Rentaghost were later recovered by the BBC Archives. The "Rentaghost" theme song, originally composed by Michael Staniforth who also played Timothy Claypole, was performed as part of the "George's song" skit in Shooting Stars (TV series) where it was one of the very few songs performed unmodified; it attracted cheers and applause as soon as the first line was finished. The well-known version of the theme is from the later series; the first series had the lyrics "ghosts and ghouls and poltergeists" (later changed to ".. and freaks and fools"), and "what you see is not ESP.." (as ESP was highly
Rentaghost up further release. However, the first two series have been made available digitally via the BBC Store Some master copies of "Rentaghost" episodes and other children's shows were wiped by the BBC in 1993 on the assumption that they were no use and that examples of some other episodes were sufficient. The wiped tapes were then sold overseas to countries that still used obsolete (in the UK at least) tape formats. However, BBC Enterprises had requested copies of the first three series a couple of years earlier and indeed they were showing at the time on UK Gold – these