On 19th March 1964 at the BBC Television Theatre (Shepherd’s Bush Green) the Beatles recorded an insert for Top of The Pops. They performed ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘You Can’t Do That’.
Alec Bray was tracking the Mole camera on that day and he recounts the full story together with details about the mole. You can access this @ A whole Mole page from Alec Bray | The Tech-ops History Site.
The story doesn’t end there as Alec tells us ‘Since it had been a 35mm film telerecording, I always felt convinced that there must have been a copy somewhere somehow of that performance, but there seemed to be no trace, The only record of the performance had been a poor quality incomplete 8mm film shot by a viewer. Hope never died that the performance would someday surface
That day finally arrived. The ‘Film is Fabulous!’ team’ are a charitable trust run by film collectors, cinema lovers and vintage television enthusiasts. On Saturday 30th May 2026 they were presented with several items from the estate of a deceased film collector. One of these, stored in its original BBC film can, was a unique and pristine 35mm negative of The Beatles’ first-ever appearance on Top of the Pops. Journalist Oliver Crocker and Alec Bray wrote an article about this discovery and you can read it together with fascinating video of how they cleaned and restored the negative. If you’re a Beatles fan then this is the untold story of their first appearance on Top Of The Pops which was on 25th March 1964 when the recording was transmitted.
Read and watch @ https://filmisfabulous.org.uk/the-beatles-top-of-the-pops/
