Happy New Years Gone By

 

No fireworks, no Jools Holland, just Andy Stewart...

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, 2026 probably started with a bang. Fireworks have become a New Year tradition in Britain: this year they were popping at random all evening before the midnight barrage got going at around five minutes to twelve. From where I live, I can look out across the town from a high vantage point, which affords the spectacle of seeing everybody letting off their fireworks at once, across a span of two or three miles, looking almost like a co-ordinated display. This year, there seemed more than ever. But it wasn’t always like this.

Fifty years ago, if you wanted to see fireworks on New Years’ Eve, you’d have had to be in a major city, where there might have been a few organised displays at midnight. But in smaller towns, and out in the suburbs, the year turned in wintry silence. No one let off fireworks in their own gardens, and if they did, they’d have been in a minority. For one thing, pyrotechnics were only sold to the public ahead of November 5, so there’d have been none in the shops. Those who felt like celebrating the new year with a bang would have had to hoard a supply from Guy Fawkes Night. But the reality is that people didn’t bother. Maybe they went in for it in Scotland, where New Year (or Hogmanay) has always been a bigger deal, and was often accompanied by fiery displays – although these were not usually fireworks as such.

The whole ‘fireworks at midnight’ thing only really took off at the millennium. This was the first time I could recollect seeing (and hearing) fireworks being let off to celebrate a new year, and on this occasion it was understandable: we weren’t just welcoming in a new year but a whole new millennium. But come December 31 in the year 2000, the whole thing happened again – and has been happening ever since.

Growing up, New Year’s Eve never really struck me as a great occasion. On New Year’s Day, our mum usually did another Christmas dinner (sometimes comprising left overs from the first one), but on the whole, the night before was no big deal. From the age of ten, I was allowed to stay up to see in the New Year – my 1972 diary mentions it – but this didn’t amount to much more than watching Big Ben strike midnight on television. There were no big celebrations in our house – our dad, being a semi-professional musician, was always out on New Year’s Eve, which for any musician is traditionally the best paying night of the year. Sometimes, he was accompanied by my brother, leaving my mum and myself to see in the New Year on our own.

Only once or twice do I remember our observing any kind of New Year customs – I was sent round the house to re-enter by the front door, in the tradition of ‘first foot’ (the first to enter a dwelling on January 1 was, according to tradition, dark haired, and should carry items of food, drink and fuel. We had a gas fire so that ruled out coal, and I can’t remember drink being involved – just half a loaf of bread). Other years, we’d simply be in front of the television where some kind of Hogmanay entertainment would be presented – usually involving, pipes, drums, country dancing and Andy Stewart, British television’s go-to Scottish entertainer.

Another televisual New Year tradition was the Old Grey Whistle Test’s famous ‘pick of the year’: although this didn’t get started until 1974, and wasn’t billed as such until the following year. The first year’s edition (beginning at just after midnight on 1 January 1975) was billed in the Radio Times as ‘Rock Till Two’, and seems to have been more akin to Jools Holland’s annual Hootenanny with guests performing live in the studio and a look back at some of the past year’s highlights. Next year, there were no live acts on the night, and the programme became an annual round up of clips. The tradition was kept up until New Year’s Eve 1987, when Bob Harris presented the very last edition of the now retitled ‘Whistle Test’, a five and a half hour marathon edition including live performance, documentary items and a raid on the archives. New Year’s Eve 1988 featured a concert by Eurythmics and a David Bowie programme, whilst the following year presented a round-up of the decade in rock music, followed by an Arena programme ‘Heavy Metal Heaven’. Certainly not the kind of thing I’d have stopped up to watch. By now, BBC2 had established a tradition of rock music to see viewers into the New Year: 1990 brought a Rolling Stones concert, and 1991 the classic ‘rockumentary’ This is Spinal Tap. But what all of these programmes lacked was a countdown to midnight, ushering in the New Year.

New Year’s Eve 1992 on BBC2 was an anomaly – music made way for comedy in the form of Monty Python, Rab C Nesbitt and Sandra Bernhard – but if this was an attempt to establish a new end of year tradition, it was to prove short lived. 1993 brought the first of Jools Holland’s annual Hootenannies, and he’s been a fixture on New Year’s Eve ever since. The programme maintains the pretence of counting down to midnight, but is always pre-recorded.

