From the Archive ep 12: DW Randolph Tapes and The Beatles

It’s a pretty special episode of the podcast to have both Doctor Who and The Beatles in the same episode and generally talking about the same subject: off-air audio recordings from television broadcasts!

Back in December of 2018, Kaleidoscope announced that they were given a number of off-air audio recordings of Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s. These were given to us by Robert Wyn and have since been dubbed “The Randolph Tapes” as the name Randolph appears on the tapes themselves. Mark Ayres kindly stepped in and had a listen and was impressed by the quality. We wanted to share the background and analysis of these recordings by talking to Doctor Who Researcher Robert Franks about what he thought of them. Of course, we include clips so you can hear them yourself plus some rarities from the tapes you may never have heard before unless you were watching at the time of broadcast.

We move onto that unknown Liverpudlian group known as The Beatles. Of course we jest but we have a great conversation with author and Beatles expert Keith Badman about off-air audio recordings of missing television appearances by the Fab Four plus so much more. The idea of missing music programs (apart from Top of the Pops) sometimes gets overlooked in favour of other series but Keith’s knowledge of the subject is very intriguing! Plus, we are happy to include some very rare clips of The Beatles from the Kaleidoscope archives.

If that wasn’t enough, how about a brand-new missing off-air audio discovery of a television broadcast featuring The Rolling Stones? You want to know what it is? Well, you’ll have to listen and let Neil Ingoe tell you!

If you have feedback or questions you would like to have read on the podcast or general inquiries, please contact us at feedback@fromthearchive.co.uk. We would love to hear from you! This podcast is a co-production between From the Archive: A British Television Blog and Kaleidoscope. Thank you for listening.