The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse

[cperry]

Just a heads up that the long awaited documentary featuring the Bob Monkhouse Archive made by the BBC with our help is on BBC4 on Monday 3rd January 2011 at 9pm.

I've seen the show and it's full of brilliant archive material from the Bob stuff we rescued. A real gem.

c

[Rich Cornock]

Fantastic news. So glad that Bob gets the recognition he deserves for saving this stuff and also that we get a chance to see some of it. I hope Kal gets a mention too ;D

[Robert Belford]

Can't wait to see this.

[Jeff Lewis]

Great documentary. I wouldn't have the patience to catalogue every programmes to such a degree.

[Paul Cooksley]

I'd recorded this and got round to watching it last night.

It was a simply fascinating documentary - one of the best I've seen in recent years on BBC4.

It was superb to learn more about Bob's fantastic collection and his dedication to recording all manner of shows, which, without his efforts, we would be without today. It was great to see those clips from some of the long lost shows, like Golden Shot/Celebrity Squares etc - I had no idea that most of the original editions of 'Celebrity Squares' for example had been wiped? Ok, so not exactly ground breaking television, but it beggars belief that the television companies just wiped things like The Golden Shot/Celebrity Squares.

Can I just ask - some of the clips shown from, for example, Bob's final Golden Shot appear very good quality for a domestic recording and kind of 'fimised'? Was this cleaned up at all and filmised for the BBC4 documentary or was this a 16mm colour f/r? Also, some of the Celebrity Squares vt looked remarkably good quality ...

Anyway, thank goodness fo Kaleidoscope for being in charge now of this precious archive - nice to know it's in good hands....

[Deleted]

It was a 16mm colour telerecording, presented to him as a leaving present. Most of the other Golden Shot editions he saved though were recorded by him at home on Philips 1500 tapes.

[Paul Cooksley]

..thats interesting.... I assume that colour 16mm tele-recordngs were quite a rare thing to do? Obviously I am aware of the black and white films prints that were routinely made during the sixties and seventies, but not colour ones all that often?

Do any BBC shows originally broadcast from colour vt survive in this format?

[Rob Moss]

Jan 5, 2011 16:47:13 GMT Paul Cooksley said:

..thats interesting.... I assume that colour 16mm tele-recordngs were quite a rare thing to do? Obviously I am aware of the black and white films prints that were routinely made during the sixties and seventies, but not colour ones all that often?

Do any BBC shows originally broadcast from colour vt survive in this format?

ATV and Thames made lots of colour film recordings of VT shows. Certainly overseas screenings of The Tomorrow People were from film copies well into the 1990s. I believe that on the whole BBC film recordings tended to be black and white, although I think there are a few exceptions.

[davidstead]

Hi Paul,
One example of a BBC colour f/r of an originally tx'd 2"CVT, is the play 'The Fanatics' from 1968.
I was involved in arranging a tfr to 1" CVT for the Archive as it was being tfr'd to VHS for Rudolph Cartier (around 1988/89), along with a few other examples of his work.
That particular play was and is, probably fairly unique, in that it had been film recorded onto 35mm colour Film by Technicolour, in such a way that it had been kept as separate 3 colour negatives. So along with all the prints and the magnetic 35mm sound tracks, took up one hell of a lot of shelf space and was only able to be tfr'd back from that state, by Technicolour themselves.
For a library that has had a history of junking due to space concerns, this was rather an extreme way to save something that would have only taken up a small bit of shelf space had it been kept on the original 2"CVT!

[Deleted]

Thanks for the info on that one, David. I've always been puzzled myself as to why "The Fanatics" survived as a colour t/r. Have you any idea why they didn't just archive it on 2" tape though? Was the play shot / transmitted from 2" originally or are you saying it only ever existed as a pre-recorded colour t/r?

[Deleted]

Jan 5, 2011 16:47:13 GMT Paul Cooksley said:

..thats interesting.... I assume that colour 16mm tele-recordngs were quite a rare thing to do? Obviously I am aware of the black and white films prints that were routinely made during the sixties and seventies, but not colour ones all that often?

Do any BBC shows originally broadcast from colour vt survive in this format?

It wasn't usual for the BBC to make colour t/rs although i've come across a number of ATV ones. Also, as Rob says, there are Tomorrow People prints knocking around. I've also come across an episode of Just William (LWT) on colour t/r with Arabic subtitles! So they were made. I don't know how many of ATV's are still around (there used to be some listed in the '90s Kal guide, such as episodes of The Man From Haven, The Foundation and Escape Into Night) but the results were considered substandard in some quarters and it seems Polygram (when they owned the ATV archive) shockingly disposed of some for this reason.

[Chris Barratt]

The documentary deserves an award, utter brilliance!
As an aside, isn't it a shame nobody tipped Bob the nod of the lowly importance of Top Of The Pops and other pop music programmes within the BBC etc, it certainly sounds as if wasn't bothered about the expense involved of video recording back then - he was a man on a mission!

[Alex Trelinski]

Just seen this documentary. Brilliant stuff and a great walk down memory lane courtesy of Bob's archives. Well done to everybody concerned in putting this very entertaining 90 minutes together.

[Andrew Doherty]

Jan 5, 2011 20:19:26 GMT davidstead said:

Hi Paul,
One example of a BBC colour f/r of an originally tx'd 2"CVT, is the play 'The Fanatics' from 1968.
I was involved in arranging a tfr to 1" CVT for the Archive as it was being tfr'd to VHS for Rudolph Cartier (around 1988/89), along with a few other examples of his work.
That particular play was and is, probably fairly unique, in that it had been film recorded onto 35mm colour Film by Technicolour, in such a way that it had been kept as separate 3 colour negatives. So along with all the prints and the magnetic 35mm sound tracks, took up one hell of a lot of shelf space and was only able to be tfr'd back from that state, by Technicolour themselves.
For a library that has had a history of junking due to space concerns, this was rather an extreme way to save something that would have only taken up a small bit of shelf space had it been kept on the original 2"CVT!

I believe that the last remaining BBC 35mm telerecording machines were sold to 'Technicolor' in 1968 and, for some reason, the BBC let the film processors test their machines by using three of the telerecorders (one for each primary colour) to record 'The Fanatics', but it was far too expensive for regular recordings to be made. Consequently, no further colour recordings like this were produced.

As for the excellent Bob Monkhouse documentary, there is no doubt that the audio visual archives owe a great deal to Bob Monkhouse; this was clearly shown in the programme.

Yours,

[Jeff Lewis]

Jan 7, 2011 15:04:23 GMT Chris Barratt said:

The documentary deserves an award, utter brilliance!
As an aside, isn't it a shame nobody tipped Bob the nod of the lowly importance of Top Of The Pops and other pop music programmes within the BBC etc, it certainly sounds as if wasn't bothered about the expense involved of video recording back then - he was a man on a mission!

I suspect, as shown in the case the recent Ray Davies documentary, that quite a few musicians may have copies of their telvision appearances but simply unaware that these programmes are not held in the archives. And why should they?