On this day special: Christmas Day 1988

Three or four years ago we started trailing the Christmas Day viewing of thirty years previously on Twitter; last year we moved it so we could write in a more longform format, and for another year here we all are again...




As always, BBC1 and ITV got up early to clear their throat with some cartoons for the kids who couldn't sleep. ITV got in first from 6am with Christmas Robins, a Cribbins-narrated RSPB film that isn't related to Cribbins-narrated BBC film Round Robin. That was followed by CBS' 1978 animated version of Puff The Magic Dragon with Burgess Meredith as Puff. 'Christmas with TV-am' as an umbrella title featured carols from their regional outposts and an hour long version of Black Beauty. Meanwhile BBC1 got going at 6.55am under the umbrella of Now It's Christmas, adapted from the Sunday morning Now On 2 strand, where Parkin and Crane introduce the Henson team's The Christmas Toy, The Christmas Raccoons, The Nativity Play, a Playbus Why Bird Stop, The Pink Panther Show and Charlie's Christmas Project, in which the titular child (played by an 11 year old Seth Green) gets involved in pet adoption. Being a Sunday, they then run up to 10am with a special of kids' religious show Umbrella - "Why did a hooded figure visit the house of a poor merchant with gifts for his daughters, and why did a Manchester man give his daughter a poem for Christmas?" Rather less spiritually on ITV, Motormouth On Christmas Day From Disneyworld. Pretty sure Andrea Arnold, Neil Buchannan, Tony Gregory and the other two weren't actually there at the time.

By that time Channel 4 has woken up and started with something else being given a fresh Cribbins voiceover, Swedish animation Christopher's Christmas Mission. That's followed at 10am by Silent Mouse, an uneven mix of the story of how Silent Night was written, shot on location in Austria using local choirs and orchestras, and photography from the point of view of an actual mouse. Lynn Redgrave narrates, Gregor Fisher plays composer Franz Gruber. By then BBC1 is onto Christmas Worship from Paisley Abbey, ITV are showing animation The Little Troll Prince, and BBC2 wake up with Storm Boy, a 1976 Australian children's film which won a plethora of awards in the country and is currently being remade with Geoffrey Rush.

But hey, we're just filling time here until 11am...



By now Noel had been brought down from the BT Tower and this was not a classic year as the format breathed its last (Christmas Presents took over from 1989), with Shane Richie and Sophie Aldred as captains of a show-long quiz, Christmas messages from the political great and good including Noel chatting to Thatcher within Number 10, the debut of the concept of Auntie's Bloomers and the patented annual "television first" that Noel would always brag about, in this case a hesitant live link with the Mir space station. This goes on and off YouTube but it's there at time of writing so try your luck.

ITV moved to Lemsford, Herts for Morning Worship, Channel 4 slipped into an unfestive Waltons, and come 11.25am BBC2 were throwing their lot in with two and three-quarter hours of The Bible: In the Beginning..., Dino De Laurentiis' attempt to film as much as possible of the book of Genesis, with Richard Harris, John Huston, Peter O'Toole, Ava Gardner and George C Scott leading a cast of thousands.

While at midday Channel 4 slum it with a repeat of 1985's Florida special of Treasure Hunt and ITV sling on a Mickey, Donald and Goofy gang show in Moving Day, BBC1 follow ITV's lead by sending a show to the Magic Kingdom. It's A Charity Knockout From Walt Disney World Resort, to be precise, the format unbowed by the previous year's Grand Knockout Tournament as teams representing Britain, America and Australia raised money for Children In Need. Check some of that lineup: Jenny Agutter, Joe Bugner, Bernie Clifton, Annabel Croft, Eddie Edwards, the Fat Boys (ah, 1988), David Gower, Lloyd Honeyghan, George Lazenby, Meatloaf, Richard 'Shaft' Roundtree and Toyah. ITV pick up their own entertainment pace at 12.15pm with The Great British Pop Machine, an entertaining take on the music of the year format including performances from the likes of Yazz, linked by French & Saunders, including an "interview" with Def Leppard.

