Whilst we were always the last to upgrade our consumer electronic products, the last to have a colour tv for instance, the last to have a record player in the house as another for instance, we were, for some strange reason known only to my father, the first people in the known world to have an operational video recorder inside their house.
We rented our colour tv from DER and once a month our dads routine involved him calling in at the DER shop on Town Street in Horsforth to pay the rent on said tv set, it was while he was in there one day that some extremely smart salesman demonstrated to him the miracle of the home video recorder and the concept of being able to record stuff from the tv set without the tv set even being switched on, without you even having to be in the house, or miracle of miracles, record “the other side” while you were watching the BBC – how did it manage to do that then eh ?
He rented one on the spot.
Rushing home he burst into the house to tell us of this new-fangled device that would revolutionise our viewing habits, it was 1977, we had three channels on the tv set and now we’d be assured of covering at least two of them at all times, how good was that then ?
Ned and I sort of understood what he spoke of but to our mum it was totally perplexing, then again the tv set perplexed her, the remote control that had come with our rental tv set perplexed her, especially the fact that you had to plug it in to the tv set and sit no further away than the cable that attached it to said tv set would reach – the number of times that we had to get off our chairs and walk to the tv set to plug in the remote control to walk back to our chair to remotely change channel…
Later on the week the Ferguson Videostar home video recorder was delivered by two men from DER. It took two of them to carry it in the room for it weighed three hundredweight and was the same size as a washing machine. They wired it up and demonstrated its use, remarking that we were the first people in the known world to embrace this technology, why how lucky we were to be able to capture tv images in this way and did we realise that we’d now have 66% of the nations tv output covered now ?
They left, we stared at the video recorder, wondering what to tape record first.
Five seconds later our wondering was answered, we wouldn’t be recording anything for a while as the men from DER had not left any video tapes.
Fortunately I had some birthday money to spend and so the following Saturday all the men in our house went to Comet in Horsforth to loudly proclaim to the man behind the counter (loud enough for most people in Horsforth to hear) that we were the owners of a home video recorder and could we purchase a tape for it please, Comet being the only place in the world where you could buy a home video tape.
The man behind the counter knew nought of which we spoke and went to fetch the manager who in turn had heard something of this new invention, taking his managers copy of “Comet Stocktake Monthly” he thumbed through the pages until he found a small section on the Ferguson Videostar home video recording machine. Mumbling something about “we should have one tape in here somewhere” he disappeared out the back to emerge some time later with one Thorn EMI three hour video tape, “I knew we had one somewhere” he perused staring at the tape and clearly not having the first clue of what it was.
£18 is what it cost, 18 of my birthday pounds, which is all I had, in fact our dad may have had to put some money towards it as well, my weekly wage at that time was around £28 – can you imagine paying £300 for one blank recordable CD now ?
Scurrying home we eagerly inserted the tape and started recording, this was brilliant, we could record Dickie Davis on World of Sport while watching Frank Bough on Grandstand, this is what technology was all about.
“I can record Coronation Street if I miss it can’t I” our mother asked. Gathered around the home video recorder staring intently at it recording we all ignored her but three minds all thought the same, “If she thinks I’m spending two thirds of a weeks wage just so she can tape Coro-bloody-nation Street…”
Our mother never got the hang of the home video recorder, indeed the very next day highlighted to us that she would never, for the rest of her life, understand the workings of the video recorder. Our Uncle Sid and Auntie Irene had popped around to have a look at the new marvel of the age and as the two sisters sat gossiping on the settee Sid told them to hush their noise, when they looked at him to question why he whispered “the video machine is recording”, they looked suitably embarassed and instantly lowered their voices so that they wouldn’t be “picked up” on the video recorder, not that such a thing was possible of course, but from then on whenever we told our mother that we were recording something she always lowered her voice to a whisper and if the phone range she’d dive for it to answer within one ring so as not to disturb the recording.
[...] The miracle of the video recorder [...]
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I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to show my mother how to watch a DVD on their player, explaining what a ‘menu’ and a ‘cursor’ are and how to make them do what you want.
haha, that was a good read – though the last line about the recording sounds familiar, doesn’t Peter Kay tell a very similar story?
Amanda – I don’t think my mother ever touched any button on the video recorder, ever although she did frequently switch it off by slamming the hoover into it (it stood on the floor).
Faceless – Haven’t really hear a lot of Peter Kays stuff but if his mother is anything like my mother was then I wouldn’t be surprised.
Jerry, I love this story. Super funny. Thanks for sharing. I remember having our first video recorder in the early 80′s and it was all the rage. We used to watch Superman at my birthday parties and it was awesome!
Im glad that shouting at mam and dad for talking, while I (audio) recorded Top of the Pops had some effect.
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