Advent Calendar 2023 Day 15: Carry On Christmas, 1969

Hello, Peter Rogers. The Carry On team were in their element, with Camping out that summer, Again Doctor literally just released and Jungle fresh off filming, when a TV spin-off was commissioned with a Talbot Rothwell script and former Goon Show producer Peter Eton. Inevitably they went for the lowest hanging seasonal story fruit, A Christmas Carol, albeit a version in which the Spirit of Christmas Past (Charles Hawtrey) reveals Scrooge (Sid James) hadn't invested in the scheme of Dr Frank N Stein (a corpsing Terry Scott) and his assistant Dracula (Peter Butterworth) to create a mate (Barbara Windsor) for their monster (Bernard Bresslaw), while the showgirl Spirit of Christmas Present (Babs) chides him for refusing to help Robert Browning (Frankie Howerd, shattering the fourth wall as ever) elope with Elizabeth Barrett (Hattie Jacques) and the hippy - well, it was 1969 (our first ever entry from that year as it happens) - Spirit of Christmas Future (Bresslaw) retells the Cinderella (Windsor again) story with Howerd as fairy godmother. In the end they did four specials, of which we've featured 1972 before.