On This Day: Christmas Day 1983

Only six years on from The Greatest Christmas TV Schedule In History (TM) and already it wasn't as good as it used to be. The BBC was actually in something of a crisis of popularity at the time, as only The Two Ronnies were regularly breaking a commercial stranglehold on the weekly ratings top tens by December, the big historical drama By The Sword Divided had failed and Nationwide replacement Sixty Minutes was getting pelters. "There may be scarcely a new idea in the whole thing" the Times wrote about their festive package in words that will burn the ears of any DigitalSpy forum poster, "though that is not necessarily bad for the ratings, but one wonders if this desperate recycling stands much chance of success." What was new was ninety minute specials of two of its biggest hits, one below, one Last Of The Summer Wine on the 27th, which a different Times article reckoned "could herald a new direction for BBC drama... there is a move to make film productions for showing through cinemas, cable and satellite outlets as well as conventional television". Imagine Getting Sam Home on the big screen. Imagine if it had let to a Don't Wait Up film.

As breakfast television had come into being during the course of the year the big two are more than used by now to warming the transmitters up earlier, but despite that BBC1 still chooses to start at 8.35am, which in previous years had comfortably made them the first to rise but now seemed positively tardy. By that time ITV has already passed a special on TV-am's early weekend show via Anne Wood for primary and pre-schoolers Rub-a-Dub-Tub, which over its year and change on air featured everyone from Stratford Johns via Dick King-Smith to Ivor Cutler, this one giving space to Bonnie Langford, Edward Woodward and Michelle Dotrice.

The actual hour of Christmas with TV-am followed from 8am, with Cardinal Basil Hume's Thought for Christmas and Chris Tarrant reviving the already once traditional children's hospital visit. If that doesn't grab the kids, then when BBC1 finally rises they have the UK premiere of The Christmas Raccoons, in which Cyril Sneer cuts out the middleman and tries to cut down the entire forest, featuring songs by Rita Coolidge and Rupert Holmes, who also cameos as the voice of the forest ranger. It probably has the theme at the end too, yes. The kids' entertainment swaps back round at 9am as while BBC1 takes fifty minutes of Carols from Newby Hall in Ripon, fronted by Ian Carmichael with Grace Kennedy joining in TV-am ends by collecting the recent Alpine adventures of Roland's Winter Wonderland together, followed by a repeat of 1970 animated Jesus birth story The Night The Animals Talked. That's except for viewers in Scotland, who have their own Moderator's Christmas Message followed by something called The Sound Of Christmas.

So if you've got a captive audience of excitable young children, what better to do than dangle something they'll love the look of in front of them even if it isn't very festive to then snatch it away? Actually The Fraggles Are Coming aired the previous morning as well, which if nothing else shows the commitment of Children's ITV in plugging the new Hensonalia that began two weeks later. Those five minutes you'd imagine captured more adolescent imaginations than the following Messengers To Earth, a "musical fantasy recorded at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Crediton" put on by the Sheldon Theatre Company of Devon. Over on BBC1 Away In A Manger delivered half an hour of similarly cutesy "children's stories, songs, pictures and thoughts about the Nativity."

Interestingly, both BBC1 and ITV went to their major religious services at 10.20am, BBC1's Christmas Morning Family Service traipsing off to the Mint Methodist Church in Exeter while Christmas Morning Worship went to St Molua's Church, Belfast. But hold hard, because in Scotland there was one more surprise for the kiddies - Glen Michael's Christmas Cavalcade! Who needs organised religion when you've got a scraggy dog puppet and some second tier carttons? It's during this time that Channel 4 starts up, though they immediately disappear to Austria's Cloister Church of Wauldhausen for 160 minutes for a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Back from church at 11.20am both channels have something dazzling and international for us. For ITV it's The Magic Planet, a fantasy spectacular on ice about an astronaut falling in love with an alien queen. On BBC1 it's the premiere of The Little Convict, starring Rolf Har... oh. Oh no. *cough* Made in 1979, Harris, as an artist who is also Jake The Peg because why wouldn't he be, bisects a part-animated hybrid tale of the early convict settlers in Australia, fictional but based on fact and authentic enough to be shown in schools. That's followed by another imported cartoon making its UK debut, in this case one that would be shown four more times on the 25th (1987, 1989, 1991, 1993) Ziggy's Gift, a version of a long running US newspaper cartoon strip, was brought to life by the great Richard Williams as director, with Disney and Dreamworks animation emerituses Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito drawing and Harry Nilsson providing an original song for the soundtrack. Aired on ABC the previous December, it won the Outstanding Animated Program Emmy. Although the unfortunate blob isn't everyone's favourite it's likely better than the made for TV film ITV stuck on to cover an hour and three quarters, The Capture Of Grizzly Adams, aired the previous year as a three years on finale to the TV series in which the hirsute backwoodsman is shot, has his daughter taken away from him and is found guilty of murder. Merry Christmas!

Mind you, if you thought that was filler leading up to 2pm so as not to distract mum from the cooking (1983, that's how it operated then), BBC1 were after a Bugs Bunny five minutes (Abominable Snow Rabbit) offering a Children's Film Foundation cut, The Glitterball, in which two kids stumble across an alien being in the shape of a small silver ball with an appetite and a whole host of people after it, which offset its budget (the sphere was often a painted ping-pong ball) with technical skill - effects man Brian Johnson had worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space 1999. In 2010 it was aired at an Edinburgh film festival event for 'lost and forgotten films", reportedly "rediscovered after more than a year's detective work", which is a bit weird as it was shown on BBC1 twice more over the next four years. Channel 4 finally returned from Vienna just after it started with its own TV first, Busby Berkeley's biggest spectacular and the film that popularised Carmen Miranda's fruit hat, The Gang's All Here.

