A few weeks ago, I went on a mad quest to find the newspaper used in 1995’s Bottom Hole TV show (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/finding-the-right-bottom-hole-paper/).

During the episode, Eddie starts reading this newspaper:

Obviously, the “Hammersmith Bugle” is not a real paper and they never ran a headline “No News Shocker”. But judging from all the other shots, the prop is based on a real newspaper.

So I decided to rip off Dirty Feed’s shtick (https://www.dirtyfeed.org/tag/newspaper-props/) and find out what was used to create the fake newspaper. The quest took me o’er hill and dale. Through the rough hinterlands of Hammersmith and into the nether regions of Wimbledon. By which I mean - I used lots of online archive sources.

And it nearly worked! I found all of the internal pages. I also found the back page:

That’s from The Surrey Herald (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1994-11-03/1994-11-03?NewspaperTitle=Surrey%2BHerald&IssueId=BL%2F0003604%2F19941103%2F&County=Surrey%2C%20England) - but that’s a paper with lots of regional editions. None of which had the right headline.

So I emailed my (frankly asinine ) request to Surrey Museums (https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/culture-and-leisure/history-centre/researchers/guides/newspaper-back-issues). They were polite, but unable to help. Their website gave a clue though - the location of the archives of the Surrey Herald:

Surrey Herald: Chertsey, Addlestone and Byfleet edition (also Walton, Weybridge and Hersham edition Feb 1979 to 1999 at Elmbridge Museum)

So I contacted the fine people at Elmbridge Museum (https://elmbridgemuseum.org.uk/) who were happy to rummage through their microfiche for me. I expect, much like Indiana Jones, the archivists had to knock down fake walls, find a mystic box containing the treasure, and then dodge various snakes and villains to retrieve the priceless artefact. Or they may have a well designed archival system which is a pleasure to use. I don’t know.

Anyway! All of which is to say that they very kindly sent me a quick scan of the front page of Surrey Herald’s Walton, Weybridge and Hersham edition from November 3rd 1994.

Here it is in all its glory!

That’s a perfect match for what’s seen on screen:

Hurrah! Another mystery solved thanks to publicly funded museums (https://elmbridgemuseum.org.uk/)!

What have we learned today? (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/ive-found-just-the-right-paper-for-my-bottom-hole-problem/#what-have-we-learned-today)

• Archivists are lovely, generous, and helpful people.

• Museums are brilliant.

• Not everything in the world has been digitised.

• There was quite a lot of news that day no matter what the drunken hacks at the Hammersmith Bugle say.

• We do not know if centenarian Elsie Bartlett was aware that her photo featured in this seminal part of British comedy.