At least once a year, I will have a gander at what has to be one of my favourite DVDs, "The Very Best Of Have I Got News For You" released for Christmas 2002.
And every time I watch it, I always happen to have the commentary from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop as they tend to stop talking whenever a particularly funny bit comes on and it's evident that there was never really any animosity between them.
What I like about the DVD is that it contains all the opening title sequences throughout the compilation including the first ever theme tune which was a more synthy version of the theme designed to match the animated images.
The closing theme was more or less the same as the one that's been used since.
Angus Deayton was only chosen as host about a week before transmission started with his close competitor being Sandi Toksvig. The woman who's now the host of the Radio 4 programme that the show originated from.
Sandi was on Ian Hislop's team for the first show and was already known for her appearances on another Hat Trick show "Whose Line Is It Anyway" along with Paul Merton.
Although younger viewers possibly in their late teens would recognise her better as Ethel from Number 73 although she had left the show before it ended and turned into the ill fated 7T3.
Just over a year before HIGNFY began however, Sandi could be seen doing a kids version of "Whose Line" as an insert on the first series of the ITV Saturday morning show "Ghost Train".
Anyway some of the early highlights included when Roy Hattersley failed to turn up for the show first time round and his replacement was Robert Harris, of whom they showed the 1983 clip of him making a report following Mrs Thatcher on her campaign trail when it turned out to be the then Prime Minister following him!
The first revenge for Roy Hattersley's absence was a clip of him seen jogging on an edition of Panorama in 1978 which was only the beginning of many jokes sending him up.
It's worth pointing out that the shows in the first series had up to 8 rounds including one where contestants had to guess a newspaper story through a list of words that were sub headings, and there was even a props round which didn't last too long.
The show became established pretty quickly and in 1992 they started recording two series per year and even established figures such as Trevor McDonald and former Labour leader Neil Kinnock made appearances.
Both of them ended up hosting the show just over a decade later although results were rather mixed with Lord Kinnock as he's now known, blundering through the show.
He was brilliant on his first apperance as a guest however even joining in on the jokes about Angus's "brown suit".
It's also worth mentioning the 1992 Election Special where in place of the newspaper cuttings were pictures of party leaders and MPs on the studio set.
One of them being the unlucky positioning of John Major next to Edwina Currie, who had appeared on what Paul and Ian agreed was the worst ever show which was a Thatcher special in 1993 where Edwina and fellow guest Derek Hatton just spat insults at each other.
This post is obviously an opportunity for me to reccount some of my favourite jokes although for me the funniest parts are the video clips and photos shown at the beginning and the end of the show. Harry Hill could learn an awful lot from them as the ones on HIGNFY are actually funny.
Examples included one from 1991 about David Mellor being on a youth training scheme, which was actually a clip of the Tory MP singing a duet of "I'd Do Anything" with a young boy as part of that year's Children In Need.
Another one that made me laugh especially was one involving an early target Robert Maxwell and about him investing a lot of money in a maze made up of unsold copies of The European.
As mentioned by Ian Hislop, the newspaper ended up sinking with him.
Although the actual clip used was part of the title sequence to "What The Papers Say" which had just been revived on BBC 2.
Also worth mentioning is an Odd One Out round from series 2 where Mother Teresa was one of those who had won the Turner Prize to which Angus said was for "the Calcutta shrivelled walnut lookalike competition"
Ian was particularly disgruntled by that remark and retorted with
"Who's next Albert Schweitzer? Bastard! Yeah!"
And there was also a missing words round where the question was "Small ____ For Maggie" to which guest Nick Hancock responded "Git as a son".
Nick: "You know about libel don't you Ian?"
Ian: "No, that's fair comment!"
By 1993 the show saw the first of many highlights including when Paul Merton appeared alongside a tub of lard in place of Roy Hattersley who had failed to show up for a third time.
Paul's team surprisingly ended up winning to which Ian compared himself to Graham Taylor, in one of his very rare football references.
Other significant moments included in 1994 where Tory MP Teddy Taylor appeared as a guest and having never seen the show before just went off in tangents thinking it was an excuse to get his statements across. This resulted in Paul Merton pretending to fall asleep and make gestures of him hanging himself.
1994 was also the year the show got into big trouble for a joke about Kevin and Ian Maxwell being "heartless scheming bastards" which got Angus into trouble for contempt of court and Hat Trick and the BBC a 20 grand fine.
