[Neil Jones]

Yes, and I do remember when they did turn up, it was during the Virgin days and of course they eventually hacked them to pieces in their usual fashion, presumably because they didn't rate as well as the normal episodes did. And it was more memorable because they hacked away at the Richard O'Brien specials as well to shove a third break in, as well as Ed Tudor-Pole.

Presumably hacking away at the main Richard O'Brien episodes wasn't far away, but because Sky came along and bought the operation, that put paid to that, but of course the legacy is they're still using those edits for Series 5 and 6 today best part of 15 years later - and Sky can't (or won't) get new files. I do remember I think its the series 5 or 6 special (it was Tudor-Pole anyway) there's a major chunk of tape interference during a game baked into the picture/file and it comes out every time it gets an airing.

IIRC Virgin attacked everything content wise they had (or were actively airing), chopping out chat and stuff to persue some policy about hitting shows at the top and bottom of the hour and inserted some five minute fillers every once in a while to achieve this which seemed a bit pointless really when you can achieve the exact same effect without the cutting but the legacy of that policy is still evident.