The Lucozer's VHS catalouge system!!

Hello dear reader,

I've had far too much to do lately, moving house mainly, so I've been short on time to tome! The place I'm moving to is quite small. One of my vexing dilemmas space wise is that it's been hard to find a place that is out of view of visitors but also rapidly accessible at a nervy nerd's notice to store my idiosyncratically labelled Dr Who VHS collection. I'm happy for the official BBC DVD's to be on view, for reasons I'll explain later, but my VHS collection is another matter.

At some point in the late 80's, I decided it was a good idea to colour code my VHS tapes by Doctor. I already had a folder with the contents of each tape fastidiously documented, so it seemed the next natural slash painfully anal & obsessive step towards perfection. I ran a strip of electrical tape down the spine of each tape cover & in black texta wrote the appropriate Doctor's name & the number of tape for that Doctor i.e. William Hartnell #4 or Tom Baker #27, each Doctor starting from #1 for their era.

My grand plan was for each Doctor to have his own individual colour, until I realised that I only had 4 colours & that Dad was never going to drive his uber geek son to the supermarket to buy electrical tape for Dr Who video catalouging purposes. And of course being a kid I also had to do it all NOW!! So, some doctor's had to share colours, but they had to have at least one other colour between them otherwise it just wouldn't do for the sake of easy differentiation. Hartnell was green, Troughton white, Pertwee red, Tom Baker green, Davison yellow, Colin Baker red & McCoy yellow. Hartnell was green because I randomly started with that colour, but Troughton was the sole 'white' Doctor as he is my favourite. I felt he deserved to stand alone & not share his colour. In fact, he's so cool he got a tone instead. The others were chosen based on my 'must be separated by another colour' manifesto. I think I also vaguely factored in how much of each colour tape I had, knowing that I would need a full roll of one colour, if not more, to complete the voluminous 32(?) tape Tom Baker collection. I must have had a big roll of green.

As luck would have it, all the colours lasted, but there was very little left of each & I think I copped a stern 'Oh Lucozer!! really!!!' the next time Mum or Dad needed electrical tape. I was very proud of my handiwork & they all looked rather grand lined up on my pine book shelf. It was much easier to grab for the correct tape using the number codes from my book & my splendid spine labels rather than craning my neck sideways & straining to read my tiny handwriting on the spine that would say, for example..

Robot 4/4
Ark In Space 1,2,3,4/4
Sontaron Experiment 1,2/2

As fans, I won't have to explain the numerical code to you. The eagle eyed will spot that 'Robot' (the first Tom Baker story) is missing parts 1,2 & 3. Were they therefore on the end of the previous tape with Jon Pertwee's swansong 'Planet Of Spiders' I hear you ask? I also hear you ask whether that awkward 'mixed Doctor' tape would then be considered the final Jon Pertwee tape or the first Tom Baker tape? (or both?) Well, the two doctors on one tape problem did trouble me. I usually decided that whichever Doctor had the the most episodes on the tape could claim it for their colour. Jon would win in this marvellous theoretical case. However, this theoretical tape didn't in fact exist as for some reason I didn't tape the first few parts of Robot. Tom Baker Tape 1 started with Robot part 4.

There was an exception to this 'most episodes' rule though, a case where I had a tape with 'Revelation Of The Daleks' parts 2,3 & 4 followed by 'Ark In Space' 1,2,3 & 4 (again), which I inexpicably taped twice, perhaps by uncontrollable compulsion. It was also inexplicable that the ABC followed one with the other in 1993 during the infamous 4.30am screenings. Anyway, I decided that because Colin Baker only had a very meagre 6 tapes & because I had 'Ark In Space' in its correct place, even though this out of place 'Ark In Space' was in better condition than the one on Tom Baker #1, Colin's 3 episodes would trump Tom's 4.

Other problems emerged with the passing of time. I would buy or record off telly a new story & have to painfully insert it into my inflexible system. Oh how I gnashed my teeth & grimaced! At first I changed each bit of spinal tape onto the next tape & changed the number in my book to accomodate the insertions. Jon Pertwee 6 would become Jon Perwtee 7 with the new one taking the formers number & so on etc etc. This proved intensely frustrating & time consuming, but my obsessive ways would not let me submit to the easy, lazy ignominy of, say, having a Jon Pertwee 6A! It was, to quote the wonderful Stephen Fry, "a thundering nuisance, I don't mind telling you!".

More time passed & through lack of having the correct colour electrical tape when I needed it &, thankfully, eventually getting a life, I ended up with a few 'vanilla' spines. Tapes without tape!? that were merely inserted in the correct chronological position. At this point, I decided to turn them all around to face the tapes own label outwards again. This way, they all looked blandly similar, could have been any old movie or tv show to the casual observer & did not look geekily arranged in any way.

Now, at this time of moving house, they just look a bit too ratty & hodge podge to be on display. Also, the few official BBC tapes look incongruous amongst my far more numerous 'taped off the telly' tapes & also give away my long time fanboy status. The BBC DVD's are ok, they look slick & tidy & don't suggest such an arch obsession. Several have now replaced their VHS counterpart in my affections. Also, the new series has leant the old series a quaint, ironic, post-modern cool. Phew! But only in retrospect though mind you!! VHS really does give the game away. NERD BOY!

I really don't care what people think. I'm being overly silly for effect. But tell me loves that you don't feel a tiny little squirm inside when a new partner looks at a whole bookshelf devoted to your slavish love for a show that more often than not has been sub par & sometimes downright embarrasing over its huge life span. Tell me you don't immediately go into defensive mode & feel the need to madly justify & qualify.

Back to unpacking boxes. Damn. How nice it was to procrastinate for a moment...

xx Lucozer..