Yes, I really am going to contribute something to a controversial thread!

I'd just like to point out the 'Tom Baker' phone calls, which seem to be the items that everyone who talks loudly and annoyingly about "Dead Ringers" on the bus finds funniest, are the sort of lame jokes which were being peddled by the worst and weakest "Doctor Who" fanzines over ten years ago. And as I used to write for the damn things, I am perfectly qualified in making this judgement.

I find it variably average to pretty good, not stuendously outstanding. The spoof phone calls (mostly purporting to be from Tom Baker) make me cringe and I've actually turned off whilst these are on, but maybe that's a personal thing - I don't find the concept of laughing at other unsuspecting people's reactions amusing; even when John Shuttleworth (comedy hero) has delved into this in one or two of his shows. It makes me squirm.

I like the Brian Perkins stuff, good impressions, idea perhaps lifted from Grevious Bodily Radio (I'll stick my neck out here and say I loved that brief series).

This recent series of Dead Ringers seemed better than the first, though can't put my finger on why.

Is there too much publicity for "Dead Ringers"? Some would say a radio show being hyped out of all proportion just about brings it into line with the level of recognition radio comedies in general ought to deserve, of course� As I've said here before, and as you seem to accept, DR is really not a bad show as topical R4 stuff goes: better than "The Way It Is", far better than "The Now Show", with the best bits probably as good as "Week Ending" ever got. (I'm a bit less keen to defend it after hearing last week's, which, to be honest, was pretty hopeless). Its chief merit is in being competent rather than innovative, though, and any claim for it as "the future of comedy" would be way off the mark. But *is* anybody claiming this? You don't dwell on the fact that *all* the praise and discussion (so far as I know) has been *within* the radio world: Feedback, continuity, trails, newsgroups, Radio Festival, Ned Sherrin. If it were the case that, for instance, R4 was deliberately hyping the show because it needs a comedy success right now, I'd expect the show to receive more plugs in the outside world, and, specifically, on the telly. If that starts happening I'll accept you've got a point: as things stand, however, very few people have even heard of "Dead Ringers" - as evidenced by the fact that nobody seems to be offering views on the matter here, except for the usual suspects like me and Sheep.

I reckon the "hype" can be explained fairly simply. "Dead Ringers" picked up a lot of fans among the Radio 4 audience very quickly because so much of it is about Radio 4. It's just the shop humour principle. And of course the continuity people will want to talk about it, because it does jokes about Brian Perkins and as far as they're concerned he's the bloke from the office. I reckon the plugging came on the back of the listener interest, not the other way round. (If they could really make this work the other way round, they'd have done so with the Now Show). I'm going to nail my colours to the mast here and say that the situation is nothing to worry about. I don't accept that a bit of overboard publicity here is a disaster on a par with the sky falling in or the recommissioning of the I've Got A Cock Show.

Should you want a conspiracy theory, however, you're welcome to mine�

I've heard mention in the past of persistent friction between the producers in the Light Ent department (or whatever it's changed its name to now) who develop the shows, and the station management who schedule them and have ultimate say over commissioning decisions. Comedy producers are more inclined towards trying out ideas that might not work and "bringing new writers forward" with their own shows; the (administratively separate) Radio 4 management, by reputation at least, can't understand what's wrong with just making panel games all the time, since they're efficient and uncontroversial and people seem to like or at least tolerate them.

Now, the axing of Week Ending was (someone correct me if I'm wrong) a decision imposed by Four on LE, as part of Jimmy Boyle's legendary Changes - which, it's fair to say now the dust has settled, were as pointless and ill-conceived as everyone made out at the time. And this decision knocked a bloody great hole in Light Ent's overall strategy. For most of its lifetime, WE actually had far more significance for the writers and producers than for the listeners: we saw it as an innocuous twenty-five minute dose of lame and sometimes not-so-lame topical gags, but its real purpose (some understood this better than others) was to allow producers to get groups of writers together, and to allow newcomers to try out their art in an environment where the inevitable proportion of duff results wasn't a problem. The LE writer-farming system has actually become very sophisticated during the Bill Dare era, with programmes like "The Very World of Milton Jones" and "Life, Death and Sex�" allowing commissioned writers to assume steadily more and more responsibility. But without some means of finding writers to commission in the first place (putting aside "Huddlines", which isn't in the right style), the system was no use. And this has been painfully visible since 1997.

But now they've got "Dead Ringers". And it's a winning formula. A dream ticket, if you will. Effectively it can be used in exactly the same way as "Week Ending", which couldn't satisfactorily be replaced by anything but a close copy of itself; but it's sufficiently different from "Week Ending" that Four don't have to admit they were wrong. The LE people are happy because they've regained a show sufficiently format-free for fiddling-around purposes; the Four people are happy because the programme is reliable and popular, and connects perfectly with their precious Radio 4 demographic.

