On this day: Christmas Day 1989

Oi, spoilers!

As is now traditional, instead of flooding your timelines we take this space up to go through the Christmas Day schedules from thirty years ago in longform - and in 1989 they're a fascinating mix of the famous, the fading and the transient.

So where are we starting? 6am seems as good as anywhere even if the Beeb is still in bed, excited youngsters waking up with TV-am's Cartoon Capers, Timmy Mallett introducing festive cast-offs including Mr Men and a Punky Brewster animation. Alternatively Channel 4 offer a gospel version of Joseph Haydn's Creation recorded either in Vienna or at the Canterbury Festival depending on which source you believe. Their morning continued under the umbrella of the Channel Four Daily, though surely their bureaus wouldn't be open on such a day, with Dennis, Aladdin, Countdown Masters, Dai Mouse - about which there is no information other than "read by David Jason", and as you can imagine searching for information about Jason providing the voiceover for a D Mouse is dominated by his other work - and Poetry Book, a series of poems read by Paul Scofield, Alan Bennett, Derek Jacobi and others. TV-am meanwhile fills out with Benji, Zax And The Alien Prince until Good Morning Britain throws a Christmas Party from 8am with "a host of celebrity guests". As well as giving away its pre-recorded nature the list of stars starts very strongly with Bros and Jason Donovan, quickly plummets with Russ Conway, and then gives up and lists its regulars (Russell Grant, Gyles Brandreth, Lizzie Webb, Kathy Tayler, Jimmy Greaves, Ulrika Jonsson) Beatrice Hollyer, now an acclaimed parenting author, drew the short newsreading straw.

By this time BBC1 is up and straight in to a morning of Children's BBC with Andi Peters and Lisa Jones, who was a regular co-host of the Christmas and New Year strands over this period and was then never seen again. They're on from 7am to 9.30am with The Nativity Play, 1988 Canadian animation Bluetoes The Christmas Elf, The Christmas Tree Stop on Playdays with the Why Bird, Dot and Patch together, Ziggy's Gift (an 1982 ABC silent cartoon directed by the great and sadly passed this year Richard Williams with future Shrek and Pocahontas directors involved plus music by Harry Nilsson), A Merry Mirthworm Christmas and A Flintstone Christmas (from 1977). BBC2 for their part are going about business as if it's a normal day from 8.25am with an episode from the first series of The Third Man adaptation and a Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon Buster Crabbe double.

With breakfast TV commitments done it's into the morning TV for kids, with BBC1 easing into Eggs 'n' Baker an hour and a quarter later than its usual slot at 9.30am and given all of half an hour. None of their usual scraping around for guests to come to Manchester despite the time restriction as Jason Donovan, Sinitta, Big Fun, Sonia and Jimmy Somerville all pitch in. The nebulous Bugs Bunny & Friends At Christmas fills the post-TV-am hour on ITV - that's except for viewers in Scotland, who get the Moderator's Christmas Message followed by depending on region Glen Michael's Christmas Special (Scottish), Christmas Comes To Pacland (Border) or Dusty The Snowman (Grampian) - while Channel 4 go with A Sesame Street Christmas, presumably the one from 1978 featuring cameos by Henry Fonda and Michael Jackson. BBC2 meanwhile links live with what is still officially referred to as East Berlin at this incredibly auspicious moment in history, six weeks after the wall fell, for the landmark Berlin Freedom Concert, Beethoven's Ninth conducted by Leonard Bernstein with the word 'freude' (joy) in Ode To Joy changed to 'freiheit' (keeping the dream alive freedom). "The conductor, with an orchestra assembled from both sides of the Iron Curtain, projects the message: 'All men shall be brothers.'" It would also be Bernstein's last major public engagement before his death the following October.

By 10am BBC1 is off to church, Christmas Celebration led by Roy Castle at his local Gold Hill Baptist Church in Chalfont St Peter, Bucks. Fifteen minutes later ITV's big morning encompassing spectacular begins, The Other Side Of Christmas hosted live from Docklands Arena's free funfair and circus by Anneka Rice. In between entertainments we're taken to Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital for the traditional welcoming of festive babies and chat with harried midwives, to St Michael & All Angels Church, Hackney where local children re-enact the nativity, and as was tradition to Lapland with David Bellamy and 23 former care home children who benefited from Central's Find A Family project. Corrie's Thelma Barlow, Helen Worth and Bill Waddington talk about Those Less Fortunate At This Time Of Year while Michael Aspel and Nick Owen launch Telethon '90 with "a dramatic pledge for the homeless". The mind shudders to think.

