G&TV: Book ‘Em and Risk It (11/08/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 13th February 2025, 09:53 From the Robert Llewellyn interview in Smegazine Vol. 1 Issue #13, as recently revisited by the DwarfCast Smegazine Rack: RL: But I’ve known Mac for years and years, in fact I did my first ever television work with him. It was in about 1980, I think, in some weird programme for Channel 4 – it was recorded before the channel started. TS: What was that? RL: Bookem and Riskit. It was a pretty appalling experience. It was the first time I’d done any telly and it was a bit of a shock – very different to Red Dwarf and very different to anything else I’ve done since. But it did get broadcast – once – I think it was on the third day Channel 4 went out, and it was watched by about 7 or 8 people over the whole country, including me. This sounds like a job for the potty-mouthed archivists! We immediately set out to track down any known recordings of this obscure and elusive pilot, utilising all our detective skills, industry contacts and technical wizardry… only to discover that our good friend Jonsmad had already sent us a link to it months ago. So… good. The upload comes via comedy writer Bill Matthews (creator of Never Mind The Buzzcocks and They Think It’s All Over, fact fans), who was a very early adopter of VHS. The sound is horribly distorted at the start, but it sorts itself out around twenty minutes in. I absolutely love this. A glimpse at a time when both television and comedy were pushing new boundaries, reinventing themselves before our eyes. And it’s a time that’s vitally important to the genesis of our favourite show – while Robert and Mac were cutting their teeth here, Son of Cliché started on Radio 4 in the same month. Of course, not all of the material on display works, and some of it is downright awful. But I guess that’s the “risk it” part of the title, and you can’t fault the ethos of giving a platform to so many new and interesting acts – none of whom would ever have been considered for television just a couple of years earlier – and seeing what works. The great Arnold Brown delivering killer one liners to absolute silence is very much my cup of tea. Arden and Frost coming on at the end and completely stealing the show, doing their own brand of crowd work with an audience that includes Ben Elton and Andy De La Tour, alternative comedy pioneers who presumably just came along to see their mates. Oh, and another fun fact – mime artist Adrian Barclay played the notoriously terrifying kids’ TV character Mr Noseybonk. As for our Red Dwarf contingent, Robert is unsurprisingly for this era there as part of his comedy song and dance troupe The Joeys. They do their number Men Rap, and if you’re struggling to make it out with the audio issues, here’s a cleaner version from Pyjamarama. Whereas Mac is part of a double act called The Chip Shop Show, which has shades of his more famous Human Jukebox set up, with its homemade but fairly elaborate props to aid the comedy. He whisks us off to the far off space year of 2023 for a sci-fi parody with some jokes not a million miles away from Red Dwarf. Clearly the man was destined for the role of Hollister even at this stage.
From what I can glean from the little information online, this was the pilot for a series called Interference. And here’s a clip from that show where Mac demonstrates a computer who visibly looks up the answers to questions in a book… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csVVqPgYoJA
Slightly more plausible version of the Entangled kebab joke at 6:30. A full stage show with Mac & co and their charming props could have been a lot of ramshackle fun. I struggled to see why the Joeys couldn’t just be the Joey.
my favourite joke is 41 minutes 15 seconds in when the two terrorists look at each other and one says ‘remember our motto’ and then they just break off without revealing their motto.
Was racking my brain trying to figure out where “Book ‘Em and Risk It” is the name of something in the novels and it turned out I was remembering it from The Man in the Rubber Mask‘s audiobook but mixing it up with Chris’s reading of the in-universe novel title “Young, Bad, and Dangerous to Know” from Better Than Life.
The Smegazine’s rendering of “Bookem and Riskit” makes it sound like a sister cartoon to Stoppit and Tidyup.
Meanwhile, IMDB is still claiming that Bobby’s first TV credit is the unaired pilot episode of Not the Nine O’Clock News from 1979 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080253/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_cdt_t_44 I have been attempting to edit the page to remove this credit. I made an edit with the explanation (you’ll have to forgive the formatting here) Robert Llewellyn does not appear in this episode (made in 1979). I have reviewed the pilot on a streaming site and I believe I understand partly how this error was made. Robert Llewellyn was well known in the UK in the 1990s for playing the robot ‘Kryten’ in Red Dwarf. In this role he appears with a North American accent. It’s a very distinctive voice, and he used it in multiple voiceover roles in commercials subsequently. An example of this voice in Red Dwarf is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkM2Vk8nvkQ and is here in example in a toothpaste commercial https://youtu.be/BMRdOlBNp90?si=pcjmCW1bKSkYhewj&t=26 The role IMDB says he plays is ‘Bob Hope’. There is an appearance by a Bob Hope puppet at 11:00 into the pilot. https://youtu.be/V3IZb5lm8KI?si=JDr-w62IAkwQEpIH&t=659 By my judgement this definitely does not sound like Llewellyn. Llewellyn would have been 23 at the time – it certainly would not be chronologically impossible. His autobiography “The Man In The Rubber Mask” makes no reference to this supposed television appearance – which would be a standout – and instead he writes that his “first ever experience of working in television” was working on a Channel 4 show (Channel 4 was launched in 1982); as part of his comedy group The Joeys (which he says was active from 1980). IMDB says he was appearing under a pseudonym, that of “Rhoddie Llewellyn”, though. That appears in the credits, as part of a series of joke credits, including a number of other ficticious performers, named “Pietar Rhoodie”, “Jan Rhoodie”, “Boaz Rhoodie”, and “Arnold Rhoodie”, apparently as part of a joke related to the so-called “Muldergate” (see Wikipedia for the tedious background on this one), a scandal involving the South African government and a civil servant named Eschel Rhoodie. Roddy Llewellyn, a British baronet who had an affair with Princess Margaret, is mentioned in the episode earlier in a satirical context, and I think this name is then included as an extra joke. see https://youtu.be/V3IZb5lm8KI?si=8nsbiK91gzPXk_wc&t=1772 for the joke referring to the South African government and then immediately afterwards appear the joke credits. In the credits the ficticious “Rhoodie” performer names are all placed in a block. After a significantly gap these are then followed by the actual performers, including Rowan Atkinson, Chris Emmett and Chris Langham, although using pseudo-Afrikaans language pseudonymes (“Van” is inserted as a middle name). It is plain to me that this linkage was added in error. I am guessing that the fact that typing Rhoodie Llewellyn into your search comes up with Robert meant that someone adding these credits did not realise these were joke credits and came up with a match that they thought was good enough. their response a simple Your contribution has been declined.We have been unable to verify your contribution
If only IMDB were so stringent with their verification when Cappsy edited Norman Lovett’s profile to say he was playing Davros in The Parting of the Ways.
