Ceefax switch-off

[Beagle 2]

Cor blimey yes, Barney's Bunch! I bet no screencaps of that exist. Wasn't there some sort of badger? I was very put out when Oracle was disappearing and spent one of my parents' huge boozy New Years' parties repeatedly checking back as Oracle got smaller and smaller until it disappeared at midnight. You know what? I probably still would.

[Replies From View]

it doesn't much look like a cock.

Maybe not your cock, Uncle "TechTip".

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

Paging Ronnie...

Hello! I also spent my teenagehood on Teletext, specifically, Megazine and The Void.  (And on Bamboozle).  I actually met my fiance on Teletext when I was 13, on the Void letters page.  He was looking for drummers, and was a regular writer-into the Void.  I thought he was cool so I replied to his ad anyway and we became penpals. Then he moved to Belfast from London, we were in love, broke up as teenagers do, got back together 9 years later. We're getting married in August and have no idea how we will ever explain to our children how we met on prehistoric internet.  Thinking back I can't believe how much effort I put into writing letters for it.  My dad once went and told people I was on TV when one of my letters was printed.

I read the Void pages every day and hated weekends when they didn't update with new letters.  It was the first thing I did before I went to school in the morning.  My mum would be watching breakfast telly and I'd come down, nick the remote and read through the pages while eating my breakfast. 

I still get friend requests on Facebook from the incredibly mental Rebecca Nahid.  Apparently she was a horny old goat.  She was also my fiance's penpal, much older than him, and when they met up she cracked onto him.  She used to ring my house and cackle down the phone.

Planet Sound was a brilliant music page.  Their reviews (and John Earls in particular) were great.  They always had a bit of humour in them and because of the short space, were concise and well-written.

Megazine was where it was at, though.  I met tons of people through that- Brocolli the Evil One, Galder Weatherwax's Hat (or my ex, Karl, as I know him), Loony, Enola and others.  I used to save my school lunch money for the meet-ups.  Usually in Manchester or Leeds (like this one in 2003 when I was 17)



or London 2005:



And was a moderator for the Megazine Yahoo! groups and forums.  It was, for a good few years, my social life.  I have no idea if I'd even be living here without it.  It's a bit boggling to think about.

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

Damn, that picture of a test match score card on ceefax in the Guardian article really brings back memories of looking at test match score cards on ceefax.

I met my first husband on Megazine, but that's a story for another time.

Now I'm wondering who you are!

[Jerzy Bondov]

Does anybody remember the choose-your-own adventure thing they had in place of Bamboozle one school holiday? I think there was a wizard in it. There was a sport version of Bamboozle as well, which I used to play even though I don't really know anything about sport. You could tell what the correct answer was from the numbers at the top and change your mind quickly if you got it wrong though.

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

Does anybody remember the choose-your-own adventure thing they had in place of Bamboozle one school holiday? I think there was a wizard in it. There was a sport version of Bamboozle as well, which I used to play even though I don't really know anything about sport. You could tell what the correct answer was from the numbers at the top and change your mind quickly if you got it wrong though.

Yes!  They had them at Christmas too, I think?  You would pick a colour for your choice if I remember.  Often end up at a dead end.

There's a Bamboozle app, by the way!

[Replies From View]

Come on, what came before Bamboozle?  I guess it would have been on Oracle.

There's a Bamboozle app, by the way!

Apparently Bamber Boozler is a bit fuzzy around the edges, making him not quite blocky enough and ruining the retro effect.  I think I'd get it if they managed to fix that and also mock up the page numbers being flicked through at the top of the page.  And provide seasonal variations with members of his family taking over from him while he's away, just like the original Bamboozle.

[thecuriousorange]

It ended in Scotland bloody ages ago, along with analogue TV. Now that it's switched off in London the whole UK has to read "Ceefax ended today" stories everywhere.

[Nuclear Optimism]

What was the name of that music page on Ceefax where some guy kept writing in who was obsessed with Geri Halliwell, and would slate all other female singers who in his mind weren't half as successful? A right nutter.

I got published on Dear Ceefax once, but I was wrong.

When my letter came up I was overjoyed. Took about twenty photos of the telly. I saw one of my shots on an old hard drive recently and didn't immediately recognise it was me (I used a false name). Then I was mortified when I read it. The letter started with "As a Christian..." Blimey, that was a while back...

Now I'm annoyed that my sole contribution to the history of Ceefax was something with which I no longer agree, and I'll never get the chance to fix that.

[Beagle 2]

It ended in Scotland bloody ages ago, along with analogue TV. Now that it's switched off in London the whole UK has to read "Ceefax ended today" stories everywhere.

Your ceefax probably had a lower life expectancy due to a mostly deep-fried diet. EH?

[KLG-7A]

The one Barney's Bunch I remember had them coming home from an airport. The old "Anything to declare?" chestnut. "Yes, I've had a wonderful holiday and..." etc. etc.

I wish somebody had the least bit of evidence of Barney's Bunch. Although it's quite good that it's only remembered by about five living people.

Another amusing thing was the page where children's pictures were digitised and display on Teletext. What a mad idea.

In 1995 a friend who had Sky lied to me and told me that its Teletext was high-res and had sound.

[mcbpete]

4tel was the bestest for just flicking through unlisted pages and finding strange random patterns. I didn't have many friends.

I did exactly the same as a kid - I thought I'd hacked into the system! I even remember having a weird dream where you could force it to load four digit page numbers leading to even more secret pages - sort of like a teletext dark world ....

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

What was the name of that music page on Ceefax where some guy kept writing in who was obsessed with Geri Halliwell, and would slate all other female singers who in his mind weren't half as successful? A right nutter.

