BBC GENOME

I got more than a little bit excited when I read about the new "Genome" project launched recently by the BBC (http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/). It sounded like it might be rather my sort of thing, given that I'm a total sucker for anything involving old TV and radio programmes, especially those produced by the BBC which is, despite its various recent troubles, still quite possibly my favourite institution in the whole wide world.

Oh, I might have more regard for some of the other institutions, you understand, but I believe that it is the BBC that has provided me with the most joy over the years, despite the fact that they never saw fit to put me onto their payroll.

Quite right too.

I'd probably have been utterly hopeless.

Anyway, the point of the Genome project is to provide access to the archives of the Radio Times and opened the floodgates for the nation to wallow in nostalgia and, perhaps start to fill in the gaps in the archive where individual episodes or entire series are "Missing" to use the vernacular, by indicating to the world what is currently "Lost" if they just happen to have a few old tapes of TV or radio programmes knocking around.

"Missing" is, of course, a euphemism for "Junked" or "Misplaced" or "Wiped" and refers to the huge act of cultural vandalism that took place whenever expensive videotapes were re-used back in the 1960s and 1970s because it was in the Public Interest to save money when it was the licence fee that was being spent, and when storing such ephemera was not considered cost-effective when such things, especially in a bright new era of Colour Television, were unlikely ever to want to be seen again.

Within a decade, along came home video and the sudden resurgence of interest in old television from a generation for whom the words "another bloody repeat" (one of my dad's expressions) would have little meaning, and interest in the culture of the past - a place which was already becoming "another country" - was booming.

But the work of a generation of actors and comedians had already been decimated (and more) by the time that happened, especially during an era when, as the makers of the new versions of some lost "Hancock's Half Hour" episodes mentioned on the radio a few days ago - a producer might just go and grab the first available tape off the shelves and record over it.

ITV are not without guilt in this area as well, by the way, as many of their series have huge gaps in their archives, too, not least two personal favourites, "Callan" and the first year of "The Avengers". Interestingly, ITC's film-based output is a lot more fully preserved, not least because much of it was made available for overseas sales, and film was generally more marketable than videotape because it was a more "universal" medium.

Anyway, one of the bigger "selling points" for this new project, as far as the news media and the general public was concerned, anyway was the ability for people to look up what was on TV on the day that they were born (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29647931), or in relation to other significant dates in their lives - as long they fell between 1923 and 2009 anyway.

So, thanks to the new BBC Genome project, I now know that I was born during the Fourth Test, on the morning of the fifth day of an England v Australia Test Match which was being played at Old Trafford... (a game, incidentally, described as having been "the dullest of draws") and suddenly things in my life actually start to make a lot more sense, given that I'm a Manchester Lad with a bit of an unhealthily obsessive interest in Test Match Cricket.

Perhaps ironically, within a week of this project being announced, a couple of missing episodes of the ITV series "At Last, The 1948 Show" turned up in David Frost's family archive... which at least proves that the hunt goes on, and that occasionally something "new" (Well "old", obviously, but you know what I mean...) will turn up.

Now I do love a good "find" - it gives me hope that other "Lost Treasures" might yet prove to be somewhere out there after all.

I could also burble on and complain about my "At Last The 1948 Show" DVD now being out of date, but, under such circumstances, that might seem churlish. It's probably simply best to just enjoy that fact that something that once was lost is found again, and wonder what's going to turn up next.

IT WASN'T JUST ME

I went into the newsagent's shop the other Tuesday morning, as I usually do, in order to pick up the latest issue of the "Radio Times" and found myself having the following exchange, after having glanced across at the spot on the shelf which they are usually stacked in and thought that the old one was still there.

"Have you got the new Radio Times…?"

"I've put it out, mate…"

"But isn't that last week's edition…?"

"No, I put the new one out this morning…"

I went back and realised that this was indeed a brand new edition, although its similarities to the previous week's issue was, I felt, at least for the casual observer, close enough for this to be a very simple mistake to make.

Anyway, feel in like an idiot, I picked up a copy, parted with my £1.80 (!!!) and disappeared off into the dark morning, wondering whether I was just getting old.

Mind you, given the similarity of the colour palette, the similarity of one of the main photographs, and the near replication of the banner flash advertising the free book offer, I still don't believe that it was that foolish an error, even though, once you put them next to each other, they're really not all that similar at all.

But I do wonder how many other potential buyers have been put off this week by making the same elementary error… after all, as Sherlock himself once observed, we look but we don't observe, although, given the current fan base that Mr Cumberbatch has (Cue utterly gratuitous picture of his mum, back in the day, using the excuse of her uncredited cameo in the first episode of the new run to justify the inclusion), I don't suppose that sales would suffer, although making such a design choice does seem to be a minor blunder on the part of the designers.

