G&TV: Stand Up Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 21st November 2025, 09:41 Ah, G&TV, always a reliable indication that we've suddenly realised it's been ages since our last update. As is so often the case, we are eternally grateful to our good friend Jonsmad for keeping the G&T inbox topped up with archival treats, ready to be raided at a moment's notice. This one's a particularly juicy titbit - two episodes from the late 80s/early 90s ITV show Stand Up, both of which feature Hattie Hayridge and Craig Ferguson. Back when this programme started in 1989, whoever was in charge of naming it clearly wasn't anticipating how difficult it would be to Google in a quarter of a century's time. But from what we can gather, these episodes hail from that first series, meaning they were filmed up in Manchester not long after Hattie was there to be Hilly, and not long before she was there to be Holly. However, it was only shown regionally on its initial broadcast, whereas these recordings come from a late night national repeat in the summer of 1991. Read more →
G&TV: Comic Relief Utterly Utterly Live Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 21st March 2025, 12:46 2025 marks the fortieth anniversary of Comic Relief, the charity founded by Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry in the aftermath of Band Aid and Live Aid, to raise further funds for the victims of famine in Ethiopia. And today is Red Nose Day, the charity's now annual fundraising event in aid of various good causes throughout Africa and the UK. There was a time when this was unmissable television, with the greatest names in alternative comedy taking over BBC One for an evening of innovative, subversive and hilarious sketches and stand-up. Nowadays there's barely a comedian to be seen, with regular big name presenters introducing skits featuring reality stars and VTs about TV personalities taking on endurance events. And yet they seem to be raising more money than ever, with over £1.6 billion donated over the years, so it's hard to argue really. But it took a few years for the telethon format to be established, with the charity's early revenue streams coming from one-off live shows, books, singles, albums and videos. The very first Comic Relief event was held at the Shaftesbury Theatre in April 1986 - a star-studded stage show over three nights, recorded for later broadcast and home release. And the video of said event is what we're looking at today. I came across it recently and was shocked at just how many Dwarfy names were involved. The unmistakable voice of Chris Barrie is heard in a couple of Spitting Image skits, Howard Goodall is involved as part of Rowan Atkinson's live troupe, Mike Agnew was the production manager, the editor was Ed Wooden, the producer was Ed Bye, and Paul Jackson is credited as both a director and for co-ordinating the VHS release. Add in Lenny Henry, French & Saunders, Billy Connolly, Stephen Fry, the aforementioned Rowan Atkinson and the entire Young Ones cast to the mix, and this is truly a gathering of all the biggest legends of 1980s comedy, on both sides of the camera. Read more →
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. Read more →
G&TV: Carrott’s Lib (22/10/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 6th November 2024, 09:50 As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years, let's take the opportunity to hark back to a far happier time, ie before many of us were even sodding born. We're heading back to 1983 to take in a crucial component of the Grant Naylor oeuvre. Having pretty much mastered the art of radio comedy with the first series of Son of Cliché, it was time to take on television, and the pair began successfully submitting sketches for the likes of Paul Squire, Cannon & Ball and Three of a Kind. But arguably the most quintessentially Rob-and-Doug feeling project of this era was Carrott's Lib. Starring Jasper Carrott, one of this country's greatest ever stand-ups, this was a pre-Spitting Image topical, satirical comedy, broadcast live on Saturday nights on BBC One. Paul Jackson produced the first series, but we're going to focus instead on the first episode of series two, for reasons that will become apparent. The first thing to note is the date - the series started just eleven days after the first series of Son of Cliché concluded on Radio 4, and given how last-minute a lot of those scripts were, Rob and Doug presumably had very little time to breathe between projects. This series also established a new supporting cast for Jasper: future Cadbury's Caramel bunny Jan Ravens, alongside the trio of Nick Wilton, Nick Maloney and Chris Barrie. Now where have I seen those guys together before? Huge thanks to Jonsmad for pointing us in the direction of this YouTube upload: Read more →
Red Dwarf: Just The Franks Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 30th January 2024, 11:01 What is it about that name?
