Cheggers Plays Pop

[Jeremy Grayson]

Hiya,

What survives of this, and where?

From a music poinf of view, I'm particularly interested in an episode from around 1981 featuring a performance by long-forgotten but fairly ace singer-keyboardist Susan Fassbender (NB may have appeared as Fassbender Russell).

From a computing point of view, us at the BBC Games Archive (www.beebgames.com) seek confirmation that some of the computer games the teams of kids used to play included titles run on the BBC Model B - I distinctly remember something that looked suspiciously like Cowboy Shootout by Micropower being played on a few occasions. Quite what such a game had to do with pop music is beyond me, but never mind...

Jeremy

[William Martin]

the key word here is BBC, they never missed an opertunity to push the BBC-acorn computer, I used to know one of the engineers that designed the acorn and the bbc hoped that it would make them a lot of money

[pete]

are any of the acorns in use now ?

bet they are so low powered that the internet coudnt possibly run on them

[William Martin]

just between you and me the internet is run from acorn servers, thats why its so slow, or is it the wet string conecting it to the telephone wires?

I did see a bbc at a college about 6 years ago used in training and there are clubs that use them, a fetish I supose

[Clive]

The BBC used the Acorn computer for almost everything back in the 80's, even the animated bumpers between CBBC programmes were generated from the venerable Model-B and I remember lots of special effects sounds (buzzers on quiz shows etc) had that 4-Envelope BBC Model-B quality.

(In a similiar vein I saw an ultra cheap quiz show the other day which used the Microsoft Outlook 'New Mail' sound when the contestents pressed their buttons, it was so annoying after a few minutes that I just had to switch off)

[Clive]

The BBC used the Acorn computer for almost everything back in the 80's, even the animated bumpers between CBBC programmes were generated from the venerable Model-B and I remember lots of special effects sounds (buzzers on quiz shows etc) had that 4-Envelope BBC Model-B quality.

(In a similiar vein I saw an ultra cheap quiz show the other day which used the Microsoft Outlook 'New Mail' sound when the contestents pressed their buttons, it was so annoying after a few minutes that I just had to switch off)

[Jeremy Grayson]

Hiya,

Clive has pre-empted perfectly my next line of enquiry - have the between-show CBBC animations ever been archived anywhere? I remember a variety of monsters (as monstery as a BBC / B could make a monster look), a tin of sardines and a mock-up of the Blue Peter Garden featuring - any others? And the best thing about the animations was, of course, that they were not Philip Schofield (though he rumbled into town shortly afterwards)...

As for the mailer who mentioned BBC Micro fetishists - well, there's still loads of us out there using them (I've had the same machine for 20 completely breakdown-free years!) and the machine is probably better represented by emulators, software archives etc. than any of the other home computers of the 1980s. Further, whilst you can't run the contemporary Internet off a 32k micro (obviously!), the Beeb - with its Econet system and the Micronet transmission service - gave many computer users their first ever experience of interacting with a network spread over a large geographical area.

...and if you think this is all deviating from the original subject matter of this string, ie Keith Chegwin, just remember that it was the most BBC Micro-embracing show of all, The Adventure Game, in which he was "blown up" by the Vortex (a superimposed micro fountain of colour)!

Jeremy

PS Further BBC Micro info at:

www.beebgames.com
www.stairwaytohell.com
8bs.com
www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/

[Troy Walters]

I know that on "Sounds Of The 80s" Yazoo's "Only You" performance on Cheggers from 1982 exists. A lot of the BBC wipeouts occurred during the mid/late 70s so I reckon pretty much all the "Cheggers Plays Pop" episodes exist.

Cheers
Troy