YOU know nothing is safe from the merciless reach of the internet when even the Littlewoods catalogue bites the dust.

 

The company behind the catalogue, Shop Direct, has ditched it after more than 80 years, as more and more people are switching to online shopping.

It was a small piece of news that made me feel a pang of regret. There was a time when I was one of the home-shopping catalogues' most industrious customers. Everything I wore came from their pages.

High-waisted, slim-fit jeans that it was unwise to try to get into after a heavy meal. Cheesecloth shirts. Packs of cheap, gaudy T-shirts, ideal for the summer holidays. Groovy cord trousers with voluminous 26-inch bell-bottoms that were, very briefly, the height of men's fashion (this was the seventies, after all). Knitwear with strikingly garish patterns (ditto).

Underwear, too. It was always modelled in the catalogues by men with sunglasses and enviably trim physiques, standing in groups on a beach minus their trousers and gazing at something much more interesting that was taking place in the middle distance.

And the best part of the catalogues was that, if you were a family on a budget, you could pay for the items over several months. Where else could you buy an £11.99 pair of jeans by sending weekly payments of 60 pence?

I don't mean to wallow in nostalgia for that decade, but the other week I came across a couple of old vinyl albums from the early seventies. 20 Fantastic Hits by the Original Artists, Volumes One and Two ('As advertised on T.V.'). Both were issued by Arcade Records and were, in their way, forerunners of today's Now That's What I Call Music compilations.

I hadn't seen the records for almost a quarter of a century but was taken aback by the sheer jolt of recognition when I looked at the sleeves: their rainbow-themed designs, their typography, their layout. It all came back in a heady, day-glo rush. The groups, too: The Hollies, Melanie, The Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Derek & the Dominos, Slade. Even, God help us, the Chelsea football team, and 'Blue is the Colour', a top five hit in 1972.

Like the catalogue clothes, these Arcade records were a bargain: 20 current chart hits for a couple of pounds. Like the clothes, too, they were, to my earnest schoolboy self, the peak of cultural sophistication. I'm tempted to play the records and see if they've survived the passing of the years. Might give the Gary Glitter track on Volume Two a miss, though.