Not that anyone would have been watching the later stages, as Michael Leggo's new initiative bore its first fruits at 11am. Under his watch Christmas Morning With Noel had devolved from Telecom Tower, world-spanning broadcast firsts into studio bound games the previous year and Leggo couldn't see a way forward so the format was put to sleep. Instead he came up with Noel's Christmas Presents, a simple but effective tearjerking idea to, as Radio Times put it, "give some very unusual presents to some very special people" that ran annually for all but one year until 1999 when Noel and the BBC fell out, and then from 2007 to 2011 on Sky. Channel 4 for their part got to midday with regularly scheduled repeats of Tintin and Batman plus Silent Mouse, the story of Silent Night shot on location in Austria from the point of view of an actual mouse with Lynn Redgrave narrating. BBC2 continued their family film season at 11am with the 1977 The Prince And The Pauper.

In fact the hours leading up to the Queen and the dinner are generally repeats and filler. For the two hours after Noel finished at midday BBC1 served up Christmas Comedy Cracker, an umbrella title for episodes of Porridge (the one where Mackay briefly leaves), Dad's Army (Mainwaring's brother) and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (the Nativity episode). ITV choose 12.25pm for the Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service ten years after its TV premiere; BBC2 follow Reed, Rex and Raquel with Canadian cartoon The Boy And The Snowgoose and the second of a two part tribute to Fred Astaire; and Channel 4 showcases The Greatest (Little) Show On Earth, an Australian documentary about a children's circus troupe, and Oscar nominated animated short George And Rosemary - made for the National Film Board of Canada but co-directed by Brit Alison Snowden and her British based Canuck partner David Fine, a pair who would later create Shaun The Sheep and their daughter was the original voice of Peppa Pig. Following that, the 1940 Pride And Prejudice shown as a tribute to Laurence Olivier who died in July.

While the royals get ready 2pm is music hour on the Beeb. BBC2 goes to Amsterdam for the live Christmas Concert with a performance of Ravel's ballet Daphnis And Chloe; more earthily the Top of the Pops Christmas Show sees Bruno Brookes, Gary Davies and Jakki Brambles welcome Erasure, Mike & The Mechanics, Marc Almond & Gene Pitney, Jason Donovan, Bros, the London Boys, The Beautiful South, Sonia, Black Box and Lisa Stansfield, and confirm the previous day's news that Band Aid II was the Christmas number one.

Come 3pm, outside Channel 4 (still on Pride And Prejudice) and BBC2 which embarked on the first of the Pagnol Trilogy with 1931's Marius, stuff had to be said. On stage from the Royal Albert Hall, no less, Queen Elizabeth II - Live 'N' Lewd!



What next? Well, BBC1 went into the second Christmas special for Bread, apparently Carla Lane's son's favourite episode. According to the official synopsis "Joey tries to help out when Shifty's released from prison, Billy's left facing the anger of the family when the Christmas presents are stolen from the car, the Boswell boys manage to put a smile on Martina's face, Jack and Nellie go out to buy the Christmas turkey, Adrian decides to have a chat with Julie when she upsets Billy yet again, and Joey finds himself faced with a difficult choice." And yet in the TV listings, and in a very 1989/Lane plotline, "in an attempt to do their bit for the environment and the ozone layer, the Boswells agree to a plastic tree and an organically grown Christmas dinner". That's a lot of story even for fifty minutes, not that 16.5m viewers would all have minded - and that was in the face of strong opposition on ITV, the celebrated animated version of The BFG. Cosgrove Hall's only full length feature, with reliable David Jason as the titular character, and apparently one of the few adaptations of his work that Roald Dahl liked, it surely would have done better but for... well, for having a virtually mute first ten minutes, but primarily being against not only the Boswell clan but after that a quite separate big David Jason character.



