Way way back in the early eighties there was a craze for releasing "book" versions of TV series on to the shelves of supermarkets and petrol stations. Whilst holidaying in the Peak District I uncovered a whole bookshelf full of these at my lodgings which my friends dared me to steal but I never had the guts to (because I'd paid a deposit and quite literally a whole shelf of books would have disappeared, and I would have had to replace them with something for it to go unnoticed, and I don't really think they were worth my "Postmodern American Poetry" anthology or my copy of Alisdair Gray's "Poor Things").
It would appear that it wasn't just popular sitcoms such as "Auf Wiedersehn Pet" that got turned into novels. Oh no. It would seem that the truly awful "Roll Over Beethoven" also received that dubious honour, as well as some of the more questionable cop series of the day. The trick to these hack jobs appeared to be to take the basic script, re-use as much of the speech as possible, and intersperse it with bits of very hurried description. Hey presto, you've got yourself a very cheap novel which will probably shift units on account of its tie-in status. Much as I hate a lot of British publishing practice now, these things really were the pits (and a lot of the licensing seemed to originate from Central and Yorkshire, for some reason).
Question is, has anyone seen or does anyone own any more of these? If I'd stolen some copies I don't doubt I could amuse you all now by quoting from "Roll Over Beethoven", but I'll have to spare you it I'm afraid.
There used to be millions of these at one point, from the 1960s well into the early 1990s, and I have loads at home. There's a Follyfoot tie-in novel (of which I'm sure there were several hundred) detailed somewhere on the site, but other 'classics' that I've encountered over the years include tie-in novels of Dallas, Neighbours, Home And Away, Daktari, Emmerdale Farm, and my own personal favourite - a long series of novels 'inspired by the popular BBC TV series' Lovejoy.
Interesting questions - when did the TV tie-in novel phenomenon start (presumably the early 1960s or slightly earlier, as the Daktari, Honor Blackman-era Avengers and Johnny Staccato books I own all date from this point), and are they still produced to tie in with current programmes?