RIP 2022

Graham Skidmore (aged 90, died in June 2021, reported in January)
Blind Date's Our Graham, Shooting Stars voiceover

Betty White (99, died New Year's Eve 2021)
Rose from The Golden Girls

George Rossi (60, died January 5th 2022)
Duncan Lennox in The Bill

Nicholas Donnelly (83, January 9th)
Mr MacKenzie in Grange Hill, Sergeant Johnny Wills in Dixon of Dock Green

Gary Waldhorn (74, January 10th)
Councillor David Horton in The Vicar of Dibley, Jacko's boss Lionel Bainbridge in Brush Strokes

Jana Bennett (66, January 11th)
Panorama producer and Horizon editor who became BBC Head of Science, then Director of Television, overseeing the launch of the digital channels, iPlayer, Strictly, The Apprentice, Gavin & Stacey and so forth

Donald Gee (84, January 14th)
PC Walker on Z-Cars, Bob Hoskins' sidekick in On The Move, two Doctor Who stories

Barry Cryer (86, January 25th)

Andy Devine (79, January 27th)
Shadrach in Emmerdale

Jo Kendall (81, January 29th)
I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and The Burkiss Way cast member, spoke the first ever line on Emmerdale Farm

Leonard Fenton (84, January 29th)
Dr Legg in EastEnders

Bamber Gascoigne (86, February 8th)
University Challenge

Beryl Vertue (90, February 12th)
Agent to Milligan, Hancock, Sykes, Howerd, Johnny Speight, Galton & Simpson and Terry Nation; sold Steptoe & Son and Till Death Us Do Part to America successfully; produced Men Behaving Badly and Coupling, executive producer of Sherlock

John Finch (96, February 13th)
A Family At War and regular Coronation Street writer

Jack Smethurst (89, February 16th)
Eddie in Love Thy Neighbour

Stewart Bevan (73, February 20th)
Professor Clifford Jones in Doctor Who: The Green Death

Anna Karen (85, February 22nd)
Olive in On The Buses (and The Rag Trade), Aunt Sal in EastEnders

Sally Kellerman (84, February 24th)
Hotlips Houlihan in M*A*S*H

Conrad Janis (94, March 1st)
Mindy's father Frederick in Mork & Mindy

Bob Wellings (87, March 1st)
Nationwide reporter, That's Life, London Plus and Open Air

Roger Graef (85, March 2nd)
Groundbreaking documentarian - The Space Between Words has been called the first fly-on-the wall series - also directed The Secret Policeman's Ball and co-produced the first Comic Relief

John Stahl (68, March 2nd)
Tom Kerr in Take The High Road, later Game Of Thrones

Lynda Baron (82, March 5th)
Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in Open All Hours

Jeremy Child (77, March 7th)
Stage and film regular who appeared regularly in Edward & Mrs Simpson and Fairly Secret Army

Ron Pember (87, March 8th)
Regular character actor, most regularly Secret Army and Crown Court

Peter Bowles (85, March 17th)
To The Manor Born, Only When I Laugh, The Irish RM, Rising Damp, Perfect Scoundrels

Denise Coffey (85, March 24th)
Do Not Adjust Your Set and End Of Part One team member

Jennifer Wilson (89, March 29th)
Jennifer Hammond in The Brothers

June Brown (95, April 3rd)
Long time bit-part actor who became EastEnders' Dot Cotton for a total of 31 years

David McKee (87, April 6th)
Mr Benn and King Rollo creator

Eric Chappell (88, April 21st)
Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Duty Free, Home To Roost writer

Robin Parkinson (92, May 7th)
Monsieur Leclerc in 'Allo 'Allo!, Button Moon narrator

Dennis Waterman (74, May 8th)

Kay Mellor (71, May 15th)
Band of Gold, Playing The Field, Fat Friends, The Syndicate; also wrote for Coronation Street and Brookside, Children's Ward co-creator

Patricia Brake (79, May 28th)
Ingrid in Porridge

Bob Hall (77, May 28th)
ATV/Central and Sky Sports reporter

Matt Zimmerman (87, June 9th)
Voice of Alan Tracy in Thunderbirds

Harry Gration (71, June 24th)
Look North anchor 1982-1995 and 1999-2020, South Today 1995-1999

Frank Williams (90, June 26th)
The Reverend in Dad's Army, Hi-de-Hi!, You Rang M'Lord?

Brian Jackson (July 2nd, 91)
The Man From Del Monte

Mona Hammond (91, July 4th)
Susu in Desmond's, Blossom in EastEnders

John Gwynne (77, July 9th)
ITV and Sky Sports darts commentator

Michael Barratt (94, July 10th)
Panorama reporter, Nationwide presenter

Chris Stuart (73, July 12th)
BBC Radio Wales breakfast and Radio 2 DJ

Bernard Cribbins (93, July 27th)

Michael Redfern (79, July 29th)
Oxo family dad

Nichelle Nichols (89, July 30th)
Star Trek's Uhura

Roger E. Mosley (83, August 7th)
TC in Magnum PI

Olivia Newton-John (73, August 8th)

Raymond Briggs (88, August 9th)
The Snowman, Fungus The Bogeyman, When The Wind Blows etc

Duggie Brown (82, August 16th)
The Comedians regular

Bruce Montague (83, August 16th)
Leonard in Butterflies

Josephine Tewson (91, August 16th)
Edna in Shelley, Elizabeth in Keeping Up Appearances

Bill Turnbull (66, August 31st)
BBC TV reporter, presenter and newsreader for thirty years

Queen Elizabeth II (96, September 8th)
Annual Christmas Day speechmaker

Mavis Nicholson (91, September 8th)
Interviewer on Thames and Channel 4

Gwyneth Powell (76, September 8th)
Mrs McClusky in Grange Hill

Harry Landis (95, September 11th)
Felix in EastEnders, Mr Morris in Friday Night Dinner

Eddie Butler (65, September 15th)
BBC rugby union commentator

Raymond Allen (82, October 2nd)
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em creator

Angela Lansbury (96, October 11th)

Robbie Coltrane (72, October 14th)

Atarah Ben-Tovim (82, October 20th)
Flautist and children's TV regular, had own series Atarah's Music

Luke Casey (80, October 30th)
Look North and Nationwide, The Dales Diary

Bill Treacher (92, November 5th)
Arthur Fowler in EastEnders

Leslie Phillips (98, November 7th)

Sir David Butler (98, November 8th)
Psephologist and election night regular

Tom Owen (73, November 8th)
Tom in Last of the Summer Wine, Freewheelers

David English (76, November 12th)
You And Me presenter, Bunbury Tails writer

Sue Baker (75, November 14th)
Top Gear presenter 1980-1991

Tim Beddows (59, November 18th)
Network Distributing founder

John Hanmer (82, November 27th)
BBC horse racing commentator

Kirstie Alley (71, December 5th)
Rebecca in Cheers

Ruth Madoc (79, December 9th)
Hi-De-Hi!

Shirley Coward (88, reported December 9th)
Vision mixer who created the Doctor Who regeneration effect

Victor Lewis-Smith (65, December 10th)
Satirist, writer, producer, maker of Inside Victor Lewis-Smith, TV Offal, Ads Infinitum

Chris Boucher (79, December 11th)
Writer and script editor on Doctor Who (created Leela), Blake's 7, Shoestring, Bergerac, Juliet Bravo and The Bill

Michael Chapman (94, December 15th)
Writer and producer on Public Eye, Van Der Valk, Enemy At The Door and more than a thousand episodes of The Bill

Stephen Greif (78, December 23rd)
Travis in Blake's 7, Harry Fenning in Citizen Smith

John Bird (86, December 24th)
Satirist from TW3 to Bremner Bird & Fortune, voice of the Private Eye Idi Amin, acted in A Very Peculiar Practice, Blue Remembered Hills, Yes Prime Minister, the Marmalade Atkins series

On This Day: Christmas Day 1992

Something feels subtly different about this Christmas Day schedule. Maybe it's that it features both an EastEnders and a Coronation Street, neither for the first time (Corrie had missed one year since 1985) or indeed for the first time on the same day (the same happened in 1987) but it was the first time they'd faced off in prime-time and while 1987 had sauntered towards being the day's most watched show on a feelgood wave with Hilda's exit, this year both were down in the weeds. The soap ratings wars were on and it's arguable the day has never really recovered. That said, you could make the same case for this being an early example of ITV seeing the lack of commercial revenue value in Christmas Day advertising and putting many of their homegrown big hitters either side (The Ruth Rendell Mystery Movie on the 24th, Baywatch and a Darling Buds Of May special on the 26th, a major dramatisation of Frankenstein as late as the 29th), something that will reach an apogee in a year's time, by which time the big franchise changes will have put another crimp in the third channel's abilities.