The Jolly Boys' Outing, which drew 20.1 million, might be the only major festive show to be set at August bank holiday weekend and is comfortably this day's most remembered hit. Indeed, by the time it ends ITV feels like it's given up as it puts on a regular episode of Home And Away, which had debuted that February and was only four weeks behind Australia. "Steven returns from his mission in the city, convinced that Carly is on a path of self-destruction. Bobby makes an unfounded accusation."



Channel 4 had filled the previous couple of hours with Birthday, in which Judi Dench read the poetry of The Rev Alan Ecclestone "whose message is that the greatest birthday of all is really the birthday of us all" - right you are, then - and then An Evening For Armenia, highlights of a Royal Opera House fundraiser for the country stricken a year before by an earthquake involving international opera and ballet companies including the Bolshoi, Kirov and Sadler's Wells ballets. More opera on BBC2 from 5pm with Aida From The Met, a new production of Verdi's work with Placido Domingo.

Oddly both BBC1 and ITV scheduled news bulletins at 5.30pm but ITV nipped in five minutes early - Jill Dando was on BBC duty (preceded here by Chas & Dave's Margate rewrite for the OFAH end theme) with a bulletin two stories long, not featuring the Queen's speech, and the major part of one of those stories isn't quite public yet. For their part Channel 4 got the Queen out of the way right then and got on with The Snowman ("Walking Through The Air"?) Strike It Lucky's Christmas Special followed the news on the major commercial channel with guest Frank Bruno while BBC1 were in Russ Abbot mode, with "the Phantom of the Opera as you've never seen it before", and Channel 4 returned to the opera house at 6pm with a production of Benjamin Britten's The Little Sweep - the end of which was followed by a newsflash of one of the few genuinely big stories to break on the 25th. Then, as ITV reached for the comforting familiarity of classic comedy clips linked by Jim Davidson in Christmas Comedy Box, BBC1 won the day's overall ratings battle comprehensively, the TV premiere of Crocodile Dundee watched by 21.8 million people, still a record for Christmas Day.

As the day approaches 8pm a strange sense of normality encroaches. BBC2 finally get round to relaying the royal message, with signing and subtitles, at 7.35pm, followed by Denmark's 1988 Best Foreign Language Oscar winner Babette's Feast. At 7pm Channel 4 brings us Circus Of The Sun, more specific details about which aren't forthcoming but as you'll have seen in that newsflash continuity the title being the English translation of Cirque du Soleil is a pretty hefty clue. That was followed by Brookside ("Terry and Sue end up with more dinner guests than they are expecting... Jimmy and Sinbad's present for Billy results in a cold, dark Christmas for Katie") and the first in a repeat run of the 1987 series of Cheers. Coronation Street is on ITV at 8, a regular length episode but setting up Deirdre throwing Ken out four days later and watched by 20.9m viewers (including the repeat), followed by a festive episode of surprisingly popular generation gap gentle sitcom After Henry. BBC1 then drew out the reliable big gun of Miss Marple, with Donald Pleasence in the cast - A Caribbean Mystery was meant to be both the last in the Beeb's existing agreement with Agatha Christie's estate over the Marple books and Joan Hickson's last as the titular amateur detective, though both came back in 1991. Thing is, as Richard Curtis noted in Radio Times a couple of years later, "my family and I sat down happy on Christmas Day, and during the course of a Christie two people were stabbed and one was forcibly injected with heroin. By the end of it we were totally miserable."



ITV's big movie premiere, starting on the dot of the watershed, was Down And Out In Beverly Hills, a successful film but surely not typical family fare for the day. You may as well turn to Channel 4 at the same time as they return to their Olivier tribute with his Richard III, and ending at five to midnight be damned, it's Christmas. On BBC2 at 9.30pm is something that was highlighted in a lot of Choice columns for the day, Plum, a documentary on PG Wodehouse as part of the Bookmark strand and prominently telling the story of his internment in a German camp in 1940. A different kind of Englishman on BBC1 at 9.40pm as Alf Garnett attempts to recover a Christmas hamper from a raffle in In Sickness And In Health.