My diaries mention ‘seeing in’ the New Year pretty well every year from 1972 onwards. I recall seeing a fair few of the Whistle Test compilations, but occasionally I was lured away by other entertainments such as BBC1’s Welcome 1977, a variety compilation featuring New Year’s greetings from Kojak, Starsky and Hutch and Petula Clark amongst others (including the inevitable Andy Stewart). For three years from the 70s into the 80s, my mum and myself were invited to a neighbour’s New Year party, which was a quietly sedentary occasion populated by elderly relatives. One year, I entertained them all with an impersonation of Jake Thackray…

From 1980 onwards, my New Years Eves were generally spent in a pub or at various friends’ houses where the entertainment was only marginally less sedentary than that offered by our neighbours across the road. None of them was specially memorable, and they now appear as a blur of quiches, pop quizzes, dull games, ham rolls and the chimes of Big Ben. The one thing that was conspicuously absent from all of them was fireworks…

Pop culture has, on the whole, failed to celebrate the New Year in any form beyond the ephemeral entertainments of the evening itself: one tends not to find New Year episodes of sitcoms, whereas Christmas episodes abound. Charles Dickens, who did a lot to popularise the idea of the festive season being memorialised in literature, actually wrote more New Year tales than specifically Christmas stories, but the tradition has never really taken hold in the era of film and television.

When it comes to pop music, the Christmas chart topper has long exerted a hold on the popular imagination, but no one seems to care what’s number one at New Year – which perhaps is for the best. Pop songs aimed at New Year are few indeed – I mentioned one example in a recent blog: ‘Hoots Mon’ by Lord Rockingham’s XI was clearly pitched at the Hogmanay party crowd. The most famous example of a hit for New Year is, of course, U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’, but hardly anyone else has followed their lead. John Lennon added ‘and a happy new year’ into his famous Christmas hit, and George Harrison had a bash back in 1974 with ‘Ding Dong Ding Dong’, but it hardly set the charts alight, which perhaps served as a deterrent to anyone else considering a ‘song for New Year’. Pilot’s ‘January’ (1975) was about the month rather than the first of the month: and Wings’s ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which annexed the Christmas number one during the festive season of 1977 made no lyrical reference to either Christmas or New Year – though the song’s massed bagpipes made Macca’s festive intentions quite clear.

Comics have occasionally gone in for New Year covers, with the snow on the masthead still frozen in place from Christmas, and characters depicted making and breaking New Year resolutions. A quick trawl through my modest collection of comics produced two New Year examples, both from 1972: and whilst there were plenty of references to the season in IPC's Knockout (above), the Beano, hailing from Dundee, only managed this Dennis the Menace strip: elsewhere, it was business as usual for the regular characters.

Dennis the Menace stages a New Year Revolution in the Beano, January 1, 1972 (click to enlarge)

In England if not elsewhere, New Year has always been the poor relation of Christmas, the last gasp of the festive season, the last date on which the Radio and TV Times bother to decorate the mastheads in their festive double editions. But Christmas itself owes its date to New Year's Day, chosen for the Christian calendar to compete with the pagan winter solstice on 21 December, and conveniently located exactly seven days before New Year. These days, that means many people have a ready made excuse to take a whole week off. New Year’s Eve is the last chance to party before reality kicks in again and everyone goes back to work. Until 1974, January the first was an ordinary working day in England (the Scots had it as a Bank Holiday since 1871), so there was perhaps rather less incentive to stay up late and set off fireworks… which, of course, nobody did.

Happy New Year!

December 75 – week four/ week five

 

Holiday Star Trek, Dad's Army and a complete Doctor Who... from Christmas Day to New Year's Eve, 1975

Continuing my trawl through the pages of my diary from fifty years ago...

