Missing Believed Wiped

The picture above shows the severely damaged videotape containing what is believed to be the only surviving copy of Pink Floyd's 1967 debut on Top of the Pops. With much of the surface of the tape apparently wiped clean, it might have seemed an impossible dream that audiences would ever again See Emily Play.

The recording was on a reel of now-obsolete one-inch videotape, whose advanced age meant that the magnetic oxide (i.e. the brown bits) had flaked off, with what remained little better than Sellotape. The material was originally unearthed in the collection of an unnamed rock star, and contains extracts from two shows, broadcast on 6th and 27th July 1967. Thanks to the efforts of the Archive's Video Preservation Engineer Bob Wilson, at least some of this material could be retrieved for posterity, albeit sometimes in understandably fragmentary form.

This formed part of 'Music Music Music', the second of two programmes at BFI Southbank on 9 January for its annual Missing Believed Wiped showcase of recently rediscovered television material. The first programme, 'A Mixed Bag', began with comedy in the form of a 1967 episode of Till Death Us Do Part ('State Visit', in which Alf Garnett rails against the VIP treatment offered to a visiting Soviet dignitary) and what is believed to be the only surviving episode of Ronnie Barker's 1973 series His Lordship Entertains ('The Food Inspector'). This was followed by presentations on the late Bob Monkhouse's huge videotape collection, and on missing programmes produced as recently as 1990 for the BSB satellite channel (the one with the short-lived 'squarial').

Missing Believed Wiped was hosted in collaboration with fans' organisation Kaleidoscope, in recognition of their increasingly essential contribution towards identifying, tracking down and even finding long-lost recordings. Learn more at www.kaleidoscope.org.uk