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
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