Yes, it’s that time of year again: the annual plea for readers of Curious British Telly to donate their old video tapes. For those new here, the purpose of this is simple. I dig through these dusty tapes for fleeting glimpses of long-forgotten British television. I’m talking about programmes that haven’t seen the light of day since their original broadcast, in-vision continuity announcers introducing films, regional news reports and, of course, that true blast of nostalgia: the advert break. A fine example of what I can uncover is this Anglia closedown from 1985.
I’ve been at this for ten years now, yet recordings from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s are getting harder to find. The majority of tapes I see online are from the mid-1990s, and usually contain recordings of Big Brother 5 or even the 2008 Olympics. Yes, these recordings are getting older by the day, but they're far from the interests of Curious British Telly. I want to take you back on a journey into the distant, distant past.
So, if you happen to have - or know someone who has - old VHS or Betamax tapes gathering dust like the ones pictured above, please get in touch. I’m always happy to come and collect them, and yes, I can send them back if you’d like. Each tape rescued is another small piece of British television history saved from oblivion.
I've got a few VHS tapes but none of them would interest you as they only have stuff on from the late 1990's and 2000's. Looking through them however I do have one tape that has the original versions of the 100 Greatest Adverts and 100 Greatest Kids TV Shows that C4 broadcast in around 2009 with Jamie Theakston as host before they edited him out of future broadcasts and replaced him with new hosts. I also have another tape containing a show called The Red Dwarf A-Z which I think the BBC showed it on Red Dwarf Night many years ago but possibly never repeated again. A third tape has on it a show titled The One Foot in the Grave Selection Box which was a compilation of the beloved sitcom where celebrities talked about their favourite scenes. Sadly however, every other tape contains either movies or F1 racing related stuff.
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