X Requests

Written and produced: Andrew Fisher, Ed Devereaux, Brain Tapply, John Peel.
This film, a short comedy, is a sequel to The Adventures of X, by Fisher and Newman, financed by the BFI Production Fund in 1967. It was made as an experiment on a very low budget with the help of some distinguished film-makers and performers. It uses encounters between stereotypes to represent fears current in 1974, a time when Britain’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb.
X, an anonymous everyman figure, wanders around London ravaged by inflation, unemployment, homelessness, terrorism and foreign money. X’s sole asset is a transistor radio and the dispossessed peer enviously at him and it. The film records X’s attempts to have a record played for him on a phone-in request show. The hysterical disc jockey (John Peel) plays the BBC’s only remaining record over and over again… – A.F.