Videosyncratic

VHS vs Betamax, toploaders, video nasties, late fees, the art of adjusting the tracking. These are things only recently forgotten by society, along with the culture of the video rental shop.

VIDEOSYNCRATIC does for video shops what 'Kitchen Confidential' did for restaurants. It's a rough-and-tumble insider's view of an industry which spanned from the early 80s through the 00s.

Film-maker and writer Jon Spira spills the beans about his thirty-odd years in the video rental industry from wide-eyed child of the aisles to teenage obsessive to laconic till jockey to stressed-out manager to badly-behaved owner. From the birth to the death of the video shop, he was there in corporate shops, local chains and proud indies.

It has everything you could want from a book on video shops - corporate sleaze, indie hijinks, triumph, failure, grown adults being dragged out of shops by their ears, awkward sex in the VHS section and film geekery of the highest order.

It features a foreword from lexicographer and star of TV's Countdown Susie Dent.