21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (21 page)

Obviously our standards and morals change over the years – imagine
The Young Ones
being broadcast in the ’50s or ’60s! – and I am sure they will continue do so, but something of the frisson has been lost in the last decade or so. The excitement of discovering something forbidden – be it sex, violence, adult themes, or just some ribald comedy – has pretty much evaporated. And I am talking about teenagers here, young adults on a voyage of discovery. I don’t even want to get into what younger kids have access to these days.

I shudder to think.

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Analogue Television

By the end of 2012, any remaining analogue television signals will be switched off in favour of digital. In order to roll out digital broadcasts, the powers that be need to free up space, and can only complete the project by getting rid of analogue altogether.

So gone once and for all are the days of twiddling with the portable aerial on front of the telly, Dad being forced to stand in the corner of the room with his arm aloft so that Mum can see the end of the film she is watching, and that fuzzy bit of snow on screen when a plane flies past.

So no great loss, then?

Well, probably not, for most people. Digital television delivers a better-quality picture, better sound, more channels, more choice, and, in many cases, lots of fancy extras.

But the digital signal will only reach 98.5% of the country; 1.5% of the population will, presumably, have no TV signal at all. That’s almost 1 million people. What will they do? Where do they live? I presume they are at the top of mountains, in deep valleys, or remote islands, but nearly a million of the blighters? Blimey.

So progress may be great, but it is only of use if it can actually reach you.

I love the idea, stupid and fanciful though it is, of some residual analogue signal floating around that these people can pick up on their old TV sets. They would end up living in a time bubble of old episodes of
Porridge
,
Play School
, and
Terry & June
. Sounds quite nice to me. I’d be tempted to pay them a visit.

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Teletext

When that final analogue signal is switched off, it will mark the death of Ceefax, the only remaining teletext service in the UK. Hopefully this won’t happen halfway through a football match, with fans waiting for an update on the score as the screen refreshes, a popular pastime in the days before Sky Sports.

The BBC launched its teletext service, called Ceefax because it allowed you to ‘see’ the ‘facts’, in 1974. It was born out of technology used to create subtitles for the deaf, and started out with a few dozen pages of information that could be accessed by punching in a page number on your remote control.

ITV launched its own service, Oracle, in the same year, and each of the five terrestrial channels had their own service at one time or another. As teletext grew, it added a huge array of content and became an essential source of up-to-the-minute information for most households. Don’t forget, this was before the days of the internet and 24-hour rolling news; if you wanted the most up to date information, teletext was the place to look.

It led, understandably, with news and sport (live football scores during match day being a particularly popular feature) but widened its brief to include more niche interests and magazine content. Channel 4 had excellent music review and news pages, there was an interactive quiz called
Bamboozle
in which you answered the questions by punching in numbers, and horse racing analysis and cards worked brilliantly on the format, with the BBC’s Ceefax pundit being a particularly successful tipster.

There were gardening pages, knitting pages with full patterns, computer pages with programs to input, kids’ pages, advent calendars at Christmas, and joke pages (you pressed the REVEAL button of the remote to show the punchlines).

But even if you never pressed the TEXT button on your remote control, you would get to see Ceefax, and listen to some muzak, when
Pages from Ceefax
was broadcast late at night or early in the morning. Used as a bit of a filler when there were no actual programmes to air, the viewer would be treated to a rolling loop of the most popular pages with an easy listening soundtrack. It may not sound particularly inspirational, but most of us would have spent a few minutes in front of it at some point in our lives, often while eating a bowl of cornflakes.

ITV stopped its teletext service in 2009, and Ceefax is only available nowadays via your analogue signal (although
Pages from Ceefax
is still occasionally broadcast on BBC2), which, as mentioned, is soon to vanish. It has been replaced with the flashy graphics and interactivity of modern digital systems, which do look to come from another century entirely (perhaps because they do) but somehow lack the warm, friendly feel of teletext of old. Thankfully, you can find examples of pretty much every page there ever was at one of several online resources; well worth a visit for all you nostalgia junkies.

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IN THE CINEMA

Where we sat in the dark, snogged, and ate popcorn …

National Anthem

Right up until the late 1970s, the national anthem was played at every screening in cinemas up and down the land. Patrons were expected, but not actually forced, to observe the anthem by standing throughout. Originally, it would have been played at the end of the film, but that tended to lead to a frantic rush for the exits while the credits were rolling (if you’ve ever seen that
Dad’s Army
episode, then you’ll know what I mean). It was later moved to the beginning so that unpatriotic scallywags would be immediately identifiable by their insistence on staying seated. Cue lots of tutting from older cinema-goers.

I am guessing that the tradition came to an end when the number of people sitting through the anthem far outnumbered those standing to attention. Or perhaps when multiplexes started popping up in out-of-town shopping centres. Or when most people stopped giving a tinker’s toss about royalty and the fine heritage of this great nation. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t happen any more.

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Commissionaires

There was none of this milling round the foyer, buying pic ’n’ mix, or playing on arcade games you get nowadays when you visit the cinema, not during the era of black and white films. No back then, if you wanted to see a film, you would queue up outside until just before showtime, when you would be allowed in to buy your ticket and popcorn.

Looking after these queues were commissionaires, often ex-military chaps in peaked caps and uniforms, not unlike a posh hotel doorman. They would keep an eye out for any troublemakers (watch out for those mods and rockers), ensure the queue remained orderly, and field any questions from excited cinema-goers (‘When are you going to bloody well let us in?’).

The commissionaire was also in charge of the HOUSE FULL sign that would be plonked in front of some unlucky bugger who had arrived late and was too far down the queue to stand a chance of getting in.

Once the show had started, the commissionaire might be called upon to eject some troublesome oiks and he would appear again as the audience left, to ensure that they made their way home in time for him to nip down the pub for a swift pint.

As cinemas changed and owners realised there was more money to be made by getting people inside the foyer as early as possible, the role of the commissionaire became defunct and went the way of lighthouse-keepers.

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Usherettes

Most cinemas would have a number of usherettes (sometimes ushers, but they were usually female) who wore smart uniforms and would look after patrons once they had made it inside.

She would take your ticket, rip it in half, and often thread the portion she kept onto a string (presumably to keep tabs on how many people were inside). She (or one of her fellow usherettes) would show you to your seat with the aid of her trusty torch.