And from then on it's largely films all round, though that's not to say there aren't attractions as BBC1 follows the news at 10.20pm with the first TV showing of John Cleese comedy Clockwise, followed by the prologue to St John's Gospel as the Christmas Epilogue and Bogart and Bacall's Key Largo at midnight. ITV waits until 11.10pm, after a similarly two-story news bulletin with Nicholas Owen (and what wonderful BBC1-like effects and Night Club studio HTV had that season), before unleashing 1984's big Christmas Day premiere Raiders Of The Lost Ark and then running into the early hours with Gene Hackman and Barbra Streisand in All Night Long and Jan-Michael Vincent and Kim Basinger in Hard Country. Henry Fonda's My Name Is Nobody is BBC2's final offering while Channel 4 returns to its loose musical strand with a performance of Messiaen's organ piece La Nativité du Seigneur and a repeat of the Prince's Trust '88 Rock Gala.



And then onto Boxing Day, where you could watch either Blackadder's Christmas Carol, the TV premiere of Paul McCartney's Give My Regards To Broad Street in the prime slot of 3.20am, or on Channel 4 The Fabulous Singlettes, where "an outrageous Australian group recreate the songs of the Supremes and others"...

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 24: Crossroads, 1979

Finally for this year we travel back forty years to the King's Oak festive do where Meg Mortimer, challenged to sing to the gathered staff, finds the pianist knows exactly what Broadway standard she wants to deliver from being told the key alone and then having already stretched likelihood shatters it entirely with the aid of an invisible jazz trio to sing direct to camera instead. And a happy and peaceful Christmas to you all.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 23: St Paul's Boys Choir on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, 1981

Famously John Lennon was knocked off the Christmas number one spot in 1980 by St Winifred's School Choir. A year later the local choir to the Crofton Parish Church Choir, Orpington combined the two parties by covering Let It Be, but despite featuring on the last Swap Shop before Christmas it didn't chart. Look at that shapes that guitarist is throwing, and think about Noel thanking toy manufacturers for sending in their wares before chiding the choir for their appearance.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 22: Kate, 1979

For two of the last three entries for this year we're going back forty years for the last Sunday of the period, and this is a special one - a 45 minute special for "the most distinctive new sound of the 70s", Kate Bush. Featuring songs that wouldn't appear until the following year's Never For Ever, and even then one as a B-side, there's extravagant dance pieces off the back of that year's Tour Of Life, Kate at the piano, a big production number with pre-filmed sequences for The Wedding List and even a song by Peter Gabriel because he was there to duet on a Roy Harper cover, as you do on your big BBC showpiece.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 21: It'll Be Alright On Christmas Night, 1987

OK, this is a bit of a cheat as it was rebadged as It'll Be Alright On The Night 5 before long with the season specific clips edited out - and as proof, someone's edited together Christmas Night, a 1988 edit and a further 1991 edit playing at the same time, kind of. Anyway, any Denis is good Denis, and this is the one with the toboggan sheepdog, Timothy Spall's trousers, Cliff Richard vs the smoke machine and 'facilitate'.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 20: How We Used To Live, 1978

Given it was in production sporadically between 1968 and 2002 Yorkshire's drama-documentary schools programme got through a mass of actors so it was inevitable some would find good work elsewhere. Lena Headey, Peter Howitt, Corrie's Ian Mercer and Emmerdale's Cy Chadwick all passed through the fictional town of Bradley but Joanne Whalley is the young actor best known for taking part, seventeen years old here as the Hughes family celebrate a traditional Christmas in 1880 - aired as far back as 27th November, oddly. Maybe they should have rehearsed that bit with feathers at the end.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 19: Tyne Tees, 1984

It used to be LWT, but the more we see of Tyne Tees' various Christmas lounge designs over the years it becomes clearer that they're the region that put the most effort in to their holidays sets. Look at Bill Steel here in his bow tie, shiny shoes and comfortable red leather armchair by the fireside, two bottles of good red to its side notably unopened even at 10.40pm, even if he is thinking of ruining the effort with a hat. Wonder if the inclusion of the Raiders Of The Lost Ark Terry's Chocolate Orange advert right after Raiders Of The Lost Ark was deliberate or not. A beta version of Pamela Armstrong at ITN actually provides festive cheer, at least at first but she does provide advance warning before closing with John Suchet in Lapland drinking on the job before a Christmas bells version of the Thames jingle into (not included) Des O'Connor Tonight. Wonderful work all round.

