Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 05:39:12 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Chris Morris: Raw Meat Radio - BBC Radio 4 Extra, 29th November

Started by Neil, October 07, 2014, 09:25:36 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Neil



Hello.  After the success of Blue Jam on Radio 4 Extra, one of the producers (big CM fan) pushed for a three-hour Chris Morris documentary to be made.

That's been in production for ages, and is scheduled to go out as "Raw Meat Radio" at 7pm on the 29th of November.  Top producer Sophie Black is starting the first batch of interviews, with Lucian Randall, Paul Garner and Matthew Bannister.  Iann Ucci is doing one too at some point, yay Iann Ucci.

I've sent in loads of rare clips from the CaB archive as well at Sophie's request, and pointed them to a few things they might be able to dig out of the Beebs archive.  One particular thing I mentioned was a chat with Mary Anne Hobbs, where she mentioned the third, aborted Breezeblock to me ages ago on Twitter... Dunno if it's been found, but it's been looked for.

Anyway, three hours of yer man, and some archive repeats.  Nice.

TJ

Excellent work Neil! Really looking forward to this.

CM did tell me himself that he never actually did the third mix owing to the last-minute re-editing to the BES, but you never know what they might find...

Neil

Really glad MAH is involved, I wonder if she is actually hosting?   This sounds like it's going to be really thorough.

marginal and troublesome


Thomas

That's great news, nice work sending in those radio bits.

Kane Jones



Neil

Should have a preview clip soon as well. Can't wait to hear this.

Ignatius_S

That's absolutely great news – also, it's good to hear that Blue Jam did so well on Radio 4 Extra .

BlodwynPig



Hymenoptera

Brilliant news, I'm all excited now. Also, it's being aired on my birthday, which is doubly ace.

Old Thrashbarg

What sort of bits have you sent in Neil? If that isn't giving away too much.

Really looking forward to this. Especially as it probably means some digging through the BBC archives, which, as has been suggested, could unearth something new.


weirdbeard

Quote from: Old Thrashbarg on October 07, 2014, 11:37:16 PM
What sort of bits have you sent in Neil? If that isn't giving away too much.

Really looking forward to this. Especially as it probably means some digging through the BBC archives, which, as has been suggested, could unearth something new.

There's more 'new' material on tapes sitting in people's houses than there is in the archives.

Ignatius_S

News article from Chortle:

QuoteBBC plans Chris Morris tributeThree-hour retrospective of his radio work

Radio 4 Extra are to air a three-hour retrospective of Chris Morris's work called Raw Meat Radio.

The show will be presented by Mary Anne Hobbs, and is set to air at 7pm on November 29.

Producers have been working with the fan site Cookd and Bombd to track down rare clips, and the BBC promise plenty of material that hasn't been aired since it was first broadcast. Archive footage will include clips from his local radio days at BBC Bristol and GLR as well as On the Hour, Why Bother? (which he made with Peter Cook) and Blue Jam.

Interviewees include Morris biographer Lucian Randall; comedian Paul Garner, who worked on Morris's radio shows; Matthew Bannister, his boss at GLR; Armando Iannucci, who created On The Hour with Morris; and IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan, who contributed to Brass Eye.

'Raw meat radio' is how fellow broadcaster Danny Baker excitedly described his own first day on the groundbreaking BBC GLR in the early Nineties.

The show will be produced by Sophie Black, who was formerly in the sketch group Fat Tongue with the Cardinal Burns duo.
http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2014/10/08/21081/bbc_plans_chris_morris_tribute

up_the_hampipe

Wow, didn't see any typos in that article. Chortle are in rare form.

Old Thrashbarg

Quote from: weirdbeard on October 08, 2014, 11:11:32 AM
There's more 'new' material on tapes sitting in people's houses than there is in the archives.

True, and this might also prompt some of those people to have a search through their tape libraries.

weekender


"A part of Chris Morris's face has let itself go".

