Runaround with Mike Reid

[anselm]

Anyone know if any of the early series of Runaround have survived?

According to the site below (which is very out of date), a few 2" reels did survive and are in storage somewhere but apparently much of the show has been wiped?

freespace.virgin.net/greg.taylor1/watched_it/run.htm

I'd love to find some even VHS copies as my missus says she went with her school to be in the audience to see it being filmed at the STV studios in Southampton, and her classmates may be on some of the tapes.

Also I can clearly remember an episode with Mike Reid interviewing the keyboard player from 10cc who appeared in the TV studio with his all his fancy keyboards which were supposed to be worth some ridiculous amount of money at the time. I'm sure it wasn't long after I'm Not In Love was a hit, and they discussed how it was recorded etc.

Help!

[col1963]

I have one with Charles Hawtrey as the guest, its an absolute scream.

Col

[Geoff Sear]

Ah yes, I've got that one too. It's the 'Horror Special'. Roger Ruskin-Spear of the Bonzo Dogs appears too, doing one of his turns with a robot. It is indeed a scream
I've got another one somewhere, with Leslie Crowther hosting it, but it's practically unwatchable due to being an n-th gen copy.

[Simon Winters]

I have about 15 episodes of Runaround on VHS. I have had some past dealings with the copyright holder, Southern Star International, so they are aware that I have the copies.

They recently contacted me with a very sorry story....a school reunion had contacted them to buy a viewing copy of one of the 1980 editions of Runaround, in which they all appeared. (You can buy a viewing copy of Runaround from them if you appeared in it and know the date).

When they played the master tape, it disintegrated in the machine and had to be binned. They asked if I had a viewing copy of that episode, but sadly it was not in my collection.

They only hold some of the editions, and if a 1980 edition is disintegrating in their vtr machine, what hope is there for the rest? I understand that in the 1980's, the collection languished in poor conditions in an old Southampton warehouse. This is where the tapes may have started to rot.

[Geoff Sear]

Eeek, what a sad tale. How much material do they hold? I presume no funds were ever forthcoming for a general transfer to a new format, and it sounds like it could be too late for some stuff.
When you say that the tape "disintegrated" do you mean massive oxide shedding, or it was really "sticky"? I'm not very well up on the woes of badly stored VT, but I know from audio-tape experience that baking can help recover stuff from dodgy tapes..but it is a very precise art, and not for the fainthearted.
I think one of the Pertwee WHOs kept clogging up the machine when a copy was attempted, and they had to keep stopping the tape machine and cleaning it.

[Simon Winters]

They just said the tape 'disintegrates' when played.

[Christopher Perry]

Good news that you kept those Runarounds Simon, seems a shame that Southern Star are not very bothered by it all.

c