The Alchemists of Sound2003

[after the Radiophonic Workshop closed, Mark Ayres was made curator of the tapes]

Oliver Postgate - Narrator:
One day, he learned to his horror that all the tapes recorded after 1983 had simply been thrown away.

Mark Ayres:
So I hit the roof, and then spent a couple of weeks opening every door in Maida Vale and saying "Where would these tapes have gone? What was the process by which these tapes were skipped?" And they said "Well, we get a guy in. He'd move the tapes out and then he'd order the skip." "Where would he put the tapes before they were moved out?" "Oh, in an ante-room somewhere." Eventually I found a room which was the Band Store - the BBC Symphony Orchestra Band Store - and there were all these tapes in piles. And it was a brilliant piece of BBC inefficiency because they'd thrown all these tapes out but nobody had ordered the skip.