It seemed more shocking and fresh in the mid 80's, and there were some good scriptwriters behind it. Grant/Naylor to name two, who went on to do much more mediocre mainstream stuff. It was appalling at the end. As you say, I can't see how an animated series could be very topical, but it'd be nice to think they had some other plan up their sleeve, and that it wasn't just a ratings grabbing attempt at bringing back a once popular series from the old days.

>>In the latest issue of Time Out the TV section reports that ITV has commissioned a new pilot of the old warhorse.

No doubt it will be a Carlton Central production... sorry: A Carlton production.
Oh, how dare I use the C word next to the other C word!! That's nearly as bad as putting the W word next to the C word!

Damn you Carlton! Damn you!!!

(takes two pills, nods off)

perhaps they just thought that if Bill Dare can recycle the format of a show he used to produce, commission it himself, change its name, and have the BBC hail it a great success...then anything goes...

Explain, please, sheep.

>Explain, please, sheep.

Sorry. I meant, explain please, sleepy.

That's such ill-thought-out bollocks, sleepy. And that's the problem with you lot - you take a tiny nugget of information you might have and turn everything into a conspiracy. Lunatics.

>That's such ill-thought-out bollocks, sleepy. And that's the problem with you lot - you take a tiny nugget of information you might have and turn everything into a conspiracy. Lunatics.

Not at all my friend:
First, it's such a clumsy knee-jerk reaction to anything posted on this site to dismiss it as a 'conspiracy' - change the record. Second, where is the conspiracy?! Bill Dare used to produce Spitting Image, and Dead Ringers is patently a lazy, blanded down version of that show, and as I understand it Mr.Dare was involved in developing the show. How can listening to the weak sat-eye-rical fumblings of an impressions-based topical show NOT lead one to the conclusion that a lazy rehash of an older, better show is taking place? How can that be dismissed as lunacy?

Also I make no claim to have any knowledge or information of much more than sod all. But at the same time, from postings here and elsewhere it has been made clear previously that opinions far more cynical than these were held by those much more closely involved with the show.

Finally my main point was just that recycling ideas is so overt these days that you might as well go the whole hog and exhume a decomposing show and reanimate it, as RapH was indicating might be happening with Spitting Image; if in doing that I inadvertantly get right on your tits, then, oh well...

I don't think pointing out the blatant similarities between 'Spitting Image' and 'Dead Ringers' would be classed as starting a conspiracy, or making a mountain out of a molehill by even the dimmest 'Titanic' fan.

So why the extreme reaction?

Perhaps the third Anonymous is or knows Bill Dare.

I was trying to coax him ou, and you scared him away!

I'll have to reset my trap...

Out that is.

Sorry, Prisoner. Another blunder. I'll just hide in this bush and be very, very quiet.

Shush, here he comes again!

IDENTS
IINDETS
IDENTS!!!

oh, hello there.......why are you all hiding?

Shut up and take this tranquiliser gun!

Whoa there, Prisoner. How do you know this isn't the Third Anonymous?

No, I'm the fourth Anonymous............I'm normally called Stuart O, but I thought I'd better be in disguise.

Hand me that gun, then.....

So who's that other guy standing over there then?

Shit.

STERILISE THE AREA!

Control... control... we are outnumbered request immediate air support I repeat immediate air support... pull us out and burn this sector....

<drops napalm>

Spitting Image was cleverly done and very popular at it`s peak. Who made this? Could it be Central. The clowns in charge of them now could never make anything of even similar quality

>Spitting Image was cleverly done and very popular at it`s peak. Who made this? Could it be Central. The clowns in charge of them now could never make anything of even similar quality

CETRNL LAUHCNED TEH CARREEERRR OF NELE MORISEY!
THEY SHOUDL BE FORCE DTO WATHC BBC LCOAL NEWS FOR THADR!!!

GLOBSE

Central had a very nice ident if I recall. A circle with a cresant rainbow in it. Very nice.

iyt awas highyl danegrous

the clownas in chareg of cnetrsal are not proper clowns

Can I come out of this bush now?

My favourite sketch that Stew and me ever wrote for Spitting Image was called "Bill Dare's bottom" which was about a giant bottom in the sky that spoke (or something) and belonged to Bill Dare.
It failed to make it to the screen, however, like the vast majority of the sketches we wrote for that series

Wondered why?

When (and what) did Lee and Herring write for Spitting Image?

Hate spitting image made me cry horrible scary puppets, worse than fishcakes

Oh hum. Will someone stop giving these kids Sunny Delight? They're hyper-active again.

>Not at all my friend:
> First, it's such a clumsy knee-jerk reaction to anything posted on this site to dismiss it as a 'conspiracy' - change the record.

Just because it's a cliche, doesn't mean to say it's not true.

