Video: V12 For Victory

produced by Videovision Broadcast. 60 minutes. (Duke Marketing Ltd, PO Box 46, Douglas, Isle of Man. £29.90).

Slowest of the 1988 World Sports-car Championship reviews to reach us, this is nonetheless a worthy record of an exciting series, with most of the important action (including Silverstone’s wheel-to-wheel dice for the lead and Brands Hatch’s Clearways shunt) well captured. Driver interviews also feature, with Jochen Mass talking us round his Sauber Mercedes and Eddie Cheever his Jaguar. Under the circumstances it seems a shame to carp on once again about the failings of the commentary, but, in common with other examples of this genre, it simply fails to do justice to the entertainment value of the film. It sounds as if the narrator is ad-libbing, when a well-written script would have completed an excellent package. GT

Michelin’s annual feat of compressing the whole of Britain into its Red Guide makes it one of the most useful items in the traveller’s library. The 1989 edition stretches to almost 700 pages of hotels, restaurants and garages, but remains almost small enough to live in the glovebox. Dense with information on 2700 different places, readable once the codes are mastered, it also stretches a point geographically to cover Eire. It costs £7.95.

The equivalent Red Guide France, also now ready, is even bigger at some 1200 pages, and this year comes with a free extra, a facsimile of the first edition of 1900, which was itself given away to automobilists and cyclists. GC