I didn’t know the Richard Herring story but I’ve heard she was widely disliked by people working in comedy, and that Judith in the League of Gentlemen’s third series was based on her. On the DVD commentary one of them says “It’s the witch!” when that character appears.

  Ade has said they wanted to make the fourth series of Bottom more outlandish, so I wonder whether stuff like the bunker and the time-travelling toilet might have been ideas for episodes that got repurposed for the later live shows.

• One thing I’ve always wondered about the fluffs, did they fuck up for real and decide to keep it in when it got a big reaction, or was it always scripted before they ever got to the stage?

  I can imagine them doing it deliberately for later tours, and it also wouldn’t surprise me if they were Hancock fans and just loved the idea of live shows going wrong. A lot of Hancock’s Half Hour was broadcast live so naturally the bloopers are embedded into the episodes for ever, and they’re always delightful: 

•  Is it called “Bottom” to mean that they’re at the bottom rung of society, or is it just because random rude word = funny? 

  Definitely just “rude word = funny” – as far as I know it was originally going to be called “Your Bottom” so that if people talked about it they would say “I saw your bottom on TV last night” etc. The eventual title is due to this not being considered acceptable, other meanings may have been invented to get it allowed at all (and allowed some title puns that wouldn’t have worked with the original title, what would Your Bottom’s Up even have meant?)

• Definitely just “rude word = funny”

  Richie also Says The Thing in the pilot (episode 3).

  

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