FORMER video store manager Jon Spira is returning to Cowley Road to promote his new book about the shop once adored by film buffs.

Mr Spira ran his DVD and comic business Videosyncratic from 2002 until the stores in Cowley Road in East Oxford and South Parade, Summertown, closed in 2010.

At the time he blamed a combination of increasing business rates, reduced custom, internet downloads and the recession for his decision.

He said at the time: "I’m extremely sad to be going. This shop has always been my passion."

Tonight he will be at Truck Store to launch his new book about the years he spent behind the counter serving film fans.

Mr Spira, who won critical claim for his music documentary Anyone Can Play Guitar, about Oxford bands including Radiohead who shot to fame, said: "The book is called Videosyncratic and is about my life in video shops.

"It's heavy on Oxford content going back from the 1980s to the present day, with a lot of focus on the Videosyncratic shops in Summertown and Cowley Road.

"It has a foreword by local celebrity Susie Dent of Countdown fame too.

"The book itself is the exact shape and dimensions of a VHS tape and looks like one too."

At 7pm tonight Mr Spira will be at the record store in Cowley Road, where Videosyncratic used to be, to read extracts from his new book, which costs £10 in paperback.

One reviewer said on Amazon: "At first glance you'd be forgiven to think Jon's book is just about working in video shops.

"However, it's much more than that. It's also about having real passion for something, youth, the banality of corporate policies, technological change and a lot more.

"Two things really shine through in this book – firstly Jon's huge passion for film, and it's interesting to read his journey with that passion from school to the current time.

"There is a touch of sadness to the book – being part of the journey from the rise and huge success of video shops, to their downfall when technology, price and viewer apathy catches up."

In 2011 Mr Spira, who lived in Kidlington until he moved to London, enjoyed the premiere of his film Anyone Can Play Guitar.

The film was named after a track on Radiohead's first album Pablo Honey and was a 90-minute insider's guide to the flourishing music scene of Jericho and East Oxford in the 1990s.

Mr Spira, who went to film school in Edinburgh, was so keen not to relinquish control of the documentary that he turned the spotlight on fans to help him make the £30,000 project rather than sell out to a major filmmaker.

He invited 300 of the 800 contributing fans and stars of the documentary, including Supergrass’s Gaz Coombes, to the screening at the Phoenix Picturehouse.