Raiders Of The Loft Archive

A recent delve into the recesses of BrokenTV's parents' loft uncovered a load of print magazines (remember them?) from the mid-1990's. Which is lucky, as it gives us something to post about while our Sky+ box is on the blink (currently most channels appear to us in the form of a slide presentation narrated by Norman Collier). One of the gems uncovered was issue one of the short-lived but very excellent FourFourTwo-but-about-telly magazine, The Box. And, thanks to the unique way BrokenTV is funded, we've scanned in some of the best bits to share (instead of, say, flogging it on eBay).

The cover, featuring lots of things we haven't scanned in. Look, it's really annoying trying to scan in things from annoyingly-just-bigger-than-A4 magazines as it is, so we've had to limit ourselves.

Click to embiggen each of the following:

Yes, it's Jerome Seinfeld. Heading straight for the top of the comedy hierarchy, there.

Fresh from his stint helming the enjoyable BBC2 "What Britain and the US think of each other" jaw-fest Where's Elvis This Week, it's Jon Stewart. Despite what the article says, BBC2 didn't bother thinking up a new vehicle for Jon, and pausing only to usurp Larry Sanders fictional chatshow crown, he moved on to The Daily Show, and the rest is history. Dave Gorman was on it the other day, you know. So, having let 'The Next Jonathan Ross' slip through their fingers, how often has the old Jonathan Ross been on the Beeb? According to the wonderful BBC Programme Catalogue, about 902 times.

Bill Bailey, being damned with faint praise, here. 'The Next Richard Digance', indeed.

What the future of television used to be. "1998: Viewers have to pay £600 for a black decoder box" [Harry Hill voice] No, we didn't! "2003: JVC launches the first 3D TV" No, they didn't! "You better start getting used to... Pay Per View: For boxing, football, movies, porn, any time they think they can get away with it." No, they... oh.

More scanned artifacts from the last century next time, viewers.

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A Post Written Several Weeks While Drunk, Then Forgotten About , Then Posted Upon Rediscovery, Again While Drunk, Hence Verbatim

Notice to everyone in Britain: Watch ESPN Classic on Sky channel 442. It is ace. That is all.

BrokenTV's ESPN Classic Notice-o-meter

* Having an introduction to the, er, introduction for classic matches containing lots of contemporary references is A Good Thing, as long as they update them periodically. Otherwise, making a cheeky reference to Alan Pardew's foreigner-spat with Arsene Venger will seem pretty confusing to the digital viewers of Space Year 2007.

* Graham Souness' surname was pronounced as in Sourness, but without the 'r', in 1978. Now, either the moustachioed midfield supremo also referred to himself as such at the time, or Brian Moore really was rather lazy at the time. Everyone bothered finding the correct pronounciation for Glenn 'Looks Just Like BrokenTV's Old Chemistry Teacher' Hysen weeks before he started playing for Liverpool, by way of being arsed to ask him!

* In 197x, Ajax were pronounced in the same way as the bathroom cleaning product now known as 'Cif', or if you'd prefer, in the same way as Duckman's thickest son, as opposed to the more correct 'Aye-axe'. And yet in the very same final, Juventus were mentioned in the correct 'You-vent-us' manners (not 'jew-vent-us').

* Seeing the World Of Sport clock pop up on screen every now and then is somehow a pleasing sight. Phil Thompson with a perm, less so.

* As long as they bother getting hold of more than just a dozen or so European Cup finals, ESPN Classic could well become one of our favourite channels. All they need is to pick up a few FA Cup Finals, British Championship matches (c'mon, Wales v England at Wrexham in 1980, 2W don't seem to want to show it any more), or especially the 70's Match Of The Day repeats that used to be on UK Gold When It Was Good. And if they ever showed the edition of World Of Sport where Eric Morecambe turned up for a laugh because he'd been out on the ale with Dickie Davies the previous night, we'd happily let the staff of EPSN Classic marry our sisters.

* If it's hopelessly incomprehensible advertising boards you're after, you can't say fairer than 'WYBORDWA'.

* Seeing Belgian teams with Danish footballers who, until eight months before the European Cup Final they appear in, worked for British Leyland's finance division, is ace. Obviously.

* Already, we're really fond of ESPN Classic (channel 442 on Sky, don't forget!). Therefore, we're giving it two months before the bulk of its airtime consists of a keen-to-get-back-on-EPG-numbers-anyone-will-bother-with Quizcall and CGI greyhounds.

* It's seeing channels like this pop up that rekindle our hopelessly futile hope of someday seeing a 'BBC1+20 Years' or 'ATV+25 Years' ultra-timeshifted channel sneak into the EPG within the next five years.

On a Liverpool FC tip, the club's best current player (no Stevie, not you) has a blog: it lives at http://spaces.msn.com/worldcup-es-uk/blog/, and rather charmingly, he does occasionally refer to himself in the third person. "It's the question everyone asks - and Xabi Alonso is no different", indeed.

UNRELATED THOUGHT OF THE NANOSECOND:

How disappointed we all were upon discovering that Parcel Force aren't actually a secret cabal of Post Office Superheroes.

ESPN Classic update:

We've chanced upon the coverage of Aston Villa vs Bayern European Cup Final 1982, God Nigel Spink's looking fat. And enough of the animey-zoom-across-the-eyes-device, ESPNC's director-bloke. Really. It's crap!

(edit: No, really. He's just done it again. It's not as if Spinksy was shouting "Aieeeeee!" while doing it, or anything. We're still drunk by the way.)

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