However, if ITV were in existential wallows the BBC were in an actual crisis, director general Michael Checkland surprisingly announcing he was to stand down early in November, having comprehensively fallen out with chairman Marmaduke Hussey. That would allow successor John Birt to take over at Christmas, which led Jonathan Powell to surprisingly announce he was leaving his position as controller of BBC1 two weeks before the big day to become head of drama at Carlton, the populist quitting just after Birt had declared his plan to downsize the channel's audience in favour of a more "distinctive" approach. Maybe it was this perception of highbrow that led to the Times mockingly report that the BBC schedule was led by a "singing vampire" (a 19th century romantic opera being shown on BBC2 over the new year weekend)


As always, being the 24 hour network, ITV are up at the crack of 6am with the TV-am service, starting with their own active kids' game show Top Banana, only pausing for a 7am Thought for Christmas Day before leaping into a melange of Mr Men, Australian present hunting snow duck animated short The Twelve Gifts, Canadian Long John Baldry-voiced animation A Klondike Christmas as featured the previous year, the 1987 festive episode of long since cancelled ABC sitcom The Charmings (in which Snow White and Prince Charming are transported to modern day California) which the TV-am children's slot had picked up for some reason and then, but of course, Timmy Mallett's Utterly Brilliant Christmas Show. Channel 4 were also up with the lark at 6am, starting off with another Canadian animation with Baldry's voice, 1991's The Boy Who Dreamed Christmas in which Santa has been deposed by an evil robot (Elon Musk makes notes, for whatever reason a twenty year old would be watching), followed by ten minutes of Dangermouse and Dennis (the American Menace) apiece. Surprisingly BBC2 is underway before BBC1, though Christmas In Paris is hardly designed to draw the weans in, being a (presumably not actually) live performance by the French National Orchestra of music by Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Offenbach. Similarly, it's followed by John Wayne western Rio Bravo.

As always with BBC1's early Christmas Day starts the morning is marshalled by the Peters/Forrester/Anstis/Duck power quartet, introducing - yes! Another Canadian animation! Baldry can only do so much though so he's not involved in The Birthday Dragon, made that year, which is followed by the Playdays Tent Stop, a repeat of adventuring puppet fun A Bear Behind, the premiere of Bobby Ball-penned cartoon Juniper Jungle, Tony Robinson Bible storytelling series Blood And Honey ending with Herod's death, yet another new animation Santa's First Christmas, Jim Henson Workshop fable The Christmas Toy and buried at 8.10am, which might tell you something, the year's panto Edd The Duck's Megastar Treck, with appearances by Lesley Joseph, Anne & Nick, Des Lynam, Anthea Turner, the Minogues and unexpectedly Punt & Dennis, who starred as aliens beaming up celebrities and seemingly wrote their own lines. Against all this Channel 4 scheduled a special Big Breakfast, which in less than three months had become a sensation. Was it live? No, almost certainly not, especially as they had an actual live show over the new year crossover less than a week later, but pretending it was were Take That, Jason Donovan, Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee, Cathy Dennis, Claudia Schiffer and Rebekah Elmaloglou.

Truth be told, two hours of prime ideas Chris and Gaby is the standout in a morning that redefines "much of a muchness". Channel 4 themselves follow it with an episode of Bill Cosby's revival of Groucho Marx's people game show You Bet Your Life, one of the shit Laurel & Hardy cartoons, Sesame Street, Terry Wogan returning to Pro-Celebrity Golf - we all missed them snatching that off the Beeb - and a performance from Dublin of Handel's Messiah to mark its 250th anniversary. Once wrested back from TV-am, ITV go straight to Morning Worship from St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, then after a Donald Duck transition (or the Moderator's Christmas Message for Scots) launch into Disney David Niven comedy Candleshoe. While at 9.45am BBC2 are airing one of two Jacques Tati films that day, Jour de Fete, BBC1 have gone to hospital. Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital in London, to be precise, where Emma Forbes and "clown-vicar Roly Bain" are "celebrating the true spirit of Christmas", which would have to do in the absence of a church service. It was up for debate whether that constituted Good Morning With Anne And Nick - there's a trail here at 3:32 - the glossy but failed This Morning-breaker popping up for an hour as the pair went live and brought their children in to work with them to introduce family surprises and, bleurgh, a phone-in singalong. It's very much to be confirmed whether the national mood of celebration was uplifted by a vaguely festive Eldorado, tellingly left in a corner unloved at 11.30am.

While BBC2 bided time by repeating the Advent Calendar of new and old shorts they'd been dropping in all month, highlights of April's Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and into the afternoon with Fred and Ginger's Top Hat, one of the strangest examples of counter-programming ever seen on the 25th was taking place between BBC1 and ITV. For several years now the former had been filling the turkey-basting period with the Christmas Comedy Cracker of classic repeats, and they did so again with the 1986 Hi-De-Hi! special and the 1983 Two Ronnies Christmas Special with Elton John and Arabian Nights by way of Doctor Who spoof The Adventures of Archie. So how should ITV react? Simple - a triple bill from their own comedy archives! Hence a 1972 Nearest And Dearest, a 1974 Get Some In! (a final Christmas Day fling for Thames) and the 1975 Rising Damp special. That takes them to 2pm, which BBC1 reaches with Neighbours' first ever airing on the date, an entirely unfestive episode due to having been broadcast in Australia on 20th January.

Unless you really wanted to watch Channel 4's repeated tribute to Chaplin, Our Charlie, the 2pm decision between the big channels was straight. You could continue with ITV's sitcom repeats, which had now got up to Watching from 1987 and The Upper Hand from 1990. (This and the last decades were not great for prime-time ITV sitcoms). Or you could take your laters where you get them and join Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie on Christmas Top Of The Pops, with studio appearances by Wet Wet Wet, Right Said Fred, KWS, Jimmy Nail, Undercover introduced by Sid Owen and Tasmin Archer, plus Shanice, Charles & Eddie and Boyz II Men via satellite and a special message from Michael Jackson. The last ten minutes clashed with a short version of Sister Wendy's Odyssey, the breakout cultural hit of the year's last couple of months, in which Sister Wendy Beckett is in Edinburgh suggesting why "Santa Claus is the patron saint of pawn brokers".



The sixieth anniversary of the first royal message was meant to be a milestone worth commemorating, but this Queen's Speech came at the end of the annus horribilis year and it got worse as the whole contents were published by the Sun on the 22nd. The source has never been found but, as well as the venue and distribution methods changing, it was cited as a reason (along with the Diana interview three years later) for the Palace ending the BBC monopoly of production.

A different kind of taciturn royalty took up the time on BBC2 with a review of Nigel Mansell's Formula 1 championship winning year. Otherwise it's films all the way, with the TV premiere of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on BBC1, the 1970 Chuck Jones directed fantasy The Phantom Tollbooth on Channel 4, and Supergirl on ITV nearly five years after its TV premiere. That's unless you're watching in London, who are repeating the Cosgrove Hall (and Thames) David Jason-voiced 1989 version of The BFG. A year earlier they'd thrown a fit of pique and dropped Crocodile Dundee II, again alone among the regions, because it had otherwise relegated their own Minder to past 10pm. Doing the same for a three year old animation, though, seems a different level of spite, especially as The BFG was half an hour shorter so they had to fill the space with a Count Duckula repeat. Have to say, though, either way it feels like giving in in the face of the Beeb's big blockbuster.

BBC2 and Channel 4 filled its afternoon lulls with culture, the former starting at 3.45pm with The Maestro And The Diva, in which Sir Georg Solti and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performed some of the Strauss songbook, followed by Life With Eliza, a ten minute, twelve part series running across the season in which John Sessions put Edwardian social climbing comic monologues the Eliza Stories to screen. While that was going on, and before BBC2 could complete its Tati double bill with Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Channel 4 had nipped over for the Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert from the previous year, conducted by Andrew Preview. In a break with longstanding tradition, though, no Cirque du Soleil.



