Ben,

May I also add my sincere thanks. As our friend Archiefit noted, above - I too on listening really enjoyed it. Bing leant his usual engagingly modest presence to a programme I've been listening to it for the past thirty-five years or so. 2022 marks its eightieth anniversary. For many years after the BBC had formed a huge online presence, Desert Island Discs, due to legal copyright complications with its devisor and first presenter of forty-three years (Roy Plomley's) widow (known as a fairly tricky customer), was unable to repeat its programmes online.

So with Mrs Plomley's eventual demise, came the then wherewithal to negotiate and then finally release online its available archive of hundreds of episodes (mainly from the mid/late 1970's onwards). Its programmes' original website was for more detailed and search/user friendly. But it still, as we've just experienced, adds newly discovered or partly discovered episodes. When it was reported a handful of years ago, ninety thought to be lost episodes had appeared all at once via some freshly discovered home recorded tapes, the BBC did not specify which these were. Thankfully, with their recent release, they now have.  

Until around 1978, they didn't even have a large, active, detailed archiving policy, which resulted in  the majority of its programmes (radio and television) "wiped" or unpreserved for technical, storage and economy reasons.

When the original Desert Island Discs website was released online, knowing Bing appeared in 1975, I knew his appearance had fallen just before the BBC's policy to methodically archive - and therefore the survival of the original would purely be the luck of the draw. I was so disappointed to find that it hadn't -  and would check for it once in a while but had pretty much given up hope.

With all thanks to you now, Ben - I've finally revelled in at least one episode I thought had been lost to the airwaves forever. 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (20/10/2022 9:29 pm)