The end

With the recent technical difficulties and all (still not resolved at the time of writing, but our webhosts have now fallen silent, so who knows?) I’ve been prompted to make a decision about this site’s future, or lack of.

As of today – and fast on the back of Ian’s excellent and final chart of the decade - there will be no more updates on offthetelly.co.uk. However, it will remain online, as is, until its HTML rusts into pixel dust… or someone pulls the plug. I will, though, be switching off the comments in due course.

The thing is, the recent technical kerfuffle really brought it home to me that I no longer have the time or the appetite to keep this thing running. When it looked like it might be wiped off the web altogether I actually felt – well – a fair bit of relief.

In addition, I  also firmly believe OTT’s time has passed. We’ve done 10 years of this and it was lots of fun, right?

So it’s a massive thank-you to everyone who’s contributed over the years. You’re all great, but I must give a special tip of the Graham Kibble-White-shaped hat to Jane Redfern who has tirelessly built and rebuilt various versions of the site. She’s my personal unknown stunt(wo)man who’s made me look so fine (er, kind of). My gratitude also to Jack Kibble-White, Ian Jones, Steve Williams and TJ Worthington who between them have probably written about 70 percent of what’s up here. In fact I’m going to attribute about 30 percent to Ian alone. Additional thanks to the man who exhales, David J Bodycombe, who’s benevolently hosted us for ages now… while also making BBC4′s Only Connect. What a hero.

Plus, a public apology to Jack and Steve who’d both been working on a huge new feature for the site which will now never be published.

I shan’t get all dewy-eyed, don’t worry. I did that a few months back (and doesn’t that valedictory penultimate paragraph now look a bit rubbish?). Oh, and in terms of life-frittering online projects, I’m still well tooled-up. TV Cream keeps me terribly busy and my enthusiasm for it is a long way from flagging.

My only regret is we won’t be around to file another daft big General Election report. I really liked them.