My first bit of madness was was probably in 1989, arranged to go to Torquay on holidays on the saturday to stay in a caravan but because I knew that TSW ITV broadcast Prisoner on a friday night, my mate and I decided to drive the 250 odd miles the night before so I could get there before 10:40pm to watch their episode, went straight after work on the friday and got there just in time.
Second bit of madness was buying a S-VHS video recorder which then cost £1000 just so I could record Prisoner in better quality (a single 4hr S-VHS tape cost £10 in those days) and I recorded Prisoner on S-VHS tape right until the end on HTV (approx 100 tapes in total) For anyone that doesnt kno- S-VHS tapes would record with approx 4x the picture quality of normal vhs. Cost me a bloody fortune!!
Third bit of madness was travelling around the country following Prisoner cell Block H: The musical with Maggie K and Lily Savage, managed to see if 17 times and visited cities including Swansea, Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, Sunderland, Edinburgh, Oxford etc etc
Fourth bit of madness was setting my alarm clock every morning for 04:35 so I could record Prisoner on S-VHS off channel 5, I would force myself to stay awake so I could pause the adverts and I did this from episode 1 until I caught up with the episodes I started recording in S-VHS from HTV (episode 476 if i remember correctly) BONKERS!!
More madness... Booked to see Maggie Millar in Newcastle, had to fly from Cardiff International Airport to Edinburgh Airport and then get a train down to Newcastle to see Maggie, so 3 countiries just to see Maggie (Wales/Scotland/England) ok It sounds a lot more than it actually was but Maggie seemed impressed!! Haha
Oh yeah this is probably the most bonkers thing I did, I used to live in a small village in south wales which is surrounded by mountains, our local ITV region was HTV Wales but I was convinced that if I bought a big enough and powerful enough tv aerial then I would be able to pick up other ITV regions and tune into their episode of Prisoner (all the regions showed different episodes of Prisoner in those days), I visited my local aerial shop and purchased one of those huge aerials (about 6fth long and heavy!) that had a motor, which allowed me to rotate it by remote control, I plonked it on my mothers washing line pole to get maximum height, I sat in my bedroom with this rediculous remote control watching this huge aerial revolving and discovering it didnt even pick up HTV Wales very well so I kept rotating back and forth and becuase it was so big and heavy I heard this almighty crash as the constant revolving plus the weight of it brought my mams washing line pole crashing to the floor!! Nightmare, funny though when I think back, I was only 17 or 18 so I was a bit daft then haha!
 |