Early episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus would have been lost forever if BBC bosses hadn't landed a deal to air the TV show in the U.S.
The cult series, starring John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and the late Graham Chapman, was picked up by BBC network bosses in 1969.
But there would be no trace of the troupe's early comedy shenanigans if the funnymen hadn't broken into the American market in 1975 - because network executives were eager to erase the original recordings of Monty Python to clear some space in their vaults.
Cleese explains, "The technology was so clumsy; I mean the tapes that the shows were stored on were so wide and took up so much space that the BBC started wiping the shows."
Jones adds, "There were no VCRs (video recorders), no DVDs in those days. The BBC nearly wiped all the shows. We got a call one day from our video editor saying they were about to erase all the shows - the BBC had put them onto Phillips cassettes, the only thing we had at the time. So, for a time, I thought the only record we had of the first Monty Python series was in my basement!
"In fact, the BBC would have wiped the Python TV shows if they hadn't suddenly sold them to the United States, so thank you the United States!"
Cleese reveals he suffered a similar fate with another TV comedy he made with late pals Chapman and Marty Feldman - and would have nothing to look back on had it not been for a superfan in Sweden.
He explains: "I did a show with Graham and Marty Feldman, called At Last the 1948 Show, and they (BBC bosses) completely wiped it.
"It wouldn't exist apart from the fact that, quite seriously, some guy in Sweden found seven episodes in a vault and sent them (to Cleese). So these classic series got completely wiped because the technology took up too much space."
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