Gullible Twat

Gullible Twat

The BBC Model B Micro-computer. Thirty-two kilobytes of raw, naked computing power. In the right hands, it became a valuable educational tool readying youngsters such as myself for a future in the burgeoning IT industries. In the wrong hands, used solely for the running of Samantha Fox Strip Poker and the authoring of shit-hot lesbian pornography. Like myself, too, is it happens.

Being of limited means, however, I found my Saturday job at Prestos supermarket and wine shop – the choice of the discerning wino – didn't quite stretch to getting hold of the latest releases for the Beeb, and with a disc drive prohibitively expensive, anything on cutting-edge cassette technology was gratefully snapped up.

So, when I was told there was a hidden all-formats computer game embedded in the 12" version of Dead or Alive's "You Spin me Round (Like A Record)" which you could play into your computer, I was in there like a teenager with a surprisingly large record collection.

The game was, I read, a hilarious role-player based around the adventures of our favourite eye-patched gender-bending chart-toppers. This new technology was really working, so I thought.

I knew exactly where to find such a disc, because I had recently bought it, not fully appreciating that it was, in fact, as camp as tits. In fact, I had recently spent a rather enjoyable evening at a certain low-quality Bracknell nightclub frugging away like a bucket of soapy eels to said track on several occasions, not realising the relatively low male-to-female ratio on the dance floor at the time. I had failed to pull, so once again, I went home and pulled myself*. But then I still thought Frankie Goes to Hollywood were as straight as a die. Oh Holly…

Anyhoo, back to the gayness, and with the help of a few leads I had lying about the house, thanks, in the main, to a brief flirtation with a world of geekery, I rigged up the output from my radiogram (oh yes, it was that long ago), and played the red hot Hi-NRG classic into my BBC Micro, a brand new cassette inserted firmly yet lovingly into the drive to save the results. It sat there, cursor blinking back at me on the CHAIN"" command. Not a sausage.

“Try turning the volume up,” said Nigel.

“Try it with less bass.”

“Try it on 33rpm.”

That's when the complaints from downstairs started.

But still - bugger all, and it looked like I wasn't going to get my free computer game after all.

My plans unravelling like a Chelsea Belgian bun, it would have been enough force any young man to don women's clothing and run amok after Margaret Thatcher with his dad's second best chainsaw. Instead, I turned to my friends.

So, I took it round to my mate Matt's house because he had a C-64, and we both thought, that despite promises, I might just have been playing it into the wrong format. We also new some poor bastard with a ZX Spectrum, and any I/O port in a storm, as it were (See? I made a geek funny).

I was only on the twentieth attempt that I remembered where I had seen this vital tip-off, and legged it back to my bedroom to see where I was going wrong. It was a copy of the late, lamented Record Mirror. A copy of Record Mirror dated… April 1st 1984.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Gullible Twat.

Of course, fact is stranger than fiction, and I have found, in researching this piece that several pop acts in the 1980s really did put out computer games as extra tracks on their vinyl releases! That’s where we were going wrong – I didn’t have a Speccy, nor a love for the Thompson Twins or Shakin' Stevens. Lucky escape, then.

* Copyright Spike Milligan, mayherestinpeace