It sticks out half a mile pilot

[Lance M]

What is the status of this episode? ;D

[Herbert Skardon]

Lance said:

What is the status of this episode? ;D

It was been aired on BBC7 last year IIRC. So I assume that the BBC a copy that they think is broadcastable on that station.

Cheers,
Herbert

[Stuart Monk]

One of the writers (I think it was Harold Snoad) kept a copy of the BBC tape when the pilot was made and, unlike the BBC Archive, decided to keep it!
When they ran the Treasure Hunt a few years ago, he decided to hand it over with full public ceremony and it's since been broadcast on BBC7 and released as an extra in one of the later Complete Dad's Army Radio Show box sets.
I did hear a story a few years ago that Harold invited some of the higher echelon of the Dad's Army Appreciation Society to his home to listen to the show (he'd been rumoured to have the show for years), on the understanding that he search them for portable recording devices!
Could be apocryphal, but it's still a nice story!

[Ed Brown]

It's not an apocryphal story. I was there! And Harold Snoad did make a suggestion along those lines, but only as a joke.

I was a friend of the late Jack Wheeler and helped him organise the 1998 Dad's Army convention at the Oval, which Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles attended as guests.

A few weeks afterwards, Harold Snoad invited the Society to record an interview with him on tape at his home. Jack asked me along, and together with two or three of the Society's officers we met him for lunch at a pub in Sunbury on Thames, and then went back to his house for tea.

One of the reasons for the get-together was so that we could hear his tape of the unbroadcast pilot recording of "It Sticks Out Half a Mile", which he and Michael Knowles wrote. As the BBC had not retained any recordings from the series, except a mono copy of the 5th episode ("Pike in Love"), he was aware that he had the only existing tape of the pilot show.

He played the cassette for us, but didn't want to give the Society a copy of it at the time (1998). When the BBC "treasure hunt" began, four years later, he gave a copy of the cassette to them.

It was not a transcription recording. It was a cassette copy from the master magnetic tape. It was not an off-air copy, because the pilot (which had a different cast to the eventual series) was never broadcast. So it was a good quality, professional copy run off for him, as the writer, by the production staff.

Because we set up a video camera in his living room to do the interview with him, he joked that he didn't want us taping during the playback of the pilot tape. We were all keen to hear it, as it was Arthur Lowe's last appearance as Captain Mainwaring, and no one (outside of the studio audience) had ever heard it before.

It was very enjoyable meeting him and his wife, Jean, and seeing his collection of framed photographs round the walls, from the many tv shows he had worked on as a director (including "Dad's Army") and, later, as a producer, going back to the 1960s, and hearing his anecdotes of the making of some of those shows.

Harold Snoad has been extremely helpful to the Dad's Army Appreciation Society over the years, as have many of the people connected with the show, not least Bill Pertwee and Jimmy Perry.