Second, where is the conspiracy?! Bill Dare used to produce Spitting Image,

As far as I know, he used script-edit.

and Dead Ringers is patently a lazy, blanded down version of that show,

That's quite good, disguising basic offensiveness as a logical argument. You should be very proud.

That's your opinion. In MY opinion, as someone who watched every series of spitting image, and who writes pretty much half of DR, that there is no link whatsoever, aside from the bleedin' obvious...

a) It's a comedy.

b) It uses impressions.

Not good enough, mate.

The sketches have a completely different structure, some of them are non-topical, we don't do political songs, cabinet sketches, in fact we don't do anything 'Spitting Image' does, apart from trying to make our show as funny as it can possibly be.

'and as I understand it Mr.Dare was involved in developing the show'.

No he wasn't.

How can listening to the weak sat-eye-rical fumblings of an impressions-based topical show NOT lead one to the conclusion that a lazy rehash of an older, better show is taking place?

You've done lazy.

Everybody has. Except you.

Older = better. Well that speaks volumes for your atitude.

How can that be dismissed as lunacy?
>
No, but it can be dismissed. 'Weekending with knobs on' perhaps, 'Alistair McGowan's big impression on the radio' but I'm afraid the elastic on your logic has just snapped.

>Also I make no claim to have any knowledge or information of much more than sod all.

That's obvious.

But at the same time, from postings here and elsewhere it has been made clear previously that opinions far more cynical than these were held by those much more closely involved with the show.
>
What postings??? There were some grumblings about the corpses about the open-door writer's policy (whilst conceding it was a decent sketch show) but you're the first person I know, in postings to this site, in paper reviews, in letters to 'Feedback' and personal feedback to me and anyone involved in the show who has...

a) equated spitting image with DR.

B) turned it into something sinister.

Which says more about you than DR.

>Finally my main point was just that recycling ideas is so overt these days that you might as well go the whole hog and exhume a decomposing show and reanimate it, as RapH was indicating might be happening with Spitting Image; if in doing that I inadvertantly get right on your tits, then, oh well...
>

Oh well done indeed. The recycling of 'Spitting Image' in the form of DR is so obvious no-one's spotted it.

Finally:

1)The new spitting image project has nothing to do with Bill Dare.

2)Bill Dare was just one of a GREAT many people involved in 'Spitting Image'. You might as well point the finger at me and say 'ha! He worked on 'Weekending! He's trying to re-create the show!'

3)A topical sketch show using impressions has a long and 'distinguished' history that started long before Spitting Image...TW3, Weekending, even the Huddlines.

All SI did was transfer that style to TV using puppets. PUPPETS. THAT was what was so innovative about SI, nothing else. Where are the puppets on DR? Nowhere.

I await with baited breath a posting from someone who claims that R4's News Quiz ripped off HIGNFY...

It was the other way round

Nev (and the rest of you) -

If you're going to quote heavily from other people's messages, can you clearly put quotation marks around their words. Otherwise it becomes very hard to make sense of a long message.

The no-longer-here (and not missed) Dan L suffered this problem to an excruciating degree, and his more fevered denunciations were utterly indecipherable. I found.

In terms of quality of comedy, Dead Ringers resembles Spitting Image at the time Bill Dare was producing it - ie, when it had no teeth whatsoever and was just there for people to chuckle at over their cocoa.

Yeah, actually - this is a serious question for you, Nev. Why doesn't Dead Ringers actually satirise Radio 4 properly? Y'know, like On the Hour used to do - actually call into question the network's actual existence? Are you scared?

My concern is that people like you are forever content to make 'acceptable post-pub jokes' (your words) and little else. Are you actually looking up at the stars?

I mean, you don't necessarily need to be a worthy political animal to be great (you can change the world simply by being silly - Kenny Everett being a case in point), but you still need to do comedy which reflects the things you CARE about. And I don't really believe you're particularly bothered about...I dunno, Charlie Dimmock's tits or whatever.

Because, for me, comedy has no point unless it aims to genuinely surprise its listeners, to make them go to bed thinking 'Fucking hell, I can't BELIEVE I just heard that'. I used to do this with R4 comedy all the time, but it never happens now. That's why I remain unmoved by both The 11 O'Clock Show and Dead Ringers - you can smell 'writers who want to be successful' rather than 'writers who adore comedy for its own sake'. Such writers have always been around, of course, but they seemed to disguise it better in the old days.

yeah, whatever.

>Yeah, actually - this is a serious question for you, Nev. Why doesn't Dead Ringers actually satirise Radio 4 properly? Y'know, like On the Hour used to do - actually call into question the network's actual existence? Are you scared?

