Category: e.phemera

  • BEEB Magazine
    BEEB Magazine

    I stumbled across the BBC’s answer to Look In magazine last night. It was called BEEB, and lasted 20 issues. Here’s a look at some pages and covers from the run. All of them are available here.

  • What A Gas
    What A Gas

    This isn’t what I was planning on sharing today, but sometimes you’re scouring for tiny articles in the archive, and you get distracted by big, gaudy ones like this. ‘Romped with a bevy of beauties’ is a phrase you only ever see in a tabloid newspaper. Here’s a preview of the movie, from the Folkestone,…

  • Mary Whitehouse Versus Scum
    Mary Whitehouse Versus Scum

    Here’s a story told through newspaper clippings. It begins on Thursday the 15th of September, in 1983. The Belfast Telegraph tells its readers that Mary Whitehouse, the teacher who founded the National Viewers And Listeners Association, has been given leave by the High Court to seek a declaration that the Independent Broadcasting Authority breached its…

  • These Four Walls Are Closing In
    These Four Walls Are Closing In

    I’m writing this in an effort to exorcise a pernicious ear-worm. It’s burrowed so deep into my head now that I’m worried its actually eating my brain from the inside. The name of my pain is Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone. I didn’t realise that this was actually a cover version. The song was originally…

  • Squarials
    Squarials

    There’s a whole book about the rise and fall of British Satellite Broadcasting called Dished!, by Peter Chipindale and Suzanne Franks. It’s a fascinating tale, and I often revisit it. This time I have done so via old newspaper clippings.

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  • Proctology: A Bottom Examination
    Proctology: A Bottom Examination

    For a long time now I’ve been wanting to write an old-fashioned programme guide. One you can hold in your hand and thumb through, make notes on, spill coffee on. So I did. Proctology: A Bottom Examination is my deep dive into Bottom, the hit BBC Two sitcom starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. That’s…

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  • Re-Casting Keanu
    Re-Casting Keanu

    Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him eight years older than Clive Dunn was when he was first cast in Dad’s Army. But don’t panic, Clive Dunn was always playing much older characters than his own age. Keanu Reeves is 56. That makes him seven years older than Stephanie Cole was when she was first…

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