On This Day: Christmas Day 1981

1981 was the calm before the storm. 1982 and 1983 would see huge changes in the very format and make-up of television, this being the last Christmas of British airwaves' three channel life. Three ITV franchises would not exist at least in their present forms a week later while a lot of big shows had seen changes over the course of the preceding twelve months, whether Ken and Deirdre's marriage or the Fourth Doctor's regeneration. Could TV keep it up for the day the family gathers round the set? Well, notably as the 25th was on a Friday that year the central ITV job fell to LWT, meaning no sign of Thames' Morecambe & Wise (which went out on the 23rd) or Goodies (27th), while BBC1 (as you'll see below, sorry, only clean version we could find) put most of their budget into the TV premiere of Gone With The Wind which had been cut in half and spread across Boxing Day and the 27th, but that does still leave the big day with a few modish heavy hitters.



It certainly isn't putting too much effort in too early. At 8.40am BBC1 wakes up and puts on Star Over Bethlehem, which had been on BBC2 the previous night at 9pm - the third and last such event where seven nations were brought together in a choral evening centring on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem which seemed to have as its USP the idea that communication satellites are the bright firmament star of today. Then there's an old Flumps up to Rolf At Christmas, first aired on 20th December 1980. ITV's opening offering at 9am (except for viewers in Scotland, who had their own Moderator's Christmas Message) was A Cup 'O Tea And A Slice 'O Cake, the musical Worzel Gummidge Christmas special from the previous year featuring a turn from Billy Connolly.

The first new programming of the day is therefore devout in nature. ITV's Christmas Family Worship starts at 10am, from Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, because the Beeb have the Royal service from 10.30am, Christmas Morning Service from St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle in the presence of Liz, Phil, the family and a watching Tom Fleming. BBC2 briefly rouses at 11am for the annual reading of The Christmas Story, this time by Carol Leader and Ben Thomas, before nodding back off for three hours whilst BBC1 is somewhere between John 3:16 (really) and a rendition of When Christ Was Born Of Mary Free.

ITV come out of the god slot, briefly, at 11am for The Dazzle, Edna O'Brien reading her own fantastical story published that year of a boy whose bedroom makes noises that keep him awake all night until meeting a friendly mouse with a surprise (we haven't read or seen it and all we have to go on is the TV Times blurb, does it show?) After that it's a sudden plunge back into reverence at 11.30am with We Six Kings, the King's Singers at Nostell Priory near Wakefield singing numbers both traditional and, it says here, comedic. Willie Rushton assists while interestingly musical director is Howard Goodall, which would have been while he was writing songs for Not The Nine O'Clock News and touring with Rowan Atkinson. BBC1 for their part return from church at 11.47am, whip through the weather with Jack Scott, then present part one of The Donald Duck Story (part two was on Boxing Day), in which Walt himself intersects clips to talk through how Donald was created and interacts with him in a way that must have been especially groundbreaking when made in 1954.

Time to bring out the family movies to occupy those not cooking the dinner, and ITV go first at midday with 1963's The Three Lives Of Thomasina, a classic Disney-produced fantasy adventure directed by Don Chaffey (Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C.) starring Patrick McGoohan and Susan Hampshire. Their children are Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice, who off the back of this movie got the roles of the Banks kids in Mary Poppins a year later. (Garber died of pancreatitis aged 21. Merry Christmas.) BBC1 weighs in at 12.30 with the 1958 Tom Thumb, Russ Tamblyn leading a cast including Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers (his first Hollywood film) and Peter Butterworth.

But hold on, wasn't 1981 Charles and Diana wedding year? And we've nearly got through to 2pm without mentioning it! Don't panic, ITV has got you covered from 1.45pm as Alastair Burnet exhibits bits that weren't shown on the day and the story of those inside Buckingham Palace in A Wedding In The Family. Something more down to earth on BBC1 at 2pm, Christmas Top Of The Pops. With there having been a regular show the previous evening for the only time ever, this was the almost infamous occasion when Michael Hurll suggested everybody on Radio 1 have a go, hence the usual host roundel - Savile, Blackburn, Travis, Bates, Jensen, Powell, Read, Wright, Peebles, Skinner - are joined by Paul Burnett, Paul Gambaccini, Adrian Juste and, months ahead of joining the regular rota, John Peel. Intriguingly Radio Times only lists Powell and Travis, so the overmanning decision must have been late notice. They're all commanded to introduce Altered Images, Dave Stewart & Colin Blunstone, Depeche Mode, Godley & Creme, the Human League, Kim Wilde, Kirsty MacColl, Linx, OMD, Shaky, Spandau Ballet, Teardrop Explodes, The Beat, Toyah and Ultravox, plus Zoo dancing to the Jacksons and, inexplicably even after you've seen it, Laurie Anderson (almost all the others are linked in the playlist at the bottom) Then to close there's a fulsome studio singalong to an off-key cover of All You Need Is Love. Nope, no idea. If all that seems like modernity gone mad, BBC2 has started back up with some Harold Lloyd, a pair of glasses and a smile in 1925's The Freshman.

3pm. SPEAK. SPEAK TO YOUR NATION.

All three channels hit the junction at around the same time - BBC2 weren't showing the Queen simultaneously but the Lloyd film just happened to also end at 3.10pm - and all go in interesting ways. ITV had a new tradition to uphold, so Dr No it is. Here's some Tyne Tees adverts from within, starting with St Winifred's School Choir (Sally Lindsay inclusive)'s odd Co-Op advert that was actually two years old so must have been reissued off the back of the hit. BBC2 put on A Charlie Brown Christmas, which had debuted on British telly in most ITV regions in 1970 (five years after its premiere) and this was its first time on the Beeb; following that was the wonderfully titled Uproar In Heaven, a 1961 cartoon version of the Chinese literature classic Journey To The West which begat the series Monkey. As for BBC1, they had an annual favourite to unload for the last time, a Larry Grayson's Generation Game special. He doesn't let on anything but news of Grayson and Isla St Clair moving on had broken three weeks earlier, which makes its lack of pizzazz a little bit underwhelming despite the annual pantomime end game, Babes In The Wood starring Willie Rushton, Lennie Bennett, Kenny Lynch and Anna Dawson. An hour later came the TV premiere of 1961's In Search Of The Castaways, more Disneyania and one from their sequence of Hayley Mills vehicles, Maurice Chevalier and George Sanders also in the Jules Verne adaptation.

Yet more ITV Chas'n'Di-alia at 5.15pm as Kiri Te Kanawa is the subject of This Is Your Life, surprised with the big red book at St Paul's Cathedral and receiving a letter of congratulations from the Prince of Wales amid video messages from Georg Solti and Joan Sutherland. While that's going on BBC2 at 5.25pm delve into Joseph And Child, the story of a new sculpture at a church in Kirkby of St Joseph The Worker, and fifteen minutes later sort out some more consecration in Sounds Of Christmas, wherein the blessed Stilgoe introduces a carol concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Them King's Singers are back too.

While Alastair Stewart works ITN's hopefully triple time shift that is teatime news at 5.45pm BBC1 is easing into its big prime-time family fare with Jim'll Fix It - look, however it rightfully seems now you know how big it was then. "Dear Jim, Please may I... Have a new set of angel's wings? Go to Disneyland? Spend my 105th birthday by the sea? Work for Father Christmas?" But never mind that, The Muppet Movie is on ITV! It's not listed as a TV premiere but it kind of has to be, being only two years old. Lew's rates. Moira Stuart is on newsroom duty for BBC1 at 6.25pm, followed by Paul Daniels' Magical Christmas, the third of his fifteen straight Christmas shows, featuring a deluxe version of Chop Cup, the usual enigmatic European conjuror in Pierre Brahma, martial artists Les Samurai and his own Martin P recreating Houdini's water tank escape. Against that BBC2 slings The Queen on with subtitles, pauses for a reshowing of ten minute filler One Hundred Great Paintings - Da Vinci's Virgin and Child with St Anne at the Louvre - and then settles into its traditional role of something alternative and long for the evening, all two hours twenty of Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. It's not even in Japanese, it was a Soviet production.



