Author: Jon Bounds

The essential ingredients of daytime television are: jumpers, middle aged people, chat. Whether they’re hunting for antiques, buying or selling or failing to sell things (especially houses) or even solving murders or being real in some sort of institution—it’s the middle-aged jumper chat that’s important.

Once all that was on the day was programmes for schools, which would be shown by teachers happy to have a cup of tea and a sit down. In class we counted down the clock until Fred Harris appeared, him tidily bearded us tidily bored, did some sciencey thing and went away. At home, you did the cleaning to the testcard music; praying for pages from Ceefax to brighten up the long dark teatime of the soul.

But then daytime TV arrived, and arrived live from the foyer of the BBC’s studios in Pebble Mill. In Birmingham, with the middle-aged jumper chat formula already immaculately sorted. That they eventually employed Alan Titchmarch is just a middle-aged jumper chat bonus.

Loose Women? Cash in the Attic on tour? Without Birmingham it would be the potter’s wheel for you.

Americans hated New Coke. Scared by loss of market share to Pepsi, The Coca-Cola Company decided in 1985 to reformulate and relaunch their particular brand of sugary mess. As it turned out people don’t like change, and this played even more into Pepsi’s hands.

One chap in New Mexico reportedly stockpiled a thousand dollars worth of ‘old coke’, drinkers were revolting. And their teeth were dissolving. Southern USA-ians considered the drink a fundamental part of regional identity and viewed the company’s decision to change the formula through the prism of the Civil War, as another surrender to the Yankees—which is about the standard of reasoned debate you see in American politics today.

It’s the biggest PR disaster in business history—and Coke soon returned to ‘classic’—just be glad we didn’t have hordes of social media bloggers blogging on the lessons we could all learn from it.

You shouldn’t mess with fizzy pop. And fizzy pop, as any fool knows was created by the Birmingham Lunar Society member Joseph Priestley as he worked on isolating Oxygen from the rest of air—presumably as that was thirsty work.Priestley published a paper called Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air in 1772 , which explained how to make soda water. I haven’t read it but assume it’s “put normal water in a Soda Stream”.

Every woman of a certain age wants to read about a ‘red room of pain’ it seems. Every supermarket bookshelf is filled with copies of the—originally–self-published and—apparently, I of course haven’t read it—turgidly written mommy-porn.

Just who’d have thought that some women would like reading about s-e-x? I don’t know, what’s the world coming to? I mean, isn’t a quick look at Eric Bristow showering in I’m A Celebrity… enough to keep them buzzing along? With or without batteries.

But it’s really just a romance novel, not particularly sexily sexed up. And the progenitor of romance novels that really hit the spot?

Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland, of course.

Of Edgbaston, of Birmingham.

Of course.

You may stand now.

(from original idea by Frilly)

“Sing, Lofty.” said Sgt Major Tudor ‘Shut Up’ Williams, and Lofty did—tubby little everyman tho he was. And tubby little everymen and everywomen around the World have sung. Along to backing tracks, badly, when they’ve had just over the recommended amount of booze.

The recommended amount of booze being just a sip below the amount that assures you that other people need your version of Paradise By The Dashboard Light in their ears.

But, hang on? Isn’t Karaoke a Japanese invention, like the digital watch and cartoon porn?

Well…back in the mists of computer and video time, Aston Micro-Electronics Ltd invented an easy way of putting captions on video. Electronically. Before that Karaoke would just be some sod reading the words to songs off a bit of paper. Aston dominated TV captions from their introduction in the 1980s. 

And why were Astons called Astons?  After Mr Aston? Hell no. Aston in Birmingham of course.

Okay, so James Brown got down and Afrika Bambaataa saw b-boy and the freak as a way to change the World with his Zulu Nation. But that was back in the seventies and was that really likely ever to cross-over?

Okay, yes, so the Rock Steady Crew were busting up the East Coast (not Lowestoft) in the eary 80’s but were they ever more than one-hit wonders?

No, what really made sure that street dance hit the mainstream and is still there thirty years later—battling with comic opera singers and amusing dogs on Saturday night telly—was the crew from Studio 3 of ATV on Broad Street. First introduced by Jasper Carrot, the b-boy stylings of lying on your back waving your arms and legs in the air was what really make breakdancing what it is today. So ingrained into British culture was ‘the dying fly’ that the dance at one point soared high in the RoSPA list of common causes of household injury.

