1. A few specially-recorded trailers were made to promote the pilot and first series of Not The Nine O’Clock News, one of which featured Chris Langham dressed as a Red Indian standing next to the BBC2 logo. Our source for this bit of information was an old Guardian article written by someone whose name we’ve forgotten which we can’t possibly retrieve because it’s at the bottom of a box we can no longer find. Yes, it’s research like that which makes Some Of The Corpses Are Amusing a true force to be reckoned with in academic circles.

[NOTE: Nobody has ever given a clear reason why Chris Langham was dropped from the team after the first series. The official reason was that he ‘didn’t quite fit’, which - to anyone who’s ever watched the first series will testify - is patently balls. While it’s easy and trendy to be crawly bumlick about unsung underdogs from obscure, never-repeated shows, it would be a foolish man who tried to claim that Langham was acting out of pitch with the others. There must have been another reason. In most articles and documentaries on the subject, he is only mentioned as a footnote, and his departure is glossed over. This often gives the impression that the real reason why he left was known to most TV insiders of the time, but nobody wishes to divulge it. What has been documented, however, is that Langham refused to talk to Rowan Atkinson for a long time afterwards, believing that - since Atkinson was being promoted as ‘the star of the show’ - he was somehow to blame for his sacking. In fact, Langham only learned several years later that Atkinson had actually been a great believer in Langham, and had practically begged producer John Lloyd to keep him in the show.]

The Ayatolla Song - single release. Lovely. Four quid it cost. In a little shop in Brighton. Bought a copy of Peter Cook's 'Ballad of Spotty Muldoon' too…

[NOTE: Jones’ closing abuse in Hey Wow (‘You look revolting...have you seen a doctor about that scab?’) was re-recorded for the LP, although the original laughter was retained.]

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(a) Many musical numbers (including those used as backing music) have been mixed for stereo, suggesting that Lloyd was utilising the original, multi-track masters. Hence, some songs appear without audience laughter, and this has generally been employed where the audience enjoyed visual jokes - ‘I Like Trucking’ (27/10/80) being a good example. It has also been possible to remove the audience laughter from pre-recorded sketches (eg, ‘Sir Robert Mark’ 27/10/80), in which you can hear his angry cry of ‘This isn’t Starsky & Hutch you know...’).

(b) The line in the LP version of the ‘Rumbley’s Pies’ sketch (1/3/82) about ‘any hiccups’ was not present in the original broadcast, nor has it featured in any TV compilations since:

The belch is clearly a sound effect dropped into the soundtrack, suggesting the amusement was largely visual.

(c) The beginning of the ‘Kinda Lingers’ song (8/3/82) utilises a different vocal. However, a later verse ('Even saying kinda lingers brings a tear to my eye / But at least we never said goodbye…') was excluded from the album.

(d) Rowan is heard to yell ‘Come on!’ after telling his plants to grow up (8/2/82); on the TV version, it cuts off immediately after the punchline.

(e) In the Kate Bush parody, ‘England My Leotard’ (3/11/80), the words ‘cauliflower quiches’ is changed to ‘carrot quiches’ for the LP: we might have concluded that the song was re-performed in order to construct a proper stereo mix, but the LP does not appear to utilise a different vocal for the rest of the lyrics.

[NOTE: A bearded compilation album of BBC comedy was released in 1982 called The BBC's Laughing Stock. Along with all the obvious selections from the Goons, Round The Horne, Noel's Funny Phone Calls (and anything else they happened to have released) were two selections from NTNOCN - 'General Synod's Life Of Python' (placed after 'Nudge Nudge' from the BBC's Flying Circus LP) and 'Bad Language' (following some 50s filth from Julian & Sandy). What's interesting about the latter selection is that, although having been released on 'Hedgehog Sandwich', the version presented here doesn't feature the tightening up of the end of the sketch (Griff's 'Wang, wang wang…' is very much evident) but does include the extended footstep sequence which originally linked it to 'Gift Shop' (here it links to nothing as it's the last track on Side 1!). Rowan's first line also starts as a clean edit (albeit mixed with the applause fade of the Round The Horne sketch) whereas on Hedgehog it had been drowned out by the Not theme and laughter of the previous item. This suggests that the Laughing Stock LP compilers had access to test-edits of Hedgehog Sandwich tracks.

Pass the Kleenex, please…]

[*NOTE: The order of transmission was as follows - 1/5/4/6/7/2/8/3]

[NOTE (1): The 1995 compilations were apparently aimed at the American market, and sketches were perhaps rejected on the basis of containing too many Anglocentric references. Although quite why ‘Sir Robert Mark’ was considered more accessible to the US than ‘Divorce Ceremony’ is a mystery.]