Chris Lowe and Sonia Ruseler drawing the Christmas Day rota short straw for BBC and ITN news respectively meant we were now into the prime-time big hitters, and they didn't come much more... hit than The Generation Game. Outside the monarch and the undroppable Pops there can't have been many shows with its consistency for scheduling on the 25th, this being the fourteenth time out of fourteen potential years it had gone out on the big day, but sadly it was also the last, a decision that would hasten Bruce's 1994 exit. The final round was the traditional pantomime with reading lines off things, fight choreography and celebrity cameos, this time Peter Pan with Mollie Sugden and Bernie Clifton, Tarby doing the adjudication before the annual finale of Brucie at the white piano. Over on ITV Coronation Street began at the oddly neither here nor there time of 5.25pm - LWT's influence on the schedule seems telling at this point - in which Mike dressed as a driver to deliver a present to old flame Maggie only to find Ken there and Carmel, the babysitter who was obsessed with Martin Platt, unexpectedly reappeared at his and Gail's house. Almost as if mockingly, this was followed by Christmas Blind Date with children, set to full "heartwarming for grans".

While the lesser channels wallowing the comfort of nostalgia, Channel 4 with a one day short of ten year anniversary repeat of The Snowman, BBC2 with festive pop and comedy compilation Reindeer Rock, BBC1 pulls out the big guns, EastEnders - from now on permanently implanted on the 25th - and Only Fools And Horses. The major events in Albert Square had actually happened the previous day, with Arthur sealing his affair with Mrs Hewitt and Pat knocking someone down while drink-driving. As for today, "Michelle has an unexpected visitor. Pat and Frank have a difficult day. Mandy learns a lesson about home." From east to south-east London, about eighteen miles round the M50, Only Fools And Horses time. Mother Nature's Son is the Peckham Spring episode, topping the day's viewership figures with 20.13 million (5.2 million up on 1991's Miami Twice, which itself led the eyeballs list), based on an incident where an unknown substance was dumped in a nearby reservoir, association with which would twelve years later sink Coca-Cola's popular in the US Dasani water brand in the UK (not least, as Tom Scott explains, as it also had a dangerous chemical issue) Also Robbie Williams might appear as an extra in the Nag's Head, notably while Take That are playing in the background. ITV put up Barrymore, which could have involved anything, we don't know now and it's likely most didn't know then.

So what constitutes Christmas mid-evening fare on a minority channel if it's not the classics, like the Northern Ballet Theatre version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet that took up the next 105 minutes on BBC2? Why, Malcolm Muggeridge, of course! Saint Mugg examined the journalist, satirist, broadcaster, critic, interviewer, contrarian, Christian convert, Python blowhard, benchmark of Adrian Mole's intellectualism and man who had been dead for two years. Given his opinions on royalty it was wise to put a new episode of Brookside between him and their repeat of the speech, followed by the TV premiere of Derek Jacobi 1850s melodrama The Fool. By that time ITV was beginning to pass a lot more time with Nick Nolte buddy crime comedy Three Fugitives and BBC1's Birds Of A Feather special The Chigwell Connection. Attracting the day's second best figure, 16.88 million (to Indiana Jones 15.8 million, Corrie heading ITV's effort with just under 14 million), it saw Sharon and Tracey relaunch the campaign to have their husbands cleared, taking it to Kilroy, when the DI who arrested them was suggested to be not on the level.

Another news bulletin takes BBC1 up to 9pm and Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast, her first special and sketch show alike since As Seen On TV ended on 18th December 1987, linked by a This Morning spoof featuring an ignored Alan Rickman and with spiritual Acorn Antiques successor The Mall. That it was followed by the TV bow of Shirley Valentine to 13.86 million people feels right, though not that, unless you got an E180 in, you'd have to miss BBC2 giving its own premiere to Dangerous Liaisons. Meanwhile ITV continued not so much competing as marking out time, following the late news at 10pm with Youngblood, starring Rob Lowe as an ice hockey player.

BBC2 had commissioned a series of highbrow music videos for the season under the title The Cry, culminating in a new performance of John Tavener's God Is With Us at 10.55pm, followed by the less lofty ambitions of the 1974 Christmas Likely Lads. Against that Channel 4 offered Thirty Years On: A Tribute To The Music of Bob Dylan, a Madison Square Garden hootenanny for the growling troubadour in October featuring a whole host of admirers - George Harrison, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Chrissie Hynde, Tom Petty, Lou Reed, The O'Jays, Pearl Jam, Tracy Chapman, several of The Band, all the surviving Booker T & the MGs - but is most famous for Sinead O'Connor singing Bob Marley's War to a wall of boos thirteen days after tearing up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.

And so we finally reach the late hours. BBC1, as every year, slung out a ten minute Reflection On Christmas, not featuring John Wells for once, followed by Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner ensemble disaster flick Earthquake. BBC2 opts much classier with Rear Window while Channel 4 continues a late night Godzilla season with Son Of Godzilla, with an NFL preview to finish. ITV meanwhile head into a night of not having to strain too hard with made for TV comedy Combat Academy (featuring George Clooney's first significant role), Leslie Nielsen crime drama Brink's: The Great Robbery, eccentric whodunnit Murder For Two and, joy of joys, a Get Stuffed Christmas Special even though no student was going to be coming in hammered at 3am.

This time next year: BBC1 has gotta lotta fings on, and it's a very Steve Priestley Christmas!


Radio choice

Bruno Brookes borrows Simon Mayo's own Rod and Dianne for Radio 1 breakfast, followed by four hours of Simon Bates playing Golden Hour classics and then another hour and a half of him hosting the Great Ormond Street Christmas party. He left the station the following October. (Though, like a haunted doll that cannot be destroyed, he still appeared on the Christmas Day 1993 schedule) A Jason Donovan concert, a Steve Wright compilation, Pete Tong's best of the year and a repeated Michael Jackson gig lead up to John Peel counting down 26 to 13 in the year's Festive 50 in the prime slot of 11pm.

Don Maclean covers Radio 2 first thing with - eat shit, Ball - Cliff Richard, Thora Hird, Bobby Ball, Harry Secombe, Bruce Forsyth and Cardinal Basil Hume. Ken Bruce is a comforting presence at 9am, Michael Aspel in a different way at 11am. Barbara Sturgeon is not a name we know but she spent two years on early breakfast. Tom Conti chooses his favourite music in the afternoon, Alan Titchmarsh does the 5pm slot with his Christmas Glow which doesn't bear thinking about for too long, and then local London lifer Jeremy Nicholas chooses a playlist suggested by the Twelve Days of Christmas. Dick Vosburgh presents film clips of the season in Christmas at the Movies before the main evening event, Gloria Gaynor's Christmas Concert with lots of gospel content.

Radio 3, ever individualistic, takes Christmas Mass from Lutheran Germany "as it may have been celebrated in Wolfenbiittel around 1620." At 9.10pm, we quote verbatim, They Can Because They Seem To Be Able To, "a sort of furry chiller for Christmas by Lynne Truss", read by Sylvestra 'in Majorca' Le Touzel.

On Radio 4, Walking Backwards For Christmas, "listeners' favourite bits of radio", seems admirable in a connecting with your audience in a way they understand fashion, were it not on at 7.05am. On Christmas Day, remember. Maybe they're hoping the target audience's kids will have got them up. And now, please welcome with his name above the door for the first time, Armando Iannucci! He'd been producing for the station since 1989 - On The Hour of course, The News Quiz, Quote Unquote, er, Bloopers - but in 1992 started performing too, firstly as an additional voice on Gordon Kennedy sketch show Kennedy's Connections and debut Lee & Herring radio vehicle Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World, but Down Your Ear was the first time he got to mess with tapes and surreal settings under his own steam, the pilot before 1993's full series hidden away at 10.30am. We're on surer ground after that with Stephen Hawking on Desert Island Discs. Now, what's the most unexpected name to see on a Radio 4 Christmas schedule in 1992? It wouldn't be Shirley Ballas, obviously. Any one of the billions of people who weren't alive in 1992 would be a better option. But it's still unexpected to see her name pop up, even more so on a programme called The X-Factor, an Emma Freud series about partnerships that broke up, as she discusses her former Latin American dance partner Sammy Stopford. The festive final episode of sitcom Second Thoughts overlapped with the middle of the third series of the LWT (but only for one more week) version, with the same cast, which must have involved some delicate negotiations; similarly, if without the TV transfer, Nick Revell and Andy Hamilton's sketch series The Million Pound Radio Show came to an end after six series with a billed Pantomime. The afternoon play is, boringly, A Christmas Carol, narrated by Freddie Jones. We greatly enjoy the title Here Come The Books, about a Peak District mobile library, and greatly shy away from Falstaff - A Voyage Round His Belly, a celebration of the character here portrayed by Donald Sinden. Mary Ellis, who ten years to the day earlier was the Desert Island castaway, is the subject of the self-explanatory 92 And Still Working. Jeremy Nicholas turns up here too after the 6pm news, Something Borrowed, Something New examining musical plagirism. The big evening play is a 1984 combined version of Titus Groan and Gormenghast, which despite a strong cast including Freddie Jones, Eleanor Bron, David Warner, Sheila Hancock, Cyril Shaps, Maurice Denham, Stratford Johns and Michael Aldridge highlights Sting - Sting! - as lead. At least, just before an 11pm Year Ending, A Book At Bedtime is Sir John Gielgud reading Edward Lear's The Jumblies.