FROM THE NORTH EAST: We previous popped up to marvel at Tyne Tees' design skills for 1982, 1986 and1989

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 18: Carry On Christmas, 1972

Thames made four specials with the Carry On team between 1969 and 1973 (they skipped 1971), notably this third gives three women - Jacques, Sims and Windsor - top billing, if only because Sid James, first named in all three others, was absent (presumably because he'd just made the Bless This House film with the similarly sat out Terry Scott) and Charles Hawtrey then pulled out at the last minute because he wasn't guaranteed to be their replacement. Carry On scholars agree this is the weakest one - Talbot Rothwell couldn't finish the script due to illness and replacement Dave Freeman wrote his own separate material rather than build on what was there, which explains why the central 18th century concept is merely what the sketches loosely hang around and turns into Aladdin about three quarters of the way through.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 17: Play School, 1970

Turning the lock this Christmas Eve are Brian Cant discovering tubular bells two and a half years before Mike Oldfield did and using them to their fullest music and movement crossover potential, Julie Stevens abandoning her gift wrapping to go through the Twelve Days Of Christmas, and farm children through the round window. Spare a thought for the toys, who have to be stuffed in a cupboard if they're to have any hope of sleep.

CANT CONFORMISM: this is the Advent Calendar's first Play School but we came across Brian as the emperor of China in the 1983 Children's BBC pantomime Aladdin & The Forty Thieves

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 16: So You Think You Know About Christmas?, 1980

So You Think...? was a panel quiz show strand that ran every so often in one-offs between 1965 and 1984, each based on a theme set by Cliff Michelmore at his irreverently masterish best, with scoresheets to play along at home provided by Radio Times. Oddly its only festive special was co-hosted by Magnus Magnusson, with eclectic studio teams Tim Rice, harpist Mary O'Hara and Paul Daniels against Arthur Askey, Susan Hampshire and Basil Brush, who Cliff clearly tires of early. Remember to give yourself fifteen points at home.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 15: BBC1 and BBC2, 1986

A good exercise in compare and contrast here - first of all the trailers towards the end of Christmas Eve horribly mislead as to Eastenders' intentions (this was divorce papers year, remember) and show how little the dancing holly mixes with the national anthem; then a five minute preview of BBC2's festive season goes heavy on opera, ornithology and subtitled film and not so much on the Harty's Christmas Party BBC1 trailed and which we'd obviously love to see.

WHAT ELSE WAS ON?: flicking across the regions around Christmas 1986 we find continuity of note from Thames, Granada, Tyne Tees and closedown on Channel 4

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 14: 4-Tel On View, 1989

Because who doesn't love a cheering story at Christmas time?

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 13: Family Fortunes, 1989

You'd think this of all shows would extend the 'family' remit to pantomimes every year but as far as can be told they only did it twice, here and the following year, though it was surely only ever going to happen comfortably with Les Dennis at the heln. Les as Buttons hosts Peter Howitt, Lisa Maxwell, Bella Emberg, Jim Bowen and John Inman against Christopher Biggins, Paul Shane, Jessica Martin, Windsor Davies and Cheryl Baker, with Frank Bruno as a surrogate genie, all carefully annotated in the credits with where they're appearing in panto so as not to wear out the continuity announcer. One of the Big Money round questions is "name part of a turkey", which would have confused the hell out of Bob Johnson.

OUR SURVEY SAYS: this is the Advent Calendar's first Family Fortunes but not its first encounter with Les Dennis

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 12: Ark Royal - The Rock Show, 1986

It was a rock show. On HMS Ark Royal. Moored in Gibraltar at the time and clearly filmed in much warmer climes than its Christmas Day airing (late October, apparently) as part of many a failed ITV attempt to directly challenge Top Of The Pops' big day hegemony. "We've got rock on the beaches, we've got rock on the streets!" promises Sue Robbie, which she fails to deliver on, though Cyndi Lauper tries her best and Bob Geldof provokes a small scale stage invasion.

