FIRST OFF . . .

“Oliver North: Memo to History,” the 90-minute home video of Oliver North’s congressional testimony hits the stores this week, with advance orders pointing to a multimillion-dollar best seller, the tape’s producer said Monday. “We will ship 100,000 cassettes tomorrow (Tuesday) based on advance demand,” said Jaffer Ali, vice president for sales at MPI Home Video in Oak Forest, Ill. That will make the video second only to the Chicago Bears’ “Super Bowl Shuffle,” which began with a shipment of 150,000. Ali said his firm, one of the largest home video producers in the country, considered the material to be in the public domain and did not request congressional or television network permission to use the tape, made from copies of North’s nationally televised testimony.