Unless I’m very much mistaken this is the last episode of the season, it is unfortaunate how British series tend to have shorter runs than their American counterparts (22 episodes in a typical full season?), because it’s nice having something on British TV to look forward to each week other than Top Gear or football, and because The IT Crowd has meant a lot of people have been visiting HYA, and the more people that visit here the more likely it is that I can turn writing about t-shirts into a full-time job, which is pretty ridiculous, but hey, someone’s got to do it. Actually, they don’t, but it is a lot of fun so I’d like to carry on.
If you missed the show on Friday night it is available on Channel 4OD, but I’ve always found that site to not be so friendly to my PC, so I was happy to find the whole show streamable on the Channel 4 YouTube page. I’m not sure if the YouTube stuff has the same 1 week expiry as the main 4OD site, so that video might disappear by Friday, and chances are it’s geo-locked too, so if you’re outside the UK you’d have to get a bit creative if you wanted to watch it.
All my waffling in the previous couple of paragraphs probably suggested something to you, this episode was not stuffed full of t-shirts, in fact it didn’t contain much of Roy at all, unsurprisingly focusing upon Reyholm. Still, Roy did wear one t-shirt in the show, one which probably made a lot of people sitting at home think “I wonder if our IT guy does that?” because Roy’s tee stated “I read your e-mail” in a style so simple that it was immediately recognisable as a shirt from ThinkGeek. The shirt costs from $15.99 and you can buy it at ThinkGeek.
Well, just one shirt in this episode, and one that Roy has worn in the past too, so it was a pretty easy find. Good episode though, loads of one liners, I especially liked Roy complaining about “have you tried turning it off and on again?” being some kind of catchphrase for him, and Moss shouting “we’re going to die!” after finding out that the robot was running on Vista.
I think that this is one of my favourite t-shirts that’s been on The IT Crowd, it’s geeky, it’s non-sensical, and it’s genuinely funny, so I guess that in a way it’s a bit like The IT Crowd! The blue shirt with the whale on it is by Dinosaur Comics and can be bought from TopatoCo for $17.50 + shipping.
For a little bit of an extra to go with this shorter than usual post, a commenter on the last IT Crowd post shared a link to a cool page on the Channel 4 website showing the IT Crowd basement with loads of tagged items from the set, definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan.
*Welcome to everyone that’s visiting because of @Glinner tweeting about the site, be sure to take a look around, check out the older IT Crowd posts (I’ve covered just about every episode of the last few seasons) and I’m also running a competition to win $100 of clothing from JackThreads that you may want to enter. Thanks for visiting!
As a side note before we get into the traditional meat of The IT Crowd t-shirt roundups, after listening to Pirate FM in Cornwall when I was on holiday me and my girlfriend were inspired to watch The Boat That Rocked a film inspired by the pirate radio station Radio Caroline that operated from a boat (it was in international waters and therefore not governed by British law). I was under the impression that Pirate FM was the legit ‘child’ of Radio Caroline, but I actually completely wrong. Still, it’s a good, funny film, and I thought I’d mention it because Chris O’Dowd and Katherine Parkinson (Roy & Jen in the IT Crowd) are both in the film, so you guys may want to check it out.
Anyway, on with the show (almost literally), the first tee worn by Roy was just a plain grey shirt, naturally, I’m not going to track down the brand, if you want to be just like Roy go and get a grey shirt from Primark or American Apparel.
The second shirt had already been found for me by
@RustyBransteinX which did make my job rather a lot easier. The OMFG t-shirt comes from
ThinkGeek and the acronym is for the little-known Ontario Mega Finance Group the investment company that lots of teenagers apparently enjoy talking about. The t-shirt is $15.99 and it
can be purchased here.
Roy’s third shirt of the evening was a bit more troublesome to hunt, and not just because of Roy’s hot girlfriend being on view. It was a dark scene, but after taking about a dozen pictures and playing with the levels on them I managed to make out the writing “don’t even think about tagging me” which is actually pretty good advice for those people that think it’s fun to tag photos on Facebook of their friends in compromising positions.The tee is
available from Balcony Shirts for £12.50. As I do try to be a bit of a completist with these things, I had a quick look around for the other tee in this pic, the one with the crossed guitars worn by the orphan. I haven’t been able to find the same tee, but I have found what I think is the
same graphic on an apron at Spreadshirt, and with it being spreadshirt to can customise these thing to your heart’s delight, and that includes putting the design on a pink t-shirt with black print.
Fourth tee of the night was easily recognised as Roy has worn it before, “Nothing is any good if other people like it” is a
Diesel Sweeties design. However, I can’t find the shirt anywhere in their store, so it seems as if they’ve stopped selling it. Still, there’s plenty of other cool shirts in their shop. Also, how good was this scene? There isn’t nearly enough mashed potato based comedy on TV.
And that’s your lot for this episode, I will post episode 5 tomorrow, and then you can expect the episode 6 recap (last episode of the season, sob) early next week.
Indeed, last night something did happen, Graham Linehan (aka @Glinner) tweeted about my IT Crowd t-shirt posts, which was then retweeted by rather a lot of people, causing what I think is the largest amount of traffic I’ve received on a Sunday, giving the site a bit of a meltdown (until I got home and cranked up the resources), and presumably putting a bit of pressure on me to continue my IT Crowd shirt posts now that a lot more fans are aware of them. Fear not new readers, I shall continue, and this week I’ve got links to all three of Roy’s tees so that you can get your hands on them.
Roy’s first tee of the week was immediately obvious to me as I had written about it back in May. Even though the most visible text says “let’s say you’ve gone back in time” the shirt is actually called “Time Traveler Essentials” because it explains what you need to do if you were to travel back in time. It’s a very clever and funny shirt, and it’s yours for $18 at TopatoCo.
Shirt number two in the episode is a bit of a tee design classic, having been featured on the show before and on many a blog. Some people have point out that it doesn’t really work as a Venn diagram, but I’m able to look past that and just enjoy a cool shirt. Elitism can be bought for
$16.99 at Diesel Sweeties.
Last shirt of the week (excluding Jen’s shirt for the band
Sweet Billy Pilgrim, who I presumed were fictional since I don’t keep up with what’s cool in the music world, but are in fact real, though apparently don’t have a keyboard player) picks up on the keyboard cat meme, but makes it almost acceptable in my cynical eyes by giving it an 8-bit makeover, since we all know that making something 8-bit makes it cool.
The tee is £16.21 and can be purchased at MySoti.
I won’t be able to cover episodes 4 & 5 of this season in a timely fashion because I’m going to Cornwall on holiday, and writing about t-shirts will be the furthest thing from my mind. I will cover the shirts worn in the episodes when I get back, you’ll just have to be patient about it.
