Saturday 6 September 1997, 12.25pm. The third episode of the latest series of The News Quiz is scheduled to air on BBC Radio 4 at this date and time. Look, here's the listing in the BBC Genome and everything. According to the listing for the Monday 6.30pm repeat, the panel was scheduled to include Alan Coren and Alan Hamilton (probably a corruption of Andy Hamilton).
Let us move from that listing to the fantastic resource that is Ben Newsam's News Quiz archive. Whilst most of the show's first 13 years are missing, from the early 90s most episodes are present and correct... but the 06/09/97 one is not. It is the only missing episode from its series. In fact, it is the most recent missing episode of the show.
Maybe the British Comedy Guide's episode guide can shed some light on this? No, because "No detail is known for this episode" - again making it the odd man out in its series.
If all this seems rather curious to you, then maybe consider the fact that six days before that episode was due to go out, Diana, Princess of Wales died. Indeed, if you listen to the previous week's (30th August) episode, there is a round about Princess Diana which was apparently excised from the repeat, which would have been the day after Diana's death.
Does it not seem terribly likely that, rather than the episode being missing, the recording for that week was cancelled altogether? There's no mention of it on the 13 September episode (or indeed any mention of Diana at all), but in the circumstances perhaps that's not surprising... although perhaps Jeremy Hardy's comments on the topical nature of the show in the first question aimed at him are a reference to the previous week's cancellation, presuming that is what happened?