It's 1992 so it's original flavour Radio 5, the kind of sparking off in all directions station that allows Cliff Morgan to cover the breakfast show, Trevor & Simon to take charge of school holiday kids' magazine Take Five, leave most of the afternoon to BFBS, allow Adrian Rose to read from his (now banned, obviously) diary of the transcontinental Euro Auto Challenge in Around Europe In Seven Days and fill the early evening with readings from Aladdin, Revolting Rhymes and a childrens' mystery read by Arthur Smith. "Bella Cappella, a British singing trio, take a vocal look at the seasonal music" in Musical Crackers and Robert Elms investigates the festivities across Europe before a fun final couplet of John Hegley introducing Arnold Brown and a tyro Rob Brydon holding the Christmas party for BBC Wales' Big Noise At Night contribution Rave.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 24: Swap Of The Pops, 1976

We finish this year with two hardy perennials of the Advent Calendar down the years, including this one, namely a Saturday morning show and Noel Edmonds. Despite the scrolling introductory caption Chopin, Rick Dees and Laurel & Hardy do not appear in the studio, which is mostly made up of performances from the shows that year and any kind of accompanying video they can find, including Noel flying a kite and Keith "meeting Blackpool's beauty queen", except apart from being filmed in Blackpool clearly out of season it's no such thing. In fact Chegwin had been outdoors somewhere unknown taking requests and then in the Television Centre bar receiving a silver disc competition prize from Abba. As for the music: Paul Nicholas, Showaddywaddy, the Strawbs apparently by child request, "those ooh-ah gentlemen The Wurzels", Mud and John Christie, a smug pianist singer-songwriter who Noel clearly had his money on as he appeared a week earlier performing his Auld Lang Syne hijack on actual Top Of The Pops in a week Edmonds was hosting to little avail. Accompanying these are special films for Dr Hook accompanied by drawings from a class in Bethnal Green and, um, The Teddy Bear's Picnic. It was still the age of Junior Choice, after all. So, a merry Christmas and happy New Year to all our readers, and we'll see you back here next December 1st, we hope, for the... EIGHTH Advent Calendar? Has there even been that much useable festive television?

On This Day: Christmas Day 1982

(OK, that's from nowhere near Christmas Day but it's still that year's ident)

Welcome to the first 25th December of the four channel era. Obviously Channel 4, having been extant for just 53 days, wasn't expected to be fully up to speed with the traditions and tidings of the others, but they added to it anyway in one memorable respect... but not until the following day. While the previews were more interested in the following night's 1950s repeats marathon, The Snowman debuted at 6.15pm on Boxing Day, just before Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up At The 10th Street Car Wash. They also had Treasure Hunt beginning on the 28th, but all that was affected by the Equity dispute, which one of the big ITV companies estimated had cost them £900,000 in its first two months. Additionally there was what was still seen as the threat of video recorders, numbers in use having risen by seven-eights over the course of the year to 10.2 percent of all households (58% VHS, 27% Betamax, a fast rising 15% Video 2000), and that was just to the end of November. When the BARB figures were published they showed a drop of up to six or seven million viewers year on year, which the BBC put down to the increased use of VCRs. Throw in that as the 25th was a Saturday the penultimate Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show, being a Thames property, had to go out on the 27th and this was not looking a good day for the commercial channels. So let's dive in and see what transpired...


As always in these pre-breakfast show days it was BBC1 who rose first at 8.40am with a homily to an animal not like rhinocerouses, tigers, cats and mink, The All-New Pink Panther Show, an episode last shown as recently as 2011 featuring Supermarket Pink, String Along In Pink and in between, bad news, Crazylegs Crane. That was followed at 9am by, stand by in Glasgow, Carols From Buckfast. The Devonian Benedictine monastery of self-sufficiency wino supply fame was celebrating its centenary in the only way it knew how, by inviting Paul Daniels down. He brought with him Stephanie Lawrence, Cambridge University Chamber Choir and some work for the abbey choir and their monks. As for the abbey the infamy of the name didn't stop the Beeb going back there for Midnight Mass as recently as 2018.

ITV starts up at 9am (belatedly in Tyne Tees' case) with Journey Back To Oz, the 1972 animated sort of Wizard Of Oz successor that died in cinemas but became a TV hit in America in which Liza Minelli took the voice version of her mother's role with Mickey Rooney as the scarecrow, Milton Berle as the lion and Ethel Merman as the Wicked Witch. Bill Cosby recorded a festive live action introduction but a contractual dispute meant Berle re-recorded it for an all year round airing syndicated version. No idea which version we got. Halfway through BBC1 relocated to Hyde Park Barracks for the Christmas Parade, where Simon Bates and Floella Benjamin watched the Queen's Life Guard prepare for Christmas Day ceremonial duties and "The Scots Guards enjoy a special television request party with visits from favourite personalities". Yes, yes, Falklands year, but it's not exactly a Great Ormond Street visit, is it.

With both main channels off to morning service at 10.30am - BBC1 at St Chad's Church, Lichfield, ITV the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady, St John's Wood - Channel 4 takes its opportunity to get going with the first production from the Children's Film Unit, a production company formed by former Avengers writer Colin Finbow with the new channel's backing to give 10 to 16 year olds the chance to learn about and take part in filmmaking which lasted until 1998, Sir Richard Attenborough and Steven Spielberg among its patrons. Their bow was with Captain Stirrick, a musical based on an 1840 murder cast involving a Fagin-like teenage leader of a child pickpocket gang. The titular Stirrick was played by Jules Sylvester, who became a well known Hollywood animal wrangler for everything from Bond to Jackass, with Freddie Jones and Roger Sloman among the supporting adults.

The grown-ups return from church around 11.30am and slip into their own junior entertainments, ITV offering a version of Enid Blyton's The Island Of Adventure only released to cinemas the previous year, starring Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Bowler (between Softly Softly and Emmerdale) and John Rhys-Davies. That's for all except TSW, who not for the last time today go their own way with The Adventures Of Gulliver and a Saturday Show half hour special of unknown provenance. BBC1 for their part... oh god, it's Raccoons On Ice. Debuting here in the same year as in the US it doesn't even feature Run With Us, instead laying its chips in with voices and new songs by Leo Sayer and Rita Coolidge. What gets us back on terra firma is another TV premiere, Mister Quilp, a musical based on The Old Curiosity Shop. Yeah, they centred the villain of the book, played by Anthony Newley, with support from David Hemmings, Michael Hordern, David Warner, Windsor Davies, Peter Duncan, Brian Glover, Ronald Lacey, Bryan Pringle, Rosalind Knight and Britain's tallest man Chris Greener (as "Giant").

Yet more animation from Canada starts the pre-lunch jollity on Channel 4, Oscar-nominated The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin, for which the Wikipedia entry does the synopsis job for us: "Cinderella has to stay home while her evil stepsisters go to the ball. You know the rest except everyone here is a penguin". That's followed by a jolt out of kid-friendly territory, Caesar And Cleopatra, a 1945 George Bernard Shaw play adaptation that was reputedly the most expensive film ever made, got halted in production after star Vivien Leigh miscarried during filming and had a breakdown as a result of which her bipolar disorder was discovered, and didn't come close to making even half the money back.

