Award.

The outstandingly excellent Robin Hood & Little John pub in Lion Road, Bexleyheath has won the Bexley CAMRA pub of the year award for an astonishing eleventh time.  For several years it was disqualified from entering the annual competition - as one CAMRA official told me at the time, the competition had become one as to which Bexley pub was going to come second.  The Robin Hood & Little John serves a range of very well kept real ales, and an extensive menu of home cooked food, with a menu which changes weekly. I can heartily recommend it as an absolutely exceptional venue. Tony from the pub said in an online interview:- "Dating from the 1850's, when it sat amidst fields and farms, The Robin Hood & Little John is a delightful little back street traditional pub.The pub has been run by the Johnson family (Ray, Caterina and son Tony) Since the 1980's. In that time it has won CAMRA London Pub of the year on three occasions, plus CAMRA local Pub of the year on ten occasions. We offer seven well kept real ales, two guest ones plus five different lagers. Also, at the same time we have built a reputation for home cooked food, which includes authentic special Italian dishes".

Thanks again for the kind comments from readers - I am slowly recovering from the nasty Covid infection - despite being fully vaccinated, it hit me very hard and I am still suffering from the after effects. 

A subject that has not yet been picked up by the mainstream press. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of a now defunct technology. The first widely used home video cassette format - Betamax. Something that might quite surprise you is that the price of old Betamax video recorders is currently going through the roof on the second hand market; a couple of years ago you could not give one away if you tried. Suddenly they are turning up on EBay and the bidding competition is fierce. Prices of £250 and upwards have been noted. Even non working machines that are being sold for repair or spares are fetching £75 or more. What is the reason for this? Well, it does not seem to be down to any love for the outdated video format (which whilst it failed in the domestic home market, it was the cornerstone of many TV news and outside broadcast units for many years). It would appear that people are coming across family videos recorded on Betamax cassettes and wish to digitise them. Most professional video transfer services can handle VHS and the common broadcast formats, but very few are capable of doing anything with a Betamax format cassette. People with old recordings of weddings and family events realise that if they wish to be able to see them again, they will need to locate a device capable of playing the tape format - hence the sudden upsurge of interest. The ironic thing is, it is pretty likely that the tapes will be unwatchable even when a suitable player is used. Both Betamax and VHS cassettes deteriorate over time, even when stored in ideal conditions. A forty  or so year old video tape will have de-magnetised and printed through so much that it will almost certainly show on screen as a mess of flickering static with a few under saturated, ghostly images of what remains of the original recording now. I recently have read quite a lot about the format wars between VHS and Betamax back in the early 1980's. From all that I have read, it became apparent that Sony, the creators of the Beta format were pretty much to blame for the demise of what initially was a somewhat technically superior video format than the relatively pedestrian VHS system. The main determining factor between Betamax and VHS was the cost of the recorders and length of recording time. Betamax is, in theory, a superior recording format over VHS due to resolution (250 lines vs. 240 lines), slightly superior sound, and a more stable image; Betamax recorders were also of higher quality construction. But these differences were negligible to consumers, and thus did not justify either the extra cost of a Betamax VCR (which was often significantly more expensive than a VHS equivalent) or Betamax's shorter recording time. JVC, which designed the VHS technology, licensed it to any manufacturer that was interested. The manufacturers then competed against each other for sales, resulting in lower prices to the consumer. Sony was the only manufacturer of Betamax initially and so was not pressured to reduce prices. Only in the early 1980s did Sony decide to licence Betamax technology to other manufacturers, such as Toshiba and Sanyo. What Sony did not take into account was what consumers wanted. While Betamax was believed to be the superior format in the minds of the public and press (due to excellent marketing by Sony), consumers wanted an affordable video recorder (a VHS machine was often around a hundred pounds less than an equivalent Betamax one, which at the time was a considerable amount of money); Sony believed that having better quality recordings was the key to success, and that consumers would be willing to pay a higher retail price for this, whereas it soon became clear that consumer desire was focused more intently on longer recording time, lower retail price, and compatibility with other machines for cassette sharing (as VHS was becoming the format in the majority of homes). The real Betamax killer was that for the first few years, the maximum length of recording was limited to one hour on Beta, whereas VHS could stretch to four hours with reduced image quality, critically long enough to record an entire American football game - the lucrative mass American market both systems were looking to crack. Sony had the attitude of "We know best" as to what the market wanted, and ignored requests for features that quickly became standard with their competitors. Consequently Betamax is now considered alongside the 8 - Track cartridge as a dodo technology. If you are of the opinion that Betamax is far too mainstream, well known and commonplace, do yourself a favour by visiting the Philips V2000 web site here. You can also read more about other format wars by clicking here. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Thanks to regular readers and contributors Gary and Miles for bringing the following story to my attention. As I have previously written, BBC Radio 4‘s 500 Kilowatt Long wave transmitter at Droitwich is due to shut down in June 2025. If the latest announced extension is to be believed. This extension has been negotiated by the energy industry, which relies on the BBC to transmit the Economy 7 telecoms signal. It appears that almost a million homes and businesses still rely on old meters that use the telecommutation signal. It is therefore unlikely that all these meters will be replaced before June. The Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) helps electricity suppliers switch between peak and off-peak times and controls when your heating and hot water switches on and off. If you use electricity for heating and hot water (using electric storage/panel heaters and/or immersion heaters), and you have tariffs that offer cheaper rates during off-peak periods, you may have RTS equipment in your home or business. Usually, there will be a large black box next to your meter. This is the RTS equipment. The equipment receives updates through Long wave radio broadcast. It uses the same radio frequency as the BBC uses for delivering radio programming. Long wave broadcasting, once at the forefront of radio technology, has become increasingly outdated in the digital age. With the rise of FM, DAB, and online streaming, the audience for Long wave has dwindled significantly. The BBC argues that maintaining the aging infrastructure is no longer financially viable, especially as it faces pressure to streamline its operations. The switch-off will primarily impact older listeners who rely on Long wave for its robust signal, particularly in areas with poor FM or DAB reception. Coastal communities, seafarers, and those living in remote regions have traditionally relied on Long wave for news and information, due to its ability to travel long distances and penetrate obstacles. The loss of the BBC Shipping Forecast and Test Match Special  cricket coverage on Long wave will affect many traditional listeners. The reasons for the BBC shutting down Long wave is primarily financial; Long wave transmitters are very inefficient in their electrical power consumption, and as such the BBC spend a fortune on electricity. The main BBC Long wave transmitter facility at Droitwich is end of life. The Twentieth Century Society (C20), which aims to save irreplaceable twentieth-century buildings and design, is campaigning to save the two masts and the main transmission building of the Droitwich transmitting station. C20 wants to list the site as part of England’s national heritage. As shown in the photo above - click on it to see a larger version. These two 213.4 m (700 ft.) steel lattice masts are supported by 21 steel cables, each anchored to a concrete block weighing 400 tonnes. They were the tallest structures in the UK when they were built, and are believed to be the only pre-war structures over 200 m to have survived, making them the oldest telecommunication structures of their type in Britain. The station’s main transmission building, built in 1934, was also included in the consultation. Comprising four contiguous blocks, clad in limestone and finished with decorative tooling, they are monolithic Art Deco in style. The BBC Radio 4 LW signal from Droitwich covers most of England and Wales. There are supplementary Long wave transmitters in Scotland (Burghead and Westerglen, both 50 kW). The station can also be heard clearly in most of the Republic of Ireland, particularly along eastern and southern counties. Reception is also possible in Western Europe, including Italy and Sweden.

