Folder Containing 'Behind the Bleep' Script, Press Cuttings, and Correspondence

Folder Containing 'Behind the Bleep' Script, Press Cuttings, and Correspondence

Brown folder containing a copy of Elaine Morgan’s script for the TV movie and documentary drama, ‘Sputniks, Bleeps and Mr Perry’, also referred to as ‘Behind the Bleep’. Produced by John Gau Productions and distributed through Channel Four Television Corporation in 1987, the programme tells the story of Geoff Perry and the Kettering Grammar School Group.

Perry had worked with Derek Slater tracking Soviet space activity with basic equipment at the Kettering Grammar School, using students to assist them. The Group achieved many notable discoveries, including revealing a secret Soviet launch site before it had been made public by the Americans. This particular discovery catapulted the Kettering Group, and Perry, into the media spotlight and led to the Channel Four docudrama.

The programme stared Ian McNeice as Geoff Perry and James Hazeldine as Derek Slater. The writer Elaine Morgan sent a copy of the script to Derek Slater, who added press cuttings, a Kettering Group memo, a press release, and an invite to the press screening of ‘Behind the Bleep’. The folder also contains letters Slater received from the public in response to the programme and a memoir by David John Hall, who was a student at the Kettering Grammar School at the time.