38. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...MIX TAPES ON VIDEO CASSETTES

The absolute very first time I taped something off the telly onto a video cassette was Ghost Town by the Specials because we’d bought the VCR to record my Dad on Look East and I was practicing beforehand with Terry Hall and his band to make sure I got the hang of it. He was being interviewed before a big rugby game (Dad not Terry) because our local club had got through to the 2nd Round of the John Player Cup in the days when most sporting competitions were sponsored by fag brands. Dad made a joke in the interview and was very proud of himself. I was secretly proud of him too but I clearly never let him know.

As an aside, I was heartened to see the latest pointless cricket competition, The Hundred, being supported by KP’s snack brands because the government has clearly decided Hula Hoops are the modern equivalent of cigarettes and so is determined to ban kids from eating them off the ends of their fingers in case, well, god knows why – perhaps there's a danger of them enjoying themselves otherwise?

There was definitely something cool and space-age about video cassettes when they first came out. The way you loaded them into the slot and just pressed them gently forward to make them disappear into the machine with that satisfying whirr and clunk. I know we’ve got our entire record collection on something we hold in our hand nowadays but, in the 80s, this was cutting edge hi-tech and made you feel like you were one step away from wielding a sonic screwdriver or joining Blake’s Seven.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I’d still got a number of video cassettes in my cupboard and, although I have nothing to play them on, I know exactly what's on them because I have the contents lists I prepared at the time. Not only does this show that being OCD (ie a bloke) has its advantages sometimes but it also proves that I suffered from a mental health condition long before it became trendy to announce it to the world and his wife.

They’re mix tapes of songs, adverts and entire series of Not The Nine O'Clock News and the Young Ones. Sadly I was too late to record Michael Bentine’s Potty Time but there's a little refresher on YouTube here which I'd recommend you watch only when your kids are out of earshot otherwise the next knock on the door you hear will be the police.

They bring back bitter-sweet memories of the challenges we faced:

1. The first VCRs were bloody difficult to programme and seemed to be deliberately designed to catch you out at every step. This was particularly embarrassing if, as the youngest and therefore the most technologically-savvy member of the family, you were entrusted with taping the Xmas blockbuster or, even worse, the Queen’s Speech for everyone to settle round the telly to watch later. Successfully recording your father on his TV debut gave you a few credits in the bank but it’s amazing how quickly you can use those up by cutting off Her Majesty before she gets to talk about her annus...horribilis or otherwise

2. You set the VCR for a specific date and time, not a specific programme, and so if the BBC were running late (something they were extremely reliable at doing in the 70s & 80s), you ended up taping most of Tomorrow’s World and just the opening credits of TOTP. That would give you lots of Raymond Baxter but not much Simon Bates …..although a lot less Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile too (both of whom were far more dangerous to children than either cigarettes or Hula Hoops)

3. Cassettes were expensive so we were encouraged to re-use them. This was fine if you taped over stuff you'd already watched - Happy Days (“heyyyyy”) or Diff’rent Strokes (“what you talking about, Willis”) - but, if it was the last episode of Jewel in the Crown or Brideshead Revisited which got wiped, mum had to wait 2 years for it to be repeated on TV before she could finish the series. That’s a long time to be confined to the doghouse.

Most of my pre-recorded videos went to a car boot sale (a sort of DIY eBay) several years ago once I’d realised I could watch them all on YouTube for free. I still had a few left over and they’ve proved very useful in propping up the heavier shelves in my garage. And, if they ever make a comeback like vinyl (they won’t), I'm sure I could replace them with other obsolete stuff of shelf-supporting potential lying around the house which even eBay wouldn’t be able to find a home for – I’m thinking atlases & maps, CDs & DVDs, reference books & Yellow Pages and chequebooks & banknotes just to name a few.

Nowadays, whenever I manage to persuade my kids to watch an 80s music documentary with me on TV (and, when I say ‘watch’, I clearly mean ‘glance up from their iPhones every once in a while’) and clips of TOTP performances are shown, they are always amazed (and no doubt secretly proud but the little devils don’t let on) how I can point out what people in the crowd are just about to do or what the presenters are going to say. They think they're the first generation to re-watch memes plenty of times but me and my mates would throw all-nighters replaying the recordings of those clips to dissect every aspect of the performance.

That's how we were able to dance like Roland (the less attractive half of Tears for Fears) in the Mad World video because we studied every move he made - a routine we'd put into practice on the dancefloor at the school disco to huge acclaim. I didn't need to be told it was the highlight of the evening because, out of the corner of my eye, I could see people in the crowd doubled over with laughter and beckoning their mates over. Luckily it was a mixed event with the girls school and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves too judging by their good-natured sniggering as they tried to copy the shapes we were throwing. Not as easy as you thought, eh girls?

I also recorded the Smiths’ TOTP debut with Morrissey’s gladioli in his back pocket as well as the 2nd time they appeared when he added prescription glasses and a hearing aid. As a result, I went marching into town for the next disco with my mum’s favourite flowers jammed down my jeans (they were actually freesias but I wasn’t a horticultural expert in my teens) and the glasses & hearing aid I ‘borrowed’ from my grandad. It became clear, after a few yards, that I could hardly see or hear a thing with them on so I stumbled back home to leave them behind (when I gave them back to grandad the next day, he whispered that it was the same for him but I wasn’t to tell anyone). I think my schoolmates at the disco were hugely disappointed - they said they'd only turned up to watch me dance - so I did a cheeky moonwalk for them and that seemed to cheer them up no end.

It’s funny how the things that superseded video cassettes – DVDs – and audio tapes & vinyl – CDs – have themselves been made redundant by streaming and downloads. It's hard not to see this as progress but it means you can no longer make mix tapes of videos like you used to in the old days (or perhaps you can but I haven't worked out how). Just like the ritual of placing a vinyl on the turntable and attempting to find a track with the needle without scratching the record, there was also something empowering about gently pushing the video cassette into the VCR, pressing record and sitting back with a false sense of security as Peter Powell's intro on TOTP inadvertently taped over the only TV appearance your Dad would ever make.

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Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...NEW ROMANTICS

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