Next up on BBC1, the programme that got the highest ratings of the day just ahead of Daniels, at a tiny bit under 17 million. By our reckoning Last Of The Summer Wine had 23 Christmas specials, or at least regular episodes first broadcast in Christmas week because when you're Last Of The Summer Wine it barely matters. Not that it was always treated as such - by 2004 and 2005 it was airing on the 19th and 18th December - but back in this year and about to begin just its sixth series after two years off, it got the Christmas Day prime-time slot and would hold on to it for the next two years as well, also marking the debut of its longest serving and memorably exactly named director Alan J.W. Bell. The episode sees the trio try to get the old school gang back together and ends, in a rarely deployed but always fascinating coup de theatre, with the Holmfirth Choral Society singing carol-like lyrics to the theme tune. Following that, The Two Ronnies land on Christmas Day for the first time outside Christmas Night With The Stars, where they'll remain for five of the next six years, and they didn't do a show at all for the other one. Piggy Malone & Charlie Farley are in the filmic slot, Sheena Easton sings and the final set-piece number sees the pair as Pearly Kings with an appearance by Chas & Dave a year before Barker and Corbett would spoof them.



Against the two Rons are the two Kellys (and Kennedy, and Beadle) Game For A Laugh getting this prime slot is a huge vote of confidence (or piece of brinksmanship by LWT) given this was right after its first series. The content feels a lot more kid-friendly than normal if still full of pranks and a guest appearance by Gareth Hunt. Another LWT big hitter followed, one not as new but with even fewer shows behind it, but when Denis has come up with enough for It'll Be Alright On The Night 3 the network listened. Such a packed show the trailer featured clips that weren't in it, four editions would be aired on Christmas Day but only one would go out as It'll Be Alright On Christmas Night and it wasn't even this one, that being the regular number 5. ITV's most watched show that day, third overall, number three was themed around both American clips and talking head presenters and newsreaders discussing the pitfalls of their industry. Somehow they even persuaded the Beeb to lend them the footage of Lulu the elephant, with a notable reaction of audience recognition at Norden’s mention of it. The programme actually got a VHS release, albeit edited for contractual reasons, so you wouldn't miss it even if you put Oracle on (those restored pages, by the way, are a must-see for all kinds of reasons, not least that someone had to type that video sales chart in) BBC1 had something with no direct tinselly connections lying in wait too, an episode of Dallas a week after its US airing. Waterloo At Southfork saw JR and Sue Ellen turn on each other as Bobby is persuaded to return to the family company.

Legend has it that when many within Auntie Beeb, and more to the point ITV, received the BBC1 schedule for the day they assumed Loophole being listed as the night's big film at 9.25pm to be code for a huge acquisition they didn't want to let on to their rivals too far in advance. Nope, it was Loophole, a British bank heist thriller starring Albert Finney, Martin Sheen, Susannah York, Jonathan Pryce and Robert Morley that had come and gone barely making a mark on cinemas just that February, a classic example of a distributor panicking trying to cut their losses. Prime BBC1 on Christmas Day, though.



It's possible that maybe the two sides had agreed on a special Bank Heist Box Office Flop night, as ITV's opposition was Harry And Walter Go To New York, a period comedy starring James Caan and Elliott Gould as 19th century conmen in New York attempting to test a bank's safe's security, get on the right side of prison reformer Diane Keaton and evade the great bank robber Adam Worth, played by Michael Caine and likely not uncoincidentally sharing a name with a major 19th century crime kingpin who was the inspiration for Holmes' enemy Moriarty. Caan sacked his manager as a result; Lesley Ann Warren, who had a small but significant role, couldn't get another film part for another five years. As an alternative, once BBC2 had got through their own news bulletin with Moira Stuart they let Margot Fonteyn introduce the London Festival Ballet performing a double bill involving music by Elgar and Strauss. No safes were cracked, although braincells might have been when it was followed by Country Holiday, a 45 minute singalong of country standards, jukebox hits and the Hank Williams songbook by such names as George Hamilton IV, Tammy Cline and Pete Sayers, recorded in a big top in the capital of C&W swing... Great Yarmouth. In fact Pete Sayers was from the area, was the first Brit to play the Grand Ole Opry, worked with Johnny Cash and his daughter Goldie won bronze in the 2008 Olympic javelin.

Moira's back with the main BBC1 news at 11.05pm, followed by a clip show, Parkinson On Comedy featuring some who made him laugh on his show, namely Billy Connoly (obviously), Bob Hope, Rowan Atkinson, Kenneth Williams, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, Ken Dodd, Frankie Howerd, Dave Allen, Tom Lehrer, Cannon & Ball, Jimmy Tarbuck, Tommy Trinder and Arthur Marshall. Against that BBC2 continues its Jack Lemmon season on a day and in a slot they'd have been excused for missing out, The War Between Men And Women a little regarded 1972 comedy-drama based on the writings of James Thurber.



ITV comes back at 11.40pm, realises it's got nothing left and slings on the festive Rising Damp followed by Star In The Sky, making the children of St Richard's with St Andrew's School, Ham, Richmond stay up this late to see them sing their carols (unless you're in Granada, where for some reason you get the 1980 Christmas episode of Michael Mann devised, Aaron Spelling produced, Robert Urich starring private detective drama series Vega$) It's difficult to match that for unsympathetic scheduling but BBC1 give it a try at the same time with Christmas Night With The Spinners, recorded in Harrogate in front of more than a thousand people. Then it's weather, closedown and see you all in the morning.


ON THE RADIO: Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin do an hour on Radio 1 from 7am before Tony Blackburn takes over heralding the traditional hospital based morning Junior Choice special from Great Ormond Street, though he also "rides his magic carpet around the British Isles" to Cardiff, Aberdeen, Exeter and Dundonald, taking a break only for the radio version of the Queen's speech at 9.30am. Post-Bates DLT serves Christmas dinner from 12.35pm, and let's not wonder what he put in the pudding, before Wright, Jensen, Peebles and the Friday Rock Show with AC/DC.
-Ray Moore is still on the Radio 2 early shift before Nick Page covers breakfast, Petula Clark recalls some of her favourite festive things, then after the speech at a fashionably late 10am Wogan strolls in before - and god, we hope they pre-recorded a handover for this - Jimmy Young Sings For Christmas. A staging of Mother Goose adapted by Chris Emmett follows at 1pm with Kenneth Connor in the title role, Mollie Sugden as the Fairy Queen, Bernie Winters as Squire Bashem, Michael Robbins from On The Buses as the Demon King and Percy Edwards as a goose. Something they could well repeat now follows in highlights from Abba's recent European tour, followed by Christmas Song (dunno), Moore talking to Johnny Mathis about 25 years in the business, Anne Murray recorded at the Palladium, David Symonds and then, splendidly, a Barn Dance involving "village children and handbell ringers". Friday Night Is Music Night remains with the Central Band Of The RAF before Rolf's Christmas Walkabout goes to Cornwall and Brian Matthew has seasonal stories written and read by former guests.
-Radio 3's morning concert, counterintuitively, is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as well as a Beethoven Piano Sonata and Haydn cello concerto, all overseen by Yo Yo Ma. Other highlights include the Stuttgart Piano Trio at the Bath Festival, Kiri te Kanawa leading a year old Philharmonia Orchestra recital, a live Christmas Concert from Amsterdam, A Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols from King's College, a Christmas Sermon by Dame Maria Boulding of Stanbrook Abbey about how the Christians reinterpreted the Roman midwinter feast, Roger Woddis putting his Radio Times headed notepaper down to talk about social reformist George R Sims, and the development of Tom Stoppard's National Theatre farce On The Razzle with Felicity Kendal (as a man) and Dinsdale Landen (ditto) leading the cast. They've got Her Maj on at 1pm.
-She speaks at 9.30am on Radio 4, as is only right. By then they've opened the day with Peter Barkworth reading words and introducing records for the day. The Desert Island castaway is Helene Hanff, the American writer responsible for 84 Charing Cross Road. Morning Service goes to Belfast, The Countryside At Christmas samples a traditional Christmas breakfast on a Shetland croft, Michael Hordern chooses poetry and prose With Great Pleasure, all before a weird choice of Afternoon Play given the day, Enquiry by Dick Francis, starring Tony Osoba from Porridge, Jack 'Nelson Gabriel/Igor' May, reliable hand Selina Cadell and a little way down the cast list one William Nighy. Taking up an hour as the sun sets is To Fly Where The Sun Never Sets, the life story of an Arctic tern narrated by Andrew Sachs. After the news is a long forgotten panel show, Just The Ticket, a travel themed quizzer hosted by Joan Bakewell with guests Magnus Magnusson, Judith Chalmers, Julian Pettifer and Kenneth Clarke. Margaret Howard fronts Pick Of The Week before an adaptation of J.B. Priestley's When We Are Married with Malcolm Hebden (Norris Cole) halfway down the cast. Letter From America is concerned with the budget deficit, followed by a celebration of Christy Brown, future subject of My Left Foot, who died that September. What we definitely want to put the C90 in for though is Kaleidoscope, as Kenny Everett talks to Paul Gambaccini about his radio innovations, then turn it over for The Jason Explanation of the Festive Season, the last of David Jason's sketch series with Sheila Steafel and Jon Glover in the cast, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin among the writers, and Jimmy Mulville producing. But stop it before the Elgar docu-drama.

