There are thousands upon thousands of fabulous photographs and contact sheets of pop icons and spiffing former BBC employees at work on music residing in the BBC archives, many never seen before. Here is just a tiny sample, dug up for no reason other that they're incredible shots covering almost 100 years in time.

We present them with a hat tipped fondly in the direction of the Reddit subreddit OldSchoolCool: History's cool kids, looking fantastic. (The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.)