THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS TELLY PAST (part ten)

For its last Christmas as a single channel listings magazine in 1981, the cover star for the special issue of the TV Times was the ex-Goon, Sir Harry Secombe, pulling a suitably “whacky” face in a suitably “whacky” hat. Simpler times, simpler times... and Sir Harry’s show didn’t even feature in the Christmas Day programmes. Perhaps he was just  “available”...

ITV that year seemed to be pulling out all the “Christmassy” stops they could as their Christmas Eve schedule from 9.30 AM until the 12.30 Closedown was chock-full of Christmas themed programming. All right, the opening programme, the sublime “Little Blue” centred upon Mr Guppy’s fish shop but after that it was Christmas all the way. Whether it was “Get Up and Go!” with Beryl Reid and Mooncat or “Chorlton and the Ice-World” or Johnny Morris making music in Ulster, or “Ad-Lib” having a “seasonal edition” everything was getting into the swing of it. Everyone, that is, except Bill Grundy whose lunchtime offering “Abolish Christmas!” rather put a spanner into the festive works. In between all these seasonal treats (nearly wrote “threats” there…) there were the movies “Christmas Lilies of the Field” and that Bank Holiday fixture “Jason and the Argonauts” just in case you weren’t sure what day it was. As the daytime gave over to the evening schedule, you had the prospect of an episode of the children’s drama show “Theatre Box” set in Victorian times and starring Patrick Malahide as Charles Dickens, Reg Lamont outwitting Sharon Metcalfe at “Crossroads” (still running even then!) and Michael Aspel asking some celebrities, including Nicholas Lyndhurst, to “Give Us a Clue”. The comedy about some seemingly permanently hospitalised gentlemen known as “Only When I Laugh” followed that, and another years “London Night Out” with Tom O’Connor and “Name That Tune” took you through to Albert Finney as “Scrooge” and a midnight communion ended the day.

Christmas Day itself started off with Jon Pertwee in a Worzel Gummidge Christmas Special (“A Cup o’ tea an’ a slice o’ cake”), some “Christmas Family Worship” (the past really is another country) and Edna O’Brien reading “The Dazzle”. Barry Took’s “We Six Kings” featuring “The King’s Singers” followed, before the film “The Three Lives of Thomasina” took you through to ITVs Christmas Day forelock-tugging as they relived “A Wedding in the Family” from July 29 1981. After the Queen herself got a look in, James Bond saved the world, as he did most Christmas Day’s back then, this time seeing off “Dr No” (again!). Eamonn Andrews shoved a Big Red Book into somebody’s Christmassy face before “The Muppet Movie” brought some much-needed anarchy into the afternoon. Family-centric “entertainment” shows like “Game For a Laugh” and “It’ll Be Alright on the Night 3” then took over, just to show how TV was changing, and the main Christmas Day feature film for Christmas Night on ITV was “Harry and Walter Go to New York”. The day ended with a party on “Rising Damp”, a Christmas episode of “Vega$” and some carols sung by schoolchildren.

Bless.

Boxing Day was upon a Saturday, and thus included a lengthy chunk of “Tiswas” and another huge chunk of “World of Sport” with Dickie Davies. Then Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood crooned their way through “Paint Your Wagon” and “Metal Mickey” served up his “Pantomickey” until Bob Monkhouse  had two teams from “Give Us a Clue” and “It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum” face off in a special “(not really a) Family Fortunes”. This was followed by a scary sounding “Russ Abbot’s Christmas Madhouse”, Robert Powell in “The Thirty Nine Steps”, “Tales of the Unexpected” (or “of the blindingly obvious”, if you prefer...), “An Audience with Dudley Moore”, and a suitably saccharine sounding “Salute to Fred Astaire” from Hollywood types on his 82nd birthday.

New Year’s Eve seemed pretty low-key if truth were told, with a very familiar schedule (“Crossroads”, “Give Us a Clue”, a “Carry On Laughing” compilation and “London Night Out”) leading up to a low-key movie “Desperate Voyage” starring Christopher Plummer. There was a “This is Your Life Special” (i.e. 45 minutes) leading up to Fulton Mackay and “The Hogmanay Show”, but they didn’t seem to be trying too hard, and New Year’s Day itself seemed pretty familiar too with “Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World”, “Spartacus” and “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” all popping up alongside “Bruce Forsyth’s Play Your Cards Right” and “The Gentle Touch” and Abba, Shakin’ Stevens, Bad Manners and some performing androids turning out for a lunchtime “Razzamatazz”.