Missing Believed Wiped

I don’t know if anyone caught ITV3’s affectionate documentary Those Were The Days about the Apollo 11 Moon Landing last night, with interviews and footage about the momentous event. (It's currently available on ITV's CatchUp service and to be repeated on 27 April).

The documentary was interspersed with interviews with others in the news at the time, including marathon runner Reg Hill, Miss British Isles beauty competition Pat Wheeldon, members of one hit wonder band Thunderclap Newman and Portsmouth's Leigh Park Six activists, who fought for the right to keep their local park’s admission free and were sent to prison for their protest.

Anyway, I just received a newsletter in which an anonymous poster relates that a lovely old chap at the BBC who'd been in charge of covering the first moon landing once told them that if the NASA mission had gone wrong, the only tape the Corporation had lined up to cut to was a Warner Bros Porky Pig cartoon!

On the plus side, I assume the BBC probably still have a copy of the cartoon, unlike the recordings of the studio coverage of the first moon landing, which, much to Sir Patrick Moore’s chagrin in the documentary, are lost! (Missing, Presumed Wiped?). How stupid is that...