"The Music Collection presents: Phil Collins" - A video review by Mike Jackson.

Christmas shopping often produces a surprise or two and upon a recent trip to Birmingham I came across this little item hidden among such gems as “Postman Pat Gets A Hernia From Delivering TWR Editor’s Mail” and Ninja Warriors #37. So, what exactly did I get for my money?

The tape is a mere 32 minutes long, of which the last four are completely blank. It consists of a number of brief interviews which are from US TV news/entertainment shows tagged together with real Oscar winning graphics ( a touch of sarcasm there, Mike? Surely not - AH) Imagine a wide screen TV picture with both ends cut off matched by a surround of stars to the picture and lettering that spells out what each item is and that is the quality you get! And the interviews themselves? Well, roughly they are as follows…

1. Four brief minutes on the US Awards Ceremony (circa 1985) and a brief interview with a CBS reporter.

2. A two minute resume of Phil’s career up to 1985.

3. Four minute interview with US reporter Bryan Gumbel on the No Jacket… tour and album.

4. Five minute interview with both PC and Philip Bailey and an NBC reporter. The subject matter of course, is Easy Lover.

5. Seven minute interview with Phil, Mike and Tony regarding the Invisible Touch album. This includes a brief clip of Phil playing with Eric Clapton’s band but the music is dubbed over with someone playing the pan pipes (!)

6. Four minutes of news coverage on Phil’s appearance in Tommy live on stage with The Who.

7. One minute of Phil reflecting on The Beatles and their influence on his music.

At which point the video comes to a halt leaving the reviewer glad that he hadn’t paid out a normal price for a pre-recorded video! Some of the footage was new to me but the content was of limited value and the presentation was beyond belief! Readers should be warned that other videos exist in this series (including one featuring Peter Gabriel). No doubt these are of similar quality and content but I have no intentions of sampling them. Oh well, at least Postman Pat was quite interesting!