Did you know that The Beatles played a local gig back in the day? On the 3rd of June 1963 the band played a concert in Woolwich. The 16th date of The Beatles’ UK tour with Roy Orbison was a return to London, with a concert at the Granada Cinema in Woolwich.  This was the group’s only performance at the venue, which later became a bingo hall. The Beatles’ repertoire throughout the Roy Orbison tour contained seven songs: ‘Some Other Guy’, ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’, ‘Love Me Do’, ‘From Me To You’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Twist And Shout’. The Beatles had another local connection which is not known by many people. Local musical instrument and amplifier manufacturer JMI had what was one of the very first sponsorship / product placement deals with the band. Founder Thomas Walter Jennings started the business, then called JMI (Jennings Musical Instruments) in Dartford in 1958, when he took a prototype guitar amplifier which had been demonstrated to him by big band guitarist and Belvedere resident Dick Denney two years earlier, and turned it into a working, commercial product – the Vox AC-15. The AC-15 was almost immediately purchased by Hank Marvin, and the unique sound of the Shadows was down primarily to the use of Vox amplification. Soon after, the “British Invasion” of the early 60’s was under way, powered almost exclusively by Vox amplifiers. Keeping it local, Dartford’s own Rolling Stones used Vox, as did The Kinks, The Yardbirds, and in what was one of the very earliest pieces of celebrity product placement, Vox amplifiers were promoted and exclusively used by The Beatles, after manager Brian Epstein negotiated a deal – one which greatly benefitted JMI, who were pretty much called Vox by this point. As the audiences for gig got bigger, and the venue sizes increased, the need for more powerful amplification became evident – the 15 Watt AC-15 was not powerful enough; JMI effectively nailed two AC-15 amps together to create their all time classic Vox AC-30 amplifier – a model still in production to this day. Contemporary musicians who employ the AC-30 include Brian May of Queen, who was the first person to create a “wall” of AC-30’s to create his unique and totally distinctive sound; Tom Petty, Rory Gallagher, Pete Townshend, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, Paul Weller, and the Edge of U2 – pretty much all of rock royalty use or have used Vox amplification. JMI also manufactured guitars, many of which were technically ground breaking – including active pickups, and built in sound effects – the down side of this was that they tended to be heavy and ugly, and did not pick up many celebrity users. JMI / Vox also invented the Wah Wah pedal – most famously used by Jimi Hendrix, and the fuzztone distortion pedal used by Jimmy Page, then of the Yardbirds, and soon to be of Led Zeppelin. Vox / JMI also created the very first wireless microphone system, early models of which gained a reputation from picking up interference from nearby mini cab radios. Another very successful and influential product made by JMI / Vox at Erith was the Vox Continental electronic organ, which most famously featured on “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals, and “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors (actually, pretty much any Doors track heavily features the Vox Continental – it was integral to their sound).

The end video this week dates back to the 30th of March 2000. It shows Mick Jagger at the official opening of the Mick Jagger performing arts centre in Dartford. Comments and feedback as usual to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.