It's interesting and perhaps telling that Channel 4 should choose that time to go highbrow with a jolly musical on BBC1, especially as once out of Blyton at 1pm ITV went into the many Derek Griffithses of Film Fun At Christmas. That took us to 2pm and two very different musical extravaganzas. ITV bought in that year's Andy Williams' Christmas Special, which was actually Andy Williams' Early New England Christmas, the eleventh of his fifteen festive hootenannies, featuring guests Aileen Quinn who had just been the lead in Annie, James Galway, former Olympic champion skater Dorothy Hamill and Dick van Patten from the recently cancelled Eight Is Enough. If your Christmas day wasn't set up for hollered homilies by stars of ABC comedy-dramas based on syndicated American newspaper columns, there was the refuge of the Top of the Pops Christmas Party. In 1981 the entireity of Radio 1 had been thrown at it but this year it's just all the usual rota at once - Powell, Read, Wright, Peebles, Smith Travis, Peel (in the 'SHEENA BARMY ARMY' jumper), Vance and Skinner fighting over dressing room space and airtime the better to introduce Spandau Ballet, Shakin' Stevens, a spectacularly costumed Bucks Fizz, Duran Duran, Dexys Midnight Runners, Captain Sensible with Dolly Mixture and mechanical seagull, Culture Club, Soft Cell, Haircut 100 (Nick Heyward's final appearance with the band having already been quit-fired), Musical Youth, Cliff, Zoo dancing to the Steve Miller Band with a very pre-Secret Cabaret Simon Drake, and Dionne Warwick via satellite.

While normally they'd at least rouse themselves for an 11am telling of the Christmas story, BBC2 has slept right through the morning and lunchtime and come out in no mood to try to make up for it, instead starting at 2.10pm with the second part of The Islanders, a weeklong series of programmes about people who make their living by the island sea, followed by a repeat of the previous year's Gold From The Deep, Robert Powell narrating a deep dive for a cache of gold bullion, 4.5 kilos' worth, stuck in the hull of a ship sunk off the Russian coast by German torpedos forty years earlier. Enthralling, but at least Channel 4's twenty minute holiday viewing preview at the same time was new.

Which brings us to 3pm. Remember the old days, back when the Queen was still alive? Acting family ingenues appear to be the theme of the post-Message films with the TV premiere of International Velvet on BBC1 against The Parent Trap on ITV. As Channel 4 will get to that later, they're covering the time with Magic Of China, in which illusionist and US TV regular Mark Wilson goes the other side of what was still known as the Bamboo Curtain, followed from 4pm by Buster Keaton classic The Navigator and - happy Christmas! - the Brookside omnibus. Once back from underwater at 3.40pm BBC2, still on their own game, sticks on an episode of another series running over the season, literary panel show The Book Game, invariably hosted by Robert Robinson with guests Anthony Burgess, Susan Hill, Frederic Raphael and Gillian Reynolds, followed by a Horizon special, 25 Years In Space, which was only here because it had been postponed in October and had to go somewhere.

Jan Leeming is in charge of BBC news as the buffer between family filled daytime and flopping-on-couch prime-time, which starts with, yes, alright, Jim'll Fix It, with Ken Dodd and Val Doonican among those granting wishes. The ITN news meanwhile is followed by fast-fingered fuzzy fictioned fun in 3-2-1 with star guests Henry McGee, Joan Sims, David Yip, Patti Gold, the debut of the Brian Rogers Connection hoofing it to Eye Of The Tiger and - christ, there's one of 'em! - Bernie Winters. While that's all going on BBC2 continue a Peter Sellers season with Sophia Loren co-starring The Millionairess, the film for which Goodness Gracious Me was recorded but wasn't included.





We've marvelled before at how often Paul Daniels bestrode the festive period and the Magic Christmas Show was the third of his fourteen festive favourites but the third of only four on the day itself. Daniels has celebrated by doing up his living room and inviting celebrities to form the jury of observers. Daniels covers Lorraine Chase's ring in glass and takes photos through Rolf Harris, Tim Rice and Jill Gascoine' fingertips Under Laboratory Conditions, Floella Benjamin is assisted in a new career by puppeteer Philippe Genty, Kenneth Williams dons silly hats in the name of narrating a basic trick, Billy Dainty forms a card locating triangle with Benjamin and Nerys Hughes and Debbie joins the space race with the help of Barry Took, Barbara Kelly and naturally Patrick Moore. The guests are acrobatic duo Los Rios, "first lady of hula hoops" Luisa and motorcyclists The Trocaderos, who obligingly drown Paul's introduction out ahead of a wall of death ride with McGee, wearing a dreadlock wig for no good reason, as centrepiece. With ITV still banking on the Chris Emmett dollar Channel 4 do their royal duty against it followed by St Mark's Gospel, all of it, delivered as an acclaimed, Tony-nominated near two hour virtuoso one-man show by stage actor Alec McCowen.

A year earlier after just the one series ITV had chanced on a Christmas Day edition of their runaway new hit Game For A Laugh and reaped viewership rewards, so obviously they were going to try it again from 6.35pm, though there weren't any more festive specials after this so presumably we weren't watching them watching... them? Hold on. Er... BBC2 returned from dubious Sellersdom at 6.45pm with the Queen and Jan Leeming, not together, followed by The World About Us On The Tracks Of The Wild Otter, a three year labour of slithery love by wildlife cameraman Hugh Miles in the Shetlands following one specific otter and their family, his narration later sampled by Boards Of Canada. Speaking of unknowable yet loveable characters in rough terrain, Last Of The Summer Wine from 6.55pm was the fourth of 23 - TWENTY THREE - Christmas specials, but this was the second and last to actually go out on the 25th. This may seem odd if you recall the 1981 episode was been the most watched programme that day, but not so much once you realise it was watched by seven million fewer people by comparison. That all said, aside from All Mod Conned being one of the few episodes in its thousand year run not to take place in Holmfirth, it's pretty by-numbers stuff as Foggy suggests abandoning Christmas spirit and hiring a caravan.

We're deep into the evening by now and it's time for entertainment heavy hitters to face off. In the commercial corner, with a five minute head start at 7.25pm, it's what seems to be a standard episode not counting the set dressing of what is still grandly titled Bruce Forsyth's Play Your Cards Right. In the licence fee corner, with the second of six straight Christmas Day shows and winning the day's ratings battle (but only the week's ninth most watched programme, with a four million drop year on year), it's The Two Ronnies Christmas Show, featuring as the big budget closing sketch The Tree, a time travelling sci-fi take on the It's A Wonderful Life story with Brigit Forsyth. There's also a spoof of Chas & Dave. Keep that in mind. BBC2 wanders off to The World Of James Joyce: Is There One Who Understands Me?, an Emmy winning film about the writer's life complete with unseen interviews.

At 8pm ITV get to their big film. Kind of. The Black Hole was a divisive outlier in the Disney catalogue, a dark space exploration thriller starring Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, Maximilian Schell, Yvette Mimieux and the voice of Roddy McDowall, intended to attract the Star Wars audience what with its robots, sentries and laser battles, spectacular for the time CGI held back by clunky dialogue, an incomprehensible ending (there wasn't even one on the script) and barely making its money back. So that was ITV's big gamble for all the family - unless you lived within the TSW region - a franchise, remember, in its first year of Christmas broadcasting and therefore maybe looking to make a name for their out-of-the-way selves - who replaced it with Peter Falk action comedy The In-Laws after their chief executive Kevin Goldstein-Jackson called the film "rubbish" and blamed the Big Five companies for forcing it on everyone else. (TSW burned it off on January 11th) No such options for opting out on BBC1, where everyone got the TV premiere of the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile, Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot investigating the death of Lois Chiles (Holly Goodhead in Moonraker)' heiress, suspects including Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Jane Birkin, Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy and Jon Finch but likely not an uncredited Saeed Jaffrey and Celia Imrie. Channel 4, after the news, are meanwhile ploughing through a repeat of a standard episode from the first series of Upstairs Downstairs before at 9pm unleashing the full three hour weight of Laurence Olivier as Richard III, what many regard as his Shakespearian masterpiece, with such a high level of operation that Olivier was one of four cast members to be knighted (John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Cedric Hardwicke the others)

We're past the watershed now so you have a staggered choice of music. At 9.35pm on BBC2, Richard Baker's Christmas Dozen introduces the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis with soloists Margaret Marshall and John Rawnsley and the choristers of Westminster Abbey. At 9.50pm on ITV, Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees-Up introduces the Rockney trio with soloists Eric Clapton, Lennie Peters (from Peters & Lee), Jimmy Cricket and Albert Lee. LWT obligingly did a studio up as a working pub, brought in what seems to be the inhabitants of all the local hostelries and then forgot to put any toilets in. The whole thing ends in a conga line, as nature intended. Nancy Banks-Smith's sole comment in the Guardian: "which one is Chas and which one is Dave?" Forty years later they're still doing the same about Ant and Dec.