On Boxing Day Eastenders would get its first spinoff, the WWII set Civvy Street, but despite being only three years on from Den's divorce papers the soap skipped putting a new episode on the big day for the first time, though the omnibus filled the hour from 1pm. While an unseasonal Lost In Space kept Channel 4 running, TVS supplied ITV with a Mr Majeika special in which Santa drops in early.

BBC1 retook the musical hindmost at 2pm with the Top Of The Pops Christmas party, starring double Pet Shop Boys, Aswad, Fairground Attraction with Eddi Reader feeding the crowd, the Timelords with Gary Glitter, Wet Wet Wet, Bros, a chat with Robin Gibb and of course a special message from Breathe, of Hands To Heaven fame. But ITV know Christmas lunch glamour too, hence at 2.15pm the Bullseye Christmas Special with Marti Caine, Les Dennis, Bob Holness, Roy Walker, Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson, Bob Anderson and the Birmingham Cathedral Choir. Channel 4, beaten, slings on 1928 cameo-heavy silent Show People.

BBC2, as ever seeking the alternative, goes to, over and underneath the Hawaiian Islands in Islands of the Fire Goddess and then from 3pm covers the next five hours 20 minutes with a re-run of the summer's Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Concert from Wembley Stadium. Harry Belafonte, Derek B and Harry Enfield - together at last! And no, Fry & Laurie's mikes still die, followed by them.

After BBC1 and ITV have covered a word to the Commonwealth and its subjects, the former goes big with the Back To The Future TV premiere. ITV have a big debut too, The Empire Strikes Back, and at least one region knew exactly what gravitas to give it.



Actually ITV crucially held off on that until 3.55pm so they could use as a buffer a festive Blind Date. BBC1 came out of its big Christmas film first with something else that would in time become its own Feast of Stephen perennial, Only Fools and Horses. Dates, already its seventh special, is the one where Del first meets Raquel.

This year's invariable classical music on the big day comes from Channel 4, with a Viennese staging of Mozart's Mass In C Minor at 3.30pm followed by the strangely common sight across the Eighties and into the early Nineties of John Wells doing something special and usually not satirical. John Wells And The Three Wise Men involved Wells chairing a discussion about faith between Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives, set on a supposedly broken down train. The Queen was delayed to 5.20pm - no Alternative Christmas Message until 1993 - followed by The Snowman, because obviously.

There must have been something about the progression past six o'clock that made the big channels want to break out even more star names all in one go. ITV went first with a Save The Children fundraiser of Christmas music performed by the stars of the West End, including Michael Ball, David Essex, Anita Harris, Bonnie Langford, Paul Nicholas, Elaine Paige, Francis Rufelle and your host Michael Crawford. Meanwhile after the news at 6.30pm BBC1 celebrated with the annual Arts Centre Group get-together in a Songs Of Praise special (again, remember this was a Sunday), hosted by Cliff Richard and Sally Magnusson with our celebrants including Wendy Craig, Thora Hird, Paul Jones, Ian McCaskill, Pam Rhodes, Roger Royle and that man again John Wells. Channel 4 went in a different direction, plucking from Showtime's Faerie Tale Theatre anthology series a 1984 adaptation of Pinocchio with Paul Reubens as lead, Carl Reiner as Gepetto and James Coburn, Michael Richards and Jim Belushi in the cast.

Teatime just about cleared, it was time for the light entertainment hordes to step in. Bread took up most of the evening, 75 minutes of the Boswells visiting Rome and winning the day's ratings battle. ITV put up Coronation Street in opposition - Hilda Ogden's departure had won the day for ITV in 1987 but despite Deirdre's kidnapping this year was a comparative flop with around half the audience, less in fact than Ten Years Of Alright On The Night which followed. (That show was the first time we ever saw the Yogs clip and it scared the hell out of junior us) Channel 4? Well, after the news at 7pm was Time Is A Country, a profile of patron of the arts Margaret Gardiner looking at her friendships with the likes of Barbara Hepworth and W. H. Auden and her left-wing political involvement. This cannot have registered anything with BARB, surely.