WHAT'S ON BBC1?: As mentioned this went out at 2pm on Christmas Day so was doomed to failure against the TOTP pop juggernaut responsible for David Essex in 1974, Zoo dancing to O Superman in 1981, a patched together Band Aid in 1984, T'Pau and a deflating snowman in 1987 and the mess of 1991

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 11: Good Morning With Anne & Nick, 1992

We've already had some trailers for Christmas 1992 TV on this year's Advent Calendar, now here's a very different kind of preview. Diamond and Owen's opposition to This Morning had started only ten weeks earlier and clearly it wasn't just that show's breezy mix they were trying to emulate but also remind people of their Good Morning Britain glory days, hence Jimmy Greaves coming in to preview the festive offerings. "The Great Escape's not on" is one of his opening gambits, which sets the banter levels early (it had been shown in Christmas week four times since its 1971 premiere and three times since), and as usual he seems less interested in the programming than the chat opportunity.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 10: The Two Ronnies, 1982

Uniquely with no promise of a packed programme before it, this is the one that starts with a Chas & Dave tribute on the same night as an actual Chas & Dave show on ITV, though despite Rockney lore suggesting otherwise they didn't go out at the same time (Corbett and Barker finished at 8.15pm, Hodges and Peacock started at 9.50pm) There's a routine about bellringing and the big sketch is The Tree, a time travelling sci-fi take on the It's A Wonderful Life story with Brigit Forsyth as Barker's wife. For completion, here's the David Essex song cut from that upload.

AND IN A PACKED ADVENT CALENDAR TONIGHT...: the first and last Ronnie specials from 1972 and 1987, their hosting of Christmas Night With The Stars 1972, a special trailer for 1978, and Corbett shines alone in 1988's Bruce And Ronnie

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 9: Do Not Adjust Your Stocking

In this year of the fiftieth anniversary of Monty Python it feels right to feature the Christmas special from one of its two direct antecedents, the supposed children's show where Cleese and Chapman first saw the other four at work. From 1968, in between Do Not Adjust Your Set's two series, this was where Terry Gilliam entered the equation with The Christmas Card being his first work for the show. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band do I'm The Urban Spaceman which had peaked at number 5 the previous week, there's an episode of Captain Fantastic - weird to think David Jason was a key part of Pythonic lore - and the whole thing ends with assorted company round Neil Innes' piano. Nine months later most of the key cast had moved from teatime to late night and were better off for it.

PYTHON PLUNDERING: Eric Idle had a Christmas Rutland Weekend Television featuring George Harrison, while Palin and Jones wrote for Christmas Night With The Stars 1972

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 8: The Paul Daniels Magic Show, 1990

It gets overlooked but Daniels clocked up fifteen straight Christmas specials on the BBC from 1979 to 1993. This year's spectacular took a carnival theme and attached to it Debbie dancing, which she can do, and Paul singing, which... "Everything is not as it seems" is a running theme, as will become more apparent in the closing sequence. There's also a bit where the uploader clearly hasn't realised they accidentally taped over a few seconds, such is the magic of VHS.

MORE OF THE MAN WHO EXCELS: 1980 and 1985 - Debbie gets to dance in that one too

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 7: Christmas Morning With Noel, 1988

Change was in the air. After four years atop the Telecom Tower doing things that "had never ever been done before on TV" Michael Leggo took over as producer of the Christmas morning hullabaloo and decided straight away that Edmonds should get down from there and settle in a regular BBC studio like a normal human presenter. Noel tries his best and has various big features - in-studio reunions, a hesitant live linkup with the Mir space station, messages from political leaders including Edmonds having a chat with Thatcher, a Swap Shop quasi-revival - but going from the wide, loose, chaotic brief of the previous Christmas Mornings to a show centred around a game show with Shane Richie and Sophie Aldred as captains doesn't capture the attention anything like as much. This was the final year of Christmas Morning, with an afternoon slot of handing out Christmas Presents taking over from 1989 onwards.

NOEL AT HIS CHRISTMAS MORNING HEIGHT, LITERALLY: The Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show - Feargal Sharkey's Concorde miming failure, a race up the BT Tower and Comic Relief launched by way of sending a tyro Helen Fielding to the Sudan. We've also got a bit of 1984 but none of the rest of the shows. One day. ONE DAY.