It's 2pm, so it must be Top Of The Pops, but cutbacks have struck as the usual mob-handed assortment of DJs is cut down to four, namely Simon Bates, Janice Long, Mr Light Entertainment Andy Peebles and, so you won't have seen it, Mike Smith introducing studio performances from Freeez, Shakin' Stevens, Eurythmics, Adam Ant, Bucks Fizz, Heaven 17, UB40 and your festive chart topper the Flying Pickets. And what is the natural antithesis to pop music? Royalty, of course! But while ITV trotted out Alistair Burnet's personal scrapbook for The Royal Year - which got the TV Times cover, the periodical being very much in love with the family - BBC2 kicked off its day quite lazily (where's your Play School mid-morning break-in, lads?) with Nobody Minded the Rain: Impressions Of Coronation Day, reminiscences of that day in 1953 that were first seen on the actual thirtieth anniversary back in June. And yet they wouldn't even air the Queen's speech until 9.50pm, not like the big two, instead opting for The Book Game, one of a series of four literary panel shows across the period in which Anthony Burgess, Germaine Greer, Susan Hill and Adam Mars-Jones "try to identify recited extracts and then give vent to their literary likes and dislikes."

Another big occasion followed the royal message, namely Terry Wogan's final Blankety Blank, seen off with a panel of at least semi-regulars, namely Sabina Franklyn, Roy Kinnear, Ruth Madoc, Patrick Moore, Beryl Reid and Freddie Starr. And yet a twist would emerge much later as one contestant is Captain Tom Moore, far from Sir, and also far from the prizes as he loses his round. An auspicious, and auspiciously placed, occasion for a programme Tel dropped out of as he felt it was running fast out of steam, but not one that people were going to engage with in large numbers.



Not when at the same time ITV was premiering Superman, which while only fourth in the day's ratings battle was ITV's big winner by some distance with 11.3 million viewers. Actually once Wogan and his wand had been dealt with BBC1 had its own film premiere for the family lazing around afternoon, and one that had been held off telly for longer than Clark and co. Yes, that'll be a Disney film, then, namely their first fully live action film, the 1950 version of Treasure Island. BBC2 and Channel 4 gamely stepped out of the way, the former with a repeat of the week's final part of The Great Palace: The Story Of Parliament, a festive first run Henry's Cat in which the titular drawling moggy helps Chris Rabbit prepare Christmas dinner for everyone until a pot of glue gets in the way, and the reliable standby of a classic black and white film in Meet Me In St Louis, the latter with Robert Llewellyn-voiced alien fantasy animated short Skywhales first aired in November, an episode of Fragile Earth dealing with the fauna and flora of Alaska and yet another TV premiere, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.

As we enter the evening, BBC1 follows the news, Jan Leeming's turn on the roster, with Jim'll Fix It promising "an 11 year old Hi-de-Hi! Yellowcoat, two pupils of a school for the blind riding at the Horse of the Year Show, an 8 year old Father Christmas and how to crack Christmas walnuts." And how do ITV ride off the back of their enormous film premiere? With Bullseye, of course! Kenneth Kendall, Anne Diamond and Judith Hann do the answering, Eric Bristow does the charity throwing and Anne Aston does the scoring. Channel 4 slings the Queen on at 6pm and follows it with those markers of everything innovative and alternative that early Channel 4 stood for, the Barron Knights. What's more, Twice Knightly was their second special for the channel that year, producing a series of videos for their most recent songs. Carol Lee Scott makes an undignified cameo, like there could be any other kind here. For its part BBC2 is reminding its viewers that it's a bitter world out there with Winter Days, an edition of The Natural World voiced by Robert Powell about how wildlife cope with the cold. Actually you'd have thought both would have made the effort in the 6pm onwards slot as Christmas Day fell on a Sunday and the God Slot still applied, so BBC1 goes to Peterborough Cathedral for a traditional Songs Of Praise Special and ITV follows the Prince and Princess of Wales - obsessed, we're telling you, to A Royal Concert of Carols, a hospital choir joined by with Marti Webb and classical pianist Peter Donohoe in aid of the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children.

As if ordained that the day's televisual victors would be a comedy double act, the third Christmas Day Two Ronnies followed the example of the previous year by being the day's most watched non-Queen programme. This was the lowest rating Christmas Day of the decade, BBC1 in a slump that would lead to the Michael Grade era and ITV maybe complacent with their big film, so that meant all of 12.3 million tuning in for Elton John, two singing Welsh train operatives, a taxidermist, a judo demonstration and the annual big closing sketch The Adventures of Archie, in which the titular Corbett character is transported to a desert island by a genie with only Carol Hawkins for company and is rescued by a Tardis piloted by Worzel Gummidge. See what they've done there?

So why were RonnieSquared so popular? Perhaps because, also for the second year running, ITV countered it with a bog standard episode of Play Your Cards Right and followed it with Jimmy Tarbuck's Christmas All Stars, a studio based variety spectacular as she is spoken, meaning Brucie appears again this time in music hall pianist mode alongside Cannon & Ball, Max Bygraves' song about the year, a mini-Game For A Laugh, Yarwood, Barrymore, Shaky and via satellite the Temptations, Andy Williams and the stars of Hart To Hart, Freeway inclusive. BBC2's form of entertainment is Rossini's comic opera version of Cinderella recorded at Glyndebourne over the summer, while Channel 4 put out an unwisely commissioned Christmas Special of Father's Day, a John Alderton family sitcom that seemed to be forgotten while it was on. Hey, one of its time failed comedy not good enough for your Christmas day evening? Good, because that's followed by a regular episode of Struggle, a local government satire of polarised politics in the GLC/Militant era starring Tim Piggot-Smith and written by Guardian political commentator Peter Jenkins, who wouldn't write anything else for TV but his daughter Amy created This Life. We're all for alternatives, but what the hell, Channel 4?

Taking third place in the viewership chart for the day was the extended special we referred to back in the first paragraph, a ninety minute All Creatures Great And Small (part two), three years after the third series, four before the fourth and rather splendidly getting a follow-up episode two years to the day later. The war has ended so the call-ups that ended matters in 1980 have been demobbed and James, Tristan and Siegfried have to readjust to civilian and vetenary life. Despite its undoubted popularity, it was maybe over on Four that the big event of the night was airing as remarkably, despite being released to British cinemas less than six months earlier and in the US in February, Channel 4 were able to premiere The King Of Comedy, mostly because it bombed at the box office and this was seen as the best way that the distributors could get some money back, which even given its blackness feels a very odd thing to think about the Scorsese/De Niro/Lewis modern acknowledged classic. Look, even now it's been freely available on YouTube for four years!

