London: Rare footage of the psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd playing on the popular BBC Top Of The Pops show has been discovered after more than 40 years.
The damaged footage of the band performing See Emily Play - an early hit - has been restored and will now be screened for the first time since it was first broadcast in 1967, the BBC said.
The footage includes Syd Barrett, the Pink Floyd founding-member and frontman who left the group a year after it was recorded.
Barrett, who wrote the song, died in 2006.
The footage, said to come from the collection of an unnamed rock star, was handed over to the British Film Institute (BFI) which will screen it at its `Missing Believed Wiped` annual event Jan 9, 2010.
Steve Bryant, senior curator at the BFI, said: "This is an enormously significant discovery that will generate huge interest amongst music fans all over the world, even though the surviving material is in poor condition.
"Footage of Pink Floyd from this era is extremely rare."
TV recordings were often dumped in the 1960s and 1970s because tapes were too cumbersome or costly to store.
IANS