In fact there's a lot of music all the way to the end of the day, with BBC1 following the news with Perry Como, in the fifteenth of his twenty holiday happenings, extending an invitation to join him, Angie Dickinson and Pierre Cardin in Paris (that's except for viewers in Wales who have something called Grand Slam, which can't be rugby related as they didn't win the Five Nations that year) Later the second and last Christmas Night with The Spinners takes their folky show to Bradford's Alhambra Theatre, the two song specials sandwiched somewhat less joyously by A Ghost Story for Christmas, the 1976 classic The Signalman. BBC2 sticks on another first showing on British television, the 1978 Billy Wilder directed melodrama Fedora. With Channel 4 having already gone to bed, unsteadily stumbling over its words as it goes, Sandy Gall is coming to town as ITN News is followed by a Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth special, Cleo And John talking, singing and introducing Rowan Atkinson, Julian Lloyd Webber and whatever Dougie Squires' latest dance troupe were called, followed before letting the valves cool down overnight (apart from Granada, who risked an airing of 1972 Glenda Jackson/Oliver Reed wartime farmland drma The Triple Echo) with a ten minute look at Great Ormond Street's radio station. There'll be plenty of meat left for tomorrow, don't worry about that for tonight. And remember, BBC radio carries on...

Radio choice

As traditional, Tony Blackburn returns to Radio 1 breakfast duty, where while based at Great Ormond Street he "takes a magic carpet ride around the British Isles". Guys, we know satellite communications exist. Christmas Dinner with DLT makes the toes curl as a prospect but after that it's an afternoon and evening for the aesthete with Gambaccini, Peebles, Long and, er, Davies.

Jimmy Tarbuck is the unexpected Radio 2 host first thing, but only for an hour due to Once In Royal David's City, "well-known carols with familiar voices". Chris Emmett's annual panto at midday is Dick Whittington and his Wonderful Cat, starring Anita Harris, Percy Edwards as the cat, Kenneth Connor, Frank Thornton, Bob Todd, Bernie Winters, Julie Dawn Cole and Michael Robbins. The Magic of Geoff Love kicks off the afternoon in about as cliched an 80s Radio 2 way as possible before the dangerously cutting edge Ed Stewart takes seasonal messages from those stationed in the Falklands. A tape gets put in for the afternoon of the Boston Pops' Christmas Party, Dame Vera Lynn is in Star Choice, Wally Whyton visits Nashville to pay tribute to Jim Reeves, and Pete Murray does the late show at 11om "in party mood with some of his favourite music and special guests, including Val Doonican, Rolf Harris and Lorraine Chase."

Radio 3 starts a series of the Bach Christmas Oratorio - best time for it, we say. The afternoon is spent with a series of European works from the 1840s. Once A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols have been taken from King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Barrie Illffe chairs a Christmas Quiz, and from 11.55am we go to Melbourne and Test Match Special for the first day of the fourth Ashes test, though all the excitement was at the other end of the five days as England won by three runs.

Peter Barkworth is your super soaraway Radio 4 breakfast show host introducing seasonal music and stories, then after 9 Robert Hudson introduces a selection of Christmas bellringing from across the country. The Countryside at Christmas, in which Wynford Vaughan-Thomas meets the only female lighthouse keeper in the UK, is followed by The Falklands At Christmas and Christmas 42, "a nostalgic medley of radio from 40 years ago". Can you begin to imagine such an exercise in cultural retrogressiveness? Things do perk up after that with part two of News Quiz of the Year and as most years at this time Margaret Howard choosing her Pick Of The Week. To Sing Is To Live, in the playlet slot of 2pm, celebrates soprano Kirsten Flagstad, who passed on 26 years to the month earlier (wait, what? 26 to the month?) Lord Denning does With Great Pleasure, Broadway singer Mary Ellis is the Desert Island Discs castaway, and after *another* two sets of seasonal poetry and prose we get to... a repeat from 1968 of an adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan. Extraordinarily, all this relegates The Ambridge Christmas Revue to 10.55pm, where the cast do their party pieces slipping in and out of character. Why is this not on BBC Sounds? They don't need to use *all* the space on true crime documentaries, surely?

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 23: Saturday Superstore, 1985

Well, especially given how often we've featured Saturday mornings down the Advent years, you can't accuse the faux-warehouse delivery system of stinting on the last big morning of the year. Cliff Richard, Russ Abbot, Paul Daniels being enthusiastic about fast skipping and Ian McCaskill, a man far from averse to delivering the festive weather wry approach to anyone who asks, are all "in". So are a Donald Duck impersonator, Princess, who like Cliff doesn't sing her latest single, and Cantabile, who do, often, including one with Cliff and Mike with their acoustics on a Betjeman poem Reid arranged, all of which very much sounds like something he'd do. Keith Chegwin has gone to a cold and windy Oldham with Slade performing a flop single with gusto unbecoming, and also Mark Curry, Olympic relay bronze medallist Lyndsey MacDonald and a steel drum circle because there was always one handy for outside broadcasts in the mid-80s. Some kids are introduced as the Mini Minstrels performing a Minstrel Medley, which is nowhere near as bad as that sounds even taking in account that they're singing children, though if you can make out anything they're singing you're doing better than us. Later they back Russ on All Night Holiday, which on this recording gets mercifully cut short. The Dallas spoof Crow's Road doesn't. John Craven in his own special corner weighs up popular opinion on whether animals should be kept in zoos, but he doesn't have the gravitas needed for the scrolling list of stars in panto. Oh, and just to add a level of seasonal indignity Sarah Greene and Vicky Licorish have to do the whole show dressed as Christmas tree fairies. There's a bit of Look And Read's Fair Ground at the end of the third video, a story we don't know but the theme is sung by Derek Griffiths so it must be a good one.

LEFTOVERS: we've been down to the Superstore twice before, 1982 and 1984

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 22: The Two Ronnies, 1984

The fourth of six Christmas Ronnie gatherings - you'd have thought there'd have been more, wouldn't you? -features much of what you'd expect insomuch as a Barker monologue (which as far as can be told features no actual jokes), a wordplay based crosstalk routine in a location, a big song and dance routine by "stereo Santas" and a chair monologue. Patrick Troughton is the judge in a courtroom that becomes a game show set and the long closing film is The Ballad of Snivelling And Grudge, starring Peter Wyngarde in a Gerald Wiley-penned medieval tale. For what might be the only time the final headlines are replaced by a warmly comforting and mostly straight seasonal song with Ronnie C "at" the piano. Also, "the lovely Elaine Paige".

LEFTOVERS: we've previously spanned the history of Ron and Ron at the time of year, from their fronting and being heavily featured in Christmas Night With The Stars 1972 and a year later their Old Fashioned Christmas Mystery to straight up specials in 1982 and their final get-together, the epic 1987

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 21: Russell Harty's Christmas Party, 1982

We wouldn't suggest a lot of rules to live your life by but as a rule of thumb no programme that starts with Harty in flick photo form getting dressed as Santa can be bad. Russell in his white suit has set up live at the Greenwood Theatre in full variety pantomime mode, being challenged by Nicholas Parsons as a surprisingly angry Sheriff Of Nottingham threatening "the Grace Joneses" before a valiant interruption from fairy godmother Sandra Dickinson, who has the voice for it, and her Buttons in more than one way Peter Davison - remarkably the pair and Anthony Ainley were in a production of Cinderella in Tunbridge Wells written and directed by John Nathan-Turner. Your move, Messrs Gatwa and Davies. Matthew Kelly and Sarah Kennedy, one more accustomed to the art than the other, Esther Rantzen in knee-high boots is Dick Whittington conducting a singalong to "the fish and chip song", something that was entertaining the boys and girls of Bognor that season. After a tasteful interlude from St Paul's Cathedral Choir Mother Christmas Shelley Winters, who cannot have known what was going on, joins in and hands over a stuffed penguin, James Burke plays classical guitar, Shaw Taylor dances Latin American style and the Archbishop of Canterbury's wife plays piano. An all-party choir of MPs sings God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen out of sync on the verses and the whole things ends with the entire company led by Winters, who stops singing before the first chorus, on We Wish You A Merry Christmas. Is it the last knockings of the golden age of variety? We're not sure what it is, but it's remarkable in its jollity.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 20: Playdays, 1989

