For those of us of "a certain age", Jack Hargreaves was a colossus of a man who brought fishing and the countryside into our lives via the outstanding weekly TV programme "Out of Town" broadcast by Southern Television during the 1960's, 1970's and early 1980's.
Very little appeared to remain of those broadcasts (and of the other series and programmes created by Jack and others). But some determined work by his Stepson, Simon Baddeley, unearthed some treasure locked away at the South West Film & Television Archive.
It consists of separate audio and visual tapes and, later next week, will be moved, at Simon's expense, to a suitable storage facility.
That is the first step! In this day and age, when you and I can create good quality video with our phones, it is easy to forget that the technology in 1960/70 was very different.
The programmes were created via various standards of film stock by the outstanding cameraman Stan Brehaut (who died in 2005). The audio and soundtrack were then added by very skilful technicians, the whole thing then brought together via further technology (Telecine process I think!).
What precisely is held in the SWFTA remains to be seen and fully documented but it is clearly substantial and of great interest.
Very early days but I and quite a few others believe it's extremely worthwhile to start the process to preserve this body of work for generations to come.
For those who "do Facebook" please consider joining the group via the link given in the article. This project will take a lot of work and will happily accept all kinds of support and help to see it through. The more demonstrable the public support is, the stronger the case for funding will be!
I hope to be able to report on the progress as often as possible but in the meantime this quote seems highly appropriate:
"When they finally cover Britain with concrete, they will have something to remind them of what it was all about"