Tuning Back Into Dominik Diamond

Dominik Diamond — a radio host in Canada when this article was published — broadcast his first Twitch stream on April 14th, 2020. For Diamond, it was a characteristically defiant act. Pushing back at a previous employer who wanted to undervalue his listening audience, as well as a refusal to let COVID-19 stop him from doing what he loved most. Connecting with people.

Dominik Diamond Live streams at 12 pm EST — Monday to Friday — on Twitch.tv. It is more than just an honest look back at the career of Dominik Diamond. It also combines topical humor with self-penned music. At the same time, it enables Diamond to talk directly to a global audience. The voice of a generation for video game enthusiasts in the UK is now broadcasting to the world in real time.

Dominik Diamond Live has quickly evolved into something more for its audience — more than just a media personality having a show going out independently via the internet. It was an interactive way to reconnect with the face of a generation in real time. Something impossible to achieve on a worldwide scale when Diamond hosted the show that made him famous, GamesMaster. The first “magazine programme” of its kind on British television about video games (primarily aimed at teenagers), it was so popular that it made Diamond a household name in the 1990s.

GamesMaster was Dominik Diamond’s first job in television. He was a 23-year-old stand-up comedian when the first episode aired, having recently graduated with a degree in Drama from the University of Bristol. Season one (left) was filmed in St Paul’s Church, Dock Street, London. It’s final and seventh season (right) was filmed at the Hewlett International TV studio in Brixton. GamesMaster was shown on Channel 4 in the UK from 1992–1998.

Channeling his defiance via Twitch — a channel built around video game-based interactions — immediately reconnected Diamond to a community he helped shape and build. That is, even if starting the show may have made him feel like Bob Dylan going electric.

GamesMaster

GamesMaster became the original computer and video games magazine show on British television when it first aired on January 7th, 1992. Other shows would soon follow, such as Bad Influence. Each with its own set of plucky young presenters. It was Dominik Diamond, however, who became the face of a generation, as well as the proven irreplaceable host of GamesMaster.

Each season of GamesMaster had a different theme. The creators of the show — Hewlett Productions — communicated each theme via opening credits that told a story, set design and the GamesMaster’s head. Left to Right: Season 1 was a Gothic theme set in a church; Season 2 was an industrial theme set on an oil rig; Season 3 was set in two different prisons; Season 4 was set in Hell; Season 5 was set in Heaven; Season 6 was set in Atlantis; and Season 7 was set on a desert island.

Diamond’s co-host (of sorts) was the astronomer Patrick Moore — who played the disembodied head known as the GamesMaster. He would go on to be GamesMaster for all seven seasons of the show. Dominik, however, stepped down as the main presenter for the entire run of season three. This was due to a disagreement over its sponsor — McDonald’s.

The first two seasons of GamesMaster are like a time capsule. They extend beyond their primary subject matter of computer and video games — now acting like a window into the past. They present a youth culture that had been growing organically for over a decade. That is, by the time the first episode of GamesMaster aired. The show tapped into the multiple threads of interest of the young people that was its audience — art, comedy, music and technology. It was naturally positioned as being counter to the status quo set out by the Conservative and Unionist Party government in power. Dominic Diamond was also, in some respects, an indirect spokesman for the youth culture that the show fed off. He represented how it was maturing, as well as how it could connect with a broader audience by the early 1990s.

Diamond’s exit from — and return to — GamesMaster was a turning point for both the show and its audience. It demonstrated there was only one person who could act as the successful bridge between fans of GamesMaster and a video game industry about to go mainstream. Dexter Fletcher — the host of season three — departed from his prison themed set almost as quickly as he entered it. His style of presenting was in stark contrast to the humor of Diamond, who seemed to be a lightning rod attuned to the cultural influences of the time. Social and cultural scenes that were maturing as the people driving them grew older as well.

Dominik Diamond (picture left) interviewing Vic Reeves — a comedian who was part of the “alternative scene” in the UK. That was in season two, episode nineteen. The third season of GamesMaster (picture right) opened with its new host — Dexter Fletcher — holding up the Butlin’s style Redcoat worn by Diamond in season two. This was followed by the statement: “Sadly, this poor chap burnt himself out on level two.” Fletcher would leave the show after one just season — never to talk about it again. Diamond then returned to host GamesMaster for its last four seasons.

The Early 1990s

The last decade of the 20th century marked a period of great change on the surface of British culture. It began with the ousting of “The Iron Lady” as Prime Minister. Her replacement, a man satirically immortalized as a grey faced puppet on Spitting Image.

John Major was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1990–1997. He was famously portrayed as a grey faced puppet on Spitting Image — a satirical television show that brought caricatures to life. The kind usually drawn to better contextualize political commentary in broadsheet newspapers.

The Spitting Image sketch in which Major and his wife Norma talked about peas for dinner made its way into the Houses of Parliament. That is, when the opposition of the time shouted in reference to it: “Peas, Dear.” Another ongoing joke in the show was that Major was in love with Edwina Currie- former Health Secretary. This was exposed as being very close to fact as well. Currie described her four-year affair with Major in her diaries, 1984–88.

