THE DIGITISER FRIDAY THE 13th LETTERS PAGE

I'm a bit excited. You see, I'm about to have my first weekend off in what feels like months. I'm going to do this: bugger all. Sorry to whine on about it, but the filming for Digitiser The Show, and getting ready for the filming, was like running a marathon every day for weeks for myself and my other half.

And amid all that I was having to do actual, paying, day job work... and I got married... and I don't understand why I thought I'd finish filming and then just spring back to full energy levels. This week I appear to have alternated between days where I feel fired up and full of verve, and days where I feel like I'm 150 years old. 

Anyway, I've had the busiest year of my life... so I just want to forewarn - particularly for my lovely Patreon backers as much as anyone - that I might take a big chunk of August off. I think that's probably sensible for the sake of my health and sanity, and the future of Digi. Plus, I've a lot of editing to do over the autumn, and more filming, and a live show to plan, and - ohhhhh - it's all very exciting.

So that's that. I'll shut up now, and shove some letters in your face. 

If you'd like to appear here, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone, please send your filthy emails to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com

ULTRA LETTER 73
I find myself wondering why your fan page is called Super Page 58, surely Digitiser (and all teletext pages) always had three digit page numbers?

Also I’m somewhat jealous of you as you seem to be ‘living the dream’ right now!
Dominic

You'd have to ask Chris Bell why Super Page 58 specifically, but it's a very Digi-sounding name. In fact, when Mr Hairs and I first saw the site, that was the thing we said - that whomever the mystery man responsible for it was, he totally got Digitiser. More from Bellston below.

​Ohhh... and don't be jealous. My life's great these days, but it has also been really shitty in the past, and for a very long time, so I was overdue a bit of a karmic rebalancing. Also: as mentioned above, I live in a state of semi-permanent total exhaustion.

GAMING MILL'S LETTER 
A load of idiots all kicked off in my town the other day because of the football or something. I wasn't there - I don't really go out very often. Apparently five fellas threw an adult's tricycle over the gates of the back yard of my local pub and then one of them threw a red smoke bomb over which landed on one of those big pub umbrellas and it burned a hole right through it.

Like I said, I wasn't there and it sounds like I made it up but I have this info on good authority.
Gaming Mill

Gaming Mill, can you please clarify whether you were there or not?

A REAL BIG STINK
I can spot one of the differences. The top picture shows both face up and face down brownaround, while the bottom picture only shows face up.

Any ideas what the second and third might be?
David W

The issue with those images is that the spurts are going in the wrong direction.

WII NOT?
I just wanted to write to let your listeners know how smug I'm feeling having bought a second-hand Nintendo Wii last month. It means I can play all of the Switch's best games for a third of the price! Except for Mario Odyssey, but I get the same buzz by walking around central London throwing a Mario hat at dogs.

Thank you!
PDT

Well aren't you "Mr Funny"...?! I only play the Switch as a handheld. Try doing THAT on the Wii.

CHEER UP
I felt sorry for you so decided to write to cheer you up. 

You wonder why you don't get letters anymore? Me too. And it got me thinking about our generation. The generation who grew up on 8-bit home computers, Grange Hill, and regular beatings at school.

Maybe we're a dying breed? Maybe we see no point in trying to outwit the young up-and-coming whippersnappers with their 'Fortnite' and Twitch and skateboards? Maybe we just want to fall into our middle-aged sleep reading a book on Freud and washing down our tablets with Diet Coke. Bliss.
John

Well, yeah. We're a dying breed. Literally, we're closer to being all-died-out than younger people. Also, I sort of like being old. It's nice to realise that we don't actually have to do the things we all did when we were younger, like going out and being sociable and stuff.

LIQUIDS
Howdy Biffo. I'm proper excited about all this filming you've been doing, you know. I can only just contain my inner liquids in excitement, as it goes!!!

So anyway, my brother took his kids to Cadbury Land the other week. Turns out there was a live performance of the Sooty show at the end of the tour, which seemed to have programmed my nephew’s into cult-like worshippers of the 'Soot'.

