On This Day: Christmas Day 1985

Something about 1985 feels like a watershed. Obviously there had been a good decade of classic Christmas Day schedules, more or less, by this point, but a lot of what had seeped in around the holiday fortnight in the previous few years - extended specials, live broadcasts, genuine scheduling battles led by the aggressive planning of Michael Grade now into his second Christmas as head of BBC1 - is well on the way towards a peak. Throw in that the two most watched programmes of Christmas week (albeit including omnibus figures) were the Christmas Eve and Boxing Day episodes of Eastenders, no doubt the filip for the move the following year that would overhaul festive soap attitudes entirely, and the sea change for the next decade-plus is apparent.

As usual the prime independent channel is up much earlier than the Beeb, 6am, but doesn't quite know what to do with the time, and as usual you'd wonder how much of it is actually live as after an hour and a half of headlines and prevarication Anne and Nick front TV-am's Christmas Party "with the stars and their families". How much is this the case if not only are the Diamond and Owen families shipping in in the early hours but so are the nearest and dearest of Rolf Harris, Faith Brown, Rustie Lee, Roy Castle, Rory Bremner and that 80s kids' favourite Russ Conway, not to mention the Salvation Army Band and two different choirs? Meanwhile Wincey Willis and Henry Kelly are at "a national children's home" apparently with Adam Ant, Paul King, Michael Barrymore and Five Star. We know TV-am was awash with money at this point but that's a lot of people to be paying triple time to. At least Paul McCartney and Cliff Richard got away with "a special Christmas greeting", probably not together.

BBC1 ships up fashionably late from 8am and still pauses to give itself time to wake up with Pages From Ceefax for 35 minutes ahead of the traditional for the time starter Play School, which this year piles into Wayne Jackman's studio house, complete with Jonathan Cohen at the piano. Jackman as one Dr Wacky followed by unnecessary glove puppet Bingo could well be overbearing but the charm quickly reasserts itself, especially when Carol Chell, Iain Lauchlan with his guitar and an actual donkey arrive to ground the show back in traditional means by telling the nativity story in differing ways. It's a lot more wholesome and festive than what follows, the first episode aired in Britain of bloody Muppet Babies, in which Animal disappears and Baby Kermit starts to fulfil the Indiana Frog fantasies he didn't carry into adulthood. It's not even the first episode. Is everything alright in here? No! Get Bryan Murray and some children around a tree for a Christmas Knock! Knock! immediately! Oh, you have. Just after one Hensonalia has finished another starts once TV-am gives way to ITV - which, Moderator's Christmas Message in Scotland aside, is in regional unity for the day - with a repeat of The Bells of Fraggle Rock, and if that's not enough for the kids it's followed by a new Dangermouse episode, Journey to the Earth's... Cor! only Christmassy insomuch as it's set at the North Pole where the mechanism that keeps the world turning is being undermined and gives David Jason a chance to do his Yorkshire accent. Not the last time he'll travel north today.

Once the children are sated it's time for grown-up religion, but BBC1 has eschewed the usual trip to a cathedral by sending their Sunday morning show This Is The Day, of bread and candle request fame, to a Birmingham viewer's house, Bishop of Stepney in tow. ITV for their part send Morning Service to Kenton Methodist Church in Harrow. "It wouldn't be Christmas without Disney" proclaims TV Times but BBC1 got there first, their film from 10.05am being The Gnome-Mobile, the slapstick reunion of the Banks children from Mary Poppins in service to gnomes losing their livelihood. ITV catches up with Walt at 11am with a couple of shorts leading into... oh, it's just The Black Hole, just three years earlier ITV's big Christmas Day evening movie premiere, now filling a gap up to lunchtime. In any case Channel 4 is up early for them at the time, also 11am, and they've got something new. Just a shame it's Mister Skeeter, not a spin-off for Scooter's sister in Muppet Babies but a Children's Film Unit workaday tale about two children's home residents who run away and meet an elderly eccentric. While all this has been going on BBC2 has had the Pages From Ceefax snooze button on since 9am and can only rouse themselves at 11.30am with a repeat of a Horizon from a year earlier about intra-war Grand Prix cars.

And now, the first big event of the day. Roland Rat's move from TV-am to the BBC had broken in October and in the week leading up to the big day he was targeting all markets with appearances on Breakfast Time, Blue Peter and Blankety Blank, reflecting how much he'd crossed over as the saviour of commercial breakfast. With that in mind, and granting that it's still essentially a family character, 11.30am feels out of the way for a show that had essentially been built to for nearly three months, Roland's Yuletide Binge adding a child audience and singers as if this were just Crackerjack with a more human presenter. Russell Grant, Frankie Howerd, Jan Leeming, Ian McCaskill, Beryl Reid, Valerie Singleton and Jeannette Charles all take part. And talking of furry creatures, 25 minutes later comes the second Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show, "a Christmas show you are not going to be able to put down!" Two and a tiny bit hours featuring a race up the BT Tower, Feargal Sharkey's miming disaster on Concorde in what's claimed to be the first ever live pictures from mid-air in the company of Krankies and Gary Davies, various drowned rats (metaphorical this time) of regional reporters right across the country's outposts, a suspiciously large number of plugs for BT including Noel failing to understand Prestel, Smitty linking some speciality acts, Rowan Atkinson and competitions in a field, and most notably the launch of Comic Relief, having taken some satellite trucks the long way round to the Sudan to meet aid workers and the odd local in a broadcast fronted by Late Late researcher (speciality: the Golden Egg Awards), former Newsround stringer and future diarist Helen Fielding. Fun for all.

As battered competition BBC2 can only put on Fred Astaire's The Man in the Santa Claus Suit, whilst Channel 4 get through early afternoon with Wil 6, a 1920s set 1983 S4C Welsh community bilingual family drama, 1963 Oscar winning clown short Happy Anniversary and dolphin documentary A Closer Encounter, part of the channel's occasional series of animal films Assignment Adventure.

ITV re-emerge from the Black Hole at 1pm with, joy, an hour of Jim Davidson's Top Pop Videos Of '85, notably not confident enough to go head to head with Auntie's pop flagship. Indeed by the time ITV have got out of that and onto their speciality ground of The Royal Year at 2pm a full gamut of music is on offer over on the Beeb, BBC2 taking the Christmas Day Concert live from Amsterdam, a simulcast with Radio 3 of Mahler's seventh symphony which in pre-NICAM days Radio Times advises its readers to "turn off TV sound and position their speakers on either side of the screen, but a few feet away". That audience would gladly position their speakers several miles away upon Top Of The Pops Christmas Party over on BBC1. After the previous year's jarring experiment with getting the bands to introduce each other they weren't going to try that sort of thing again if they could help it so it was back to the roundel of Radio 1 regulars (Gary Davies, Janice Long, Dixie Peach, John Peel and Steve Wright) for this year. For the first time video clips of the year's hitmakers who couldn't or wouldn't make it into the studio interspersed those that did, namely King, Colonel Abrams, Alison Moyet, Dead Or Alive, Baltimora, Billy Ocean, Feargal Sharkey and Paul Young.

Channel 4 know a good black and white comedy when they see one, so the Marx Brothers it is, even if it is the lesser work At The Circus. Speaking of dysfunctional comic families, The Queen's Christmas Message brings us up to 3.10pm. Obviously ITV's subsequent entertainment is for Queen and country, Moonraker two days short of three years after its TV premiere and still able to land the channel's biggest audience of the day at fourteen million. BBC1 meanwhile spring us the Children's Royal Variety Performance, liberated at the fifth time of asking from LWT with an enormous cast spanning kids' telly and entertainment - Benjamin, Biggins, Castle, Chegwin, Clifton, Cricket, Dando, Soprendo, Harris/Orville, Hull/Emu, Inman, Krankie, Krankie, Langford, Pollard, Rat, Rippon, Sammarco, Savile (grnn), Saturday Superstore and Blue Peter representation, Just Good Friends representation and, of course, Leo Sayer. It's possible discerning older children turned over at 3.30pm to watch Shak, The Red Fox, a repeat of a Simon King film reshown as part of trilogy Three In The Wild. Whether those youngsters stuck around an hour later for Citizen Kane isn't clear. Maybe some drifted off before the end to Buster Keaton's Nothing But Pleasure on Channel 4, if not the subsequent Queen repeat and Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief Of Bagdad.

All Creatures Great And Small had been off the air for all of three years when it made a very successful comeback this time in 1983, so a couple of years later and with Peter Davison now post-renegeration they tried another ninety minute revisit, which itself was so well loved it set the scene for its full return in 1988, if without Carol Drinkwater as she couldn't see what else they could do with Helen, who promptly became Lynda Bellingham. James is now living in the practice, Tristan is now working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Siegfried has grown a tache. While that's on ITV go to the first news bulletin of the day anywhere, with Carol Barnes at ITN, followed by for some reason a regular episode of Name That Tune and Coronation Street, in which Percy and Phyllis spend Christmas with Emily. They'd have appreciated Hinge and Bracket on BBC2 in special episode A Prize Performance, in which Dame Hilda Bracket is invited to speak at the Cheltenham Ladies' College Speech Day.

Moira Stuart is on big day duty for BBC1 at 6.25pm, subsequent to which it's summer and an hour long Hi-De-Hi!, on the 25th for the second and last time and the second of four Christmas specials none of which are in the least bit Christmassy. In this one Peggy recognises a recently deceased cat burglar as someone who stayed with them and all decide he must have left his loot there, leading to an unexpected way round the existing campers. Post-Fairbrother but still just about existing on joie de vivre. ITV's answer? Why a 45 minutes Fresh Fields Christmas Special, of course! William and Hester have bought an extra lot of food and drink for family who suddenly aren't going to be there, but of course Sonia is on hand. Sonia is always on hand. That's why she gets a round of applause on entrance like an American sitcom. But if you call an episode A Dickens Of A Christmas it should be a riff on A Christmas Carol, shouldn't it?