BBC2 rejoined the fray at 8.20pm with the Queen plus signing and subtitles followed by Once In A Lifetime, an adaptation of a 1930 satirical play about the rise of talking pictures with Zoe Wanamaker, David Suchet and Brian Blessed involved. Surely indistinguishable from what started at the same time over on BBC1, the Russ Abbot Christmas Show with Cribbins' third appearance of the day. Channel 4, going very much its own way, covered the restoration of York Minster on Challenge By Fire, which is also a good summation of London's Burning, whose 90-minute special included a small role for Arthur Smith.

Past the watershed, Channel 4 switch back into arts mode with a version of the ballet Creole Giselle by the Dance Theatre of Harlem, set in 19th century Louisiana, then see out the night with Jean-Michel Jarre in Docklands two months earlier and a repeat of the same month's Human Rights Now! concert in Buenos Aires featuring Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N'Dour. BBC2 meanwhile head back to the film vaults and pick out foreign language Oscar-nominated Italian drama The Family and, more populist apart from that it was on at twenty past midnight, Some Like It Hot. BBC1 filled out the night with films too, the TV premiere of Silverado after the news, the musical Carousel after a reading of The Gospel According to St Matthew. ITV still had something big left in One More Audience With Dame Edna at 10.25pm after their own news, followed by a variety of movies depending on your region, High Plains Drifter and Our Man Flint among them going through the night in the new era of 24 hour commercial TV.

And then onto Boxing Day - is it to be Bruce & Ronnie at 10.55pm (a time that drove their producer to tears in the rehearsal room, as discussed), The Story of Reader's Digest on BBC2, After Henry on ITV or an Italian film about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers impersonators on Channel 4?

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 24: Bruce And Ronnie, 1988

This has been online since April 2017, why didn't we feature it last year? Surely not just because it's missing the last three minutes or so? Anyway... Forsyth and Corbett had hosted that year's Royal Variety Performance together so were given a BBC1 Christmas special, to give it its full top of the bill-averting title Bruce And Ronnie In the Corbett and Forsyth Show. However, according to Brucie's autobiography producer Marcus Mortimer entered the rehearsal room in tears one day and told the pair "I don't know how to tell you this - I've just had the schedules and we are to follow Lenny Henry who's on at ten o'clock on Boxing Night". Unless Eastenders special Civvy Street and the TV premiere of Beverley Hills Cop really were that urgent appointments to view there's no reason this shouldn't have been key to prime time, featuring as it does the classic structure of sketches (including one with Fiona Fullerton), crosstalk, hoofing, Bruce singing and Ronnie sitting. Enjoy this quintessential slab of LE, and a merry Christmas to you all!

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 24: S4C, Christmas Eve 1983

Let's finish with the WDYT? Advent Calendar debut of Cymru Christmas capers. Actually this is technically from Christmas Day as it's 1.05am and as nobody's up they've settled in reception. Don't worry about the language, it's all bilingual. We can be cynical, yes, but Sian Thomas taking a moment to thank the staff "feeding us with the adverts" is something you didn't get on LWT. Similarly, most regions meet the early hour closedown by sticking together some photos of birds, or wintry fields, or the Queen. S4C hired a choir to sing White Christmas in the native language. Nadolig Llawen!

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 23: Christmas With Eric & Ernie, 1979

Eric Morecambe suffered his second heart attack in March 1979 and had bypass surgery, so aware of the strain he always put on himself attempting to improve on the previous Christmas shows the pair took it easier in the form of a David Frost interview with interruptions. We've featured a clip from this before so we're gradually pulling the whole thing together - here Des O'Connor appeared so they didn't have to make fun of him behind his back, while the sole entirely new sketch was, of all things, a Looney Tunes spoof.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 23: Thames, Christmas Day 1980

Peter Marshall, with his voice like old brandy, in a fully decorated sitting room introducing the Billy Smart Circus with a Thames ident should be what every Christmas is like.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 22: Gone Live!, 1993

The last pre-recorded special Going Live! did (yes, we know Live & Kicking was in place by Christmas 1993 but this was actually shown on 2nd January and we're sticklers for accuracy) has turned up in the interim. The video quality is really quite poor early on but do stick with it as Nelson Polo and Horatio Mint, the investigative team known as The Looking Eye, examine television itself, make a mess of BBC TV, give Pip a disturbingly accurate vision of his comfortable daytime future and - Saturday morning kids' TV, remember - spoof The Word. George Takei, Judith Hann, Gayle and Gillian Blakeney, The Farm and Run The Risk fit in somewhere between.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 22: Heineken advert, 1977

