About 200 VHS tapes of stuff recorded off the TV between late 80s - early 2000s

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Perhaps seek out some of the more prolific (obviously uk-based) archivists on YouTube and post them comments to ask if they'd be interested?

Thanks; I will try this.

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Sounds like people above are hooking you up.

It looks like the CaB well is running dry, unfortunately.  I will get in touch with some youtubers and see what they say. 

Please folks pass on to me the names of any obvious youtubers you think I shouldn't miss!  I'm kind of poking around in the dark here.

And if anyone has any other suggestions or knows anyone who may be interested in these tapes, please let me know.

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Lancashire

Sorry Mr_Simnock, I missed this post until just now!

Do you or biniput drive?  And would you ever take a daytrip in Bath, or have any other reason to visit (eg Bristol isn't far away)?

Also please note that it is closer to 400 tapes than 200.  I misremembered when I started this thread.

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(Please PM me if you would prefer.)

[Mr_Simnock]

I'll get back to you on this when back from work

[Mr_Simnock]

Do you or biniput drive?  And would you ever take a daytrip in Bath, or have any other reason to visit (eg Bristol isn't far away)?

I drive yes, Iniput no. Tell you what, if there is a Bristol meetup on the horizon I will certainly take them off your hands. Im not too keen on telling the wife Im drive 300 miles for 400 old VHS tapes, I am keen on telling wife there is a big CaB meetup at Bristol that is a MUST attend event, nudge nudge.

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I drive yes, Iniput no. Tell you what, if there is a Bristol meetup on the horizon I will certainly take them off your hands. Im not too keen on telling the wife Im drive 300 miles for 400 old VHS tapes, I am keen on telling wife there is a big CaB meetup at Bristol that is a MUST attend event, nudge nudge.

Fantastic.  I'll make sure my Dad holds onto the tapes until you have taken them, and will organise a Bristol/Bath meet in due course.

Thanks Mr_Simnock!

[checkoutgirl]

I know from a recent glance that there's a tape of Victoria Wood's Jackanory, when she read Matilda.  That hardly turns up anything when you search for it online. 

I've often been absolutely convinced that everything on telly ever is online somewhere but that's just not the case, or anywhere near the case really. IMdB looks really thorough but even that falls well short of the mark. I reckon the next 20 years will see a huge uptake on people uploading Christ knows what onto youtube. The real problem will be discerning what's worth bothering with and how people catalogue the stuff they upload.

[Uncle TechTip]

It's gone mate, I don't think anyone makes VHS players any more (or was that recorders?). You're left with an ever dwindling supply of second hand units.

Neil Miles on YouTube loves his continuity and adverts.

[mothman]

Thanks; I will try this.

Good luck! Reading my post again there I'm struck by how terse I can be in written communcication sometimes... But then it was half seven in the morning.

Being able to go through something like these soubds like the kind of thing I'd enjoy, but I just wouldn't have the time...

Also, up for a SW CaB meet.

[biniput]

It is surprising what isn't out there on the net. When I got into sorting vinyl for charity shops I found just how many records were not on Discogs or 45 cat etc just as a example. Amazing what has been wiped etc or where the VHS recording is the last copy in existence. One bonus is that if TV firms ask for stuff they can give very good copies from what they do have in return and know of some who have got very rare stuff in best condition because of this. VHS are no longer made but many are still about. This is the time to save a few yourselfs as they will only get rarer. If anyone knows of a cheap Betamax etc well I might want one myself.

[Dead Soon]

I was once a 'prolific' uploader of continuity/advert ephemera and it's definitely *not* true that ''YouTube has everything'' - there's many instances where my VHS copy of a particular CITV link is quite possibly the only existing record of that broadcast, and there's a few recordings that I once held which have fallen by the wayside since my childhood and these contain material that certainly isn't on the 'net. Will cream my pants if your 400-strong collection contains the UK Super Mario Bros. 3 ''coming soon'' advert, though how likely your dad was recording CITV remains to be seen.

[Alberon]

I've got a few DVDs full of odd bits and pieces saved from my video tapes over the years that I should look into putting up. I've also got a few full programmes I've never seen online that I should upload. Off the top of my head I have Yello on some BBC show called Snub TV and an itv pilot about the police force in the year 2020, called Police 2020. I've been planning to upload that in a couple of years when we actually reach that year (assuming we do).

As far as I remember that last one was way off the mark in future prediction. It's about a vastly underfunded and overun force and the plot has something to do with hate attacks against immigrants. Ludicrous!

