Those EastEnders Spin-off Annuals...

Yes, it still the 'annual' season and here's a selection of annuals I've knocked up over the weekend featuring your favourite characters from TV's EastEnders. 

If the layouts of some of them seem familiar, you have good taste in cult television.

Can you help TV's The Prisoner?

Heading off to Portmeirion for a few days. 

Hopefully will be back Thursday. 

Activity for the journey sorted. 

Just need to find a crayon...

Crossroads Mini-album Adventures from Century 21 Discovered in Skip!

There was a skip of stuff at the bottom of the street where I live. I had a rummage through it as any good citizen would and what did I find...? A selection of old single records no less. So I scraped the now rancid baked bean juice from them and took them home.

There were fourteen of them in all - mostly original sixties releases. In amongst them was a pleasant surprise!

An original Century 21 mini-album!

Sadly, it was not that 'Doctor Who' Dalek one with the odd narration on it. It was one of the very rare 'Crossroads' ones that I'd only heard talk of in very exclusive and hushed conversations at comic marts. 

If I recall correctly, Century 21 tried their hand at releasing non-Gerry Anderson material back in the mid-sixties and they dipped their toes into new markets with a handful based on the ATV soap opera. 

Needless to say, it didn't really catch on. I mean, who wanted to pay and listen to a show in sound only when they can watch it four nights a week for free on the telly. 

I put the record on and found it to be crap. They used a dreadful 'space-age' version of the 'Crossroads' theme performed on a theremin and the narration by 'Sandy' was inaudible - either due to poor mixing or the actor's adenoids. 

Pretty shit day really...

More "rare" Century 21 Mini-albums here.

Some More Recent Question Time Merchandise

They're still trying to peddle this stuff...

TV21 - Today's News Tomorrow from Yesterday!

Paper arrived this morning...

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Crossroads - The Movie - Direct to Video!

Back in the early eighties, ITC had a habit of joining episodes of its successful TV shows together and marketing them as movies to TV stations too stingy to fork out for the full series. 

Titles like 'Journey Through the Black Sun', 'The Incredible Voyage of Stingray' and 'The Amazing Adventures of Joe 90' soon found their way onto the fledgling VHS rental market via the label 'Precision Home Video'. 

I still have a copy of 'London Conspiracy' - two episodes of 'The Persuaders!' shamelessly bolted together and displaying a complete disregard for the title by not having any scenes set in the British capital! Uniquely, these tapes came in robust music-cassette style plastic boxes and like their audio counterparts, easily broke and became very scuffed and filthy looking as the years went on. 

ITC attempted to create a movie from its popular soap opera 'Crossroads'. A selection of episodes chronicling the fire at the motel that resulted in the sad departure of Noele Gordon were edited together into an hour and half mini-epic. Additional scenes set at an inquiry into the fire at the Birmingham coroner's office were filmed with actors Geoffrey Keen, Shane Rimmer and Nina Baden-Semper were added to cover the joins and an additional scene which changed the storyline was filmed with Jane Rossington weeping at the graveside of her dead mum. (The latter had originally been passed off as a hoax by the press!) There we also some extra effects scenes spliced in from 'The Medusa Touch'. It was a bit of a mess really and very few broadcasters took up the option on it. 

I hear that it was broadcast once in Singapore.

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