“by way of comparison The World Of Beachcomber”

With the OTT Book now on sale, what better time to take a look at some other wonderful telly-related books from the ages? We’ll be posting one (or two) page (or pages) from a different book each and every day until we forget to, we’ve covered all the TV-tie-in books in our collection, or the Millennium Bug finally kicks in and all of the internet reverts to how it was in 1999 and we have to go back to doing an irregularly updated website with an unmanageable URL all about the PlayStation One. Place your bets.

As pretty much all the books in question have long since been deleted by their publishers, there shouldn’t be any legal difficulty there, we hope. Unlike all those superinjunctions that we've blown wide open on our Geocities page which luckily no-one has noticed yet for some reason. In any case, we’re putting these scans online under the banner of ‘BrokenTV’, and no-one else. Just in case anyone starts waving their lawyers around.

Today, a page from Monty Python: The Case Against (by Robert Hewison, Methuen 1981). What it lacks in actual hilarity, it gains in containing an actual audience research report on an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (“Sex and Voilence”, series one episode two, aired Sunday, 12th October 1969, 11.10-11.35pm, BBC 1).

“It is estimated that the audience for this broadcast was 2.9% of the United Kingdom population. Programmes on BBC2 and ITV at the time were seen by 0.5% and 14.8% (averages).”

It even includes a breakdown of social demographic of the Flying Circus audience (49% of viewers were classed as ‘A+’ or ‘A’), and a reaction index rating of 55 – ten points higher than that for the first episode.

Shut up, all that IS interesting. Tsk. Genuinely, we’d like to see more of this kind of thing in TV tie-in books.

A page (or two) from a different book tomorrow. Until then, why not take time to have a look at the TV-related book that all the flapper girls are calling OTTTBBOTBTVWNNNTTAN (Off The Telly: The Best Bits of the British TV Website 1999-2009)? Available from Lulu.com in paperback for just £16.99 (that's just £0.00005 per word!), or £3.99 for the PDF ebook version, with any profits going to Alzheimer's charities.

Go on, what else are you going to spend your money on? Food?