A forgotten classic of the festive advert genre, and one that thanks to the legendary artist and illustrator Oscar Grillo precedes Who Framed Roger Rabbit? by a full decade in its combination of animation and actuality. Charlie Drake takes the role he often played for real at this time of year, early 90s Channel 4 video advert favourite Victor Borge delivers the narration and you don't need us to tell you who the other voice belongs to.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 21: Tomorrow's World Christmas Quiz, 1989

We've featured 1987 and 1988's future-facing quizzes before on the blog, but for this year the concept changed as a very applause happy audience, cajoled by Sybil Ruscoe, fielded multiple choice questions against a panel of Douglas Adams and two experts, the juries being led by Eartha Kitt, Paul Daniels, David Essex and Frank Bruno alongside a cameo from a homebound Bob Symes.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 21: ATV, Christmas Day 1979

We say this a lot but many of these animations are far too gorgeous to waste on trailers, aren't they? Especially so when plonked in a corner of a jet black backdrop behind Kevin Morrison, who understandably is more appreciative of the viewers than his employers. Looking ahead to Boxing Day as in the second video, the problematic Dick Emery sketch isn't really offset by the introduction of "the swinging Three Degrees" and their hit song Bicycle Hut.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 20: Russ Abbot's Madhouse, 1984

Still in its ITV 'teddy boys are inherently amusing' phase with the Dennis/Gee/Emberg/Holland/Blake/Hewson team, who at one point all turn into Abbot's dancers. Alyn Ainsworth must have been working union hours. Cooperman and Basildon Bond both turn up, Dustin Gee blacks up twice (and, notably, nobody else), and because it's 1984 Abbot ends with a rendition of Atmosphere, far from the only time he sings straight during the show. He must have fancied his chances of a second career.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 20: BBC1, Christmas Eve 1983

Roy Hudd in a Shakespeare documentary actually seems quite tempting, but BBC1 are busy looking ahead to the following day, or at least the family-friendly end of it. How is that meant to make us want to watch Christmas Top Of The Pops? Blankety Blank right after the Queen feels like odd scheduling, and Peggy gladly giving someone else a Yellowcoat is breaking character.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 19: The Mike Yarwood Show, 1979

Two years after his triumph on that Christmas night of BBC1 Christmas nights Yarwood had slipped behind To The Manor Born in the schedule and ratings, and as any fule no (except Jon Culshaw, who in the festive edition of TV Years blames "keyboard warriors" for the perception) the rise of Thatcher stymied his calling card of being able to take off all the top political names, although that's what he had Janet Brown for. This thirteen minute excerpt still sees him keeping up with Wilson and Heath before introducing Johnny Mathis, who playing off Mike as Liberace would at least have needed less explanation of the gag in advance unlike the Grayson/Abba meeting of the previous year's show.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 19: BBC2, Christmas Eve 1979

Rotating snowflakes served BBC2 well down the years, and the trailer for the TV premiere of Cabaret - strange that wasn't on BBC1 and was as late as 10.45pm, but anyway - combined with the multicoloured visual effects makes it sound like they've been taken down the circus. After Singin' In The Rain Tim Nichols transfers us into the big day with a warning on road conditions and a wintry piano ballad.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 18: Punchlines, 1982

Recorded in that timeframe where jokes about Mark Thatcher's driving could get shrieking laughs. Taking the feeds in what was sadly never referred to as the small box game are Judy Grindley (us neither), Lennie & Jerry sideman Albert Pontefract, Isla St Clair, Joe Brown, Madeline Smith, David Hamilton, Faith Brown (who gets wolf whistles) and Kenny Lynch. Joining and taking over from the contestants, Diana Dors and Freddie Starr. Go on, guess how Starr is dressed when he first appears. No, not as Elvis, the other one.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 18: Yorkshire, Boxing Day 1989