But where does it go? To the Christmas Tree Stop, of course, a double stopover for us, and it does so under a new guise as, as Andi Peters mentions in his introduction and following a complaint from the National Playbus Association - a belated one, surely, given it had been running for fourteen months by then - it was now travelling under a new name but, note, not a new theme. The change is also being sneaked out at 7.30am on the 25th, so no wonder kids were confused. The Christmas Tree Stop is a kind of supergroup featuring Lizzie, The Why Bird - underneath which was Ellie Darvill, Arthur's mum - the violin wielding second Dot (and now sadly late) Eithne Hannigan and Peggy Patch visiting a donkey sanctuary with assistant Vanessa Amberleigh, who went on to write for and produce a lot of CBBC shows including Big Cook Little Cook, Basil Brush and parts of the Justin Fletcherverse. The reading for the day is Papa Panov's Special Day, rewritten from an original story by Andi's absolute fave Leo Tolstoy. Otherwise it's manger, presents, cards, dancing tree, you know the drill. The other not-Broom Cupboard presenter, by the way, is one Lisa Jones, who was a Children's BBC presenter for precisely two weeks around this But First This! festive period. You can kind of tell why. Then we're onto Boxing Day where Dave Benson Phillips welcomes us, then welcomes us in sign language, then abandons that. Why Bird has stuck around and they visit a children's ward in Tooting together before ver Bird introduces a photo story with the astonishing even in context title Wobble And Humphrey Visit Leamington Spa.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 19: Bobby Davro's TV Annual 1988, 1987

Well, that's clearly not going to be a confusing title, even if it is in keeping with publishing tradition. Davro these days is little more than Mr Collapsing Stocks Man but he was if not a big hitter than someone ITV went back to for years seeing a certain gold in his Jim Davidson But He Does Impressions style, giving him five series over six years with four different titles (Bobby Davro On The Box, Bobby Davro's TV Weekly, Davro's Sketch Pad, Davro), five if you count the two end of year Annuals that came between the first two listed. This was the second, which captures a moment that would soon enough start to evaporate from prime-time, centred around he and Jessica Martin's oh-alright-then take-offs of some intriguing scattershot choices - credit for latching on to Jonathan Ross this early and for this audience, and for Martin having Liza Goddard in her repertoire, but he's still doing Duncan Norvelle in 1987? And yes, there is blacking up, especially in a sketch about Five Star - in which, it should be noted, there are actual people of colour - in which the gag appears to be that there's five of them. And then, launching an extended closing spoof of a programme in The Roxy that was already on borrowed time and ended in April 1988, he does Prince! Good god almighty, past.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 18: Jack and the Beanstalk, 1998

In 1998 ITV decided the TV pantomime was a grand TV tradition ripe for renewal, even though it had never really been a thing, and so went to town, staging the magic bean feast at the Old Vic Theatre with a cast of all the talents and any more they could crowbar into Simon Nye's script. Paul Merton narrates as Neil Morrissey is Jack, Adrian Edmondson the Dame and Jack's mother, Griff Rhys Jones the evil baron and their landlord, Julie Walters the fairy godmother with more than a hint of Mrs Overall, Denise van Outen is Jill the Baron's daughter - we see what they've done nominatively there, and giving her a love duet with Morrissey feels unequal - Morwenna Banks as Little Girl as Goldilocks (wait a moment...) and Julian Clary the fourth wall breaking beanstalk giant's henchman with mute assistant Peter Serafinowicz, which is interesting in itself as he'd barely done anything in TV at the time and would likely have just been fresh off recording Darth Maul's voice for The Phantom Menace, though he and director John Henderson had worked with Nye on How Do You Want Me? The giant is... a voice. And that's it. ITV only did three more before, dunno, it got too cumbersome.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 17: Telly Addicts, 1986

At the end of the first year of Telly Addicts, 1985, a team comprising Michael Grade, Nina Myskow, Barry Took and Larry Grayson took on the series winners in a programme we very eagerly inducted into the Advent Calendar four years ago but has since disappeared (can anyone help?) In 1986, it was decided that by winner stays on rules they may as well try the same thing again, so they gathered together to face off with the Reynish family from Swansea, one question seemingly unknowingly featuring a sketch that Took wrote. Incidentally, this was the first thing Noel, sporting a spectacular blow-weave mullet, filmed after Michael Lush's death on 13th November, which may explain his slight restraint and the volume of the applause at the start. Whatever popular history now considers, there was a lot of public goodwill behind him at the time.

LEFTOVERS: we, it's fair to say, are big on these end of year TV questioning feasts, as as well as 1985 as previously mentioned we've featured 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 16: The Giddy Game Show, 1986

"I've got two hairy portraits of me!" announces Children's ITV frontman du jour Matthew Kelly by way of introducing Yorkshire's animated interactive sci-fi pre-schoolers' quiz, devised by Play School and Jackanory creator Joy Whitby and fronted by professor Richard Vernon, gorilla Bernard Bresslaw (seems like cartoon typecasting to us) and the magic pencil wielding alien Giddy, who although you may not recognise him for the pitchshifting represents your recommended allowance of Redvers Kyle. Apparently opera singing is a specifically festive sound.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 15: A Diary Of Britain - Christmas At St David's, 1979

A Diary Of Britain was a series of fifteen documentary films made for BBC2 covering one week at a time between September and Christmas 1978 and aired a year to the week later. They ended in St David's, the most westerly point of Wales and a summer centre of tourism, eavesdropping on the community as the farmers and fishermen get ready for a bumper season, rehearsals are made equally for the Women's Institute pantomime and the cathedral nativity service by a priest with an accordion, and there's a funeral in passing.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 14: BBC1 Christmas Eve continuity and news, 1983

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Well, if you have granular level knowledge of our previous Advent Calendars, which not even we have, but if you do (and don't have access to our notes or Blogger's search engine) you'll know we had some BBC1 continuity from Christmas Eve 1983 on day 20 in 1983, which we're not going to link to because it's been made private for some reason. We can however confirm that this one is all new to the Advent Calendar. Unfortunately we can also confirm that it's heavy on Little & Large, with both a specific trailer which genuinely appears to have no jokes at the end and a quickie gag in the menu at the start between "the irrepressible Mike Read" and the TV premiere of Flash Gordon, which feels far more an ITV kind of thing even if the Beeb had been showing the animated New Adventures Of Flash Gordon from earlier that year. In between Nicholas Witchell, five months after transferring from Ireland reporter to anchor, reports on new leads in the Harrods bombing eight days earlier at the head of a very of its time running order including industrial action, the Falklands, South Africa (Michael Buerk reporting) and Greenham Common, plus the unusual move of Brentford moving a league game to this date. Weirdly, Witchell calls it "Channel 1" in his rounding off. Maybe he still had a push-button set.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 13: Michael Bentine's Potty Time, 1973

Michael Bentine was famously an original Goon, but we almost only have his word to go on for that as only one of the 38 shows in which he appeared (and Down Among The Z Men, the 1951 film starring all four) still survives before he left to pursue solo projects, or much more likely fell out with Milligan. Although his most revered work was early 60s sketch show It's A Square World, which also incubated Dick Emery's characters, Potty Time is probably what he's best remembered for, the Pottys being hirsute puppets mostly re-enacting historical scenarios. In this festive episode it's revealed Santa has had to take on extra lookalikes to cope with the workload, taking Bentine to the secret North Pole processing centre where they've developed world-spanning computer present message networks and supersonic sleighs to back up the reindeer. Bear in mind Bentine is doing all the voices at the end singalong, having additionally channelled Leonard Sachs.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 12: The Dawson Watch, 1980

After a series under his own name that was by and large a continuation of his ITV work, Les Dawson started The Dawson Watch, three series of themed sketches and stand-up in a hi-tech underground bunker staffed by comely assistants and installed software that would allow him to illustrate that week's line of enquiry. The final episode put up the tinsel, brought in Cissie and Ada and plays us out on piano with Bella Emberg, who had only just that year become known through Russ Abbot, and one of the control team absolutely losing it.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 11: Disney Time, 1984

