Looks Unfamiliar: Mark Griffiths – It Was Definitely An Audience Member, If You’ll Pardon The Pun

Off Beat Sound Effects (BBC Records And Tapes, 1975) - listen to Mark Griffiths and Tim Worthington talking about this collection of bangs, crashes, door creaks and, erm, ducks in Looks Unfamiliar.

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

Joining Tim this time is writer Mark Griffiths, who’s trying to find a suitably off-beat sound effect to go with his recollections of microchip revolution-era synthpop track Five Minutes by Mainframe, The Bloke Who Pulled His Pants Down On Kilroy, Disneyland by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Charles Hawtrey appearing as a vampire on Runaround, BBC Records And Tapes’ Off Beat Sound Effects, and missing the first episode of a new series of Doctor Who because you were at the Doctor Who exhibition in Blackpool. Along the way we’ll be speculating on how Robert Kilroy-Silk’s personal archives are organised, trying to figure out what ‘Door Creak With Eno’ might sound like, and debating how to respond if faced with a Doctor Who-themed Sophie’s Choice.

If you enjoy Looks Unfamiliar, why not buy us a coffee here?

Sci-Fi Sound Effects (BBC Records And Tapes, 1980) - listen to Mark Griffiths and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

About Mark

Mark Griffiths is a playwright and children’s author – you can find his official website here and follow him on Bluesky at @markauthor.bsky.social. We Apologise For The Inconvenience, Mark’s play about Douglas Adams writing So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, is available from Amazon here. Mark’s Doctor Who novel The Self-Made Man is also available from Amazon here.

Buy A Book!

There’s lots more about Runaround and tons of other often only moderately less chaotic game shows in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Waterstones here, Amazon here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

You can read more about the strange story of BBC Records And Tapes – and their many, many other Sound Effects albums, only around eighteen million of which were collections of birdsong – in Top Of The Box Vol. 2, the story behind every album released by BBC Records And Tapes, from Play School Play On to Russell Grant’s Zodiac Jukebox. Top Of The Box Vol. 2 is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. Preferably with no accompanying ‘coffee mug smash’ sound effect.

Further Listening

Mark has also appeared on my Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Avengers Assemble, which you can find here. You can also find Mark on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV talking about Noggin The Nog here.

Mark also appears in The Best Of Looks Unfamiliar alongside Lisa Parker and Andrew Trowbridge on the Jaws board game, Ben Baker on Mysteries Of Old Peking, Martin Ruddock on Doomlord, Steve O’Brien on High Time and Ice Cold Cube by The Stone Roses, Jem Roberts on an advert reuniting Neil and Vyvyan from The Young Ones and Tim on the radio talking about the remake of The Prisoner, which you can find here.