March 29, 2024
Teletext MIX

(c)BBC

“CORRECTION: Wigan Athletcc 5 (FIVE) Prest#n 0
Jasob Robarts 903mins %%%”

Last Sunday I shed a small block-shaped tear.

23rd October 2016 marked precisely 4 barren years since the day Internet yuppies callously killed our good friend Ceefax in cold pixellated blood. No more would we stare upon its up-to-the-minute football updates, anxiously hoping against every conceivable hope that Geoff Horsfield’s goal against Wigan Athletic was the result of a simple typing error at BBC Broadcasting House.

No more would we violently curse our team’s placement on the third sub-page of the Division Three table. And no more would we wonder if this mysterious An&y L%ddell chap could possibly be the heavily glitched twin of Sir Andrew Liddell – he did, after all, have an identical scoring record.

Where would we go now? How would we discover that Stuart Balmer had scored, only to learn that this information had been corrected to ‘Stuart Barlow’ some fifteen minutes later?

And how else would we find out that the crucial Milk Cup tie between Fulchester United and Argleton Town had shockingly been postponed two minutes before kickoff on a baking hot summer evening? Those two big Ps always told you it was time to head for Fartington South Train Station once more.

1460-odd days into the post-Ceefax (P.C.) era, the situation is just as desperate.

Those attempting to fill the yawning crevasse left by teletext’s untimely demise have only been presented with information overload of the highest degree. Useful services once provided by televisual text platforms are now spread across the obtuse, unmanageable plains of flagrant garbage they (I) erroneously call the worldwide superweb.

Without a triple lifetime subscription to Geoff Spelling’s Cable Sports Snooze or the ever-reliable Football Magenta matchday results newspaper, you’re thrust into the ominous wasteland of crudge and flam I daren’t mention the name of again. Out there, many a soul has lost their (virtual) soul among cheap jibes and unwinnable bickering contests.

And that’s not to mention the utter fools that write into local newspapers to complain about the lack of television-based communication platforms from the 1970s. If anything, this article ought to be an attack on those types of people, whose gullets should b-

That’s enough now! This piece has already long surpassed the teletext word limit, so it’s time to close down for the night. Please now enjoy the Wiganese national anthem played on loop to accompany Pages From Latifax for the next five hours. – Ed.

D%n F&rrimond &&

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