PLAYLIST

On this day: Christmas Day 1991

You could make a case for 1991 being the transitional televisual Christmas Day between the lingering image of the family gathered around the set for the big night of big hitter broadcasting and the modern ratings-driven against plentiful entertainment options approach. For one thing, it's the first festive season you'd only have needed one listings magazine for, the deregulation back in February bringing all schedules together whether in cheapo lifestyle-manque magazines or the grand old Radio Times, the cover of which makes the universal umbrella nature a selling point. For another, it's the last where the 25th was overseen by Thames Television. But if you want a major signpost, this was the last Christmas Day to date not to feature an episode of Eastenders, the stories of Mark admitting his HIV+ status to his parents and Grant and Sharon's surprise wedding instead split over Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Come 1992 it'll be back on the 25th in mid-evening and there it will stay until the heat death of the universe or it becomes unprofitable, whichever happens first.

So what could it offer? ITV as always use their 24 hour nature to start the official day bright and early at 6am with their TV-am Cartoon Carnival selection, kicking off with a new programme, Canadian animation A Klondike Christmas featuring the voice of Long John Baldry as a mine owning bear who insists his staff work on Christmas Day to produce enough gold to stuff his hibernation bed only to nearly lose his business. Look, we just copy these things down. At least you know where you are with Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr Men and, because it's Christmas, Hanna Barbera's Greatest Adventure Stories From The Bible. This year Channel 4 is up at the same time and providing live competition through their own bought-in animations such as Santa And The Three Bears and The Christmas Tree Train.

BBC1 starts at 6.55am keeping their familiar holiday special umbrella programming banner But First This going, Simon Parkin, Philippa Forrester and Esther McVey linking Pingu, Playdays, Postman Pat and, intriguingly, a new animation, Santa And The Tooth Fairies an Anglo-French production featuring Penelope Keith, Nigel Planer, Brian Wilde and David Kelly on voices in which the titular entities have to join forces after a letter arrives too late for Santa to assign a child his toys. By 8.15am it's drifted off and is showing Yogi's First Christmas from 1980, in which Jellystone Lodge revellers disrupt bear and sidekick's slumber.

BBC2 gets going at 7.20am with the livener of a rendition of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing from Ely Cathedral, followed by the reliable black and white-ness of episodes of Flash Gordon and King of the Rocket Men, both of which had been running throughout the season, and the White Christmas musical film. Against that, on ITV at 8.30am, The Osmonds. Just billed as that. Although the 1976 Osmond Family Christmas album of standards was reissued on CD in that year we can't find proof of what this actually was, as the family or Donnie & Marie specials only ran up to around 1980. If there's anyone who does know what was showing in this near hour long slot officially listed as part of TV-am, do get in touch.

At 8.55am Channel 4 throw out something genuinely fascinating. The station had bought fifty two episodes of The Magic Roundabout, about three quarters of them never previously shown in the UK, to show during the Channel 4 Daily and with Eric Thompson having passed on hired Nigel Planer to provide new voiceovers. To preview the revival Planer and his brother Roger wrote and produced The Return Of The Magic Roundabout, an alternate history of the series placing it within conspiracy theories involving the secret service and tapes being deliberately lost, with the aid of a cast including then leader of the opposition Roy Hattersley, John Craven, Leslie Crowther, David Gilmour, Michael Grade and Melvyn Bragg (although the only acknowledged actor in the whole thing is Ken Campbell, and it's not like you could mistake him for anybody else) Repeated over the new year weekend and then left to exist in half-memories - suspiciously, the master tapes were apparently lost years ago - it's a decidedly odd way of approaching a text that vaguely flirts with DRUGS LOL studenty nostalgia but then takes it elsewhere to illogical conclusions. That's followed by five minutes of something called Dance Of The Snowflakes, presumably related to the routine from The Nutcracker.

9.25am is the traditional start of the commercial channel day proper, so both spring into action in their own ways, Channel 4 with the Sesame Street Christmas Special - presumably Christmas Eve On Sesame Street from 1978 - and ITV by heading to Bristol Cathedral for Morning Service. God is all around by the end of the hour with BBC2 popping down to Devon to hear Prayer for a New Mother and While Shepherds Watched, while after a pre-10am weather forecast St Philip's Church, Edinburgh plays host to the latest iteration of the celebratory service, A Christmas Gift. BBC2, aware that with both the big channels at services it has to provide some distraction, schedules the premiere of a cartoon film version of Asterix In Britain...



...claymation short A Christmas Gift and an old WDYT? Christmas blogs favourite, 1983 Richard Williams-animated Harry Nilsson-soundtracked Ziggy's Gift on its final terrestrial screening. Channel 4 gets in on the act from 10.30am with kids' favourite Rosie's Walk and La Postoreia, a retelling of the traditional Mexican festive story with Linda Rondstadt and Los Lobos, but they're reckoning without ITV at the same time repeating The BFG, the Cosgrove Hall version premiered in a prime spot two years earlier.

None of these attempts to distract the kids from playing with discarded wrapping works with BBC1 as they have loftier things in mind, namely the third Noel's Christmas Presents. Noel, in a frock coat within the old Quality Street tin design, introduces a completely changed Twelve Days Of Christmas theme in which the presents range from a desk and a Reliant Robin to a set-up involving a sailor on duty in the Gulf, a couple whose son helped build a hotel, a murdered family member and the active involvement of John Major, whose casual acting we greatly admire. In between someone becomes a pantomime fairy in an otherwise closed theatre opposite Les Dawson and John Nettles ("appearing in Dick Whittington at the Wimbledon Theatre"), there’s a mass title-defeating rendition of Silent Night involving Michael Ball and the constantly for hire London Community Gospel Choir, someone else meets Whoopi Goldberg on the set of Sister Act and there’s a flight to Moscow to introduce pen pals - though we barely actually see the meeting and suspiciously not what happens afterwards. (This, by the way, was the Presents that got repeated three months later when a bomb threat cancelled House Party at late notice.) After all that they recognise people have things to be cooking and tidying up so slip into the already established Comedy Christmas Cracker, a triumvirate formed by the model volcano episode of Hi-De-Hi!, the 1984 Two Ronnies special and the Wake Up Walmington Dad's Army.

BBC2 keep things classy with the premiere at the remarkably early time of 11.45am of Jean Renoir's acclaimed Bergman vehicle Elena et les Hommes. On the other hand Channel 4 feel like they've handed in their homework at the last minute with a Wonder Years compilation, a non-seasonal Cosby Show and a documentary about the Virgin Mary, Ave Maria, so high profile Four couldn't even sell advertising space during it. ITV show a weirdly scheduled Children's Ward Christmas special at 12.15pm following a family from the just ended last series - Paul Abbott's pen, obviously - followed by animated love story Brown Bear's Wedding, with the voices of Joss Ackland, Helena Bonham Carter and Hugh Laurie, and the classic Pinocchio. BBC2, who have nobody to appeal to but themselves, come out of the Bergman at 1.20pm with a filler repeat of an episode about false teeth from the series Small Objects of Desire followed by a Murray Perahia piano recital from Aldeburgh.

It's 2pm and time for Christmas Top Of The Pops! Except, as you may have seen at the end of November on BBC4, this was neither a vintage year for pop nor one for Pops, Tony Dortie, Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon introducing the not stellar line-up of Nomad, Kenny Thomas, Oceanic and the Scorpions. Channel 4 fill out the hour with animation in the shape of The Lighthouse, about the inhabitants of a small Scottish island who join together to build the titular illuminatory outhouse, and then Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, a Russian claymation musical take on the classic set in the country post-perestroika, though as it was released the previous year the USSR had actually commenced break-up in the interim. Again, happy Christmas! Here's a plasticine wolf being beaten, ripped apart and chained up!

