Trivia / Not the Nine O'Clock News

• Colbert Bump: The "Constable Savage" sketch gained attention after Rowan Aktinson mentioned it during his speech regarding censorship and free speech in 2012.
• Defictionalization: The show was the first to use the term "flange" to describe a troop of baboons; the word later made its name into serious studies. (The official name for a group of baboons is a "congress" which, as Rich Hall can tell you, is funny enough on its own.)
• Genre-Killer: Professional darts boomed in The '70s and The '80s as a very unlikely spectator sport - but one that could fill conference venues and draw millions of spectators on TV. It became a theatrical spectacle along the lines of pro wrestling or a big boxing bout - especially when two big-name heavyweights were slugging it out for a title. And then NTNO'CN came along with a skewering parody. Mel Smith and Gryff Rhys-Jones aided by an over-the-top commentator voiced by Rowan Atkinson, pointed out that the reason why big name darts players were heavyweights was that... well, they were heavyweights. The parody made drinking the center of the sport, with a little actual darts going on in the background. The uneasy realization started to set in... Why are we watching extremely fat men smoking, drinking, and occasionally throwing a dart at a board? (Although oddly enough, televised Darts matches were entirely "dry", with no drinking allowed - the sketch has apparently created a national false memory that the players were drinking on camera.) The sport faltered as a TV phenomenon and has never really recovered.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only two Greatest Hits DVDs have been released, which included the most famous sketches ("Gerald the Gorilla", "Kinda Lingers", "the deaf telephone" etc.) and those which don't rely too heavily on the current affairs of the early 1980s. Much like Spitting Image, some of the references and sketches would probably be somewhat impenetrable for viewers without much knowledge of that period. The full episodes probably are somewhere in the BBC archives, but if they are it remains to be seen if they'll ever see the light of day. It also doesn't help that Chris Langham was later convicted of possession of child pornography.
  • As with other BBC shows of the same period, some of the humour acceptable as The '70s turned into The '80s wouldn't really fly today. The sketch where two women's football teams exchange shirts at the end of the match (and, unlike real women footballers, are not wearing sports bras), for instance. Or else some strangely out-of-kilter-with-the-rest gags about black people and gays. Anyone compiling a "Best of..." would have to take this into account too.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The series was originally a lampoon of actuality programmes à la The Frost Report with Rowan Atkinson portraying an old-fashioned host attacking liberal and/or modern trends.
• The Pete Best: Chris Langham, dropped after the first series.
• Romance on the Set: Billy Connolly and Pamela Stephenson — they first met on the show in 1979, married in 1989, are are still together.
• Saved from Development Hell: The show was supposed to air on April 2, 1979 but a general election was called a couple of days before the airdate, so the programme was put on hold for six months, getting extensively retooled.
• What Could Have Been: Victoria Wood declined the offer to be the show's female castmember.
• Working Title: Sacred Cows.

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