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Post by Geoff on Dec 10, 2003 19:32:55 GMT
I have been wondering about overseas sales of the colour series of Not Only But Also. I have always thought it weird that nothing exists of this bar some film material. I would have thought at least some b/w film transfers might have been made for overseas sale (which could have been junked since of course) and it surely Australia would have been interested in showing them since they were popular enough over there to make those 2 Australian specials. Does anyone know about foreign sales of NOBA? It at least would hold out a little hope of recoveries from this 3rd series
Futhermore does anyone have any idea why no episodes at all were kept?
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Post by Andy Henderson on Dec 10, 2003 20:00:36 GMT
funny you should mention that as recently I realised that the 'Glidd of Glood' segement which survives looks as if it's been copied from a tape and not from film elements. The caption looks 70s. So......does it come from NOBA.....or elsewhere?
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Post by David Savage on Dec 11, 2003 0:04:48 GMT
I'm surprised Cook didn't home tape it himself.
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Post by Kevin Mulrennan on Dec 11, 2003 11:16:48 GMT
From the net:
In an act of appalling corporate blunder, the BBC wiped or junked many editions of Not Only...But Also from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as it did, so indiscriminately, with many hundreds of other programmes. Some editions therefore no longer exist, but surviving sequences were compiled into a one-off 40-minute programme, The Best Of Not Only...But Also, screened by BBC2 on 24 December 1974, for which Cook and Moore added new wraparound sequences, shot in New York where they were touring with the stage show Good Evening (see Behind The Fridge). Enough old shows were then scraped together (some were rescued from the archives of overseas TV companies to which, fortunately, the BBC had sold copies in the 1960s) to enable the BBC to piece together six half-hour compilation shows, screened on BBC2 from 4 November to 9 December 1990 as The Best Of What's Left Of Not Only...But Also (the highlights from which were released on video).
I've got copies of all the shows as broadcast on BBC2.
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Dec 11, 2003 19:51:25 GMT
From the net: In an act of appalling corporate blunder, the BBC wiped or junked many editions of Not Only...But Also from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as it did, so indiscriminately, with many hundreds of other programmes. Some editions therefore no longer exist, but surviving sequences were compiled into a one-off 40-minute programme, The Best Of Not Only...But Also, screened by BBC2 on 24 December 1974, for which Cook and Moore added new wraparound sequences, shot in New York where they were touring with the stage show Good Evening (see Behind The Fridge). Enough old shows were then scraped together (some were rescued from the archives of overseas TV companies to which, fortunately, the BBC had sold copies in the 1960s) to enable the BBC to piece together six half-hour compilation shows, screened on BBC2 from 4 November to 9 December 1990 as The Best Of What's Left Of Not Only...But Also (the highlights from which were released on video). I've got copies of all the shows as broadcast on BBC2. ------------------------------------------------- The tragedy that befell NOBA is that it could have been avoided completely. Cook had got wind of the fact that the Beeb were going to wipe them, and asked if he could have VHS copies, but was told that 'the paperwork doesn't exist that would permit such an action'. He was absolutely devastated that he wasn't allowed copies of his own work, and we all have to suffer as well now. |
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Post by dubs on Dec 11, 2003 21:08:37 GMT
When was this Kevin?
Were they talking about series 3 or all the eps?
Don't please disgust me with the fact they had series 3 as late as 1977/8 in the vaults...
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Post by dubs on Dec 11, 2003 21:10:27 GMT
Sorry that previous query was for Peter, I can't read the damn threads on the reply mode correctly.