It's also 'safe', of course - but, by some weird alchemy, it seems to be infallibly so: any material put into the Dead Ringers context *becomes* safe because the audience goodwill is so high. Look at Holmes and Hurst's 'Naked Thora Hird' joke. This originally aired on their show "Grievous Bodily Radio" (mentioned by Sheep above), which was conceived as a Radio 1 show but went out in a post-11pm slot on Four. I've no evidence that there were complaints about this joke in particular, but it's certainly typical of the material which caused a welter of Feedback complaints, causing substantial cuts in subsequent shows before transmission, the result being that the show was decommissioned for, as the explanation given actually had it, "not being Radio 4 enough." A couple of weeks ago, the exact same joke aired on "Dead Ringers" at about twenty to seven in the evening. To my knowledge, nobody complained. Nobody even blushed. OK, they didn't include the "drooping" which originally preceded "dairy arrangement", but that's unlikely to have had much effect.

Rightly or wrongly, I think, *that* is what they're so pleased with themselves about.

Well here we go, cue sound of record being straightened...

1) David Spicer has never produced this programme.

2)Most of the scripts are not unsolicited. 'Dead Ringers' has always had a core of commissioned writers, such as myself, Tom Jamieson, Jon Holmes, Andy Hurst, Simon Blackwell, and Gerard Foster.

3)The 'Radio Times' HAS ignored us, bar one complimentary letter featured on their 'readers writes' page.

4) I'm not sure we ARE 'up-and-coming' writers...Indeed, one look at my CV shows me to be a well-worn hack with a shameful history. I don't think we are seen in this light by the BBC, so the BBC talent stuff doesn't really bear close scrutiny.

Whenever a R4 show is commissioned, the producer (in this case Bill) looks around for the best (available) sketch writers he had. The show is always on the look-out for new writers, that's true, but we haven't found any that have made an impact yet. By no stretch of the imagination are we an 'open-door' show in the way that 'Weekending' was; in fact I think we're less open-door than 'The Way It is'.

5) It has had an immediate impact, and I think many of the theories put forward are true - the R4 'in jokes' for one. I think the reason is simpler. Not since 'Weekending has Radio four has had a mainstream sketch show in a 'popular' slot; e.g. not the middle of the night!
This is not to denigrate other sketch shows, but in general, they have appealed to younger/student listeners (Nualas, Fellah's hour) and not to the broad swathe of mature listeners which make up the bulk of the audience.

6. James - it was James Boyle's decision to axe 'Weekending' but I think a lot of listeners and producers thought it was the right one. The show was inconsistent, and unloved by the department, and thought of as 'had its day'.
'Dead Ringers' was, i think, an inevitable result of the need to try another sketch show in what is designated 'The Satirical Slot' to compliment the panel game (News Quiz) and the Stand-Up (Now Show). It's understandable that it tried to avoid the pitfalls of 'Weekending', going semi-topical, going live for a better atmosphere, avoiding long runs, having a smaller team of writers and professional impressionists. There are obvious comparisons with 'Weekending' as it is difficult to completely re-invent the wheel, e.g. the satirical sketch show, but I don't see any conspiracy theory in having a new sketch show.

I hope that's set a fact amongst the pigeons.

See? Proper rational discussion. I knew it could be done.

BTW while we're doing facts-sorting-out stuff: surely this is the *second* series, not the third? The first series having been a brief run of four shows earlier this year. Or am I wrong?

Correct James. Second series indeed. Third one is in November. Thank you (and 'Sheep') for your kind words about Grievous Bodily Radio. Spot on about the material agenda by the way. Ten points.

Yup, it's the second series. Third one going out at the end of the year.

I don't hear Dead Ringers very often, but whatever anyone may say about the terrible, old-hat Dr Who material, I must say Jon Culshaw's impersonation of Tom Baker is very, very good. Tom isn't someone you'd expect to hear being impersonated EVER, so fair play! Makes a change from Blair, Hague, Victor Meldrew et al.

Shame Jon's request to have The Doctor ring up "This Morning" during the end of series phone-in the other week, and beg Nicky Clarke to give The Master a make-over came to nought. That would have amused me even more.

Jon, you're writing DR and TWII this week.
You're up far too late.

But take On The Hour, for example - lots of R4 parodies, and a tone that was right up most listeners' streets...but no publicity and hype whatsoever. I'm assuming that the show *did* receive letters from fans, but they weren't made public. The same can also be said of a lot of excellent R4 comedies since.

Don't really see why you think The Nualas had a young/student audience. The chuckle-along-while-doing-the-washing-up audience that Dead Ringers is aimed at would also have enjoyed their world. The difference is that The Nualas was an exceptional show, and worthy of the attention it didn't receive.