Had enough film premieres? Tough, there's two more to come, the first being The Revenge Of The Pink Panther, Sellers' last during his lifetime, on ITV at 9.10pm. But if a glut of new movies to TV is one regular from this era of the schedules on the 25th, a greater one was being established 25 minutes later on BBC1. Thicker Than Water was the third Only Fools And Horses Christmas special, which finished fifth in the ratings chart, but the first of fourteen to go out on the day itself. John Sullivan is finally getting to grips with the special form and it advances the family story and the "men without women" angle of the set-up, something it wouldn't come back to at Christmas for some time, as Del's dad Reg Trotter, played by the voice of Pigsy from Monkey Peter Woodthorpe, briefly retuns. It would turn out to be Grandad's final appearance, Lennard Pierce dying ten days short of a full year later while filming the next series.

That final first showing on British television follows the BBC1 news at 10.15pm and interestingly it's another film released to cinemas that very year, though you might argue Better Late Than Never doesn't quite have the reputation of The King Of Comedy. Directed by Bryan Forbes, it stars David Niven, who was long since suffering from motor neurone disease when he filmed it and died that July, as a faded entertainer who meets a ten year old claimed to be his granddaughter and heir, only for Art Carney to show up and claim to the the real thing and that they shared a partner when she was born. Lionel Jeffries as the attorney and Maggie Smith as the governess show up. It was never released in Britain and despite this elevated scheduling you can kind of see why. Over on BBC2 the comic chat of The Bob Monkhouse Show ended its first series with Bob feeding Norman Wisdom, Yakov Smirnoff - in Soviet Russia entertainment lights you! - and Bertice Reading, while Channel 4 classed up the joint with Tadada: Peter Brook's Paris Cabaret, his Bouffes du Nord theatre company doing cabaret songs.

As this of all days heads towards its end BBC2 switch off with the kind of thing you'd see slipped onto the screen quite often over the festive period, the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. ITV hire the King's Singers and send them to Harewood House to declaim The King's Christmas before launching into a variety of overnight repeats, bottom of the basket films and spare festive messages, including everywhere A Different Christmas wherein "Gillian Reynolds chats to Jimmy Savile at Stoke Mandeville Hospital". Urgh. Channel 4 signs off with Peace On Earth, a gathering in Jerusalem Manger Square with Laurence Olivier reading and Dame Flora Robson narrating, while an earthier kind of singing closes BBC1's day, The Spinners at York. How come the Spinners always seemed to get the last thing on Christmas night slot around then?

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Radio choice

Radio 1, once Mark Page has done the early shift, once more turns to Tony Blackburn for his traditional Great Ormond Street-bound morning show, accompanied by Keith Chegwin taking "flying visit to Belfast, Aberdeen, Liverpool and Norwich", so they're persisting with the idea they're making all those journeys in real time. Peter Powell does the mid-morning before the oven gloves of supposedly serving up Christmas dinner to his colleages are handed over from DLT to Mike Read. Steve Wright hangs on to the afternoon with "Steve's characters in festive mood, with the Afternoon Boys unashamedly bawling carols... and will Damian enjoy his soya bean turkey?" Nothing as hilarious as the concept of vegetarianism, eh. But then Radio 1 remembers that it's Sunday - you'll notice that a lot of regular Sunday programming remains, and far from just the religious stuff - so Tommy Vance announces the chart and Annie Nightingale does a festive request show as per, leading to 10pm and The Adrian Juste Christmas Morning Show. Yes, wacky funster, we see what you've done there.

Don Maclean gets up for 5am on Radio 2 and he's waking up kids unnecessarily at The Children's Hospital, Birmingham alongside usual Sunday early jock George Ferguson. Presumably it's that early because the religious requirement means the actual breakfast show is a god slot, with usual Sunday morning contributor Bishop Bill Westwood - yes, Tim's dad - and St Paul's Cathedral School Choir. Most of the day is actually much like any other Sunday at the time, what with David Jacobs' usual Melodies For You and Desmond Carrington's Rainbow Connection, in which Jim Henson puppeteers the lifeless body of... oh, no, just two hours of his usual All Time Greats playlist on a colours theme. Lunchtime is home to Chris Emmett's annual panto, this year Sleeping Beauty starring Stacy Dorning from Black Beauty, who at the time would have been coming off Thames sitcom Keep It In The Family, with Kenneth Connor, Frank Thornton, June Whitfield, Nerys Hughes, Maureen Lipman, and obviously Tel'n'JY. Ed Stewart takes some annual dedications from the forces overseas at 2pm and the Cliff Adams Singers pop in for their usual 4pm Sing Something Simple half hour leading up to the last in the series, half an hour earlier than usual just to catch people out, of The Fosdyke Saga, a reversioning of Bill Tidy's Daily Mirror strip with Miriam Margolyes, David Threlfall and Enn Reitel among the cast. That's done with in fifteen minutes before Charlie Chester, Christmas At The Dome (no idea), Christmas Night with Hinge & Bracket, then back to normal from 7.30pm with Max Jaffa and the Palm Court Orchestra's Grand Hotel, god slot Sunday Half-Hour and Your Hundred Best Tunes. The hour before Pete Murray's Late Show at 11pm lets its hair down in the way only Eighties Radio 2 could, with easy listening piano duo Rostal & Schaefer and the BBC radio orchestra commandeering Mantovani Magic.

Radio 3 is taking it easy and at first obvious, with Your Christmas Choice at 9am, Christmas Music at 10.30am. After that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir George Solti play two Mozart piano concertos, followed by an old Schubert recital, Spanish Songs and Arias by the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra plus Placido Domingo, a Beethoven piano sonata, the BBC Symphony lot doing Haydn, A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in case you forgot what day it was, a reading of the play Sir Thomas More that even the billing admits is only here because Shakespeare did some punching up work on it, Brahms from Salzburg conducted by Herbert von Karajan with a sermon by Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie in the interval, and finally Bach on the ol' joanna, as we're sure the continuity announcer would have called it.

