On this day: Christmas Day 1980

Because we've covered television on the 25th at the end of the decade over the last few years on this day, why not fill out the big yawning gap at the start of it over the next seven years too? If the golden age of Christmas telly was the 1970s as easy populist nostalgia makes out and given entertainment trends don't just change overnight, then surely some of it will have eked out into the exciting new space age decade...

...well, not immediately, clearly. Kids up early get nothing in these three channel, pre-breakfast TV days, not until one of many showings down the years of 1977's Watch: The Nativity kicks off BBC1 at 8.55am. ITV follow five minutes later throwing their annual party for kids this time at Yeaden Town Hall, Leeds, A Merry Morning featuring party debutant Don Maclean, a very down the dumper and long Dollarless Guys & Dolls and the original quartet of Chuckle Brothers making their first strides into kids' entertainment. ITV do at least get to church first, Eucharist taken from 9.45am at Canterbury Cathedral conducted by its new Archbishop Robert Runcie and "using the new Alternative Service Book", while BBC1 is still messing around with Mr Benn and the Pink Panther Show before dropping into the Family Mass at Clifton Cathedral.

BBC2 rouses briefly at 11am for Play School with a classic Harris/Chell/Leader line-up but once the big brother has returned from church they drop off again for a few more hours while BBC1 puts on acclaimed 1962 fantasy musical The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm. No such buy-in reservations on the third channel, who after cartoon A Christmas Star pull out a big gun at 11.10am... A Christmas Runaround On Ice! Once Mike Reid has refrained from clinging onto a prop polar bear for his life on an ice rink in Torquay we move on to, depending on region, either Laurel & Hardy Film Library and a spare Give Us A Clue or another once annual tradition of festive telly...



Yep, Digby, The Biggest Dog In The World. There's a whole generation now passed, maybe even two, who didn't get that unexpected introduction to Spike Milligan and Jim Dale during school holidays. After that we slide into the afternoon with Christmas Crossroads, the anodyne blurb for which claims "Reg Cotterill has a traumatic experience. Meg Mortimer learns something astonishing about her daughter Jill" but completely neglects to mention the disco. After that something more associated with the other side as Billy Smart's Christmas Circus pitches up near Windsor with Keith Harris, sealion, mules and "Anna Smart's golden horse". That's except for viewers in Scotland, who have their own Glen Michael Cavalcade and Christmas Sunshine. Complain to the moderator, not us.

BBC1, which got the circus rights (if circuses are subject to bidding wars) back soon afterwards only to make sure it was seen off by putting Keith Harris in charge, is still in a more traditional mood than even those big top thrills for the time being, Carols from Warwick Castle at 1.10pm only nodding at modernity through a Douglas Fairbanks Jr introduction. After that though all bets are off with Top of the Pops 80, Peter Powell never quite looking comfortable next to Savile as they introduce the Nolans, Dexys Midnight Runners, Liquid Gold, Marti Webb, Fern Kinney, Johnny Logan, Leo Sayer and Sheena Easton afresh in the studio plus Legs & Co hoofing to Barbra Streisand and Lipps Inc.



Families stand up for the Queen at 3pm, supposedly the most watched message to the Commonwealth ever, as she reflects on her mum's 80th before both main channels start on films that are really much the same thing - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on BBC1, George And Mildred on ITV. That spinoff, which came out a few months earlier shortly after Yootha Joyce's alcoholism related death, is credited with bringing the era of big screen sitcom adaptations to a crashing end. George is mistaken for a hitman. Yeah. As a distraction BBC2 is active again also from 3.10pm with, surprisingly for the timeslot and type, a new documentary, A Year In The Life Of An Exmoor Man measuring a year in the life of, um, a man who lives in Exmoor. Tom Rook actually had a city trade as an estate agent but spent the rest of his time lambing, shearing, point-to-pointing and so forth. After that came more reliable fare, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in Blue Skies.

Two relatively new big hits make their debuts for the 25th after 5pm, first up the 3-2-1 Pantomime with the company joined by a range of stars including Nicholas Parsons and Derek Batey as ugly sisters, Sheila Steafel, Bill Maynard, a returning and surer footed Mike Reid, Magnus Pyke, Bob Carolgees and, oh god, Cyril Smith. The panto in question is route one choice Cinderella but Dusty Bin only sports some tinsel, not the extra costumed mile he would go to in later years. Over on BBC1 ten minutes later The Paul Daniels Magic Show has an array of international variety talent including Harry Blackstone sawing a woman in half without the box and a quick change artist performing a solo Oliver Twist, and also Paul singing which nobody requested. Hope you got the Bunco Booth you wanted for Christmas!

As BBC2 fill ten minutes with heartwarming animation Little Swallow before more Astaire in the shape of The Band Wagon, BBC1 follows the news (Angela Rippon on duty) at 6.10pm with Larry Grayson's Generation Game, with the traditional array of carol singers, clod-hopping contestant dancers, a "recognise the famous person in seasonal disguise" round, an end game panto and a phalanx of stars, ranging from Val Doonican via Alfred Marks to, obviously being Larry's era, Noele Gordon. A bog standard episode of Dallas followed, because you could get away with that as a key treat in 1980 - this was less than five weeks after we found out Who Shot JR - in an episode brought forward two days from its regular scheduling in an in no way cynical move to counteract the Bond film on ITV, a grand tradition only just starting in the shape of The Man With The Golden Gun. It's followed at 8.05pm with Engelbert Humperdinck as the guest playing themselves in...



By now we're past the Newbury Fruits hour so BBC2 is busying itself with two and a half hours of Placido Domingo in a film production of Puccini's Tosca. BBC1 goes into the night with another big film, Airport 75, which gives ITV a chance to reach for its heavy hitters.



Firstly at 8.30pm it's The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, the second actual special of the Thames era and the first with Eddie Braben involved, but there's a lot of second hand material used and Peter Barkworth as the stooge in Ernie's play is no... well, Alec Guinness, Glenda Jackson, Jill Gascoigne, Hannah Gordon, Peter Cushing, Peter Vaughan or Gemma Craven, who all make appearances of varying lengths.



The traditional unsung hero Christmas This Is Your Life follows, this year's book going to Joan Wells, foster mother to more than 150 children, and then at 10pm Janet And Company is another Janet Brown vehicle, featuring Roy Kinnear, Frank Windsor, Rod Hull and Emu. Brown was in fact so highly thought of in the early, pre-Nallon Thatcher age she'd joined Eric, Ernie and Roger (who she'd cameo kind-of-alongside the following year in For Your Eyes Only) in a famous TV Times double issue cover.

And so towards closedown... after the late news Parkinson's on at 10.40pm on BBC1 with with Penelope Keith, James Galway and stage star Ben Vereen, followed by Fawlty Towers' Gourmet Night as a late treat. BBC2 finally get round to relaying the royal words at 10.10pm, followed by Seurat's La Grande Jatte in the ten minute filler One Hundred Great Paintings and the Lemmon/Matthau great The Front Page. ITV follow their own 10.30pm news with Liza Minnelli in Concert - unless you're in London for some reason, as Thames show Glenda Jackson/George Segal romcom A Touch of Class - and after midnight everywhere the self-defeating title It's Christmas. Time to turn the page, pick up the red pen and decide for tomorrow - Dame Edna in the first ever An Audience With or Blankety Blank with a double panel?