THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS TELLY PAST (part eleven)

Ah, Christmas 1980, when paper decorations, robots and stuffed toys were all the rage as you stared longingly at the horizon in a cover by Lynda Gray, and a Christmas and New Year Double Issue of the Radio Times would set you back a princely 36p.

My! Wasn’t Christmas Eve exciting in those days? If your parent or guardian should park you in front of the telly early in the morning that year you’d have had to face the “F.A.C.T.S” (Football Association Coaching, Tactics and Skills) and gone outside for a kickabout whilst your little brother learned about “The Bishop” in part three of “Play Chess”. Other shows aimed at a younger audience that morning included “The Red Hand Gang”, “King Rollo”, “Why Don’t You?” and “Battle of the Planets” so we would probably have ended up being a bunch of mixed-up crazy dudes if we’d taken all that in. Luckily, the classic adventure film “Kim” (Aaaah… Kim!) would have sorted you out pretty quickly, just in time for “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too” and that year’s “All Star Record Breakers”, before “Pollyanna” whisked you away into the evening. After that it was down to Val Doonican to share “Val’s Special Years of Christmas” and John Wayne as “Big Jake” to entertain you through to “Placido Domingo’s Christmas Choice” and the Midnight Eucharist.

Or you could have spent Christmas Eve with BBC2, although it did close down (after showing the world “Play School”) from 11.25 AM through to 3.55 PM, until the matinee “The Toast of New Orleans” coaxed it back to consciousness. Then it was excitement all the way with Richard Stilgoe’s “Sounds of Christmas”, “One Hundred Great Paintings” (a Renoir), “Moving Pictures” (a John Wells whimsy) and “Sky” in “Rhythm on 2”. There was then a short play about a divorcee called “Moon June” (a title less attractive today), the music of “Instant Sunshine” and Walter Matthau in “A New Leaf”. If you think that’s all a little staid, well, BBC2 redeemed itself totally with “The Old Grey Whistle Test” presenting Ian Dury and the Blockheads in a special Christmas Eve concert direct from the Dominion Theatre, London.

All is forgiven.

Except for that Richard Stilgoe programme.

Christmas Day 1980 featured an almost quintessentially “classic” Christmas TV line-up. “Top of the Pops”, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. “The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show”, “Larry Grayson’s Generation Game”, “Dallas” and “The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show” ending with “Parkinson at Christmas”. Even the evening movie was the big old disaster movie “Airport 1975”. That’s just the kind of Christmas Day telly that you once thought it always was and always would be, but we now know that things were going to change, and pretty soon, too.

BBC2 wasn’t in the mood for change yet, though, with an afternoon of Fred Astaire movies before filling the evening with a performance of “Tosca”, a Seurat in the “One Hundred Great Paintings” and another in their Walter Matthau season, “The Front Page”.

Boxing Day featured another disaster movie, “The Towering Inferno” alongside more classic fare like “Jim’ll Fix It” , “Blankety Blank”, “The Two Ronnies” and “Boxing Night at the Mill” which still featured Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen tormenting Bob Langley over in the late, lamented Pebble Mill Studios. BBC2 persisted with the Fred Astaire double-bills, the paintings (an Eakins), the Matthau movies (“The Secret Life of an American Wife”) and the ballet “The Nutcracker” alongside the play “Plain Murder” and a documentary about the Land Speed Record fronted by Raymond Baxter.

New Year’s Eve started with a “Comedy Classic” repeat of “Dad’s Army” (I wonder if that would ever be done nowadays…? Tee hee...), another “Larry Grayson’s Generation Game” and “Citizen Smith” surviving just long enough to give Maggie an earful. The film “Birth of the Beatles” followed before the “Pick of 80” TV highlights review, “The Good Old Days” and “A Happy New Year” from BBC Scotland, which seemed to be pretty much the only time they ever got nationally networked. Meanwhile BBC2 ran the memorable Royal Institution Annual Christmas Lectures that year being “The Chicken, the Egg and the Molecules”, a Gauguin, some “Treasures from Chatsworth”, a birthday portrait of the Queen Mother, and the Clark Gable classic “It Happened One Night” before greeting the New Year with more of “The Old Grey Whistle Test”.

New Year’s Day seemed to be chiefly memorable for “The Return of Wonder Woman”, the movie “Papillon” and Michael Parkinson meeting James Cagney whilst BBC2 showed the annual New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna, and a programme celebrating the recently completed life of Joyce Grenfell.