Two lost episodes of Morecambe and Wise are found in a derelict cinema …in Sierra Leone
It’s the same complaint every Christmas: Not another Morecambe and Wise repeat!
Well, you won’t have seen these episodes recently. Lost tapes of the comedy duo have been unearthed after 50 years – in West Africa.
Two episodes of Eric and Ernie were discovered in a derelict cinema in Sierra Leone and will now jet more than 4,000 miles to reach our screens in time for Christmas.
The original tapes, from Morecambe and Wise’s 1968 series – the first after the BBC poached them from ITV – have long been wiped by the corporation as executives recycled the tape reels for new recordings.
Two episodes of Eric and Ernie were discovered in a derelict cinema in Sierra Leone and will now jet more than 4,000 miles to reach our screens in time for Christmas
But copies of the shows were sent abroad for overseas audiences, and the lost episodes have now been saved thanks to the discovery by Philip Morris, an archive preservation expert.
He had already scoured archives in Sierra Leone, but found the national TV station had been destroyed in the country’s civil war between 1991 and 2002.
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But this year he was advised to return to Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, after hearing of classic TV episodes in an abandoned cinema.
He told The Times: ‘Inside this building there were old steel benches with stacks and stacks of films.
The Sierra Leone shows were perfectly preserved, however, and one even features a cameo from a young Michael Aspel
‘Most were in a bad condition, but among these were two of the missing Morecambe and Wise episodes.’
He had previously found another lost tape from the 1968 series in Nigeria, but it was sadly unusable.
The Sierra Leone shows were perfectly preserved, however, and one even features a cameo from a young Michael Aspel.
Mr Morris added: ‘This is historically important for British television. These things are national heritage, it belongs to us all.’
Mr Morris has previously uncovered episodes of other classic shows.
In 2013, he found nine episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, in which star Patrick Troughton comes up against robot yeti. The archivist has also found lost episodes of Steptoe and Son and Basil Brush.
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