As usual Peter Barkworth opens up Radio 4 with a nativity reading for a bit before self-explanatory Sunday, "which takes a seasonal look at the Christian Church" and ends with a whole load of festive bells up to the Queen at 9.30am. Morning Service is a Salisbury Cathedral Eucharist; the other side of the Archers omnibus Christmas Briers has Richard of that name unwrap - of course he'd unwrap - some comedy clips. News Review of the Year follows the one o'clock news, and that's evidently too much emotional effort for the time and day as The Countryside at Christmas, which follows, is a repeat from the previous evening, wherein Wynford Vaughan-Thomas tells country tales largely of yore including "the story of a young couple hoping to promote goats' milk". Everyone settled? Good, time for Afternoon Theatre, Christmas At Dingley Dell, a bowdlerism of The Pickwick Papers and some of Dickens' Christmas stories with Helen Atkinson-Wood, who began the year in OTT, the only immediately recognisable name in the cast. Yet more fanciful seasonal readings follow at 4.15pm with A Birthday At Bethlehem, in which "Thora Hird and Peter Goodwright invite you to eavesdrop on some of the likely and unlikely conversations between ordinary folk who may or may not have taken part in the first Christmas story.". Hedging your bets well there. A repeat of a documentary about roses leads into News Quiz of the Year Part 2, Alan Coren, John Wells and Joan Bakewell among Simon Hoggart's extended panel. Christmas 43 looks back at the radio of forty years previously - what a stupid waste of everyone's time that endeavour is - up to the news, Lord Soper visiting a Crisis centre and then Helpston Cracked Pippins Northamptonshire Christmas. The ambassador was found dead that evenin... no, hold on, it's a kind of folk ballad by George Deacon based on the work of Northants poet John Clare. This features the day's second credit for the excellently and seasonally named Clive Panto, this time as Beelzebub. We need to hear this. From 7pm there's the latest part of The Magic Carpet, a serial telling the story of the development of the R101 airship, festive literature celebration All Our Christmasses with Timothy Bateson among the readers, and then... lord, Glyn Worsnip suggests Christmas Isn't What it Was. "In the old days, Christmas was a real festival. Children believed in Santa Claus and valued the modest gifts he brought. After the traditional lunch, everyone enjoyed charades and nobody quarrelled. Today Christmas is a commercial event with children greedy for expensive presents, adults greedy for food and drink and no thought for love and goodwill to men. True or false?" 1983, remember. 9pm brings a radio version of a farce, A Cuckoo In The Nest, starring Joan Hickson, Freddie Jones, Ian Lavender and one of Percy Edwards' voices; the 10.30pm news is followed by Behind The Chalet School, in which Kate O'Mara is among those celebrating the titular endless series of books by Elinor Brent-Dyer about a Nazi-era Austrian international boarding school. The religious quotient of the day concludes with the Bishop of Middlesborough reflecting on The Festival Of Peace and A People's Carol, Kathy Staff presenting the south Yorkshire hymnbook that pre-dates those the Victorians brought us. And not even a Desert Island Discs to be seen.

On This Day: Christmas Day 1993

ITV were in a right state in 1993. The franchise changeovers at the start of the year had brought discontent and the suspicion that the companies involved had spent too much on the licensing and, maybe consequently, not enough on entertainment. A recession had struck down advertising spend, an area where ITV often didn't make their best profits in good years despite the seasonal bump in viewership as it's a day when shops aren't open and the general tone advertisers look to exploit is caught between presents and food for the big day and the sales and holidays of the post-Xmas period. The previous year a lot of ITV's biggest shows had seen their internally made festive specials scheduled either side of the big day and that was apparent in 1993 with not just three episodes of Corrie bridging the 25th but Gladiators, Poirot, Dame Edna and a Les Dawson all-star tribute, all surely light entertainment suitable for a family audience, collapsed around the living room from overindulging, packing out Boxing Day instead. So John Birt's first Christmas as BBC DG and Alan Yentob's first as BBC1 controller - he'd accidentally told a press briefing "Christmas is a BBC institution", which might go to prove that old maxim about revealing slips of the tongue - saw them have the field practically to themselves, but little did we anticipate how little effort there would be at times.

In these 24 hour broadcasting times we're used to most channels kicking off early with the usual palette of kids' entertainments, which on ITV means a morning of the GMTV service Rise And Shine and Saturday Disney with Stuart Miles pre-Blue Peter and Carmen Ejogo very pre-True Detective, featuring Rosie & Jim, Muppet Babies, Count Duckula, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chip 'n Dale and Darkwing Duck, plus Bad Boys Inc somewhere along the line. BBC1 put Philippa Forrester in charge of the Children's BBC suite and sent her to the Czech Republic, illustrating how them lot celebrate the season in between linking Henry's Cat, 1987 Australian doll-comes-to-life tale Candy Claus, Mythical Magical Creatures - a series that had been running throughout the period putting traditional animal stories to song - Felix the Cat, Fox series Peter Pan and the Pirates (with Tim Curry as Captain Hook!) and The Flintstones. Channel 4 meanwhile fling everything they have in the pile at it, namely The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Heathcliff, Bobobobs, what seems to be an adaptation of festive song Up On The House Top, 1991 Canadian special The Boy Who Dreamed Christmas, moving version of Toronto comic strip For Better Or Worse, Melchoir tale White Camel, and before those last two a hardy perennial of this feature, not least this year - yes, it's Ziggy's Gift, the newspaper column turned by Richard Williams with the aid of Harry Nilsson into life. Sad news, however, as after exactly a decade this is the sixth and last time, all but one on the 25th, where it will go out on British TV.

