THE subject of my in-paper column last week dealt with an old reel-to-reel tape I had unearthed from a host of videos, cassettes and quarter-inch tapes in a cupboard. My wife Ellie has told me repeatedly that it was about time I cleared the cupboard out and so I did so, coming across an old tape of former Watford manager Ken Furphy reflecting on the 1968-69 promotion season for his book.

I was very much into tape recorders in the 1960s and invested in a Bang and Olufsen reel-to-reel recorder: a Beocord 2000, rated as semi-professional. Watching a Jeff Lynne biography recently, the man who virtually created, wrote the songs for, recorded and sang lead and multi-tracked for ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) and then the Travelling Wilburys, took the camera for a tour of his house.

“This was my first recording studio,” he said pointing to a Beocord 2000 on which they cut their early records.

It had echo, you could record from all sorts of sources at the same time and transfer from one track to other, creating a layer of recordings in the process. I spent many happy hours with that tape-recorder.

Once, when we made a series of films involving the regulars at The Cock, Sarratt, I found myself with a cassette recorder on pause, a vinyl disc which was cued for quacking ducks and a microphone dangling over a large vat of water while I stood with a brick in hand. By pressing the cassette recorder and the reel-to-reel at the same time, I captured the unhappy sound of a man about to crash his bicycle into the Chess. The brick dropped and the ducks quacked off into the distance. It was a perfect, realistic recording thanks to the Beocord.

I also taped a teenage amateur folk singer and some years later we met up and recorded some of our own compositions on that Beocord and promptly fell in love in the process. We were married, recorded our children on the recorder but finally the main motor called it a day. By then, cassette recorders were all the rage and that Beocord was off the market as were the spare parts.

My enthusiasm for tape recording had, at one stage, caught the attention of Watford striker Ross Jenkins who duly bought an Akai reel-to-reel. Some 20 years later, when he was off to Michigan to build a house, he gave me the recorder, which has travelled around with us since then, without being played.

So the other day, knowing Ellie would not be home for a fortnight while supporting our daughter and her new baby in Spain, I was able to take out all the reel-to-reels, videos and cassettes and sort them into order. It was great to be able to cause a mess without having to put it all away every evening and have to sort them out again in the morning. It’s a man-thing.

I then worked steadily through hours of reel-to-reel tape and unearthed some surprising and embarrassing items. Once, after returning from drinking a pint at every Watford High Street pub in 1966, I put on the recorder and taped the drunken inanities from our group, for that passed for humour. On another occasion two couples changed partners and tried to replicate the 1930s John and Marsha recording in which the two people keep repeating the other’s name in a manner to suggest they are meeting, petting and then making love.

I listened to this dangerous venture some 40 years later. Were we really that young?

I kept the Ken Furphy tape and other tapes such as those of the children and friends, my grandmother and parents. I hope to transfer them onto cd one day.

But my main concern is to tackle the task of transferring the recordings of a youthful Ellie to my computer and then to cd. They were essentially her product. I recorded her on guitar with echo, and even managed a couple of multi-tracked recordings as well. Altogether there must be some 40 songs, half of them folk songs and the rest feature us trying to polish up her renditions of songs featuring the various stages of love: calf-love, marriage, disillusion, infidelity, divorce, true love found, etc.

It was intended to be a thematic album. We never did get round to publishing them or trying to find a market, but I found I spent much of this Christmas humming the tunes to myself, so they have the element of being catchy.

Times have indeed changed. One of her first songs was of calf love. A young girl who is vocally pictured skipping down the road, holding a candle for someone much older. Eventually, at her invitation, he calls upon her and the song ends with an adolescent “I hope that you have seen, I am only 14 “But I love you, I love you “and on to fade out.

I chuckled to myself when I was reminded of that, for some 40 years on the concept of a 14-year-old skipping around is a little dated nowadays. They are so sophisticated, it is doubtful if one could get away with a change to the lyric, claiming “I am almost 13” in that context.

We did send four songs, immaculately recorded on my old Beocord, with echo, to Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks in 1976. The tape was sent back with an index number written on it. I thought that considerate. I did not expect them to send the tape back, but momentarily was disappointed there was only a compliment slip. Some comment would have been welcome but then I thought about Hughie and his mentors and realised we did not need a note saying: “Thank you but no thanks and I mean that most sincerely folks”.

I forget who won the competition that year. Pam Ayres won the year before but in 1976, it was a female singer and I recall noting, she did not hold the notes very well when she tried to shout the song towards the end, but perhaps it was sour grapes.

So Ellie never became a superstar, or even a star. She occasionally plays with the guitar but having unearthed the Hughie Green cassette, I took it down to Spain and, on Christmas Day morning, surprised her as I played it to her for the first time since 1976.

She was touched by the gesture, listened intently while trying to appear not to, and later admitted. “I felt quite good about that. And the songs were good for their time, weren’t they.”

Indeed, I have been humming them ever since.

I am tempted to say: “Don’t watch this space: watch the charts.”

But, upon reflection, one of the songs was titled: Maybe I’m dreaming.