Pretty obvious why it doesn't happen any more - gotta protect those IPs! - but for 27 years every bank holiday and especially Christmas came with the assurance that one of your favourite people off the telly would go to a place where stuff went on, usually Disney World, and introduce clips from Walt's vault. David Jacobs was first on Christmas Day 1961, hosts along the way including Hayley Mills, Julie Andrews, Maurice Chevalier, Tommy Steele, Dick Van Dyke, Peter Ustinov, Stratford Johns - and this is the point where the international film stars get too difficult to book - Cilla Black, Ken Dodd, Harry Secombe, the Val/John/Pete Blue Peter team, Brucie, Terry Thomas, Roy Castle, Jon Pertwee, Paul and Linda McCartney, Tom Baker as the Doctor, Bing Crosby, Bernard Cribbins, The Goodies, Noel Edmonds, Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendal, Kenny Everett, Lenny Henry, Bob Monkhouse, Jan Francis, David Jason, Phillip Schofield, Les Dawson, Anne Robinson (in 1988!), Matt Goss, Frank Bruno and Michaela Strachan, who would become its most common host and front the final one*, which wasn't even afforded the seasonal dignity as it went out on August bank holiday. At least it wasn't the penultimate instalment, a combined Disney/2002 World Cup edition with Rio Ferdinand. Anyhow, this one, the actual clips inevitably cut down well for copyright, sees us installed in Paul Nicholas' living room, where he introduces his wayward three year old son Alexander, his dog, his snooker table and his appreciation of the title sequence for That Darn Cat!

(* there was actually a Disney Time-branded programme on ITV on Christmas Day 1998 right after the Queen's Speech but that's just them being awkward, they already had practically all the actual Disney rights for most of that period. Also, the presenter was Suggs.)

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 10: bits of BBC1 from across the Nineties

This is one of those random continuity compilations that's grist to our mill, taking in Christmas Day 1991, 1994 and 1996, Boxing Day 1995 and 29th December 1996 by way of menus, introductions, trailers and bits of news bulletins.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 9: Rainbow Christmas Party, 1975

Rainbow had a full week of festive preparation and execution in its first year, 1972 as previously featured on here, then didn't bother again until 1975, meaning this is Geoffrey and George's first Christmas in the house. They're spending it with Rod, Jane & Matthew, then into the first of their two series as resident singers, and they're collectively spending it productively with a multi-layered game of hide and seek, opening their presents a day late - Bungle got an actual crown! - some tricks by Ali Bongo and with the vocal trio having already recorded their Christmas song in a big white studio. Are those all their actual children? There's a lot of them.

LEFTOVERS: as well as that first one, we've previously visited the Hayes menagerie in 1979, where Bungle claimed to be the Angel Gabriel, and their 1987 pantomime, where we'd argue Panto Villain Bungle is just as scary as Original Bungle.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 8: Paddington's Christmas, 1976

2022 was the year when somehow Paddington Bear, already in recent years elevated from endearing stop-motion short to full-on family movie cause celebre, became the ultimate symbol of the monarchy. Honestly, you'd need a diagram to explain. Well before any royal resonance, this episode from the first series is as charming as all.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 7: Cue Gary's Christmas Party, 1987

1987 was a prime year for ITV light entertainment, what with prime Beadle’s About, prime Blind Date, Sale Of The Century, the second year of the New Faces revival, Les Dennis taking over Family Fortunes, the final series of 3-2-1, sketch series like 5 Alive, The Funny Side and Kate & Ted's Show, Summertime Special/Live At The Palladium up the wazoo, sundry Davro, and this vehicle for Copy Cats' breakout star. Set for the most part in Wilmot's literal studio flat, it's built around the same kind of feather-light routines as the rest of them, all co-written by him and sidekick Martin Beaumont, a longtime actor and club comic who we're not entirely sure isn't related to Bill Oddie, who made several appearances on the series including a brief one here. Also here, aside from sidewoman Nikki Boughton about whom the internet knows nothing, we find Nina Myskow in full New Faces Judge You Love To Hate mode (and clearly filmed seperately from the rest), Jim Bowen, Linda Lusardi, David Jensen, Janet Brown, a pipe band, a Peter Sellers level of Indian shopkeeper impression by a white man, and loads of dancers one of whom we're not wholly sure isn't Danny John-Jules. Unless you count a series of The Book Tower, and everybody did one of those, this was Wilmot's last TV vehicle before moving into the West End.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 6: Countdown, 1997

It was always bound to happen eventually, and fifteen years in it did. Richard versus Carol (credited under her married name!), with William G Stewart taking the other 4.30pm game show chair and borrowing the joke book, Magnus Magnusson in Dictionary Corner and woman of hidden talents Susie Dent at the board. Sure enough, it goes to the last round where one of the two, not to put too fine a point on it, fucks it all up out of habit. More unexpectedly, the whole cast bar Stewart sing us out.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 5: You've Been Framed!, 1996

The camcorder catastrophes and cock-ups collection was famously a ratings uber-hit back in its 1991 first series, but five years later once settled into the impressive rotating house set the Christmas special went out on 15th December. It stands to reason that with people wanting to use their new present, record the family opening and using their own new presents and documenting winter holidays that this would be a boom period for clips, and so it proves with a whole half hour of snow drifts, overexcitable kids, nativities, crashing sleds and assorted lowest common denominator amusements.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 4: The Sooty Show, 1985

Sooty, Sweep, Soo and Matthew had quite a few adventures come the season as you'd expect, and we've picked out Sooty's Busy Christmas (izziness and wizziness quotients unstated) as the Advent Calendar's first for a number of reasons. For one, it upholds the great but then dying tradition of visiting children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. For a second, it features Matthew's new selection of hand bells. For a third, the A-story that emerges in the last third stars Bernie Clifton on rare variety form. But also notably the house gets a visit from permed sixteen year old Young Magician of the Year Richard Cadell, who made such an impression he would take over the handyman role after Corbett retired in 1998 and eventually buy the rights to the whole business.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 3: another motherload of 1990s commercials

Remember when Christmas adverts weren't high concept with much trailed launch dates or tried to tweak the nostalgia/lachyrmose brain cells with its musical policy but just emerged with relatable demonstrations and pictures? Here's another whole bunch of them, the main question arising being whether the Lunn Poly snowman was meant to sound like Alan Bennett.

LEFTOVERS: we've dutifully embedded all of Neil Miles' previous 80s and 90s compilations in the past few years: here, here, here, here and here.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 2: The Big Breakfast, 1997

Lock-Keepers' Cottages had a good run of festive felicitations right from the start in 1992 and we join them halfway through what's regarded as its second golden age - well, let us be the judge of that - the Johnny and Denise years. In what we suspect may not entirely be a live show Mark Owen and "Anthony" Mortimer - yeah, that didn't last long - form a partnership of boy band escapees aiming to go serious, the Spice Girls take their turns with Zig & Zag on the literal eve of the release of Spice World: The Movie, Ewan McGregor is not on the bed but on an adjoining hotel sofa to Vanessa Feltz, Phil Gayle makes his debut in the house, Melanie Sykes is reminded that she from the North of England and the big ending is given over to the Chicken Shed Theatre Company, whose Diana memorial single I Am In Love With The World was widely tipped as that year's obvious emotional runaway Christmas number one right up until it peaked at number 15. (Would probably have comfortably managed it now, mind)

LEFTOVERS: we've been down Old Ford Lock way before, on Christmas Eve 1993 with that avatar of festive goodwill, Simon Bates.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 1: A Stocking Full Of Christmas Cliches

We're starting off our seventh - SEVENTH? Christ - festive collection of videos from all our telly pasts by going pleasingly self-referential, some might even say meta. On 21st December 1991 BBC2 exhibited A Classic Christmas, a marathon of festive programming starting with the Flowerpot Men at 12.10pm and ending in the early hours with The Big Sleep. In between were Dr Finlay's Casebook, the divorce papers Eastenders, the 1973 Christmas Top Of The Pops, a Queen's speech, It's A Wonderful Life, the 1974 Christmas Steptoe & Son, 1964 Christmas Night With The Stars, a festive edition of the fly on the wall documentary Strangeways, Jack Rosenthal's Evacuees, a Morecambe & Wise compilation, the first airing of a 1958 Hancock's Half Hour since original broadcast and the classic 1976 ghost story The Signalman. The one entirely new offering, as such, was A Stocking Full Of Christmas Cliches, a clip show of hits and oddities alike linked by, but of course, talking animals. Francis Wilson and the Three Bears did not take off.