Thanks for the heads-up.


Neil

The producer is actually intent on trying to get this stuff back in the archive! I'm thrilled that MAH is indeed hosting. Sophie Black was nice enough to make me feel involved by asking me to pitch names for hosts, and I suggested Mary Anne Hobbs as she's one of my favourite broadcasters, and had a link to CM! She'll be great for this.

Edit: two of the 1994 R1 shows are/were missing from the archives btw.

alcoholic messiah

Quote from: Neil on October 08, 2014, 07:41:17 PM
Sophie Black was nice enough to make me feel involved by asking me to pitch names for hosts, and I suggested Mary Anne Hobbs

I think you've just made your way onto kittens' shitlist.


weirdbeard

Quote from: Old Thrashbarg on October 08, 2014, 01:16:06 PM
True, and this might also prompt some of those people to have a search through their tape libraries.

Wouldn't that be nice? Although searching is one thing, of course.

TJ

Any idea which two were missing Neil? Only I know that circa 2006, Show 6 (Heseltine) was in the restricted 'Legal And Royal' vault, and Show 18 (Live Bates) was held for Emergency Broadcast purposes.

Spiral King

Quote from: Neil on October 08, 2014, 07:41:17 PM
Edit: two of the 1994 R1 shows are/were missing from the archives btw.

I like how this can still happen in 20-fucking-14. Utterly woeful.

TJ

They won't have been wiped, just gone astray - it happens quite often with radio stuff due to the relative portability of the master tapes. FWIW On The Hour 2.5 went missing years ago after being borrowed for a documentary and wasn't found until about eighteen months back.

Spiral King

Well, that's good. I know it's impossible to get any sort of complete commercial release for them, but I just want to know that they're sitting there for a possible repeat in the future. They really are some of his best work.

weekender

Quote from: TJ on October 10, 2014, 07:59:48 AM
They won't have been wiped, just gone astray - it happens quite often with radio stuff due to the relative portability of the master tapes. FWIW On The Hour 2.5 went missing years ago after being borrowed for a documentary and wasn't found until about eighteen months back.

Genuinely fascinating.

How does this work then?  Does another area of the BBC just ask to borrow the masters for a documentary or something, then everyone just sort of forgets about the fact that they should officially have been returned somewhere?

TJ

It's changed in recent years, and now by and large - but not always - they'll order a copy of a show and get aCD burned from hard drive rips of pretty much everything in the Sound Archive (and I mean everything - there's a full set of Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 shows in there). But the Sound Archive wasn't part of the 'proper' archive until very recently, and before that they played by their own rules. Some departments never even deposited stuff in the Sound Archive and kept their own libraries; Radio 1 for example, which is why there's such a comprehensive and well-documented collection of Peel Sessions. Some producers, such as John Walters, even kept their own personal archives as far as they could. So people were borrowing stuff on all kinds of formats from all kinds of sources and it was all very difficult to keep track of. There was an episode of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, for example, that disappeared in the week of broadcast after it was borrowed for Pick Of The Week, and didn't turn up until someone was emptying their desk drawers years later.

Stuff is coming back all the time, though - there is now a full set of Rawlinson End masters (there were only three or four a while back, which scuppered a proposed CD release), and Radio4Extra have recently located the first series of Delve Special; previously they'd used dubs from some trebly off-airs that I provided them with.

The good thing about audio stuff though is that, unlike TV, odds are that it's all out there somewhere in some firm, as Neil's efforts over the years have proved. Great to see all that hard work being officially recognised at last!

weekender

Apologies if I am being simple here.

TJ - you refer to a 'Sound Archive' a few times, am I right in thinking this is basically 'the' library of BBC Radio - one by their own admission they seem to be crap at archiving?


weekender

It's just that today I stopped five ring-binders - all labelled 'archiving lists' in one form or another - from being sent to our archiving department in a single box called 'Miscellaneous'.