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