Hello! As the cast of BBC TV’s Play School and Play Away said on the album of the same name in 1981. They also said How High Does A Fly Fly?, Talking Tick Tock Talk and Give Me The Old Fashioned Horse, but none of those are really as relevant here. I’m guessing there may be more than a few new visitors to the site after hearing me on the radio enthusing about the hidden psych, funk and folk highlights in the eccentric output of BBC Records And Tapes. Hopefully you’ll want to have a lengthy look around, but no doubt you’ll probably be wanting to know more about BBC Records And Tapes first, so… here’s where you can find more!

First up, there’s the two books I’ve written about BBC Records And Tapes – Top Of The Box, which details the story behind every single released by the label and is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here, and Top Of The Box Vol. 2 which does likewise for the albums and is again available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here. If you want some idea of what to expect, you can find an extract from Top Of The Box Vol. 2 – looking at the series of Top BBC TV Themes compilation albums – here.

You can find features looking at the long hunt for the theme singles of The Box Of Delights here and The Changes here, some of the funkier children’s albums issued by the label here, the numerous commercially issued versions of the Play Away theme – none of which ever quite matched up with what was heard on screen – here, and the rock operas staged by BBC Schools show Watch here.

BBC Records And Tapes is always a popular subject with guests on my ‘anti-nostalgia’ podcast Looks Unfamiliar and you can find chats with Gabby Hutchinson Crouch about Mr. Men Songs here, Catrin Lowe about Singing In The Band – Songs From Play School And Play Away here, Richard Littler about Sound Effects: Death And Horror here, Mark Griffiths about Off Beat Sound Effects here, Samira Ahmed about The Changes here, Shanine Salmon about the EastEnders theme here and me as the guest talking about EastEnders spinoff single Something Outa Nothing by Letitia Dean And Paul J. Medford here.

If your attention was caught by any of the shows that I mentioned on 6Music, you can find features on Captain Zep – Space Detective here, Music Time here and Zokko! here. If you’re feeling flush, I also wrote the sleevenotes for the box set reissues of the Not The Nine O’Clock News albums which you can get from Amazon here, and the Fawlty Towers albums which are available here. Slightly more affordably, I also wrote a lengthy feature for Doctor Who Magazine about the much-loved Doctor Who records released by BBC Records And Tapes – and a few hidden surprises on other albums and singles – which you can get in a digital version of the issue here.

Hello! – Songs From BBC TV’s Play School And Play Away ended with the puntastic Footnotes – let’s be honest, you can probably work out how it went for yourself already – but I’m going to conclude hereby saying Hello! again, and I hope you stick around, because there’s lots to read and listen to on subjects like the Ferrero Rocher advert, and Tucker’s Luck, and the seventies live-action Spider-Man series, and a mysterious clown that appeared from nowhere on television and terrified Grace Dent, and Barnaby, and Camberwick Green, and Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions, and why nobody makes compilations for dates any more, and This Life, and Captain Marvel, and two-stage self-assembly ice cream cones, and Rowntree’s Secret, and The Red Hand Gang, and John Inman’s album, and The Peter Serafinowicz Show, and enamel bedroom door name plates, and Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, and what The Beatles watched on BBC2, and Rubik’s Magic, and Interceptor, and Battle Of The Planets, and Hardwicke House, and When Harry Met Sally, and View-Master, and The Monkees, and The Flashing Blade, and Hits 5, and…

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.