Picture from Radio Times
I have always been fascinated by the idea of writers and notables keeping an archive related to their work and also their personal life. A documentary called The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse broadcast in 2011 revealed that not only did he hoard photographs, home movies and letters, but also kept question cards from his various game shows and glasses from club gigs and scripts, drawings and memorabilia apparently stolen from the television companies he worked for over the years. The most revealing facet of Monkhouse's life was the obsessive way in which he videotaped programmes from the television, some of which are the only recordings that exist due to television's ridiculous policy of recording over various shows that weren't seen as important at the time. Another quirk, some would see as a sign of a mild form of autism, was that he kept television listing magazines that he had corrected with regards to timings (writing in pen that a programme started at 5.37 instead of the published time of 5.35, and replacing a chat show line up with replacement guests. This makes my collection of Christmas editions of the Radio Times look tame in comparison. Ray Gosling nearly had his entire collection consigned to landfill as he dumped the lot in a skip when he was forced to leave his house, luckily it was spotted and rescued by Nottingham Trent University who now maintain his archive. Here is a film about the items he kept throughout his career.
Most impressive of all of course was David Bowie who apparently never threw anything away. The exhibition of his archives at the Victoria and Albert museum contained everything from handwritten song lyrics, drawings on cigarette packets, childhood school books and even a small spoon used for taking cocaine. On top of this was every iconic stage costume, an impressive feat when you consider how he maintained and organised this collection while spending a period of time as a drug-fucked mess, and towards the end of the 1970s had very little money due to mismanagement. It would have been so easy for him to have sold these items to raise much needed funds but wherever he was in the world he carefully kept tickets, books, notebooks and all manner of souvenirs.
I have just watched The Undiscovered Peter Cook, another example of how occasionally BBC4 hit absolute perfection. When Cook died in 1995, his widow Lin Cook closed the door on their marital home and it has basically served as a sealed tomb until this year when friend of the family Victor Lewis-Smith (who still hasn't to my knowledge been thanked by Charlie Brooker for his whole shtick) was granted access to his personal collection. Found within this collection was a bounty of recordings and films thought lost, allowing us to see sketches that haven't been seen on television since the original broadcast. Highlights included a sketch with Peter Sellers, and thanks to combining audio cassettes and film, we were able to once again watch clips from Not Only...But Also, a victim of the BBC's wiping.
It would be nice to see how many other people have kept and stored such items of their life and work, although at some point in the future when I'm dead someone can dig through discs containing all my radio shows and podcasts, notes, and my collection of kazoos. I bet the British Museum are salivating already.
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