Week Ending

[David H]

According to the BBC INFAX catalogue, the archive holdings for this long-running topical satire series seem to be rather patchy prior to 1988:

open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/series/WEEK+ENDING

(You may need to cut and paste the whole of the above line for the link to work.)

There also seems to be an additional "WEEK ENDING.." category that has another programme listed for 08 January 1982 (which is probably a misfiled entry). Even allowing for a few catalogue errors, surely the BBC must have more episodes in its archive than what's listed here, eg. there's only 1 episode listed for 1985?

Although I haven't heard any editions prior to 1981, it seems to be the consensus that the series was at its best during the first half of the 1980s and if the catalogue is accurate relating to the BBC's physical archive holdings then there are numerous classic sketches missing from the BBC archive (eg. those covering the lead up to the 1983 General Election). Week Ending also features contributions from the likes of Griff Rhys Jones and David Jason before they went on to do greater things.

If the archive situation for Week Ending really is that bad, then private individuals may have recordings that are more important than they realise; for one thing I may have recordings of two or three episodes on cassette (maybe incomplete and of varying quality) - one from 1981 and one or more from the mid-1980s - and I'm sure that other people with larger audio tape collections will be able to do better than this.

[Anthony Brown]

Do you still have the listing of what Infax says exists? The infax prototype 'has entered a reviwes phase and is no longer available', so I can't check to see if the episodes I've got are missing.
I've certainly got the Year Ending 'compilations' (I don't know if they were re-edits of the weekly editions, or rerecordings of the sketches) from 1980 onwards, and also a handful of 1980s weekly episodes. At one point I did have a fullish set of the 1985-1986 run, but stupidly reused them... (doh).

[David H]

Unfortunately I don't have the Infax listing, but to correct what I said previously, 2 exist from 1985 (not 1). From memory, one Week Ending exists from 1971 and two from 1973 (one of these is a recent off-air recovery made in 2003), with the rest of the archive being patchy right through to 1987 - there's something like three from 1983 (one from near the start of the year and two from towards the end), but I will need access to the Infax listing to confirm these details.

[Stephen Doran]

i recall hearing a show from 1974?/75?can someone help me with tx date i only recall a reference to linda lovelace towards the end.

[Anthony Brown]

David said:

Unfortunately I don't have the Infax listing, but to correct what I said previously, 2 exist from 1985 (not 1). From memory, one Week Ending exists from 1971 and two from 1973 (one of these is a recent off-air recovery made in 2003), with the rest of the archive being patchy right through to 1987 - there's something like three from 1983 (one from near the start of the year and two from towards the end), but I will need access to the Infax listing to confirm these details.

Be nice once it's back on line, won't it?

Anyway, sounds like it might be worth spending a day checking out my old cassettes for Week Ending and demo-MP3ing them in case the Beeb are interested next time I've got a week off (two weeks, fingers crossed). There's probably some Dr Who related sketches on the end of other tapes as well if I'm lucky...

[Bent Halo]

Ah, my favourite subject although, if I'm being honest, not a show I like in itself. It's great fun to research. When INFAX first went online I almost immediately checked for Week Ending and it tallied with my fears, that at best you were dealing with Year Ending compilations prior to the mid/late-80s. And even after that it's variable.

I've been trying to gather collections together for a while now. One writer from the early 80s kept quite a few and he's kindly offered me his collection for safe keeping. The real gold is to be found when people manage to track down the casual contributors, who had a day job and weren't hanging on for a commission from BBC2. Those people are more likely to keep every show they appeared in, don't you think? Anyone else would get a bit blase about archiving their own credits the moment they found success and ex-producers were carrying them off to telly.

Seriously, if anyone wants to pool information on this show, then do get in touch at [e-mail]

Thanks
Ian