Advent Calendar 2023 Day 24: The Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show, 1984

And for a grand finale, a classic. Now it's proven from the Deal Or No Deal revival that Noel Edmonds by himself is not sufficient to sink a format and ITV on Christmas mornings is all pre-recorded versions of the regular magazine lifestyle gubbins, maybe someone should revive the concept of a big live overarching spectacle. Five years of memorably ambitious broadcasting, things involving satellite broadcasting that we're earnestly told "have not been done before" and knowing jumpers start here with a very nice helicopter shot swoop from TV Centre to the Telecom Tower. In fact the pilot must be working triple time as it carries on over the capital and at one point to a tower block so a caller can wave at it, then to Gerry Cottle's Circus with a barely audible call to the boss with all his employees gathered outside performing in a cold and wet concrete car park to nobody else at ground level until the confetti cannon breaks, and finally to Tony Blackburn exchanging quips in Richmond Park while flanked by women holding balloons and wearing a T-shirt that we're far too far away to see the source of. More successful is a link to a live party in the Falklands, with long distance reunions and one very bearded bloke who's having his facial hair cut off and clearly cannot recall agreeing to this, which we never see the outcome of. The chairman of BT is shown his family in Australia and also the limitations of his company's newest technology. Mike Smith is at Charing Cross Hospital with Kim Wilde and also Howard Jones with his band walking through and gladhanding in seemingly every ward to Like To Get To Know You Well. The Whirly Wheeler scales as much of the Tower as he's allowed ("everybody else around London is trying to get as high as possible" - hold on, Noel, what was that?), Michael Fish is on the roof of TVC, the Thompson Twins and Strawberry Switchblade - who, it should be pointed out, had not reached the top 40 yet - are up the Tower and Noel promises a chance to have your favourite moments repeated but only manages a couple, including a precursor to Keyboard Cat. Controlled chaotic, partially unneccesary, and entirely magnificent. And a year later they did it again by sending Helen Fielding to the Sudan and Feargal Sharkey into the skies without working playback, but that's another story. Noel up the tower to end our first Christmas video extravaganza to Noel up the tower to conclude this one - seems a neat completion of the circle, doesn't it?