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?