[checkoutgirl]

I'd be interested to see what youtube channels you lads have set up. Children's TV with continuity being a particular favourite.

[Alberon]

I'm going to go through my DVDs with bits and bobs on I've found on the arse end of VHS tapes while digitising them. The first is of absolutely no interest for anyone but me as it was filmed at the labs I used to work at. It was made sometime from 1996 to 2001 which was when Sky's .TV channel was running, but it's probably somewhere in the middle of that.

So, enjoy about three minutes of twenty-year-old, badly presented drivel about bionics.

https://youtu.be/gW6sH-Nyf2U

[Billy]

Back in the mid-noughties, when everyone was binning their VHS collection and selling them off at car boot sales, I bought some family's entire set of about 20-30 tapes for a couple of quid. Spent the next few days going through them in case there was anything interesting, and while I didn't find any missing Doctor Whos or anything, some of it was pretty neat...

* A showing of 'Those Glory Glory Days' in the early days of Channel 4, adverts and all including Norman Wisdom bigging up the Ronco Music Library, Peel/Jensen hailing K-Tel's Chart Hits 83 and John Cleese with a fancy Sony VCR.

* An odd BBC1 closedown from 1985, where after the National Anthem & testcard plays, the faint sounds of Scritti Pollitti and Slade can be heard beneath the blank picture fuzz - seperated with some digital beeps as if cued up on an automated playlist. Even more disturbingly the tape counter didn't move during all this.

* A coked-up Elton John on TV-AM in 1985, sticking his finger up at the camera before looking embarrassed and pulling an "Oops" face to the delight of Michael Parkinson.

* The start of an 80s repeat run of Fawlty Towers, promoted as a "long-awaited" chance to see it again, before to my utter horror the tape cuts to a night of dull ITV from 2004, never switching back. Why didn't they just buy a new tape?? Grr.

* An entire night of overnight Thames from February 1989, obviously just someone leaving the tape running - full ep of America's Top 10,  and ads ranging from various 0898 Partyline numbers to the local sofa shop on Caledonian Road.

* A 1990 ep of the James Whale Radio Show with special guest...oh christ, Jimmy Savile. Who immediately makes a joke about giving Leeds police officers "a few quid" to get rid of them, to much studio merriment.

* Lots of Christmas telly from both 1990 and 1993, both including full news reports slightly dampening the mood with the wars in the Gulf/Bosnia respectively.

* The entire third series of Bottom, as recorded at the time of original transmission. Yay!

* An entire tape of Barry Manilow, starting in about 1980 and featuring pretty much every UK TV appearance he ever did (Wogan, Aspel etc) up to his brief 1993 comeback on the strength of Could It Be Magic being popular again. Actually oddly compelling, starting out as a moody arsehole in sunglasses making sarky comments at interviewers and slowly transforming into cuddly granny favourite by the 90s.

Then a load of boring tapes just consisting of blockbuster movies recorded off the telly, three entire series of Soldier Soldier, and then a few live Robbie Williams shows from the early noughties - not much interesting stuff there other than the odd ad. But it was nice to discover...I captured some of it in shit RealPlayer quality at the time, but hopefully one day I'll find the tapes again and re-encode the best stuff.

[Flouncer]

* The entire third series of Bottom, as recorded at the time of original transmission. Yay!

Presumably the last episode has the continuity announcer promising that it will be back for another series? I have a hallowed memory of staying round at my Grandad's house when I was about eight years old, and he let me watch Bottom with him. It was the Carnival episode, and when Richie and Eddie get shot by the SAS at the end, I can remember being worried that they had been permanently killed off, only to be reassured that they would be coming back for another series by the announcer.

[Twed]

Fingers crossed!

[non capisco]

Back in the mid-noughties, when everyone was binning their VHS collection and selling them off at car boot sales, I bought some family's entire set of about 20-30 tapes for a couple of quid. Spent the next few days going through them in case there was anything interesting, and while I didn't find any missing Doctor Whos or anything, some of it was pretty neat...

* A showing of 'Those Glory Glory Days' in the early days of Channel 4, adverts and all including Norman Wisdom bigging up the Ronco Music Library, Peel/Jensen hailing K-Tel's Chart Hits 83 and John Cleese with a fancy Sony VCR.

* An odd BBC1 closedown from 1985, where after the National Anthem & testcard plays, the faint sounds of Scritti Pollitti and Slade can be heard beneath the blank picture fuzz - seperated with some digital beeps as if cued up on an automated playlist. Even more disturbingly the tape counter didn't move during all this.

