Radio enthusiast finds lost Desert Island Discs recordings

Richard Harrison discovered a lost recording of a 1964 Desert Island Discs episode featuring Dirk Bogarde

(Image credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)

last updated 20 October 2022

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.

Parkour athletes address energy crisis

Parkour athletes in Paris are using their talent for scaling high walls to flip the light switches of signs that have been left on overnight, in defiance of energy saving rules. Since 2013, shops in the city have been required to turn off their signs and displays between 1am and 6am, but enforcement is lax – hence the “Lights Off” operation. “Everyone can contribute [to energy saving] in their own way,” said Kevin Ha, who leads a group. “We put our physical abilities to good use.”

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.”