My grandfather was long dead before I realised just how much the entrepreneurial spirit was strong in him. Back in 1947 he was gathering family and friends around a microphone for singing sessions recorded to disc. Such goings-on in a small village in Ayrshire would hardly have been typical. It would have been untypical anywhere in post-war austerity Britain.

Alex White's skills as an innovator are further demonstrated here in this would-be audio commercial preserved on an old 78 in which he has his friend the local minister recite an inventory of the appliances for sale in his electrical store. I assume the plan might have been to distribute the discs in the community as advertising. It likely never happened but the idea was sound enough and anticipated commercial radio ads thirty years later.