Putting your schlong into the reel-to-reel tape machine is a bad idea Last week, I promised you I’d rip my two mighty appearances on Granada Plus’s The Computer Channel (later relaunched as .tv) in 1997 from VHS. Well, a promise is a promise, if only half-kept. Here for your viewing curiosity is just one of my BAFTA nomination-worthy performances for a short-lived night-time satellite TV programme …
I remember my parents angst when they lent their reel to reel to a "friend" who snapped off the little wings that held the reels in place on one side of the machine.
Basically the machine was buggered despite my Dad's best efforts to replace the wings with pins through carefully drilled holes.
As for applying my schlong to aforementioned machine..... sorry I was a bit too young.
What did they think they were trying to achieve putting a bloke like him on TV talking about computers. Not you Mr Dabbs, the permed one. Consumer programs about technology make me cringe and that video made me feel like I was watching a modern day shopping channel minus the three easy payments and call now banners on the screen.
Now there's an idea, you could get yourself on to the QVC technology segment and we could watch you subtly take the piss out of the presenters lack of clue about what they are selling.
School drama productions in the 1960s needed several people to cram themselves into a small space in the wings to do the prompting, lighting, and sound effects. Actors entering/leaving from stage left had weave their way through the bodies keeping a low profile - indeed at times even prostrate on the floor.
The lights were controlled with large black knobs and levers.mounted on grey Hammertite painted panels. They had lots of ventilation as the dimming technology was just very large wire-wound variable resistors known as rheostats.
The large reel to reel recorder was on the floor. A tape of sound effects had been commissioned - with grease pencil marks on the mylar to show the alignment point of the next sound. In the open wings only a small light was permitted for the prompter - so a dim pencil torch had to be used to see the marks. After each sound was used the tape had to be carefully aligned at the next mark with the transport in "pause" mode. On the cue in the script the tape would be started playing.
Being a boys' school the plays selected were all-male characters - until a new headmaster allowed the Shakespearean tradition of casting pretty boys in women's roles.
One year the play was Arnold Wesker's "Chips with Everything". The lead role was given to a budding thespian who was always in trouble with teachers for having what appeared to be a permanent grin on his face. A perfect casting - but for the fact that he was very cavalier about his lines. Whole chunks of dialogue would be unpredictably skipped - and the backstage crew would be frantically turning pages to keep up.
In one scene "Smiler" was supposed to be trying to thumb a lift from a passing motorbike. The audience was suddenly treated to his vehement cursing of a bike that hadn't stopped - followed after a frantic pause by the distant doppler sound of it approaching then roaring past.
Scene changes used the sound of a band playing The RAF March - but unfortunately the "theatre professional" who had supplied the sound effects tape had only included a few seconds of it. Consequently a record player with a 78rpm record had to be cued at the appropriate points - while the tape was manually wound on to the next effect mark.
To this day the opening bars of that tune automatically take me back to that production.
My godchildren love my Halloween computer controlled electronic SFX - but I spare them any repeats of the Goon Show imitations we spent our teenage years producing on my affluent pal's reel to reel recorder.
The year I was in the high school theater lighting crew was the year they got a new light control board (fit on a folding table) that was pretty high-tech for the time (easy cross-fades and all that). Yeah, it was spiffy and ours was the first crew to use it, but I felt vaguely ripped off not being up in "the loft" with the banks of levers and switches the previous years' light crews got to use.
One of my many non-study ways of filling my time at Oxford was doing light shows for balls*. For a big occasion we'd hire a van-load of kit from Strand Electric. The dimmer units were armour-plated monsters on wheels - typically about five feet long by four feet high to provide twelve 500W channels.
Then smaller dimmers using a solid-state device called a thyristor started to appear. I built a number of these, but mine always burned out. I guess I was destined for a career in software rather than hardware.
* Dances in marquees, not testicle lighting.
The fact is Pinky and Perky was one of the more entertaining bits of Brit TV at the time. Do try to remember what life was like in the early '60's. Perry Bloody Como on the TV - and in the charts. The Black and White Minstrels on Saturday prime time TV. And if-you-don't-feel-like-hanging-yourself-yet-you-soon-will Sing Something Simple on Sunday evening radio.
No Kojak or Man From U.N.C.L.E. No Avengers, if memory serves.
Christ! How did we get through it all!
Because at the time we lapped it up,
Now don't get me started on '50's TV and radio.
And your starter for 10 : Which actor did P and P begin performing with, who spoke on screen with an atrocious Italian accent.
Here's a clue : He later redeemed himself by playing a 'tec on Z Cars. On the other hand he had an awful lot to redeem himself for, because he also did TV ads for Special K.
"No Avengers, if memory serves."
Pinky and Perky (1957–1968) - then on ITV until 1971.
"The Avengers" started in 1960 - although it was only the second series that promoted Steed to the main character with Honor Blackman as the intelligent female lead.
There was "Captain Pugwash" from 1957 - and "The Magic Roudabout" from 1965. A reasonable attempt at "Biggles" was on ITV in 1960. "Garry Halliday" 1959.