Was this sick indoctrination anything to do with you?!?!
Zobbster

No, alas, my involvement with Sooty ended long, long ago. I have been to Cadbury Land, however, where my main memory is drinking some sort of original recipe hot chocolate, which was raaaank.

BAD HABITS
I do hope you are well and life is treating you good. I am looking forward to Digi TV, as I am in desperate need of a bit more variety in my viewing habits (currently restricted to barracuda breeding infomercials for reasons I can't divulge at this time).

Anyhow, I am going on my summer holidays this weekend and face the prospect of a five-hour drive with a dilemma regarding entertainment for my children. I have a copy of Abba Gold for a sing song but should I buy a 3DS? Seems to me that there aren't actually any good games for it. Pokemon? Poke-WONT more like!! Ha ha ha! 
Aggy Fox 

Get a Switch if you can afford it. Switch = best handheld, and they can both play on it at the same time. Also: there are loads of indie games on there, many of which are both cheap and good. Why, I'm going to be reviewing some of them next week!

NOST'FERATU
I'm looking forward to seeing Digitiser come to life with the new show, thinking about it had left me all nostalgic for the days when I could play games for hours on end and not worry about being too tired for work the next day.

These days I don't play them much, I think it's mostly a lack of time although  I sometimes wonder if they're just out of my system. The one game I do play though, is on my phone: Clash Royale. My kids got me into it and I started just to indulge them but it's grown on me in a big way which surprised me. The fact that I can play it with my kids makes it even better. 

Something I have missed lately is reading Digitiser 2000, I've been mad busy, the only bonus being I've got loads to look forward to catching up on. The world always seems a better place after visiting Digi.
Anyway, hope you're well and thank you for the great site,
Monkey Head

Man alive... welcome to Digitiser's Middle-Aged Letters Page, everyone.

FANTASY FOOTBALL
Dear Baddiel and Skinner. Do you believe Roberto Martinez’s playing style is antiquated, that his side has largely underperformed at this World Cup, or it is simply illegal for Fellaini’s wig to be worn in a final these days?
Dan Farrimond

You letter has given me an embolism.

BELLSTON OF THE BALL
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for inviting me to come along and watch the filming of Digitiser The Show last week. It was a thoroughly tip-top day all round, I was ecstatic to be there, and made to feel very welcome.

It was great seeing you again after so long, and everyone I met on the day proved to be extremely splendid types. The Digi family is full of the best people around, without question.

The show’s looking top notch, too. Hope you’ve recovered enough from the filming marathon to be able to think straight by now - I’m so looking forward to seeing the finished product, and the live show is going to be another massive highlight.

If anyone’s interested in reading it, my report on how the day unfolded is up on Super Page 58 now:

http://www.superpage58.com/digitiser-the-show-filming-production-report-july-2018.htm

Good luck with the next stretch of filming, and godspeed you as you wrestle this beast into shape in the edit. From where I was sitting, you’ve got a Grade A winner on your hands.
Chris Bell

Thanking you, Bellston. I'm glad you had a nice day, and thanks for doing the write-up. I'm very blessed by everyone who gave their time to be involved in Digitiser The Show, and it seems as if they all enjoyed their involvement too.

​It was an utterly relentless week - following a relentless month spent getting ready for it - but it's fair to say I'm happy with the results. It was a lovely week, with lovely people, and a very special atmosphere. 

THE 50 Q's OF WHYTE
1) It's fair to say that many (most?) old games play quite poorly today, even to the extent where it's hard to remember how you even enjoyed them in the first place. How much of that do you put down to the arcade origin of many games i.e. they were designed to make you lose? While the graphics and mechanics are primitive, of course, for me, the extreme difficulty is what puts me off many old games.

2) While the newest ones are generally quite good, am I the only one that misses the early, classic Tomb raiders? They had much better senses of mystery, atmosphere and didn't make Lady Croft into a mass killer either (not to begin with, anyway).

