'Lost' recording returned to BBC

A previously unheard episode of a Dad's Army spin-off, which featured the last performance of star Arthur Lowe, has been unearthed.

The BBC lost the pilot episode of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, which featured Captain Mainwaring and his men trying to restore a pier, after it was recorded in 1982.

Lowe died of a stroke just weeks later, and the radio show was never broadcast.

It was though that the tape was lost forever, until the comedy's creator, Harold Snoad, discovered a copy at home.

The pilot did spawn a little-remembered series starring Bill Pertwee.

Mr Snoad told the Independent on Sunday: "Arthur was suffering from narcolepsy, and he would start to doze off part-way through the recordings.

"We got it in the can in the end, but before we could transmit it, Arthur sadly died."

The idea made it to TV as a BBC1 comedy play, Walking the Planks with Michael Elphick and Richard Wilson, and as a short-lived ITV1 sitcom High and Dry, starring Bernard Cribbins and Wilson again. But he characters names were changed to avoid links with Dad's Army.

Published: 19 Oct 2003