I'm sure if we just 'tried to do what 'On The Hour' used to do, we would be pilloried for being derivative. We're not scared; we've created quite a few earthquakes so far.

>My concern is that people like you are forever content to make 'acceptable post-pub jokes' (your words) and little else. Are you actually looking up at the stars?

What you and many others on this forum fail to understand is that each programme has to be judged on its own terms, on what its purpose is as a show, just as it is pointless to compare 'some mother's do have 'em' to 'friday night armistice'. I was pointing out how pointless it is to complain that a show is too direct and offensive when it's late night channel 4 show. You may legitimately complain that it's failing to achieve what it sets out to do, but moaning about a show for what it is is a fruitless exercise, much in the same way as saying 'why can't a 6.30pm r4 sketch show be more like a 11.30pm sketch show?
Because they're different, that's why.

I can be proud of fulfilling my remit on the 11 O'Clock show, just as I am proud of the success of DR, I am not a cynic, I'm a professional writer.

>I mean, you don't necessarily need to be a worthy political animal to be great (you can change the world simply by being silly - Kenny Everett being a case in point), but you still need to do comedy which reflects the things you CARE about. And I don't really believe you're particularly bothered about...I dunno, Charlie Dimmock's tits or whatever.
>
I don't really think you've listened to DR all that much, to be honest. We've been very brutal about R4, Midweek, the Moral Maze and Loose Ends have all had a good kicking, and our 'Archers' sketch from episode 1, for example. Gillian Reynolds said it caused chaos at Broadcasting House, and had people talking about it for weeks... another artistic achievement this 'hack' is very proud of.

>Because, for me, comedy has no point unless it aims to genuinely surprise its listeners, to make them go to bed thinking 'Fucking hell, I can't BELIEVE I just heard that'. I used to do this with R4 comedy all the time, but it never happens now. That's why I remain unmoved by both The 11 O'Clock Show and Dead Ringers - you can smell 'writers who want to be successful' rather than 'writers who adore comedy for its own sake'. Such writers have always been around, of course, but they seemed to disguise it better in the old days.
>
>
>

This is because like a lot of comedy fans you've become jaded, unlike many others who write into the BBC to say they found it exciting and anarchic and naughty. It has been raised by the Corpses earlier that Jon got away with far more on DR than on GBR, the 'nude Thora' appeal for example...Tom and I have been pretty hard too, with our 'Archers' stuff and our 'Alan Bennett' to name but two.

I'm as excited and energised by my work as i've always been. TV work can be frustrating but i'm cheered by the little victories Tom and I have had on the 11O'Clock show - the Loyalty card VTs, the opinion polls skit. Good work on its own terms.

I will also look back on DR and be justly proud of the work I did, helping to form and write a show, created only this year, into a comedy that rivals 'The News Quiz' and 'Just A Minute' in terms of audience satisfaction, and I did it writing in the way I want to, not aiming for some Chris Morrisesque ideal that won't be repeated.

Everyone leave Nev alone, he's obviously very frustrated and is beginning to waffle.

>Everyone leave Nev alone, he's obviously very frustrated and is beginning to waffle.

Frustrated - certainly
Waffling - definitely.

Still, never forget amid the hurly burly, name calling and general abuse that he means well. And he only hurts his own.

Dear Nev,

I'm not going to shout abuse at you, I just want to justify my position.

Firstly, my gross overuse of the word 'lazy'. I'm sorry, but I was trying to talk about 'Dead Ringers', not display my ability to use a thesaurus. Here are some of the words I could have used:

slothful
lusk
unbusied
torpid
sluggish
otiose

Secondly, that opinion of Bill Dare is one held by many BBC producers, whose description of 'Dead Ringers' usually contains the words 'money for old rope'.

Thirdly, the structure and style of the sketches are very 'Spitting Image', the only difference being the prescence of the studio audience. If you remember the editions of 'Spitting Image' that did have a studio audience, you will know what I mean.

That's about it.

I remember them. There were three editions of SI that had a studio audience -

8th April 1992 (Election Special) - the first edtion of Spitting Image to be so filmed
14th November 1993
12th December 1993

SI was designed to work without the use of a studio audience and so the presence of one in these editions didn't really work. The '92 election special used the audience for a spoof "Question Time" which was featured in the programme. The two 1993 editions which used the audience were to a "Question Time" format, hosted by the latex Jeremy Paxman, with the sketches slotted into the "Question" sessions.

Quite why Bill Dare changed the format of SI for these shows is a mystery. Perhaps someone can enlighten us?

>hosted by the latex Jeremy Paxman

I didn't know he'd died.


Oh, "latex"

>>hosted by the latex Jeremy Paxman
>
>I didn't know he'd died.
>
>
>Oh, "latex"

I think there are a few politicians about who wish that he had died...... :)