Just come across this forum as I was looking into the cuts that were made to Only Fools and Horses. Looks like a great place for discussion for shows that have been butchered or been altered in some way due to music rights issues, and OFAH is no exception of course.
I wish I still had the second repeat showing of OFAH Miami Twice (both parts) on video, but sadly they got taped over some years ago by my dad with Heartbeats lol. I think this airing was recorded around summer 1992 (will need to look up on the BBC Genome site to confirm this). I had Part 1 on one tape, but the Miami ep I had to rec on two tapes as I ran out of tapes, so there were a few secs missing between Raquel talking to the vicar about his lorry full of wine and Del and Rodders at the beach with Rico and his henchmen (just before the Jet ski incident). Apart from this, every bit of the ep was intact and no cuts (as far as I’m aware). I suspect someone must have this showing, or even the original Xmas Eve/Day broadcast on video (converted to DVD/HDD possibly) somewhere in their collection, as well as other eps that were uncut at the time. I did have a recording (again off BBC1) of the seance which, surprising to me at the time, had that extra bit at the beginning where Rodney is talking to Albert (I think Del was asleep?), which was recorded probably the early-mid 2000s (rough guess). I had never seen the extra scene before then.
Glad you mentioned Heartbeat. Used to be glued to that show. My dad and I used to be big fans of it, so we had recorded a lot of early (mostly original) showings of it on ITV. I’d say I have about 90% of the episodes on tape, the majority of them when they were originally aired, though there are some from the first and second series that are second showings, but thankfully they are uncut for content and no music has been changed. There are also one or two separate recordings from these series that were recording from UKGold, but i think they cut the violent bits out due to being shown in the afternoon. From series 3 onwards almost every episode I have was taped when first aired (adverts not recorded apart from the odd one), with the original music (Beatles originals incl). Speaking of Beatles music, but I wondered if music rights was the reason why the used Joe Cocker’s version of “Let it Be” at the end of the do were Dr Ferrenby dies?. Btw, this was used in the original broadcast, so mayve just been down to suitability rather than rights issues.
Shame the DVD versions have had their music altered. Not sure if this is correct, but I think they changed the music in the series 5 ep where the two girls crash their MG and Nick and Maggie rush over to see the BeRo Man. The music they used was “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, and I thought that song really suited the scene perfectly. When I came across a clip of it online the music was completely different.