This is a story about a television title sequence,
and about me, as a child watching it.
It's also a warning about how YouTube won't last forever,
and it's the reason I'm climbing this particular hill.
It'll Be Alright on the Night was an outtakes show.
It compiled mistakes, technical errors, and flubs from television and film...
what its presenter and writer, Denis Norden, termed "cockups".
When the first episode aired in 1977, it was the only television show anywhere
that was dedicated to showing clips that the public weren't meant to see.
The show's formula was simple: compilations of cockups
presented by Denis Norden, clipboard in hand, to a live studio audience.
He'd add some wry comments around each set of outtakes,
his delivery slow and measured and droll.
He chose the clips and wrote the script himself — he'd been an accomplished comedy writer for decades.
In that first show, he has to explain the concept of the outtake,
of how they've picked up the no-good — NG — takes off the cutting room floor,
either literally or metaphorically.
And it's around some of the choicer of these NG takes we've found
that this programme has been nailed together.
In truth, those clips had been quietly circulating among film and television technicians for a while:
they'd save the best ones and compile them together to show at the office Christmas party.
Occasionally, a comedy show might put its own outtakes in somewhere,
but the idea of compiling them together as a show in itself
and displaying other people's mistakes to the public: well, that was new.
In that first 1977 show, even the simplest, most basic mistakes get a laugh,
partly because they're being shown to a warmed-up live audience,
but partly because things like that had not been seen by the public before.
And I know that's weird from a 21st-century perspective, but seeing a film actor forget their lines was novel.
Now, that was a one-off programme, so it had a one-off title sequence.
And those titles are slow by modern standards.
It's literally just someone using dry transfer letters to create the title,
and making obvious pre-planned mistakes.
It's more than a minute long.
But it gets a couple of laughs, it sets the tone,
and it's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect for a show of that era and that budget.
Alright On The Night was an obvious success.
But there weren't enough available outtakes to make it a regular thing.
It returned for a second edition two years later,
concentrating more on mistakes from film, with a title sequence built as a fake movie trailer.
And the third edition, 1981, had to focus a lot on American outtakes,
partly because the UK had started to run out of material,
but partly because America now had a similar show,
and the two countries' productions were sharing tapes across the Atlantic.
You can see the UK team set the audience's expectations in their title sequence.
And it's, again, a pretty standard set of titles for a one-off show: some commissioned animation.
But as the '80s went on, Alright On The Night became more and more popular.
When a new show aired, which was only every two years or so, it was event television.
There was even one late-night, more-adult edition on the new, edgy Channel 4,
and one sports edition called It'll Be Alright on the Day1, which as far as I can tell is entirely lost to history.
Now, the only source that I have for ratings is Wikipedia, which doesn't have its sources cited.
I don't have any explicit reason to doubt those numbers,
but also, I can absolutely imagine some jerk emailing me after this video
gloating that I believed the fake viewing figures they hilariously added years ago.
But, the numbers do seem reasonable, so assuming they're true:
by the late '80s, the show was pulling in 17 million viewers.
That means about a third of the entire British population were tuned in.
After all, there were only four television channels.
By the early 90s,
Alright On The Night was an institution on ITV, the main commercial network.
Their publicly-funded rivals at the BBC launched a competing show,
raiding their own archives and Christmas tapes,
but they were always playing second fiddle.
Alright On The Night was a show that belonged to that massively centralised era of television.
Big, monolithic studio complexes
where half a dozen shows might be recorded at the same time:
a comedy in one studio, a drama next door, light entertainment just down the hall.
And each studio complex would have a central VT Department — VT for "video tape".
Back then, television cameras didn't do the actual recording to tape themselves,
they just sent live signals down the cables to VT,
who were usually stuck in a windowless basement room with big specialised equipment.
So the folks in VT would do the actual recording,
and they'd see pretty much everything that was going on.
And by the '90s, those VT engineers, and the editors putting the footage together:
oh, they all knew about the outtake shows.