Coronation Street on a Christmas Day feels like a modern invention but before now it's happened every year but two since 1985 and five times before that, as far back as 1961. This however was the only time there were officially two episodes on the day. Actually technically you could argue there were three, as the first began at 2.50pm and uniquely paused while Alf, Audrey and sundry paused to watch the speech, then carried on for another 25 minutes afterwards, enough time for Mike and Ken to form a new love triangle with Alma. The Queen's Christmas Message was actually notable, or at least newsworthy in the way her words rarely are, as after some chat about the Iron Curtain break-up and the dedication of the voluntary workforce she closed with the words “I shall try to serve you in the years to come”, which the press interpreted as a slapdown to both idle talk of abdication now she was 65 in the midst of one of the perennial royal crises (and it got worse in 1992) and to her own son’s ambitions on such.



BBC1 followed one tradition with what was by now another, Only Fools And Horses. Though it wasn’t common knowledge at the time the show had finished its run of regular series that February but Miami Twice was the only tenth of eighteen festive specials - in fact between its inaugural year of 1981 and 1993 it only missed out 1984 (Lennard Pierce died on 15th December but they’d already started filming the next series so would have skipped that year anyway) Del and Rodney’s trip to Florida and getting wrapped up in Mafioso business was spread over two parts, the first on Christmas Eve, the second running over fully 95 minutes in an edit pretty much never seen again as, not uniquely for these specials, even the repeats and streaming versions have ten minutes cut off. While it still won the day's ratings war the figure was well down on both the previous year and part one (and both were left in the dust of the first Auntie's Bloomers four days later), which is partially why you don't tend to get a TV special episode at 3.10pm any more. Lots of anomalies too, as Barry Gibb has a walk-on part, there's incidental music unusually for the series (including Vic Reeves' Born Free) and no laugh track, and it ends with a cover of Summer In The City. That all said, David Jason has claimed this is his favourite episode.

Speaking of adventures by unlikely figures, BBC2 at the same time starts The Wizard Of Oz. Channel 4 ducks out of the clash of classics by showing a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto in G Major by the Gustav Mahler Orchestra and then the annual Cirque du Soleil spectacular, Novelle Experience. Having its own annual standards to uphold, ITV break out the Bond once Corrie is done, namely For Your Eyes Only.

The Generation Game - trailer only, unfortunately - had been a Christmas Day fixture for all eleven years of its original run so when it came back there was only one date it was set for, even if the night's big event had moved it to 4.40pm, a little earlier than when it would have worked best. Over on BBC2 The Staggering Year Of Ferdinand de Bargos was a year in review version of the Geoff Atkinson and Kim Fuller series of shorts putting new dialogue over old news clips, the voiceovers in this series' case coming from Mount Rushmore of VO candidates Kate Robbins, Enn Reitel and Jon Glover plus the ever adaptable Susie Blake, followed by a Broadway recording of Stephen Sondheim's acclaimed Into The Woods starring his regular lead Bernadette Peters. Against that Channel 4 throw on five minutes of news and then settle back with this year's outing for The Snowman.

Magician David Berglas is a leftfield choice for the big This Is Your Life, with the great and good of both magic - Paul and Debbie, Uri Geller, the Morettis, the Pendragons, the Great Soprendo - and otherwise - Ted Rogers, Ruth Madoc, Bill Maynard, Anthea Turner, Henry Cooper - coming by. During this time Channel 4 has brought together the best of Tonight With Jonathan Ross' autumn New York trip. If it feels like everyone is getting the small fry out of the way, there's a very good reason for that. After Chris Lowe has drawn the BBC news short straw - though not for actual news value, as this was the day Gorbachev stepped down - we are upon the TV premiere of Batman attracting 14.3 million, 600,000 short of OFAH.



An hour long Watching special on ITV, after Sue Carpenter has been ITN's short shift, can't compete. Maybe it wasn't meant to.

"It is Christmas Day in the Farnham household" says the Brookside blurb, which makes us think their horizons are limited, though there is a sting. Following that, we're reminded that in many ways this was the era of big showy Status Quo publicity stunts, as an hour is given over to Rock Till You Drop, the story of their playing four charity gigs across the UK (except Wales and Ireland) in twelve hours. Which is, by the way, a repeat from October. A repeat! At 7pm on Christmas Day! And not even a festive one!

The second Corrie, ITV's most watched show of the day (unless you count the combined speech viewership, but who does that?) hoves into view at the usual time and it's all go. Alma wakes up with Mike and winds round to calling him a bastard (at 7.30pm on Christmas Day! There'll have had to be letters) and throwing him out, the McDonalds get a brick through their window, Rovers decorator and Christmas dinner invitee Des Foster reacts to being turned down by Bet by hitting her and gets thrown out, and Tracy goes upstairs to listen to her tapes. Maybe she had new ones. While BBC2 gets on with the signed version of the speech followed by a Glyndebourne production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, filling two hours 20 in one of the traditional manners, the third of eight Birds Of A Feather extended specials takes a key spot on BBC1's evening. This is the one where Brian Hibbard from the Flying Pickets offers the trio use of a villa in Majorca only for the sisters to find their escaped husbands there and then drugs planted on Dorien, possibly by a local played by John Bluthal.

Then, something strange happens. Ever since ITV had published their programming details it had been expected that their big show on the day would be their enormous hit and obvious cosy family viewing treat The Darling Buds Of May. This however was ITV in the early 1990s, where entertaining the nation came a distant second to advertising revenue, so in what might well have been a late decision that went out on the 22nd and a lot of potential huge audiences were burned off during Advent, most notably the premiere of Big as far back as the 4th December, reportedly at Thames' request. We'd see the extreme of this approach in the next couple of years but for now they had to keep something back to counteract the caped crusader so at 8pm placed the premiere of Crocodile Dundee II. Fair, as even if it isn’t the most remembered sequel to a hit the original had become the most watched Christmas Day single airing programme ever (21.77 million) two years earlier for BBC1. But... that's except for viewers in Thames, TSW and TVS, who got a special episode of Minder and a second, ITN news-straddling showing of Top Gun. Everyone else got to watch Arthur and, being this late in its day, Ray transport stolen videos across London by barge at 10.15pm. The reasons are murky, especially as it's not like the advertising premium even in the affluent capital and southern regions would have been huge when they eventually did show it on Wednesday January 22nd (when the other regions put on... well, guess) Minder's home franchise upset at the late scheduling? It's not like they'd have shifted more holiday brochures that way. While ITV were having a little local difficulty Channel 4 were showing highlights of Pavarotti's huge free Hyde Park concert in the presence of Charles, Diana and the PM from that July.

Once BBC1 has returned from Majorca/Chigwell it's onto another reliable sitcom signpost of the age, Keeping Up Appearances. It only had three Christmas specials, perhaps because there's very little room for manoeuvre when churches and costumes are already part of its world. Hyacinth orders a Father Christmas outfit for Richard's church hall duties, he gets drunk, Elizabeth has to pretend to be him, mayhem ensues. After the news follows another premiere, regular Christmas TV visitor Eddie Murphy's Coming To America, which 13 million hung on for.

Channel 4 have to show the Queen's speech so stick it out at 9.55pm before a channel that has already this morning delivered one of the great Christmas Day hidden gems puts out another. The Ghosts Of Oxford Street - yes, somehow it's on All4 - was written and directed by Malcolm McLaren as a fantastical retelling of-cum-love letter to the history of London's retail hub. Wandering the streets by night McLaren acts as narrator in his usual not quite telling all the story straightforwardly way between musical interludes. Tom Jones is George Selfridge. The Happy Mondays cover Stayin' Alive raggedly while being hung at Tyburn. Sinead O'Connor delivers a cut glass version of Silent Night. John Altman is Thomas De Quincey. Rebel MC appears to rework Pick A Pocket Or Two. Shane McGowan and Kirsty Maccoll bum, punk and old slut on junk their way down Dickensian thoroughfares. It's the kind of frustrating, dubious, odd, unique spark that McLaren made his own space, and even if nothing else you can see how Oxford Street has changed yet again in the last thirty years.