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 6: A Christmas Runaround, 1979

This. *This* is a joy, of it very 1979 sorts. It starts with three minutes of bagpipes - kids' show, remember - before nobody but Mike Reid laughs at any of the jokes in his intro, one of which is related to his sitting next to a woman of colour, because he's still Mike Reid. He goes on to tell the child contestants they should visit Ireland in a way that suggests he's misjudged the target audience, brings on a vintage Bugatti that leaks coolant all over the studio floor and has to be pushed back out by the kids, shouts at some huskies to keep quiet at which they start making so much noise the interview with their handler has to be abandoned, and it seems the winner's prize is to sit on a horse. All this and Barbara Dickson too. Southern lost their broadcasting licence a year later.

THIS WAS GOOD, BUT I'D NOW LIKE TO SEE MUCH THE SAME THING EXCEPT WITH MORE POINTLESS PERIL: Gladly. A year later, Runaround On Ice. See Reid cling for his life onto a prop polar bear on an ice rink in Bournemouth! Wonder exactly when and why the Rolling Stones sponsored a bobsleigh! Experience the special guest right at the end give away that conditions may not be all that Arctic after all!

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 5: Telly Addicts, 1989

There are those who used to take the return of a new series of Telly Addicts as first sign of autumn so it makes sense that they went all in on festive cheer every year. Thirty years ago the Christmas Comedy Special, as presumably opposed to the normal Christmas Special, pitted Frank Carson, Liza Goddard, George Layton and Graeme Garden against Chris Tarrant, Barry Cryer (who very much appreciates the Goons reference in his intro), Jessica Martin and Jim Bowen. Fair warning: some of these people are not making their last appearance on this year's Advent Calendar.

HOOFER-DOOFER HIGHLIGHTS: 1985, 1991 and 1992. We're on our way to the full set!

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 4: Generation Game, 1978

Larry Grayson's first Christmas and they found a contestant called Everard! That researcher should have taken the rest of the week off. Plenty of surprise faces turn up, not least Norman Collier being rebooked, according to Isla, because he "did a tremendous impression of a cockerel", and the end game is Turkish in origin, which being 1978 means it's set in "Ali Baba's bazaar".

SHUT THAT DOOR, OPEN THOSE OTHER ADVENT CALENDAR DOORS: this is the first Grayson Gen Game we've featured, but it fits neatly between the Brucie shows from 1973 and 1990

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 3: BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky trailers, 1992

So Haunt Me on BBC1, A Christmas Story on BBC2, Barrymore on ITV, Dire Straits on C4, Diff'rent Strokes on Sky One. Also, a remarkable promo for BBC radio.

ALSO IN 1992: a different BBC1 trailer

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 2: Rainbow, 1979

A lot of Rainbow episodes have appeared on YouTube in the last couple of years and there's a lot of interest in them all. Forty years ago Geoffrey was telling the Nativity story to the gang and before you know where you are Bungle is claiming he's the Angel Gabriel to Jane and Freddy's Mary and Joseph.

PREVIOUSLY IN RAINBOW: three episodes from launch year 1972 with Original Bungle; the 1987 Christmas Panto

Advent Calendar 2019 Day 1: The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, 1977

Let's start this year's Christmas countdown big. As big as it gets, in Christmas TV terms. The most watched Christmas Day show of all time, according to 2016 research, and somehow more importantly the most viewed on the most famous December 25th schedule of them all, 21.4m* edging out the more celebrated Morecambe & Wise on the day the Beeb finally confirmed their big day event television status, which would happen if your rivals are showing a two hour Stars On Sunday special and Young Winston in opposition. What was the appeal? Well, Paul McCartney for one, Wings performing Mull Of Kintyre as it bestrode the pop scene like a bagpiped colossus and then acting opposite - ah, 1977 - Denis Healey as a punk. Even Linda and Denny get lines. The big opening sketch involves a lot of split screen work, the knowledge that Basil Fawlty is already a mass audience reference point and - ah, 1970s - Mike done up as Sammy Davis Jr. There's also a whole pantomime spoof that runs on union based topicality, which is probably why you don't see this repeated or even reviewed a lot despite its status.

AS HE SAID AT THE BRIGHTON CONFERENCE: 1978 and 1979, neither the most watched show that year

(* The first of the climactic Only Fools And Horses trilogy in 2001 was measured at 21.35m)