Have I Got News For You

[Rats]

I think the last time it came up, people were saying it was the sotcaa lot. I find that hard to believe because it was funny ;)
Yeah Dara is great, I remember there was quite a bit of dara bashing going on here when the live floor show was transmitted but hell I even liked the gay scottish bloke so I can't really be seen as the king of taste.

[rjpeters]

...get rid of the regulars, that's the only way they can inject some life into the corpse it is now

What, like they did about about 7 or 8 years ago when Merton fucked off for a couple of series. I wish they'd do that again some time, sooner rather than later as well.

As for friday's show, alright really. O'Briain was easily the best thing about it given that merton and hislop both looked bored, Clive James was on crack and that bird from the Express was as obvious as ever. O'Briain was really over the top, which as a host is not something you expect to see but it made it very funny. which was nice.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

Not written by Lee and Herring. I'd say but I'd rather let the relevant parties explain (or not explain) in their own words, instead of me blabbering it all twelfth-hand. There's an only-slightly-tenous L&H link to the perpetrators, so I can see how that rumour might have started.

Apparently it caused a huge rumble at the time in the media - do a Google search and you'll find everything from gossip columns nervously mentioning it to Ian Hislop being asked his views on it.

I've googled quite a lot but I haven't found any quote from Hislop. Can you remember he said or even better give an appropriate link? It's very funny though, it's the work of sotcaa isn't it, that's what most of the things I've read claimed (apart from one that said Morris could have been involved, although he didn't have any actual evidence at all and it was just his guess).

[alan strang]

This from The Guardian. Hardly a 'huge rumble'. Both Lewis-Smith and Morris doffed their caps to us though, which was pleasing.

This old collection of forum threads shows how the thing spread in 'real time'. The second 'Anonymous' kicks it off, 25 post down.

[Ambient Sheep]

I've googled quite a lot but I haven't found any quote from Hislop.

There *was* one, though.  A single-line response, something along the lines of "Completely untrue, but very well written."  Might have been Merton, actually.  Or Deayton.  Someone close to the production, anyway.  <blush>

EDIT: from the SOTCAA thread linked earlier, it was Hislop:

"It's bogus", declares regular panellist Ian Hislop. "I read it in disbelief. They've copied out the stuff that did go in, and put a whole load of made-up stuff in the middle. It's quite cunningly done, I must say. I'm fascinated by who could have written it." Any hunt for the hoaxer should look for an enemy of both Sir James and Merton, neither of whom come out well. That should narrow it down to a mere few million.

What a splendid thread that first SOTCAA one (about comedy feuds) was!

A couple of questions that page brings up:

Other "hidden" scripts also show Merton going off on some quite angry tirades against guests ( paula yates, glenda jackson etc)

When, a few years ago, one episode from each series was repeated, series 3 was left out mainly becuase of the cutting-job needed to cut out Merton's triades.

Are either of those true, do we know?  The second one, especially, would seem unlikely (why show them first time round but not subsequently?), but given that UKTV People haven't so far repeated 4:6 - 4:10 (skipping as they did from 4:5 to 5:1) it does pique my curiosity.

Finally...may I have the audacity to ask...why did you write it in the first place?  It's very good, but why?  The SOTCAA thread says at one point:

The Corpses have written a detailed examinaton of the hoax which will be published on the site in a few days time...

but that's not included on the page itself.  Did it ever happen?

Sorry for being so nosy, but this fascinated me at the time, which was before I ever had web access (it came round in an E-Mail at work).  I had already learnt since who did it, but not *why*...

[rjpeters]

...why did you write it in the first place? It's very good, but why?

The transcript was never intended to be published on this website, without an explanatory article. After working so hard on the site for many months we wouldn't of been so reckless. The transcript is quite obviously a hoax, as several forum users spotted. The original target of the hoax was a specific journalist rather than Internet users in general...

Rather narrows the potential targets doesn't it? No idea who they might mean but I guess there are some slightly more knowledgable people round here than my good self, so I'll leave them to fill in the blanks.

[Ambient Sheep]

...why did you write it in the first place? It's very good, but why?

