IN 1985, long-haired aspiring rock star Mark Craig, by day a graphic designer, bought an answerphone because he was fed up of missing calls from friends and family.
Being one of the first answerphones around – and considered rather flash at the time – it recorded the messages on tapes, which you were supposed to wipe off and reuse.
But Mark had other ideas. He kept the used tapes, labelled them and put them away. For 20 years.

Now a documentary maker, Mark has made a moving and intriguing short film compiling dozens of those messages, playing them over a montage of photos of those speaking – then and now.
The result, Talk to Me, was aired on More4 last night.
I stumbled upon it by accident, while doing the usual channel-hopping looking for something worth looking at. And it gripped me.
It was like listening to ghosts of the past; Mark’s former girlfriends, one minute professing undying love, the next indifferent and uncaring; band members’ invitations to wild, drug-filled parties; a friend’s ascent into a career as a pilot and subsequent trips to exotic shores; his sister’s travels to Australia; a profession of weddings, births, divorces; a plethora of birthdays; and, poignantly, his dad’s comments at the start of an illness which was to kill him.
In order to make the documentary, Mark had to track down every one of the people whose messages he was going to use, in order to get their permission. This in itself must have been a momentous task – rediscovering ex-girlfriends and long-lost friends.
The whole thing made me wonder whether something like this could be done 20 years from now. I doubt it.
In this age of instant gratification, personal letters are rare and, where exchanged, usually thrown away.
Voicemails are wiped off as soon as listened to. Texts are deleted as soon as they’re sent. Emails ditto.
The digital age is destroying our memories.
Mark’s documentary may well be one of the last of such intimate records of ordinary life.

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