Talk:Twice a Fortnight

As this article is about a television series. I feel that it could be better covered as part of a TelevisionWikiProject.

Is a TelevisionWikiProject proposed for some time in the future, for television programs? Thanks. Figaro 00:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Template box

Does it really deserve a template box like that ? Seems excessive. -- Beardo 07:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Why would it be excessive? Garion96 (talk) 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

TV or Radio show?

Twice a Fortnight was a BBC Radio programme. Not a TV programme. Signature tune: "Twice a Fortnight, twenty-four hours a day / Twice a Fortnight, shout hip hip hooray! / One and one makes two / Twice a Fortnight, Twice a Fortnight, Twice a Fortnight we love you." During broadcasts it often referred to itself as "Twice a Fork-knife". Casablanca58 (talk) 15:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Twice a Fortnight was MOST DEFINITELY a TV programme, NOT a radio programme, I remember watching it very clearly and it was on TV late on a Saturday night. I have amended the article accordingly! (Gadsby West (talk) 05:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC))

I have checked through Google etc, and you are fully correct in saying Twice a Fortnight "was MOST DEFINITELY a TV programme". However, you are wrong to say it was "NOT a radio programme". Myself, and others, remember hearing it on the radio, and never heard of it as a TV programme. I can only suggest (1) there were two versions made and (2) the TV programme was not broadcast in all regions. (81.178.30.92 (talk) 17:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC))

Twice a Fortnight was NEVER a radio show. If you and others think you remember hearing it on the radio, then you are almost certainly confusing it with I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, a long-lasting BBC radio show that also featured Bill Oddie & Graeme Garden and from which the TV show "borrowed" many of its sketches and jokes. But don't take my word for it: Here's what Roger Wilmut writes in From Fringe to Flying Circus (1980): "Palin and Jones then contributed a number of film items to a television series which grew out of ISIRTA [I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again], called Twice a Fortnight, which starred Bill Oddie, Jonathan Lynn, and Graeme Garden. . . . Twice a Fortnight, which ran for ten weeks from 21 October 1967 on BBC-1, arose from Tony Palmer's wish to direct something including Graeme Garden, whom he had known at Cambridge. Despite opposition from his head of department - oddly, the programme was produced under the aegis of the Music and Arts Department - Palmer went about setting up the programme, including Bill Oddie and, at Garden's suggestion, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Palmer says that Oddie was very keen to bring over to the series the audience-participation atmosphere of ISIRTA. . . A number of the items were recycled ISIRTA sketches, included against Palmer's advice; as he predicted, they tend not to transfer well to television." [pp 153-4] And on page 156: "The series also weaned Garden and Oddie away from radio and into television; although ISIRTA continued for some time, they were getting a bit fed up with radio work because they felt that BBC Radio was not giving them sufficient backing . . ." And Mark Lewisohn in the encyclopaedic Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy (1998): "A sketch series that borrowed liberally from the brilliant BBC radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (and featured two of that show's stars, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden), Twice a Fortnight is mostly of interest now for its position in a family tree as much as its content, being one of the several shows that led up to Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies." [p.682] Like Wilmut, he also notes that "much of the material, originally written for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, failed to work so well on TV". (Gadsby West (talk) 05:04, 17 July 2012 (UTC))