And why did the Radio Times feature that letter? They NEVER cover radio comedy, unless they see a bandwagon is about to leave them behind.

Re: Unsolicited scripts. Danny Wallace was asking his 'Funny Talk' readers to send in material earlier this year, as I remember.

I also thought the puff piece (by any other name) on Feedback was very sinister, particularly the talk of a television transfer. Sometimes I think they don't realise how blatant they are.

But...y'know.

[Jon Holmes: There should be a letter from us awaiting you c/o Broadcasting House - wasn't sure whether this was reliable or not. Let us know if you don't receive it.]

"Now, us at SOTCAA are miserable bastards who see conspiracy theories in everything, right? We're also failed comedy writers who want to deny everyone else success."

At last! They admit it.

Letter? Haven't yet. Is it a SOTCAA bomb packed with a timer primed to go off during the Dead Ringers recording?

First off, thanks for the praise for the Nualas, I'm sure from your extensive research that you know that Tom and I were writers on their radio series, thanks! I'm sure you'll agree that the Nualas were more 'offbeat' and you had to buy into their world, which takes a bit more effort than listening to a straightforward sketch show which is DR. That's all I was saying, no slagging off other shows, nothing like that.

My e-mail was just to set a few facts straight. FACTS. I'm not dancing on the heads of pins here. I was just trying to be helpful, not start an debate about what is and what isn't an unsolicited script and what is and what isn't publicity.

FACT: There have been NO unsolicited scripts on the show, much as we'd like new writers. There is NO link to BBC Talent.

FACT: We have been frustrated by the lack of publicity, particularly from Beeb sponsored organs. There was no fanfare that we were starting up again, no previews...This is understandable as reviewers go by preview tapes and of course, none were available.

FACT: Any publicity has come about from positive newspaper reviews, personal selections on 'Pick of the Week' and an item that 'Feedback' chose to do in the light of an overwhelmingly positive mailbag. I think they were sick of featuring slaggings-off and want to talk about a success story for a change.

FACT: On the Hour was 10 years ago, and the BBC has changed a lot in those years. The fact they are more willing to respond to praise now does not really merit a grumble as to how different these two comedy shows were treated. The Beeb were in better shape a few years ago and were probably not counting the comedic blessings. And anyway, isn't this by the by, discussing the spin a comedy gets by it's sponsor is hardly the same as discussing comedy, is it..?

A few more disconnected comments...

> But take On The Hour, for example - lots of R4 parodies, and a tone that was right up most listeners' streets...but no publicity
> and hype whatsoever. I'm assuming that the show *did* receive letters from fans, but they weren't made public. The same can
> also be said of a lot of excellent R4 comedies since.

I see what you're getting at, but the difference is still there... there were lots of R4 parodies in OTH, certainly, but the general tone was, initially at least, alien and confusing to the bulk of the audience who find shows like DR perfectly accessible. OTH was a challenging programme, far more audiophonically complicated than any other Light Ent show I can think of. It very carefully avoided most of the obvious techniques, with a lot of the humour coming from the crucifixion of the English language, and bashed together what ideas were left in a way that had never been attempted before. You know this far better than I do.

This means that OTH is (rightly) venerated as one of the greatest shows of the '90s, if not *the* greatest... but it means there couldn't possibly have been the immediate groundswell of fandom which DR attracted. I remember the first mention of OTH on "Feedback" was a complaint about the 'Big Street Station' piece, on the grounds that this was insensitive mockery of disaster victims -- surely this illustrates that much of the audience initially missed the point. There would have been no value in pushing a series like OTH hard at such an early stage -- it needed time to build up a following (which it's got -- and I agree with you 100% about the cassette release). Also, if my memory serves, OTH had one of those right-hand-side-of-the-page 'choice' features, with accompanying picture, at the time of its first transmission, which DR didn't.

>And why did the Radio Times feature that letter? They NEVER cover radio comedy, unless they see a bandwagon is about to
>leave them behind.

As I've said, I don't believe they make the letters up, but I will accept they show a bias towards uncritical, enthusiastic, short and uncomplicated letters. The DR letter met these criteria.

>I also thought the puff piece (by any other name) on Feedback was very sinister,

The smugness of the 'Feedback' piece didn't indicate to me anything over and above the smugness of 'Feedback' in general... but that's another rant.

As to the 'open-door' policy, or lack of it, on DR... My "new Week Ending" comments, and the Corpses' comments, probably make more sense with reference to that first, four-show series. Nev's described what the position is now, but I remember those original shows did have a credits list of WE proportions (hence the speeding-up gag, I presume), with various established names followed by a gaggle of others. Most of whom I recognised, not from their prowess in the writing world, but from being characters one or two years ahead of me at a well-known and pointy university who were arsing around and putting posters of themselves up while I was slaving over a hot crystal lattice. Oh, and Danny Wallace *did* solicit material via FT, though that's not to say any of it was ever used.