The transcript was never intended to be published on this website, without an explanatory article. After working so hard on the site for many months we wouldn't of been so reckless. The transcript is quite obviously a hoax, as several forum users spotted. The original target of the hoax was a specific journalist rather than Internet users in general...

Rather narrows the potential targets doesn't it? No idea who they might mean but I guess there are some slightly more knowledgable people round here than my good self, so I'll leave them to fill in the blanks.

Indeed, I saw that, but my question was: did the explanatory article ever appear?

I have no idea who the specific journalist might be either.

[alan strang]

Finally...may I have the audacity to ask...why did you write it in the first place?  It's very good, but why?  The SOTCAA thread says at one point:

The Corpses have written a detailed examinaton of the hoax which will be published on the site in a few days time...

but that's not included on the page itself.  Did it ever happen?

I think it got half-written - it was going to be a nice little page with a proper chronology / collection of reactions from all over the web/media, plus a mini-essay about the veracity of hoaxes in general. But other events took over and we decided it was best just to leave it.

A brief overview: Sometime in 1999, while putting the first version of the site together, Emergency Lalla Ward and myself started pondering on how affected stories get attached to 'classic' shows and films over the years which go down well in pub conversations but also blur any kind of factual coverage - stuff like the rushes of The Wicker Man being buried under the M4 motorway, etc.

On the other hand, some of the bits we'd gathered for Edit News, etc, seemed a tad on the unbelievable side (eg Paul McCartney getting his nob out in Magical Mystery Tour) so we decided it would be fun to stick some obviously fake stuff on the site, just to see whether or not people would actually question it. Part of the site's remit was to get comedy fans questioning the media, refusing to accept everything at face value, etc.

Faking some HIGNFY out-takes was originally going to be part of that initial plan. We probably decided on it after watching the 'Unbroadcastable Have I Got News...' video (which itself features rushes material), but mainly because we enjoy the idea of rushes per se. The original idea was to stick the page on the site in Hidden Archive and see if anyone noticed/cared. Emergency Lalla Ward went off and wrote the actual page - based on a tape of the broadcast itself (if you watch the show in tandem with the fakery you'll note that he's specifically 'filled in' stuff where there was an obvious edit-point). However, this was really only ever a first draft. Something to build on and rewrite later in a less obvious/explosive fashion.

What with everything else we were hurriedly completing for the site at the time, the story gets a bit blurred from this point on. We definitely sent it down to Rob the webmaster along with all the other finished pages so that he could turn it into a website (at this point SOTCAA was just a bunch of Word documents with pictures attached). He then sent the results back to us on a disc so we could see how the thing looked, design-wise. The HIGNFY page stood out like a sore thumb. Far too obvious a fake, we thought.

I remember us getting together with Rob at the Hen & Chickens, Islington, to ponder on what - if anything - to do with it. Maybe the rewrite as planned, or something similar. Until we decided on what to do, Rob commented out the link on the Hidden Archive index page so that it was only visible to people viewing the source code. This brings us up to March 2000, when the site first went live, presumably with all this stuff attached.

At some point during all of this one of us came up with the alternate idea of leaking the unedited piece to Matthew Wright (then of The Mirror) to see if he'd fall for it. This is probably why we kept the commented-out link on the index page. April 1st was coming up so it seemed like as good a time as any for a hoax. I think the idea was to contact Wright anonymously, point him towards the page, mention that it had been 'hidden' and then run away laughing, hoping that he'd fall for it and include some sort of reference to it on his dreadful gossip page. If successful we'd have then replaced the page with a great big 'April Fool' sign, and published the transcript in full with suitable amendments referencing this.

But that idea came and went, as did April Fools, and we just sort of forgot all about it - until June when an anonymous forum dweller discovered the link. The rest is detailed in the forum threads above. Amusingly, the enforced publication resulted in something similar to what we'd planned, albeit via a more scenic route. It certainly wasn't a planned forum-leak anyway. Had we realised beforehand what was going to happen we'd have removed the credit from the base of the page! We probably should have put a stop to it sooner, but all three of us were fascinated (and not a little excited) about how far it could conceivably go.

We found out for sure a bit later when solicitors, apparently acting on behalf of Sir James Savile OBE, managed to close down the site pending an enquiry re libel, defamation of character, etc. As webmaster, Rob was required to write a legally-binding letter in hardcopy pointing out that the script in question had never actually been 'officially' published on the site (and that we had no plans to publish it in the future) before the ban could be lifted.

