Cambridge teletext event marks 50 years of Ceefax

The BBC pulled the plug on the service in 2012 but it has continued to attract enthusiasts, including Jason Robertson, a teletext archaeologist from Congleton, Cheshire.

At about that time, fellow enthusiast Alistair Buxton explained that it was possible to “rescue” teletext pages from domestic video tapes used to record TV programmes.

Mr Robertson, 53, described it as “VHS skip-diving” and added: “We thought that was the end of it, but when we realised we could recover teletext, the medium was democratised, with people doing their own thing.”

For him, the appeal of teletext is partly nostalgic and partly what can be done with it today – it also attracts artists who like the “big bold colourful graphics”.

“I’m from the 1970s and we had newspapers and print,” he said.

“When teletext came along it was just incredible – instead of just staring at the TV passively, we could pick up the remote control and dial up whatever we wanted to see.”