'Wilt thou leave this drunken shit who is thy wedded husband?'

[NOTE (2): It is also possible that ‘England My Leotard’ was dropped due to PRS reasons, as its melody is virtually identical to the verse sections of Kate Bush’s song ‘Them Heavy People’ (from The Kick Inside, 1978). Indeed, the song is credited on Hedgehog Sandwich thus:

ENGLAND MY LEOTARD (Kate Bush)/Kate
Bush Music Ltd. sub. pub. by EMI MUSIC LTD
(Lyrical pastiche: Peter Brewis)

Since this is the only NOT parody to be credited in this fashion, it may be the case that a legal hassle ensued over the song way back in 1981 (perhaps similar to Neil Innes’ legal hassles over his ‘Rutles’ parodies).]

[NOTE (3): Oh yeah, speaking of 'Divorce Ceremony', when the sketch was performed as part of the Secret Policeman's Ball it was slightly longer, Atkinson's speech spilling over a bit:

MINISTER (ATKINSON)
Those whom I have put asunder I bet no man can join together.  Dearly beloved, divorce is an honourable state and is not to be taken in hand lightly, inadvisedly or wantonly to satisfy men's carnal lusts, although that's a pretty good reason, [and forasmuch as Dennis and Muriel have consented to abandon holy wedlock and instead to pledge their troth to whomsoever tickles their fancy, I pronounce that they shall be man and woman apart and henceforward shall be free to be swingers and frequent singles' bars that have been approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps dancing cheek to cheek.  Amen.]

So there y'go.]

Sadly, many other songs suffered a similar fate, with favourites like ‘Gob On You’ (6/11/79) being reduced to a half of their original length. It was also true of ‘Hey Wow’, where Rhys Jones strolled into the real studio audience and began insulting them: this couldn’t be accommodated structurally, and the sketch therefore ends very awkwardly. If Lloyd had kept the rushes for a bit longer, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

[NOTE: The full unedited versions of both ‘The Aide’ and ‘Poland’ are available on the BBC Radio Collection release.]

Some views of ‘I Like Trucking’ cut from the 95 compilations due to irremovable credits.

[NOTE: Many sketches (‘Alibee’, ‘Gorilla Interview’) have lines missing, often for no obvious reason. ‘Not 7’ (the fifth compilation to be broadcast) is a prime offender: ‘Points Of View’ is cut off before the amusing reference to ‘Barry Took, c/o almost everything put out by the BBC’, while ‘National Wealth Beds’ (16/10/79) omits a few lines and - in a further demonstration of showing off - incorporates a suicide quickie. Worst of all, ‘Golf Trousers’ cuts off after ‘There are no flies on this man’, depriving us of the fantastic tag line: ‘What a professional, what a contender...(slight chuckle) what a prick!’.]

12. We’re currently updating this article completely after having recently acquired the complete Not The Nine O’Clock News on video. We’ll wait until Rob explains the mysteries of HTML before doing this properly otherwise the poor sod will be up all night. Until then here are a few of our latest discoveries:

Many Not songs on the video compilations had to be truncated prematurely due to unremovable end-credits. We’ve said that. However, there is one exception - namely, the gloriously stupid ‘I Like Bouncing’ from Series 2. This track (featuring the band Sox) puzzled many Not fans who remembered it purely from the album, until they saw the visuals and chorused as one ‘Ah, it’s a ska parody - I see...’ However, some discerning Not fans may also have been excited by another factor - that here was final proof that John Lloyd had some kind of raw footage to hand while editing the compilations...

Below is a shot-by-shot guide to the situation. (If any members of Sox are reading this, we’re sorry but we don’t know your names. You were fucking great anyway.)

-First bar played under visuals of preceding sketch
[On the video, the first two bars are played under Gerald the Gorilla’s daffodil saying ‘He bloody does eat daffodils you know...’]
Quick cuts of the following:
-Mel with hand aloft [Cut for video]
-Black guitarist
-Wobbly, out of focus shot of band [Cut for video]
-Bouncing black keyboard player
-Bouncing man in hat
-Bouncing white keyboard player
-Drummer
-Saxophonist
-Close-up of keyboard
-Medium shot of Rowan, who sings the chorus

-Brief four-bar bridge: Cuts to shot of band (starting on white guitarist), and pull back
-Mel opens lager can
-Another medium shot of Rowan for the second verse
[Start video credits ]

-Pull back to reveal two-shot of Rowan and Mel as the chorus is sung for the second time
-Start first section of original credits [Removed for video ]

-Cut to saxophonist; pull back to reveal black keyboard player

-As the chorus ends and the ‘oww!’ is heard, cut to the drum kit. Pull out from this during four-bar bridge to reveal rest of band (Rowan headbutting tambourine shown from the side)

[On the video, we see a frontal-shot of Rowan mime the ‘oww!’ and do some elaborate goose-stepping while headbutting the tambourine; essentially the above sequence from a different angle.]