That's the reason why the 'detailed examination' never got finished or put online. After all the problems it caused we really didn't feel like it was worth the hassle.

[Rats]

So who are you goons then? There's you, emergency lala ward ten which is a bit of a shock, I always had him down as a no face, and TJ?
I've enjoyed the stuff I've read, it's disarmingly geeky and I doff my cap to mr lala, that made my night when I read that have I got news for you thing. Darrell must be in with you guys being king spod and all.

[alan strang]

We're the Ghostbusters.

[benthalo]

When, a few years ago, one episode from each series was repeated, series 3 was left out mainly becuase of the cutting-job needed to cut out Merton's triades.

The Have I Got Old News For You repeats began in 1995 and selected 1.3, 2.1, 3.10, 4.8, 5.4 and 5.8. A good bunch of shows actually. I think they did a few more vintage repeats in later years, although not many.

I suspect the above quote refers to Merton's "overblown tart" comments about Princess Diana which littered almost every show in series 3 and most of the ones either side of it. This would almost certainly have made early episodes undesirable for repeat in the years immediately after her death, a cautiousness by the BBC which affected a great many other comedy programmes. I think even video releases covering early editions of HIGNFY were abandoned, although video-only specials were probably seen as more lucrative anyway so perhaps that's just a coincidence.

[Darrell]

Darrell must be in with you guys being king spod and all.

Nope, I simply admire from the sidelines.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

That's the reason why the 'detailed examination' never got finished or put online. After all the problems it caused we really didn't feel like it was worth the hassle.

But then Ringo came in and...

I was annoyed when the script leaked because it was a rough draft in dire need of roughening up - I thought it'd never fool anyone unless it was toned down a bit.

I heard that Paul Merton was infuriated by it, which disappointed me at the time. But, given his attitude to the Deayton sacking, this gives me some pleasure now.

Years ago, in one of our sillier moods, we had an idea of sending out a press release saying that Linehan and Mathews were working on a fourth series of Father Ted, sans Dermot Morgan, to be called (ahem) Father Dead. We wrote a fake script page and everything. Nowadays this would have been identified as a hoax almost immediately, but back in 1999 we felt there was a small air-pocket of reality in which this was *just about* plausible. It would depend on where you heard the news.

[rjpeters]

Last friday's (4/6/2004) show then...

Kirsty Young, who I couldn't stand when she presented it the first time, was surprisingly good; Dave Gorman was, well, Dave Gorman (whatever that means, I have no idea) and John Bird was very quiet. Which was a shame because he's usually very good on Bremner's Channel 4 show.

Let me just be the 743rd person to say that I really hope that the next series is alot more 'stable' and that they finally get round to appointing not only a new host but maybe also a couple of new team captains. Ross Noble and Marcus Brigstocke I think would make perfectly adequate replacements for Merton and Hislop respectively. But then I'm not Jimmy Mulville, or anyone else at Hat Trick for that matter.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

I thought Gorman was alright but the whole puppet thing was a bit crap after the initial gag. He should have just left it at that but had to keep the thing in the air for ages then bring another one out. He was okay other than that and the 'contrived joke of the night' though which I found a bit embarrassing for some reason. I wish they'd release that show he did before the astrology one on dvd though, I really enjoyed that. The book was good too apart from Danny fucking Wallace being annoying going on about how he was 'too cool' for it. I am really bored with this whole guest presenter crap though. Either fuck off or get a regular presenter.

[Alberon]

I've been reading Dave Gorman's Googlewhack book recently and so I was looking at his website this weekend. A DVD of his Googlewhack live show is coming out this year and he says this in his FAQ

It is now looking likely that The Dave Gorman Collection will be released on Video and DVD some time in 2004. If and when it is available, I'll obviously let folk know via the website.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

Ah, good. Is his Googlewhack thing any good?

[Ambient Sheep]

No.  No Ross Noble.  Can't stand the unfunny person.  My heart sinks every time I see him appear as a guest; if he was a team captain I would definitely switch off for good at that point.

