ROLF HARRIS was unearthed in Cyprus, Dusty Springfield in Malaysia and Dr Who traced as far away as Nigeria.
All three feature in a collection of 30-year-old television shows, thought to have been lost forever, assembled by the British Film Institute in response to enthusiasm for "classic" television.
Thousands of episodes of the most popular television dramas of the 1950s and 1960s were lost because of a widespread policy of wiping tapes to save money and because so many shows were broadcast live from a studio and not recorded.
Last night the National Film Theatre showed the first in what is to be a month-long series of screenings of "rediscovered treasures".
Some were much more popular than today's hit shows. An early episode of Steptoe and Son on a reel-to-reel tape found at the home of the writers, was part of a series which at its peak gained an audience of 28 million — 10 million more than watched The Darling Buds Of May.
The season will also include the first and sixth episodes of Z Cars, shot in 1962 and recently discovered in the vaults of Cyprus Television, and episodes of The Army Game.
Other surviving classics include three minutes of the science fiction drama A for Andromeda. The one remaining episode of Garry Halliday, the stiff upper lip children's airline drama of the early 1960s, was found in the BBC's own archives.
A lost 1967 Rolf Harris show, including the only film of Del Shannon singing Runaway Live, was found in Cyprus. A 1966 Dusty Springfield Show featuring an early stand-up act by Woody Allen came to light in Malaysia.
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