It was a United Kingdom repositioned for well over a decade by the time GamesMaster first aired on television. Not just by the transatlantic neoliberal tag team of Thatcher and Reagan, but the counter reactions to them as well. The specters of Blairism and Cool Britannia were yet to emerge from the shadows of Thatcherism. In the meantime, however, there was a ray of light shining through in the Major like greyness — a thriving youth culture self-broadcasted via art, comedy, music and technology.

The aesthetic, tone and onscreen personalities of GamesMaster exposed this more youthful elements of British culture to a wider audience. It was almost like a filter. One that helped package a bootstrapped generation — agents of change that would help define the second part of the decade — to an even younger group of people.

Action and Reaction

Turner prize winning artist Jeremy Deller uses the development of house music — a genre of electronic music that came out of Detroit — as an example that parallels what is seen through GamesMaster. In this instance, through a youth movement that used technologies like the Roland TB-303 synthesizer as its instrument of choice. Deller talks about it in more detail in Everybody That’s In The Place — An Incomplete History of Britain 1984–1992.

The dance music show The Hitman and Her is another example used by Deller in the same presentation — to further emphasize the divide that can occur across different generations. His observations describe a reaction similar to what finally came out of the Major government in 1992. That is, to control a rave party scene traced back to 1989.

The Second Summer of Love — a documentary by the BBC — outlines the counter reactions to the perceived norm in the UK. That is, from the 1980s to early 1990.

The reining in of this scene — built on mobile sound systems and self-organized gatherings of young people — came after the Castlemorton Common Festival. This week long free festival took place in the same year that GamesMaster first aired. Laws to stop gatherings of its scale were finally implemented via the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994.

The Church

It is ironic to frame GamesMaster within the context laid out by artists like Jeremy Deller. Some comparisons actually become literal. Deller’s observations about The Music Box, for example — a gay club in Detroit that came out of the house music scene. It became a safe place for its patrons, with the support network built up through The Music Box likened to that of a church.

The first season of GamesMaster was filmed in St Paul’s Church, Dock Street, London. In one respect, the format of the show was based on support networks. Contestants were cheered on by their peers, as they faced the challenge set out by the GamesMaster. That was, in the hope of winning a trophy called the Golden Joystick. Help with video games — the glue that bound the audience of the show together — was also served up in the Consultation Zone. This segment of the show was a sign of the times. It was before most households were connected via the internet. The cheats, codes and tips offered up by the GamesMaster were otherwise distributed via print media at the time. It is a period in history where looking for your answers via a search engine was not an option.

The first season of GamesMaster — a show created to support the interests of young people brought together through video games — was set in a church. Dominick Diamond — at the age of 23 — was also part of the same generation influenced by house music and the rave scene outlined in documentaries like The Second Summer of Love. GamesMaster’s position within the wider context of the youth culture it fed into remains more than just food for thought.

Turning Point and Tipping Point

GamesMaster was a tipping point for several happenings that came before it. It built upon efforts to make people more literate in technologies like personal computers in the 1980s. For example, the Spectrum computer was designed by Sinclair Research to be usable and affordable. It helped create a video games industry in the UK. Nationwide initiatives like the BBC Computer Literacy Project were also developed to educate people on what were still being referred to as microcomputers.

Sir Clive Sinclair had been making cheap microelectronic products since the 1960s. The Spectrum was the high point of his belief in making devices that were affordable for all consumers. The Spectrum and the Commodore 64 computers lay the foundation for a generation of video game designers. This was built upon by the time GamesMaster first aired — via 16-bit generation computers like the Amiga 500 and Atari ST.

These closely aligned events — turning point moments — brought personal computing to homes and schools across the UK. That is, via organized and conscious efforts not seen before. They helped build an emerging market and user base, which GamesMaster fed into when season one broadcast in 1992. The show was a tipping point moment for everything that came before it — technologically speaking. It solidified that computers were household items to familiar enough to their user to make an entertainment show about them. Whereas, its presenter — Dominik Diamond — harnessed the full potential of who and what its audience could be. He was someone they could relate to because, in a way, he was of their generation and “one of them.”

Magazines like Viz and albums like Experience by The Prodigy are cultural artifacts. They are windows into other cultural influences in play around the time when GamesMaster was created and broadcast. The leopard skin background is a direct reference to the style of clothing worn (and iconoclasm used around this time) by a Welsh rock band, Manic Street Preachers. They were a direct influence on Dominik Diamond — his favorite band in the early 1990s.

The audience is taken on a journey via GamesMaster as a show. This is because of the humor and pace set by Diamond as its presenter. One minute it is like the viewer is watching an alternative comedy show where celebrity is parodied, such as Filthy, Rich and Catflap. The next moment, there is innuendo-laced street humor — jokes well suited to the pages of a very British magazine like Viz. Even the Reviews section on GamesMaster (admittedly more to do with the format laid out by the producers of the show than Diamond himself ) was to a standard comparable to music press like the NME. That is, in terms of the way video games were contextualized and analyzed.

