Who remembers calling Dial-a-Disc?
For those whose memories don't go back that far this was a GPO (pre-BT) service through which you called a number and listened to a chart hit. Usually you'd come in in the middle of the hit and either wait to hear it again or hear another one. They had about three or four on a rota, and that was kind of it. I remember hearing - appropriately enough - Meri Wilson's Telephone Man.
This was the Seventies - I don't remember it being around in the Eighties - so you couldn't put it on speakerphone or anything, you had to hold the phone to your ear to hear a record. So why not just put the radio on? I think it's one of the oddest ideas of all time.
Ever use it? I'm sure we just called it because it was there, usually when mum and dad were out between prank phone calls to people telling them we saw their husband kissing the woman from number 14 outside Peter Dominic, saw their daughter on the back of a black man's motorbike (well it was the Seventies), or that their Chinese meal was ready, complete with comedy accent. Oh those salad days.
So thinking about it, I'm at a loss to think of a good reason to have Dial-a-Disc other than it being a revenue stream for the GPO. It's not like you could listen in quadrophonic stereosound or anything. At best it was tinny AND fuzzy. But listen we did.
What was the number? Three digits, surely? How long did it go for, when did it start and is it still going?
