Having It Off
Ah. I love guest reviewers. It means we get a nice content update for doing bugger all. This one is from the lovely Tanya Jones, who got hold of the Spitting Image video-only release Having It Off the other day, and kindly wrote us a review. This video was produced after the days of Rob and Doug being head writers of the show, and Chris Barrie had also left - the Dwarfian connection here being the fact that Robert Llewellyn features prominently. And disturbingly. Enjoy.
We do plan to give Spitting Image its own section at some point. Meanwhile, why not try getting hold of these videos...
Comments
Yay! The first Spitting Image bit on this site! Great review, by the way.
I've just realised - if we're all messing about on eBay trying to get hold of the vids, there's a possibility we might end up unwittingly trying to out-bid each other, which is ridiculous!
Although the postal strike is trying its best to ruin things, I'm awaiting the 'Classic Music Video' (the rarest Spit vid by some margin) compilation through the post. So, no-one on here spend any money on it as I can run them off a copy after Christmas (as I've put them all away until then)!
When you eventually do a Spitting Image section, bagsy you let me do an article about the records!
And speaking of records...
http://www.thehusks.com/comedy/ - You can (at the moment, anyway), download the rare extended version of the Spit single 'Santa Claus Is On The Dole', taken from the even rarer withdrawn 12" release. Messrs Grant and Naylor wrote the lyrics, don't you know! You can get the B-side '1st Atheist Tabernacle Choir' there too, with lyrics by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. I encoded them for this Phil Pope site I'm doing, but as I'm going to compress them down to RealAudio for the website, I've whacked up the top-quality MP3s for a bit.
P.S. Cappsy, you're welcome to put the 'Santa Claus Is On The Dole' MP3 on the downloads section of your website if you wish. I'll encode more Grant Naylor Spit songs too if you want those. Anything to get them circulating, y'know.
I'm a waffly bastard when I get going, aren't I?
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 9, 2003 05:20 PM
Yes, Having it Off (The Bonkers Guide) lay unopened on my Bookshelf (A Present off My Brother)for several years, I looked at the back during a spring clean and noticed 'Rob Llewellyn'
He has quite a big part in it...Oooo Errr :)
Posted by Cpt-D at November 9, 2003 07:40 PM
Sounds like we should set up a Spitting Image group to bid for such delights... ;)
Which records do you have, Darrell? I've been wanting a copy of '20 Golden Gobs' for ages.
Posted by Tanya Jones at November 9, 2003 10:57 PM
I'm also interested in the book Cpt-D mentions above. Do you get to see Rob's naughty bits? I'm also interested in the other stuff, probably.
Posted by Tanya Jones at November 9, 2003 11:03 PM
I have a cassette copy of '20 Great Golden Gobs', but it's a copy of a copy of the original cassette release, and copying it further may cause it to scream out in pain! I'm after either the CD of it or a nice vinyl copy that I can digitise. There was a "damaged" vinyl copy on there a few weeks ago, which I ignored as even I wasn't that desperate. HOWEVER, I may be able to get somebody I know to do me a CDR of it reasonably soon...
I have 'Spit In Your Ear' and all of the singles though - when the 'Da Do Run Ron' 7" arrives in the post my collection will be complete... (maniacal laugh)
That is unless there are more singles than this...
- 'Da Do Run Ron' (b/w 'Just a Prince Who Can't Say No')
- 'The Chicken Song' (b/w 'I've Never Met A Nice South African', 12" features '12 Hour Mix' of A-side and also includes 'Hello You Must Be Going' and 'We're Scared of Bob')
- 'Santa Claus Is On The Dole' (b/w '1st Atheist Tabernacle Choir', 12" features longer mix of A-side)
- 'The Christmas Singles' (b/w 'Keepin on Rockin', 12" and CD single also includes additional 12" mix of A-side and 'I'm Queen (House of Windsor)'. This has the same cover as '20 Great Golden Gobs' incidentally.
