Round the Horne restoration work

[Mark T]

Having just purchased a copy of "Round the Horne" complete series 1, can anyone tell me which 3 episodes were missing, where they were found and what the "restoration" actually entailed?

I've looked but can't find it anywhere on the web, and the booklet only mentions the use of transcriptions disc in a very slight way.

And while I'm on about it, any restoration on the further complete RTHs?

Thanks in advance.

[stearn]

Does anyone actually join this board anymore? I digress, the Round The Horne shows were restored from off-air recordings, those in the BBC Sound Archives, and those in the Transcription Service Archive (Now radio international). 1:5 and 1:11 were missing in their entirity, but many others have been extended by about a minute and a half. This may not seem much, but for a 30 minute show this is a huge amount. Certianly the Sound Archive had from ep 7 onwards (exc 11) and TS didn't take The Clissold Sage Pt 5.

Series 2 also has considerable restoration as from memory only one was retained by Sound Archives, although TS took more.

As Horne died before the archiving of series 3 onwards, the Sound Archive kept everything else, but edits have been made over the years for political correctness and time considerations, so, again, off air copies are used to check the content.

To add to this, TS made their own studio recording and edited it independently of the Home Service, and made a couple of different version for different overseas markets. As such all of the recordings available were compared and material mixed and matched to make the 'complete' shows.

As for where they were found, the BBC supplied the masters and then off-air copies came from a number of sources. Since the 1st series was released a further off-air copy of 1:5 turned up (from a BBC employee who had been given a load of tapes, had offered them to the Treasure Hunt, never heard again, and wanted to offload them). 1 edition of RTH was nestled between a virtually complete course on speaking Russian!

[Mark Tinkler]

(See, I HAD joined - just didn't realise that my work PC had wiped my cookie!)

Thanks for that - I find it most strange that the Treasure Hunt people seem to be so slow to, if at all, to get back to people, but then the BBC spend so much time & trouble putting something like these complete series together.
Listened to the 1st 2 shows on the drive home last night - one could definitely tell the opening from the 1st show was from another copy (as indeed the booklet says), but there was at least one other very short segment that sounded like it came from an off-air recording.

I would have throught that it might have been interesting to ass such things to the booklet - but as I say, thanks for your full answer.

[William Martin]

MarkT said:

I would have throught that it might have been interesting to ass such things to the booklet - but as I say, thanks for your full answer.

ass?

what was the RTH episode inbetween the learn to speak russian
A while ago I found an existing Navy Lark from 1970 (are any of these missing) with the theme tune and closing music cut by whoever recorded it and that was amongst pop music and musicals, again with all the presenters and such cut out

[stearn]

1:5 - This was the one that was compeltely missing from the archive, and the off air recording couldn't be extended as it was the only one to exist (at the time). It was a great shame that this wasn't found before the series 1 was pressed as there is an extra bit of material that could have been used!

Glad you were a member Mark, there was troll a week or so ago (who seems to have gone now) who only seemed to want to waste my time asking questions. At least with members you can contact them directly and discuss things not really worth clogging the board with.

William, drop me a message or contact me through the britishcomedy.org.uk site as it sounds as if we may be able to chat about reels, and I might be able to find you some.

Steve

[Gary C]

this is interesting stuff!! Steve, were the TS copies used direct from their master tapes or from disc copies?? any idea?

[stearn]

I think it depended what was available. There was more than one TS version - US and Commonwealth - and I suppose it was whatever was still on the shelf. Ted Kendall, as far as I recall, was responsible for an audit of the TS recordings at one time, so would have been aware of what was available and in what format, and he would have called up the relevant tapes/discs. Sorry I can't be more specific.

[Nic Ford]

Just interested to know, is there a list of episodes of RTH still missing? How many have been found recently?

Cheers

Nic

[stearn]

None are missing. The last thing to be found (as far as I know) was that large piece of series 1, episode 5 (all but a few minutes).

Steve

[William Martin]

stearn said:

William, drop me a message or contact me through the britishcomedy.org.uk site as it sounds as if we may be able to chat about reels, and I might be able to find you some.

I havn't forgotten about this, I'm going to pull out the tapes from storage and do a proper list