-End first section of original credits [Removed for video]
-Quick shot of band member hitting xylophone (Ding! sound) [We do not see this on the video; End video credits at this point]
-Cut to close-up of Rowan singing the final verse

[On the video, we do not see any more visuals from the performance - the remainder of the song is heard under the ‘Caber tosser/Toilet’ sketch.]

-Cut to long shot of entire band for the last chorus (less-frames-per-second FX)
-Start second section of original credits

-For the closing instrumental riff, we begin on a shot of the white guitarist before panning out as far as the black keyboard player (also with less-fields-per-second FX). Blackout for final few bars.
-Last few credits (Lloyd, Hardie, etc) on blackout. Song ends cleanly without applause.

To summarise then, Lloyd was utilising some kind of ‘clean’ copy sans end credits in addition to some previously unseen camera rushes of Rowan’s headbutts. It would appear. He was also doing this more than fifteen years after transmission. How was this possible? And, more to the point, HOW MUCH MORE ‘ALTERNATIVE’ MATERIAL OF THIS KIND WAS ALSO AVAILABLE TO YOU, JOHN? That’s what we wanna know. With your hair.

John Lloyd was presumably editing the first Not LP (released November 1980) at around the same time as the second TV series. As such, he perhaps had the opportunity to master sketches before they entered post production, or maybe in pure rushes form. What else can explain the following?

(a) ‘Ayatollah Song’ starts cleanly on the LP (following the line from ‘Life Of Python’ about explicit sex thinly disguised as choreography); on the TV version, this first line was obscured and smothered in applause.

(b) Janet Street Porter’s line about ‘Nazis against fascism’ (at the end of ‘Stout Life’) appears to have been taken from a ‘clean’ recording of the session; on the TV version, there is (unclearable?) music under her words.

(c) There is an extra exchange in ‘Gerald The Gorilla’:

(d) Barry Took’s closing line from ‘Points Of View’ (‘Goodnight, sleep tight, hope the bugs don’t bite...’) is heard in full on the LP; on the TV version, it cuts off after ‘Goodnight’.

[NOTE: Rowan Atkinson’s closing address on the ‘Points Of View’ sketch (‘If you want to write, praising the BBC to the skies...’) was re-recorded for the LP, since - on the TV version - we hear the theme music under his words. An example here of musicless raw footage not being available, oddly. Said theme music is also cut from the beginning of the LP sketch, suggesting it was a PRS problem. Luckily this wasn’t a case for the video release, and we got to see those fantastic jump-cuts of Took in his chair during the title sequence Sadly, Lloyd omitted the closing section, which showed Took revolving on his swivel chair in the same arty manner. Perhaps he thought previously unseen Sox footage was exciting enough.]

The ‘Aeroplane Toilet’ sketch (Series 2, Show 2; 7/4/80), where passengers become concerned as a ‘Toilet Engaged’ sign descends into a graphic commentary on an imminent defecation, was done in front of the studio audience. But how on earth did they pace the amusement so that the laughter was bang on the money? Surely the audience would have seen the changing captions (‘No luck yet’, ‘Hang on, what’s this?’, etc) out of sync with the intended vision-mixing? Well, a perusal of a later sketch in the same show (in which Rowan apologises to the audience for murdering his family, with the entire studio set in shot) reveals that the aeroplane seats were facing away from the audience. Therefore, a flat was presumably brought on for the sketch in question, obscuring the set itself and forcing the audience to watch the proceedings (with their intended pacing and vision-mixing) on the overhead monitors.

There is an odd moment/edit in the ‘British Academy Awards’ sketch (Series 2, Show 2; 7/4/80). Here is a transcript of the full thing:

Was this a genuine fluff on Atkinson’s part? Was the ‘telephone table’ line intended as the line before the bathetic ‘Derek Nimmo’ (which would have worked better rhythmically)? If so, why did Atkinson insist on saying it rather than just proceeding with the sketch? Another theory is that this was a deliberate anti-bathos line and Atkinson, put off his stride by Stephenson who came in with her ‘But first...’ line too soon, managed to stay in character. Other deciding factors include (a) the fact that Stephenson’s face does show signs of ‘Oh shit, I’ve fucked it up’ wincing as she is interrupted, and that Atkinson’s slight double-take before he says ‘I’m sorry’ looks pretty theatrical. Also, of course, for this to be a genuine omission, it would have to be Stephenson who delivered the ‘Derek Nimmo’ line. Unless there was another bit which they forgot.