7.30pm is where we reach the apex of this night, and maybe the biggest direct battle of the whole Christmas Day peak era, especially as both programmes were the cover feature on their respective double issue listings magazines. Minder On The Orient Express was going to be the crowning achievement of the Tel and Arfur partnership (and was George Cole's favourite episode), taking up two full hours as the pair take the titular train finding it full of gangsters apart from, somehow, Chisholm on board. A whole phalanx of guest stars - Honor Blackman, Maurice Denham, Adam Faith, Ronald Lacey, Karl Howman, Jesse Birdsall, Amanda Pays, Debbie Arnold - amid reports that this might be the final ever episode, or possibly that (and keep this in mind for what was on opposite) it would turn into a set of annual specials, gave it that extra big push. Thing is, as well as the usual effect when a beloved series and characters become a tinselled televisual Stretch Armstrong, whether involving low lives or high societal ambition dramas set on the Orient Express rarely work because it's just a plush train around which a narrative has had to be stretched - in fact there had already been one just over a month earlier on the ITV network, Romance On The Orient Express being the one and only time Sir John Gielgud and Ruby Wax shared a billing, and that didn't work for similar reasons, though it gave the production team some replica carriages to use. And what's with Chisholm just happening to be on board? How much suspension of internal disbelief can it hold? Whatever, its 12.5 million viewers were the minority by more than four million compared to its comparatively compact ninety minute opposition - and something which is also partly set abroad for nefarious criminal purposes - Only Fools And Horses' To Hull And Back. Shot on film, no laugh track - this, friends, is the future of comedy. Or, at least, the special that showed you could make a feature length sitcom episode without overstretching the component parts and storyline, in a way that feels like a genuine sense of adventure and road trip in a way that things happening on a train don't. Even the regular programme itself would expand having found what was possible. And it's not even Christmassy! It's set in June!

So what does a channel do against those behemoths fighting? Kiri Te Kanawa At Christmas, of course. At least that's BBC2's answer, a programme of seasonal music from the Barbican, followed by a very unexpected thing to be throwing out not anticipating large viewership, Sir John Mills' TV acting debut in a three-hander with Omar Sharif and Golden Globe nominee (for an NBC docudrama on the Vanderbilts, despite being a Londoner) Lucy Gutteridge in Edge Of The Wind, Sharif as the wheelchair bound major general's manservant finding himself lost when his boss is forced by circumstances to go into sheltered accommodation. Over on Channel 4, The Mind Of David Berglas showcases the influential magician and mentalist with the help of Stephanie Lawrence, Graham Chapman, Britt Ekland and Freddie Jones, and then their own contribution to the minority channels' high culture evenings with documentary Fonteyn and Nureyev: The Perfect Partnership.

We wouldn't know it yet but the series that followed The Two Ronnies' Christmas show, the fifth of six to go out on the day itself, would be their last. They certainly throw plenty into it (unfortunately including a sketch as Indians), though there's little actively seasonal in the packed programme tonight aside from a big final musical number based on Alice In Wonderland, costumes and backdrops aplenty. This would win out the day with 18.5 million viewers and certainly expended more effort than Des O'Connor Tonight which began half an hour later on ITV at 9.30pm, Joan Collins or no Joan Collins, lining up with Dudley Moore, "America's top comedian" Alan King and dubious US ventriloquist act Willie Tyler and Lester. Couldn't we watch Film Buff of the Year on BBC2 instead, a kind of champion of champions for the cinephile grown-up quiz show?

Moira's back on news duty at 9.50pm, followed by Bill Giles in a flat cap and scarf at the robin and snow scene-bedecked weather screen, but it was the following show that made just as much news. A year earlier Dallas had come to verdant Shepherd's Bush Green; now Wogan was going to Denver to spend Christmas At The Carringtons, an awkward forty minutes where Tel has to snatch small talk where he can find it with Dynasty cast members dropping in and out of character who for the most part are only claiming to know who he is. But wouldn't that include Joan Collins? Why, no, but she's there on the other side. And that wasn't the only contentious issue, as a quip from Robin Day on the first Question Time of the new year set the pair at public odds, Day telling reporters Terry "was talking to people as characters. He was speaking to fictional people who don't exist as if they were real. It was appalling." It ended up being a press cause celebre and Day was invited onto the first live Wogan of the new year to tell Tel his issue with the show face to face. In fact, while it was the day's third most watched programme with just under sixteen million tuned in, Wogan later revealed in one of his many autobiographies that he didn't much care for the finished product either - it had been pitched as a fully set up Christmas Dinner With The Carringtons but when the BBC team got to America they found Aaron Spelling had changed all the plans on them and ended up having to snatch unfocused chats and set wanderings instead ("(the press) panned the thing, and I hate to say it, but they were right") Still, the festive titles are a treat. We're sure someone at the time made a gag comparing this to French comedy drama Diva, starring tremendously named American soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, that began at the same time on BBC2 so we don't have to.

So with the Quality Street having to be hidden from view and the dirty plates teetering, what little is left after 10.40pm? BBC1 draws to a close with Paul Newman film Absence Of Malice; BBC2 drops off with an hour of Choirs At Midnight (actually at 11.55 - we want our licence fee back!) from an international festival of boys' choirs in Vienna; ITV follows the late news with the mighty Gregory's Girl and some Night Thoughts from Alec McCowen and Paul Miles-Kington; and Channel 4 offers Show Of Shows compilation Mel Brooks Hails Sid Caesar and a performance of Weber's Missa Sancta recorded in a monastery. Please remember to turn off all appliances.

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Radio choice

Adrian John wakes Radio 1 up, Peter Powell does the usual check-in with kids in hospitals across Britain, Simon Bates goes thematic with Solid Gold - every record played went gold in records sold - Mike Read's turn to put on the Christmas Dinner, and Paul Jordan fills out the afternoon. At 5pm is a curio, Peace On Earth, "a musical presentation for Christmas Day composed by Richard Attree, featuring the voice of Jonathan Cunliffe, Choirboy of the Year 1985". On Radio 1! Something we'd much rather hear is Around The World In 30 Plays, where Read, Paul Gambaccini and John Walters combine to play "some of the world's more unusual rock and pop sounds of 1985". The Ranking Miss P gets her own Christmas Special with live Bobby Womack, and into the night we go with John Peel counting down the top ten of the Festive 50. Spoilers: Jesus & Mary Chain at 1 and 2.

Weekend early presenter Dave Bussey kicks off Radio 2's day, followed by Roger Royle in Bethlehem, two Queen-inclusive hours of Ken Bruce, and then at 11am the Syd Lawrence Orchestra live! In Manchester with, just to emphasise the retro nature, the Beverley Sisters. Midday brings The News Huddlines Christmas Cracker and the 1958 Christmas Hancock's Half Hour, after which lunch comes with Judith Chalmers presenting the listeners with My Kind of Christmas. Ray Conniff, a very old school Radio 2 figure, talks to Ray Moore from 3pm, after which the Swingle Singers join the BBC Radio Orchestra Christmas Special. At 5pm, Sweet Liza!, which without knowledge you'd think could be any number of things but is in fact an original musical by Hubert Gregg, the station regular who also wrote Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner. "Tom and Liza are inseparable, according to him. But love is as blind as a Londoner in a pea-souper, we all know that." Oh, he's writing about London again, is he. Very children's show casting here, with Toni Arthur as Liza and Wayne Jackman in the cast. Benny Green's Sinatra!: A Man And His Music continues - Continues? It's Christmas Day! And it's part two! You could have saved it! - at 6pm, after which is a repeat of chamber orchestra classics in A Victorian Evening, first broadcast on 15th December 1984, the lush sounds of the Melachrino Strings and Orchestra At Christmas, 1920s nightlife memorial A Good Night Out and at 10pm Ian Wooldridge's Sporting Year, with Brian Matthew seeing the station into the night beyond.

Radio 3 had a day of classical music. Among these were the intriguingly titled Christmas Day Fantasies - just some Britten, Prokofiev and Vaughan Williams - that BBC2 simulcast from Amsterdam, A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, the start of six Bach Christmas Oratorios, Mahler and Strauss from the Aldeburgh Festival and, oh my, "a Burlesque Christmas Pantomime" of Cinderella, a traditional version from the Players' Theatre starring Patricia Routledge as the fairy queen, David Learner - Pickle from Knightmare! And also Marvin's body in the TV Hitchhikers', and he's still in panto this year in Haverhill - as Buttons, regular comedy straight man and Points Of View letter reader Alec Bregonzi as Dandini and, in a bit of a waste, musicals name Jenny Wren in the lead role.

So how would you like to wake up on Christmas morning? The Nativity story read by Timothy West? Dr Finlay's Casebook? "A selection of church bells from around the country"? Radio 4 can offer all of these and more before 9am. Morning Service comes from Belfast, and levity will be required when it's followed by a programme actually called A Sideways Look At..., not that we really know what that was. A lot of repeats litter the morning, including a 1976 Steptoe and Son and a documentary about holiday camps from 1948, up to the afternoon play Home For Christmas, which isn't even about someone coming home for Christmas but was one of a series by William Douglas Home, brother of Alec Douglas-Hume and forgotten playwright. That tends to happen when like this your plays are about debutantes, even if the deb is played by Helena Bonham Carter right before A Room With A View's national release, with Anna Massey and Terence Alexander as her parents. A retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk follows. Later on Richard Baker makes an appeal for radios for the blind, a repeat of Adrian Mole At Christmas (produced by John Tydeman!) and Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, John Wells re-adapting Carroll's work with a Carl Davies score, Polly James as Alice, Ann 'Sonia' Beach making her second appearance on the station and third on the broadcast day, Spike Milligan as a wasp and... Patricia Routledge, David Learner and Alec Bregonzi! What's going on here?

On This Day: Christmas Day 1995

This is an odd Christmas schedule. While not near the infamous depths of ITV in 1993, you'd be forgiven for wondering if there was a funding crisis going on across television, which with recent years having brought BBC accounting and commercial income overestimations and ITV advertising recession downturns might be reasonable, and on top of that the Government was in the process of publishing a new BBC charter.

The staggered starts of yore really are a thing of the distant past in this not too far off completely 24 hour broadcast age, so both BBC1 and GMTV pitch in at 6am with Channel 4 following at 6.45pm and BBC2 at the very precise time of 7.05am. Three of them cater for the kids early on, so CBBC starts with Podddington Peas, Bump's Christmas Story, Moomin (singular), White Christmas (animation) and Playdays, moving on to the specialist animated buy-ins they have lying around collecting dust for the rest of the year. Namely: PJ's Unfunnybunny Christmas, a 1994 ABC special in which a bunny Learns The True Meaning Of Christmas with the voices of Bart Simpson, Yakko Warner, Pinky, Duckworth, Tommy and Chuckie, Powerpuff Girl Buttercup, Tiny Toon Buster Bunny, Dexter and, er, Babe; and McGee and Me, a 1990 episode from a Christian morality tale. That's not us ascribing religion to it, it's produced by Focus on the Family and Living Bibles International. Not exactly washing that taste away is A Flintstones Christmas Carol, because it's from 1994. They're doing a Christmas Carol tale within an in-universe Christmas Carol play.

