Faye Dunaway and the Muppets featured on the cover of the last TV Times of the 1970s which, despite inflation, still cost only 30p. Mind you, back then you could have a pretty good night out on 30p and still have enough for your bus fare home. Well, you could if you were twelve, anyway, because someone else was usually picking up the tab. I myself was sixteen and going through the period when everyone found me unattractive and which, incidentally, I am still hoping will finally come to an end one day soon. In the (slightly out of register on my copy) illustration you can also see (if the lurid green cover hasn’t already burnt out your retinas, that is. Gotta love the designers of the 1970s…) Morecambe and Wise who had crossed over to ITV from the BBC and Kenny Everett’s “Captain Kremmen” characters who were about to make the leap in the opposite direction.
Christmas Eve on ITV that year is a positive cornucopia of joy for nostalgia lovers everywhere and brings a considerable amount of familiar programming which we have already seem in this, our random trawl through the TV Guides of the relatively recent past. “Ben-Hur” is on and there’s another “London Night out Christmas Special” (including “Name That Tune”) as well as the big Christmas Eve evening movie being one we haven’t yet come across: “The Tamarind Seed”. There are also some old faithfuls in the schedule that have become increasingly familiar to me over this past couple of weeks: “Give Us a Clue”, “Crossroads” and “Coronation Street” as if there was some kind of national Pavlovian experiment going on. But let’s not worry about that for the moment, let’s just savour the names of those classic old shows that those of us of a certain age used to know and love: “Jamie and the Magic Torch”, “A Christmas Runaround”, “Once Upon a Time” and “You’re Only Young Twice”.
Marvellous!
Christmas Day seemed less familiar, perhaps because the telly remained resolutely “off” in our house on Christmas Day back then. I see Jimmy Tarbuck offering us “A Merry Morning” (not with you in tow, Tarby…) and a “Lassie” movie. I see a “Christmas Oh Boy!” featuring Joe Brown and the Bruvvers (amongst others) and the grand final of “Star Games” which still sound like the sort of thing they put on the covers of lurid tabloid magazines nowadays, but I might be wrong. This pitted the stars of “comedy” against the “TV Presenters” with five grand up for grabs (“for charity”). The Queen was followed by “Goldfinger”, that year’s Christmas Day Bond film and, if you survived the “3, 2, 1 Dickensian Xmas Show” and the latest episode of “George and Mildred” you would be rewarded by Michael York in “The Three Musketeers” and “Christmas with Eric and Ernie” before Eamonn Andrews popped up somewhere with that infernal book of his and Cleo Laine and John Dankworth Be-Doobied the rest of Christmas Night away.
On Boxing Day we can wallow again with the notion of a “Get It Together Christmas Bonanza”, “The Adventures of Rupert Bear” (all together now… “Rooo –pert, Rupert the Bear…” Oh suit yourselves…) and “Clapperboard” before watching “The King and I” and “Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus”. presented by Bernie Winters. After that there was an “All Star Winner Takes All” (Tarby… Again!!!), an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” with Cheryl Ladd in the place of Farrah Fawcett, and, after “Coronation Street” there was the prospect of “The Dick Emery Special” and the movie version of “Man About the House” before we all traipsed off to the Lido to see Shirley MacLaine.
New Year’s Eve on ITV saw out the 1970s in, well not exactly “style” as such. There was an international edition of “University Challenge” and a “Jim Davidson Special” (define “special”) amidst all of the usual suspects. Max Bygraves popped up to sing a few songs alongside Geoff Love and the feature film was “Carry on Dick”. After that we were given the false jeopardy of “The ‘Will Kenny Everett Make It to 1980?’ Show” and then we (rather naturally) went up to Scotland for the first moments of the 1980s in “The First Day of the Year Show” with Stanley Baxter.
And so began the 1980s, with the last vestiges of the 1970s still hanging around the New Year’s Day schedules: “Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings”, “Pipkins” and “Get It Together”, “The Incredible Hulk” and “The Sullivans”, “Charlie’s Angels” and “Mr and Mrs”, just bask for a moment in that rosy nostalgic glow and then go and “Paint Your Wagon” because that’s what they expected you to do.
I once went to a screening of The Three Musketeers in High Wycombe in a near empty cinema. Ten minutes into the movie the couple in front began to have all kinds of vigorous sex - I never did see how it ended (the movie that is).
ReplyDeleteWell, it was the seventies.
...and you probably still had enough change for a bag of chips on the way home... M.
ReplyDelete