The section was cut from the 1995 video version, anyway. The jump was covered up by stock footage of a wildebeest farting or something.

We’re not sure how expensive Billy Connolly was in 1980, but it’s likely that, shagging Pam or not, he only did one session for NTNOCN. Since most of the sketches featuring him come from Series 2, Show 6 (‘Janet Street Porter’, ‘Campari And Soda’, etc), it is possible that the potentially troublesome ‘Ayatollah Song’ (where he makes a cameo as Khomeini) was recorded for this show and then held back a week.

The sketch on the 1995 compilation where Mel buys some Osmonds tickets from a spivvy tout was actually an additional tag to a much longer sketch, where a cashier refused to believe that Mel was over 18. The sketch, as we see it on the compilation, actually starts with Mel walking angrily away from the grille in a ‘oh sod it, we’ll go somewhere else’ type fashion. Incidentally, this sketch was nicked - pretty much word for word - by the Blue Jam team, who added the clever 90s twist of doing it really slowly.

The ‘I Believe’ sketch about devil worship (Series 2, Show 4) originally began with a title sequence cutting stock footage to the strains of George Harrison’s 1971 chart-topper ‘My Sweet Lord’. This was cut from the video (and the LP), presumably for PRS reasons, meaning ‘The Devil - Is He All Bad?’ title was captioned, but ‘I Believe’ itself wasn’t. It’s also possible that Lloyd cut the sequence because it featured a shot of a naked, Satanic initiation ceremony and he wanted to keep the video down to a commercially-minded ‘12’ certification.

The photo montages on the cover of the first Not LP (the team meeting the Queen, Mel doing a streak, etc) were originally used in the opening titles of Series 2, Show 6.

The closing credits of Series 2, Show 7 (the last in that series) features a few highlights from the previous few programmes cut, for some reason, to The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pocket’. These were taken from ‘clean’ film stock, since one sketch (a parody of a government information film, with a yobbish Rowan getting shot by suburban vigilantes) no longer featured an on-screen caption telling the viewers to be ‘more brutal’.

During the ‘Rowan’s Rant’ about Esther Rantzen (Series 1, Show 2), a confused floor manager - believing Atkinson to be a genuine audience member - came into shot to restrain him. This was left in the final edit of the programme.

13. There was apparently a plan, around the time of the 1995 compilations, for UK Gold to repeat the original series in its entirity (including the original first episode with the unfamiliar cast of Rowan Atkinson, Chris Emmett, Willoughby Goddard, Christopher Godwin, John Gorman, Jonathan Hyde, and Chris Langham - destined for transmission on 2/4/79 but censored due to its ‘overtly political content’ during the current General Election and pulled from the schedules). Sadly, boring old legal hassles raised their tiresome heads and the plans were shelved.

15. Hedgehog Sandwich ends with a loud, agonised male scream followed by Griff Rhys Jones saying ‘Well, I’m buggered if I’m going out there tonight...’. This is incomprehensible to anyone who had not seen the sketch in question, and was included presumably in an attempt to generate discussions like this. The sketch (27/10/80) parodied the play The Romans In Britain, then playing at the National Theatre and receiving condemnation from Mary Whitehouse over its full-frontal nudity and a scene where a Roman slave is raped. Jones, dressed as a Roman slave, stands in the wings waiting for his entrance. On hearing the scream, he turns to a centurion next to him (Mel Smith) and delivers the line.

16. (The Memory) Kinda Lingers ends with an out-take: the sound of a man puffing and panting while a woman (Stephenson) offers encouragement. Reaching what sounds like an orgasm, the man is congratulated by the woman who says ‘Right - perhaps you’d like to try it now without Mr Johnson’. An educated guess suggests that this was set in a sperm bank, and - if so - would have been very risqué for its time, and its censure would not have been surprising. There is also a strange, speeded-up laugh after the punchline, suggesting that the material had never been shown to an audience.

18. The 1995 compilations were repeated in the summer of 1999. Censorship was evident in the second compilation (‘NOT 5’ on the video), where the footage of Princess Diana turning on the Soho lights (22/2/82) was cut out. Strangely, however, the censor didn’t seem troubled by the joke about Diana’s hat blowing off during a ride with Prince Charles. That’s my boy. Meanwhile, the 28/4/80 monologue about giving princesses to the Saudis so they can be executed (which wasn’t included on the compilations) will almost certainly be deemed unbroadcastable, if and when the BBC decide to repeat the series in full. Despite the fact, of course, that Diana wasn’t famous at that point, and the joke refers to Princesses Anne and Margaret.

"NOT THE NINE O’CLOCK NEWS" (EMI, 1980)

"HEDGEHOG SANDWICH" (BBC, 1981)
(REB 421) (Also on cassette: ZCF 421)