So what of ITV? Well, GMTV until 9.25am of course, and this is still Mr Motivator's world we're just living in so he's linking the cartoons with White Power Ranger Jason David Frank. The Mighty Morphin types come at the end of a sequence that starts with Tom And Jerry Kids, Galaxy High and forgotten fantasy series Starla & the Jewel Riders. Channel 4 opens up with Ulysses 31 - what? How did that broom cupboard staple end up all the way over there? - The Adventures of T-Rex and Little Dracula, but The Big Breakfast will not be denied so its Christmas Special is pushed out to 8am, packing out Lockkeepers' Cottages with Eternal, Eastenders' Paul Bradley, Peter Cunnah, Gloria Gaynor, Barbara Windsor and Dame Barbara Cartland. BBC2 meanwhile get completely the wrong end of the stick and start with a repeat of the previous day's Songs Of Praise special Christmas with Cliff, then the undistinguished 1938 A Christmas Carol and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

So which hot Children's BBC property are BBC1 fending off the start of the ITV day with? Er, The Movie Game, the currently John Barrowman fronted dress-up and film light knowledge game show whose celebrity edition tempts in Donna Air, Toby Anstis, Clare Buckfield, Mark Curry, Saturday morning vet Mark Evans, Grange Hill's Natalie Poyser and Gladiator Nightshade. Not that they should have worried much about effort as ITV's first job once in charge is Christmas Morning Worship from Arundel Cathedral, the religious quotient fulfilled on BBC1 at 10am not in a place of worship but at Beaulieu, a surprisingly common place for BBC media to head to for the big day usually on Radio 2, but this time it's Don Maclean dropping by Lord Montagu's gaff for Christmas Day In The Morning, taking Harry Secombe, Ruth Madoc and Clive Mantle with him. Channel 4 sense the way the heavy hitters' wind is blowing and repeat an episode of Saved by the Bell: The New Class instead, followed by a repeat of Showtime, Blur live at Alexandra Palace just over a year earlier, and yet another A Christmas Carol, this one the Oscar winning Richard Williams animation from 1971 with Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern reprising their famous roles, Michael Redgrave narrating and Melvyn Hayes as Bob Cratchit. "Melvyn Hayes has been in an Oscar winning film" is a tremendous fact to drop in, until someone retorts that so has Danny Dyer.

We're getting ahead of ourselves timeline-wise, ITV is still at 10.25am and showing The Little Engine That Could, which we're guessing is the 1991 animated version of the folk tale with Frank Welker's voice and financed by Universal with, oddly, S4C, which they follow with the all new (apart from being made in 1979) Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales and that most reliable of family film fillers, Herbie Rides Again. BBC1 also have a fantasy kids' film of a very different hue against it, The Neverending Story, an ITV property until now, followed by Neighbours, because no special occasion can stop it even if it has no festive content having aired in May in Australia. BBC2 counter with something for the dads and Propaganda fans, Top Gear Rally Special recalling the Lombard RAC Rally and Colin McRae clinching the world title at home, and then something for... mum? Treasures In Trust, a repeat documentary showing how the National Trust manages its properties. After that is a weirdly buried documentary about The Sound Of Music fandom, The Hills Are Alive!, which surely they could have shown in a better slot given the actual film wasn't airing until the 29th. Channel 4 are still in a cartoon frame of mind for a while, turning to two lightly satirical takes on fairytales with Prince Cinders and Beauty, and then interrupt that for Christian Rave Special. Now, there's a concept for a Christmas Day approaching lunchtime, fulfilling Channel 4's religious brief with an examination of the world of religious raves, as in Christian dance acts in churches and youth services in nightclubs. Oddly, as if predicting Channel 5, it's actually introduced under the title God In The House by its presenter... actually, no, we won't spoil it.

The day's first news on BBC1 is at 12.50pm, followed by Top Of The Pops seeing off the Christian rave but notably still trying to reclaim its status after the Year Zero disaster, and it's not going to do that an hour earlier than is traditional, almost as if they were willing to take it out of the firing line of... we'll get to that. The team of your dreams, Jack Dee and Bjork, introduce clips of the year and a strong line-up of new performances from - keep two of these names in mind for later - N-Trance, Annie Lennox, the downsized Take That, Boyzone, Robson & Jerome twice, Pulp, the Outhere Brothers, Blur, Simply Red and... well, as it was recorded a week or two in advance two endings were recorded based on who would be Christmas number one, so on the day a Michael Jackson video closed proceedings but when BBC Four repeated it the other year they somehow accidentally got the wrong tape and showed a version with Mike Flowers Pops in the studio heralded as festive victors.

So why did BBC1 go early with TOTP, sticking a repeat of the 1992 Only Fools And Horses special Mother Nature's Son (the Peckham Spring one) up to 3pm? Because on ITV at 1.55pm, after Disney short Lambert The Sheepish Lion, news and a repeat of presumably the episode of Coronation Street from the 22nd comes the first hour, with more to follow on Boxing Day, of Take That At Earls Court, one of a ten night run marred by the reduction in numbers and more notoriously the Smells Like Teen Spirit cover. God, we hope that was included in part one. Channel 4 at this point are half an hour into Elenya, the premiere that we can't imagine was greatly fought over - note the editor is an Alan Smithee credit - of a 1992 film about a WWII German aircraft crashlanding in Wales and the sole survivor being rescued by a twelve year old. BBC2 is at the same time reminding us of the summer's fiftieth anniversary of VE Day, contemporary compilation Victory Stills followed by highlights of the commemorations Memories And Celebrations.

Anyway, how's her majesty been?

Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message was still being pitched directly against HRH and this year was given to Brigitte Bardot to complain about live calf exports and the Dangerous Dogs Act, while BBC2's alternative was a compilation of their Tricks On Two shorts.

3.10pm was still regarded as valuable real estate for the big two and they went about it in their separate ways, ITV with Ghostbusters II, and on BBC1 the equally spectral Noel's Christmas Presents, the seventh in all, mining a handy invocation of the Victoriana that used to go hand in hand with popular Christmas imagery. The emotional crux ties in with the WWII anniversary, before which Noel and Chris Jarvis take kids to Lapland to meet Santa, as everyone did, and Noel lays territorial claim on behalf of the show to Antarctica. Airier fare elsewhere, a Baz Luhrmann reworking of La Boheme from Sydney Opera House on BBC2, a repeat of the previous New Year's Eve sprawling two and a half hour launch of Heroes Of Comedy on Channel 4 which apparently requires something called Coping With Christmas afterwards.

The day's first big film premiere is Hook at 4.30pm on BBC1, or if you prefer Martyn Lewis fires archive clips at celebrities on a Today's The Day Christmas Special at 5.05pm on BBC2. At the same time there's a new version of Wind In The Willows on ITV, a year in the making combination of a live action Vanessa Redgrave as narrator and luxurious animation by the same studio that made The Snowman (which was on Channel 4 at 6.30pm), with a cast that proves the worth of a good casting director - Rik Mayall as Mr Toad (he would win a voice acting Emmy for follow-up The Willows In Winter, but his being so close in cast to Vanessa went unremarked upon), Alan Bennett as Mole, Michael Palin as Rat, Michael Gambon as Badger, with Emma Chambers, James Villiers, Judy Cornwell and Enn Reitel amongst other voices. Some Enchanted Evening may be on BBC2 at the time - a Julie Andrews hosted celebration of Oscar Hammerstein's musicals' lyrics - but this is the real thing.

It's kind of surprising to find that the night's Coronation Street was its first ever hour-long episode, both because we're so used to the form and because Eastenders was kind of there nine years earlier. Newly secretly married Curly and Raquel's families want answers, the Duckworths are in no festive mood and Steve MacDonald's day is spoilt by a police raid. It was obviously ITV's most watched programme of the day but only sixth overall, and it's tempting to wonder how many potential viewers were instead drawn to the surprisingly behemothic Auntie's Brand New Bloomers, still in its Wogan days. The other channels respond at 7pm with very different layers and levels of populist fare - a repeat of the Austen Easter hit Persuasion on BBC2, Turtle Diary on Channel 4, a 1985 kind of rom-com screenplayed by Harold Pinter starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley who find love over the sea turtle enclosure at London Zoo and Michael Gambon as the zookeeper who helps smuggle them out.

Eastenders was doing the two half hour parts thing again, 7.30pm and 8.30pm laid out for the traditional misery, what with Arthur despondent in prison and Frank Butcher surprisingly returning to an unhappy Pat. In between is a very different type of familial saga and what would turn out to be the final episode of Keeping Up Appearances before Patricia Routledge left fearing typecasting, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates beginning nine days later. Not that you'd know it as Hyacinth organises a Civil War pageant which is turns out nobody else wants to take part in. This and the second 'enders episode landed clear of sixteen million watching.

Facing down the colossus of soapland, ITV pull out the big guns for the drunk mums. It's the Robson & Jerome Christmas Special! This was the year of the singing squaddies' imperial phase, not just two number ones and the biggest selling single of the year in Unchained Melody but the biggest selling album of the year - no, really, it topped two million sales in just six weeks, beating (What's The Story) Morning Glory? by a good 200,000 sales by year end. (Over the next ten years it shifted less than 300,000. Rip up all those theories about cultural long tails) And because it already has a prospective captive audience nobody even needs to really try, comprising clips of the pair chatting aimlessly about their year between Soldier Soldier moments and the singles' videos. As for more professional singing actors, that can be arranged by the subsequent big evening movie premiere, Sister Act. And if you want bad ideas by actors out of their depth, try The Other Christmas Story on Channel 4, a fifteen minuter in which Michael 'Sinbad' Starke tells "an alternative to the first Christmas story in which everything goes wrong".

