29/06/2026
Exciting discovery of treasures!
INFO: Film is Fabulous! Recoveries
The Film is Fabulous! team has announced a series of important recoveries in recent months. These were made during the charitable trust’s work to advance and to encourage public interest, education and training in film as a medium, especially its role within British culture.
Since early March, a host of missing vintage television episodes have been located. They have primarily been found within the collections of deceased former industry professionals. Following delicate conversations with the various estates, the entire collections have been removed, catalogued, and missing items scanned for preservation purposes.
Among the missing and rare items recovered during the process have been episodes of the following BBC television shows:
*Doctor Who: The Nightmare Begins (Broadcast: 13th November 1965)
*Doctor Who: Devil’s Planet (Broadcast: 27th November 1965)
*Late Night Horror: No Such Thing As A Vampire (Broadcast: 19th April 1968)
*Morecambe And Wise Show (Broadcast: 16th September 1968)
*Once More With Felix (Broadcast: 30th March 1968)
In addition to the above, a host of BBC training films have been found, plus inserts and negatives. Foremost among these is:
*The Beatles on Top of the Pops (Recorded: 19th March 1964)
There are many examples of the work that was undertaken by former BBC editors, who created show reels of their favourite sketches for private use. Two reels from one collection included:
The Frost Report
Comedy sketches starring a young David Frost, Sheila Steafel, John Cleese, and Ronnie Barker, which are entitled:
*Big Ben
*The Hokey Kokey
*The Bank Manager
*Karate
*Dope
*The Dentist
*Land of Hope and Glory
*Trenchmouth-on-Sea
That Was The Week That Was
Sketches with David Frost, Millicent Martin, Lance Percival, and various members of team, which are entitled:
*Dimblefrost
*Camberley Kate
*Goodbye TW3 (1963)
Marty Feldman (and John Junkin):
*The Egyptian
Homage to Spike Jones
*Joe Melia performs ‘You only hurt the one you love’
It’s A Square World
With Michael Bentine, Clive Dunn, Derek Guyler, and others:
*The News
*Willowplate
*Mousetrap
*The small train robbery
*The monster at TV Centre
The Benny Hill Show
A young Benny Hill pokes fun at:
*The Tonight Report
*TV Commercials
*Man’s Favourite Sport (song sung by Julie Rodgers)
The comedy items will be returned to BBC Archives, with the aim of making any missing or rare material widely available. Several of these comedy clips will also be screened at future Film is Fabulous! events.
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