I also have a compilation CD I made meself featuring all the songs from about 30 episodes, including some real belters which never made it onto albums and stuff (including the fantastic 'When You're 65'). I'm really proud of it, there's a full 70 minutes plus on it - it took AGES to make.
Apologies if I appear to be boasting here, as I have every intention of releasing this stuff 'into the wild' as it were. So think of this post as the Argos catalogue of Spit rarities.
In the New Year when I've cleared my current trading backlog I'm going to devote my attention to getting all this stuff out and about.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 9, 2003 11:24 PM
I have an mp3 copy of 20 Golden Gobs if anybody's got 13 meg of webspace handy to upload it to.
Posted by Mr The Meddler at November 9, 2003 11:58 PM
I have the webspace available, but 13MB for a 50-minute album? Eurgh.
Still, it's something I suppose.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 10, 2003 12:02 AM
The tracks are 40kbps, stereo, 22khz. I suspect it's been taken from the cassette so that level of encoding is appropriate. Feel free to hold out for something better.
Posted by Mr The Meddler at November 10, 2003 12:16 AM
Right, they also released 'Cry Gazza Cry' as a single... and so they bloody should have done! It's a great song! I'm pretty sure there wasn't a 12" as the B-side's just the TV mix, which would suggest there were no other songs available anyway.
I've bid on a copy, and there's another one there as well so the bidding should remain quite civilised... fingers crossed.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 10, 2003 12:39 AM
Mr The Meddler, I'll personally pass on those MP3s, as I'd rather wait until the top-quality version reaches my possession than inflicting some over-compressed files on folk.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 10, 2003 12:40 AM
Err, I may have confused people there.I was referring to the Video not a book..The full title
is 'Having it Off''A Bonkers Guide' I think, and I
just happen to keep my Vids on a Bookcase some remain unopened...And if memory serves, there is a flash !
Posted by Cpt-D at November 10, 2003 10:07 AM
"Right, they also released 'Cry Gazza Cry' as a single... and so they bloody should have done! It's a great song! I'm pretty sure there wasn't a 12" as the B-side's just the TV mix, which would suggest there were no other songs available anyway."
There was a twelve-inch: it has a longer version of the a-side which ended with everyone singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" before finishing with the wail of "I'm forever crying buckets". Never seen the vinyl but once downloaded ian mp3 off Audiogalaxy. The b-side of 'Cry Gazza Cry' (the 'TV mix') has an extra verse, with Thatcher, Kinnock and Steve Davis attempting to emulate Gazza by crying. Marvellous song, written by Philip Pope and Steve Brown of KMKYWAP fame:
"Cry, Gazza, cry,
Put Maradonna to shame,
Try and get a hatrick,
Cry three times in one game, whoah,
Cry, Gazza, Cry,
Forget the soddin' ball,
It's a novelty to know that men are human after all..."
The 12-inch of 'Christmas Singles' though: what was on *that*, that's what we want to know.
Posted by Squidy at November 10, 2003 01:08 PM
"Never seen the vinyl but once downloaded ian mp3 off Audiogalaxy."
Was he the bloke who invented mp3s?
Posted by Sorry at November 10, 2003 01:13 PM
I've got the 12" of 'The Christmas Singles', Squidy - it carries on for another couple of minutes after the 7" fades out, with largely "la la la" lyrics, and one actual extra verse:
No more Christmas singles
Let's stop them in their tracks
If we hear one more medley
We'll kill-along-a-Max
Also, there's an exclusive song on side 2, 'I'm Queen (House of Windsor)', a version of which appeared in the first episode of series 12. There are major differences between the TV and record versions though, not least Chris Barrie doing Alistair Burnett's voice on the record instead of Jon Glover.
I have definite plans to make a complete, fully fledged 'Spitting Image: The Singles' boot now. It seems that everyone's missing at least one track from their collections, so it would be nice to have them all (in all their edits) in one place.
I shall look out for the 12" of 'Cry Gazza Cry' - at present I've only heard the TV version of that (I've got the episode it comes from on tape).