A year earlier One Foot In The Grave had pulled off one of the great Christmas Day sitcom episodes, the one with Brian Murphy. The Wisdom Of The Witch, which came at the end of the last regular series for five years (though there would be Xmas specials in the next two) and at one time was intended by David Renwick as the series' finale, isn't far behind and demonstrates again how to make an hour long episode run smoothly despite a maze of sub-plots and footnotes. Clearly the trust was there from the audience as 16.8 million made it the day's most watched show. In actuality, Patrick and Pippa finally move away but find they still can't shake Victor's capacity for building farce or their having to deal with him as they ignore the prophecy of Tarot cards and get snowed in with a psychopath played by Phil Daniels, with an ending met by an audience reaction that can only be transcribed as "HAHAHAohfuck".

Meanwhile on BBC2 is an odd thing, The Abbey With Alan Bennett, the start of a three part series in which the melancholic observer goes behind the scenes at Westminster Abbey with fresh erudition. Channel 4's post-watershed offering is a real punt at the highest mark, England, My England, a musical drama about Henry Purcell part-written by John Osborne who died almost exactly a year earlier, which because not much of Purcell's life story was known about goes and makes up a Restoration timeline as within a storyline about a 1960s actor played by Simon Callow writing a play based on what he imagined Purcell's life to be like, in which he has cast himself as Charles II. Bertold Brecht, were you alive for this moment. Purcell, by the way, is played by the natural choice, Michael Ball. In fact this cast list brings up new thrills throughout, whether that be Letitia Dean as Lady Castlemaine, Lucy Speed as Nell Gwyn, Rebecca Front as Queen Mary II, John Shrapnel as Samuel Pepys, Corin Redgrave as William of Orange, Sir Robert Stephens as John Dryden, Bill Kenwright essentially as himself, John Fortune, Patricia Quinn, for christ's sake, Antonia de Sancha fresh from the David Mellor affair.

We've already had two decent sized film premieres today and at 10.10pm on BBC1 after Peter Sissons has read the news we get a third, Indecent Proposal, direct from the summer of erotic thrillers. In fact there's another starting ten minutes earlier on BBC2, Chinese milestone Farewell My Concubine. ITV's idea of something for those stopping up is by comparison the kind of programme that could have fallen anywhere within the festive week and just happened to land here, a special episode of ensemble cricket club sitcom Outside Edge based around, in a neat subversion of cliche, watching back the video of a recent tour to Corfu and the key events happening during the get-together. That's followed by another premiere but not quite one of the same stripe, Bette Midler's Scenes From A Mall. From there it's the race to see who can most successfully keep people who really are stretching out the definition of Christmas Day the longest. BBC1's then usual festive themed short is I Hate Christmas, "a poem about a man who gets into a taxi after arguing with his wife on Christmas Eve", followed by The Greatest Music Party In The World, a special extravaganza at Birmingham NEC intended as advertising for of all confectionary Twix featuring David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Soul II Soul, the Lightning Seeds, Des'ree, Echobelly, Alanis Morissette, Alannah Myles (hello 1990), Curtis Stigers and Diana King. BBC2 has picked up a 25th anniversary Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In compilation and the Marx Brothers' A Night At The Opera; the whole ITV network is together for once to enjoy Margot Kidder crime thriller Trenchcoat, Jean-Paul Belmondo's Cartouche and, my oh my, a 1992 German TV version of Snow White; and Channel 4 see the day off with Hepburn and O'Toole's How To Steal A Million, maudlin old Sentimental Journey which surely isn't something you should be showing at 2.20am in the early hours of Boxing Day and just to cap off the night... an episode of Rawhide. And merry Christmas to you too, Channel 4.

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Radio choice

Allegedly Chris Evans is live on breakfast at 8am, following Claire Sturgess' breaking in of the Radio 1 day, and he's got Mick Hucknall and Cher with him. Simon Mayo has an early lunch at 11am with "the stars of 1995", namely Boyzone, Michelle Gayle, Deuce, Sean McGuire, Louise and EYC - hey, remember all you've been told about how Britpop dominated culture that year? A curio at 2pm, Danny Baker's Reeling In The Years, a one-off pop quiz with actual willing members of the public, after which Wendy Lloyd coasts through the afternoon. And then, via the magic of Lunewyre Technology in total Spectrasound, Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince, whose first series of Radio Tip Top had been a sleeper cult hit with readers of Corsair magazine in the spring/summer so now regathered in the Starlight Ballrooms for a two hour Christmas Cracker (part two; three; four) at 5pm. Back down on Radio 1 The Evening Session goes back through the year's best live music, Peter Cunnah's Star Review looks back at the year in dance, and then at 10pm Wet Wet Wet Live at the Bowl, which nobody has ever previously or since called Wembley.

As so often Roger Royle is pressed into morning Radio 2 service, handing off at 8am to a remarkable piece of blurb: "Charlton Heston, Kriss Akabusi and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth join Don Maclean for Christmas celebrations live from Beaulieu". Sure. Why not? Ken Bruce is the other side of the Queen at 10am, Aled Jones does the midday shift, followed by Celebrity Choice, celebrities not listed. And then from 3pm, a Radio 2 exclusive as Mickey and Minnie Mouse are given the DJ gig their voices cannot surely carry for a full hour, Merry Christmas From Walt Disney World. Carson sidekick Ed McMahon is parlayed into action to help out despite his name surely meaning nothing to 99.9% of the audience, but then guests such as Whitney Houston, Steve Martin, Gloria Estefan, Mel Torme, Natalie Cole and Bill Clinton are doing the heavy lifting. Equally glamorous fare subsequently, Roy Hudd's Extremely Amusing History Of The Comic Song. Ed Stewart fills a gap to the documentary O Come All Ye Jacobites, a new version of the old "stories behind the carols" canard, and then a slight return to Natalie Cole recorded live in Birmingham. The BBC Big Band Christmas Special do their thing from 9pm and Martin Kelner sees off the day promising "Christmas turkeys from his own record collection".

By now Paul Gambaccini has set up a spot on Radio 3 and he's on at 9am with some of his Russian ballet music. Saint-Saens is Composer Of The Week so Richard Langham Smith visits the Parisian church where he was organist to talk to a musicologist about him. In fact there's quite a bit of talking on this day where there's more devotional classical music than the rest of the year for most people, such as "Musicians haven't always played string instruments they way they do today. Tommy Pearson finds out about the changes that have taken place in string technique since 1830." At 5.30pm British Cities asks what music Burns might have heard in Edinburgh, but after two hours of that comes a curveball in the shape of Dave Brubeck's Birthday Bash, his 75th celebrated at the Barbican with a backing band of his sons. An operatic version of Holst's The Perfect Fool comes later on, as does The Shellac Show. A selection of 78rpm records, not what you might have been thinking.

Russell Davies is our first guide through the Radio 4 day on the pleasingly titled Morning Cordial. Richard Wilson, in no way stereotyping the man by his character, begins reading A Christmas Carol just before 9am, at which Christmas Morning Service is from Edinburgh. One of those splendidly opaque Radio 4 documentaries is on after that, Lashings Of Ginger Beer, involving Lenny Henry, Michael Rosen, Sophie Grigson and the food in children's books, and then yet another of those John Walters projects we'd love to hear, Walters' Festive Frolics, in which he searches for the perfect winter break. Silent film pianist Neil Brand is responsible for part-autobiographical drama The Player at 11am, with Supermarionation regular David Healy as Cecil B De Mille. Healy died that October, as well. In fact there's a real treasure trove of new programming being thrown in here, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple, Sian Phillips, Geoffrey Bayldon, Freddie Jones and Maurice Denham at 11.30am, followed by the start of Trumpton Riots, the Brian Cant-fronted cultish series about 70s children's television beginning in Smallfilms' back yard, and then the Comedy Store Players' wildly improvised historical comedy epic The Masterson Inheritance Christmas Special. After the 1pm news is more of the same, sort of, in the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue special, while after The Archers a young woman denied the chance to go and see the Bolshoi Ballet finds the real ballet was within us all along in The Nutcracker Christmas. Maeve Binchy has written a story, Christmas Present, and Hannah Gordon reads it to us at 4.45pm, followed by Kate Adie's favourite writing in With Great Pleasure. After the 6pm news Nanette Newman reads letters from Edwardian children in Dear Peter Pan. Neil Brand's back in the evening in a repeat of a production of Coward's Private Lives with Imogen Stubbs, Stephen Fry and Louise Lombard before Spike Milligan reads his poetry in Spike's Fleas, Knees And Hidden Elephants. Kaleidoscope ponders the popularity of dream sequences in film, Nick Baker seeks a life of joy In Don't Worry, Be Happy, and the Book At Bedtime is Memo From David O Selznick, the producer behind Gone With The Wind, followed by the BBC Singers indulging in some of that light music for A Christmas Cracker.

Jane Garvey and Julian Worricker are still in charge of Radio 5's Breakfast Programme as every day. Indeed the station really doesn't know how to pitch all this, Robin Lustig's Spotlight 95 and Bosnia At Christmas followed by I'll Eat My Hat, Des Lynam's history of the stars of radio sport, and Phill Jupitus' timeline of football songs Nice One Cyril both ongoing. Now The Good News gives a Martyn Lewis-approved (presumably, it's not him) sheen on the year, Sybil Ruscoe looks back at her own show's highlights and then it's The Christmas Quiz, news vs sport for an hour and a half. Sheena MacDonald returns with another hour from Bosnia at 5.30pm, and then it's all stand by your beds for the worst title perhaps in the history of Christmas day broadcasting, The Holly And The Archivy - "questions of Christmas sport answered by Geoff Hurst, Frank Bruno, Harry Carpenter and Mike Gatting". Another quiz? What? We're not even going to ask what A Criminal Crisis is and why it's taking up two hours of Christmas evening from 8pm, but it's seen off eventually by Voices Of The Old Firm, Rangers and Celtic's rivalry explained, then Jon Ronson remembering his teens in Ages Of Being and Gareth Gaz Top Jones talking to Jim Lovell in Spaced Out to take things up to midnight. Where we don't yet find Up All Night. Not even Up All Night All Day. Nope, back to Bosnia. Happy Christmas to you too.

On This Day: Christmas Day 1984

Maybe, despite all the effort, people just weren't as keen as they were on reciprocating in 1984. Call it due to weather, the miner's strike or whatever, but the most watched programme all week was a repeat of the ten year old festive special of Porridge on the 27th, attracting 19.4 million viewers, while Kramer vs Kramer (BBC1, 30th) and Airplane! (ITV, Boxing Day) both topped eighteen million, which only one programme on the 25th would do.