RPG Free Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 13th November 2023, 09:47 As you may have gathered, we’ve currently got a bit of a bee in our bonnet about media going missing. Ever since being described by the official site as the “potty-mouth archivists” of Red Dwarf, we’ve taken the epithet to heart, to the extent that this description is now backed up in a complete rebuild of said official site. We’ve come a long way since the 50s, 60s and 70s, when master tapes of major TV shows would be reused or binned as a matter of course, and any current releases of significant media are backed up by fans almost immediately. But there does seem to be a bit of a blind spot at around the turn of the century and a few years either side, things that were released recently enough to be documented online, but before decent upload speeds and significant storage space were available to all. Which brings us on to the Red Dwarf RPG, released in February 2003 by Deep 7 – then a fledgling and relatively new indie, now going strong for nearly twenty-five years, with games such as Arrowflight, Santa’s Soldiers and Grimmworld released to much acclaim. It was only ever officially released in the US, although it was easily accessible for purchase at conventions and online within the UK, and it spawned a couple of further additions, the A.I. Screen accessory (complete with the Extra Bits expansion pack), and the Series Sourcebook, which ambitiously converted each episode to a playable format. All of which is long since out of print, and incredibly difficult to get hold of. Well, you can currently buy a copy of the main RPG book, if you’re willing to part with £1,774.05 for it. Furthermore, digital copies are very hard to find too, particularly in the case of the expansion packs. The licensing rights to produce such a Red Dwarf game have long since expired, which makes official reprints or digital releases extremely unlikely. So unless someone happens to, I don’t know, upload high-res PDFs of absolutely every piece of material that Deep 7 produced for Red Dwarf, it’s likely to be lost forever. Oh, look at this! G&T regular Ben Paddon (they of Jump Leads fame), has sent us a link to archive.org, where someone has uploaded high-res PDFs of absolutely every piece of material that Deep 7 produced for Red Dwarf. What a coincidence! A huge thank you to all involved.
Red Dwarf: Just The Episode Titles Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 11th September 2023, 09:35 Most people would have written this video off as a bad idea as soon as they remembered what the seventh episode is called. Not us.
G&TV: Funky Bunker Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 12th July 2023, 09:11 As discussed in our recent Channel Hopping article, there was a brief period in early 1997 when Craig Charles had three different programmes on air, across three different channels, every Friday night. I'd assume we're all familiar with BBC2's Red Dwarf VII, while Channel 4's Captain Butler is still inexplicably available in full on demand. But what of the other, much more obscure offering, late night ITV's Funky Bunker? Usually starting so late at night it would conclude in the early hours of the following morning, it was a chat show/variety show hybrid in the short-lived genre of post-pub television, ie disposal entertainment, designed to be consumed exclusively whilst drunkenly picking through a kebab, to fill the silence and distract from the growing sense of existential dread. But was it any good? Well, here's a random full episode on YouTube (no way of knowing the date, for some reason I can't find any comprehensive episode guides online), so let's see what the show's got to offer. Brace yourself. Read more →
AI Art College Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 7th June 2023, 09:35 The new Beta version of Adobe Photoshop has an interesting feature called Generative Fill. You highlight a section of a canvas, and it uses AI to figure out what should be there, based on the rest of the image. Immediately, people started using it to extend famous artworks, album covers and the like. My immediate thought - what happens when you put Red Dwarf images through it? Read more →
Coral Canvass Closed! Anniversary Adventures Announced! Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 1st February 2023, 00:01 My dearest friends, I hereby declare that voting for the Coral Canvass, our mega 35th anniversary poll, is now OVER. A huge thank you to everyone who took part and indeed helped us spread the word. Submission numbers were way beyond our expectations - more than double the amount of responses we got for the Pearl Poll five years ago. And let me tell you, the results are very interesting indeed. You think certain episodes' positions are set in stone? Think again. All will be revealed at 9am on Wednesday 15th February, right here on ganymede.tv. But that's not all! For the previous two milestone anniversaries, we've accompanied the results with a little anniversary party in the form of a Live DwarfCast. This year is no exception, other than the small detail that it will be a Live Video DwarfCast instead! That's right, not only will you have to put up with irritating voices, you also have to see our repugnant faces too. So make a note in your diary to be online at 9pm on Wednesday 15th February over on our Youtube channel (though the video will be embedded here too). We'll be discussing the poll results in full, as well as dealing with your live waffles and also playing a little game... Read more →
