[Neil Jones]

Yeah, there was a VHS called Too Hot for TV, which served as the UK premiere for The Cartridge Family since as the video tape's name suggests, it hadn't aired on television.

Oh, I wasn't aware of that! I digress here, but I've often wondered how many people have actually bought a VHS/DVD of any show in the past and watched a yet-to-air episode, and actually how many of them were aware of that. E.g. when the unaired Mr. Bean episode (the haircut/pet show one) was released on home media before TV; various episodes of late My Family had that happen to them as well (two episodes released on the series 10 DVD that didn't air until the series 11 TV run, with the series 11 DVD released early too), and I personally took advantage of that at the time.

Might depend on the show, Coronation Street got caught up in a home "exclusive" thing:
tvforum.uk 

Mr Bean though managed IIRC to last about 10 years before that episode was ultimately aired in the UK, though it had apparently appeared abroad. Long enough not to cause a problem, but then of course there was a new Mr Bean movie coming out the following year so...

My Family went downhill major big time towards the end of its life and it was somewhere around Series 10 that things went sour behind the scenes with the principal cast decreeing that the scripts were crap.  Which may be why the DVD release got a bit screwed up.