So if an actor slipped up and happened to make the folks in VT laugh,
it wasn't just "huh, maybe that clip'll end up in the Christmas tape".
It was, to quote actor Rik Mayall...
...which is a great line, well delivered,
but also not quite as improvised as it seems.
He said that several different ways over the years after various slipups,
because it could reliably get a laugh from a British audience.
Alright on the Night was part of British culture.
And as it went on through the '90s,
the title sequences were always specially-commissioned,
because they had to be.
Each show was numbered, and that number would often appear
throughout the show's artwork or as part of the set design.
The budget did seem to stretch and shift a bit:
Sometimes there would be an elaborate animated title sequence
and a live studio audience very clearly in shot.
Sometimes there'd just be a quick bit of computer graphics
and no audience actually visible.
I'm not saying they used canned laughter.
I don't have access to the paperwork and records that'd prove it either way,
but I am saying that for studio entertainment shows,
TV directors very much like to show off
and prove there's a live audience... if they can.
But, the show had settled down,
as much as a show can settle down when it only has a new episode every two or three years.
It finally got a consistent theme tune.
Instead of a different stock library piece every time,
it became a specially-composed, saxophone-heavy and very, very '90s bit of music.
And that's where you'd expect the show to stay.
Title sequence, regular theme tune, studio section, outtakes.
You'd expect it to become a stock-standard show with stock-standard production.
Yes, it's popular. Yes, it takes a lot of research and clearance —
particularly because the show not only needed permission to show clips,
but also paid a fee to the performers as thank-you.
But it's a regular studio show, in a routine.
You'd expect the titles and production to be... just okay, fine.
But they're a lot more than that: as the show goes through the 90s,
you start to see some really clever bits of compositing and technical work.
Look at this transition from the titles of the seventh edition, January '93:
Completely CG introduction, there's a red circle, the film reel morphing into a number seven.
All CG, completely CG text over it.
But seamlessly, it becomes a live camera shot of the actual studio set.
Now, if you look closely, you can see there's a fade just there,
they've used a looped few seconds of footage,
but I have gone frame-by-frame through that title,
and I am not certain where the transition from CG to real set is.
It's brilliant work.
And importantly, it meant there was probably coordination
between the title designers and the set designers and the director and the camera team.
That'll be a huge amount of effort for a production team nowadays,
let alone one using tech from nearly 30 years ago.
They didn't have to do that.
No-one was going to think less of the show
if they'd just had a regular title sequence and then cut to the set.
Who does that? Who bothers to do that much for a clip show of outtakes?
Well, some people who are clearly very dedicated to their craft.
It's similar with the eighth edition: it's not quite as smooth,
but there's still a nice transition between titles and set and live studio audience.
All of which sets the stage for the single greatest title sequence I have ever seen.
I'm going to play it out in full,
because I think the amount of criticism and review that I'm about to do
covers me for both US fair use and the more strict UK fair dealing,
but also because this deserves to be seen in full.
As a kid, watching this, this was the first time that I can remember
noticing the craft that went into making television, and genuinely wondering...
wait, how was that done?
'Cause I couldn't go back and watch it again. This was linear television.
There was no pause or rewind unless for some reason you'd bothered to tape it.
Officially, the next show was not "the ninth edition".
There's no show number 9.
Instead, they went to film on location,
and they called the show It'll Be Alright On The Night's Cockup Trip.
♪♪ [theme music begins]
[applause]
[music and applause end]
Hello, from a hill in Cumbria called Great Cockup.
So. You may be asking, what's so impressive about that?
Well...
First, we're coming in from a clip in which a skier knocks over a camera
and sends it rolling anti-clockwise.
So we fade to a camera shot that's also rolling anti-clockwise,
which then lines up perfectly.
Then the laser effect.
Not tricky for a video artist in the 90s, sure, but look:
someone masked out the leaves on that plant frame-by-frame,
and someone's off-camera making them move and react
so it seems like the laser is physically there, affecting things.
Those leaves cast shadows on the rest of the scene.
This isn't just layers of photos composited, it's real physical stuff.
