I was recording some bits and pieces from old VHS tapes last night. On one tape, in amongst a bunch of Erasure performances, I came upon an edition of The Chart Show, the long-defunct ITV show that was the broadcaster’s alternative to the satellite-only MTV.

On this edition was the promo video for Erasure‘s ‘Am I Right?’. I was about to skip straight past it to the ‘live’ performance of the track on the Des O’Connor show that I’d recorded after this on the tape, but then I remembered that The Chart Show always included some pretty random ‘gossip’, usually within the middle eight of any track they were showing the video for. So I fast forwarded to that point and the photo above shows what they had to say about Erasure at this point – namely a small reveal of the venues for The Phantasmagorical Entertainment tour that would hit the road in 1992 and a weird list of animals that Andy Bell would like to keep as pets. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure pandas don’t make great pets.

Seeing this in turn reminded me that during a promo for ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ the following year, The Chart Show gossip was – and this now clearly seems ridiculous – that Andy Bell and Debbie Harry were due to marry. And so you can take Andy’s animal list above with a sufficiently large pinch of salt.

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence