Twenty-Five

[Barry Admin]

On the 8th of August 1999 - 25 years ago to this day - I was bored.  It was a Sunday, Sundays are always boring, it's the law. 

I'd been dabbling with little websites for a few years by this point, and I think almost on a whim I decided to start one dedicated to Chris Morris and Peter Cook.  Within a couple of hours, I'd knocked up a truly gaudy and eye-watering concoction - a bright blue background with big red boxes the text sat on.  Javascript was used to make a trail of stars follow along behind your mouse pointer as it moved across the screen. The whole thing was an absolute eyesore. I loved it.

To be honest, I didn't take the whole thing seriously at all, I stuck it on Geocities because I was already using up tons of bandwidth on my ISP account.

The reason I first started making these websites was that I get incredibly enthusiastic about art that I love, and I desperately want to share it so that others can hopefully experience the same joy.  Towards the end of the 90's, I realised that websites were going to become the new mixtapes.  Instead of pissing about with two cassette decks for ages - usually just for the benefit of one person - you could just fire clips online for people all over the world to check out, amazing!

Around this time, video compression was starting to get a lot better, and I was able to download or stream 35mb episodes of South Park almost as soon as they were released.  It's hard to describe how revolutionary this actually was in the late 90's, given how accustomed we are to streaming and downloading these days, but it was an absolute gamechanger.  Comedy was already getting archived and posted about by collectors (often through good old snail mail), but video codecs like RealVideo and DivX meant that filesizes massively decreased with almost no real loss in quality. 

At the time, it was commonly accepted (wrongly, as it goes) that Brass Eye would never be able to get a commercial release, and so I resolved to use this new technology to get it encoded and spread online for people.  The early days of this site involved a constant rooting out of Chris Morris material, I had so much energy back then, it's insane to think back and remember just how much actually got done.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to keep the pace up - I still have tapes I need to encode and/or return to people! - but I'm immensely glad that we all managed to surface and rescue so much of this rare and precious material at the time, and I'm thrilled that it's kept circulating ever since.

As the site continued to grow, I moved it from Geocities and renamed it to "Cook'd and Bomb'd."  Because it was billed as a Chris Morris archive, I felt it would be entirely inappropriate for me to make any money for it.  So for around the first 12 years or so, we got by on people's generous donations of server space and the like.  Honestly, the growth of the site did suffer because of this, but it was the right thing to do and it meant CaB didn't need to support itself with advertising and the like. 

The Forums

Let's go back to the start to look at the other aspect of Cook'd and Bomb'd - the community.  When I eventually moved the Geocities site to my ISP webspace, it gave me more options to play with.  There was a script UkOnline provided so that webmasters could post a form on a website so that their visitors could mail them with feedback.  I thought, okay, what about if we write that feedback back to a webpage instead of sending it to my email address?  Amazingly this worked, and let me construct a very early sort of messageboard system.  Now my users couldn't just talk to me, they could talk to each other as well. 

Quickly, and to my surprise, a community formed.  It just happened organically, I can't take any credit for it.  I have always been extremely uncomfortable with self-promotion and the like, so the site just got around through word of mouth.  The Chris Morris rarities were very popular, and CaB's traffic quickly exploded. 

Before long, all my time was being taken up by the bustling community I now had to look after.  Slowly, the focus of the site changed, and over the past 25 years it has stopped being about Chris Morris.  Now it's about you.  And me.  And anyone else who wants to join us. 

I get emotional when I think about it all.  25 years. 

When I started the site I was a really dumb little guy, very socially inept.  Embarrassing and cringey.  Absolutely gauche.  Fucking clueless, honestly. 

You know, I grew up with you lot.  I started to lean how to communicate in a much more reasonable and balanced manner.  I have taken so much away from the Cook'd and Bomb'd community.  In some of the hardest and worst times of my life, you have always been there to support me and to give me advice or cheer me up with a sick joke.

I know that CaB means a lot to some of you too.  We're still a relatively small community given how long we've been going, but there are benefits to that. 

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for all your contributions to CaB over the years.  Although we lost some of the forum archive (1999-2004), there's still over 5 and a half million posts stored on here, which is a remarkable amount of discussion.  Over 100,000 individual threads.  Over 830,000 posts about comedy.  It's staggering to me when I stop to think about it. 

Honestly, it makes me burst with pride.  Remember when I said that the impetus to start the site initially was the enthusiastic sharing of art?  Well, I never could have foresaw that you lot would have taken that ethos and provided so much goddamn quality writing over the years.  Whenever I see people say "I found out about my favourite comedy show/record/book/TV programme through CaB" then... well, it means the absolute world to me. 

CaB has often been derided as negative and hateful over the years - and we've surely had our moments - but the heart of it has always been this sharing of passion, and the desire to analyse art, and to better understand it through discussion. 

Thank you again.  I love you guys, and it's been my immense privilege to get to know you, and to spend so much time talking to you over the years.  You have been a huge part of my life.

