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.)