You know how nowadays Christmas morning ITV is pretty much the same as every other morning until they remember there should be a cooking element and get James Martin in to pretend it's Saturday? Well, something similar happens here as Good Morning Britain takes up its usual three hours up to 9.25am in the year it became solidly profitable and was regularly beating Breakfast Time with its solid presenting team, solidly amusing features and very unstable Roland Rat, whose Countdown To Christmas was the de facto centrepiece of TV-am's festivities with the likes of Thumbs Aloft Macca involved. Because of that success they can go live, the morning seeing a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Roland phoning children in hospital and the conclusion of the Caring Christmas Campaign, which three years down the line will be the cause of the walkout that changes its fortunes and in some ways that of television and the unions irrevocably.

Frank and Selina were of course too precious to be working on the 25th so BBC1 lies in until 8am, gets up to stick on some Pages From Ceefax and has another forty minutes' kip before being roused for Carol Chell and Brian Jameson reading the nativity story and telling the origin story of glow-worms for some reason, as part of Play School. It's actually the first of three consecutive programmes, four if you count the traditional morning service, to recount all that star/inn/manger business, as it's followed by Christopher Lillicrap's storyteller identity Busker telling the Christmas Story and then fifty minutes of a not yet nationally famous Aled Jones leading the BBC Welsh Chorus in carols, with Isla Blair and Martin Jarvis filling in the details, under the title Born In Bethlehem - which had been shown on BBC2 the previous night!

Once ITV has wrested control of the third channel they offer earthier children's fare (except for viewers in Scotland who have their own Moderator's Christmas Message), starting with a Danger Mouse double bill of Aztec shenanigans The Long Lost Crown Affair and, excitingly, a new episode, Once Upon A Timeslip, the one where the narrator accidentally takes over the story and the cast have to become Robin Hood cosplayers. Better than that, Thomas The Tank Engine And Friends offers two new episodes, one thematic - Thomas's Christmas Party - and one not, Dirty Objects, in which arrogant James pushes about some trucks and gets covered in tar. Then it's Emu At Christmas, in which King Boggle and his cortege escape from barely registered side Pink Windmill characters to save Rod and the gang from Grotbags' latest plans only to get captured instead, all while the kids sing Kool and the Gang's Celebration.

As usual it's ITV that get the Royal service with Alastair Burnet forelock tugging a step behind, still down south in St George's Chapel, Windsor, whilst the BBC's Morning Family Service is from Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, Belfast. Its accompaniment to putting the turkey in is Fritz Freleng compilation The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, unless you're watching Scottish in which case it's baffling to non-Americans Our Gang animated variant The Little Rascals Christmas Special followed by that man again, Glen Michael's Christmas Cavalcade.

ITV would of course be right to get as far out of the way as possible, because for the first time BBC1 was heading up the Telecom Tower at 11.05am. Obviously church services and hospital wards had been providing live Christmas Day broadcasts for years but The Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show was something else entirely, a big live overarching spectacle supposedly the first show live from a BBC studio (even though it wasn't) on the day for twenty years, beginning five years of memorably ambitious live broadcasting and earnest pronouncements about whatever breakthrough is being planned for that year. While a helicopter traverses much of London, from a tower block to Gerry Cottle's Circus with all his employees gathered outside performing in a cold and wet concrete car park to nobody else 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, Noel links repeatedly to the Falklands for long distance reunions and a shaving that the subject clearly cannot recall agreeing to and which we never see the outcome of. Meanwhile 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, the Whirly Wheeler scales as much of the Tower as he's allowed, Michael Fish is on the roof of TVC, and the Thompson Twins and Strawberry Switchblade - who, it should be pointed out, had not reached the top 40 yet - join the throng. Controlled chaotic, partially unnecessary, and entirely magnificent, and there'd be four more in the years to come before Michael Leggo got bored and told Noel to just do the earned surprises instead, the sourpuss.



Channel 4, sensing they cannot compete, stick on the short film Il Poverello: the Story Of St. Francis of Assisi followed by undistinguished Children's Film Unit wartime countryside evacuee film The Custard Boys, the horrible sounding short The World Of Children ("full of images and ideas and this film plays with some of them. Parents, authority and racism are highlighted but slugs, snails and puppy dogs' tails are not excluded") and, just to ensure the whole day doesn't pass with a zero rating, Jacques Tati's Jour de Fête.

There's no way BBC1 can come down easily from Noel, or indeed get Noel down easily - the lift must have been on multiple pulleys and it's surely a skeleton maintenance staff - so they stick on Blue Murder At St Trinians. That means they can get to one of the great immovables (at the time) of Christmas Day telly, except being a great non-royal immovable means it's there to be shot at, which is what ITV attempt at 1.15pm with Top Pop Videos Of '84. In future they would do something with the format but for now it's a mere compilation of videos, including the laser version of Relax, and thus not really competition at all. Were they man enough they'd have put it on three quarters of an hour later; instead the 2pm slot is essentially a topical clip show, Jayne Torvill And Christopher Dean Special.

BBC2 finally rouses itself at 1.55pm and puts on A Dog's Life, a Charlie Chaplin from 1918 involving a mutt just as mangy as The Tramp, and the first film Chaplin made after being signed to a million dollar contract with First National Pictures that gave him free production rein, a contract so open and giving performer freedom that a year later he co-founded United Artists instead. And talking of United Artists... it's the Top of the Pops Christmas Special! The one show every year that the whole presenting roster jostled and politicked their way towards being picked for, except this was the one year Michael Hurll basically went "sod the lot of yers" and had the artists introduce each other in a loose chain. That's Frankie doing Relax for the first time on BBC TV since the first Pops of the year, Howard Jones, Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw, Culture Club, the Thompson Twins, Jim Diamond, Paul Young, Wham! and George Michael separately on video, and ending with a gang mimealong to Do They Know It's Christmas? including Paul Weller lipsyncing Bono's big line and Slade and Black Lace, both there to appear on the Lenny Henry-fronted second show on the 27th, casually inserting themselves into the climactic chorus group.

A message, your majesty? Sure, and some clips of Harry's christening too.



After which everyone is in filmic mood, and some greater than others. Tell kids of today and they'll laugh but the big family films used to be guarded jealously from prying home viewing eyes, partially leading to a slump over the decade so far in movie premiere quality and viewing figures. Yet both main sides would have their huge deal premieres to correct the slump this time around, ITV's coming later, but for BBC1 Mary Poppins made perfect post-lunch, post-Queen undemanding family fare as it leapt after twenty years from Disney Time perennial to airing in full for the first time. 17.35 million agreed, the Beeb's biggest audience of the day. Almost as reliable was ITV going into 3.10pm opposition with a Bond film and this year's was The Man With The Golden Gun, four years to the day after its own small screen debut.

Ten minutes in, and linking the two with Canadian ice melting/mammal wandering documentary Polar Bear Alert, BBC2 joined the fray with another Chaplin but from thirty four years after the earlier one, Limelight the self-penned and partially autobiographical story of a washed up music hall comedian who takes suicidal dancer Claire Bloom as his protégé, released in his Commie conspiracy days - it was while promoting it in Britain that he found his re-entry visa had been refused - but when reissued in 1972 won Chaplin his only competitive Oscar, albeit Best Original Dramatic Score. And that was shared. Channel 4 for their part choose this moment to launch a new made for TV adaptation of Victorian era bestseller The Young Visiters (which the BBC made a big deal version of in 2003), starring Tracey Ullman and future Victoria Wood sideman and Benidorm star Kenny Ireland. After a Queen repeat at 5pm the Kirov Ballet performing Giselle fills another awkward couple of hours.

It just so happens that not only have BBC1 and ITV's big afternoon films started at the same time, they also finish simultaneously and are followed by five minute news bulletins, Jan Leeming and Pamela Armstrong taking the respective rosters, followed by star-packed versions of their most reliable word or phrase based panel parlour games. 15.35 million chose Blankety Blank, with Les Dawson in his first year in charge dressed as a fairy (for the first couple of minutes) engendering an appropriately frosty relationship with Russell Harty, Ruth Madoc, Derek Nimmo, Suzanne Danielle, Ken Dodd and Lorraine Chase. Brilliantly, neither contestant scores anything on the Supermatch Game. Over on ITV Give Us A Clue is coping less well with a change of master of ceremonies, Michael Parkinson all stentorian and forgetting to ring the bell, and it doesn't have the rushed namechecks in the theme tune yet. Una Stubbs is joined by Julia McKenzie, Nicola Pagett and Julie Walters, Lionel Blair by Spike Milligan, Wayne Sleep and - christ, there's one of 'em! - Bernie Winters. BBC2 have a quiz show as well, but it's a right oddity, Telly Quiz running stripped across Christmas and New Year weeks with club comic and short spell Lennie Bennett straight man Jerry Stevens asking, well, questions about telly, not really a kind of Telly Addicts (which began nine months later) proof of concept given the easy, medium or hard question tiering and the potential of asking a very small cross-section of the audience for help.

This was of course the first Christmas following Eric Morecambe's passing and ITV's joint centrepiece for the evening was Bring Me Sunshine, a tribute variety gala at the Palladium filmed the previous month raising money for the British Heart Foundation and in the presence of their patron Prince Philip. The line-up is if not often in the Eric mode a showbiz Royal Variety Performance in itself, treated like one too including the national anthem and a Michael Parkinson introduction. Ernie Wise opens the show with a song before leading on, in chronological order and with a deep breath... Max Bygraves, the Tiller Girls, Roy Castle with unexpected hair accompanying Eli Woods and James Casey in that same Jimmy James routine they always did together, comedy tumblers The Halfwits, Jim Davidson not even getting two minutes in before introducing the Chalky voice, Leslie Crowther, Bruce Forsyth at the piano and threatening to revive Sunday Night At The London Palladium, Petula Clark, Bertice Reading with Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, a parade of special guests from the Morecambe & Wise Show's history featuring an Arthur Tolcher run-in, Lionel Blair and Suzanne Danielle duetting on All That Jazz, Jimmy Tarbuck, Benny Hill making a rare stage appearance, Dickie Henderson, Wayne Sleep and Cherry Gillespie from the Hot Shoe Show, Cannon & Ball, Bonnie Langford involved in a song and dance routine with Ernie, Mike Yarwood, Des O'Connor and Elaine Paige. It even ends with a joke about Ern's parsimoniousness.

