I looked into the possibility of a reissue of MES when I was doing Folk Police. Even though they no longer have the tapes, the Beeb still wanted payment of a licensing fee for the release to go ahead - a reasonable stipulation, I suppose, as it was their broadcast in the first place. The initial amount quoted was fairly affordable until they realised it was a whole suite of songs rather than one piece, and at that point it went up to a price that would have needed considerable sales for a very niche release to make it viable. The other issue was the absence of a master tape - the version that had been taped off the radio that was doing the rounds at the time was the best available, which would have probably been ok for committed Bellamists, but probably wouldn't have helped in the quest of attracting sales beyond this hallowed circle. Meanwhile, it turned out that Fellside kind of had first dibs, given their historical relationship with Bellamy and their programme of Bellamy releases - at the time it appeared that an MES release may have been on the cards at some point, and I got the impression they were in possession of a decent quality master of some sort - though I may have remembered this wrong. Paul at Fellside would probably be able to confirm this or otherwise.

Hope this helps.

If a link has not already been posted by someone, I have the Australian four-parter as digital files. I'll pop it on Rapidshare at some point if people want a copy.