We're not sure Yorkshire's Christmas Line would have quite the same effect on the dispossessed over Christmas as LWT's. Even if the schedule for the rest of the day hasn't, someone within ITV has clearly made an effort for the TV premiere of Return Of The Jedi.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 17: Telly Addicts, 1985

They say a person can be aged by which Telly Addicts Christmas special was their first. OK, maybe not, but just as the start of a new series was a better guide than any equinox for judging when autumn truly started, so the end of season celebrity edition was for many years the show that held the last stages of TV's countdown to Christmas together. Joined in progress, this was after the end of the first series in which inaugural champions the Pains faced - do you see? - the Aches, comprising Michael Grade (making the first of three appearances on the end of year bonanza), Nina Myskow, Barry Took and Larry Grayson. And yes, there's some film of Noel when he looked slightly different.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 17: Central, 1982

Michael Aspel, on his lunch break going on how distracted he sounds, previews ITV's festive fare including the bizarre looking and sounding A Christmas Lantern, Brucie playing drunk and Sarah Kennedy falling over. Gary Terzza in his Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) suit makes the Easter joke that everyone on Twitter in mid-October now thinks they invented.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 16: The Lenny Henry Show, 1988

Post-Lenny Lenny Len, post-not-a-repeat, that year's series was the one where it turned into a Delbert Wilkins sitcom but Len returned to a sketch and standup format for the Special, the Brixton Broadcasting Corporation put aside for the return of Deakus, Josh Yarlog and Theophilus P Wildebeeste.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 16: 1980s and 1990s Christmas adverts

We've featured some of continuity scourer by appointment Neil Miles' finds before - twice over, in fact - but here's two all-new sets of commercials, all under a minute long and none setting out to be tearjerking, unless you count WH Smith deciding their true voice was Su Pollard.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 15: Battle Of The Gladiators Celebrity Special, 1993

John Fashanu says "awooga!" twice before Ulrika can actually introduce the programme, which is a fitting start to a special that went out right before the second series' final, enough time for Jet to become a national obsession and 'oversized cotton buds' to become the show's shorthand. Playing for charity in a line-up that features a distinct lack of women are the inevitable Vinnie Jones, Fashanu himself at one stage clearly pretending to have lost his male dignity, boxers Denis Andries (who is sweating buckets in the introductory interview) and Gary Mason, gymnast Neil Adams and showjumper Oliver Skeete, who as a black horseman was all over the media for a short time while never actually achieving anything of worth in the sport.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 15: Howard Jones on The Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show, 1984

No, not the whole thing. One day. ONE DAY. Instead here's HoJo wearing a bin bag and singing Like To Get To Know You Well live while disobeying all kinds of health regulations at Charing Cross Hospital, an idea Michael Leggo copied from Jones doing the same with commuters at Temple Meads Station, Bristol earlier the same year on that Top Of The Pops where they broke the UK train speed record. (Long story.)

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 14: Les Dawson and Gilbert O'Sullivan, 1974

Les Dawson's Christmas Box came after the ninth of Sez Les' eleven series, which means John Cleese was part of the usual Barraclough/Ball/Jazzmen team, with Wanda Ventham guesting. O'Sullivan was there to promote his number 12 hit Christmas Song, which it's fair to say hasn't survived as well as the popular Christmas hits of the previous year, and he clearly hadn't been at rehearsals for Les' piano part.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 14: BBC1, Christmas Day 1978

Even discounting the strike that nearly enveloped it, Christmas 1978 was very much after the Lord Mayor's show for BBC1 - Morecambe & Wise were across on the other side and despite getting the Radio Times cover Mike Yarwood couldn't keep up his momentum of the previous year, although in the ratings he only fell behind another offering on the same channel, the TV premiere of The Sound Of Music. That has just finished as we join BBC1 with only a real bottom of the barrel offering to trail in terms of movies. Compared to that previous St Nicholas celebration the animated trails, while not exactly scrimping, feel boxy and less inviting too. Once we've seen what's ahead Peter Woods runs through some standard Christmas Day news before Parkinson At The Pantomime, obviously the kind of special only a journalist is qualified to host. And then OH GOD THAT SANTA FACE.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 13: The Likely Lads, 1974

