Cliché - The Truth
Sigh. Our reporting on the various things to do with Cliché and Son of Cliché has been woefully confused - partly our fault, and partly the BBC's. In order to at least sort some of it out, on Saturday I spent ages going through the contemporary Radio Times listings for the shows. Here's what I found out about Cliché; I'll do a story on Son of Cliché later this week, once I've investigated various other things.
To start with, there are six episodes of Cliché, as Zenith said in the comments - the BBC's assertation that there was only five was false. These were broadcast on Mondays at 12:27pm (with a repeat the next day at 10:30pm), on the 16th March, 23rd March, 30th March, 6th April, 13th April, and 20th April 1981.
All of which you'd know if you read my comments in the previous news story. But having got in touch with the BBC today, we can confirm that they do just have only five tapes in the archive - we believe they are missing episode 5. Whether this is permenantly missing, or has just been temporarily mislaid, we have no idea.
Anyway, we'll update soon with a full Cliché episode guide, which will include detailed timings of the sketches as per the Son of Cliché one, and the original Radio Times capsules. As for the missing episode - watch this space for more info on that.
And if any of that is wrong, then I'll just give up G&T for good.
Comments
'M' on the Verbwhores forum has just posted this:
"Often you ask BBC7 if they'd be interested in high-quality off-airs of wiped shows like this, but they never seem bothered.
I do know someone who will have the whole of Cliche/Son of Cliche from the first transmissions, and in superb quality if his other tapes are anything to go by. And he won't be the only one, since it was a popular show. These people do exist - it just takes a bit of legwork to look for them."
Reassuring to say the least. Just think, if BBC7 had never have repeated Clich�, there would never have been this much excellent detective work going on, and we'd be happily under the assumption that everything was safe...
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 14, 2003 02:29 AM
Indeed - I thought they must be around somewhere, but that sounds very hopeful that they're very good quality, too. Of course, it's always possible the BBC might find the original tapes at some point too. At least it's only 1 ep of Cliche lost, rather than the entire series...
It's just a shame it's so difficult to get the truth out of the BBC though (that 'Tapes Safe and Well' article is an embarassment for G&T, frankly) - although to be fair, they probably don't have the resources to be able to deal with things like this in they way they'd like. I'm not going to bother with getting in touch with them about SoC - they won't have time to give us anything useful. I suggest we just wait for this "full" schedule of repeats and see what they broadcast.
Posted by John Hoare at October 14, 2003 02:47 AM
Never trust a response you get from the BBC, whether it's good news or bad. It's in their interests to fob people off. Much more fun to do your own research - you find out all sorts of things along the scenic route...
Posted by M at October 26, 2003 05:07 PM
The thing is, they just haven't got time to do the proper research necessary; they're far too busy.
There's some more Cliche/Son of Cliche news coming up - I've just got to sort a few things out, and then I'll make an announcement.
Posted by John Hoare at October 26, 2003 05:24 PM
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