We're past ten by now so everyone's thinking about what they're heading into the small hours with. BBC2's nightcap from 10.20pm is, but of course, a double bill of Jean Vigo directed French films from the Thirties, Zéro de Conduite and L'Atalante. Channel 4, having given Cirque du Soleil their annual fill earlier on, showcase their briefly cooler modern circus counterparts Archaos, then dive into Dial M For Murder after midnight, then at 2.50am - but of course! - a random episode of Swedish satirical series Lorry, followed by a Jonathan Ross repeat. BBC1 is still closing down in these days where News 24 is a gleam in John Birt's eye and gets there with a repeat of the previous year's In Sickness And In Health special (which had gone out on the 30th), John Wells - drain your glass, Christmas Day Schedule Drinking Game players - monologue Just What I Always Wanted! and the Likely Lads film. That just leaves ITV and they're doing as little work as possible. Once another premiere is out of the way, and given Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol ends at 12.50am you can see what they think of it (and the fifth premiered three days later!), practically the whole network gets to quietly snooze through some or all of 1987's Assault And Matrimony, a hilarious tale of attempted domestic murder, David Essex motorbike racing thriller Silver Dream Racer, the 1984 animated A Tale Of Two Cities, and then it's just a triple bill of Porky Pig and Sylvester before TV-am kicks off a post-Christmas 1991 world...

ON THE RADIO: Simon Bates is off around the world, as per, linking up with BFBS to play requests from the Forces in Cyprus, encompassing the Queen at 11am. DLT has somehow got the keys to Ambridge's Grey Gables to host the Radio 1 Christmas lunch, with John Peel making the return visit. The station then collectively sleeps it off with Steve Wright's best of the year's guests, Paul Simon live in Central Park and Level 42 from Crystal Palace Bowl before Neale James sends everyone off to bed.
-Predicting the home broadcasting revolution of the last two years, Don Maclean presents the Radio 2 breakfast show from his home in Solihull with family, friends, Des O'Connor, Lenny Henry and Sue Lawley. The speech is on at 10am, handled by Ken, with Michael Aspel taking us towards a lunchtime decorated by festive News Huddlines and a 1967 Round The Horne. File the next show under "things you'd never dream of today" as Norma Major, as in the Prime Minister's wife, introduces her favourite seasonal music before Alan Titchmarsh does likewise. Jeremy Nicholas presents a celebration of Junior Choice and its ilk, Merry Christmas Children Everywhere, two decades before the station just bit the bullet and brought it back, followed by James Stewart celebrating the work of Frank Capra, seasonally enough. Gloria Gaynor's gospel scented Christmas Special from the BBC Hippodrome Theatre is as good a way as any to bring on the night before the handbrake turn of Sing Something Seasonal and Sir Yehudi Menuhin talking to Sheridan Morley, after which Tony Capstick introduces A Traditional Yorkshire Christmas.
-Radio 3 highlights? Gladly: the Westminster Abbey Choir lending itself to a Bach Cantata, a chat with Pavarotti about his greatest roles and influences, Mozart from Salzburg, Jeremy Beadle conducting a Christmas Quiz, an episode of the struggling writer sitcom Such Rotten Luck starring Tim Pigott Smith, Zoe Wanamaker and Stephen Rea, an adaptation of Don Quixote with Paul Scofield and Bob Hoskins, and ancient chanting from the Lebanon to end.
-Radio 4 get off to a flyer, Dilly Barlow introducing "your choice of memorable radio moments" in Christmas Past, Christmas Present. Clearly the Greg James of her day. The Queen is on as early as 9am. The Christmas On The Hour is at the remarkable time of 10.30am (yes, we know it's a repeat from the previous day), followed by a repeat of the 1968 adaptaion of The Hobbit ahead of JRR Tolkien's centenary, though there's a lot of this recycling going round as there's a Hancock's Half Hour and a Tommy Handley profile later. In one of those brainwaves Radio 4 producers have occasionally a new festive season series begins entitled Namesakes, in which people meet their famous namealikes, Victoria Wood today. Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance is the afternoon production, involving Samantha Bond and Reece Dinsdale. At evening Dame Barbara Cartland is In The Psychiatrist's Chair, The Wizard Of Oz's production is the subject of the series Going To The Pictures, harpist Osian Ellis gives a recital and Dr Alan Maryon Davis explains what DNA is.
-It's 1991 so we have a Radio 5, which has Cliff Morgan on the breakfast beat once again introducing clips of festivities past, breaking for Liz at 9am. The children's slot Take Five has taken a turn as it's being presented by Gorden Kaye and Carmen Silvera in character, incorporating Judi Dench reading Papa Panov's Special Christmas. Then the station puts its feet up for a while, simulcasting A Festival of Nine Lessons And Carols with Radio 3, BFBS Worldwide and the World Service for five hours in total. The evening is for the kids with a repeat of the summer's Children's Prom, a playlet of Peter Pan, Barbara Windsor reading Dick Whittington, a history of and performance by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra with Johnny Dankworth sitting in and, er, a version of Paul Theroux's London Snow. Right at the end Scrawn and Lard save the day with a Hit The North special.

PLAYLIST

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 24: Cinderella: The Shoe Must Go On

To finish off for, christ, our seventh year of scouring the online world of Advent-ure, it's the traditional ITV pantomime! That is apart from the yawning gaps when they can't be arsed, as this from 1986 was the only one between 1969 (Aladdin with Mike and Bernie Winters and Jack Douglas) and 1998 (Jack And The Beanstalk with Neil Morrissey, Julie Walters and a cast of thousands) Penned by Barry Cryer and Dick Vosburgh with music by Keith Strachan (pre-Mistletoe And Wine, very pre-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire), the ever welcome visage of Willie Rushton narrates as the evil stepmother - Danny La Rue, of course, because we always had drag in our culture, it's just that everyone including the people doing it understands what it actually is now, and La Rue hated being called a drag act anyway - visits Hardup Hall, its propreitor Roy Kinnear ("I should have stayed in Peterborough") and his daughter Cinderella, Cheryl Baker having to confide in Buttons (Jimmy Cricket) Kicking off a range of songs, out in the forest Brian Conley is Dandini who swaps with Michael Howe, best known from Solo, who feels like a "someone was ill" choice for Prince Charming. Basil Brush is chased by huntmaster Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog. Brian Murphy and Roy Hudd, a man you'd want for broad music hall routines, are the comic relief ugly sisters. Someone finally thinks to put Steve Nallon and John Wells together, and they're apparently Prince Charming's parents. Throw in Faith Brown as the fairy godmother, Judith Chalmers, Shaw Taylor, a wilf of a town crier, Les Dennis and Roy Walker doing slapstick, and Jim Bowen as a slipper fit locating game show host with assistant Caroline Munro who was doing 3-2-1 duties at the time, and it's all great fun for old and young. Merry Christmas!

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 23: Pop Goes Christmas

We've featured a couple of clips from this before but never before the whole show from Boxing Day 1982, where Granada - and it very much has the air of a Granada studio production - sought to take on the Pops hegemony by getting the day's stars to cover Christmas songs or entinsel their own. Mari Wilson throws herself fully into it, giving a joyous jazzy treatment to to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town and rewriting Just What I Always Wanted into what presents she expects Santa, on passing by Neasden next, to send down the Compact Organisation's chimney. Dexys Midnight Runners give Merry Xmas Everybody the Emerald Express treatment. Shakin’ Stevens croons Blue Christmas, the big Shaky festive hit that nobody plays any more. Toto Coelo give an unnecessary sheen to Step Into Christmas, with a musical reference to I Eat Cannibals in case you don't recognise them in normal dresses. Toyah joins the prog dots by covering I Believe In Father Christmas. Musical Youth meet Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer uptown. David Essex borrows a very big staircase for A Winter's Tale, followed by the Nolans chorusing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas at its base trading verses with a dangerously overmanned St. Winifred's School Choir. "Pop illusionist" Simon Drake, years before going underground to The Secret Cabaret, plays with a cane of lights and a floating bauble over Happy Christmas (War is Over) And Wah! perform The Story Of The Blues because Pete Wylie is above all this, maybe?

