[James2001]

I guess it's been possible that the lost shows database has been updated since the quoted UK Gameshows article made those claims, and it was likely not accurate to begin with. There's so much misinformation about what is and isn't lost, and rumours and conjecture easily become passed around as "fact". The missing episodes forum, while responsible for a lot of stuff being tracked down, is also completely full of chinese whispers, outdated information and outright nonsense being confidently passed around on there as "fact".

I imagine quite often it's a case of someone on these forums talking to some intern who doesn't really know what they're looking for, only makes a half-hearted search through a messy cataloguing system, if they even make one at all, and when they can't find it, it instantly becomes declared as "wiped". Not to mention the recent conflation with "lost media", which most of the time isn't actually lost, just unavailable (I've recently seen the entire 5 series run of a show from the mid-90s, that the broadcaster certainly still had in their archives the late 00s, being declared as "wiped" on there, likely because someone on there saw it on a "lost media" list). There's a couple of particularly bad offenders on where who often confidently declare things as "wiped" and it gets taken as gospel. And then seem suprised when clearly broadcast quality copies of this "wiped" material turns up.

The Big Breakfast archive going from "the tapes are there, but most clips aren't being sold because it needs properly cataloguing" being chinese whispered within a couple of years into "the vast majority of episodes are wiped" is probably the most prominent example.