The Glam Metal Detectives

...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.

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.

Glam Metal Detectives was great, very funny and extremely watchable. Classic British TV, sadly missed.

As far as I know at least the first three episodes were put onto BBC Video, I have the feeling that it would be very hard to get hold of a copy as I know that it has been deleted.

There was also an album released which had four tracks on it, three different versions of The Glams song Everybody Up and a cover of Crazy Horses. The music was done by Trevor Horn (masquerading as Trelvis Hornsley), Lol Creme and Lol Creme's son Lalo, though as far as I know this has also now been deleted.

The Marvel comic was also good and in the same way as both the video and the album is likely to be extremely hard to find.

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.

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.