3) If you had to guess, how do you think Star Citizen will end up?
John Whyte

1) I think the influence of arcade games was huge on so many early home games. What has surprised me of late is how good those early arcade games were. They had a simplicity to them - built around one idea, as they were. I often find with many second generation games - mainly the home computer ones of the early-mid 80s - that the difficulty comes from the iffy controls as much as anything.

2) I totes agree, brah! The first two Tomb Raiders are barely playable if you have a go on them today, but what they lacked in user-friendliness they more than made up for in their sense of mystery and exploration. Interesting how they've lost that as they've become steadily more epic.

3) I'll be honest, I've not really followed the whole Star Citizen thing all that closely. From what I've read, the game's backers are understandably annoyed, but at the same time... if you back a thing before it exists, there's always a risk, and it seems as if the game's creators truly do want to deliver on its promise.

Speaking from experience, it's tough doing crowd-funding. In any creative endeavour - especially an ambitious one - there are going to be things you simply can't foresee at the start. Plus, you want to get people excited, so that they back the project, and there's always going to be a degree of over-promising and hyperbole. 

Of course, there are things you can do to mitigate that, but even some of the really big, ambitious, ideas for Digitiser The Show have had to be dropped or scaled back (while, I think, retaining the essence - perhaps even improving on it - of what we originally wanted to achieve). I work in TV, and rarely do projects end as they start out. Until you actually start creating a thing, you really don't know what's going to work or not, and I appreciate that if you don't work in a creative industry that process can be hard to understand. 

Obviously, Star Citizen raised an enormous amount of money, obviously it has gotten into difficulty somewhere along the way, but the thing I think anyone pledging to crowd-funding has to keep in mind is that it's always going to be a gamble.

You're investing in the potential of something, you're paying for someone to have the freedom to explore their creative dream, and there are never going to be any cast iron guarantees. It's down to the individual potential backer to weigh up the evidence, weigh up how much they want something, and then make a call.

I'm really especially grateful to everyone who backed Mr Biffo's Found Footage, because they gave me the chance to prove I can deliver - and go above and beyond - which no doubt helped Digitiser The Show.

That said, the thing I would probably never do again is offer physical rewards. I was reluctant this time around, but was encouraged and advised to include them, but I'm not sure how much they helped the overall campaign. All they really achieve is to take energy away from what should be the ultimate end product - and the cost of fulfilling them all also gives a rather false impression of the final total raised. It's hard enough making a TV show without also being a clothing, DVD, and general merchandise shop.

Anyway... what has Star Citizen raised now? $200 million, or something? And they're selling spaceship packs for thousands of dollars each? You do have to wonder where that money is going...

MR TEA
Mon the Biff! What shall I have for my tea tonight? Cheers,
James Walker

Edible segs.

​KEEP ON STRUCKIN'
Dear Mr Digi Rose person. Who would you be starstruck if you met? I met William Shatner and stayed cool. Then I unexpectedly met Elizabeth Sladen and dissolved into a gooey fawning mess.

Yours quite sincerely,
That woman with the hair

Hmm. I don't get starstruck. I really don't. Even when I've met one of my heroes.

I've met Luke Skywalker and Marillion, worked with Terry Jones from Monty Python, and spent three months locked in a room with Lenny Henry - who, for all the grief he gets these days, was much loved by everyone when I was growing up.

The one and only time I ever got properly starstruck was, many years ago, meeting Marillion's ex-lead singer Fish backstage after a gig. Having interviewed him for Teletext a few times I knew I ought to speak to him, and the only way to do so was to get very, very drunk. Consequently, I barely even remember our chat, and later fell over in a kebab shop.

That said, I'm not sure I'd get like that anymore.

I think I can separate the work of a person from the actual person. I guess that whole thing of being nervous around someone you admire comes from wanting to impress them, or wanting them to like you. People are people, whether they're famous or otherwise. I feel much more fortunate to have - for want of a better word - a fanbase who support what I do, and excellent people who want to work with me. I don't really give a fart if a famous person likes me or not.