Advent Calendar 2023 Day 12: Noel's Christmas Presents, 1991

The third of ten special prize-giving ceremonies round Noel's, after 1989, before 1994 and 1995. It was in its most famous post-Queen slot and had the honour of being the one on standby repeat when a bomb scare forced House Party off the air fifteen months later. Noel, in a frock coat within the old Quality Street tin design, introduces a completely changed Twelve Days Of Christmas theme in which the presents range from a desk and a Reliant Robin to a set-up involving a sailor on duty in the Gulf, a couple whose son helped build a hotel, a murdered family member (not for the programme's behalf, we should add) and the active involvement of John Major, whose casual acting we greatly admire. In between someone becomes a pantomime fairy in an otherwise closed theatre opposite Les Dawson and John Nettles ("appearing in Dick Whittington at the Wimbledon Theatre"), there’s a mass title-defeating rendition of Silent Night involving Michael Ball and the constantly for hire London Community Gospel Choir, someone else meets Whoopi Goldberg on the set of Sister Act and there’s a flight to Moscow to introduce pen pals - though we barely actually see the meeting and suspiciously not at all what happens afterwards.