Copyright Nazis! If it wasn’t for home tapers that had squirreled away many of the B&W episodes of Dad’s Army they would have been lost for ever.

I’m sorry this is off-topic but that is an incorrect statement.

At the time Dad’s Army was being made the master tapes were large and expensive video tape. It could be wiped and reused, twice I believe. Basically all shows that were made in that era had a contractual obligation for the length of time it was stored.

Shows like Dad’s Army that were popular often got one repeat, and also from the master they made film prints which were sent to overseas broadcasters. Once the contract with those overseas broadcasters was up (ie they had been aired) the tapes were usually either returned to the BBC, passed on to the next overseas broadcast company who’d bought the rights, or destroyed.

The contract with British Equity, the actor’s union, stated that these shows would then have the master tape wiped. This was in order to stop the broadcasters repeating shows over and over, and rather they had to keep making new stuff, therefore keeping actors in work.

So at the point when the period, usually two years, was up and shows were to be wiped and their expensive tapes recycled, a form would be sent around to the Producer telling him or her.

At that point they had the option to preserve the master, simply by signing the form. If they signed, it would not be wiped and would simply stay in the archives.

When this occurred for Series Two of Dad’s Army however, producer David Croft was away. He had a personal policy to always sign and thus preserved everything he made. No-one in the office realised and the form was not signed. Series Two was sadly wiped. The same thing occurred for Series Three, I’m not sure if this was at the same time. Some if not all of the third series was also wiped.

Some years later David was in Australia on holiday or a business trip, and turned the television on to see one of the Series Three episodes. He realised that the broadcaster must have film copies still, so he contacted the station and they found several in their archives. David arranged for copies to be returned to the BBC, which was done.

At that time the BBC wasn’t rerunning the series so this batch returned to the archives and were forgotten. When they did begin to replay them, one was found to be missing from Series Three (“Room At The Bootm”) and all of Series Two was declared as still lost.

Around about 1995 “Room at the Bottom” and “the series two episode “Sgt Wilson’s Little Secret” however turned up in the BBC archives after all. They too had been returned from Australia and had been misfiled. The only problem was Room At The Bottom was only in black and white, probably because when telecined for Aussie they were a b&w broadcaster.

That left five missing from the 80 in the series.

Then in 1998 I think it was, two more turned up. This story is more well known as it made world news. “The Battle of Godfrey’s Cottage” and “Operation Kilt” were returned to the BBC after laying in a man’s garden shed for ten years. These were not home taped copies either.

The truth is in 1969 when writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft were trying to sell the idea to film production companies for a Dad’s Army film, one of the companies they approached was the famous Boulting Brothers. Jimmy had a meeting with them and they were not familiar with the series so he’d had two recent episodes copied onto film. He’d taken then to their office to show them, and left the films with them. They never took up the deal of course (sadly, they’d probably have done a much better job than Columbia). So much later on when Boultings were having a clear out, these two film reels along with many others were dumped into a skip at Elstree.

A worker at the Elstree Studios saw all these cans in the skip and thought “I’ll ave them”. He took them home and had them stored in his garden shed for years, never looking at them. After about 15 years he passed them all onto a mate, who had them in his garden shed for another 10 years or so. It was only when this chap’s daughter forced him to tidy the shed he actually had a look at what was on them. 23 of the film cans were full of uninteresting stuff. Two had priceless gems in them!

So he took them back to the BBC and that was when they finally acknowledged the public could have more stuff and began their Treasure Hunt. That did bring in a lot of home recorded items that had been lost – particulalrly lost Goon Shows, Hancocks, Round The Hornes, etc.

Not one episode of the Dad’s Army radio series was lost, and not one of the lost TV episodes that have been returned (yet) have been because of home recordings. All have been on official BBC film reels.

Three TV episodes remain missing – “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker”, “A Stripe For Frazer” and “Under Fire”. If you have them, please return them to the BBC.

I had the pleasure of finding and returning the two lost episodes of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, and Rear Guard, the appaulling US version of Dad’s Army (also wiped by ABC-TV), to David Croft and Jimmy Perry a few years back. All three were lost till i tracked them down. The two IAHHM were sadly badly cut by ABC in Australia when broadcast, and were taped on home video. Despite this, they now appear on the official BBC DVD as extras, and I didn’t get a single credit, nor did the chap who recorded them in the 1980’s. Oh well.

I’d love to find complete uncut versions. They were ‘It’s A Wise Child’ and ‘A Star Is Born’.

You are quite right that other things have been preserved and returned by home tapers, but I had to clear up the fact that it’s not the case with Dad’s Army.

Back to ‘Airline’, a great series I’d love to see again.

This is very sad. I had the great fortune of corresponding with Ian a few years back and chatting with him via phone whilst he was helping me with some research. He was a very, very nice man, and rather witty.

He played both Sherlock Holmes and also Dr. Joseph Bell (whom Conan Doyle based Holmes upon) in his career. Plus many other memorable characters.

RIP

Interesting news, a film on the SAS’s first raid will be great. I remember reading years ago there was a very strong wind that put their aircraft off course by about 60 miles or so. And several men were lost simply due to that.

You may be interested tomorrow evening UK time is a documentary on BBC Radio 4’s The Archive Hour which includes the only known, previously unbroadcast recorded interview with David Stirling.

The Archive Hour – BBC Radio 4
3 February 2007
SAS – The Originals: The remarkable story of the birth of the SAS, told by the men who were there and who were The Originals. Presented by Gordon Stevens.

Clive Dunn was captured due to the incompetence of his officers who lost their maps, among other things! He was forced with his fellow prisoners in one camp to cut a road out of shere rock face with just pick-axes and shovels. At another, not even a camp but two rooms on the third floor of a Barber Shop in Austria, they were forced to march naked through the town. He spent most of his war in those two rooms. He was therefore very happy in 1968 to be given a part where he was allowed to take the mickey out of the Germans every week!

It’s been a while since I read his book, but I think he was a ghost for a while but he then became a POW again when he heard a concert troop had started up in the camp. Being a professional actor he thought it a better way to live entertaining his fellow prisoners, than hiding for a living. He was Robert Dunn back then. He became Clive Dunn just after the war when he registered with Equity, as his father Robert snr was also an entertainer, so he took his um’s maiden name. She was Connie Clive. So if anyone cares to research his POW days, look for Robert Dunn. It’s all detailed in his excellent book anyway, if you can find it. It’s very rare.