* A coked-up Elton John on TV-AM in 1985, sticking his finger up at the camera before looking embarrassed and pulling an "Oops" face to the delight of Michael Parkinson.

* The start of an 80s repeat run of Fawlty Towers, promoted as a "long-awaited" chance to see it again, before to my utter horror the tape cuts to a night of dull ITV from 2004, never switching back. Why didn't they just buy a new tape?? Grr.

* An entire night of overnight Thames from February 1989, obviously just someone leaving the tape running - full ep of America's Top 10,  and ads ranging from various 0898 Partyline numbers to the local sofa shop on Caledonian Road.

* A 1990 ep of the James Whale Radio Show with special guest...oh christ, Jimmy Savile. Who immediately makes a joke about giving Leeds police officers "a few quid" to get rid of them, to much studio merriment.

* Lots of Christmas telly from both 1990 and 1993, both including full news reports slightly dampening the mood with the wars in the Gulf/Bosnia respectively.

* The entire third series of Bottom, as recorded at the time of original transmission. Yay!

* An entire tape of Barry Manilow, starting in about 1980 and featuring pretty much every UK TV appearance he ever did (Wogan, Aspel etc) up to his brief 1993 comeback on the strength of Could It Be Magic being popular again. Actually oddly compelling, starting out as a moody arsehole in sunglasses making sarky comments at interviewers and slowly transforming into cuddly granny favourite by the 90s.

Then a load of boring tapes just consisting of blockbuster movies recorded off the telly, three entire series of Soldier Soldier, and then a few live Robbie Williams shows from the early noughties - not much interesting stuff there other than the odd ad. But it was nice to discover...I captured some of it in shit RealPlayer quality at the time, but hopefully one day I'll find the tapes again and re-encode the best stuff.

What a top post.

[Alberon]

Years ago, I stumbled across one of the Open University programmes being broadcast on the TV, but the announcer had forgotten to mute her mike so over the top of it you could hear her chatting to a friend. Wish I had recorded that.

Anyway, I'm uploading another one now which is a six minute piece of Light Lunch with Mel and Sue with an interview with Claudia Christian of Babylon 5, with a bit of Bill Bailey thrown in for good measure. It should be here in about quarter of an hour.

https://youtu.be/cTTihfLx21o

To be honest these are the highlights of this particular DVD I'm going through. Also on here is Noel Edmonds presenting an award to Doctor Who (back in the dark days before the 2005 revival), and another bit of a BBC viewers comments show Biteback about fans of the show wanting it back on the air, and another piece on the TV movie with Paul McGann. Do you want them up online (if they're not already somewhere)?

[Dead Soon]

I'd be interested to see what youtube channels you lads have set up. Children's TV with continuity being a particular favourite.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl619bxVzyAMY-KC25p9ITA

Bit of a dusty cupboard now, most of the material was uploaded in 2010 on either side of my GCSEs. Peculiar sensation that I was far more actively motivated and prolific as a 16 year old than any time into my 20's.

[mothman]

Anyway, I'm uploading another one now which is a six minute piece of Light Lunch with Mel and Sue with an interview with Claudia Christian of Babylon 5, with a bit of Bill Bailey thrown in for good measure. It should be here in about quarter of an hour.

https://youtu.be/cTTihfLx21o

Cool. I am of course a massive B5 fan, and it's bittersweet to see Claudia C there all upbeat (not sure exactly when this was, but based on the "four years" and it being '98, I guess it was after she left under acrimonious circumstances - or failed to return when the show was saved from cancellation, the differing accounts between her and JMS over what happened don't help). After this her career nosedived as an abusive relationship took its toll and she became an alcoholic (as well as edged weapons, she collected vintage wines, which she ultimately went on to drink...). She's better now, but the damage to her career was done. While the female cast members seem to have mostly avoided the Curse of B5, she (and possibly Andrea Thompson) is an exception, albeit a nonfatal one.

[Dr Rock]

I'd like to be reminded of what was on my mid-80s 'erotica' tape. That Naked Yoga, that was on there. Some Buck's Fizz videos. Wrestling.

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Thread update

I visited my parents for a week during the summer, and realised they had a working VCR so could make a start on transferring some of these tapes myself, to reduce the burden on the next person.  So I bought the capture device necessary and was on my way.

One thing I realised was that the early tapes were indeed mostly well archived.  My Dad (and later I) usually cut out the relevant parts from the Radio Times and inserted them into the tape boxes to show what had been recorded, and tapes that were not labelled with the official stickers often had post-it notes stuck to the outside of the box.  This lasted until probably around 2000 when the archiving became more haphazard.  I know for example that amongst the unlabelled tapes somewhere is around 4 hours of unbroken news footage from September 11th 2001; I just grabbed a tape when I saw what was happening, stuck it on record and left it running.


