Raiders of the Lost Archive

An article in today Times makes this ITV series sound rather fun:

The young Michael Parkinson looked a bit like Alastair Campbell and once pretended to have his back tattooed by an old codger called Sailor Jack in a dingy Liverpool parlour. When he is shown this alarming clip on Raiders of the Lost Archive, the old stager is suitably aghast, but embarrassment turns to joy when they show him his only interview with Laurence Olivier on an early cinema show.

Even more alarming is Rolf Harris showing Joan Bakewell his didgeridoo on the po-faced arts programme Late Night Line-Up. Or Rolf playing a Stylophone duet with Liberace, an event he says he has forgotten, even after the amiable, blokeish presenter Paddy McGuinness has played it back to him.

In four half-hour shows, two ageing celebrities per programme are confronted with clips from their misspent TV youth. Others feature Bruce Forsyth, Bill Oddie, Chris Tarrant and Johnny Briggs from Coronation Street. All tap into the semi-submerged world of TV archive retrieval.

The programme also has its own website. The first episode will be broadcast on Tuesday 16 January at 10 p.m. on ITV1.