The Glam Metal Detectives

I have managed to download this from a torrents site and the full episodes are available on youtube but I would dearly love to get hold of the DVD so that I can watch them again in better quality. I don't understand why the BBC did not release one. The show is kind of in the format of somebody sitting and zapping channels on cable TV. There are some wonderful moments but my favourite has to be Colin Corleone (he thinks he's the Godfather). I remember watching these episodes with a friend and she was in stitches even though she had never seen any of the Godfather films. Just as the season finished, the Lumiere in London started to run the three films. I took her to see them and she just started laughing out loud at every scene with Marlon Brando. To me, this was one of the better comedy show on the BBC in the 90s, I really don't understand why it isn't available on DVD or iPlayer. Comic genius.

Suddenly remembered this series I saw when I was about eleven when I heard a description of Velvet Underground. Funny and strange series that is, alas, lost to the world. A piece of Nostalgia never to be revisited. It seems too few people saw it to warrant it's release and we live in a world where the British public voted shoddy series The Good Life one our ten best sitcoms. Life can be unfair sometimes.

...or something. Come to think, maybe funkin' wasn't exactly what they had in mind, but I was a dirty-minded child (about 9 or 10 around the time this was showing) and if it was I didn't pick up on it. As far as I can remember, Glam Metal Detectives set itself up as a post-pub trawl through various cable channels and programmes, the main one concerning a troup of old-school, mullets-and-fishnets rockers who toured the world (even reaching London, In-guh-land)solving mysteries. In a van. There was also Bloodsports Live, coming direct to your front room from car parks at kicking-out time nationwide; Betty's Mad Dash, a film about two fraightfully-fraightfully flappers on a NBK-style crime spree; George Yiasoumi, who thought he was the Godfather and was followed everywhere by two thugs who hummed the theme tune; Mick Jagger's Hamlet and, uh, not that many more. It was very funny, very sweet and very strange. Judging from its limited distribution and the fact that no one I've ever met has heard of it, it was also an aquired taste. Maybe I'm just recalling it through the rosy contact lenses of nostalgia but for this up-too-late 9 year old, GMD was a taste well worth aquiring. Besides which, it shoes the hell out of Smack The Pony.

A VHS video was released by the BBC in 1995 but only the first three episodes were on it,(it's order number was BBCV5574),I have that one but don't know if a second one was ever made, I also only ever managed to get the first of the comics as I never saw any more for sale.It was a great series and they should have made more. I've talked to a lot of people about the "Glam Metal Detectives" to see if a soundtrack was ever made (there was a lot of brilliant music in it), but no one seems to have heard of them. As it says in the title they were detectives who toured as a rock band so as not to blow their cover as crime fighters. The rest was good as well, what with "The Big Me", "B-Movie TV", "Bloodsports", "Betty's Mad Dash", "Call Mickey", "Colin Corleone" and more, why it ended I don't know.

This was a short lived comic sketch so that was a product of its time. Designed to feel like you were channel surfing through the dreadful satellite and cable TV shows and adverts of the time, some sketches were hilarious and others you just couldn't get at the time. The whole thing was held together of course by the Glam Metal Detectives - saving the planet whilst provide a great rock & roll sound.

Even now, if I am in a rush to do something I would regard it as Betty's Mad Dash, and if someone is very self-obsessed I would refer to them as a Morag Evans, star of the The Big Me - a spoof chat show where the hostess Morag could always steer the conversation back to her. A ladies, if you husband was watching the football, you could always call on the services of Mickey to give you a good time.