Sleigh bells drowning out the theme! Ah, those were the days. There's some subsequent confusion about whether this went out under the Whatever Happened To...? title as that was obviously what the series that ended earlier in 1974 was called, but both the title sequence and Radio Times bill it under the shortened form, so Likely Lads it is. Bob, with a beard, and Thelma go to a fancy dress party, and Terry passes his driving test. This was the final episode, though Bolam and Bewes would take time away from badly falling out to make radio and film versions. Footnote: Bob makes a joke about watching The Great Escape on TV again when it had only debuted on BBC1 three years earlier and wouldn't next appear in the days around Christmas until 28th December 1983, which is also the earliest press reference we can find to it being on every Christmas (after that was Boxing Day 1985, Boxing Day 1987, 27th December 2003 and 23rd December 2007)

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 13: Thames, Christmas Day 1986

See how the building lights light up as the day progresses from afternoon into night. It's those little touches that make a welcoming festive continuity atmosphere. Amid the adverts Victoria Wood was the face and voice of Thames' annual Christmas Line initiative, and we really must also draw your attention to the date specific Adrian Mole trailer at the start of the second video.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 12: Dave Allen At Large, 1979

Another little thing at the end of this (not the end of the video unfortunately, it's one of those uploads that loops back around) that time and progress has sadly made redundant - every Boxing Day a comedy show would make a point of telling the viewer how many shopping days there were until the next Christmas. This was the final show to go out under Allen's most famous programme title, from now on only going out in one-off specials or compilations until a self-titled series in 1990. Among his repertory company: Paul McDowell from Porridge, Kirsten Cooke (Michelle from Allo Allo) and JoAnne Good now of BBC Radio London.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 12: Anglia, Boxing Day 1988

We're not convinced of the link between ITV's shortlived The Look Of... branding exercise and the jukebox setting, but whatever. Shockingly, Patrick Anthony chooses this of all days to assault BC.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 11: Les Dennis Laughter Show, 1990

The Laughter Show, maybe the BBC's most hostage to fortune show title ever, only had one series left before the great early 90s LE putsch, but given this went out on the 22nd everyone must have known the writing was already on the wall. You can tell from her getting a lengthy monologue sketch that his sidekick here Lisa Maxwell ("currently appearing in Russ Abbot's Palladium Madhouse") is being lined up to take over, which she did for one series just before leaving TV for years and returning as a serious actor. As per government decree for late 1990 there's a Gazza sketch in which the punchline is 'he cries'. Two, in fact. Still, nice to see Brian Glover.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 11: BBC1, Christmas Day 1980

Really we just wanted to include this for the Paul Daniels photo.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 10: Coronation Street, Christmas Eve 1984

Hilda Ogden left the Street three years and a day later - who moves house on Christmas Day? - but everyone remembers the close of this pre-Christmas episode too as, just over a month after her husband Stan passed away, she leads a Rovers-wide hymnal of Silent Night. We have no idea if this is deliberate but when Stan found himself being held hostage at gunpoint the same week in 1970 his captor forced him to sing that same song. There's also a subplot about Jack and Vera's Christmas tree, and we bet that wasn't the only time that happened.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 10: ITN News, Christmas Day 1981

Just because it was Christmas doesn't mean Solidarity took a rest. This comes from Southern, which closed down a week later. We don't want to suggest the loss of picture just as Alastair Stewart begins talking about the Queen is necessarily connected, but...

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 9: The Dick Emery Show, 1980

For Whom The Jingle Bells Toll, a Godfather spoof of sorts all shot on film for extra prestige in which Emery takes many one-off characters alongside a cast list including Harry H Corbett in one of his last roles, Roy Kinnear, June Whitfield, Iain Cuthbertson, Glynn Edwards and pre-Arthur Bill Treacher.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 9: Woolworths advert, 1981

You can do longform festive advertising that isn't "heartwarming" in the slightest. We wish some companies would. We've featured nearly all of Woolies' once traditional big rollouts before on this blog - 1977, 1978, 1979 (yes, we know we got the year wrong first time), 1980 (first one in the second video), 1982, 1983 - so let's fill that gap with reliable Anita Harris, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Windsor Davies, Don Estelle, an amusingly bass-voiced Di-alike, Chinese acrobats and Cossack dancers. Were Windsor Davies and Joe Brown busy?

