Dick and Dom in da Bungalow



Live, unscripted, anarchic BBC Saturday Morning Kids Show (continued on Sunday mornings) which ran from 2002-2006. Hosted by Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood. Chiefly famous for running entirely on Rule of Funny for an audience of children; plenty of gunge and Toilet Humor. The “Bungalow”of the title was the set, supposedly Dick and Dom's home where a bunch of children would turn up every weekend to play silly games- see a list at The Other Wiki.

Combined Game Show elements (with prizes for the winner at the end of the weekend) with magic tricks from Dom, some Guinness World Record attempts for feats like “most pairs of underpants put on in one minute”, showing the usual Saturday cartoons, and pre-filmed inserts of Dick and Dom doing ridiculous activities in towns around the country- most notoriously shouting “Bogies!” (US English=“Boogers”) louder and louder in a public place. Plenty of ridiculous recurring characters popped into the Bungalow as well, mostly played by the same four actors.

Won a Children's BAFTA.

A song from the final episode sums up the whole thing rather well. (“We've danced in our pants and we've kissed old fogies/We've been to museums and we've shouted bogies/ What a brilliant use of your license fee!”)

A 20-episode Clip Show, Da Dairies Of Dick And Dom, aired in 2009.


 * Alliteration: many of the game titles. Also featured lots of other wordplay.
 * Affectionate Parody: The finale, which led to everyone getting covered in gunge, was frequently a parody of a game show- both current ones (Who Wants To Be A Muckionaire?) and ones from many years before (Muckphrase/Catchphrase). The host of the show would typically be played by men of a thousand voices Dave Chapman or Ian Kirkby- although this one where both Dick and Dom are playing Lily Savage for Muckety Muck!/Blankety Blank! is fairly startling.
 * Ascended Extra: Melvin O'Doom was brought in as a dancer for one show and became indispensible. Also several ascended one-joke characters who became recurring, like Raymond Farmer or Harry Batt.
 * Aside Comment: Dick and Dom often addressed the camera. Only sometimes were they asking the producers what the hell to do next.
 * British Coppers: DI Harry Batt.
 * British Stuffiness: Averted, inverted, farted on...
 * Candid Camera Prank: Several of the Dick vs Dom games filmed outside the Bungalow, notably Bogies and Om Pom Stick.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: The Prize Idiot, supposedly their next door neighbour, who wandered in wearing flippers and a clown wig every so often to show off the prizes. Obsessed with cheese sandwiches.
 * Corpsing: Both hosts are fairly prone to this, with Dick in particular often literally rolling on the floor laughing.
 * Covered in Gunge: Including but not limited to Produce Pelting, Food Fight, Pie in the Face. The raison d'etre of the show. Ramped up from the odd squirt with shaving foam in the early days to hundreds of buckets of custard. Many and innovative ways of gunging contestants- flicking tinned tomatoes, dumping bowls of tapioca, chucking eggs, smearing glue, painting whitewash, spraying soup from a stuffed crocodile's head, and the simple traditional gunge tank (located in the toilet) for the final loser.
 * Crossdresser: The British are convinced that men in dresses are funny. And on this evidence, we're right. All the presenters and actors at various times impersonated glamourous celebrities, played Monty Python-like mums and dinnerladies, and sometimes just plain married each other.
 * Crowd Song: Justified for recurring musical moments like The Pants Dance (losing contestant has to dance around with underpants on their head)- the contestants were fans of the show so they already knew the tunes and moves.
 * Enforced Method Acting: As well as the whole thing being unscripted, the producers liked to surprise the hosts from time to time.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Game names like Do Not Laugh Or You Will Lose.
 * ExcitedKidsShowHosts: type 2
 * Expository Theme Tune: “Wake up Dick and Dom, and get out of bed/ Get yourselves dressed, there's a crazy day ahead...”
 * Gasshole: Diddy Dick and Dom- tiny drama queens who live (and fart) in a cupboard in the Bungalow. Played by Dick and Dom with puppet bodies attached to their real heads.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Not as much as you might expect (Dom's infamous t-shirt that said Morning Wood certainly counts.) You can see them trying hard, ahem, to avoid smirking here.
 * The Grim Reaper: Death (played by Dave Chapman) would turn up with a giant balloon for a losing contestant to pop and get gunge all over themselves. Which fits in with the theme of the show..
 * I Ate What??: There was a segment called Make Dick Sick. And one called Yum Yum Yak. You do the math.
 * Improv: Word of God from the DVD commentary- they only had a running order. “And you never looked at that. If we wanted to keep something as a surprise for you, we put it on the list.”
 * In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: type 7.
 * Jingle: Infuriatingly catchy. All together- “Painty painty paint paint painty paint paint, Painty painty paint paint painty paint paint!”
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: Da Dairies Of Dick And Dom uses less than ten hours of footage, from several hundred that aired, and the DVD only covers highlights of season 3. There's about two complete shows on Youtube, from people whose mums videoed the show the week they were a Bungalowhead, but otherwise it's all snippets.
 * Loads and Loads of Roles: Dave Chapman and Ian Kirkby played tens of characters each. Melvin O'Doom slightly fewer, but danced a lot. Even Dick and Dom had several each, like Toni and Tony or Tom Dickunharry.
 * Love Hate Relationship: Diddy Dick and Dom. Codependent, prone to beating each other up and storming out, only to be back “Luvvie”-ing each other the next week.
 * Medium Awareness
 * The Merch: A DVD of highlights of series 3, two comedy annual books, joke book, colouring book, sleepover planner, board game, CD of music from the show.
 * Naked People Are Funny: Well, not actually naked on kid's TV. Fair amount of underpants-and-socks work, though.
 * Never Work with Children or Animals: Unless you don't mind having your legs nearly pulled off (Don't Go Daddy), or being biffed with inflatable hammers, or general disrespect and mayhem. Oh, and dogs peeing on your sets.
 * No Fourth Wall
 * Nose Nuggets: "BOGIES!"
 * Running Gag: Almost everything.
 * Self-Deprecation: “Another blow for quality children's television!”
 * Slapstick
 * Spin-Off: One element of the show, the very short Diddy Dick And Dom sketches, has been sporadically used as filler between CBBC programmes, and new episodes of this have been filmed (to be shown in 2012). Recurring character Geordie detective Harry Batt, had a pilot for a spin-off show.
 * Surreal Humor: Why two Murray Walkers inside the same sweater? Why a half-dog-half-chicken character called Barky Cluckinson? Why marauding pumpkins flushing ready meals down the toilet? Rule of Funny, that's why.
 * Telethon: Comic Relief In The Bungalow special episodes.
 * Toilet Humor: Plenty. Included masses of fart gags, fart sounds played in, etc, but the word “fart” seemed to be taboo. “Trump” or “Bottom burp” were fine, though.
 * Unusual Euphemism: funny or rude-sounding phrases like "flap-crackers!" and "scroggage!" were fairly liberally employed.
 * Vomit Discretion Shot: Even in the game Make Dick Sick, oddly.
 * Zonk: First and second prizes were real, but third prize would be something like a half-used tube of verruca cream.