Filthy, Rich and Catflap was the follow up show to The Young Ones. Rik Mayall — one of the stars of the show — went on to become the face of Nintendo in its UK advertisements in the 1990s.

GamesMaster was a show that pulled on threads of influence from many directions. Diamond was not only the lightning rod through which these influences were channeled. He was also the conductor who guided an eclectic orchestra of personalities every time the light turned red on the television camera.

Three arm wrestlers (top) being awarded Golden Joysticks by someone dressed in a deep-sea diving suit. Dominik Diamond provides commentary looking like a Butlin’s Redcoat. Season two, episode twenty-five. Julian Rignall (bottom left) transitioned from a video game champion to journalist in 1983. He appeared on the first three seasons of GamesMaster. That is, before he moved to California to take up a job in product design and license acquisitions at Virgin Interactive Entertainment. Frank O’Conner (bottom right) started his career in video games journalism at Amstrad Action as a Staff Writer. He made multiple appearances on GamesMaster when he worked for Future Publishing. He was Franchise Creative Director for the Halo intellectual property at Microsoft, as of when this article was published.

Diamond Goes Electric

GamesMaster aired at a time when the rise of the internet played out in the UK. Its first two seasons encouraged the audience to call into a hotline at the end of every show, if they wanted to connect directly with the show. By season four, however, Diamond was encouraging people to call in on their modems — bringing GamesMaster in line with early forms of online community. The last season of GamesMaster simply directed people to the Channel 4 website.

The way in which the audience of GamesMaster could interact with the show evolved as the internet became a household technology through the 1990s

The rules of engagement for connecting to an audience were more centralized in the media and entertainment industry in the 1990s. There was a production team who developed the concept for a show like GamesMaster for television. This same team selected the people they had on the show, and set out how an audience could get in contact with GamesMaster. Even other projects that Diamond worked on at the time — such as Dom & Kirk’s Night O’ Plenty for the satellite television channel Paramount — followed this kind of template. The main way to view any form of pre-recorded or live streamed content was on a television for most people in the 1990s. That is, after paying either a television license or subscription fee.

Dom & Kirk’s Night O’ Plenty aired on The Paramount Comedy Channel in the UK.

There were, in other words, clearly defined layers of separation between the producers and consumers of media — be it intentional or unintentional. This is not necessarily the case today. Times when anyone can control how and where their show is broadcast, as well as how its content is produced. The fan base or audience can connect directly to a show’s presenter or creator almost instantaneously as well. People watching Dominik Diamond Live on Twitch, for example, become an organic and integral part of the show. That is, from the moment they tune into it.

Social media and information and communication technologies that are now “always on” make shows like Dominik Diamond Live an active experience. They are also more unrestrained than shows like GamesMaster — because they can be watched on a variety of devices. Dominik Diamond Live can be watched by anyone as long as they are connected to the internet.

Diamond having a show on Twitch is like Dylan going electric because it goes against the status quo that once existed in the television and radio industry. That is, even when shows like GamesMaster were heralding in a next wave of emerging technologies to a fresh audience.

Twitch is an online streaming service that was originally designed as a platform for shared video game-based experiences. Its DNA can be traced back to other platforms like Justin.tv. Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014. It feeds into a computer and video games industry worth over USD 380 billion, as of 2019. Diamond’s work on GamesMaster played its own notable part in helping to build the games-based industry streaming services like Twitch now support.

Summary

Dominik Diamond Live is a refreshing next step for the “boy from Arbroath.” The Twitch based show has tuned its presenter — someone with lengthy experience in the media industry — into a community driven age of broadcasting. In many ways, it is the Newport Folk Festival moment for Diamond — like Dylan going up on stage electric guitar in hand (about to play to a room full of people where acoustic guitar is the unwavering norm). It shows he is not afraid to find out who his direct audience is as an independent broadcaster. That he too is banking on himself and what his instincts are telling him — again, like Dylan in 1965.

This is only a good thing for both Diamond and his potential audience on Twitch. That is, if his past record as a cultural lightning rod is anything to go by — one where zeitgeist is naturally attracted to him.

Dominik Diamond was, ironically, set to appear on The Retro Hour podcast shortly after this article came out, May 8th, 2020. Ironic because this weekly podcast from Dan Wood and Ravi Abbott was built through its community of listeners. That is, to a point where it was featured in The Guardian newspaper when it was still a podcast that was produced independently. The Retro Hour was picked up for distribution by AudioBoom in 2019.

About the author

Dr Adam P. Spring has a deep and worldwide connection to 3D information-based communities. High profile projects he has worked on include 3D laser scanning at the Minoan Palace of Knossos in Greece and The Alamo in Texas. He is a leader in his field for technologies heavily publicized via terms like “lidar” and “reality capture”. Dr Spring’s written work has appeared in multiple journals, magazines and books over the years as well. Online publication includes sites like IEEE Spectrum and the Computer History Museum blog page. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and created the Remotely Interested Podcast in 2014. Past guests on the podcast include Ed Catmull (Co-founder of Pixar), Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins and NWA) and James Rolfe (Cinemassacre).