BBC2 rise at 7am and buy themselves time, and try to win a few childless and ageing viewers, with a double bill of John Wayne western Rio Lobo - strange day and time for it - and the one that wasn't Holiday Inn, White Christmas. Channel 4 meanwhile make a gesture at keeping the youth onside with an episode of Saved By The Bell, then give up and stick The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery on. That, you suspect, is because the Saturday morning programmes, that being the day of the week, have arrived, and bravely Live & Kicking On Christmas Day has taken up the Noel mantle by going out live (apparently, we have no direct evidence of this) and dragging Take That in, unbilled in advance for reasons we'll come back to, as well as Eternal which seems weird given half of them are devout Christians. In contrast to useful it starts at 8.30am and lasts ninety minutes, after which the winning trio of Roger Royle, Bernard Hill and Sally Ann Matthews drag a thousand people into a tent in Liverpool and call it The Giant Nativity Festivity, wherein carols are sung and the greatest story ever told is told by circus performers. ITV meanwhile hold their horses with a first thing (well, 9.25am when GMTV hand the reigns over) Morning Worship from Cathedral Church of St Peter, Bradford and fill out ten minutes with Disney Cartoon Time before a very different cartoon studio tie-in, What's Up Doc? The oft forgotten series had actually been winning the ratings battle for the time being, possibly doing so today too despite only lasting fifty minutes as BBC1 were giving another appropriate airing to the Albert Finney Scrooge, and not yet having been gutted of its production team and menagerie of characters following a dispute with their STV paymasters, Andy, Pat and an about to go on maternity leave Yvonne were joined by... Take That. And, er, Gary Glitter.

And, well, that's about the size of the effort ITV put into it. If you think just sticking the regular suite of morning shows is lazy now you ain't seen nothing yet. The (ITV) Chart Show did always have an end of year special... but this isn't it, that's the following week. This is a plain standard edition revealing the week's chart and so forth. Even more egregious what what followed at 12.30pm, namely an edition of Movies, Games And Videos, in which Steve Priestley voiced over a package of film clips and EPGs intended as nothing other than filler, this edition cycling through some of the recent cinema offerings and a few things expected in early 1994 with very little acknowledgement of the season. And they kept it in place.

At least BBC2 didn't have to pretend to be offering a major channel's service when it filled an hour with highlights from the summer's athletics world championships, though that was followed by a preview of the actual highlight of their week, Inside The Wrong Trousers, the latest Wallace & Gromit adventure (remember that, it may come in useful later) premiering at 5.20pm on Boxing Day. A reminder follows of the evil outside world in The Way Of The Cross In Sarajevo - "in the devastated city, a remarkable Mass is held as two priests follow a contemporary road to Cavalry" - before dropping the hammer on the family's emotion limits by showing The Railway Children. Channel 4 for their part come back from St Trinians into another early 90s favoured filler, the first part of The Third Genius, a two-part profile of Harold Lloyd. The Pete Smith Specialities cupboard must have been bare. It continues into the afternoon with the curiously titled animation Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus, traditional seasonal music in Christmas In Rome, and more black and white memorialising in The One, The Only Groucho.

But do you really want something big when the turkey and trimmings are in? BBC1 didn't think so for a lot of the 90s and into the 00s, hence the Christmas Comedy Cracker, putting together some light festive fun from previous years, in this case the 1985 Two Ronnies, the one that ends with the musical Alice In Wonderland set-piece, and the turkey dinner Dad's Army. 5.6 million watched. That's why they keep repeating it. Top Of The Pops follows as traditional at 2pm, but the warhorse is lame and struggling at the moment as this was the only full year of the Year Zero revamp, Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin by now the only presenters on the roster, introducing studio performances from West End featuring Sybil, 2 Unlimited, Snow, the Bluebells, Ace Of Base, Gabrelle, Take That, Bitty McLean, M-People and Meat Loaf via satellite, all of course building up to the Blobbified number one. BBC2 offered their own big pop star in parallel with an episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. ITV for their early afternoon pre-Queen part fill 55 minutes with a Bugs Bunny double bill followed by Six Little Angels, Phillip Schofield catching up with the Walton sextuplets, just like someone from ITV would every three weeks or so.



So The Queen has her usual things to say, mostly about the hope of world peace (clearly passe, the speech losing a total of five million viewers compared to 1991), and BBC1 follow as they often did, with the fifth Noel's Christmas Presents - this is the one where the Hollies play in someone's garden. With Bond being saved for the Licence To Kill premiere on 3rd January, ITV's follow-up is The Never-Ending Story, not a premiere but also the first demonstration that, news aside (Libby Weiner taking the ITN rota short straw), there will be one actual programme between the message to subjects and 11.40pm. Something else notable this year is, as part of a Christmas In New York themed season, Quentin Crisp became the first person to give Channel 4's Alternative Queen's Message, as it was then known, in the days where they were brave/man enough to run it at 3pm, though they do run the actual speech much earlier than usual at 4.15pm maybe just in case. Theirs lasts longer too, right through to 3.15pm and Christmas Star, a rigorous investigation into the Star of Bethlehem. BBC2 diverts itself to paying tribute to Rudolf Nureyev, who died six days into the year, firstly with a documentary tribute involving colleagues, then his 1966 ballet verson of Romeo And Juliet.

BBC1's big family film premiere, which has to wait out until the oddly late seeming time of 4.05pm, is Back To The Future III, though you imagine there'd be some generational battling over the remote twenty minutes in when Channel 4 let The Snowman loose, though they'd be switching back when it was superceded by - again, happy Christmas, Ange - the Brookside Omnibus, though a repeat of A Grand Day Out on BBC2 in advance of tomorrow's evil penguin capers would have to cut a substantial audience away from the last twenty minutes off of Seamus McFly and co. We can't imagine many were invested in the one actual TV programme ITV deigned to let interrupt their movie schedule, Beadle's Daredevils, a one-off of Beadlebum introducing 'death-defying' stunts.

