When exactly was the C64 released in the UK you may ask

[MadCommodore]

I had spent a lot of time working out exactly when the original 1982 Bull nose C64 landed in shops in the UK and horror of horrors postimage.org has deleted my uploaded proof of exactly when this happened. Why is this so important you may indeed ask, well it IS important because with £1000s of pounds Retro Gamer magazine never bothered to find out and nor did very popular people in the C64 scene.

So I thought it is important to preserve and so I will put it here also.

In the November 25th 1982 issue of Popular Computing Weekly Magazine, page 5, it clearly states

"The first batch of the new Commodore 64 micro computers should have been dispatched to dealers on November 19th"

I searched all the weekly and monthly mags up to February (so sold in January for monthly mags and February for weekly mags) and there was no mention of any problems or delays in dispatch.

So the C64 was on sale in computer shops by November 20th 1982. I did this research years ago but the postimage upload linked to in various places has been deleted and is no longer valid I have noticed.

[zapiy]

Wiki has it August 82, I guess that was the US release though?

[MadCommodore]

Yup that was the August release of the US NTSC model, the PAL model needed slight change to the clock speed and had S-Video output added with a 7 pin DIN not 5 pin DIN for A/V out.

I found out nobody knew exactly when the UK release was a few years ago on a Commodore 64 specific forum.