Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

telly we share what we've been watching

Cladie Aide.

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

All this week we're taking a festive look at the history of toys and games. Today

we're looking at the wildly popular and sometimes controversial Grand Theft Auto series. Paul Schuster found out how the first edition of the computer game was

developed in Scotland in the 1990s.

It's the lead up to Christmas 1997 and Britain is in the midst of a moral debate and a media storm.

Still to come tonight, do video games like this lead to joyriding and dangerous driving?

Violent computer and video games involving cars may have to include a special warning about reckless driving.

The news comes on the same day as the launch of a controversial

new game featuring car hijacks and joyriding. It's hardly in the festive spirit

called Grand Theft Otto. It's been widely criticized for its violent content.

If you go and look at the graphics and you look at the actual content,

it's about as offensive as Pac-Man.

But we got some real controversy and it really kicked off a storm.

Brian Baglow was a writer on the original Grand Theft Auto

and was also part of the publicity campaign surrounding the launch.

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