Right said Fred

Ihost an online show. I stream on a mixture of Twitch and Youtube, the latter being exclusive to my Patreons. Quite often on the show a forgotten TV programme or song or presenter will pop into my head and I’ll start digging around on Youtube trying to find clips. My recently diagnosed ADHD often means I’ll stick with a video for only a few minutes before jumping off onto something else.

Last week I was watching old game shows with my audience. We started with Take Your

Pick, moved to Sale Of The Century, had a sniff of Gambit and then landed on The Adventure Game. Gronda gronda indeed! If you never saw it, it was a very slow version of The Crystal Maze about 15 years before that show started. Two celebrities and a civilian would be locked in a room and have puzzles to solve. It was basically the precursor to escape rooms (which I love by the way. Why aren’t there any decent VR escape room games?) and our heroes (quite often Richard Stilgoe and Maggie Philbin) would plod their way through some of the most migraine-inducing puzzles. Then, to escape the planet, they had to clear The Vortex.

What has this got to do with computer games, Iain? Quite a lot actually, so sit down and listen.

I’d forgotten that a lot of the graphics for the show were actually done using a BBC Micro. You’d see shots of space and they were from the Beeb! At the start you got a glimpse of the Pac-man rip-off, Snapper.

All of this stuff at the time, I’d say about 1982, was AMAZING for kids because computers were never on telly. Certainly not for the fun bits.

But here’s the point. The episode I watched had Fred Harris in it. Allow that name to bounce around your brain for a while. My prediction is half of you have no clue, the other half now have a warm fuzzy glow in your hearts. I hadn’t thought about Fred for years, and suddenly, it all came flooding back to me.

Fred, Ian Mcnaught-davis and to a lesser extent Lesley Judd, were the faces of computing WAY before Patrick Moore. The tank-top-wearing Fred always had a slightly naughty vibe to him. Ian and Lesley were very matter of fact but I always got the feeling Fred was winking at me as if to say, “God, they’re making me do this in such a straight way, but really, this stuff is super cool.”

Now here’s the weird thing. I hadn’t thought about Fred in years. I stumble across him on my stream. The next day, I’m in the car with my nine-year-old kid. I’m bored of listening to Ed Sheeran so I do what I never do with my boys in the car, I turn over to BBC Radio 4 Extra.

And do you know who I hear on there?

Fred bloomin’ Harris.

That’s nuts, right? He was talking about a comedy show he’d been in. I sat there gobsmacked. And an idea formed… I am going to find Fred Harris, and I am going to interview him. Maybe for Retro Gamer, maybe for my show, who knows? But I WILL get answers. Doog yrev!

God, they’re making me do this in such a straight way, but really, this stuff is super cool