John Humphrys does the BBC news which we imagine he was delighted about, followed on BBC1 by, ten years after its first outing on the 25th, Only Fools And Horses. Now two years on from the final regular episode of the show, this is the last special before the "final" Christmas trilogy (not to be confused with the final FINAL Christmas trilogy), John Sullivan bemoaning to Radio Times that he could easily write a new series immediately but David Jason was making Frost and with Nicholas Lyndhurst entering his time travel era he wouldn't be able to get anything on in 1994. Fatal Extraction is a curious one to go out on regular Trotter travails, given Raquel leaves Del over his drinking and Del dates a dental receptionist who he thinks then starts stalking him and accidentally starts a riot, reputedly with Aled Jones among its participants. 85 minutes is far too long for the plot and it's justly overlooked as the one between Peckham Spring and Batman & Robin, but it's obviously a national event and with a day best of 19.59 million viewers - albeit half a million less year on year - trounced ITV's premiere of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, with the Northern Ballet Theatre's version of A Christmas Carol holding up the classy end for BBC2 and Christmas With Luciano Pavarotti, recorded in Mexico's Notre Dame Cathedral, likewise on Channel 4.

Eastenders famously set out to deliberately ruin people's Christmas Day with a set of divorce papers and that's what they came to live by as this time around Phil Mitchell embarks on an affair with his green card wife Nadia and Aidan threatens to throw himself off the top of a block of flats. None of that put off 17.4 million people, fourth highest for the day. At the same time BBC2 debut the underrated Michael Palin Englishman abroad bringing his troubles (Connie Booth) back with him film American Friends, while Channel 4 similarly premiere Cousin Bobby, Jonathan Demme's 1992 documentary film about his Episcopalian minister cousin. Films? Yeah, ITV have them out the wazoo and another to offer at 8pm, Kevin Costner's building/coming baseball fantasy Field Of Dreams, ITV's most watched programme of the day with 5.8 million tuned in, which placed it ninth on the day. BBC1 also exhibits big American dreams of a different kind, Birds Of A Feather going to Hollywood when they come to believe the father who put them up for adoption might be George Hamilton. He and George Wendt play themselves, a young Amma Asante doesn't. 19.4 million watched, running Only Fools close for the day honours (One Foot In The Algarve the next day topped both for the festive week) Does a half hour short count as a film premiere too? Sod it, Channel 4 called Swan Song one at 8.30pm, the Kenneth Branagh directed Chekhov two-hander starring John Gielgud and a beardy Richard Briers having an Oscar nomination to wield as proof.

By now it's 9pm. Channel 4 go back to their roots with Placido Domingo in Puccini's wild west opera La Fanciulla del West and BBC2 string together the Queen with BSL, the latest in five minute verite series Christmas In Sarajevo and Selected Exits, a Bookmark dramatisation by Alan Plater of comic writer Gwyn Thomas' autobiography starring Anthony Hopkins and his daughter Abigail Harrison on screen together for the first time. Somewhat more populist is Ghost, the day's actual big film premiere on BBC1 capturing 18.5 million, certainly a lot more than ITV's final first look of the day, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan neo-noir D.O.A.

As people begin to slope off for the night, BBC1 finishes off with - of course - the 1977 Morecambe & Wise which still pulled in 10.4 million viewers to put it seventh for the day, "contemporary meditation for Christmas Day" Watching Flocks for the usual late God slot and the 1958 Cushing/Lee The Hound Of The Baskervilles. BBC2 dredge up a three year old episode from French & Saunders' first series, Bunuel classic Belle de Jour and a horror for the night, 1945's Hangover Square. Channel 4 repeat Quentin Crisp's words, then repeat Robin Williams Live at the Met, start a horribly timed Marx Brothers season with Monkey Business and, for some reason at 2.15am, the LA Law episode in which the accused in an assault case only speaks through a ventriloquist's dummy. As for ITV, there's a very late South Bank Show produced tribtue to Irving Berlin which of course is called Dreaming Of A White Christmas and then we're into regional variations valhalla in which most regions take Airport '77, some Wet Wet Wet In Concert, Central a series of films no other part of the country bothered with and on LWT another clips and VO job, Cinema Cinema Cinema. Somehow those together say more about this day in ITV history, when their audience share of 21.7% was a full forty down on BBC1's to the IBA's open criticism, than we ever could.

Radio choice

In what seems a bit like nobody else would make the commitment Lynn Parsons does breakfast on Radio 1 right through to midday and the usual inhabitant throwing Simon Mayo's Christmas Lunch. But never mind them, there's bigger fish following at 2pm with The Take That Christmas Take-Away - archived by the estimable Andy Walmsley - "with all your Christmas messages and all their favourite records, eating a Christmas curry and having a great time." You know, Christmas curry. You get the impression someone thought of a clever title and then worked backwards in the wrong direction. The natural follow-on to the lads is of course Johnnie Walker, reviewing a year of his show for four hours until the necessity strikes for religious content which leads to God In The Flesh, Glasgow Christian community the Late Late Service writing and performing songs for "a contemporary, hard-hitting religious experience that takes a look at what Christmas means in 1993", followed by Simon Bates' Whitney Houston Gospel Special. Bates had actually left Radio 1 in October after resigning so presumably made an incredible pitch to Matthew Bannister. That just left John Peel, playing the entire Festive 50 from 10.30pm to 2am.

After Roger Royle does the early shift Don Maclean takes his usual Radio 2 breakfast position, except this year he's live from Manger Square, Bethlehem, as he "celebrates the new-found peace in the area and talks to some of those involved in the agreement, including Yasser Arafat". *sucks air through teeth* Ken Bruce and Michael Aspel share mid-morning duties as per 1992 with The News Huddlines' White Christmas taking up the late lunch half-hour up to, oh my, Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees Up, with guests including Marti Caine, their old mate Albert Lee and, in a battle of the novelties, the Barron Knights. Christmas Concert Classics is the vague title for the afternoon light music with Young Musician of the Year, violinist Yuri Zhislin, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, followed by Gillian Reynolds picking her favourite Christmas radio. The Daniel O'Donnell supremacy is just beginning to leak into British cultural spheres which is why they have one of his concerts to block out an hour from 5pm. Again for the second year running we're forced to confront the mental image of Alan Titchmarsh's Christmas Glow, a series of readings and traditional song from Hagley Hall. There really does seem to be an obsession with the way things used to be, which may well be par for the course of Radio 2 in the years immediately before its hip revamp, but half an hour of memories entitled Christmas Past at 7pm is stretching it far. Things are immediately taken back down a gear by David Jacobs and the BBC Big Band, then David Mellor predicting his radio future with favourite classical music and the 11pm sudden switch to Gloria Gaynor's Christmas Concert, a gospel concert recorded at the Hippodrome, with Alan Dedicoat and his delicate voice seeing us into the night.