Happily, when I got to work, m'colleague, who is a subscriber to the official organ of the BBC, was complaining that his copy had arrived in an envelope the previous day and he had begun a small rant about how they'd sent him last week's copy again by mistake before he had noticed the dates were in fact correct and it was indeed a brand spanking new edition that he clutched in his hands.

So it wasn't just me, then...

THOSE 12 RT COVERS IN FULL

A cynical marketing ploy it may very well be, but for the week of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, that venerable old organ of programme listings publications, the Radio Times, printed twelve distinct and separate covers to "celebrate" the TV show in question on the presumption that sad little completists like myself would dash out and buy all twelve so that we could leave them rotting in boxes in our attics and basements until they become "worth something" even though, given that the RT remains Britain's biggest-selling weekly magazine, there are likely to be one or two about to keep the value low.

Or maybe they'll be gathering them up to sell to gullible foreign fans whose access to such merely national treasures is more limited than our own, and seeing them as a bit of an investment opportunity.

But I kid you not. A quick glance on eBay shows that a recent edition bearing a "Poirot" cover is for sale for thirty quid a mere two weeks after it came out, although just because it's on sale at that price doesn't mean that anyone will actually pay it.

That said, the editions from the 1960s, those old black and white "newsprint" editions featuring Daleks or William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton can actually fetch hundreds of pounds, so who knows what this week's bunch will go for if you've got another fifty years or so to wait...

That's the thing about collectors of ephemera, though. They know full well that most ordinary sane readers chuck the thing into the recycling at the end of the relevant week, and the "rarity" value immediately increases accordingly. Tales of people coming home from school and finding that there mum had thrown out all of their old "Eagle" comics find grown(ish) men weeping in corners, whilst the reality of the situation is that copies of editions lying in those stacks of old "Empire" magazines which still take up far, far too much space in our tiny little house, are still selling for £0.00 each (with no bidders) and are effectively worthless, as the Beloved keeps reminding me...

Ah but, you see...

A couple of months after my mum moved out of her house and into the flat which she spent the last decade of her life living in, I went to a Film Fair and noticed a stall completely full of old Radio Times editions selling at around six quid a copy and seethed quietly at the realisation that I'd just thrown several years worth into big bags and taken them to the tip as I'd been clearing my "old rubbish" out of mum's garage.

Mind you, whether I could have been bothered trying to actually find a buyer for them is a completely different thing and is, presumably, what marks out the person who seizes an opportunity from the rest of us. The truth is that I probably wouldn't have done anything about it even if I'd known about it, because it would have seemed like far, far too much trouble and, of course, the pragmatist has to understand that there's no point in fretting about something that you've already let go.

Meanwhile, and before you ask, no.

I did not go out and buy myself all twelve of these... Although I may have got myself more than one before I recognised that that was indeed the way madness lies.

Other past "Radio Times" covers can currently be seen at:
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-11-18/partners-in-time-50-years-of-doctor-who-radio-times-covers
and all artwork is of course (c) covered by their copyright - although I'll be claiming that they're in the public domain if anyone asks...

RADIO TIMES DAY

To a creature of habit such as myself, daily, weekly and monthly routines become part of the very fabric of your being, and so it is that Tuesday is the day I like to get my new copy of the “Radio Times”. Not for me the trashy splurgy layouts of the other, ‘inferior’ TV Guides (although, of course, other TV guides are available…), oh no. This house is a “Radio Times” house and hopefully always will be. Weekly magazine sales might well be plummeting, but the Radio Times still claims a circulation record that in 1955 it sold over 8 million copies a week in a time when there were only just 2 television channels and most people still listened to their radiograms. Nowadays it still shifts about 1.5 million copies a week, but times are hard in the publishing world with all that lovely free online information persuading folk that they really don’t have to fork out £1.20 a week when they can get it “for nothing” (discuss…) online.

On my way to the station every Tuesday morning, except during December when publication dates go all to pieces, I will pull across into the lay-by outside the much beleaguered newsagents and pop inside, passing the surly youngsters that pass for delivery persons nowadays and hand my coins over to the retailer as he fights the good fight against the supermarkets which have bludgeoned their way onto his ‘turf’, and flit back to my car with the latest issue tucked under my jacket to keep the rain off. Then, after my railway duties are completed, I scurry home for a cup of coffee and a quick browse before the Tuesday toils begin. Variations on this routine have accompanied my various jobs and geographical locations across the years, but the result is always very similar. Next week’s TV and radio programmes, laid out in relatively easy-to-understand terms (although recent layout changes have proven to be a ‘talking point’ in our household and triggered the odd exasperated ‘tut’), ready for me to peruse over and pick and choose from.