The Christmas Day routine was always the same in our house. I was now aged fourteen, my brother two years younger, but there was still the same childlike rush to open our presents and my recollection is of opening them while it was still dark out, even as late as 1975. The click of the front room light switch on Christmas morning marked the moment when we saw the room transformed overnight with heaps of presents. Lunchtime meant either a visit to our Grandparents or their visiting us – the diary doesn’t say which. If it was us going to them, it meant leaving behind all our new toys and taking maybe one or two plus an annual with us. Christmas dinner was soup or smoked salmon to start (sometimes both), followed by the traditional turkey with all the ‘trimmings’. Point to note: back in 1975 nobody called sausages wrapped in bacon ‘pigs in blankets’. We certainly ate them, but that appellation lay way, way in the future (unless anyone can prove otherwise). Christmas puddings were invariably home made by my mum or grandmother (although shop bought examples were readily available), and there was often an alternative for those who didn’t care for the traditional pudding. Home made puddings invariably included a few items of small change, traditionally the old sixpenny coins which were still legal tender and would remain so until 1980. By the age of 14, I was allowed to drink wine with the meal, which meant either Mateus Rosé or Goldener Oktober. Our grandad once caused a bottle of Mateus to explode when trying to open it with a pump-action corkscrew (the ovoid shape of the bottle may have had something to do with it). Then came cheese, grapes, coffee and the obligatory After Eight Mints – or, conceivably, Matchmakers, which were just as popular back then. Not, I hasten to add, Ferrero Rocher: they weren’t invented until 1979.

After all that, there would invariably be a big tea around 6.30 or 7.00, with salads, cold meats, sandwiches, sausage rolls, pork pie, mince pies, trifle, blancmange, jelly, Christmas cake, you name it. Around 1980, our mum began to make a dessert that involved soaking Maryland cookies in sherry, then pressing them together with clotted cream to make a roll, which itself was covered with more clotted cream and chocolate sprinkles. Leave to chill, and be sure to have a defibrillator to hand… 

Boxing Day: 'Watch Let it Be. Do typing of Supercar stories for annual. The Bennets [sic] come round in evening. Watch Mike Yarwood Xmas Show & Dad’s Army. Read Goodies Book of Criminal Records.'

The Bennetts were neighbours from across the road, a couple with two sons around the same age as myself and my brother, and their Boxing Day visitation was acquiring a kind of ritualistic status, an excuse to break out the sherry and deploy the bowls of crisps and nuts, along with anything left over from yesterday’s cold collation. 

The Holiday Star Trek episodes had continued today, but I don’t appear to have been tuned in for The Paradise Syndrome (it’s still an episode I’d choose to avoid). The Beatles’ Let it Be received its British TV premiere at the slightly unimpressive hour of 10.55am. The film, as presented back then, was very grainy in appearance – my friend Tim Beddows later acquired the BBC’s old 16mm print. Today, of course, it looks shiny and new, assuming you can see it at all (you’ll need a Disney + subscription to do so). 

Tonight’s Dad’s Army was the first broadcast of one of the series’ undisputed classics: My Brother and I saw Arthur Lowe playing a dual role as Captain Mainwaring and his dissolute sibling who turns up unexpectedly in Walmington on Sea, threatening to disrupt the platoon’s genteel sherry party. Surely this was Arthur Lowe’s finest hour: his performances as George and Barry Mainwaring are so different it’s like watching two individual actors.

Saturday 27th: 'Watch complete Dr. Who story Genesis of the Daleks at 3.00. Read Goodies Book of Criminal Records. Do typed letters to David. Go to Steven (Auntie Rita’s) 21st Birthday party till past midnight.'

By 1975, no Christmas was complete without a complete Dr. Who story – that’s complete in the sense of a whole serial condensed into a single episode, but edited accordingly. In many cases, this abridgement made for a much more satisfactory viewing experience, removing needless red herring cliff hangers, essential in any serial format narrative, and stripping away any padding (which could be excessive in a six-part serial, especially when Terry Nation was writing the script). That said, there’s no denying that Genesis of the Daleks has become one of the seminal moments in the series’ history. Personally, I’d have enjoyed it more with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor as I never really warmed to Tom Baker – the teeth, the pop-eyed looks, the scarf and hat were all distractions.

Staying up (and indeed out) until past midnight was still an event worthy of comment, as my diary entry makes clear. The occasion was the 21st birthday of a cousin, who was named after the feast day of St. Stephen. I remember absolutely nothing about it.

Sunday 28th: 'Watch Holiday Star Trek 'The Cloud Minders'. Do typing. Listen to Double Top Ten Show, Top 20. Do Supercar Annual.'

Monday 29th: 'Ring up David. Watch Laurel & Hardy in The Chimp. Holiday Star Trek Requiem for Methuselah. Also Kes (film) & R.U. Being Served.'