See the compass up at the top? It swings wildly when the laser hits.
It looks like it's affected by it.
Completely unnecessary, no-one would have noticed if that compass stayed still.
It's not like the audience would have gone:
"That's wrong, I thought compasses reacted to nearby magical laser beams!"
But still, they bothered to make that happen.
And then, the map unfolds. Okay, it's probably just some hidden wires,
but anyone who's ever tried to fold and unfold one of those massive Ordnance Survey maps
knows what a pain in the ass that can be, but they've rigged it to be smooth.
And the map just clips the leaves as it opens, proving that it's done for real.
While that's happening, we get this perfectly eased, smooth camera move,
including what must be a focus pull, to exactly the right point on the map.
Second laser beam, more digital art, which isn't too tricky,
except it paints out the contours on the map.
Then, 3D animation. Maybe a bit tricky, but this is 1996.
Sci-fi shows like Babylon 5 were already doing full space battles in CG.
Moving some contour lines around is a pretty standard job.
The flying-in text is very '90s, but again, standard.
But then... it's a helicopter shot!
They hired a helicopter.
Actually, they hired Castle Air and pilot Michael Malric-Smith,
who were well established as the go-to team for aerial filming in the UK.
And given there are no crew around Denis Norden,
they must have taken him by helicopter to the top of the hill, then flown away,
and then flown back in for that shot however many times they needed to get it right.
And what a shot!
They hold on it for long enough that they have to extend the theme tune,
keep the drum loop going.
And with the blue overlay at the top and the changed speed of the footage,
it almost looks computer-generated.
They could have just hired an animator for some regular titles
and filmed in a studio, same as usual.
Or if they wanted an excuse to have a buzz around in a helicopter on someone else's budget,
they could have just used the single helicopter shot and put some text over it.
But they didn't.
They used elaborate props and CG, and they bothered to make a compass spin.
Everything in that title sequence is so far above and beyond the standards of the day.
Yes, a few other shows had impressive, painstakingly-made titles,
but not for a one-off clip show.
I have a vivid memory of watching that as a kid.
I didn't notice any of those fine details, of course I didn't,
but I remember being impressed by the whole thing.
And I think it's then that I really started to understand for the first time
that there are whole teams of people who make the shows that we watch;
that the way they do their job can be impressive, they can go above and beyond;
and that... well, maybe I could do that too one day.
And I reckon that that show was the peak, the decadent height of old-school TV.
When the Cockup Trip was aired in '96,
very few people questioned the dominance of television,
and the standard big broadcaster model that had been stable for decades.
It was all about to change, but right then,
even a clip show could spend money on elaborate titles and helicopters,
because with more than ten million people watching,
they would still make a lot of profit from advertising.
As for how that all fell apart?
Well… I'll tell you after the break.
The future might have seemed bright for television in 1996,
but the first signs of the changes to come were already there,
if you knew where to look.
Cable and satellite TV were starting to reach the mass market,
and there were a few more channels available to a few people.
And this new thing called the World Wide Web was starting to get some attention,
even though so far it was mostly just a toy for a few nerds.
But unless you were in the media industry and really forward-thinking,
television and the big broadcasters were the kings.
And to the public, it certainly looked like there weren't any pretenders to the throne.
In the ten years that followed: Big Brother kicked off reality TV,
hundreds of channels of digital television launched, broadband internet rolled out,
almost everyone bought a mobile phone, Facebook and Twitter launched,
video editing on home computers became possible,
and the first clips were uploaded to a small website called YouTube.
The years from 1996 to 2006 were the fastest acceleration
that the media industry had ever seen.
And you can see that change in Alright on the Night.
Denis Norden continued presenting for those ten years,
until poor eyesight eventually forced him to retire.
In the episodes that followed, the show was still at a high standard, of course,
but the introductions became standard animated affairs again,
and after a brief dalliance with 2D animation and stop-motion,
they went down the same CG route as every other show.