How do BBC1 react? After all, despite being a Thames property people even then regarded the BBC Christmas shows as Eric's high water mark. Wisely they continue on their own course with a pretty regular episode of Hi-De-Hi! set in spring, albeit the end of the sixth series where Ted seemingly raffles Clive's car, and watched by 14.85 million. It's followed by something that as we always point out is the great hardy perennial of this era of Christmas Day viewing, The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show being his fourth on the 25th in five years. It feels like classic Paul too - wig, "man who exhales" theme, Debbie established by name but not yet overexposed. The opener involves a series of boxes, Paul with a big bag over his head and the involvement of yachtswoman Clare Francis, Bonnie Langford, Anneka Rice (whose forename Paul pronounces as it's spelt), Val Doonican and Larry Grayson. There's a classic trick in memory of Tommy Cooper using his own prop. The special guests are appropriately exotic, juggler Kris Kremo and the astonishing veteran clown George Carl. The closer is one of Daniels' best remembered big tricks as he moves a million pounds in cash from now empty box to safe, something which takes nearly twenty minutes to do. One of the witnesses is the similarly inclined "man of integrity" Robert Maxwell, who seems to want to be very tactile with the money. BBC2 meanwhile venture a Scottish Ballet version of The Nutcracker.

In two years' time Just Good Friends will make its own mark on Christmas Day viewing, which would have been a surprise at this time to John Sullivan, Paul Nicholas, Jan Harvey and co because this ninety minute special (preceding Sullivan's first extended Only Fools And Horses by a year, so again it's possible that as he turned his thoughts back towards Peckham he was using this as practice) starting at 7.25pm was intended as a coda following Penny moving to Paris at the end of the second series a month earlier. Coda and indeed prequel, showing the pair's first meeting, the story of their affair and the eventual wedding day jilting. Surprisingly it became one of the day's biggest hits with 15.2 million tuned in, which is presumably what led to the recommission, although the episode itself is what people on the internet call Lost Media as it's never appeared on streaming or DVD (or in all likelihood YouTube unedited) in its original form due to a large amount of unclearable music.

Channel 4 for their part, after the news at 7.10pm, air in what sounds like a return offering for that Freddie Frinton New Year's Eve thing a showcase for the sketches and cartoons of huge name German comedian Loriot, with Andrew Sachs swallowing his pride to provide translated voiceovers, followed by a regular Brookside. This is listed everywhere including the STV on-demand archive and this very YouTube upload as going out on Boxing Day for some reason but we've checked back to contemporary reports and they're all wrong so there. "Marie is depressed about George and refuses to let the twins keep a donkey they find", while Sheila is confined to bed and Harry fears he's having a heart attack. A regular soap opera episode going out on this date is still a rare thing, though a set of divorce papers will soon enough sort that out. But then so even in these much more cultured climes is BBC2 giving over 65 minutes on Christmas evening to The Master Of Mouton, Russell Harty recalling his Aquarius days in visiting Baron Philippe de Rothschild at Chateau Mouton.

The other big Christmas film? That'll be Raiders Of The Lost Ark, from 8.30pm on ITV and getting the day's biggest audience of 19.35 million when no other show on this day made its weekly top ten. That overlaps with the last half hour of Just Good Friends, which BBC1 followed with the latest The Two Ronnies Christmas Special, the fourth of only six on the big day (discounting Christmas Night With The Stars contributions) and featuring a big song and dance routine by "stereo Santas", Patrick Troughton as judge in a courtroom that becomes a game show set and as this year's long closing film The Ballad of Snivelling And Grudge, starring Peter Wyngarde in a Gerald Wiley-penned medieval tale. For what might be the only time the final headlines are replaced by a warmly comforting and mostly straight seasonal song with Ronnie C "at" the piano. Also, "the lovely Elaine Paige".

The lovely Queen gets her BBC2 outing at 8.40pm followed by a 188 minute film taking the second channel all the way to closedown. Saves on energy, we suppose. It's a film released that year too, Kaos, an Italian anthology of four Sicilian short stories written by Luigi Pirandello. A little before that starts Channel 4 at 8.30pm offers a very British dramatic alternative, a small screen version (as opposed to the classic 1955 film version) of West End hit revival farce See How They Run featuring the stage cast of Michael Denison, Liza Goddard, Maureen Lipman, Derek Nimmo, Christopher Timothy, Peter Blake, Carol Hawkins and Bill Pertwee.

Leeming returns just before ten, leaving the night open to a respectful pilgrimage to the holy studios at verdant Shepherd's Bush Green and a special Wogan, the fine mist of thrice weekly hovering in the horizon. This festive sally features Freddie Starr singing and swapping shoes, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Elton John both doing the same one of those things, and an almost too knowing rematch with recent icy interviewee Victoria Principal via satellite. At the same time Channel 4, committed to the brief to the last, offers a two part documentary about Jean Sibelius. Indiana has saved the day for ITV by 10.40pm so it's back to ITN and then to Des O'Connor Tonight but by comparison it's all a bit too LE with Shakin' Stevens with Hank Marvin, Chas & Dave, Russell Grant and French singer Mireille Mathieu, who had duetted with Des on telly back in 1970.

Now we're into the witching hours, the paper has filled the dustbin, the kids are pretending to sleep and the adult conversation can come out. To wit: BBC1 closes the day with the classic Some Like It Hot sixteen years after it premiered on the same day and channel, which ITV counter with, of course, a slasher film from 1972, Sally Field starring in the made for ABC Home For The Holidays, which they attempt to take the edge off by jamming in Peace, Gill Nevill meeting the societal bridge builders, before closedown, which Channel 4 do with the Christmas Diary of "the poor man's thinker", fine artist Ian Breakwell supplying eight provocatively all too realistic seasonal tableaux across the week before bed. And peace be with you.

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Radio choice

Wake Up To Christmas is the logical way Radio 1 wakes up, with Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin who had been contributing to Saturday morning shows all year between Superstore and Tony Blackburn. Then it's Peter Powell, who takes the Queen's message at 9.30am as all BBC radio does and "talks to children who won't be at home for Christmas", Simon Bates's All Gold, Mike Read overseeing the pretend Christmas dinner wackiness, Jonathan King ("favourite records in his own inimitable style"), Bruno Brookes who had only been granted his own show in September, Janice Long and John Peel with the mid-section of the year's Festive 50.

Ray Moore is up at 5.30am to start Radio 2 off as Paul McDowell is on at breakfast hours direct from Bethlehem visiting holy sites and hospitals. Terry Wogan does a couple of hours' shift before Hannah Gordon explores the festive customs of other countries. What those other countries' learned folk would have made of The Grumbleweeds' Wilf In Santaland at midday we can only speculate. The News Huddlines of the year follow as best they can up to a revival of Forces' Favourites, the armed forces abroad request show that later became Family Favourites, with original host Jean Metcalfe returning after it being part of Ed Stewart's show of later years. Nanette Newman then looks Through A Child's Eyes at the season, after which Broadway star Stubby Kaye gets an hour and a half to talk about his career and the stars he rubbed shoulders with. The Cliff Adams Singers reconvene in tinsel for Sing Something Seasonal at 5pm, after which Cliff, Dana, Roy Castle, Dora Bryan and company indulge in the annual A Celebration Of Christmas... repeated from the 22nd! Cheap BBC! Part ten of The American Popular Song, Hubert Gregg celebrating fifty years on the wireless in binaural stereo and The Impressionists At Christmas get the station through the evening and up to Brian Matthew Round Midnight.

Radio 3 spend the first part of the day criss-crossing Europe, taking the traditional Vienna Christmas Day concert from 7.05am, including Bach's Christmas Oratorio - best time for it - and then masses from Metz and Rheims Cathedrals before retreating to the safe home ground of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Beethoven and Debussy take up most of the evening, interspersed with a commentary from the Bishop Of London entitled Being Born in the Likeness of Man and finding time for 27 year old Nigel Kennedy, who made his TV debut twenty years to the month earlier, taking up with the BBC Philharmonic to play Elgar's Violin Concerto.

James Fox's Nativity Reading starts off Radio 4 at 6.50am and carries on throughout the morning, in between Kathy Staff introducing traditional Yorkshire song in A People's Carol, the dream team of Brian Johnston, Martin Jarvis, Tony Slattery and Alison Steadman in The Rest Of The Day's Your Own, and a Christmas Day Eucharist from St Albans Abbey. An adaptation of Pride And Prejudice continues its merry way in mid-morning before the real modern literary classic, Stilgoe's Around, in which Richard has Sandi Toksvig - while still being Ethel, remember - in his team for some light comic song about education. That's followed by Quote... Unquote, which certainly taught us a lesson. After the news, The Archers and a 1957 Round The Horne, the afternoon play slot is The Prisoner of Zenda, adapted for the telly only a couple of months earlier and already being given a second go in audio form with Hannah Gordon, Martin Jarvis and Julian Glover amongst the cast. The rest of the afternoon feels pretty second hand too - a tribute to Sir John Betjeman extracted from Kaleidoscope, highlights of Down Your Way, another reading of Winnie the Pooh and Asterix - though non-Christians talking about their experiences of the festive season in Christmas Present would have been a summary jolt. Victorian Christmas Miscellany has been running after the evening news across the week in the slot 15 Minute Musical does now but this is of a higher calling, based on choral and piano recitals with words about aspects of late 19th century Christmas delivered by Richard Briers, Martin Jarvis and Miriam Margolyes amongst others. Can't imagine modern Radio 4 investing in an adaptation of Jeffrey Archer's Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, mind. Alan Coren on party games links the Archers repeat to a reading of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan with Judi Dench and Michael Williams as leads. A Blast On The Old Coach Horn is intriguing in word alone, the memoirs of "gentleman coachman" Charles Birch Reynardson with, it says here, songs by Dragonsfire, presumably not the German metal band. "Every Boxing Day traditional sword-dance teams take to the streets of Sheffield" according to late fifteen minute documentary Crossing Swords, which via a 10.30pm news bulletin leads into a repeat from two days earlier of Every Man's Guide to Mornington Crescent, author Esther de Waal on The Meaning Of Christmas, Emlyn Williams presenting his own Dickens sketches adaptations, and Radio Brynsiencyn, the long running Radio Wales spoof local station given a national berth for a week. Don't forget to switch off your set.