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Dec 12, 2003 19:33:09 GMT
Sorry that previous query was for Peter, I can't read the damn threads on the reply mode correctly. --------------------------------------------- Hi Dubs, I'm fairly sure the story of the wiping of the tapes was in a 3 - part Radio 4 series called 'Cook's Tour' around 1994 (I'll try and have a listen to it this weekend); it didn't give a time period when it happened, but one of Cook's friends said in the show that he tried desperately to buy copies of the shows on VHS, but was told it wasn't possible. How he got to hear that they were going to be wiped it didn't say, but the person telling the story (I think it may have been Ian Hislop) said he was absolutely devastated that the BBC wouldn't even give him copies of his own work. And who wouldn't be?. As I say, I'll try to listen to the shows again this weekend, and I'll post another message on Monday. Regards. |
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Dec 16, 2003 8:08:15 GMT
Hi All, I've listened again to the 'Cook's Tour' shows from 95/96, and this is from the second part (of three) broadcast on 2/1/96 on R4. Each show was presented by a different friend/colleague of Cook. The second part was presented by Ian Hislop: Hislop : ''Not Only...But Also...was one of THE great TV comedy series,and the most extraordinary thing about it is that most of it's been lost''. Unnamed Contributor : ''In the early eighties the BBC decided to wipe all the Not Only...But Also's which were on videotape because it was considered a re-usable resource, which is a disgraceful thing to do, and Cook actually tried to get copies of what they were going to wipe on VHS before they did it, and they wouldn't give him anything - even the stuff they were going to keep- just because they considered it to be too difficult to fit their administrative system,which is the most awful thing they could possibly do''. So there we have it, NOBA on vt as recently as the early eighties - nice one Beeb.  |
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Post by Kevin Mulrennan on Dec 16, 2003 8:37:36 GMT
That's an absolute disgrace. The BBC try to justify their wiping of tapes in the early 70's (new colour era/contracts/fire hazard of film/lack of space etc.) but there is no way they can justify that one. Ironically they could have made a mint from keeping the shows and issuing them (properly) on video. I think I've calmed down now (slightly). |
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Post by Harry on Dec 16, 2003 11:49:24 GMT
You'll find a lot of things like that went on with the archives over the years, not just with NOBA. Many, many priceless hours regarded so frivolously. The pages of magazines like Primetime in the '80s were full of this topic as the state of play gradually started to become clear as regards the TV archives. The thing about NOBA doesn't surprise me one bit. On the one hand the BBC were by this time paying lip service to the idea of being responsible with their archive and on the other still junking stuff. It didn't all end with Ian Levine saving The Dead Planet in 1978, you know!
The fact that the BBC treated Peter Cook as they did - one of the people actually behind NOBA - is a double insult though.
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Post by Harry on Dec 16, 2003 11:55:04 GMT
Don't think i'll EVER calm down about this topic though. It also gives the lie to the well-trotted-out idea that the old black and white shows were the ones that were junked in the early 1970s (to make room for all the 'nice new colour ones'). If that was so, then what happened to almost two whole series of Steptoe, Vanity Fair, much of Marty etc etc? Not to mention series 3 of NOBA (which could well have existed till the early 1980s). A tragedy.
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Post by Gary C on Dec 16, 2003 15:56:15 GMT
I was working in the VT Library at TV Centre from about 1983, and I can positively tell you that the colour VT's of NOBA were wiped WELL before that. For instance, they were all on 2" tape, which we had stopped using by thenm, so why would we wipe them for re-use. And no, it wasn't in the interests of 'space' either. They all went in the early 70's purges. Absolutely disgraceful, I agree.
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Post by SteveP on Dec 16, 2003 23:16:18 GMT
I was working in the VT Library at TV Centre from about 1983, and I can positively tell you that the colour VT's of NOBA were wiped WELL before that. For instance, they were all on 2" tape, which we had stopped using by thenm, so why would we wipe them for re-use. And no, it wasn't in the interests of 'space' either. They all went in the early 70's purges. Absolutely disgraceful, I agree. I agree. The Archive Selector post was well established during the "early Eighties" (a post specifically created to make some coherent sense of the BBC archiving "policy") and this simply would not have happened. The odd "not recording of a live programme" was still happening, but I doubt any vintage stuff like this would have been deliberately destroyed at this time. Most likely the contributors to the radio documentary are simply mis-remembering details which happened at least (and probably more) than 5 years beforehand. Steve |
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Post by David Savage on Dec 16, 2003 23:22:40 GMT
Yes, this:
''In the early eighties the BBC decided to wipe all the Not Only...But Also's which were on videotape because it was considered a re-usable resource, which is a disgraceful thing to do, and Cook actually tried to get copies of what they were going to wipe on VHS before they did it, and they wouldn't give him anything - even the stuff they were going to keep- just because they considered it to be too difficult to fit their administrative system,which is the most awful thing they could possibly do''.
is a mix-up of a different anecdote, which was Peter Cook pleading with the BBC to get copies before they were wiped, or to pay for their storage himself - probably back in the 60s or early 70s, as related by Harry Thompson in Peter Cook: A Biography - a story which some people also consider possibly apocryphal.
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