See ya Ceefax

Who among us is old enough to remember when British television was ruled by a squeaky gofer in a broom cupboard, Les Dawson chortling through the blanks and Blue Peter's random assortment of tropical pets?

If you can remember all that, then chances are you'll remember the time when a good Saturday night involved a chuppa chup lolly and a flick through the pages of the legendary BBC service Ceefax.

And if that memory's within your grasp then this week will be a sad one. For it's time to finally wave goodbye to good old Ceefax. The final sweep of analogue television signals across the UK will be complete this week when Northern Ireland go digital and their analogue television signal is turned off for good.

Ceefax was first transmitted by the BBC in 1974, and offered a whole host of useful, and useless, information from news headlines to lottery numbers to chess highlights. In 1993 ITV and Channel 4 released their rival service Teletext service, but this was closed in 2009.

These days, the big Red Button has replaced the idea of Ceefax on all digital BBC channels, but somehow it's just not the same!!
 

You can reminisce about the good old days of Ceefax with the BBC's brilliant journey back through time - click here

Bye bye Ceefax, didn't we have a ball....