Especially as the BBC had been told to keep references to a minimum to avoid them being biased.
The show has however been on the right side of a court case where in 1998 Rupert Allason lost a High Court libel action against a comment in the book "Have I Got 1997 For You" which suggested he was "a conniving little shit".
Having represented himself without a lawyer, he was never going to win.
The DVD also contains many run ins with guests including Ian Hislop Vs Paula Yates in 1995.
Most of the jokes made were about her breast implants but Ian was more peeved by the fact she was using the show to promote her autobiography.
Whether that's true or not it doesn't matter as she's dead now.
That show was notable for the set being changed to a green colour although it changed back to red after a week due to viewers finding it "nauseating".
The other great thing about the DVD is that it contains clips from the news that are unlikely to be found to buy anywhere else. One of them being Jeremy Paxman's one question interview with Michael Howard from May 1997 which still makes me laugh on every viewing.
The same series that year saw the infamous apperance of Neil and Christine Hamilton on the show that possibly launched their new "career". They even went as far as giving them "their fees" in paper bags although Neil was disapointed to find there wasn't actually any real money inside.
1998 saw the show switch to widescreen in the Autumn series and saw probably the first appearance of the BBC's Widescreen Test Card as part of a joke about the stupid memo telling BBC programmes not to refer to Peter Mandelson's sexuality.
Earlier that year saw the first of many apperances by Boris Johnson who started as he more or less meant to go on. After his appearance in April 1998, he wrote in a column in The Spectator complaining about the show being scripted, but he took it all back and became one of, if not the most popular guest on the show.
Ian mentioned in the commentary that many guests aren't as good on subsequent appearances, but with Boris it just got even better. At the time they had no idea that Boris would actually end up hosting the show.
Boris's second appearance on the show happened 18 months later in December 1999 where by a bizarre coincidence Janet Street Porter was on there as well having appeared with him first time round.
I didn't see the programme however as it was the same night I went to see Mamma Mia on a school visit and where things changed significantly as a result of a crush and a tape of old disco tracks I was listening to attached itself to the whole thing.
However I did get back in time to see the very end of the season finale of Friends where Ross and Rachel got married in a very cheap wedding.
Did it last? Did it hell.
Anyway the week before saw a long term target of the show finally found guilty of lying, that being Jeffrey Archer who's campaign to be Conservative Mayor for London fell apart as a result.
A few weeks earlier Labour candidate Glenda Jackson was a guest where they referred to a story about Archers rival candidate in the Tory party Stephen Norris who was alleged to have said "I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead".
When Norris was asked about it on BBC Radio 4, he said "I don't recognise those words at all, I don't remember using them in any circumstances"
This was then followed by a clip of him saying "As I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead..."
Of course Norris ended up losing to Ken Livingstone in the end.
The Spring 1999 series saw one of the show's most memorable moments where during the odd one out round Paul drifted off and it faded into a sequence where him and Ian were swaying in a field accompanied by Satie's "Gymnopedie".
This was only the beginning of a load of novelty to the point of stupid gimmicks that were present on the show, the worst one being when it moved to BBC 1 in October 2000 to coincide with the BBC moving it's main news bulletin to 10:00pm where Angus said that the move to BBC 1 didn't mean that it would affect the show's content.
This was immediately followed by a load of barely dressed dancing girls making their way into the studio but thankfully this was the worst that the show got in terms of those sort of gags.
2001 in spite of the summer and autumn that year being a struggle on a personal level, saw one of the best news stories of the year, that being Jefferey Archer finally getting banged up for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
We all know where we were in July 2001 when the verdict was announced.
The only person it seemed, who felt sorry for him was Jonathan Aitken, another man who fits into the category of a "right wing lying bastard".
Appropriatley enough one of the guests on the first show of the Autumn 2001 was Archer's biographer Michael Crick and this lead to that great clip of Archer ranting about how he didn't like the way the BBC made programmes about him;
"You wait 'til I'm Mayor! You'll find out how tough I am!"
Boris Johnson made his third and possibly funniest appearance as a panellist later on that series where he was subjected to a Mastermind spoof prompting him to say "I've never seen this on the show before".
As mentioned earlier, Boris went on to host the show after Angus's sacking the following year and continued to be popular to the point that he was probably the most well known Conservative MP in the country at the time.
