PIF off

The Public Information Film - or PIF, for cognsocenti - is of course a hauntology talisman, e.g. the infamous 'Apaches', above - which I saw as a boy and which left a small scar on my mind with its grisly procession of farmyard accidents that befall over-inquisitive children (befoul, in the case of the kid who tumbles and disappears into the liquid-dung of a pigsty). One wonders how the little child-actors could have come out the other side of the filming process unscathed by trauma.

Here Robin the Fog of Bush House elegy fame does a run-through of the PIF's history and points to its unexpected revival.

He also imagines further urban-youth oriented PIFs:

• Lethal Bizzle neglects to don gloves while handling a sparkler (that’s a firework, not street-slang for jewellery)
• Chipmunk leaves his Chip-pan unattended while polishing his floor and then puts a rug on it.
• Example neglects to stand still on an escalator and makes an Example of himself. (very clever, that one)
• Wiley, attempting to return to his ‘Eski-Boy’ roots, acts irresponsibly on a frozen pond
• Dappy from N-Dubz attempts to rescue a frisbee from a substation (with surprisingly graphic-yet-cheering results).
• Tinchy Strider goes kite flying near a pylon, while an elderly Bernard Cribbins looks on from the tree-tops, concerned..