not only but also

[Robbie Denning]

Does anyone know where the surviving episodes of NOBA were recovered from?I know series 1 episode 6{the Peter Sellers one}was recovered from the US,but what about the others?Are there actually any that were never lost and were always held by the BBC?

[davemachin]

I am no expert but I think the episodes have come from a lot of different places. A few have turned up through missing believed wiped over the years. I think the 1966 special with John Lennon was recovered in the eighties as I remember reading about it turning up somewhere at that time. Some have come from private collections I think (don't know from who though). I don't know if the BBC have kept any of them all along though. Possibly one or two but not many. Wasn't Dudley Moore up in arms on Parkinson about it because it was thought then that they had all been wiped?

I would really like to see a few from the third colour series recovered as there are none in the archives (apart from some film inserts). I would also like to see a dvd out of the existing ones (10?) and the inserts. There are audios of missing episodes that could be included too to make up for some of the losses of other episodes.

Does anyone have an up to date listing of everything surviving including inserts and audios please? I would like to see such a thing.

Dave

[Robbie Denning]

That Dudley Moore interview on Parkinson was from 1980,at that time there was probably hardly anything in the archives.I should imagine nearly all of what we have now has been recovered since then,but how and where i have no idea,apart from the Peter Sellers one.

[steve davis]

The episode with T-Bone Walker was found abroad (USA?), along with two other episodes, which sadly existed already.
I think was found about two or three years ago.

[Deleted]

I think that's right, Steve, yes.

In answer to Dave's point, I can remember reading a brief reference to the 1966 NOBA special in (I think) Dr.Who Magazine in the mid '80s as it turned up at that time, which was the same point that some DW and other material surfaced. So this possibly came from overseas TV too.

[williamdm]

Hey - I posted a to my knowledge accurate ep guide to NOBA, including surviving material, on wikipedia, so Dave you might want to check that out. Otherwise my understanding is that director Joe McGrath himself made copies of the first four of series one for his own reference (not sure at which point they were returned to the archives) and episodes one and seven of series 2 were preserved as part of Bob Galbraith's "keep the first and last of a series policy". (Though the absence of those episodes from, say, the equivalent Likely Lads series I can't explain.) The film inserts of series 3 had been shoved in a box and, again, were saved from destruction by producer Jimmy Gilbert, who paid for them to be preserved out of the production budget for his current programme. Hope this helps.

[davemachin]

That's very useful William. Thanks.

Dave