Neil

[Glebe]

It's an absolute blessing this place. Thank you sir.

[studpuppet]

Thanks Neil - I don't know you, and probably never will but this place has been ace for the most part.

I *think* I was a forum member in the early days, when I wasn't looking at The Onion or TVGoHome, but 2003-2006 I got married, bought a flat and had twins, so didn't get to see the internet again until around ten years ago when the name of the site sounded familiar. I've had my aural and visual horizons expanded immeasurably thanks to the users on here over the years. Hopefully I've been able to help do something similar for others!

Here's to the next 25.

[Tiggles]

I do love this place. Although I only signed up recently, I've been peeking at CaB for the best part of the last 20 years. Mainly for comedy, but it has also helped me to understand my response to other art forms too. At its best, which it often is, CaB drives curiosity and exploration. And you lot make me laugh.

Thank you, Neil.

[All Surrogate]

a truly gaudy and eye-watering concoction - a bright blue background with big red boxes the text sat on.  Javascript was used to make a trail of stars follow along behind your mouse pointer as it moved across the screen. The whole thing was an absolute eyesore. I loved it.

BRING IT BACK!

[Barry Admin]

BRING IT BACK!

Don't tempt me or I'll also resurrect a birthday tradition we had for the first few years.

Spoiler alert

THAT'S RIGHT - COMIC SANS DAY

[close]

[All Surrogate]

Ah yes; I wasn't here from the very beginning (I think I first joined in late 2002 ... jesus), but I caught some of those. WHIMSY!

[Jim_MacLaine]

Who remembers garlic bread winamp skins!!



Via the Wayback machine.

[Norton Canes]

I'm hopeless at writing in anniversary cards

CONGRATULATIONS
HERE'S TO 25 MORE!
x

[studpuppet]

Although we lost some of the forum archive (1999-2004)

One of these days, someone's going to find a back-up on a server somewhere, like a lost episode of Dr Who.

[Ferris]

I've been arsing about in the other thread, but even as a relative newcomer - a mere 7.5hrs (!!) - I've marveled at how well this community works.

There's no ads! Everyone is broadly respectful and well-informed! It's how I remember the promise of the internet in the late '90s. It's gonna be interesting discussion, everyone getting along and recommending new music. It'll be great!!

...When you compare it to how most mainstream websites are in 2024 (full of frenetic lunatics engagement-farming so the host site gets more advertising clicks), CaB is an absolute oasis.

25 more please!

[Bently Sheds]

Too long. Didn't read.

(Nice one, Neil. Lurked for years, always one of the first places I check each morning and every 10 minutes thereafter. Thanks for putting this place together & keeping it going).

[Ferris]

Yes good point - thanks Neil for keeping the whole thing on the rails!

[There Be Rumblings]

It's a life's work that you should rightly be extremely proud of. Thanks mate.

[The Mollusk]

I was talking to a friend the other night who knows about this place via me and is always astounded that it's not just still going but always flourishing and evolving and going from strength to strength.

It's always been an immense privilege to share this space with everyone else here, sometimes happy enough to spectate and other times finding joy in contributing and sharing my own passions and discovering new ones. The stuff I spout on here I don't feel like fits anywhere else in my life and I'm not sure what I'd do if I didn't have that space to dump it. I'm so grateful. Thank you!

[Barry Admin]

Just wanna say thanks to Dave, boki and TJ for their invaluable help during the early days of CaB. I didn't really have the confidence to do another site on my own initially and asked Dave to join me from the very start. He worked in audio, and did some incredibly high-quality encodes of Blue Jam and even CM TV shows in codecs like VQF, while I worked out the video stuff.

Then after a while, boki and TJ came onboard for help me with forum moderation and with compiling and updating CM info.

Thank you again also to everyone who has supported the site over the years with subscriptions and donations, and kept it from becoming plastered in adverts for a quarter of a decade. Ever since we outgrew donated hosting, Zetetic has also been a great help in terms of the technical side of things.

Ahhh there's so many people to thank. I can't even remember the name now of the guy who donated the fuckingnoddy.com space. I used that to circulate the Brass Eye Special right after transmission, and the filth actually stormed the server buildings to shut it down in a really over-the-top way, because the show was so contentious at the time and it was getting so many downloads. Channel 4 were going apeshit, but I had no idea a DVD release was coming or I wouldn't have uploaded it. They also had legal threats about the show so they wanted the circulation shut down, but for some reason they never just asked me.

Nick Mailer from Positive Internet hosted us for many years too, and was a free speech advocate who inspired my extremely hands-off moderation approach for many years.

And Ray's CM Rethink site was a big influence on me; he had hosted short clips of CM on the web and they were such rare and precious nuggets of gold, and helped me to really get more into Chris Morris. Rich Henderson/cabinessence.cream.org was the first guy to host full episodes of CM shows on the web, so he was a huge influence too, and showed me what was possible with the new codecs and such that were emerging.

