Not The Nine O’Clock News On Ice! A Celebration of the 80s satire juggernaut's Radio Times listings

If your mind turns, on occasion, to funny spoof TV listings it will probably and inevitably turn to one creation more than any other- Charlie Brooker’s pyrotechnic website TV Go Home (TVGH) which Brooker wrote from 1999 to 2003.

Cutting, filthy, acetic and balefully funny, this spoof Radio /TV Times-type listings site included synopses of must-see shows such as Wanking For Coins (“Rowland Rivron introduces a new series looking at the world's most desperate and degrading careers”), Vin Disel’s 500 Favourite Tartans (“45: The Macdonald Clan”), Now n’Shit (“Youth-oriented news programme”) and Nicky Campbell: Swimming With Cats.

It also, of course, gave birth to Channel 4’s Nathan Barley (“CUNT” of TVGH parish), a mock-documentary series about a hipster media guy sucking on the teat of his family’s wealth from his Westbourne Grove flat who created all manner of meaningless but achingly recherche Shoreditch/Soho media horrors.

TVGH was made into a TV series for E4 in 2001 but the original literary incarnation was the definitive and best distillation of TV listings parody, blending inventiveness, a surreal imagination, tac-sharp observations and a tendency to swear like a trouper. The Framley Examiner continues this lineage and shares its DNA with TVGH (with the authors of both working on Brooker’s Newswipe series).

But there is another comedy series which began a trend for spoof listings in actual listings magazines. Not The Nine O’Clock News’s troubled genesis is well-known -terrible pilot, abandoned first episode due to electoral broadcasting regulations, changes of cast- but an over-looked part of the brilliant satirical comedy’s history is its spoof listings in The Radio Times which provided a synopsis of an entirely different, but fictitious programme- if it provided any synopsis at all. Even the repeats received the spoof treatment.

Here are just some of the most inventive examples. This was 14 April 1980’s listing (series 2, episode 3):

A situation comedy written by Bob Deasey and Maurice Fote: Don’t Get Your Knickers in A Twist! Trouble in store for the sofa when Ros has to explain away a misunderstanding with the milkman…with hilarious consequences!

21 April 1980 (episode 4):

From the Opera House, Welwyn, Woomera Philharmonic conductor Canaan Banana. Haydn No 95 ‘Excruciatingly Dull Symphony’. Laundromat Avocado Ma, Non Mobutu Quartet for strings and relish tray.

And ending the second series (episode 7):

The Death Lasers of Kzaarn. Huge evil squids threaten to destroy the universe, but the Doctor is trapped in the same concrete corridor a last week…

The fourth series’ episode 4 was listed as “Not The Nine O Clock News On Ice” (from Munchengladbach) and some of the entries were surprisingly surreal, such as the episode 6 of series two synopsis which was written entirely in Welsh (and which translated reads, “if we leave now, we’ll be in Cardiff hours before the game”).

The synopsis for the first episode of series 4 read: “Due to lack of space in this edition of Radio Times, there is, regrettably, no room to give details about the above programme in the allotted amount of area available, due to the shortage of allotable pagery, except to say that the usual allocation is larger than this”. And the episode 6 entry took the form of a letter of complaint: “Dear Not The Nine O Clock News, I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about your treatment of……….in the last programme ever. It was disgusting/outrageous/rancid/not nearly long enough. I am not a pride/fat/old codger/your mother, but this really takes the biscuit/mickey/last train to Clarksville. I shall not be watching again. PS My favourite was Mel Smith/Griff Rhys Jones/Rowan Atkinson/Pamela Stephenson…”

The “best of” compilations received similar treatment and there was a mini-bonanza in 1980. The 9 Sept 1980 compilation was titled “The Bert of Not The Nine O’Clock News” and featured “the Jewish-looking one”, “the fat one with split ends”, “sex interest” and “the other one”. The 30 December edition requested readers to write their own billing in a special RT Christmas competition.

The first series (first broadcast 16 October 1979) was accompanied by much more sober but duller and anodyne summaries where the duty listings hack promised “unhinged interpretations of the world of news and current affairs”. They seem preoccupied with hinges as “unhinged interpretations” turned up again in the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth episode synopses.

These playful spoofs were part of NOT’s parody industry- the first comedy book to spring from the series was a spoof of the po-faced current affairs magazine NOW! It was followed by Not The Royal Wedding (a souvenir manque), and Not The General Election. It also produced two spoof day-by-day desk calendars some of which were written by Douglas Adams.

While these spin-offs are relatively well-known, the charming and eccentric listings entries are an often overlooked annexe to the NOT! industry. They are well worth seeking out. You can find them all via the BBC’s Genome website.

Thanks to Graeme Wood on Twitter for alerting me to the RT spoofs. A version of this article first appeared in Curious British Telly issue 3.