I think it's important to know who the warm-up was, for then we can gauge how much the audience's response is due to the scriptwriters of the main show.

For exmaple, I once heard Una Stubbs complaining bitterly in an interview that she'd had to perform a comedy in front of an audience who'd just seen some controversial debate programme (this was in the early days of TV, I think), and so the show had died on its arse despite being basically OK under normal conditions (she reckoned).

Equally, a good warm-up would make the audience more indulgent to a show, a bad one put them in a bad mood.

Any studio-audience veterans out there who agree/disagree?

>In the new Radio Times, friday's Red Dwarf credits Tony Hawks in the cast as 'Warm-Up'. He didn't play this part in any episode.

Wasn't there an episode where time was going backwards and there was some sort of comedy club with a compere? I think that was Tony Hawks, so maybe it's that episode.

I forgot to add that Radio Times is still rubbish, though.

Doesn't that go without saying?

>Wasn't there an episode where time was going backwards and there was some sort of comedy club with a compere? I think that was Tony Hawks, so maybe it's that episode.

Backwards - Red Dwarf 3. Tony also played the voice of many of the vending machines in series 1 and 2, and also the bloke from Better Than Life in the episode Better Than Life, series 2.

I thought that it was Arthur Smith who did the Compare bit on Backwards.

MM

>
>I thought that it was Arthur Smith who did the Compare bit on Backwards.
>
>MM

Compare or compere. Or is this a joke?

No joke, just a display of bed spalleng.

MN

Tony Hawks WAS a compere in Backwards (Arthur Smith was the club manager) but the episode on next week is Dimension Jump, which doesn't feature Hawks at all.

Five quick points:

1) Tony Hawks also played Caligula in the Meltdown episode.
2) Arthur Smith's Backwards speech played forward says 'I'm talking to the sad bastard who actually turned this rubbish round, what a poor, sad life he's got', or something like that anyway. It's on the Smeg-ups/outs? video.
3) Tim Robbins (last seen in The League of Gentlemen and cousin of Paul McCartney, er, and host of Chain Letters) is the ace warm-up man at the BBC. I saw him at a recording of Chalk, and if you buy any of the Men Behaving Badly DVDs (apart from series 6), you can hear him joking over the actors out-takes. This is usually followed by the cry of 'Shut up, Ted'.
4) The point is not whether the RT gives us the names of the warm-up men for each show (although this would arguably be interesting information) but that the RT credited an actor who doesn't appear in the show. This would be useful info if it was deliberate, but it was a mistake and further shows the incompetance of the Radio Times.
5) The Radio Times is rubbish.

Thanks for listening.

This post written and performed by Squidy.Also appearing was Mark Chapman as 'Warm-Up Man'.

>I thought that it was Arthur Smith who did the Compare bit on Backwards.

Sorry. Yep. You're right.

>5) The Radio Times is rubbish.

But... what else is there? Radio Times seems to be comfortably middle class in it's outlook (and panders openly to them), TV Times is the more commercial downmarket equivalent, though still trying to be superior to the gutter press of the TV world that are TV Quick and the like.

I buy the Radio Times chiefly for the radio programme pages.

Is there anything better? (less worse?)

What would *you* do to improve it? (constructive comments, in an ideal world..)

Hey, you wouldn't credit (oh look, how amusing) it, would you? Who knows what else could have been on the sheet... Next week:

Warm-up...............TONY HAWKS
Eggs, Marge, Tinned Toms, Pick Up Jacket From Dry Cleaners.......
.............................ROBERT BATHURST, LEE CORNES
Ask Doug why series no longer funny.........LAURIE TAYLOR, MYKOLA PAWLUK

Yes, I noticed that credit... it's been in two or three weeks running now. Having the warm-up person genuinely credited for each show *would*, of course, be ace. But I'd be happy enough just to see consistent crediting for writers, producers, people who actually appeared in front of the camera at any stage, etc. That or some people working on the listings who understand what 'warm-up' means.

Oh yes, and the Radio Times is crap.

*Constructive* comments? Oh blimey. Erm... Bring back that 'At A Glance' feature showing the day's terrestrial telly in a handy schedule-diagram form, then let the in-detail stuff ramble on for a couple of pages more; put the film credits and possibly the soap credits in a separate place; use the additional space to print full performance credits where sensible; employ top-flight technical-editing people (with a sound grasp of the concept of 'sensible', who have seen some television at some point in their lives) to do the listings; credit writers in the main description text as a matter of policy; make sure the proofreading is up to the standard of the average national newspaper, ie sufficient to prevent the intrusion of Rob Steiger, the Ku Klax Klan or Seep Space Nine, and get rid of any writer who obsessively points out the coincidence of different individuals' forenames or misplaces three participals on the same page.

(Deep breath)

Chuck out all the gardening, cookery, sport, celebrity tittle-tattle and other stuff not related to the telly or the radio. Put in loads of new stuff directly connected to the telly or the radio, written by people who know something about it. Cease commissioning new 'My Kind Of Day's and just reprint that Alexei Sayle one with the iguana restaurant, week in week out, because it was fantastic.

Problem. This is the Barebones Parliament all over again. If the Radiotimes were reconstructed according to my wayward personal fantasies, it would be far more expensive (more and better staff needed, more pages, less opportunity for subtle product-placement features) and nobody would buy it. Well... I'd buy it. Sales among the chintz-filled-cranial-cavity community would probably go into a bit of a tailspin. Or would they? It would still have the telly listings in it. And it would still be the only listings magazine respectable enough to be left lying around where children or servants might see it. Surely some token shift in the right direction wouldn't do any harm? Or am I being a hopelessly naive romantic fool again?

Sorry to be pedantic but in any Channel 4 film starring A. E. Matthews, the RT always print it as AE Matthews, as if its meant to be pronounced Aieee, like some Kamakazi battle cry.

A minor point, but it's always annoyed me.

"Sales among the chintz-filled-cranial-cavity community would probably go into a bit of a tailspin. Or would they?"

If they were going to bail out over content they would have gone years ago. Look at a copy of RT from before 1982. It's practically the Time Literary Supplement compared to the rag that goes by that name now. And you don't have to be an elitist to see that. But it helps.

Ain't that right, Al?

me> participals

Participles. You'll have to excuse me; I was tired.