If you still have that MP3 - any chance of bunging it somewhere please? Y'know, for reference? If I can't get hold of the 12" for a while it'll help fill a temporary gap with this Phil Pope site, y'see.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 10, 2003 05:59 PM
"I've got the 12" of 'The Christmas Singles', Squidy - it carries on for another couple of minutes after the 7" fades out, with largely "la la la" lyrics, and one actual extra verse:
No more Christmas singles
Let's stop them in their tracks
If we hear one more medley
We'll kill-along-a-Max"
Excellent. That's good to know. Which bomb-dropping verse does it use? The 7" and the 'Golden Gobs' version are both different, changed for topicality. IIRC, 'Golden Gobs' goes:
Take all the Christmas singles,
Take every record back,
Load them onto an aeroplane,
And drop them on Iraq.
while the 7" goes:
These records are more deadly
Than all our war machines,
Drop them from an aeroplane,
And wipe out Milton Keynes.
"Also, there's an exclusive song on side 2, 'I'm Queen (House of Windsor)', a version of which appeared in the first episode of series 12. There are major differences between the TV and record versions though, not least Chris Barrie doing Alistair Burnett's voice on the record instead of Jon Glover."
Ah, now I have this on the 7". I don't know if it's any different to the 12" but it's definitely different to the TV version (as also seen on the 'Is Nothing Sacred?' video). Some great little jokes in there. Steve Coogan as Prince Edward: "Let's do some improvisation. Give me a household object. Better still, give me a house! Hahahahaha, that's improv!"
No extra tracks, then, as per The Chicken Song 12"? Strange, I always heard there were. There was also a CD release, maybe they were on that.
"If you still have that MP3 - any chance of bunging it somewhere please? Y'know, for reference? If I can't get hold of the 12" for a while it'll help fill a temporary gap with this Phil Pope site, y'see."
No can do, I'm afraid. The mp3 is unobtainable, stuck on a hard-drive inside a broken laptop.
Posted by Squidy at November 11, 2003 01:32 PM
All of the single versions use the 'Milton Keynes' middle-eight - I always assumed it was censorship imposed by the record company to prevent it being banned or something, as the TV version, broadcast while the single was out, still used the 'Iraq' verse. For this telly edit, they'd bothered altering it to change Thatch into Major (who'd only been PM a fortnight), so this is why I can't see the 'Milton Keynes' alteration as being a creative decision for topicality, and suspect the reason was EMI chickening out and ordering the single version to be changed. The re-recorded version sounds really half-arsed and hasty - they almost sound uncertain as to what the tune is. This is what leads me to believe that it was the more polished 'Iraq' version that came first and is the 'proper' edit.
Also in the TV version, there's a different vocal on the Bing Crosby line and an extra Fenton-Stevens overdub on the 'and the Barron Knights aren't funny' line (presumably to make the joke more audible - although maybe Pope and MFS just wanted to relish the chance to trash the berks who they battled for limelight with in the HeeBeeGeeBees days!).
The CD release of 'The Christmas Singles' excellently contains both the 7" AND the 12" mixes of the title track, 'Keepin' on Rockin'' (same as the LP version and virtually identical to the TV one too) and 'I'm Queen (House of Windsor)'. 'Keepin' on Rockin'' was presumably doing the rounds as further promotion for '20 Great Golden Gobs' which was released at the same time (and had the same cover).
I've never seen the 'Is Nothing Sacred?' compilation, but imagine it would have to lose a lot of 'I'm Queen...' due to irremoveable credits. Unless they'd bothered rooting through the rushes, which I somehow doubt.
As for that unobtainable Gazza MP3 - darn.
This comments page must be the most words used in discussion of a single comedy record ever.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 11, 2003 06:15 PM
Blimey, I'm having to do ridiculously awkward bidding acrobatics to get this Gazza 7" (including a strategic retraction). There's a Tottenham Hotspur collector on my tail, although he's just collecting to hoard, judging by some of the useless tat he's bought in the past. At least I'm after the bloody song.
Posted by Darrell Jones at November 13, 2003 11:59 PM
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