I have to admit the podcast about missing Dr Who episodes from the 1960s is a real guilty pleasure for me. Apparently there are now just under 100 missing episodes, because they just found a couple more, and they got Peter Purves (I had no idea that he had been a cast member of Dr Who)* to watch a couple under false pretences, so they gazumped him, but he enjoyed it.
I lost interest in Dr Who in about 1977, gained minor interest in its revival whenever that was, but I am not in any sense a whothusiast. But I do love hearing people nerd out over nerdy things, and the men (all men - yes, all men) who staff the missing eps podcast are a beautiful blend of pedantic, cosy-complacent and smug, unashamedly obsessed and sometimes amusingly critical (not of themselves but of choices made in Dr Who 60 years ago - hold the front page!). I also enjoy hearing experts exert themselves imaginatively trying to figure out what did or didn't happen in particular episodes where they might only have images or sound or text (scripts) to help them along. (Wondering what that noise is - did actor x stumble on the way to the cell door? Etc).
I also love the way it lifts a lid on film collectors.** So, I just read a press release from the organisation that found the two 'new' missing eps in the private collection of a man (now dead) who owned films, looked after them very well, had no interest whatsoever in Dr Who, but had six episodes of it in his collection... freak. Presumably he didn't watch them, but in that he is no freak, because I have tried to watch Dr Who from back then and if you don't know, I gotta tell you, it is boring hackneyed rubbish. If it hadn't held on through to the end of that decade and, I guess, John Pertwee it would be remembered now as nothing more than a stilted, silly exercise, daleks or no daleks.
But you know, boring hackneyed silly rubbish is pretty much the main game for humanity, so, respect.
*When my family lived in Britain in the mid-70s PP was one of the presenters of Blue Peter, a show I did not mind watching, but now in my memory I get him mixed up with the other male presenter, John Noakes, and then I think of that Derek and Clive sketch of 'I'm Alfie Noakes' 'No I'm Alfie Noakes' and then ultimately it all falls in a heap of messy shallow memories of names of things. I just went on wikipedia to check the spelling of Peter Purvis' name (luckily - because I had got it wrong) and found this beautiful piece of writing about another Blue Peter presenter, Valerie Singleton: 'To say how long Valerie Singleton was a presenter for is up for debate. Some people say it was 3 September 1962 to 3 July 1972. Making her time on the show 9 years, 304 days. But some people say it was 3 September 1962 to 20 October 1975 making it 13 years, 47 days. Some people say she presented the show till 29 December 1975 making her time on the show it 13 years, 117 days. Some people go as far and say she was a presenter till 7 June 1981 making her time on the show as 18 years, 277 days' I particularly like that there is no full stop at the end of that sentence.
** It also lifts the lid on how the BBC sold shows throughout the Commonwealth in the 60s-70s and where shows went - Australia bought them, then sent them on to Zambia, or whatever. Nutty people are trying to trace them all over the place. Also, there are amazeballs theories about various collector types who reputedly have various eps, but won't admit it. So funny (not to the presenters of that podcast, not really, though they try to appear amused).