Without Tiswas, no breakdancing. Without Birmingham, no Tiswas.

Do you do little loops at the bottom of your y’s, do you draw little hearts over the top of your i’s? Do you, when actually pressed to use a pen at all after years of typing and texting, get all flummoxed and end up using block capitals so at least people have a fighting chance of understanding you? Well, you’ll never guess, Birmingham is responsible for that.

Y’see back in the 19th century people used quills for writing, it was a splodgy, blotty, ink-stained business. You had to be skilled and neat, you couldn’t develop your own style very much. But then John Mitchell. down in Newall Street, pioneered mass production of steel pens and suddenly writing just became a bit easier.

Soon thousands of people and dozens of companies were using Birmingham to make pens of different sizes and quality and the city gave easy communication to the world. And that lasted until a few years ago, because loads of us just don’t pick up a pen very often any more—and even the prime minister uses text speak. LOL.

Lots of love.

It’s made in Holland and named after a London landmark, so of course HP Sauce is the Brummiest thing going. It’s “the best known brown sauce in the United Kingdom” and slavered across sausages the length of the land, despite “brown sauce” sounding more like a euphemism for, well, shit.

If that’s not enough of a sauce based double-entendre for you,  HP Sauce became known as “Wilson’s gravy” in the 1960s and 1970s after Harold Wilson’s wife revealed he “covered everything” with it. Lucky old Mrs Wilson.

What gives it it’s unique taste is tamarind, and when the Midlands Vinegar Company launched the sauce back at the turn of the last century it was in Aston. The vinegar was made on one side of the A38 and piped over the road—you couldn’t get much more Brummie unless the tamarind pods were trod by Rustie Lee.

And then Heinz bought it and buggered off to the Netherlands, which to be fair sounds like a place brown sauce comes out of.

When you pick up Hello! or flick to the most exploitative pages in the tabloids what are you likely to see? One may have upskirt pics of vulnerable young actresses, one may have charming stories where you get to see just what the kitchen looks like in the house Sienna Miller has hired for a photoshoot. But both with have long lens pics of celebrities fannying about on a yacht.

Yes, whether they’re oligarchs, sportspeople, singers or simply government ministers enjoying the free hospitality all famous people like to lay back on deck and sup cocktails. But back in the olden days, messing around in boats was done in the mode of people from Walsall like Jerome K Jerome; you had to row your-bloody-self, what good was that? The Black Country is rubbish.

But in 1982, thankfully, Birmingham took the lead and the Taylors, Rhodes-y and sweet little tubby Simon Le Bon showed everyone how it was done in the video to ‘Rio’. No-one quite set the template for looking rich on a boat like the Durannies, and I’m sure it was their time spent in Saramoons that done it.

Since disco, all real pop music has been in thrall to the dancefloor and the beats are never more to the floor than when they are sampled. Synthesisers don’t cut it—unless you’re doing the Sparky’s Magic Piano bit on Mr Blue Sky—you need samples.

With samples you can force the four to the floor, you can get the big beat started, let them know what the fatboy’s trippin’ and at least n-n-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen other things.

But the first way to do this was with a sampler-keyboard that used tape strips: the Mellotron. And that was developed by Frank, Norm and Lesley Bradley of Bradmatic Ltd. In Aston. In Birmingham.

And it also gave the world prog rock, for which we are very sorry.

Font family, and hatred magnet, Comic Sans MS was created by Microsoft’s Vincent Connare to be the textual voice of a cartoon dog called Bob who would in some way help people use computers. It looks friendly and soon became the Australian Question Intonation of typefaces: that is, used when the message is passive aggressive or just plain irritating in an effort to soften the blow.

Ignorant desktop publishers combined it with clip-art and Word Art to promote their workshops and sell their unwanted IKEA furniture on workplace noticeboards across the world and wound hipsters up something rotten in the process. Which, for a typeface, is something to be proud of.

But it, and easily set legible fontage in general, would never have been possible without Birmingham’s John Baskerville. The designer, free-thinker, and atheist, produced the first real usable typeface and started a real publishing revolution. Democracy in action, but it doesn’t please everyone.