The last time I saw Boris as a host on the show was in December 2006 and possibly the only show I saw in that series due to Uni life being more dominant.
I even remember having to hot foot it back to the radio rooms at 9:30pm as I'd left my hard drive up there, and there were still people present as a result of third years using all the time they could to edit their features.
It's probably safe to say that 2006 was most definitely the only year in my life where I've watched the least amount of television.
Appearances for Boris have been fewer recently with his duties as London Mayor taking priority, although it didn't stop Ken Livingstone appearing on the show during his reign, including an appearance as a guest on the legendary show on the 24th of May 2002. The highlights of which took up the last 10 minutes of the DVD.
When I first heard about it, not many people I spoke to cared about the story, but I knew that it was going to provide great telly and everyone else thought the same when it finally happened that Friday after it all broke out.
During the commentary itself Paul and Ian crack up when Angus can be seen from over the years making jokes about other public figures who took cocaine, including a rather amusing photo of John Major allegedly preparing for a speech on drug abuse.
It was more than evident in the last 5 or so years that Paul didn't get on with Angus and this was the ultimate excuse to really lay into him.
My favourite line from the show has to be around halfway through where Paul mentions he was surpised Angus had the nerve to turn up that week;
Angus: "Well I did. Because of you two"
Paul: "Yes, in a way it's our fault isn't it!"
I had no knowledge of him taking cocaine at all at the time, until Paul Merton made a joke about it on Just A Minute when they came to Canterbury later that year where he had to talk about "The Gutter Press";
"The gutter press, yesterday’s trees, tomorrow’s fish and chips. Not many people take much notice of what they read in the gutter news apart of course from the individuals that are featured.
Imagine your embarrassment if you were caught consorting with prostitutes and taking cocaine?
What an enormous, terrible thing that would be if you had to appear on television while people pointed fingers at you and general laughter. It’s an incredible thing that this should happen in this day and age.
Here we are in the 21st century, why can’t show business stars spend the BBC licence-payer’s money as they see fit? If they find a strumpet in a hotel, give her 50 quid, she’s probably worth it!"
That was definitely the highlight of the recording and it even made it on to the Arena documentary about Just A Minute shown at Christmas that year.
The DVD also contains some brillaint extras including the many trailers for the show from around 1999-2001 including the Millionaire spoofs from April 1999, the Big Brother send up from October 2000, and the "I Love 2001" trails from April 2001.
There's also a clip of Terry Wogan on Room 101 in 1997 wanting to put the show onto the conveyor belt, but the real reason being was that Angus Deayton wanted to dispose of Radio 2 in the previous series.
Presenter Nick Hancock showed two clips from both his appearances on the show where coincidentally, Arsenal player, now Portsmouth manager Tony Adams was one of those in the Odd One Out round.
One both occasions Nick suggested that Tony was the odd one out "because everyone else understood the offside rule".
Nick defended the fact that he repeated the joke because the Offside rule changed between 1991 and 1994.
The most interesting item however was a piece from Newsnight transmitted after the show where Neil and Christine Hamilton appeared as guests in May 1997.
This involved a report asking why politicians went on the show in order to build their "celebrity profile", followed by a studio debate with Derek Hatton and the late John Diamond.
John's points were spot on as Neil Hamilton thought he could use the show as an excuse to try and prove he was a general funnyman, and failing miserably.
Which he's probably now more famous for than his time as a Tory MP.
John had appeared on the programme himself, as did his then wife Nigella Lawson a few years later.
Her father Nigel had also been on the programme but relevance to the programme for me will be best remembered in a joke by Paul Merton made on the show hosted by Nicholas Parsons in May 2005 which I will probably refer to in a later post.
The Newsnight report itself by Krishnan Guru-Murthy included an interview with Roy Hattersley who mentioned that his reason for not turning up in 1993 was because at the last minute he decided to accept an offer to write an article for the Sunday Times about who Black and Asian people had made great contributions to British society.
At the end of the report Krishnan mentioned that the Hamiltons could do a lot worse things than appear on Have I Got News For You, which was illustrated by the opening titles to "It's A Knockout".
Sadly the Hamiltons were now involved in even more embarassing TV appearances than that, by the time the DVD had been released.
Despite it being really late, it's an early start tomorrow as I aim to get back to London as soon as I can to get my transcribing from last night completed. Shouldn't be too much of a demand.
Once again, a very late Good Night.
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