Raymond Baxter

Most children I know would have been in deep mourning for their video games, the very first of which was demonstrated in footage from a Yuletide Tomorrow's World in which the old-school presenter Raymond Baxter played tele-tennis from his sofa with a non-speaking woman who may have been his wife, daughter, housekeeper or secretary (darker theories still crawl around my head). The same clip was shown on Gameswipe with Charlie Brooker, a blissfully archive-heavy history of computer games in which Brooker attempted to marshal a defence of them. The trouble is that if Tony Blair as a Prime Minister had no reverse gear, Brooker as a critic has no praise mode and the more he talked the more hellishly pointless the games seemed. As always with Brooker, however, the documentary contained more original ideas in 50 minutes than most of us have in a career.