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 8: Bob's Full House, 1985

We've had the 1984 special before; a year later it's a standard episode but with the contestants all giving their cash prizes to a chosen charity. They take the other prizes home with them, but the money's not theirs. Otherwise it's all the Monkhouse Master Card and concept of being Wallied you'd want.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 8: Christmas Wrapping - TV Times

We've featured Matthew Harris' sterling work over Advent Calendars past, and you really should watch and follow everything Bob The Fish Productions puts out anyway. Having already covered Radio Times double issues and beyond, last year's addition was this guide to festively never knowing it had so much in it.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 7: Rentasanta, 1979

Not a dramatic version of Chris Hill's hit of three years earlier but a seasonal episode of Rentaghost, and no, they don't reword the title song. It actually turned out to be the end of an era - while that is the correct year for its actual debut it was actually originally scheduled for transmission in 1978 but due to industrial action didn't go out. By the time it was screened Michael Darbyshire had died and Anthony Jackson decided not to continue in his absence, which meant two of the original three central characters had to be written out and as that just left clown Timothy Claypole writer Bob Block's approach was forced to veer into slapstick by the time it returned in 1980. Anyway, this is a musical episode set in a department store where said trio are employed as Santa Clauses (Clauii?) while the Meakers want them back home for a production of Aladdin. Watch for Michael Staniforth's spectacular performance of Swinging On A Star and note this is where Dobbin the house pantomime horse debuted, just to push the point about the future.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 7: Thames, Boxing Day 1983

The end of what would be the final Morecambe & Wise Christmas special - on Boxing Day, just to emphasise how far they'd fallen on ITV - is followed by a very louche looking Philip Elsmore. Hold on, the cue dot's still on...

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 6: 3-2-1, 1983

As usual the Rogers connection was pantomime, specifically Dick Whittington. The contestants are children playing for charity, which hardly seems fair on them, but not nearly so much as having a fourth pairing who can't play and have to depend on the other teams if their chosen charity wants to take something home for themselves. A strangely underpowered celebrity cast for a festive spectacular of Dana, Kenneth Connor, Billy Dainty and June Rogers (nope) in the title role takes part.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 6: BBC2, Christmas Day 1982

Starting up in the afternoon with a triumphant fanfare, a man called Dennis Skillicorn, a brief issue with the green filter and the calming tones of Bruce Hammal. If he had been the voice of Protect & Survive the Cold War might not have been so disturbing.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 5: The Paul Daniels Magic Show, 1985

Around his earliest TV appearances Paul Daniels insisted he would rather be known as an "unusualist", as he saw himself as more on the entertainment side compared to a traditional magician, but we suppose The Paul Daniels Unusualism Show wouldn't have come across the same way. The Magic Show certainly wasn't nothing but tricks, and here Paul promises that "many of our acts are very young indeed" which covers some double dutch skippers, a Chinese contortionist and, we suppose, Matthew Corbett with Sooty and Sweep, but definitely not Vegas illusionist Lance Burton. The big finale casts Debbie as Snow White against Ali Bongo, Brian Rogers' latest dance unit and the unmissable Fenella Fielding as the Wicked Queen.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 5: BBC1, Christmas Day 1985

Nice festive start there, we know (this is what happened) We've already seen something from this day on advent past, but it's worth dwelling further on how by now the Beeb had inherited from ITV the tradition of topping and tailing their trailers in beautifully animated fashion unbecoming their actual status. Hey, it's the clockwork robins!