Off-topic, I see the Radio Times blerb for the Way It Is transfer mentioned above (BBC1, this Thursday 23:35) describes it as "the Radio 4-based comedy sketch show". Bit damning as regards permanent transfer prospects, surely?

>Off-topic, I see the Radio Times blerb for the Way It Is transfer mentioned above (BBC1, this Thursday 23:35) describes it as "the Radio 4-based comedy sketch show". Bit damning as regards permanent transfer prospects, surely?

They had to do something drastic to draw attention away from the other likely prejudicial view of it as "the BBC's answer to the 11 O'Clock Show." At least it's not *that* damning.

By way of a detour, Nev (if you're still there) what happened to the second series of The Nualas that was mooted a few months back? Is it still hapening?

1. BBC Commissioning whatsits get paid for each idea they have that gets commissioned.

2. This means that they effectively write their own cheques.

3. Bill Dare produced 'Spitting Image'

4. 'Dead Ringers' is 'Spitting Image' on the radio.

5. A surprising number of Bill Dare's stuff has appeared on R4

6. This is at the expense of other peoples (almost certainly better) ideas.

7. Radio 4 is one of the main springboards to TV/Film Comedy.

So a main factor in the shit state of comedy is the fact that this unbeleivable commissioning policy exists, effectively reducing the chances of any new, fresh comedy being given a chance.

>They had to do something drastic to draw attention away from the other likely prejudicial view of it as "the BBC's
>answer to the 11 O'Clock Show." At least it's not *that* damning.

We're in a funny situation here because for something to be a pale imitation of the 11OCS would... technically... mean it was better than the 11OCS. Er, I think. Someone who wrote to me about "The Way It Is" described it as "a sort of On The Hour With Mike And Sue" -- I think that would do, if we could work in an "...on acid!" in there somewhere.

-- I was about to have a go at remembermanisnotalonenearmaniscountryofothers' argument there, but I'd better leave it to someone with a better Fact supply...

The second series of the Nualas; well, that's a loooooooooooooooooooooong story, of which I'm not going into here, suffice to say that at the moment a second series is unlikely.

Re: James, nothing to add there, cogent, reasoned comment which I largely agree with, just to add about the first series...

It is important to bear in mind that in the credits for the first series and part of the second there were 'false names' added to the end. This was because, as the credits were speeded up in a jokey manner, (a joke which, as a contributing writer, I didn't find that funny) it meant that the last garbled names weren't that of real, hard-working writers.

This was dropped because we were getting slated, 'Weekending' style, for the numbers of writers on the credits. We were getting all the usual '18 writers, for this? What were they doing?' type crap from one reviewer in particular, when in reality the writers and/or pairs of writers were only about between 5 and 7.

When the first series started, Bill trawled far and wide for writers to contribute, as any producer would. It turned out that some weren't suited, some were too busy, some didn't 'get it' and the present team, Me & Tom, Jon & Andy, Simon, Gerard, later joined by Laurence Howarth, Paul McKenzie & Dave Cohen and others took shape pretty quickly.

I don't understand why you lot have such a downer on Danny Wallace. He's just trying to do his job. When DR started he was one of a number of new trainee producers in the department along with Mario and Adam. He and Mario became assistant producers on DR and their main job - as it is now for Adam Bromley - to seek out new writers. It was only common sense that he put it on his website, and nothing to do with BBC talent. It's not his fault that writer's didn't get on the show; Bill has final say what is include and what isn't.

To the person with the tiresomely pretentious appelation; Bill is not in charge of commissioning programmes; he may have a little more clout than your average producer, but he cannot 'write himself a blank cheque'.

Hope this clears a few things up.

>It is important to bear in mind that in the credits for the first series and part of the >second there were 'false names' added to the end.

Oh blimey... I've always been credulous about credits. I'm forever having to weed false people out of my website. I'd clocked that some of the final names as the list headed into gibberish were obviously not what they seemed, but... were some of the names, by any chance, real writers who had nothing to do with the show? (I can see the artistic case there: I reckon 'Bob and Barbara Boulton' should be added to all credits lists at all times).

Also -- can Matt Holness, Rupert Russell etc somehow be made retrospectively fictional? This would simplify the accounting somewhat.

Heard some of Dead Ringers yesterday - it seemed to be very funny, well performed and written. Maybe it's receiving hype because it's better than most R4 comedy?

Awww, shucks! Yur makin' me blush ma'am!

(name removed) and (name removed) write this website.(name removed) and (name removed) write this website.(name removed) and (name removed) write this website.(name removed) and (name removed) write this website.(name removed) and (name removed) write this website.