Finally, if you've been reading the site for years and never posted, you're part of it all too, and it's never to late to sign up and join in. Regardless, thank you to the lurkers who have spent so much time following CaB over the past quarter of a decade. I love reading so much, and it's my immense thrill and privilege to know that this place has provided people with so much to read over the years.

[Oosp]

I did up this display of all the CaB logos through the years for a recent Wimblewrong post:



Thank you, Wayback Machine, and thank you, Barry Admin

[Retinend]

I also grew up on here. For better or worse virtually everything I've ever thought over the last 15 years is archived on CaB (except for the 2016-2020 years where I flounced) which is cool. It's like a diary I can flip back into and revisit where I was at some given year.

What's more it's been my only consistent writing outlet in all that time. I've never written a book or a blog, but I have consistently posted (flounce years notwithstanding). There's a lot of smart and funny people here. There's a high standard of writing which has been a positive form of peer pressure. Being on here makes me feel like I'm down the pub - the mix of high and low conversations going on at once. To choose a timely example, a thread called Academia, Graduate School, and the Meaning of It All followed by a thread called Shagging Dogs.

And it's got so much history that I could never escape its orbit, even during the flouncing years. One of the first things I inevitably do when I discover a great show I missed in the last 20 years is to google site:cookdandbombd.co.uk happy valley (or whatever the show might be) and get hip to the "CaB consensus." But it's not the CaB consensus - it's what my friends think.

[Deskbound Cunt]

Early spotting of the Deskbound Cunt. Yes, that's me on BEML



Scrolling down; sadly Graeme Payne is no longer with us.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I used that to circulate the Brass Eye Special right after transmission, and the filth actually stormed the server buildings to shut it down in a really over-the-top way,

Blimey! Has that been mentioned before? If it has I'd totally forgotten.

I was in the chatroom the night it aired. I remember you had to view it in a tiny little postage stamp sized window because video capture used a lot of cpu, and consequently you were annoyed at not being able to see it properly.  One guy in the US phoned his parents in the UK and got them to put the phone next to the tv so he could listen! It wasnt too much longer until live streams of tv shows would be commonplace.

[jamiefairlie]

One of these days, someone's going to find a back-up on a server somewhere, like a lost episode of Dr Who.

aye and the cunt will try to sell it back to us or hoard it like a wanker!

On a more serious note, I genuinely think this site is actually an incredible repository of contemporary views of the dawn of the new millennium. Views that are unedited and unairbrushed and not altered by later context.

[Barry Admin]

Blimey! Has that been mentioned before? If it has I'd totally forgotten.

I was in the chatroom the night it aired. I remember you had to view it in a tiny little postage stamp sized window because video capture used a lot of cpu, and consequently you were annoyed at not being able to see it properly.  One guy in the US phoned his parents in the UK and got them to put the phone next to the tv so he could listen! It wasnt too much longer until live streams of tv shows would be commonplace.

Yeah I definitely mentioned it before in updates and stuff. I felt awful as the guy supplying the servers had only just started doing so fairly recently. I was boasting about the amount of downloads we were getting for the BES, so C4 wanted it shut down immediately cause it was obviously flying absolutely everywhere. My understanding is that it was because of the entire fuss around the show and the threats of legal action people featured were making, rather than anything to do with copyright.

Remember just before the show went out? An insider posted up some stuff on the forums and that almost scuppered the entire thing even being broadcast. People went loopy about that too, quite rightly though.

I didn't remember that I had to watch it in a tiny little window when it was broadcast, that's a funny detail. And the guy listening down the phone, wow 😂

[Johnny Yesno]

Yeah I definitely mentioned it before in updates and stuff. I felt awful as the guy supplying the servers had only just started doing so fairly recently. I was boasting about the amount of downloads we were getting for the BES, so C4 wanted it shut down immediately cause it was obviously flying absolutely everywhere. My understanding is that it was because of the entire fuss around the show and the threats of legal action people featured were making, rather than anything to do with copyright.

I missed that story too. You probably weren't laughing at the time but it's hilarious now.

There was a script UkOnline provided so that webmasters could post a form on a website so that their visitors could mail them with feedback.  I thought, okay, what about if we write that feedback back to a webpage instead of sending it to my email address?  Amazingly this worked, and let me construct a very early sort of messageboard system.  Now my users couldn't just talk to me, they could talk to each other as well. 

This is a great detail. I'm impressed. Twenty-odd years too late but I'm impressed.

[Barry Admin]

Thanks :-)

[racecar bed indy 500]

25 years is a heck of a long time. Definitely dwarfs the period of time I've even been aware of here. Good work keeping everything running smooth for so long.

[Harlequin]

HERES TO THE FINEST CUNTS IN SHITFLEET

[Indalian]

Thank you Neil for all your work.

I remember when I joined the site I had to post a picture of a monkey!