"Fireball XL5" 1962 - "Stingray" 1964. "Torchy" 1957 plus many repeats.
The Sunday teatime serials tended to be classics that were so earnestly done as to be rather frightening for the children they were supposedly educating. I can still remember the flight of (missing) stairs illuminated by lightning in "Kidnapped" - and the earlier "Nineteen Eighty Four" mandatory hate scene still gives me the shivers.
The history of children's TV:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1397497/
You make TV of the early 1960s sound like a wet Sunday afternoon of that era. :P
>> Which actor did P and P begin performing with
According to Wikipedia, it was John Slater, but I don't remember him. Wikipedia also says Pinky and Perky were revived as creepy CG characters in 2008, which I can only imagine was as hideous and terrifying as the CG series of Noddy.
While I can appreciate to an extent the convenience that doing everything electronically on silicon that we used to used mechanical devices for I do feel that the tactile element and enjoyment of watching well designed mechanisms do their stuff has been lost. I think that this missing aspect is part of the reason vinyl is making a comeback. It's just nice to be able to see at least some of the process of sound reproduction actually happening as opposed to invisible 0 and 1s streaming around inside an inanimate 'black box'
"While I can appreciate to an extent the convenience that doing everything electronically on silicon that we used to used mechanical devices for I do feel that the tactile element and enjoyment of watching well designed mechanisms do their stuff has been lost."
Have just built some SFX systems for a godson. It uses relays and blocking diodes for the sequencing logic - and remote controlled bells for wireless signalling. Have explained to him that it is pre-war logic technology doing it that way.
Told him that to achieve the extra functionality will need an Arduino for the logic - and it can then handle more complex 433mhz signalling without the bell units.
As a Tax Accountant he finds the guts of electronics akin to magic - although he can use Excel. To me this creativity is what I've been doing since I was 13 in 1961 - and even earlier if one includes making wooden swords and shields.
This post has been deleted by its author
I had a reel-reel tape recorder in the early 70's. I once rode from Cambridge to Durham (I was at college there) on my trusty Triumph 500 with it strapped between the handlebars. That was fun!!!!
Then there was the time that a reel came off the back of the bike (not the recorder) and unwound itself down the A1. I got it all back together and it still played music (early Genesis if I remember rightly)
Alan
"Then there was the time that a reel came off the back of the bike (not the recorder) and unwound itself down the A1."
Sounds like it luckily did just unroll. People accidentally let tape fall from the edges of the reel. When they came to wind it up again they found it was like a twisted Xmas decoration.
People made the same mistake with computer papertape - thinking it would be easier to unload the spool quickly before winding it up onto a new one.
"People made the same mistake with computer papertape"
Forget paper tape. I had a friend who had a slight misunderstanding with Fortran print control characters. The sort of misunderstanding that leaves you with a single line of print on a page. On the pages that have anything printed on them at all. So he decided to take this huge stack of fanfold home to work his way through it. He put it on the pillion on the back of his motor bike....
You just described my thirty-odd years in the BBC - from shiny new 625-line colour, news sound effects played over silent film footage from a bank of six gramophones, tape machines the size of a fridge with valves in the bottom... to today's high-definition digital signals, non-linear editing, and satellite communications.
Ain't progress wonderful?
I do the same - saves others having to insult or offend me.
I think you came across really well in case you need to be told.
What I find difficult to imagine is what technology will be like in the 15-20 years, bearing in mind I have been playing with it since the late seventies. Do we need computers/cellphones/TVs that are any faster or smaller? Maybe I am lacking the imagination I once had.
+1, Great captions added in post, BTW
Dabbsy: Here's £2.5K of hardware and software I've set up to make video "editing" look easy.
Perm: Gosh, it's easy isn't it?
<edited> Dabbsy: Yes, because I set it up to showcase 2 simple features (append and transition) that even you could understand. Now you can turn several boring snippets into a feature-length borefest - WITH TRANSITIONS!!!
Actually, Alistair - You should be ashamed of yourself for helping encourage the "it's all about me" generation!
... and you can take the piss out of yourself again for the most recent crop of bollox.
Oh, and go buy a tie with stick on Polo Mints, or the present 'modern' equivalent. Then you can stop bitching about your life being a failure because you were not the right sort of dick head.
Hmm, for a Mac pro and Final cut ProX you will pay about the same pricer as your set up in'97, the Mac book Pro doesn't make such a satisfying crash as the old monitors when you kick the bloody thing off the deskbecause it's...crashed again.
I had forgotten just how bloody awful Pinky and Perky were, I hated them when I was a kid and now I find I still do.
Muffin the Mule was okay though. Always liked a bit o' muffin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spQY2FbCUtM
The presenter is Will Hanrahan. He appeared in quite a lot of BBC programmes in the early 90's. He knew absolutely nothing about computers and admitted to presenting the programme without understanding it! Take a look at his entry on Wikipedia, it doesn't even mention this highlight of his career.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
