Rider from Shang-Tu in Woking?

[Ben]

I remember awhile ago that this episode supposedly surfaced in a cinema in Woking. Obviously the episode was never discovered, but did anything ever come of this rumour - was it ever disproved or did it just fade away?

[Ben]

I just found the answer to my own question:

Since my last message to this forum I have made some new discoveries with regard the episode of 'Rider From Shang Tu'. It appears not one, but three episodes of the above story were recovered from the projectionist room of the cinema, of which has long since (eighties) been closed down and since renovated into shops and a public house/nightspot apparently. The other episodes recovered were 'Five Hundred Eyes' and 'Roof Of the World' alongwith episodes of 'Journey to the Unknown', some old Sherlock Holmes and also something called 'Adamant lives', which is about some chap with a leather mask covering his face..?
The magazines found were some early issues of The Strand magazine. The gentlemen in question being a huge Conan Doyle fanatic by all accounts. Apparently 'Bernie' was his brother who lived in Australia and worked for a tv station over there and numerous letters were found with the film reels. Everything recovered from the old cinema has been in the hands of the same person since the eighties and whilst I do not personally know the chap in question, my friend knows him extremely well and has seen the films and the letters and is one hundred per cent genuine.
I won't give names for obvious reasons but thought I would take the time to offer more of the background.

Anything with the name "Bernie", I think, is not to be believed. (I thought Bernie was in Australia? Now he's in Woking? In fact, wasn't he dead at one point?)

[Nigel Bland]

See my latest reply on the 'Not again!!!!' thread - equally relevant here. This Bernie bloke sounds like a serial hoaxer, who needs to get a life far more desperately than any Who fan!

[Stephen Neve]

Guest-Ben said:

I just found the answer to my own question:



Anything with the name "Bernie", I think, is not to be believed. (I thought Bernie was in Australia? Now he's in Woking? In fact, wasn't he dead at one point?)

Bernie is alive and well in Australia, Mr Bernard Kent, if he is the same man. Anyway this whole Polo thing is most likely a hoax, the Barry Rexworthy bit certainly was, however the chap who started the original thread, Anthony H is not the bloke who started the rumour, it seems that some fans had heard about it many weeks earlier. Whilst A Mr Benard Kent is being contacted about the Space Poirates, he is also being asked if he ever possed Polo 5.

[Ben]

Thanks for the above post, Stephen. It makes everything a lot clearer.

Feel free to lock/delete this thread, moderators/admins/whoever, as it seems to cross-over a lot with The Space Pirates thread, which is where I'm going back to now (to find out the origin of the "Pirates" claim).