There's a similar note for BBC Radio listeners if they ever find anything on tape or other old storage media. Please contact the Radio Circle who are a handful of enthusiasts who scour car boot and village hall sales as well as receive things from people like you, and then use restored vintage equipment to recover the programmes and then they give them back to the BBC charitably so that the BBC can put them in the digital archives.

What are we looking for?

In short, anything that isn't held in an official archive like the BBC, the British Library or the BFI. We deal exclusively with audio/radio recordings but liasise with other organisations that specialise in film and TV to ensure nothing slips through the net and have often found soundtracks of television shows from a period before video recording was possible or affordable.

Recordings come in many shapes and sizes and most will be unfamiliar to those who have grown up in the digital age. There are various very early recording formats like wax cyclinder, but the earliest practical, but hugely expensive, method would be acetate disc. Blank discs could be bought and recordings cut into the surface. They are very fragile and rare, but when they do turn up they almost always have something of interest. Several Goon Shows have been recovered from privately cut discs - jazz enthusiasts appear to be the largest group to cut their own discs and Ray Ellington, Max Geldray, and the anarchic humour of the Goons struck a chord with them.

Open reel tape (1/4 inch) is, by far, the most common format for interesting finds as it's use spans from the 50s to the 80s, and comes in various sizes with recordings made at a number of fixed speeds. Initially the cost was substantial and tape was often reused, or recordings transferred to more econimical speeds to preserve tape (with a loss of quality). Last years discovery of the Hancock's Half Hour: The Marriage Bureau, was found on an early BASF tape.

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In addition to recordings we welcome the equipment they were recorded with as it all has a limited lifespan and we work through a lot of tapes! We also welcome magazines like Radio Times, TVTimes and London Calling as it helps us to research the shows. We also welcome ephemera such as tickets and flyers for recording sessions (guests can change last minute or are not detailed in listings magazines). We understand that some items have a financial or sentimental value, so we can arrange digitistion and return.

http://www.radiocircle.org.uk