It's fair to say Radio 3 went right in on branding the day, what with A Christmas Stocking to open, the last door of an Advent Calendar, an 8am Mass for Christmas and Spirit Of The Age, "a selection of lighthearted early music to accompany Christmas lunch" following the seemingly irreplaceable Record Review. This lunch must have been very early because it ends at 1pm and is followed, in Table Talk, by a discussion on the act of roasting right before A Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols. Into the afternoon with some BBC Symphony Orchestra cuts, Christmas Music Old and New, Jazz Record Requests and the supposedly annual but we couldn't find it in the last couple of years Christmas Quiz, hosted by the acclaimed critic Jeremy J Beadle (actual Jeremy Beadle's middle name is also a J but leave that be) before the station goes Live From The Met for a Barber Of Seville production sung in in Italian, "in association with the Texaco Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network". While they're in America there's the first of five John Cheever Stories, the short story writer brought to life by William 'Porkins' Hootkins. Forward an hour and in a great break with the seasonal choral tradition, it's the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded at Royal Festival Hall to close the day.

John Walters! As we've said before his is a name that should be far more celebrated these days for many reasons, the latest of which is that Radio 4 gave him the morning for John Walters' Xmas Fayre, seemingly live and advertising "four mystery time zone guests, some literary consequences, and radio's first ever crossword of the air". Things get back to normal once comfortably clear of 9am, which Christmas Day Morning Service coming from a Crisis shelter and linking up with Don Maclean in Bethlehem, which is a neat signpost into It Was Christmas Day In The Empire, Harry Thompson delving into the archive of festive radio greetings from around the world. Sue Townsend has penned a new Adrian Mole short story, Mole Cooks His Goose, for the occasion and we're delighted to see it was produced by John Tydeman. The Michael Rosen helmed children's book programme Treasure Islands goes seasonal - Christmas Treasures, of course - with guests Martin Jarvis, Rachel Billington and Helen Lederer, and then a "did we have to be there?" moment occurs in Pick of the Week That Wasn't, where "Father Christmas looks back at some seasonal broadcasts that might have been". The only name attached is the producer's, who we don't know, but it makes a neat combination with the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Christmas Special, featuring a Mornington Crescent nativity, and the compilation News Quiz Of The Year. The Queen and news interrupt at 1pm but can only hold the fascination at bay for so long before another programme we really want to hear right now, The Discreet Charm Of The BBC, "a celebration of BBC radio at its worst", and then The Masterson Inheritance Christmas Special, the Comedy Store Players' improvised historical drama. In the 2.30pm drama slot begins a season of plays set in 1920s theatreland, Christmas At The Ritz, which is followed by Laughter And Hope And Sock In The Eye, sadly not an oblique playlet based on Stephen Tin Tin Duffy's Kiss Me but a repeat of a documentary about Dorothy Parker. There is, as you can tell, a lot going on on this day, and we're only just up to 4.45pm and What A Difference A Day Makes, an "aural snapshot of the days of the week". At least we're on surer footing with With Great Pleasure, baritone Thomas Allen picking his favourite prose, then after the 6pm news Fourth Column, Simon Hoggart's version of a broadsheet diary, Quote Unquote and a 1988 production of The Taming Of The Shrew with Stephen Tompkinson and Robert Glenister down the cast list. Music In Mind, sometime King's Singer Brian Kay's music show, really doesn't look at home on Radio 4, let alone taking up space on this night. Three different Liverpool-based religious figures consider the season on Ten To Ten, then after the news is Humbug!, a repeated documentary about the lasting appeal of A Christmas Carol, Famous For 15 Minutes talking to people who were just that - Bernie The Bolt tonight - Personal Records sifting through a notable's record collection and a dramatisation of F Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish to finish.

Radio 5, in its original tricks-performing mongrel form, already knew it would be onto its final Christmas Day, and it only had four as it was. Cliff Morgan opens up the morning with the prosaically titled We Wish You A Merry Christmas, then the children's show Get Set takes requests with Steve Johnson off Motormouth. Children's Christmas Carols bisect midday, followed by a Christmas edition of Talking Poetry, two hours of BFBS and a simulcast of Nine Lessons And Carols. Then we're into the readings that the station made some of its original name with, namely a series of kids' stories about astrological signs Spinning Stars, Philip Schofield reading Joseph And His Coat of Many Colours and one of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. Then at 6pm is the Christmas Extravaganza of what we reckon is the most obscure show in the Mark & Lard canon, Cult Radio, a ramshackle series of road trips loosely related to cult concerns in which uniquely Marc Riley was the superior figure. That lasts a full hour and a half, up to Afropop Worldwide Caribbean Christmas Special. Le Top, the weekly European chart, kept its place, then after the regular airing of US detective series Nightbeat the most forgotten of the stripped Big Noise At Night shows, The Way Out, from Birmingham fights the Medium Wave late night interference.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 24: The Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show, 1984

