Mr Speaker

I'm getting pretty sick of people coming up to me on the street and asking how they can play their records backwards to hear the devil. "I can't spin it backwards at a constant rate" they cry, "and I get tired after a while. What can be done?!". It's upsetting that this problem still plagues our society when the solution - past down from drunken uni student to drunken uni student for decades - is easy, and requires fewer household items than an average Curiosity Show experiment.

And like any good Curiosity Show experiment, we are going to need a roll of masking tape. Thankfully, unlike the Curiosity Show it doesn't need to be double-sided tape. Where the hell was I going to find double-sided tape as a 10-year-old, Rob and Deane? Where?

You'll also need a not-too-crap record player (if it's one of those built-in-to-the-system jobs, then you might be out of luck) and some satanically encoded records. Anything by Nana Mouskouri should do.

Step one. Make sure you have a record player. This step is just to establish a control group and make sure we are all on the same page. Kids these days might think I'm talking about some kind of futuristic music compression algorithm and associated playback device. But I'm not. I'm talking about the past.

Next, you'll need to unscrew the cartridge head from the tonearm. Make sure that your record player has a removable cartridge head before you attempt this. A good rule of thumb is that if it doesn't go back on, then you shouldn't have taken it off.

Step three. Here comes the magic part. Take the cartridge head and turn it upside down. Re-insert the head and screw the cartridge back in. You should probably chant some Latin or even gibberish as you do this. This helps to open up the record player's psycho-kinetic temporal pathways. Though some say this is just audiophile nonsense, like keeping your gold-plated connectors adequately levitated.

Finally, place your record on top of a roll of masking tape that you have carefully positioned in the center of the record player. Now instead of dropping the needle, you need to raise the needle to touch the underside of the record. To do this you'll need to adjust the weight on the tonearm so it is hovering with an inclination to lift upwards instead of downwards.

And there you go. Now you can continue your search for subliminal messages as you recline in your listening chair, sipping on whiskey or sheep's blood, or whatever you do when you search for subliminal messages.

Next week we'll explore the hilarious world of drilling a hole in a record so that it spins off-centre and plays all wobbly. You'll need a parent or guardian's help to complete this one. See you then.