How a missing David Bowie tape ended up in Swindon

The photographer and former TV cameraman, who lives in Wanborough, kept about 600 reels of tape covering everything from commercials to comedies and from continuity announcements to closedowns.

It was an archive nobody but John knew the full extent of until a couple of years ago, but the chain of events leading to its opening started much earlier, on January 3, 1973.

On that day David Bowie, five days shy of 26 and at the height of his powers, turned up at BBC Television Centre to record a performance of The Jean Genie for Top of the Pops. John was behind the camera.

“I can remember everything about it,” John said, “because the producer of Top of the Pops, Johnnie Stewart, knew I did all these special effects.

“He said to me, ‘What we need is a fish-eye lens – have you got one?’ I said we could do it in five minutes. I hared out of TV Centre and got the lens from my car.”

The lens John brought was one of several lenses and filters he’d invented. The images he produced, especially when face-to-face with Bowie, were iconic at the time and in years to come became the stuff of legend when it emerged that the BBC had wiped the tapes for reuse.

For years Bowie fans talked about the performance, which came several years before home VCRs became commonplace; thousands of posts on internet message boards were devoted to it.

Then in 2011 John was interviewed on BBC Radio 2 by Johnny Walker for Sounds of the Seventies, casually mentioned that he had a copy, and all hell broke loose.

“Little did I realise that that iconic performance had been wiped by the BBC and that enthusiasts were vigorously trying to trace any home recording.

“I had better than a ‘home’ recording: I had it on two-inch broadcast videotape, in perfect quality because the tape had been stored in perfect conditions at Big Yellow Self Storage in Greenbridge.”

John Henshall in the 1960s in his days as a cameraman at the BBC

Another interview followed, this time with BBC arts editor Will Gompertz. “At the end of that report,” John said, “Will Gompertz mentioned that I have another 100 recordings. Wrong. It has proved to be nearer 600 and these are being digitised by Kaleidoscope, the classic television organisation.”

Bowie isn’t the only star of whom John has captured iconic images. As well as working with hundreds of musicians during his BBC career, he was the director of photography for countless early music videos including Kate Bush’s The Man With the Child in His Eyes, Blondie’s Picture This and a 1978 Paul McCartney and Wings track called I’ve Had Enough.

John recalled of the Wings piece: “We shot it in Kintyre – we flew up to Glasgow and then took a private plane.

“We put duvets on the walls so it looked like a padded cell.”

John went on to work with the ex-Beatle on the videos for singles taken from the Back to the Egg album and the two are friends to this day.

John was born in Stockport, near Manchester. His first exposure to the medium that would change his life came at the age of seven, when a friend invited him home for tea.

“There was a big piece of equipment in the corner and on a little screen were Annette Mills and Muffin the Mule. I just couldn’t believe it.”

There were hardly any television sets in the town at the time because there were no local signals and John later realised his friend’s set was able to pick up a distant transmitter because the family home was at the top of a hill. Later an aunt got a set and John was hooked, watching everything during visits.

“This was live from London at the speed of light. Wow! In those days you couldn’t even dial London from a phone – it was through an operator.”

John was a photography enthusiast as a child, and at nine won a Meccano Magazine prize of 10 shillings and sixpence (about 52p) for a shot of a boat.

By 15 he was working as a cinema projectionist; later he shadowed a “friend’s friend’s friend” who was a BBC outside broadcast cameraman, and on August 28, 1961 he joined the corporation as a trainee.

Shortly afterwards he worked on a show featuring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. John had not long turned 19. Later, on a show called Jazz 625, he was behind the lens for performances by the likes of Count Basie.

He was to have dealings with countless celebrities during the 15 years he spent with the BBC before striking out on his own as a director of photography and later a pioneer of digital technology.

His archive includes, for example, a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch in which the two die and arrive in the afterlife. Moore asks if this is heaven and Cook replies: “Bl**dy hell!”

John Henshall at work at his home in Wanborough

“The audience couldn’t stop laughing,” said John, “and we had to stop recording.”

His early work also included era-defining satire programme That Was The Week That Was, with a team led by David Frost. John was there when social commentator Bernard Levin was famously punched in the face by a man called Desmond Leslie, whose singer wife’s show Levin had reviewed scathingly. The rather amateurish clobbering was watched by about 10m viewers.

John’s later career saw him work on everything from commercials for the Sun newspaper to Spitting Image, where he was director of photography.

He still works as a photographer and international consultant to various companies, and his work can be seen at www.johnhenshallphotography.com