Quote: cwickham @ August 23 2011, 9:15 PM BST"WORLD EXCLUSIVE: LEE MACK HAS ONE LEG LONGER THAN THE OTHER"
"KEELEY HAWES PRETENDED TO HER HUSBAND SHE COULD PLAY TENNIS WHEN THEY WERE FIRST GOING OUT"
Well frankly cwickham I was shocked, shocked I tell ya 
The panelists are well aware of what 'truths' the programme makers know about them, having given the researchers a list of truths they think might be interesting at earlier date, they just don't know if what is written on the card is going to be one of those truths, or something made up by the programme makers. They don't get their truths by snooping around the panelists' houses! (There's an interview with Lee Mack in which he explains all this somewhere which I'm trying to find.)
The context of "going round panellists' houses" was part of the story that David's been prising his bedroom door open ever since the door handle fell off; the quote was something like "I can believe that the researchers went round to his flat to look for facts and he had to explain the scratches on the door quickly", part of a wider joke where he was suggesting David was a murderer.
Pretty sure the researchers going to his house bit was a joke as well. Like I said: Lee Mack has explained how they get the truths.
Here it is:
http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/emma-422/interview-lee-mack-3953/
"You must be running out of unlikely truths. Surely you have to make some up now?
No we genuinely don't make them up. The thing is, you have these meetings where you tell the researchers what you think are great stories but the ones that tend to get used are actually quite mundane. I remember David Mitchell had one this year where the door in his bedroom is a bit sticky and he has to open it with his fingers rather than use the door handle. That's not particularly showbiz.
Thanks for that Lassoon
No worries!
The first live Strictly Come Dancing show is on 30th September, so the show will get bumped off the schedule for that week. (Possibly they'll displace it to Thursday, as they did with New Tricks last year.)
Series 4 DVD news: BBFC have passed the nine episodes (including Unseen Bits) and nothing else. Therefore it's certain to say that it is a 'vanilla' release of series 4 with no special features.
(It also means the 216-minute runtime listed is wrong, and therefore the number of discs. Curious as to where that came from, then.)
DVD arrived in the post this morning. Can confirm it is just the episodes and nothing else. Two discs, episodes 1-6 on the first and 7-8 plus the Unseen Bits on the second - curious arrangement. Also, episodes 5 and 8 are switched around for some reason. The cover is slightly different to the one shown on Amazon - it says 'The Complete Series 4' instead of just 'SERIES 4', and "Full of amazing stories about themselves" has become "Full of amazing celebrity stories".
Note that they rather laughably try to pass the Unseen Bits off as an "extra", despite the fact that the back lists "all 9 episodes from series 4". That's borderline false advertising. DVD extras are things that weren't broadcast on television. That's why they're extras, they're included along with the regular feature.
Conclusion: If you want to watch series 4, then don't bother with this, watch them on YouTube instead. This is such an incompetent release it makes the first ever case for continuing to pirate something available legitimately. Somebody at the BBC's marketing department and/or 4DVD needs to pull their finger out - there's at least 90 minutes of footage cut from every show, don't tell me you couldn't put some of it on here.
Quote: cwickham @ September 5 2011, 11:11 AM BSTNote that they rather laughably try to pass the Unseen Bits off as an "extra", despite the fact that the back lists "all 9 episodes from series 4". That's borderline false advertising. DVD extras are things that weren't broadcast on television. That's why they're extras, they're included along with the regular feature.
Conclusion: If you want to watch series 4, then don't bother with this, watch them on YouTube instead. This is such an incompetent release it makes the first ever case for continuing to pirate something available legitimately. Somebody at the BBC's marketing department and/or 4DVD needs to pull their finger out - there's at least 90 minutes of footage cut from every show, don't tell me you couldn't put some of it on here.
Oh it really isn't!
On the extras, it's a bit of a messy subject when you get onto BBC shows. They've been fiercely criticised in the past for spending licence fee cash on producing stuff that is only available to those who pay extra for DVDs, hence stuff like the Mongrels out-takes/documentary thing being broadcast at 2am one night. (Less so the case here, where they probably never imagined a DVD release, but you get the point.)
Well the Beeb should grow a pair of testicles and ignore what these bollock-spouting Daily Mail readers say. Even if they only put together an extra reel of extended/deleted stuff (much like the Mock the Week releases) the only expense would be getting it classified by BBFC.
If they didn't want to put extras on they could at least have admitted it, rather than try to classify something that patently isn't an extra as one.
I suppose I should be fair: apart from the weird wrong order and the weird 6-2 split, all 9 episodes are present, correct and in good quality (although I suppose it shows that they couldn't even get the episodes themselves entirely right). It's just everything else that annoys me.
I don't recall offhand the specifics, but I think they may have been criticised by the BBC Trust (or whatever the overseeing body currently is), not by the Daily Mail.
And there's still the expense of editing, and perhaps legal and clearance issues too. It's not quite as simple as just flinging an extra tape at the BBFC.
Basically they were criticised for enticing people to buy their merchandise?
Fair enough if there's expenses, but it's still a bit crap that there's nothing at all.
Great start. Lots of laughs. My face actually hurt.
I'm taping this Nil.
Stop trying to spoil it.
Typical!
