I noticed the nails. Surely one could get acrylic nails in the 80s. Simpson's whole nails were covered, and the curvature on a table-tennis ball would be wrong for that. And the colour of his was not a sufficiently dead white (on my screen) for that to be the explanation.

Some Abnetts were very good. But I know of at least one Abnett dreadnought that I think is horrid, all thin and scratchy with no thud or boom.

The programme seems to me to be an important historical document that ought to be preserved - but one would need BBC permission and performers' consents (unless the BBC got total transferable waivers) to put it out as a fruity cover disc, and I can imagine lawyers having nightmares over the Data Protection Act consequences of showing the audience, from whom waivers might well not have been obtained in 1982.