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.

"SAFARI SO-GOODY"

Christopher Biggins used to say that (every bloody week) on the early 1980s children’s game show “On Safari” when I was at an age when I should have known better than to watch it.

I know! Wretched isn’t it?

That game show also introduced the wider viewing public to Gillian Taylforth, so it’s got an awful lot to answer for, but it’s my own fault for daring to venture across to “The Other Side” for my televisual treats instead of sticking to good old “Auntie” like I ought to have done.

The BBC had a far more “respectable” approach to the whole topic of safaris as witnessed by this magazine I found in a box recently, a publication commemorating the “Blue Peter Royal Safari” as taken by the then Princess Anne and Valerie Singleton way, way back in 1971.

Nowadays, I’m sure that WHSmith would use some sort of ghastly bastardisation of the language and refer to it as a “Bookazine” but back then, despite the stiffness of its covers, it was still a plain old-fashioned “magazine” and would have set you back the Princ(ess)ly sum of 30 “new pence” or “six bob” in old money…

We had, after all, only just been “decimalised…”

(Some of us never really got over it…!)

So, is it worth an absolute fortune, now then…?

Sadly not.

AbeBooks have got a couple going for about four quid, so it was hardly an investment, but it was interesting to look through, especially when you get to this page towards the end when you see two young women walking along the seashore in, what might seem to the casual observer, an ever-so-slightly “raunchy” manner and you have to remind yourself just who it is that you’re looking at as they’re strolling along the sand in their swimwear looking as if they haven’t a care in the world.

I nearly “met” Princess Anne once, you know. I did “meet” one of her security officers who didn’t seem all that pleased with me, I can tell you…

I was in Bristol and was trying to get past the theatre where a crowd had gathered and blocked the pavement. Being just a tiny, weeny bit drunk at the time I decided that I wasn’t going to go around the crowd, and I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for it to go away…

No way…!

I was going to go through it…

And I decided to do it just as H.R.H. emerged from the front door of the theatre…

Oh, we can laugh about it now, but at the time it was… perfectly all right, actually…

Originally written for "MAWH - Light Under A Bushel" July 5th, 2012 but not published.

FIRST, FIND YOUR IDIOT

I'm often being informed that lots of the things that lie scattered about my little house are "worth" quite a lot. Various old magazines with pictures of particular movie or television stars on the cover will go for quite a few more quid than marked as the cover price apparently, if you know where to look and can be bothered to go looking for the keenest sort of buyer.

However, when you look into it, most of the contents of the various stacks of old magazines the are lying about the place and threatening to engulf me if they should ever collapse are already for sale on certain e-selling sites and often either fail to sell at all, or disappear at a price that is usually just a few pence.

Bloody so-called "Collector's Editions…" or "Exclusive Covers…" or things printed with several covers to tempt the gullible.

Occasionally one lucky seller will find that there is a bidding war for that old edition of something that they just happened to hang on to, but it does rather depend upon two keen and eager buyers happening to come across your offer to sell at precisely the same moment.

In other words, first, find your idiot… then hope that you'll find another idiot at about the same time.

After all, if someone is stupid or desperate enough to want that old Radio Times with "Harry Potter" on the cover that they'll pay three figures for it, who am I to stop them…? It can be quite easy for the unscrupulous dealer to manipulate the obsessions of others so that they are persuaded that some old pieces of tat are actually worth a week's salary to them.

Of course, in the real world, most things are only really "worth" what someone is prepared to pay for them…

You can walk around your house looking at stuff and thinking "Well, I paid XX for that so it must be worth at least YY" or you might be lucky enough to notice that somebody once paid hundreds for something that you also happen to have a copy of, but that doesn't mean that anyone's going to give you a similar price for one, and it might still end up going for seven pence on eBay, only to be sold on by your far more savvy purchaser for those mythical hundreds once they've got their grubby little mitts upon it…

Let the seller beware...

I may well have spent twenty quid or more on that shiny new book when I first bought it, but other copies still turn up in the remainder outlets for less than a quarter of that, or even in the charity shop for a couple of quid if only I'd been more patient, or selling on Amazon for £0.01 (plus postage) if I really want to feel fed up about it.

There, unfortunately, is the reality of it...

Once upon a time, I think that I genuinely believed that I might be creating an archive, or maybe I might need reference material for some topics I was becoming a minor league "expert" in and might be able to give talks about, if I was ever so inclined.

However, these days I'm very aware that it's far more likely that it will all end up just being thrown into a skip once I've carked it.

Still, it's much the same with anything. Houses, cars, jewellery, fine art. Things that are "precious" to you are only so much landfill to almost everyone else… unless they think that they can sniff out a bargain…

Because that's the other side of the coin, isn't it. You're out to get as much as you can for your tat, whereas everyone else is looking to get it as cheaply as they can and maybe make a tidy profit.

There's also the tiny problem that any collector has. How do you get rid of a collection what you've built up without grieving for its loss…?

There are now hundreds of editions of "Empire" Magazine stacked up in my house that I can't see anyone ever wanting, but if I sold them en masse they'd probably struggle to make me a tenner, but individual copies with certain actors on the cover might be able to be sold at many times that on their own to a "Star Trek" or "James Bond" fan, if you know where to look for one...