Some have been swapped in a thriving underground market which particularly exists for science fiction television. "No questions would be asked" of people who brought in tapes of the lost classics, a senior official said.A six-year hunt under a BFI/NFT campaign called "Missing Believed Wiped" has found some programmes not on the above list.A 1958 episode of the rock'n'roll show Cool For Cats has been handed over by the show's director, Brian Taylor. Dylan's was one of countless fascinating cameos among the lost programmes.Ronnie Barker appeared in a 1965 version of A Tale Of Two Cities, which starred Peter Wyngarde, a version Wyngarde is very keen to see again. According to the NFT, it is believed that the tape was sent overseas and has been seen on Nigerian television - put on as a filler in between transmission.The British Film Institute said yesterday that it would overlook any problems of illegality that might exist with tapes having been bought or sold in the past.
ITN has lost the first News At Ten, transmitted on 3 July 1967. The BBC discarded coverage of the first moon landing in 1969 with Patrick Moore and James Burke in the studio.Comedy casualties include most of the Sixties episodes of The Likely Lads. Another collectors' piece would be Alan Bennett's series of sketches On the Margin from 1966. Not a single episode has been found.Among the drama losses are Dennis Potter's 1967 play Message for Posterity and David Mercer's 1959 Armchair Theatre play No Trams to Lime Street.
Another missing Mercer play, Madhouse on Castle Street, from 1963, features a straight acting performance from a 22-year-old Bob Dylan, who happened to be in Britain at the time. Incredibly only two episodes of Top Of The Pops from the Sixties survive.But it was not only pop which was judged to be ephemeral. Just two episodes have been kept of the original series, which ran for eight years from 1959.There are also only two episodes from seven years of Thank Your Lucky Stars, another early pop programme, and only a handful of episodes from the 10 years of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, which features every variety act of the era. The definitive top 20 of classic television programmes which have been lost by the BBC and ITV has been drawn up by the National Film Theatre. And an amnesty has been promised to people who might have illegally recorded the programmes so that they can hand them back. The list makes astounding reading. Pop programmes, in particular, were thought to be dispensable. And so appearances on Juke Box Jury by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were lost.
