#17: BBC ephemera, 1981

From the desk of YouTube's continuity king David Baldwin, whose work you'll be seeing a lot of on here in the coming days, BBC1's festive promises for 1981. Judith Hann pretends to stick her finger into a CGI Christmas pudding which is bigger than she is, the cast of M*A*S*H send a greeting, the late period Nationwide theme, Russell Harty At Home accidentally invents Knowing Me Knowing Yule, John Simpson reads the news, Zoo lead a conga line to Yellow Pearl in the Top Of The Pops studios. Most interestingly is the Christmas Eve debut of the Kenny Everett Television Show, a lengthy trailer about halfway through being followed by its opening seconds right at the end, and the choice of publication replicated for last of the introductory comedic spinning headlines is quite telling.

The second video features more of largely the same, including Ceefax, the Christmas Eve closedown, a trail including K9 & Company and Look North's once seen never forgotten take on the Prince Charming video at 9:35 - lowering yourself forgetting all your standards indeed. We think the sound has been dipped for copyright reasons but it's much more satifying to think it was like that on the original broadcast when VT decided to cut their losses.