New secret audio archive uncovered

On this day in 1973, Richard Nixon was finally confessing to his role in the Watergate debacle and Cilla Black was unaware that she still had a lorra, lorra laughs ahead of her.

Back home in Dumfries the council had launched an innovative (for the time) new technology for finding out what the denizens desired. A listening device, the first of many, was secretly placed in the awning of Binns to record the everyday conversations of everyday people as they stood underneath it waiting on the bus.

As a crack, local journalist, I have been granted access to the recordings from this controversial and probably illegal experiment. This cack-handed attempt at an early form of focus group has shone a fascinating light on the private conversations of Doonhamers. Let’s take a look together at the very first anonymous conversation ever recorded.

“It’s an outrage, aw these shops in the toon, the cooncil should invent a kinda out of town shopping centre where retail sheds can cluster taegither. Aw this high street shoppin is jeest nae guid.”

So there we have it folks. The age old debate rages on.