they also played God Save the Queen before close down (with pictures of the Royal Family) and warned people to turn off their telly – this was because if a family had the British Radio Corporation TV chassis of the 1970s (the equivalent of a British Leyland television set) with no signal to lock on to it would overhead and catch fire!
this was why people started buying Japanese TV sets more often…
Do you remember the TV repairman? usually looked ancient and haggard (even if he was only about 40/50) and would always have hundreds of tobacco tins full of components. the same with the Post Office or British Telecom engineer and sparkies or any other visiting techie.
I asked a few old boys from BT about this and apparently they didn’t all smoke like chimneys (most of the ones who did are brown bread anyway) but those who did acquired so many tins they’d share them out with their colleagues.
Nowadays components are sold in very eco-unfriendly plastic bags (although these bags do have other uses 😉 )