Although fair play, the 21st-anniversary special was recorded on a yacht...
albeit with a much less impressive set of titles, no credit for aerial camerawork,
and Denis Norden being suspiciously not visible in the aerial shots.
Again, I'm not saying they just went to the seaside, hired a small boat,
and then used stock footage of a big expensive yacht for the aerials,
but I am saying that directors always like to show off... if they can.
Don't ask me.
So Denis Norden retired, but the show continued.
Griff Rhys Jones took over as presenter, in much the same style.
He presented from '08 to '16,
with the sort of standard CG titles you'd expect from a regular studio show,
and shortened, faster title music with some fiddly bits added.
And even now, in 2020, the show limps on,
with David Walliams narrating just as a voiceover.
No cameras anymore, no studio.
it's just a compilation clip show, with regular animated titles,
and the music has even more fiddly bits added.
♪♪ [theme music coda]
I'm not meaning to cast aspersions on the creative teams who've made those titles.
They're perfectly good titles, they haven't cut corners.
But they also haven't made an actual, physical compass needle spin
for no reason other than it'll make the show look very, very slightly more impressive
for the few people who notice it.
No-one's asked them to do that. And no channel has the money or time for it.
Because the show's ratings are...
well, they're going the same way as everything else on television.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think TV's going to die entirely —
radio's still going, after all.
I think TV is still going to be an important part of culture for a long while.
But the days of seventeen million people watching an outtakes show are long past.
Denis Norden died in 2018, at 96 years old.
His memoirs include a story about being in a landing craft in Normandy on D-Day,
and also a reference to Google.
He wrote of him and his peers:
"We not only lived through the golden age of so many forms of popular entertainment.
"We were present at the birth of many of them, enjoyed their heyday,
"and we were there to mourn their passing."
I wasn't there for the birth of television, obviously, but I was there for its heyday, and...
Sitting there, as a kid in 1996, watching the screen,
I had no idea how much everything was about to change.
And we're here now, watching online video on a phone, or a computer,
or maybe what we still call the big screen on the wall, the TV.
How long will it be until the next big change comes along,
and a whole new medium arrives to outcompete... this?
Because sooner or later, that will happen.
All the people and companies out there, including me,
everyone who's spending money to make big, expensive, impressive videos:
Enjoy it, by all means, but...
it's worth keeping an eye on the horizon and planning for whatever might come next.
That's the lesson to take from the Cockup Trip now as an adult,
but as a kid watching back in '96, well...
First, I learned that anything you say or do on camera can and will come back to haunt you.
But more than that: I learned that sometimes,
it's worth doing things for your craft just because you can.
That sometimes it's worth going above and beyond, and sweating the small stuff,
because someone else will notice what you've done.
When I add a little easter egg in the background of a video;
when I tweak a graphic to fix something that only a couple of people would ever notice;
or when I go and spend hours in a library fact-checking and looking up obscure references:
that title sequence is the sort of thing that inspired me.
It taught me that while you don't have to strive for absolute perfection,
sometimes it's worth taking a little bit of time and effort
to make something you're really proud of.
I didn't need to travel to the Lake District to make this video.
I didn't need to climb this hill called Great Cockup,
or hire a drone operator so I can end this video the same way as Cockup Trip ended,
with a spectacular final aerial shot.
I didn't need to commission a saxophone-heavy, very 90s,
but legally-distinct for copyright purposes, theme tune to end this video on.
But I did.
And that's partly because I want to pay tribute to the folks that came before me.
Partly because I want to show off while I can.
And it's partly because, nearly 25 years ago,
someone bothered to make a compass needle spin.
So, I say this unironically:
Merry Christmas, Denis Norden.
♪♪ [legally-distinct theme tune]
[Caption+ by JS* https://caption.plus]
I didn't need to travel to the Lake District to make this video.
Outtake!
You okay? Yeah!
That was — I'll be honest, I'm —
I'm genuinely annoyed that's not a 360 camera, and didn't have a back shot.
'Cause that was so graceful! That was lovely!
You know that's gonna be the outtake at the end now.