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.