How punk and Thatcherism came together in the surreal ZX Spectrum Pimania craze

Listeners tuning in to Portsmouth’s independent station Radio Victory, late at night in 1977, would have found themselves confronted with a mysterious electronic squeal. It sounded more like a transmitter malfunction or cat-like yawl than a music show. And yet, for the few hobbyists who owned a new-fangled “micro-computer”, this tinny squawk could be recorded and then fed via a tape-deck into one’s machine to play a puzzle game with “real prizes.”