Radio enthusiast finds lost Desert Island Discs recordings

Good news stories from the past seven days

Dirk Bogarde, portrait, London, 1983
Richard Harrison discovered a lost recording of a 1964 Desert Island Discs episode featuring Dirk Bogarde
(Image credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)

More than 90 lost recordings of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs have been found by a radio enthusiast from Suffolk. The episodes, which date back to the 1960s, were unearthed by Richard Harrison, who buys boxes of old reels and cassettes at car boot sales and auctions, and listens to them to find out what’s on them. Margot Fonteyn and Bing Crosby were among the castaways he found, but he said he’d been “most excited” by a 1964 episode featuring Dirk Bogarde. “The neighbours must have wondered what was up. I let out a huge yell of triumph.

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Couple rescue babies from burning daycare centre

An American couple have been praised for rescuing more than a dozen babies from a burning daycare centre. David Squillante and Doran Smith were visiting Barcelona on their honeymoon when they passed a building that had smoke pouring out of a doorway. Squillante ran in, and stumbled across “a bunch of babies” in a room that was rapidly filling up with smoke. Aided by his wife, he picked them up, put them into their cots, and dragged them all out into the street. “It felt like we watched it in a movie,” he recalled. “It just didn’t feel real.”

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