Speaking of which. From time to time you'll come across something that stops you in your tracks, either a programme you'd completely forgotten about or a particularly embarrassing camcorder recording. But I think the latest thing I've found takes the biscuit entirely. The recording, almost exactly ten years ago, from 15th July 2001, when my letter was on Points of View.
Yes, that's the kind of groovy, happening 17 year-old I was. To be fair it was the first time I had ever written to them and kind of got lucky. I was mid-way through studying A Level Politics at this point, and already decided I wanted to carry that on at university, so was very into all things political at this point. This included (don't laugh) Westminster Live, which was the pre-Brillo Pad answer to The Daily Politics. The programme was set in the BBC's Westminster newsroom and I had noticed that, in the background of shot on one edition, you could see one of the journalist engrossed in what must have been a particularly thrilling game of Solitaire on his PC. I emailed Points of View thinking I might be able to get on with this observation if I added the line "perhaps they find the Commons as uninspiring as we do". This was actually a complete lie, as at the time I was rather obsessed with all things Westminster, but I thought it might do the trick.
I was right. Imagine my surprise when, one lazy Sunday afternoon ten years ago, my email and name flashed up on the screen! Me, on Points of View! My email! My name! Someone else's voice!
Yep...somewhat naughtily I thought, they had got someone else who sounded vaguely young to read my email out. Points of View had made a great noise a few years previously of ditching the sarcastic actors reading out people's correspondence in favour of the people who had actually written in, recorded down the phone line. They also said you had to include your telephone number so they could arrange just that. This I did, but to my knowledge they didn't attempt to get in touch. If they did, they didn't leave a message or speak to anyone else who might have picked up the phone, or even send me a quick note to say they hadn't been able to get hold of me and would be using someone else's voice. They even got the imposter to do it down the phone! I wasn't the only one as someone on the Digital Spy forums admitted recently that this happened to them too. I'm exaggerating my annoyance, but you get the feeling had this happened five years later it would have a front page scandal in the Daily Mail. In light of this it's perhaps no surprise that they've now gone back to using actors' voices.
Anyway - at least I got to have Terry Wogan say I was "no man's fool", and that at 17 I was "so astute about politics". To give Points of View some credit they managed to find a genius clip where, with Solitairegate going on in the background, Zeinab Badawi and Michael Brown suddenly start discussing the public being fed up with politics. I now feel some sympathy with the employee I outed - we've all had those moments where we want to do anything else but work, and at least these days we have all manner of social media and video-sharing website to distract us. Back then, if you got bored of Solitaire, you had to make do with Minesweeper.
Due to the aforementioned problems with the capture device we've uploaded the video to You Tube in the style of the Transdiffusion children - pointing the camera at the television - although despite our vastly superior technology I get the feeling they would have made a better job of it. The audio is somewhat faint so it might be clearer here on Audio Boo. I'll be hanging onto the VHS of this one - so when I'm older, and my kids get to the age when they want to know what crazy things I got up to when I was 17...I can tell them I wrote into Points of View about Westminster Live. And then their mother can tell them about the email she got read out on Despatch Box...
1 comments:
I suppose the question is who do you write to, to complain about Points of View?
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