instant pressure pak spray-on british

So if nothing else this is a great example of how I can so easily be persuaded into any old rabbit hole by the flimsiest of premises. This morning on an fb group I am a member of, re: Aust Oral History, I saw someone from the UK had asked for information about a tv show - four half-hour episodes - announced to be made in Australia in 1972 produced by Bobby Limb for Channel 9 and starring Kenneth Connor, entitled Mad Dogs and English Fun. The article in question was by Nan Musgrove (Women's Weekly, 23 Feb 1972) and suggested Connor's presence in Australia was his first time here and only his second time out of the UK, and that this new show was to star him, but he would be 'helped' by Marty Feldman and Warren Mitchell and there would be 'contributions' from June Thody (who apart from umpteen Homicide eps was in the ABC's production of My Brother Jack in 1965 as Jack's wife Sheila) and James Condon. 

Connor was well-known in Australia at the time if the number of Carry On films shown on Australian tv in the early 70s is anything to go by, and he also had a sitcom popular that moment known as On the House. 

Mad Dogs and English Fun was probably not made, and if it was, it wasn't shown as far as I can tell. But the question led me to go looking. I won't bore you with all the detail, just this:

* Connor was the guest for four episodes of a variety show produced in Australia in 1969, hosted by John Laws, called The Pressure Pak Show, a revival of a much older radio-TV phenomenon. I know nothing more about this but there are four episodes of it available at the NFSA so I think it's my duty at some stage after the war, before I turn a hundred, to examine it. Perhaps Connor was only a guest in some filmed segments - that he was a guest four times either indicates, I feel, that he was in Australia (no other evidence for this) and spent an afternoon taping four episodes or, that he was somehow present via segments filmed in the UK. (By the way The Pressure Pak Show seems to have started out as a 2GB radio game show hosted by Jack Davey; Limb appears to have had nothing to do with it in particular but in a SMH listing from 5 September 1960 you see that he's all over every other show on 2GB, so there's a connection of sorts going back some way). 

* There was a show on Channel 9 all through 1972 called British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs, hosted by ('Irishman') John McNally. At least some episodes are listed as featuring Connor and some others featured Marty Feldman, so those facts alongside the title made me think this was the Mad Dogs... show, but no. British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs was one of those execrable programs no-one now remembers fondly, where a host would have the utterly impossible task of presenting segments of other shows (in this case, obviously, British comedy shows, though the time I remember actually witnessing this uncomfortable hybrid it was in the late 1970s and segments of Saturday Night Live - I shit you not - unless I was wrong but it was American satirical sketch comedy - uh oh, I see another rabbit hole) in-between greyhound racing or as I prefer to call it, greyhound fucking racing.

* A lot of the time, this was bits and pieces of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore shows. However, another show that the geniuses at Channel 9 seemed to have figured would lend itself to this treatment was Spray on British. This was, seemingly, a Marty Feldman show though it doesn't appear listed anywhere that I can make sense of, aside from here: 

The above is 7 August 1972. 

At least two episodes of Spray On British ('Spray on British No. 6' and 'Spray on British No. 7') were shown in August 1972 as part of British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs. Whatever Spray on British was, when it was shown as part of the 14 August 1972 BCHGTTD, Connor was listed as a featured presence:

Was he a guest with McNally? Was he a star of Spray on British? What does that semi-colon mean exactly? Connor and Feldman were both, apparently, in Australia at the beginning of 1972, but it seems unlikely they were still here in August. 

Look all of of this is weird enough, but are you ready to have your mind blown? Thought so. This is from the Age Tuesday 28 November 1972 and it rewrites all the rules:

At this point I decided there was nothing else for it, and I have forked out a lobster for this tome via AbeBooks just to find any further explanation that might possibly be forthcoming: 

Thoughts and prayers if you don't mind. The hardest part of this kind of meaningless research is the turning off of your curiosity. I usually tamp it down so hard that by the time I get further information I no longer care. 

PS Here's an explanation that works for me, and it's now time to forget about it: Feldman and Connor started work on what Musgrove had been told would be called Mad Dogs and English Fun and which was instead ultimately called Instant Spray on British Pressure Pak Show or something along those lines.* The show was cancelled before it began, so there were only two episodes (this bit is hard to figure: why were they called 'No. 6' and 'No. 7'?  But whatever). The show was produced by Limb for Pressure Pak which was a manufacturer of aerosol products most famously Mortein the fly spray, and then TCN-9 cut it up for presentation in between the episodes of bread-and-circuses dog torture on Saturday night in Sydney, but Channel 8 in Bendigo got hold of the actual whole shows and presented them for the delectation of Bendigonians two Tuesdays running late November-early December. The two cities (it would seem these were the only two) where Feldman had taken his stage show Marty Amok in early 1972, Canberra and Melbourne, apparently did not get to see ISOBPPS at all. 

* Sorry for extra information but there was a straight-up Pressure Pak Show in early 1972 hosted by Bob Monkhouse...