"Blog" - a new word coined, March 15th 1977

Check out that Record For The Day. "Blog". Remember where you heard it first.

Now it might not have strictly been a record, being a song by our band Walter Tottle and the Expanding Liberals. And it may not have been For The Day since, unless we recorded it, which I very much doubt we did, it'd be lucky to be a record for much more than the during of our singing it. I imagine it's a fun song we made up while jamming, then promptly forgot. It certainly never became part of any performing set that I can recollect.

But could this be the first recorded use of the word Blog? The OED has its first recorded use as being in the 1990s, as an abbreviation of web-log. But we used it in 1977, and I recorded it in my diary. Does this mean I own it or something? How much can I claim?


To be honest, it was Nick's song (as the diary, or if you will web-log) notes, so anything that's coming our way copyright-wise, goes to him. (I see that we were going to be visited by school music teacher Mrs Borem, for whom we were to do a recording. We held the session in my back room where we began the tape recording and, before we could play a note, Nick said "This is for you, Mrs Blob". We collapsed in fits at this and probably never recovered. The name Mrs Blob stuck, and perhaps she is the origin of the name Blog?)

Elsewhere I see i'd written to Marvel comics complaining that, I dunno, they weren't as funny as they used to be? And I've drawn myself ski-ing, from a strip I was doing based on the school ski-ing trip from the previous year that had clearly left its mark on me. And emotional scenes with Jasmine and Tony who, I can reveal (spoiler alert) got married some years later. Happily ever after.

The Record For The Day, other than our own long-forgotten Blog, was the Muppets' Mahna Mahna (whose spelling I just had to look up, so I'm forgiven for getting it wrong having never seen it written down).