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From the wide selection available we've chosen         "Peter the Great - The Geordie Genius"  which you'll find in the "players/managers" category. If you want a copy, follow this link, where you can order it courtesy of the excellent Blackstar website.

NUFC.com's view: Take a fabulous career, some special memories and some fantastic goals, give them to ITV's motley crew and then suffer the consequences. It's a familiar recipe that bemuses most Newcastle fans time and time again as they pop another NUFC vid into their VHS and settle down to be patronised and misinformed. We've harped on enough about the usual annoyances so let's just concentrate on the two that detract from this tape's obviously awesome footage.

Roger Thames, in what he must have thought was a moment of pure inspiration, utters at the start of the tape, "They say lightning doesn't strike twice...". Well, for starters it's a rotten analogy - Pedro playing for Newcastle in two different spells being likened to two bolts of lightning just doesn't work for me. I mean, there's plenty of Peter Pan puns that seem more obvious and appropriate. But Thames, obviously feeling very pleased with himself, takes the analogy and turns it into a graphic that appears at every available opportunity during the tape - text on an angry looking sky and statistics delivered with... yes, you guessed it, bolts of lightning. Heavens preserve us.

But even worse is the way some of the clips are presented. For reasons beyond me, some of the greatest moments ever seen from a black and white clad gladiator are presented in a dreadful, tilted, flag-shaped abomination. Why? Why? Why?  It even plays havoc with your eyes as the footage itself is distorted to fit into the curly diagonal frame. Just show us the flamin' clips untouched by inhuman hands, man.

You'd also be forgiven for thinking that a mackem fly got in the ointment somewhere. Waddle is interviewed right in front of the Ful-of-sh*te-well End at Joker Park so that the horrible lettering is clear for all to see and Peter's New Years' Day hat-trick against them is hacked to pieces and stuffed into the nasty flag-frame. Now, contrary to popular opinion, Thames is actually a Gooner and not a mackem or a smoggie but his stay in the North East has definitely not seen him adopt our black and white stripes.

There's also the usual factual blunder - Cole's goal against Ipswich was not a late equaliser - Ipswich actually levelled a couple of minutes AFTER Cole's goal. A minor point but indicative of the lack of attention to detail that is the hallmark of ITV's sub-standard productions.

However, for a change the interviews aren't bad. Keegan and Beardsley are frank enough to give some interesting twists to familiar stories. The Andy Cole transfer, Keegan's resignation and Peter's fractured cheekbone are tackled head-on which is good. Of course the important thing with tapes like these is to collate and present a collection of outstanding action and with Beardsley this is all-too-easy. The litany of stunning strikes never ceases to amaze and if only they'd avoided the dreadful graphics it could have been a video that was top of your pile. Instead it's yet another disappointment but at £5.99 you can't really go too far wrong.  

Verdict: I've seen worse but tinkering with such an array of jewels seems like sacrilege. If they were asking £12.99 for it, then forget it, but the price is about right at under six quid. I'm just glad I've got the goals unadulterated on other tapes.... 

Highlights:  

1st: Apart from the obvious goals - virtually all of them are stunning - this quote from Peter tickled our fancy. To be fair, he was talking about the Waddle, Keegan, Beardsley trio of the 1983-4 season...obviously...: 
"As a threesome, it was probably the most enjoyable threesome I've ever been a part of."
2nd: The clip of Keegan and Hall outside the brewery when KK took over as manager has some bloke with a microphone, stage left, rummaging through a plastic bag. Marvellous.
3rd: Beardsley's lack of forgiveness for Neil Ruddock over the smashed cheekbone injury. Quite right too. Incidentally how close does Robert Lee come to kicking the prone Peter in the head with a bit of speedy dribbling?

Niall MacKenzie