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 22: Play Away, 1975

The 300th video we've featured on the various types of Advent Calendar on this blog and we're in the domain of Cant once more for the only Play Away special that went out on the 25th. A classic A-team too - Derek Griffiths, Toni Arthur (a return visit to this year's Advent Calendar), Chloe Ashcroft, Lionel Morton and a Play Away band full of jazz and folk lifers, which Derek briefly joins on clarinet. Indeed Spike Heatley, who had only just recently been playing with Alexis Korner and John McLaughlin, is at one stage commandeered to throw balls into everyone's paper hats. Still entirely studio-based before an audience was brought in in later years the wonders of a full studio to play with and a world of imagination, some via Julia Donaldson, are in their grasp. The one-liners, coin tricks, hats, cardboard boxes, jousts, illustrated story (presumably by the credited Charles Front, Rubber Soul cover designer and Rebecca's dad) and CSO fun are all well within the wheelhouse; rather more unexpected is Arthur and Morton duetting on Your Song. In researching this, incidentally, we were heartened and slightly moist-eyed at learning that at Cant's memorial service Arthur and Cohen led the congregation in a rendition of the Play Away theme.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 21: The Keith Harris Christmas Party, 1983

Ventriloquists could once upon a time earn themselves a surprisingly long and distinguished career. Think of how when being brought up you were led to believe Terry Hall and Lenny The Lion were hugely important, or how omnipresent Roger de Courcey was for a while, or the US legend of Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop, or the even greater radio legend of Educating Archie. Keith Harris made his TV debut as far back as 1965. He was a regular guest on Seaside Special, The Good Old Days and the Black & White Minstrels - in fact it was backstage while Leslie Mitchell's men were doing their thing that he found the green fur he would turn into Orville. By 1983, the year after Orville's Song, he had his own series - not specifically for children at all, the first series of his own comedic variety show went out on springtime Saturdays at 6.15pm with proper variety names and pop stars ranging from Bobby Crush to Strawberry Switchblade via Gloria Gaynor as guests. And yet his Christmas special is at 4.35pm, something for the kids between Bridge On The River Kwai and the news. So there's your mixed messages context, because this is very much aimed at children rather than families given the big visitor is Crackerjack nuisance Stu Francis. A cold open features Harris in a lurid yellow sweater telling us we should have been there the previous day and then throwing to flashback, which is as big a sign as possible that he'd been told this would go out before or on the day and had to put in an emergency intro once the listings were published to explain why there's a long interlude in which Orville sings the nativity story. If nothing else, it's a show full of similar surprises. Cuddles has legs! Keith and Orville live separately! Orville's guest bedroom is haunted and it traps him and Francis, and yet he stays there overnight! Orville's house has a resident fairy! Not only does Shakin' Stevens visit but he somehow smuggled a single saxophonist into the house! Cuddles has constructed a guillotine for use on Orville, and it's not as troubling as his Savile impression! Speaking of which, Stu makes an "Irish Father Christmas" joke before Keith refers to Francis' soot-covered visage (he fell down the chimney, see) as "black face". Right at the end half of the whole of showbusiness (plus Fern Britton and Ian McCaskill) arrives at the door, and also Cuddles who was surely already indoors, and that's where the credits roll. Oh, thanks for inviting us then. And remember, Come To My Party is now available on BBC Records & Tapes, but it won't get past number 44.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 20: Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game, 1994

The Gen Game is the quintessential family-friendly all-action show that should fit Christmas Day 6pm like a glove, and indeed did (give or take the hour) for twelve straight years in its initial incarnation and the first three of its revival. In 1993 it edged back to Christmas Eve, where this one also landed, and the special shows in Jim Davidson's tenure were positively allergic to crackers and tinsel, not only never being broadcast on the 25th but one year being deposited on the 19th. The importance of specifying all this up front is this was Brucie's last show and when he announced in March 1994 that the next series would be his last, he stated the date change was the final straw in a declining relationship with management - though it's possible LWT's million pound deal may have been a filip too, and his complaints about the Corporation not valuing variety don't really square with him being stuck on Bruce's Price Is Right and Play Your Cards Right with none of the promised specials until returning ten years later. None of said bitterness is fortunately on show, which features - as well as brief Rolf Harris - traditional Alpine dancing, Christmas cake decoration and a set-piece involving Rosemarie Ford doing a ballet routine when Bruce walks out in tights at which Ford and everybody else loses it, as a precusor to a game of suggestive balloon manoevuring between the couples judged by, of course, Susan George. The final game is as usual a pantomime, Dick Whittington, with Willie Rushton wonderfully adjudicating. Bruce sees us off by, as often on these occasions, accompanying himself on jazz piano for White Christmas before a heartfelt farewell speech. Rosemarie Ford is now appearing at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 19: Jimmy Tarbuck's Christmas All Stars

"Good King Wenceslas won't be looking out, he'll be looking in tonight!" It's 1983 and ITV aren't doing their own All Star Comedy Carnivals any more so Jimmy has had to take direct action. Well, not really, it's more of a studio based Her Majesty's/Palladium-type variety spectacular of the type where you don't need a second guess to know which franchise was responsible. So Tarby indulges in crosstalk with Mike Yarwood and Cannon & Ball (Bobby, shortly after being introduced to the 'Dolly Parton breathalyser' because that's all we cared about her then, warns Jimmy "don't start thinking I'm a poofter!" to shrieking laughter), Max Bygraves sings a song for the year which includes the lines "Prince Andrew said I've got to be going, I shouldn't be here", Michael Barrymore is a drunk Australian in the kitchen, the Game For A Laugh team - Matthew Kelly wearing dungarees with a Christmas tree design because that's what he did - appear so Jeremy can run a game involving throwing paint at Lionel Blair and Jack Scott and Matthew can wrongfoot a woman after a telephone game, Shakin' Stevens and Bonnie Tyler sing, and Bruce Forsyth does a music hall drunk pianist routine before forming a piano/flute/harp jazz trio. Well, we say "studio based" but there's a lot of satellite communications going on, which means the Temptations and their cheap drum machine, Andy Williams being shown up by a brief technical fault and Robert Wagner, Stefanie Powers and Freeway class up the joint. The company end with a choral medley starting with that festive standard Singing The Blues, and as if it wasn't already odd enough Shaky and Bonnie aren't there but the ever available Kenny Lynch is. Weep, friends. Weep for this era of entertainment long gone.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 18: Saturday Superstore, 1984

A solid 102 minute wodge of the Mike Read-enabled pre-Christmas party in Studio 7 and the place is so packed out even Cheggers' Swaporama in Warrington is overstuffed, with Tom O'Connor, Slade, the local male voice choir and Salvation Army band, a massive yule log and a traffic cone giftwrapping contest. Neil (as in Nigel Planer), who'd had a tumultuous relationship with both Superstore and Geldof, tries to bring in his second single referencing white bicycle and ends up in the basement with Sarah and Roy Wood. An initially reticent four year old Natalie Casey follows her Chick Chick Chicken breakthrough with her difficult second single, her reward being getting to meet Basil Brush, who takes calls having just finished his/its last BBC series in original Ivan Owen form. There's also Britain's second best ice skating duo Karen Barber and Nicky Slater, the Toy Dolls taking the whole studio by storm, John Craven grilling Bill Giles about the likelihood of a white Christmas, some sawing a woman in half, the Thompson Twins and Cantable and their oh so clever carol rewordings. Most of the above are pressed into Pop Panel service, including Rondo Veneziano and Prince's I Would Die 4 U ("a video I know at least two of us like") - and just as you think that's more than enough for one morning, here's Bob Geldof to reinforce the message of the then new Do They Know It's Christmas? Actually the obvious highlight is the video for Two Left Feet, the Superstore equivalent of I Wanna Be A Winner but without, as far as we can tell, ever actually being released.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 17: Blue Peter - Back In Time For Christmas