On this day: Christmas Day 1994

Here in 2024 there's been a social media kerfuffle about how ITV haven't tried for Christmas Day, merely offering an Emmerdale, a Coronation Street (with a major character leaving) and The Chase. This apparently represents a low point for the main commercial channel, one that anyone who reads these blogs every year will be laughing down their sleeve at after 1993's prime time line-up comprising three films and essentially a stunt clip show. After an IBA telling off ITV was forced into making a real effort and were rewarded, still not overcoming the BBC viewing dominance of the day but their share climbed fully ten percentage points to 31.6 percent.

That said, ITV, in a move that echoes down the decades to these last few years' mornings of "same procedure as every day?", starts exactly as it always does. Well, actually we shouldn't be blasé as to blame them, it's GMTV that runs as normal with The Sunday Review, The Sunday Programme and long running but instantly forgotten basic linkage Disney Club. They had Christmas morning veteran Philippa Forrester and a tyro Craig Doyle at the time too. ITV pick up the baton from 9.25am with a Scooby Doo, but not a festive one - no, it's The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair from the 1972 The New Scooby-Doo Movies series in which the gang meet, but of course, Batman and Robin who are like them investigating a mysterious plane drop that turns out to be an aid to Joker and Penguin's counterfeiting ring. That's except for viewers in Scotland, who have their own cartoons and Moderator's Christmas Messages.

Meanwhile the firm hands of Ball and Jarvis are marshalling BBC1 through to 10am - no displaced and obviously to the point of admitting it pre-recorded Saturday morning shows this year (on either channel, actually) so start with what's been moulding in the special cupboard all year, namely Santa and the Tooth Fairies, something called Wishing, a Playdays repeat and Santa's First Christmas, followed by two premieres that would do likewise for the rest of the decade - The Bears Who Saved Christmas, with Pam 'Mindy' Dawber amongst the voice cast, and an episode of the Cosgrove Hall version of Noddy, meaning Jimmy Hibbert as far as the eye can see. Then it's as far as we can tell terrestrial's only ever airing of Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, a 1970 stopmotion animation for ABC with Fred Astaire narrating (as a mailman) and Mickey Rooney as Kris Kringle himself, telling an origin story loosely based on the song. Channel 4 is also on its kids kick for the early risers with Paddington, Dutch film Sebastian Star Bear: First Mission, Canadian newspaper strip adaptation For Better Or For Worse, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Biker Mice from Mars and CBS' 1987 A Claymation Christmas Celebration, shoving The Big Breakfast Christmas Special with guests Claudia Schiffer, Bad Boys Inc and Zig & Zag singing - none of it live, we sort of suspect - out to 9.25am. BBC2, which never wanted kids anyway, harrumphs and sticks on MGM golden age of musicals celebration That's Entertainment.

It's a Sunday so there's still a God slot to be filled but that doesn't mean Songs Of Praise has to stick to its early evening slot any more. Instead it's put out to the 10am slot usually kept for the Christmas morning service and given a bit of the old showbiz razzle-dazzle, Linda Bellingham, Robert Duncan, Marti Webb and Roy Castle's widow joining Pam Rhodes in All Hallows Church in central London while a thousand strong choir sing carols in Blackpool, Marti Caine goes to Lapland with the usual selection of underprivileged children and "Don Maclean hosts a house party", of which more in the radio section. ITV fifteen minutes later looks at disability imagery from Tiny Tim onwards in filler social programme Link and then launches into a full two hours of Christmas Matters, a version of Sue Cook-fronted topical religious magazine Sunday Matters incorporating Christmas Morning Worship, a Roman Catholic service from Birmingham. Two hours! In that time your kids could be watching the original Doctor Dolittle on BBC2, Saved By The Bell, Take That In Concert and John Lasseter-directed Pixar short Knick Knack on Channel 4 (and, if they're particularly adventurous, Black Gospel Christmas Special), or 1990's Jetsons: the Movie for some reason and a filler Tom & Jerry on BBC1.



The morning over, the adults start filing back into the room as the final dinner preparations are carried out, and your choice of viewing is the Eastenders Omnibus, a tribute to Brian Lara's record breaking cricketing year on BBC2, Danny Kaye's musical biopic Hans Christian Andersen on Channel 4, or on ITV Mole's Christmas, a new animated Wind In The Willows offshoot with the voices of Richard Briers, Peter Davison, Imelda Sta/unton and Ellie Beaven (you do, she was in The Wild House and then was the teenager in Down To Earth. Mostly does theatre now.) Even if it isn't a Cosgrove Hall joint that's a prestigious line-up and a pretty prestigious marque to spin off from, so why's it on at 12.40pm against what's essentially filler and not even shown on Scottish, who prefer a compilation of Ms Young's chat show Kirsty? It's only been repeated thrice more too, once as first thing on Boxing Day 1995, then early on December 27th 1998, then Five stuck it on at 9.25am on Christmas Eve 2004. In any case it's got to be more worthwhile than acting as warm-up for 1986 Disney TV movie The Christmas Star, which takes up the 110 minutes up to the speech and wherein Ed Asner escapes from prison disguised as Santa Claus and while hiding is befriended by two local children believing him to be the real deal.

Talking of oddly scheduled programming, D-Day Remembered should surely be in prime-time closer to the end of the year and not at 1.10pm on BBC2, being recollections of the summer's fiftieth anniversary celebrations by Allied forces veterans. As if part of a theme afternoon it's followed by Going Underground, a repeat of the story of the escape from Stalag Luft by the few that survived it. Worthy, but you can't imagine a lot of household preferring it to Top Of The Pops, presented by Take That very much projecting to the back of the theatre with studio appearances by D:Ream, Doop, Toni Di Bart, Stiltskin, Wet Wet Wet, All-4-One, Let Loose, Whigfield, Pato Banton, Eternal - this wasn't a great year for pop's depth, was it? - and East 17 at number one, plus Mariah Carey via satellite.

An address! Again, mostly about the D-Day commemorations.



Or there's the Alternative Christmas Message from the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Channel 4, who were running a Black Christmas season. Or Tricks On Two, a handily ten minutes long compilation of some close-up magic clips that had been shoved in between programmes in recent times.

So with everyone coming out of whatever way they were marking 3pm, what next? Well, on BBC1 it's the fifth Noel's Christmas Presents, set to full heartwarming blast. This is the one with a Latvian émigré returning to his former home and being reunited with his last surviving relative, and another who from Edmonds' intro seems to have been led to believe he'd be taking part in a revival of Noel's Addicts. ITV... well, in today's other blog we talk about BBC1 getting to air Mary Poppins, and a decade later here it is in the same slot on the other side. Channel 4 were originally scheduled to show The Secret Life of Walter Mitty but that had since become a San Franciscan adaptation of Turandot, while BBC2 have put together an omnibus airing of Hard Times, produced for BBC Schools' English File in four half hour sections aired in October, but whatever necessary budgetary restrictions went on production aren't reflected in a cast list that includes Richard E Grant, Harriet Walter, Alan Bates, Bill Paterson, Bob Peck, Patsy Byrne and Alex Jennings, not to mention written and directed by Peter Barnes whose The Ruling Class became an Oscar-nominated film.

As if Noel and his gifts for the deserving weren't tearjerking enough for mildly sozzled folk who've stuck BBC1 on for the night, Animal Hospital Christmas should set them right off - we weren't to know then about Rolf - before the news with Jill Dando rouses them and The Wrong Trousers, premiered on BBC2 364 days earlier, brings them back fully. Or it's possible they'll turn over to BBC2 as Eastenders and Emmerdale teams vie for supremacy at Martyn Lewis' clip-festooned topical quiz Today's The Day followed by a Carpenters BBC live set from 1971, which coupled with the 25th anniversary compilation of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In seems like the start of a 70s theme night that the channel just decides it can't be bothered continuing with.

A year earlier Keeping Up Appearances had gone abroad and featured a role for Lord Lichfield. This year Richard has athlete's foot and Hyacinth wants a new kitchen which Trevor Bannister wants to sell her. It didn't do that badly in 1993, surely. Talking of Christmas specials featuring odd couples brings us to Channel 4 at roughly the same time, 5.30pm, and Zig and Zag's Christmas Special, also known as Zig & Zag: Entertainment Cops, a kind of pilot for their 1996 Dirty Deeds series in which they seek to undermine an Eamonn Holmes special with a remarkable cast list - Richard Wilson as their boss, Caroline Quentin, Keith Allen as their boss Marcus Plantpot (someone had fun with that one), Christopher Biggins, Frank Bruno, Chas & Dave, Major Ronald Ferguson, the Krankies, Lesley Joseph, Rod Hull and Emu, Rustie Lee, Kenneth MacDonald, Paul McKenna, Sonia, Tom O'Connor, Angela Rippon, Jim Rosenthal, Dale Winton, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wolf from Gladiators and Helen Mirren as Superintendent Jane Tennison. Let's just say the whole thing ends on HMS Belfast with the pair dressed as Bruce Forsyth and Rosemarie Ford. The second hand Bugs Bunny that fills ten minutes to the news on ITV (Dennis Tuohy) cannot hope to compete, especially when Zig & Zag are followed by their old boss/running mate/offscreen flatmate Chris Evans, albeit a repeat of the previous day's Don't Forget Your Toothbrush with Roy Wood, a high powered drinks hose and a remote controlled turkey.



As we've said before, if you were keen to see some Disney on telly you'd usually have to survive on the meagre portions doled out every bank holiday Monday on Disney Time before, many years after release, the House of Mouse would relent but only one at a time. So it is that 1959's classic Sleeping Beauty has its TV premiere just after 6pm on ITV to a slightly disappointing given the circumstances eight million people, which you'd have to say is a contrast to Eastenders on BBC1 a little later. Nobody tries to kill themselves, unlike this time last year, the main story instead being Sharon signing the divorce papers with Grant - divorce papers on Christmas Day, do you see? - and walking out not to be seen again. For three months. And even if that doesn't appeal the Beeb has a large tangerine at the bottom of its stocking in the shape of the TV premiere of Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. 14.3 million people agreed, which is of course coincidentally the number of weeks (Everything I Do) I Do It For You was number one.