[mwude]

Surely the benefit of having Hislop is that at least there's someone there who's genuinely interested in the news being discussed and can get easily outraged by things he perceives as unjust.  His open-mouthed 'what-the-fuck?' response isn't often funny, but seems like a key element to the show to me.  He's not always striving to be funny which seems like a very good thing to me.  Any replacement would surely have to be able to bring this aspect to the show, or else it'd just become a news-based version of "It's only TV but I like it".

For some reason I've had one bit of HIGNFY running round my head all week.  In the same episode Merton comes out with one (maybe two?) spot-on relevant and accurate Shakespeare quotes, whilst Ian produces an insightful opinion about the tactics of a recent football match.  Can't remember the exact episode, but can't get it out of my head.

[The Culture Bunker]

Was that the episode soon after the 1999 European Cup Final, sure I remember Hislop going on about United played with "Giggs(y) on the right and Becks in the middle", the topic being brought by presumably by Deaton.

[Alberon]

Ah, good. Is his Googlewhack thing any good?

To be honest, it's much the same as Are You Dave Gorman (but without Danny Wallace's contribution) which is no bad thing. You've got the same style of contrived rules, silly bets, the race to achieve the goal, that sort of thing. Both books are about the people he meets and places he goes, but linked by Googlewhacks rather than names.

I'm enjoying it so far and the tension is extreme as another Googlewhack chain has come to a dead end for him, but for his third book he should try something a bit different.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

I'm enjoying it so far and the tension is extreme as another Googlewhack chain has come to a dead end for him, but for his third book he should try something a bit different.

Yeah, he shouldn't become like Tony Hawk: I enjoyed Round Ireland with a Fridge but his other 'drunken bets' were clearly not as spontanious or funny as the first original one. I'll read this Googlewhack book though, Wallace's contributions to 'Are You Dave Gorman?' were fucking irritating so at least I won't have to put up with that again.

[mrpants]

Apparently the show is currantly being adapted for an American version.

Don't have anymore information other than that I'm afraid.

[hencole]

Apparently the show is currantly being adapted for an American version.

Don't have anymore information other than that I'm afraid.

Probably for the best then.

[rjpeters]

No.  No Ross Noble.  Can't stand the unfunny person.  My heart sinks every time I see him appear as a guest; if he was a team captain I would definitely switch off for good at that point.

I think he is perfectly acceptable in small doses but extended exposure to him is very bad for your health. I still think the show needs some new blood though. Whether it's Noble or someone else, some new captains are needed to re-inject some life into the show.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Apparently the show is currantly being adapted for an American version.

Don't have anymore information other than that I'm afraid.

They tried to adapt HIGNFY for the american market twice before.  They say that every time they played the uk version it's gone down really well, but it never quite made it to being made for the US.  The first time it was scuppered I can't remember why, but the second time they were going to launch it around september 2001.  Wisely, the networks felt that a bunch of comedians laughing at the news probably wouldn't go down too well at that time.

It's already been adapted for several other countrys, including Norway where apparently the last series got a 70% share of the audience. (pretty fucking impressive!).

[ApexJazz]

as requested, i'll comment and then off to bed.

I am sure I'm not saying anything new here, but why exactly did angus deayton have to get the boot from the show?  The out-in-the-open tensions between him and merton would have made riveting television; especially for a show that has been coasting along for centuries.  deayton would finally be forced to think off the tele-prompter and create some patter to defend himself, and certainly his scandal would become as tiresome as last week's news before long.  If the beeb banned everyone who has snorted cocaine off a hooker's tits, Have I Got Hosts For You would hardly have anyone on it at all.

[Utter Shit]

BUMP

Just been watching a few of the old DVDs, and I've fallen in love with the show all over again. Magnificent stuff.

Quick question for you - favourite guest ever?

I can't really recall some of the older guests other than the brief clips on the first DVD, but from the more recent (post-Angus) shows, I absolutely loved Clement Freud. He's like an intentionally funny version of Boris Johnson (no slight on Johnson, who is superb)...there's something about Freud that has me in hysterics, but I don't know what it is.

[Mister Cairo]

Will Self, wonderful man that he is.


I wish Tony Benn would go on there, he's got a good sense of humour.

[klaatu!]

The Tom Baker one was marvellous.

"Malebolge."