The most recent show we've ever featured but it's worth it. Blue Peter just didn't know where to stop with festive programming in 1998. The actual Christmas show, the traditional and never changing setup from drawings soup to gold ship logo nuts happened on the 23rd, with Charlotte Church joining the usual battalion of school choirs and Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band members. However this special the previous Friday was where everyone got to let their hair down in the kind of celebratory song, dance and loose narrative fantasia that has imperial phase producer Richard Marson's fingerprints all over it. Partly devised to celebrate the show's just passed fortieth anniversary with cameos by several former presenters, including for the last time on the show the recently deceased Christopher Wenner, we join the Huq/Hill/Miles team wrapping up for the season and Stuart dreaming of inviting the others to see his time machine, only for Mark Curry - a late rewrite replacement for the recently fired Richard Bacon - to appear as a mad scientist obsessed with Christmas decorations, in something of a nod to Doctor Who. The rest we could try and describe in detail but round about the Stock Aitken Waterman-inspired version of Last Christmas we gave up, and that was after trying to parse Curry getting the band (Yvette Fielding and Caron Keating) back together with the aid of Santa Duncan for a Little Saint Nick routine. We didn't even notice at first that an uncredited Steps are part of the big finish doing next to nothing, though once you've seen Lizo Mzimba dancing you can understand how that would slip our mind.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 16: Whodunnit?, 1974

For something that doesn't often get talked about Whodunnit? lasted a long time, six series in all. Created for Thames and penned by writing supergroup Jeremy Lloyd and Lance Percival, Jon Pertwee acted as overseer as celebrity guests attempted to work out who that week's murderer was from what was acted out in front of them by means of deduction, reasoning and in the best traditions later upheld by Cluedo old fashioned cross-examination. On its sole Christmas special, aired on Boxing Day 1974 with appropriate set, a man who recently inherited a fortune drops dead after the Christmas Eve family dinner and it's up to Patrick Mower, Wendy Craig, Derek Nimmo and Leslie Crowther to work out who did it. Complicating, or maybe improving, matters is a smattering of famous faces in the cast, notably the former Sir Lancelot/Ian Chesterton, William Russell, as the deceased, Ronald Hines and Nicola Pagett among the accused and Barrie "I'm Barrie Gosney" Gosney as the waiter, but also a tremendous MacGuffin featuring Eamonn Andrews as a drunk waiter serving Hughie Green, whose bad temper may not have strictly been acting.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 15: Des O'Connor Tonight, 1986

Des was an iron horse of entertaining chat, his show lasting 22 years across BBC2 and ITV with a never changing format of feed lines, indulgent laughter and old school perma-tanned shiny floor razzle-dazzle, almost of the classic American entertainer mould multiplied by years spent as Jack Douglas' straight man. You'd certainly think of the vaudeville image when he comes on and starts crooning Winter Wonderland, but that it turns out is to set up a walk-on by Freddie Starr, in some ways the Connolly to his Parky. Indeed O'Connor is really going for the foil dollar this year when his second guest turns out to be Bernie Clifton and he surprise reveals his own ostrich and accompanying song. Shirley Bassey does her thing in a dress with knowingly comical shoulder pads somewhere between Max Headroom and David Byrne and she can't sit down in before launching into her own crosstalk gag which Des treats as if it's an ad lib before Starr reappears with a leek because you know why. Strangely enough he doesn't do the same for Tom Jones, with whom Des has a belting out the standards head to head, before the pair, Bassey, a choir and the Band of the Welsh Guards end with "the only song we could possibly sing". Well, it's not, is it, but hey, it's Christmas.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 14: Cannon & Ball For Christmas, 1980

Two series into their shiny floor reign at LWT Tommy and Bobby were given their first festive special though going out the week before rather than when London Weekend retook the reigns from Boxing Day evening itself suggests they weren't entirely convinced yet - in fact they'd only ever get four Christmas shows of any stripe. What's also interesting about this is it's all set on one stage, the classic LE set with the orchestra in the back corners, though there's a smart gag to begin with involving the big staircase entrance. You can see the transition between the working men's club and the telly screen going on as there's pointers to them becoming proper song and dance men, both in delivering Me And My Shadow and wearing comedy costumes to back Faith Brown, but the mania (and Sid Green script) behind a routine based on Bobby playing a stringless guitar that turns into the duelling banjos from Deliverance shows they could never fully commit to that. We'll be honest, other guest Bertice Reading and colleagues' version of Didn't It Rain doesn't quite match Sister Rosetta Tharpe's. But yes, together they were OK.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 13: Bullseye, 1984

The general format of a festive Bully was, give or take the clothing and set budget, pretty well established throughout as darts pros team with celebrities. And so Jim, who followers of catchphrases should note that within seconds he refers to "super, a smashing audience", brings on Jocky Wilson in a kilt, Eric Bristow in as little pearly king gear as he can get away with and Keith Deller... well, they've clearly had problems with sourcing traditional Suffolk dress so he's in school uniform because "I've got a lot to learn", which makes no sense. Pointedly stating "they all know where to sit" as a stagehand hurredly puts some chairs out behind him, Jim then brings on Kathy Staff, Mastermind winner Margaret Harris and "presenter of Saturday Starship" Tommy Boyd, a peculiar set of showbiz names only exacerbated when it turns out there are more people who are just coming on to pick up the charity cheques, namely Miss UK, Alvin Stardust and a fully armed Rod Hull, which seems to surprise Jim himself. Tony Green himself throws for charity with, one for the teenagers, Anne Aston standing in as scorer and then having a throw herself in a party dress that can't be doing much for her aim.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 12: Noel's Christmas Presents, 1989

We yield to few in our admiration for the annual Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show/Christmas Morning With Noel, but one who didn't was Michael Leggo, who first brought it down from the Telecom Tower into a studio and then persuaded Edmonds to do away with the format entirely. 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 Noel's BBC exit in 1999, then from 2007 to 2011 on Sky. This first instalment is already sending Noel on his world travels - HMS Invincible, Disney World, the Moulin Rouge where he hijacks a couple's second honeymoon, outside a house in Peterborough with a pint of homebrew to hand - but the big ones saved to the end are based around planes that aren't moving and the very first is actually initially delivered by Philip Schofield dressed, loosely, as Postman Pat.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 11: Going Live!, 1987

No, not Gone Live!, this one is a live Boxing Day special with multiple outside broadcasts and a sense that most of the crew and management are either absent or are there under Quality Street fuelled semi-protest. It was only the show's first year, they'll learn in time. Saturday Superstore refugee Vicky Licorish is already dressed as Aladdin in a hospital ward in Carshalton, joined by Jonathon Morris and someone called Peter Gosling who seems as unlikely a Saturday morning figure as there could be and doesn't do very much at all. Peter Simon meanwhile is in a dark and wet Glasgow previewing the Garden Festival of lunchtime filler future with Andy Cameron and someone else dressed as bees, and later the Proclaimers in front of a fairground roundabout with an incredible accompaniment involving children tearing up signs. We've seen part of this before, the Bread vs Little & Large Double Dare https://why-dont-youtube.blogspot.com/2015/12/19-double-dare-1987.html ; otherwise giving up their day are Ian McCaskill, Peter Howitt, Bros, Colin Moynihan MP doing the Press Conference and some of the Liverpool Why Don't You? gang. Pip and Saz have brought their parents and siblings in, and Sarah recalls an anecdote about when Run DMC freestyled on her coffee making abilities.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 10: Palace Hill, 1988

Now this - from which the very end is missing and one bit gets very briefly recorded over, sorry about that - is a Children's ITV curio. Spun off from John Gorman-aided sketch show Your Mother Wouldn't Like It hence the bit in the title song, Palace Hill was a spoof school sitcom initially a vehicle for their royal manque characters, hence the title, but quickly span off into oddness and general low-level anarchy involving a bullies, swots, exchange students, a kid caught in a timewarp from circa WWII (played by future voice of CITV and Da Bungalow producer Steven Ryde) and so forth. It was another one scored up for the Central Junior Television Workshop, that unknown, unknowable Nottingham mecca for a generation of children. This doesn't catch the periods when Samantha Morton, Felicity Jones, Vicky McClure, Joe Dempsie or Lauren and Michael Socha were attending but we do see Mark Dexter (The Bletchley Circle, Charles Babbage in Who, Tony Benn in The Crown, currently Hilary Wyndham in Industry), albeit the people who were expected to graduate as stars from this group given how often they were used - Oliver Hawker, Julie Schatzberger - weren't. From the end of the first series, inexplicably American computer geek PC - who, oh yeah, should have mentioned this, is played by Alison Hammond - has just discovered the demonic headmaster is a computer while the self-defining Bonnie and Clyde - the latter is Johann Myers who's been in a good few things as an adult including Silent Witness, State Of Play and Small Axe - are throwing a carol concert.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 9: the Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show, 1984