The Snowman finally shows up at 7pm on Channel 4, though it's all over the place for most of the next couple of decades, whilst BBC2 settles in for its usual night of the high arts with a Royal Opera House production of Aida. Channel 4 were actually going to air Turandot against it but the earlier change to the schedules left a gap that only the classic Irving Berlin musical There's No Business Like Show Business could reasonably fill. Earthier concerns over on ITV as it's their turn to try and grab the soap hindmost, this being the Coronation Street where Curly has a star named after Raquel, Phyllis returns after a year due to actress illness, and Deirdre promises to follow Samir back to Morocco, though he'll never make it there. And then it's Christmas Blind Date, which is exactly the same as normal Blind Date but with tinsel and one of the contestants being Jason Orange of Take That's twin brother.

One Foot In The Grave's Algarve set special a year earlier is recalled as a classic of the sitcom abroad genre now but it got some harsh reviews at the time, hence Victor and co now staying at home, though he'd likely wished he hadn't when Brian Murphy as Mr Foskett comes to visit seventeen years after a brief encounter on holiday. Reduced back down to forty minutes it's one of the series' genuine classics and features some patented David Renwick swings from ridiculousness to genuine bathos, and the rewards were reaped as it was the day's most watched show with 15.1 million viewers. Keeping the standards high it's followed by Victoria Wood: Live in Your Own Home, a recording of her Royal Albert Hall show. ITV's gambit for the 9pm hour is the fulsome nostalgia of Heartbeat, A Winter's Tale featuring Twiggy as a Lady whose estate's Christmas trees are purloined for fundraising requirements, while Greengrass both loses his lorry and gains a Santa Claus gig. In fairness it stood up well to Victor and co, being ITV's top rated show of the day itself with 13.8 million.

Meanwhile BBC2 and Channel 4 oddly get round to the Queen's speech at almost exactly the same time, 9.35pm/9.40pm, the latter following it with a Harry Connick Jnr concert, the former with a double bill of supernaturally inclined shorts launching a short series of them to run up to the new year, all written by, starring and directed by black and Asian women, under the header Siren Spirits. The first, the supposedly true story of a strange premonition, features Archie Panjabi's screen debut. More paranormality follows in The Butcher's Wife, a 1991 Demi Moore comedy-drama flop (and she regretted doing it) in which the titular figure influences everyone with her powers. Indeed there must have been something in the air as a little later Channel 4 show The Woman In Black, the ITV version of the Susan Hill novel adapted by Nigel Kneale that had been a big hit on Christmas Eve 1989, and indeed this has been its only TV repeat. Maybe it's the whole ghost stories for Christmas thing seeping back in when the main channels had abandoned all memory of it.

Television was really starting to get into the whole celebrities with cute but endangered animals thing and ITV, via a buy-in from PBS albeit through a British production team, had just the thing at 10pm, Robin Williams In The Wild With Dolphins, the human both sharply funny and naturally inquisitive about finding kinship with the curiosity and intelligence of the animals in Hawaii and the Bahamas. But BBC1 has the march on naturally funny men as it has years of Christmas specials by one and his short fat hairy legged friend, the post-news Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show being the 1971 one, Glenda, Shirley, Andrew Preview and all. After a five minute short entitled Christmas Spirit, which we don't know anything about so let's play safe and assume John Wells was involved, the last thing of the night is Trading Places. Hey, it's a Christmas film!

As for how everyone else ends the day, BBC2 go back to the late night horror well just after midnight with 1963 classic The Haunting, Channel 4 finish with Prince concert The Beautiful Experience and Chinese martial arts zombie flick Mr Vampire because at 1.55am you may as well, and ITV hosts Kiri's Coventry Carols, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing with the *checks notes* BBC Philharmonic followed by, depending on your region, a couple of films found down the back of the wardrobe. Phew. All that and no Movies, Games And Videos.

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Radio choice

Clive Warren, the very essence of a stand-in DJ, kicks off Radio 1's day, followed by Steve Wright and the Posse's Stars With Presents, Simon Mayo's Classic Christmas Years - the Golden Hour by any other name - and then Bruno Brookes delivers the Christmas Top 40 for the first time ever on Christmas Eve, which they could do now with computers, revealing Whatever stalling at no.3 behind Stay Another Day and All I Want For Christmas Is You. After that in the traditional Annie Nightingale slot, as a preview of something going out two days later, Paris, London explored the In Concert series from the Paris Theatre. Claire Sturgess introduces Donington highlights on The Christmas Rock Show at 8pm, after which comes Andy Kershaw armed with Johnny Cash's Glastonbury set up to Lisa I'Anson at midnight (she'd been asked to come in for 6, presumably) Boxing Day highlight: Chris Morris in the afternoon!

Roger Royle is an appropriate way for Radio 2 to get underway before Don Maclean, staying resolutely at home in Solihull, presenting Good Morning Christmas with Edward Heath, the Hall Green Salvation Army Band and stars of the Birmingham Hippodrome production of Jack and the Beanstalk, which means one or more of Kevin Lloyd from The Bill, Judi Spiers, Ray Meagher from Home And Away, Su Pollard, Malanda Burrows, Mike Doyle, Scorpio from Gladiators, Zippy, George, Bungle and, er, Don Maclean. Maybe he asked round the previous night. Ken Bruce follows the Queen, who himself is followed by Michael Aspel playing music that would have been played sixty years earlier and assorted anniversaries. We can think of a big one. Phillip Schofield Reads Joseph at 2pm in a repeat from Radio 5, which is just lazy, and then Robert Hardy narrates the story of The Christmas Truce, because it's Sunday The Cliff Adams Singers Sing Something Crosby whatever that means, Charlie Chester battles on with his music hall anecdotes which is why Tommy Cockles had to happen, The Huddlines cannot be stopped with a Bumper Christmas Annual, Richard Baker's Christmas Present is nothing of the sort, then Royle returns to host a gala Christmas concert from the Blackpool Tower Ballroom with lots of local choirs. Alan Keith is still wading through Your Hundred Best Tunes - a title that always confused us when younger, surely the list can't change so much that you wouldn't get through a hundred songs much quicker than however long that lasted? - before Steve Jones, presumably the Pyramid Game one, takes us through to midnight with "the best contemporary music featured on Radio 2 throughout the year", which is just what they do every day now. Nice to see Alex Lester on overnights even then.

The umbrella title Sacred and Profane sets out Radio 3's stall for the morning, including more than three hours of Brian Kay's Christmas Sunday Morning. The annual Christmas Quiz earns itself a lunchtime repeat from just the previous day, followed by Handel's Messiah as recorded in Cardiff a week earlier and A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols... again repeated from Christmas Eve! Budget cuts? Or could nobody be arsed? A new series of recreating Middle Ages nativity music, Paris 1200, is diverting enough at 6.10pm, as is the evening's feature Doctor Johnson's Christmas, an evening of plays, prose and poetry celebrating Dr Samuel's life and contemporary surroundings, the cast including Simon Callow as the great dictionarian, John Sessions as Boswell and Maria Aitken as his partner Hester Thrale. Music In Our Time at 10.10pm "takes a look at the lighter side of new music in the USA." Bagsy the Spin Doctors!

Richard Baker presenting festive classical music at 6am starts the day on, well, Radio 4. Sunday, what was there before Today ate everything up, presents guests, choirs, quizzes and "the Bethlehem story as it unfolds" for an hour before the Queen, the headlines and the morning service from Cambridge. Various repeats - the Archers omnibus, superior Comedy Store Players improvised play The Masterson Inheritance's Christmas Special from the previous year, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue likewise - fill the gap up to Desert Island Discs, in which Sue Lawley strands, appropriately for the date, David Jason. Radio broadcasting on the 25th is as we've seen over the years prime territory for prose and poetry, and so Deck The Halls - another much used title, almost as much as Christmas Present - has Jean Marsh and John Mortimer do the job With Great Pleasure pretty much does now but with extra seasonal chorale. A repeated Harry Thompson documentary about radio greetings from afar, It Was Christmas Day In The Empire, takes up half the usual play slot, the other being The Twelve Days Of Christmas, but not that one, this being about the festive travails of the Iannucci family - that choice surely has to be deliberate - who run an end of the pier ice cream parlour. Lemn Sissay is in it as a DJ, oddly. Chris Serle takes his Pick Of The Year as dusk draws in, followed by 94 year old Bloomsbury Group writer Frances Partridge recalling what she did on the 25th down the years in Dear Diary. Terry Waite In Wilmslow sounds like a wryly mischievous title but it's actuality (and repeated from the 20th) as he retraces his childhood steps at 5pm, followed by Poetry Please! celebrating the winners of the Radio 4 Young Poetry Competition. After the news Ned Sherrin talks to nonagenarians in Ninety Not Out, and then with the old Radio 5 having breathed its last that year a shortlived children's section on Sunday nights presents a new dramatisation of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas In Wales with Philip Madoc and Freddie Jones as those reminiscing. Just to make sure things don't get too sappy poet Simon Rae "loads his gun and sprays the festivities with satirical bullets" in Shoot The Turkey. The rest of the night is makeweight repeats, apart from a 10pm Kaleidoscope special about the history of the waltz and shocking ballroom dances down the years, followed by a very Radio 4 commission God's Secret Agents, the cultural range of heavenly bodies.

As mentioned we have Radio 5 Live now and its first Christmas Day is... patchy. Julian Worricker is still stuck on breakfast and the morning is full of programmes with confusing titles and no eludication like Spotlight 94 with Robin Lustig or The Ad Break Christmas Special. At least we can guess what Yule Never Believe This! is and know about The Big Byte, a festive special presented by Gareth 'Top' Jones, which is followed by the short-lived Top Gear radio spinoff and sports investigate programme On The Line talking about streakers for some reason. The news and sport teams are pitted into a late afternoon Quiz Of The Year, followed by a review of the American sporting year, Messrs H Reeve and Docherty's sly northern phone-in Jim And The Doc (with Mark Radcliffe contributions) and at 8pm The Ultimate Christmas Preview. Er, guys? Anyway, if you're staying up for whatever reason there's Test Match Special from midnight covering the traditional Boxing Day Ashes test in Melbourne. Shouldn't bother, though, Australia win by 295 runs and England are all out for 92 in their second innings.