It was groundbreaking in many ways: by broadcasting on Saturday mornings, being live, being three hours in length, and using the phone-in format extensively for the first time on TV.

Another person named was "Eric" (Ilett), the often-referred-to but never-seen technician whose job was to lower a plastic globe containing postcards sent in by viewers as answers to competitions.

[citation needed] Generally, the primary purpose of the BBC OB unit was to broadcast a sporting event at that Swaporama venue later that day.

For some time it was believed that either the programmes were never routinely recorded in the first place, or they had been wiped on the orders of the BBC's Archive Selector Adam Lee in 1993.

The truth, as related by ex-Blue Peter editor Richard Marson on the archive television forum The Mausoleum Club in 2006, is that almost every edition of Swap Shop was recorded in full every week onto two 90-minute Quad tapes.

These tapes were held by the BBC until the late 1980s, at which time the Deputy Head of Children's Television, Roy Thompson, allowed many of them to be wiped and sold to Australia as recycled stock.

[9] As a consequence of this action, many of the clips used in the retrospective It Started With Swap Shop and as extras on some DVD releases of other BBC shows had to be taken from domestic video recordings that had survived in private hands.

Amongst the editions wiped were those featuring appearances by Blondie, XTC, Trumpton creator Gordon Murray, and numerous cast and crew members of Doctor Who.

Readers of the Radio Times were informed that there would be entertainment at 'a garden in Central London', however the location remained a mystery prior to broadcast.

In between each of the performed songs, young members of the audience were invited on stage to play party games in order to win prizes.

[12] The publishing dates for the books were as follows: The annuals are full of quizzes, funny stories, pop group pictures, knitting patterns plus features on the shows stars.

The reason being that the strike was only settled between the union and the BBC at 10.00pm on Friday 22 December 1978, and it was impossible for the live Swap Shop to be up and running in time for the 9.30am start the following morning.