I'm trying to find footage from an episode of The Great Egg Race that aired on the BBC from 1978 to 1986. Specifically, from 29/04/80 with Tate & Lyle as one of the teams as there's every possibility that my dad was in it. I've tried Google, Youtube and the BBC Archive, but unsurprisingly nothing's coming up. It raises a question though; what happens to old TV footage? IIR, magnetic tape has a lifespan of about 30 years, which means there could be an awful lot of data decaying in warehouses if hasn't already been transcoded to digital.
OMG - Great Egg Race! I used to love watching this. Prof. Heinz Wolff is a legend! Why don't they bring it back? It'd be like a cleaner version of Scrapheap.
Yeah, emailing them might be worth a shot. As an aside, they do have some early Tomorrow's World in the Archive: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/
Other things that should be in the archives (if it isn't already), and are ripe for come backs Now Get out of That: http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Now_Get_Out_of_That The Adventure Game: http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/The_Adventure_Game Doogy Rev!
Eeh, sent an enquiry from here as they don't seem to have a general purpose email address. 350 char limit is a pain.
Okay, to follow up. The BBC replied with a link to the contributor access form. Basically, if you or someone close to you has been in a BBC program, you can request a copy. I did, and the DVD arrived in the post today.
Sadly, it comes with a whole raft of copyright warnings; on the sleeve and an unskippable warning before the program. As I'm probably the only one with this particular episode, I don't want to risk massive beatdowns from the BBC. I hear they deploy Terry Wogan to give violators the mother of all wedgies.
Bum. It's annoying that the BBC does that, when you consider we've already paid for the content through our TV licenses. And it's not as if it's the latest episode of some major Beeb drama that they want to sell to the rest of the english speaking world.
What if I'd say your father was my father, then say you were lying. Then I'd get a copy and Terry Wogan would come and destroy you.