For as long as I can remember the Radio Times has been a cornerstone of my week, even though we didn’t used to actually have it at home until I was old enough to get my own copy. I think my own love affair with this rather excellent publication started with the announcement of an ‘Tenth anniversary special’ being available at the end of an episode of Dr. Who when Mr Jon Pertwee was still in charge. I suspect that I whisked around to Mr Pennington’s as fast as my tiny legs could carry me, only to be bitterly disappointed when, being unaware at that young age as to how publishing actually worked, I found that they hadn’t come into the shop yet. A couple of years later there was a lovely painting by Frank Bellamy illustrating Tom Baker in mortal combat with the Loch Ness monster and so began the many years of hacking up my old issues to paste the important bits into my various scrapbooks.

When I had my paper round, I would dawdle more with my Wednesday deliveries (Wednesday? Wednesday! But I thought you said Tuesday was Radio Times day…) as I took a sneak peek at the latest issue just to see whether there was enough material that week to justify me getting my own copy. I was a good kid, you see. Never once did I even consider just swiping one and putting the blame on some inefficiency on the part of Mr Sellars who ran the Post Office. Wait a minute, wait a minute… (as I’m sure you’re not actually asking), who’s this Sellars bloke? What happened to Mr Pennington? Ah well, Pennington’s was the newsagency (or sweetshop if you prefer) that was halfway to school, but Mr Sellars ran the Post Office and newsagents that was in the other direction, but for whom I worked on my newspaper delivery duties during the long, dark morning hours in my brown ‘snorkel’ coat.

Being a good kid, I also went to Sunday School, and the church I reluctantly attended used to collect old newspapers to help keep its roof from leaking. Obviously they didn’t just stuff the roof with old newspapers, there was some kind of financial jiggery-pokery that meant that they got financial remuneration for every ton or so of papers they collected and the cash was used to maintain the roof (presumably by nailing the coins in place to keep the rain out – no wonder villains used to steal church roofs…). This meant that by the back door of the old Sunday School building (which is now rather strangely where my mum’s flat is…) people would leave boxes of their old newspapers and I would be able to sneak a look and grab any copies that I knew had photographs and articles in, whip out the relevant pages and stuff the rest back into the box without anyone noticing. I like to think that whatever God I thought might have been looking down on me back then didn’t resent the loss of those few pages and the pennies that he or she didn’t get for his or her holy roof-work because of the general happiness they added to my little life. Truth be told, you know that I almost certainly have the scrapbooks in a box somewhere hereabouts if he or she really wants them back.

Of course, in later years, via a rather lavishly illustrated book I found in the school library called “The Art of the Radio Times”, a book, incidentally that I never actually bought for myself (if you happen to have a spare copy lying around somewhere… Hint! Hint!), that the world of illustration and the Radio Times had a long and very noble history in each other’s company which sadly seemed to falter during the 1980s when full colour glossy printing and photography rather took over, and illustrators across the land had to seek other outlets for their dubious genius, although the bumper two-week Christmas edition (and what an exciting prospect that used to be!) still has a tendency towards the artwork option even now.

The Radio Times is an ephemeral thing, really, which is what they are supposed to be. Something you use for a week and then, like a cruel lover might, cast into the dustbin of history when you are all done with it. The problem is that I do find it very difficult to throw the bloomin’ things away, because there’s always something in them that I might just want to read again later, and so they start to pile up in various parts of the house, like having various accusatory elephants sitting in the room demanding that something be done about them. I could and would blame it on the film fair I went to a few years ago when I saw someone selling back copies for six quid a throw and the table was full of issues I remember having, but unfortunately it predates that. I remember throwing out a huge stack from my mother’s garage just before she moved house a decade or more ago, and there was a definite pang when I had to do it, which became a positive pain when I saw some of the issues on that traders stall and realised how many potential pounds I had just thrown away, although, if truth be told, I’d never have organised myself enough to have actually done anything about it.

However, I do know that somewhere hidden in the darkest corners of this abode of ours lurk the Christmas editions of both it and the TV Times (until they were each able to list all the channels) dating right back to 1974, from such times as when Morecambe and Wise and a Sean Connery James Bond film were still the biggest Christmas Day attractions, such is my compulsion to hang on to my rapidly diminishing memories of my youth, and various other copies that I considered “special” for some reason or other are still scattered around in various other nooks and crannies. I did however have a bit of a clearout over last weekend, and there’s now a load of them from the last twelve months or so just sitting in the recycling bag even as I write this. Now if only I can resist the urge to go a rummaging and rescue a few. Well, you never know when you might need one of those recipes…