I got published on Dear Ceefax once, but I was wrong.

When my letter came up I was overjoyed. Took about twenty photos of the telly. I saw one of my shots on an old hard drive recently and didn't immediately recognise it was me (I used a false name). Then I was mortified when I read it. The letter started with "As a Christian..." Blimey, that was a while back...

Now I'm annoyed that my sole contribution to the history of Ceefax was something with which I no longer agree, and I'll never get the chance to fix that.

It was Peter Pinsent, he wrote into The Void as well!

[Nuclear Optimism]

Ah that takes me back.

I'd love to read some of his letters again.

[Beagle 2]

Did anyone use "Mix" much? Why isn't there a "Mix" option on my internet? I could watch Noel Fielding THROUGH people slagging off Noel Fielding except I couldn't because there's too many colours it wouldn't really stand out but still eh makes you think

[Famous Mortimer]

Was it Jon Homer? Blue Suede Views on ORACLE.

Bloody hell, that's the fella!

[KLG-7A]

I did exactly the same as a kid - I thought I'd hacked into the system! I even remember having a weird dream where you could force it to load four digit page numbers leading to even more secret pages - sort of like a teletext dark world ....

If you were able to access the hexadecimal pages you could see the "dark Teletext" (answers for Bamboozle).

[23 Daves]

The only real teletext claim to fame I can trot it out is the fact that I was interviewed for a job writing for Intelfax (providers of 4-Tel amongst other services) in 1999.  I didn't get it, but given that the rise in Internet use was hovering over the future of their services like an angry bee at the time, that's probably not such a terrible thing (although I was disappointed at the time).  So far as I'm aware, they ceased trading altogether at some point in the mid-noughties.

Theirs is the only interview I've ever had where I've been made to sit an exam about the present story lines in various ITV and BBC1 mainstream early evening shows.  Naturally, I only knew the answers to about three of the questions out of forty, and if they'd wanted somebody who watched that stuff and could write engagingly they'd invited the wrong person to the interview, really.

[mcbpete]

If you were able to access the hexadecimal pages you could see the "dark Teletext" (answers for Bamboozle).

Hah - yeah we used to do that at school. We had BBC Micros hooked up to Teletext (don't think it was the Prestel system as it only seemed to be able to access the normal Ceefax/Oracle pages). If I remember correctly you'd press enter on the page and it would show you a 'secret page' listing what button (Red,Green,Yellow,Blue/Cyan) led to which page. Three would lead to the same thing (the wrong answer page) and one to the correct one so you could dash through the whole thing without a challenge ....

[KLG-7A]

Hah - yeah we used to do that at school. We had BBC Micros hooked up to Teletext (don't think it was the Prestel system as it only seemed to be able to access the normal Ceefax/Oracle pages). If I remember correctly you'd press enter on the page and it would show you a 'secret page' listing what button (Red,Green,Yellow,Blue/Cyan) led to which page. Three would lead to the same thing (the wrong answer page) and one to the correct one so you could dash through the whole thing without a challenge ....

You could cheat on a normal TV anyway. Just press every FastText button and see which one gives the page number that is the odd one out or the next in the logical progression (before the page loads in).

[biggytitbo]

Did anyone use "Mix" much? Why isn't there a "Mix" option on my internet? I could watch Noel Fielding THROUGH people slagging off Noel Fielding except I couldn't because there's too many colours it wouldn't really stand out but still eh makes you think

What on earth was the point of 'top'?


What always amazed me about teletext was how the journos would write every headline to be the same width on the screen.





Thats craft.

[mcbpete]

Blimey, that is good - never considered that before, in my mind I just thought 'ah they just clicked the justified button', but obviously you can't with the fixed character spacing ...

[Norton Canes]

OK, here's a question for anyone else who like me, spent too long in front of the BBC's primitive textual information dispersal system. Back in the early 80's, Ceefax would go Christmas mad - not just on the 25th, but through the whole of December, with advent calendars, poorly rendered pictures of crackers, blocky snow on the logo, the works. And each day, the kids section would feature a new chapter in the stories of two characters' adventures - a Victorian detective in the mould of Sherlock Holmes, and a warrior in a Tolkeinesque land of fantasy. The respective tales would become epic sagas over the course of the Yuletide season, with upwards of twenty sub-pages per chapter (OK, I know that probably only amounts to a couple of hundred words, but it seemed like a lot when you were waiting for the pages to cycle round). I would wait anxiously for the latest instalments, eager to discover which dastardly criminal perpetrated the murder, and whether the Ring of Elvenpower would ever be returned from the desolate wilderness.

So the question is - what were the names of these characters?

[Norton Canes]

Or, like, just make up some names.

[biggytitbo]

Textlock and CeeFrodo.

[DocDaneeka]

Did you meet Big Fat Flying Bloke* Ronnie? I used to like his Void letters.

I did love Digitiser, Game Central just wasn't the same.


*Or something like that

[biggytitbo]

Two words for you - Stuart N Hardy.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

What the fuck was with MegaZine? It was impenetrable. So I read it every day.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Haha Rebecca Nahid, I remember her.  Always sending messages to the music pages on Ch4.

I think the only thing I had published on there was when the pages were being dominated by messages about the Manic Street Preachers every day and I told them to stop it, and they agreed with me and banned any mention of the Manics for a week.

I used to spoof other uses as they wrote their messages by copying what they were writing. It was great.

There was an irritating scrote called "Mikey" on Paramount Text who used to do that.  Er, that wasn't you was it?

[KLG-7A]

I wish I had satellite in those days! I remember seeing Paramount Text around 2001 when we got Sky. It seemed like quite the community.