YouTube Pick: My Brother David

The tale of David Scarboro isn't one I was overly familiar with, but his short life and career on British television is, in itself, very much like the soap opera which defined his early fame. Full of highs, lows and tragedy, it's almost as if the infamous EastEnders doof doofs were positioned perilously above his head once he found fame. And the excellent 1989 edition of Scene entitled My Brother David tells an emotional story, all family pride and revulsion at the way the press tore his life apart.

BBC Select: A Failed Subscription Service

If, in 1987, you had been watching television very late at night, we’re talking post-closedown late, you could have stumbled across something very interesting on BBC2. To be precise, you would have encountered an encrypted engineering test. These tests would have made little sense to the average man on the street. But, for the BBC, they represented tentative steps into their first subscription service. And it failed spectacularly.