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 4: Father Christmas, 1991

Raymond Briggs' difficult second Christmas themed Channel 4 animation, and it not only has a shared universe with The Snowman but rewrites its ending. In fact if you look closely when the titular Mel Smith-voiced character visits Scotland it's also shared with When The Wind Blows, somehow. The spinoff single peaked at 59. Should have got Aled Jones to cover it.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 4: ATV, Boxing Day 1980

1980, the year Santa rode around in Danger Mouse's Space Hopper - he wouldn't need it for another year, in fairness - the An Audience With... strand began and ATV believed in the power of calming light blue and a snobbish looking Father Christmas. The adverts contain a lot of holidaymaker ideas, as was Boxing Day tradition.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 3: Christmas With Val Doonican, 1986

"Tonight for me is no jaunt or spree, for I'm off to work at the BBC!" Eat it raw, Dylan. Val's BBC1 Christmas Eve shows only actually lasted from 1978 to 1988 but the combined impact of his rocking-but-gently, becardiganed LE spectaculars cannot be underestimated, right from the opening sequence filmed in his actual home. Jan Leeming reveals the secrets of the news Christmas shift, Dennis Taylor does some trick shots because it's the mid-80s, the deaf Evelyn Glennie keeps conversation with Val despite having seemingly no visual aid and White Christmas is essayed from the suspiciously shiny rocking chair.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 3: ITV trailer, 1993

Don't take this line-up too much to heart, three of these shows featured appeared on the day itself, and two of those were films. In stark contrast to BBC1 having gotta lotta fings on, this was the year ITV decided to schedule its biggest shows in the periods before and after Christmas to capture the more valuable advertising revenue during a downturn. As Christmas Day was a Saturday, uninspired magazine filler Movies Games And Videos was kept in its post-Chart Show slot; between the Queen and 11.40pm the line-up consisted of four movies, a Beadle-fronted compilation of daredevil stunts and two news bulletins. The result: not much above 20 percent of all viewing in what was still for a vast majority the four-channel era (eight BBC1 shows on Christmas Day had more viewers than ITV's most watched output) and a carpeting from the ITC who told them never to try that again.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 2: Rutland Weekend Television, 1975

Idle and Innes' low budget - on and off screen - sketch show got its own special half hour in between its two series, featuring George Harrison as a pirate possibly having taken a pre-show cocktail, a spoof of that year's Tommy, Film Night in which Idle plays both Philip Jenkinson and Tony Bilbow alongside Gwen Taylor playing heavily against type, and the ever reliable for one very specific walk-on role Jeanette Charles.

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 2: The DJ Kat Show, 1994

DJ Kat was an unprepossessing puppet, Dutch in origin - in fact it was created by the company that became Endemol - which served as the mascot of Sky's kids' output, such as they had much, every weekday morning between 1986 and 1995. In later years it was mostly a framing device for imported cartoons and puppeteer-ed by Don Austen (responsible for a horde of puppet and animatronic film and TV work from Live & Kicking's Leprechauns via Spitting Image to The Phantom Menace) but rarely let off from a glorious mess of sketches, skits, interactivity and so forth. Put together from broadcasts over two days, the 20th and 21st December, Kat, human sidekick Joe Greco (Spatz, Emu's Pink Windmill Show) and a cast of... two others put on a version of A Christmas Carol.

Home Advent Calendar 2018 Day 1: Windmill, 1985

Let's start this December's perambulation around the centre and outskirts alike of old festive TV with a show that did much the same itself. Windmill was a Sunday morning treat where Chris Serle acted as welcoming host to a plundering of the Windmill Road BBC archive, a Trojan horse of telly nostalgia that led so many down the path we all now tread these days. John Craven is the guest, and even if the illustrative clip of him in a boat in Panama is not entirely festive it's followed in short order by a clip from a Swap Shop pantomime and All-Star Record Breakers. Plus, Serle sings!

Work Advent Calendar 2018 Day 1: LWT, 22nd December 1978

Is it beyond the realms of possibility for someone to find and upload Pam Ayres Hong Kong Christmas in the next year? So we're not quite up to Christmas here but it's all Peter Lewis can think about, starting with a look at Saturday 23rd and a chance to wonder what exactly Gemma Craven is wearing in her Celebrity Squares box. Imagine the green room conversations between Elaine Stritch and Dick Emery. After that News At Ten reports on the end of the two day BBC strike and a story about the moon where we cannot work out what Alastair Burnet is supposed to say. We hope he hadn't been digging into his co-anchor Reginald Bosanquet's secret stash before going on air. Also, is that continuity announcement meant to suggest the next day's news has been extended because of wrestling?