You don't tend to think of him as a festive schedule fixture but Paul Daniels had fifteen straight Christmas shows from 1979 onwards, and between 1980 and this one only one wasn't on the day itself. This feels like classic Paul - wig, "man who exhales" theme, Debbie established by name, 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, who attracts some very distinctive laughing styles from the audience. The closer is one of Daniels' best remembered big tricks as Paul vanishes a million pounds in cash, something which takes nearly twenty minutes to do. One of the witnesses is the similarly inclined Robert Maxwell, who seems to want to be very tactile with the money.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 8: Basil Brush's Christmas Fantasy

The whole Basil Brush conceit is built on sand, isn't it? A fox in self-hating hunting gear whose schtick is corny rejoiners and a top volume laugh and catchphrase it delivers all the sodding time shouldn't have lasted as long as it has, but there's a weird charisma and a connection to these Seventies shows. This 1974 special, Brush's fourth, starts with Basil and Mr Roy agreeing on the spirit of the season before being introduced to a book of fairy tales. Basil has been promised a Christmas Eve visit to the waxworks museum but his purchase of an Indian carpet from a street market backfires when the Pied Piper appears and makes it fly to the waxworks' festive party, once all the nursery rhyme characters have been brought to life. The Old Woman Who Lives In A Show dances in clogs, Snow White sings Someday My Prince Will Come and Basil's clockwork dog pet Little Ticker plays little part. Given what's clearly a very limited set budget LE veteran director Robin Nash does well, but it all comes down to the essence of the vainglorious virtuistic vulpine.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 7: The Good Old Days, 1974

The tinselled terpsichoreanism, this Christian celebratory coterie, had two distinct unbroken runs of festive specials, from 1956 to 1967 and then again from 1971 to 1976, with two further dressing up occasions in 1983 and its final year 1983. In a show very light on actual Christmas content, we drop in on the City Varieties to the unexpected sight of Croydon's Edward Woodward, who'd just been in the Callan film, singing the Cockney songbook, from I'm Enery The Eighth I Am to Any Old Iron. As he himself put it almost exactly a year earlier, OH GOD! OH JESUS CHR... actually, to be fair he's giving it unashamed plenty, though that a whole host of Union Jacks come out for his closing number gives it a very different air. Also getting the full Leonard Sachs treatment are The King's Singers - and they've brought kazoos! - illusionist Brahma, revivalist regular and Candid Camera cast member Sheila Bernette in her best gingham, comedy strongman Ted Durante, Australian jazz singer Wilma Reading and acrobats The Orlandos.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 6: The Crystal Maze, 1993

A festive whimsy and a fundamentally show-altering moment in one, as the fourth of its five kids' issue Christmas specials was chosen as the moment to literally hand over from Richard O'Brien, as the cold open specifies although it's never followed up on after the titles, to the new Maze Master, part-time Georgian dandy adventurer Edward Tudor-Pole. The change in attitude is immediately obvious, less conspiratorial and detached, more strident and fantastical. Tudor-Pole gives it a better go than many recall but you never quite get past someone as large in profile and definition as O'Brien. You could argue this whole show wouldn't. Having these likely easily confused kids on the first show with a new host, though.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 5: A Christmas Celebration

Television has had more trouble with the god slot when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday than you'd think given the absolute lay-up. The religious symbolism and elements of the occasion have already been dealt with that morning by the worshipful church service across all significant channels, so what to do come prime-time when the family is all together and expecting entertainment? The last time the question needed to be asked before the ITC loosened the reins on the teatime religious necessity was 1988. ITV refocused it into a Save The Children charity appeal with the West End bred likes of Ball, Essex, Crawford, Paige, Nicholas and Langford singing their spirituality. Against that number of big hitters singing in the name of the lord BBC1 went for the big one, Cliff Richard in the year Mistletoe And Wine was number one. We join Cliff and Sally Magnusson shivering outside All Souls Church, where Richard blithely tells us he and his celebrity mates gather every year for festive commemorations and "we call ourseves the Arts Centre Group". Cliff really goes go full on trendy vicar in his presenting style, fortunately not much of it as the set-pieces include Thora Hird monologues, an Ian McCaskill light comedy weather forecast leading into his giving Cliff and Wendy Craig a snowstorm, Precious Wilson singing Up Where We Belong and a man who turned up in his various guises seemingly every year around this time, John Wells, this time in his Denis Thatcher variant. Cliff ends with an appropriately arm waving rendition of the hit, though he doesn't do the "have a great Christmas everybody!" ad lib during the pause from his Pops performances, so points off for that. We note the production credits include Adam Tandy, who went secular very quickly afterwards as his production/director credits include The Thick Of It (and indeed most of Iannucci's work), Inside No.9, Detectorists and Catastrophe.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 4: and more 1980s and 1990s Christmas adverts

Yet again - and we don't just mean the Advent Calendar with this, we mean WDYT? itself and by extension all of life - we're indebted to Neil Miles for going through his endless parade of E180s and plucking out the best festive advertising, just as we were here, here, here and here. Highlights this time include the usual parade of local stores advertising entirely in stills, burst balloons at the Arndale Centre, Boots attempting to synthesise the Woolworths approach, two lots of Christmas TV Times, Chas & Dave's Christmas Jamboree Bag in far too short detail, Westbrook Glass and their new computer graphics software, Paul Henry in Plymouth, the Liverpool Empire's treble act of your dreams, Tesco reminding you that only dirty hippies don't eat meat, Sonic 2 at D-D-Dixons, "what is a happening?", a News Of The World TV guide that attempts to rip off The Day Today of all things, Barbara Windsor promoting the People's version, a festive themed sell for Parklife and festive versions of the famous mid-90s Guinness Guaglione and Pot Noodle Peter Baynham ads. Truly, something for everyone.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 3: Play School, Christmas Day 1985

Taken from one of the show's repeat runs can't tell you when, where or how because Genome or whatever it's called now refuses to admit they happened, a soldier dancing in CSO welcomes us, as if a Christmas miracle. We're gathering at Wayne Jackman's studio house this year, with its rabbits, toy shelves and installed 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 - apart from the bit featuring a golliwog in a Victorian bedroom illustration - 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. Then everyone has a game of Squeak Piggy Squeak, which isn't as dubious as it sounds despite the only necessary tool being a blindfold so STOP THAT, before everyone gathers for carols round the piano.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 2: My World, 1971

My World, which ran from 1969 to 1988, was an ITV Schools - our second visit there - via Yorkshire storytelling series for primary school children best remembered its pastoral guitar and synth-woodwind theme, The Free Life by regular theme tune writer (News At Ten, Minder, Angels, guitarist on the Top Of The Pops version of Whole Lotta Love) Alan Parker, later covered (as My World) by The Go! Team on their 2007 second album Proof Of Youth. That means one problem is immediately evident - that theme hadn't actually come in by this stage, instead using a shuffly sitcommy thing by Stars On Sunday regular Charles Smitton that doesn't suit the patrician sit down and tell tales to five year olds concept at all. Then again, neither does airing a Christmas themed show on 29th November, no matter what Maureen Sutcliffe says. There's something sweet about the animations borrowed from the National Film Board of Canada - this must be part of the goodwill they built up that enabled them to fund The Cat Came Back - and Chris Rowe's song about the other animals and birds that might have gathered around the stable. The notably accented children singing Away In A Manger, less so.

Advent Calendar 2021 Day 1: Seeing And Doing, 1980

First shown on 8th December, let's start our year with a basic introduction for the very young to what this season is about and what happens in it from a familiar face. Seeing And Doing lasted from 1967 to 1992 teaching five to seven year olds about the wider world. For several years from around 1976 Toni Arthur was its presenter, let go by Play School because Cynthia Felgate thought she had a big acting career ahead of her only for her to jump channels. In truth her work there is a bit like everyone else who went from the Beeb to Thames with a view to furthering their career in the late 70s in that she wasn't as effective and most forget about it, but in this edition she's joined by her pagan folk (and life) partner Dave Arthur. Once you know they were involved with sometime media sensation Wiccan high priest Alex Sanders something feels weird about them outlining the traditional rituals of Christian feast but that's just us from a well read 2021 perspective. There's carol singers, cards, puddings and decoration before closing with a rendition of We Wish You A Merry Christmas, and hopefully by the end you'll start being in the mood for the season.