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I made an attempt to sort through a big box of photographs from the last 30 years to see if I could get them in any kind of order - maybe even stick them in some albums. It was a classic displacement manoeuvre from Herring. I should be trying to think of a new sitcom or book or some kind of work that will buy muslin squares for my baby (I don’t know what babies like so much about those, they seem pretty boring), but instead another trip down memory lane and the start of a task that will take me weeks.
Nice to be reminded of a time when taking a photograph was a risk, where every shot was precious and where you couldn’t see the photo you’d taken for weeks. If the light was wrong or someone was blinking or your finger was over the lens you’d only find out when the shots came back in the post. But even the photos that came out totally wrong still made their way to my albums (I did manage to keep the photos catalogued until I got to University. The ones from 1986 to the early 2000s are either in their packs or just scattered loosely around the box. Some show people or places I can no longer identify, but mostly I could work out some kind of order.
Amongst the photos I found a cache of old leaflets, programmes and show tickets (which will find their way to eBay - more of which later) and an unused Fotopost Express envelope with a picture of Wendy Craig on the front happily saying, “I never trust my colour films to anyone else…” I don’t think there could be an object in the whole world that is more of its time than this. Wait fifty years and show that to someone and they would have no idea what it refers to at all. Who was Wendy Craig? What made her such an expert on colour films (not sure about that myself)? What were colour films? Why did they require an envelope? What is an envelope? What do you do with it? What is this £ currency? What is Stevenage?
I wonder if Fotopost Express are still in business? And will they honour their £1.89 for 20/24 exposures? I have a fun camera from my ill-fated 2002 holiday to Barbados with the girlfriend that I didn’t know had been proposed to by her previous boyfriend the day before we left and who kept ringing him from the room…. for some reason I didn’t feel like developing that film when I got home… Maybe now is the time to have a look at the miserable scenes (I also got knocked over by a wave and hit my head on the sand and then -for some reason- one of my testicles swelled up to about five times its usual size - it was quite a holiday).
You youngsters don’t know what fun it was having non digital cameras. Sometimes you’d even get sent someone else’s prints by mistake. It was brilliant. You don’t get that with your iPhones do you? Let’s return the UK back to when it was great, not to a made-up version of the 1950s like Nigel Farage wants but to the 1980s like me and UKIP1980s want. Farage wasn’t even alive in the 1950s, the pillock. I want to go back to the time of Walkmen and Wendy Craig, when the staff of Fotopost Express were living like the Wolf of Wall Street with their post based film service millions (allegedly - and i am doing the alleging)
Robert Knight who won the bumper New Year prize draw is giving a little bit back. For some unknown reason he doesn’t want the copy of John Bishop’s DVD given to me by Stewart Lee and signed by me, so it’s up for sale on eBay (along with some signed programmes). If you want to own the guaranteed
only copy in the world of a John Bishop DVD signed by me then head here. Robert if donating back to the fighting fund to make more AIOTM. I will be adding some more items to eBay soon.
I have added a few more memorabilia items to eBay - again all the money will go towards internet projects -
Punk’s Not Dead programme
And if you don’t know what Punk’s Not Dead was, it is my personal favourite of all my plays and
you can read it here.
And the RHLSTP with Victoria Coren Mitchell is now up on video at the usual places -
Video
Audio
