Top 5

The most nostalgiatastic pages from the Teletext/Ceefax golden age

Mike Pollitt | Monday 23 May, 2011 11:00

Internet, you killed a wonderful thing.

Bamboozle!
Bamber Boozler and family ask themed quiz questions, which you answer by pressing one of four colours on your remote control. If it sounds simple, you underrate the fiendish devilry of the Boozler mind. Hours of fun.

Now and Next
Simply go to 606 on the BBC, or 120 on the commercial channels, and be transported to a world where you are not only able to watch the programme being currently transmitted, but also to know the programme coming up next. It felt pretty cool at the time. How young we were.

Football rumours
Traditionally 312 on Ceefax, although needless tinkering in the later years somewhat diluted this iconic number brand. A football fan’s five minutes of heaven…will page 5/5 bring news of a daring swoop for your club’s much-needed new striker? Will it heck.

Dr Nick
Channel 4’s Teletext, at it’s peak, was comparable to some of the great print magazines of the era. Bamboozle!, Mega-zine, Digitiser, Planet Sound, and good old Dr Nick, whose sage advice soothed the mind of many a worry-addled suburban teen.

On this Day
Oft overlooked, tucked away on Ceefax page 143. But what juicy nuggets it provided, what nourishment to the factually undernourished brain. I can get a hundred of these each day in my Twitter feed now. That’s progress, I suppose.

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