ITV has launched Raiders of the Lost Archives, which it labels "the biggest ever worldwide search for missing TV shows featuring some of the best-loved stars in the history of British television."

There are thousands of shows, featuring the likes of Tommy Cooper, Morecambe & Wise, Bruce Forsyth and Tony Hancock, that came to be lost. Over the last 12 months archive researchers working for ITV have been searching all over the globe for this material. The results will be seen in a forthcoming series which reunites some of Britain’s most popular celebrities with TV gold they thought they’d never see again. But the job’s not done. In conjunction with the BFI and Kaleidoscope, the channel is launching a search to find TV’s 50 Most Wanted Shows – whether they were on ITV or the BBC, shown in the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s. A list of these is available at: www.raidersofthelostarchive.co.uk/mostwanted.html

"It's an incredible shame that so much TV gold has been lost over the years so I’m right behind this campaign," says Bruce Forsyth, who took part in dozens of shows which now appear to have gone ‘missing’. "I made dozens of editions of Sunday Night at The London Palladium in the Sixties and all but two or three of them seem to be lost. There are lots of memories I would love to relive if any of these shows were to turn up after all these years. It's also sad to think too that so many great performances from the likes of Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper and Tony Hancock in so many different shows have gone missing over the years. We owe it to future generations to find them so I hope Raiders of the Lost Archive is a massive success!"