Just A Minute

Well, I've listened to both releases now, and am very happy with both.

The Clue CD is pretty much what you'd expect from the Vol. 1 release,
of course. A lot of the first recording has already been released in
the compilation CDs, but the second recording mostly consists of
material that has not previously been commercially released. Again,
the extra material also includes bits you wouldn't normally hear,
including the occasional very amusing fluff.

One other notable thing about this release is that both Pick-Up Song
rounds have been left intact. They've been omitted from the
compilations and the first Live release, as "this involves commercial
disks which the BBC would have to pay huge amounts of money to use"
(according to
http://www.bbc. co.uk/comedy/ clue/interviews/ everything. shtml), but for
some reason it's managed to find its way on here.

The pre- and post-show banter is the highlight, and I'm very glad to
have the opportunity to hear it. There are a lot of very good bits,
which I'm not going to spoil by mentioning here, but we also get to
hear Humph recording a trailer at the end of the second recording. And
as before, Jon Naismith's introductions are very informative, not to
mention slightly nostalgic when he starts explaining all the mid-90s
cultural references. It's also quite a bittersweet experience, as the
introductions were clearly written and recorded before the loss of Humph.

Unlike the Clue CD, the JAM episodes remain in their original
broadcast form, of course, so there's not really anything new to say
about those. The introductions are excellent - the ones to the first
four volumes, with Nicholas flying solo, were very good, but after 12
solo introductions I would imagine it starts getting hard to find new
things to say about the show, so these introductions benefit
enormously from having someone else to talk to, and particularly from
the fact that the other person is Paul Merton.

Again, I don't want to say too much and spoil the enjoyment of hearing
it all first-hand. I haven't checked the running times, but the first
introduction seems substantially longer than the others because it
starts off by discussing the show itself before moving on to discuss
the episode in question. That's not to suggest that the others are
unduly short - they're all of a decent length, almost certainly longer
than the introductions on the other CDs, and always fun, informative
and entertaining. There's a good rapport between the two of them, and
there's a lot of commentary on particular things that happen in the
episodes, as well as other interesting remarks and insights about the
game itself that happen to arise in conversation; for example, there's
a particularly interesting exchange in the fourth introduction about
how they feel that having woman on the panel makes for a better
dynamic. I very much hope that these joint introductions will continue
for Vol. 6 and beyond.

Altogether, excellent content (new and old) on both releases, and I'm
proud to have them both on my shelf. It's been almost painful to wait
for so many months, but it was definitely worth it.