And honestly evilmorwen it’s probably the case that your justification was TOO well thought out and detailed.
Meanwhile, IMDB is still claiming that Bobby’s first TV credit is the unaired pilot episode of Not the Nine O’Clock News from 1979 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080253/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_cdt_t_44 I have been attempting to edit the page to remove this credit. I made an edit with the explanation (you’ll have to forgive the formatting here) Robert Llewellyn does not appear in this episode (made in 1979). I have reviewed the pilot on a streaming site and I believe I understand partly how this error was made. Robert Llewellyn was well known in the UK in the 1990s for playing the robot ‘Kryten’ in Red Dwarf. In this role he appears with a North American accent. It’s a very distinctive voice, and he used it in multiple voiceover roles in commercials subsequently. An example of this voice in Red Dwarf is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkM2Vk8nvkQ and is here in example in a toothpaste commercial https://youtu.be/BMRdOlBNp90?si=pcjmCW1bKSkYhewj&t=26 The role IMDB says he plays is ‘Bob Hope’. There is an appearance by a Bob Hope puppet at 11:00 into the pilot. https://youtu.be/V3IZb5lm8KI?si=JDr-w62IAkwQEpIH&t=659 By my judgement this definitely does not sound like Llewellyn. Llewellyn would have been 23 at the time – it certainly would not be chronologically impossible. His autobiography “The Man In The Rubber Mask” makes no reference to this supposed television appearance – which would be a standout – and instead he writes that his “first ever experience of working in television” was working on a Channel 4 show (Channel 4 was launched in 1982); as part of his comedy group The Joeys (which he says was active from 1980). IMDB says he was appearing under a pseudonym, that of “Rhoddie Llewellyn”, though. That appears in the credits, as part of a series of joke credits, including a number of other ficticious performers, named “Pietar Rhoodie”, “Jan Rhoodie”, “Boaz Rhoodie”, and “Arnold Rhoodie”, apparently as part of a joke related to the so-called “Muldergate” (see Wikipedia for the tedious background on this one), a scandal involving the South African government and a civil servant named Eschel Rhoodie. Roddy Llewellyn, a British baronet who had an affair with Princess Margaret, is mentioned in the episode earlier in a satirical context, and I think this name is then included as an extra joke. see https://youtu.be/V3IZb5lm8KI?si=8nsbiK91gzPXk_wc&t=1772 for the joke referring to the South African government and then immediately afterwards appear the joke credits. In the credits the ficticious “Rhoodie” performer names are all placed in a block. After a significantly gap these are then followed by the actual performers, including Rowan Atkinson, Chris Emmett and Chris Langham, although using pseudo-Afrikaans language pseudonymes (“Van” is inserted as a middle name). It is plain to me that this linkage was added in error. I am guessing that the fact that typing Rhoodie Llewellyn into your search comes up with Robert meant that someone adding these credits did not realise these were joke credits and came up with a match that they thought was good enough. their response a simple Your contribution has been declined.We have been unable to verify your contribution Sorted. Just don’t ask me what I did differently, because I have no idea! I have been a regular data contributor for over 20 years, so maybe they’re just more inclined to take my word for it. I’m also going to make a post on their community forums (once they open up again following maintenance work) to see if they can put any kind of block on it being re-submitted.
“Although Jackson’s early screen work has been stated to have included a role in That Peter Kay Thing, he has clarified in interviews that this is an error on IMDB, and that he has no knowledge of how it came to be credited to him, and further that he has so far been unable to remove the error from his profile.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Jackson_%28actor%29?wprov=sfla1 So not an isolated incident.
“Although Jackson’s early screen work has been stated to have included a role in That Peter Kay Thing, he has clarified in interviews that this is an error on IMDB, and that he has no knowledge of how it came to be credited to him, and further that he has so far been unable to remove the error from his profile.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Jackson_%28actor%29?wprov=sfla1 So not an isolated incident. Oh, absolutely not – it definitely happens all the time. I’ll see what I can do…
Thanks. i have found dealing with it frustrating. For ages my photo was on someone else’s IMDB page and I went through proper channels but couldn’t get it fixed. Eventually I just made a second page for my namesake and moved her credit to that, which remarkably worked.
Not IMDb but we came across a production listing for John Nathan-Turner, the Doctor Who producer from the 1980s, and the picture was of John Turner, the brief tenured Canadian prime minister from the 1980s.
