Launched in the early 40s after the vinyl crisis created by WWII - many of the critical parts of Spitfires were made from deconstructed Henry Hall and his Orchestra 78s, Hurricanes from the slightly-lesser quality Oscar Rabin and his Gypsy Violins demo discs; by strange coincidence, when vinyl sales plummeted in the 90s, the raw materials were diverted to the production of Airfix and Revell scale models of the same planes.

Early flexidiscs were very thin 10" 78s; with the scarse vinyl supplemented with lard, they could be bent double and posted without damage through letterboxes (7" singles were invented soon after, circumventing this letterbox issue).

The sound quality of 'flexis', as we musos call them, was truly atrocious and the discs were generally restricted in use to spoken word records, sound effects, cover-mounted discs stuck to magazines and heavy metal - although a schoolmate of mine called Kenny got a box set of red vinyl flexis LPs of Chinese opera after writing repeatedly to Radio Peking; he also got a letter from Radio Moscow saying they'd be in touch when they needed him, but that's another story.

21st century flexidiscs are another matter entirely - the sound quality is definitely improved but the unit cost has increased at least 20-fold, so these days only a really stupid record label would have anything to do with them

editor's note: some or all of this might not be true