And for a grand finale, a classic. Now it's proven from the Deal Or No Deal revival that Noel Edmonds by himself is not sufficient to sink a format and ITV on Christmas mornings is all pre-recorded versions of the regular magazine lifestyle gubbins, maybe someone should revive the concept of a big live overarching spectacle. Five years of memorably ambitious broadcasting, things involving satellite broadcasting that we're earnestly told "have not been done before" and knowing jumpers start here with a very nice helicopter shot swoop from TV Centre to the Telecom Tower. In fact the pilot must be working triple time as it carries on over the capital and at one point to a tower block so a caller can wave at it, then to Gerry Cottle's Circus with a barely audible call to the boss with all his employees gathered outside performing in a cold and wet concrete car park to nobody else at ground level until the confetti cannon breaks, and finally to Tony Blackburn exchanging quips in Richmond Park while flanked by women holding balloons and wearing a T-shirt that we're far too far away to see the source of. More successful is a link to a live party in the Falklands, with long distance reunions and one very bearded bloke who's having his facial hair cut off and clearly cannot recall agreeing to this, which we never see the outcome of. The chairman of BT is shown his family in Australia and also the limitations of his company's newest technology. Mike Smith is at Charing Cross Hospital with Kim Wilde and also Howard Jones with his band walking through and gladhanding in seemingly every ward to Like To Get To Know You Well. The Whirly Wheeler scales as much of the Tower as he's allowed ("everybody else around London is trying to get as high as possible" - hold on, Noel, what was that?), Michael Fish is on the roof of TVC, the Thompson Twins and Strawberry Switchblade - who, it should be pointed out, had not reached the top 40 yet - are up the Tower and Noel promises a chance to have your favourite moments repeated but only manages a couple, including a precursor to Keyboard Cat. Controlled chaotic, partially unneccesary, and entirely magnificent. And a year later they did it again by sending Helen Fielding to the Sudan and Feargal Sharkey into the skies without working playback, but that's another story. Noel up the tower to end our first Christmas video extravaganza to Noel up the tower to conclude this one - seems a neat completion of the circle, doesn't it?

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 23: Holiday Startime, 1970

Time for a good old-fashioned variety showcase spectacular from LWT, not so shiny floor as the Colour Strike, which becomes no less an astonishing concept for all the times we write about it, meant it all came out in monochrome. Hosted by Maggie Fitzgibbon, who that year had her own LWT variety vehicle Maggie's Place and starred in wartime drama Manhunt, the most astonishing input comes from Vincent Price, sporting his Abominable Dr Phibes tache, giving a lecture about Christmas leftovers surrounded by empty bottles that may not have been props before being visited by fairy godmother Hattie Jacques. What else? Plenty else. Reg Varney at the piano, a Thora Hird and Arthur Lowe shopkeeper sketch, Les Dawson, Max Jaffa and Ted Ray with comedy violin bows at dawn, Peter Cook as the late EL Wisty and being interviewed by Jimmy Hill about his playing style in a self-penned Private Eye-referencing sketch, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball's Jazzmen at cross purposes and some once remarkably rare Bee Gees.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 22: All Star Record Breakers, 1977

We've inducted the two most famous parts of this show before, the concrete doughnut mass tapdance and Kenneth Williams with the big horn (and also Sarah Greene's big moment from 1981, plus the inaugural and non-star 1972 Christmas show), but you don't get to see a full show of the Children's BBC team letting their collective hair down and dignity go. Notably the pair of standouts come within its first ten minutes - yeah, we thought you could only end with the tapdancers and Roy on the fountain, but ours is not to question why. Instead the bulk of the programme puts Roy at the centre of the life story and work of Hans Christian Andersen, casting Kenneth as the storyteller and the multi-talented glory of Castle backed by a gang of pro-am actors and singers including John Noakes, Peter Purves and Lesley Judd, John Craven and Lucy Mathen, Cheggers, Johnny Morris, Jan Hunt, Julie Stevens, Maggie Henderson and Noel Edmonds as an inchworm.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 21: Blue Peter, 1990

You're going to have to work round this one, so go to 1:25 for the Newsround team in song, then skip an ancient cartoon that Andi Peters has to apologise for being in black and white to 10:09 where two lesser members of Beats International have glad tidings for all viewers followed by the thing we're all here for, the Yvette/John/Diane-Louise team pushed up to 3.25pm for a show that, as we've said before when we covered 1987, you can set your watch by, from opening viewer drawings to closing silver ship and crib. This year's appeal was a bring and buy for Romanian orphans, Fielding popping over there to see how the season is worshipped, while the make is John's Christmas dinner mats and napkin holders. But what about the song? A Christmas show slot that's been gradually slipped in over recent years, it entails Diane-Louise Jordan singing that festive classic You Can Do Magic. Nobody can surely have recovered from that in time for the death blow of John Leslie rapping. They've even brought prime entertainer Mark Curry back to help out, not for the last time either as a festive special returnee or in bringing Caron Keating back with him.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 20: Basil's Christmas Cruise, 1980

Six years on from the last time we saw Basil's festive fantasia, Basil and forgotten final BBC sidekick (not counting the relaunch) Billy Boyle are on the maiden cruise of a luxury liner that thanks to a carelessly edited front page we can practically nail to the day, some time between 17th and 23rd February 1933. Being a 1930s tale there's a stolen diamond, a wrongly accused fox and in somewhat of a casting coup Michael Hordern in a number of roles, plus stage regular and TV comedy foil Dilys Watling, not to mention ragtime jazz just for the kids and a Legs & Co routine. A decade after the first this was the vulpine gagsmith's eighth and last Christmas special (again, ignore the reboot)

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 19: Keith and Orville's Christmas Circus, 1985

A couple of years ago we went round the Harris household's underattended until it was too late Christmas party; this time we're going out with them to the big top with Harris as the ringmaster where Keith, undeterred by Cuddles with legs in delivering a big opening number climaxing with "tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight" - optimistic there - before Orville DRIVES HIMSELF ON STAGE and immediately sings a chorus of Nelly The Elephant. Except... this turns out to be Orville's dream and in fact they're now living in a traveller's caravan that's never been part of the Harrisverse before. It turns out Harris' family used to own a circus which was lost in a loss of will to unscrupulous types assisted by Eli Woods, one of those rare times he's not doing that one Jimmy James routine with Roy Castle's small box and the other one. The rest of the special vacilitates between fantasy of setting up a circus anyway and the ambition of who it might attract as acts, namely balancers, dancers and Dana, the latter two of which apparently count as circus regulars. It does, of course, all work out well in the end, if you count Orville singing White Christmas, again, before SIX bipedal Dippys appear as the resident orchestra, in a Portsmouth Sinfonia sense. Get used to that villain's name, you'll hear the punchline coming light years off.