"Selling 100,000 records means you get a gold disc, those trophies so beloved of the ageing rock star with acres of Cotswolds wall space to fill. The discs themselves were huge, framed artefacts - a piece of twelve-inch vinyl sprayed either gold or silver according to how many you'd sold - but here's the hilarious bit: it wouldn't necessarily be your own actual record that had been sprayed gold - just any old piece of vinyl. You would know, for instance, that your album had five tracks on side one, but there it was, a piece of 'gold' vinyl, with seven clearly separated sets of grooves on that side. You might have earned the prize for selling an admirable number of copies of a fairly quirky, uncommercial British pop record, but there on your wall you might well have a framed and gilded copy of The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden."

- Tracey Thorn, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star