Anyway.  The big initial upset when I sat down with the VCR and computer was discovering that the childhood tape I was most looking forward to finally digitising - the one containing Victoria Wood's Jackanory of 'Matilda' from the late 80s - had been wiped over in the early 2000s with recordings of Memento and Steel Magnolias.  I'm not joking, and I'm gutted.  Unlike many other programmes we recorded around that era, like Tom's Midnight Garden and The Chronicles of Narnia, Victoria Wood's reading of 'Matilda' has never surfaced online.

I managed to transfer a few tapes from childhood, including Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa, which I loved as a kid and has an English dub that I haven't seen anywhere else.  A few nice bits of continuity here and there, random animations turning up at the end of tapes, and lots of Buster Keaton for some reason.  I have also prioritised (but have yet to complete) personal tapes such as drama productions I was in as a teenager, and recordings of televised opera that introduced me to opera as a child (and hated at the time), and remind me of my Dad whenever I see them.  I've prioritised these because they wouldn't be the first things transferred by the inheritor of these tapes, I am sure, and I am keen to have them.


Here's the tiniest glimpse of what I was looking at during my visit:

   

 

 

 

 


I am quite disappointed by a kind of fuzziness with the audio throughout many of the tapes.  I can't work out whether it's a thing with the heads needing cleaning (I bought one of those head-cleaner tape things and used it, but I wasn't sure if it made any difference).  Maybe some of the tapes were recorded when the heads were dirty, or when the tracking was off, or those tapes are simply now showing signs of their age.  Either way this is maybe why it's a good idea to not just have one person doing this, and I'm taking on some of the burden myself, as it is possible one VCR might not last for 400 tapes.


Next time I visit my parents will be over Christmas, and I will try to get another bulk of tapes done then.  It can only be something I do over the holidays; my Dad has said he doesn't want to get sucked into this and it'll only happen when I am there.  I'll keep you updated.  Thanks Mr Simnock and biniput for being patient.  I will let you know when I am ready to pass the tapes on.

[mothman]

Fascinating stuff. Are all the tapes as well-labelled, or is there a significant amount of mystery material to be examined?

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Fascinating stuff. Are all the tapes as well-labelled, or is there a significant amount of mystery material to be examined?

A significant amount of mystery.

[kaprisky]

Would your dad have taped any films that would have been on BBC2's Film Club? We could always do with more of those introductions.

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While my Dad was doing that, I was extremely pedantic in the archiving of my own first 40 tapes or so, around the mid 90s.  Following my Dad's lead I took to removing sections from the Radio Times and other sources, but instead of leaving them inside the cassette boxes I glued them into a book which I then numbered according to its corresponding tape.

Here are a few samples:

   


The television premiere of Alien³, along with an amusingly negative review from a newspaper.  Plus an ITV broadcast of Robocop, because CaB likes nothing more than to talk about it:

   


Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (see the most recent post in the (spam) thread for a coincidence - https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,64337.msg3595695.html#msg3595695):

   

   

The images from The Fly seem a bit randomly placed at the end there, but the next page was for a tape of A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Fly, and there wasn't enough room on it for those pictures.


 

Derek Winnert edited the film reviews for the Radio Times in the early 90s, and each week his name was sitting there so prominently that I decided to make that comment in my clippings book when he left.


   

Sadly I lent my 'Evening with Billy Connolly' tape to an acquaintance around 1996, and he never gave it back. 

Around that time and later there were many nights devoted to comedy.  Amongst the recordings I managed to digitise over the summer was the Monty Python Night, Spike Night and Channel Izzard.  Very gutted that 'An Evening with Billy Connolly' couldn't have joined them as I remember it being very good.

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Would your dad have taped any films that would have been on BBC2's Film Club? We could always do with more of those introductions.

It's possible but I'm not aware (yet) if he has.

[Alberon]

From one of the earliest VHS tapes I had, a bunch of adverts from Christmas 1984. My family had only just gotten a video recorder and I hadn't fully worked out the pause button yet.

Among the highlights are some cutting-edge CGI for Debenhams, some too kid-friendly beer adverts that were banned not long after, Matt Frewer advertising British Airways, "Strewth! There's a bloke down there with no strides on!", those threatening skinheads from Weetabix and a Terry's Chocolate Orange parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

https://youtu.be/_IUeKk_weO0