The rest of the Christmas holiday was occupied with more telly (mostly Star Trek and Laurel & Hardy), which we watched whilst consuming bags of Fun Size Mars Bars. Today, these items have become little more than individual chocolates, but back in 1975 they were substantially bigger. Smaller than a ‘full size’ Mars, I’ll grant you, but still of around the same proportions as a regular Milky Way. Shrinkflation: another word nobody had heard of in 1975.

Tuesday 30th: 'Go to David's. Go to Sutton. Get 'The Golden Age of Hollywood Comedy Laurel & Hardy' & The Sea Devils. Play Laurel & Hardy LP. Watch Batman & Norman Wisdom in Press for Time. L&H Murder Case.'

On Tuesday 30 December, I went into Birmingham with my friend David, and came back with an LP of soundtrack highlights from Laurel & Hardy films – a purchase which marked the beginning of my taking a closer interest in the comics and their career. The Sea Devils was another Target paperback.

Wednesday 31st: 'Watch Laurel & Hardy in Chickens Come Home and Star Trek in Day of the Dove. Watch Norman Wisdom film 'Just my Luck; about betting on horses. Do typing.'

The year ended with more L&H, yet another Star Trek, and the Norman Wisdom comedy Just My Luck, the title of which would later become the catchphrase of another teenage diarist – Adrian Mole. There's no mention of having stayed up to see in the New Year, to the accompaniment of The Old Grey Whistle Test, but I'm sure we did so. The 'tradition' lives on in the form of Jools Holland's annual 'Hootenanny' but the music will never be as good again.

From the 1975 diary, we bid you farewell and a Happy New Year!

Note: The Radio Times spread illustrating this piece was sourced from the facebook group Vintage Radio Times which is well worth following if you don't already: Facebook Vintage Radio Times

December 75: Week Four

Monday 22^nd: 'Watch Holiday Star Trek ‘Amok Time’ and Laurel and Hardy ‘Hog Wild’. Also watch Batman – The Funny Feline Felonies pt1 (pt2 tomorrow), The Invisible Man (best yet) and Are You Being Served.'

Describing an episode of The Invisible Man as being ‘the best yet’ wasn’t saying very much. For the record, tonight’s episode saw an escaped mental patient determined to learn the secret of invisibility. The BBC repeated the series during the summer of 1976, following which it was never seen again (you see what I did there).

Tuesday 23^rd: 'Watch Thunderbirds ‘Ricochet’, Star Trek ‘Dagger of the Mind’ and Laurel and Hardy ‘Be Big’. Also Batman pt2, Tomorrow’s World Xmas special, Carry On Up the Khyber, The Liver Birds, The Night That Panicked America, A Ghost Story for Christmas.'

My diary entry attests to the fact that I did little else besides watch television on this particular day. Here’s how it panned out: 11.10-12.00: Thunderbirds. 11.40-12.30: Star Trek (clearly, we missed the beginning on account of the clash with Thunderbirds) 12.30-12.55 Laurel and Hardy. 18.30-19.00 Tomorrow’s World Xmas Special (repeated last week on BBC4) 19.00-20.25 Carry On Up the Khyber. 20.25-21.05 The Liver Birds. 21.20-22.55 The Night That Panicked America. 23.25-00.00 A Ghost Story for Christmas. Between the last two programmes we got The Spinners at Christmas, which one was sort of contractually obliged to watch as there was nothing worth turning over for. And although the diary doesn’t record it, I’m sure I also saw this evening’s festive Top of the Pops (17.50-18.30), a round-up of the year’s number one hits. All told, that added up to over eight hours of viewing between 10am and midnight…

The Night That Panicked America was a dramatisation of the infamous Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938. The BBC’s Ghost Story for Christmas this year was The Ash Tree, the last M.R. James story to be adapted until the modern era. 1976 brought Charles Dickens’ The Signalman, whilst the final two years’ films were specially written for the series. A Ghost Story For Christmas was still far from being the cult favourite that it would become, and the films went mostly unrepeated until the 1990s.

Christmas Eve: 'Watch Star Trek ‘Operation Annihilate’ and Laurel & Hardy ‘Thicker Than Water.’ Uncle Johnny comes. Read OHMSS. Watch Jim’ll Fix It, Great Locomotive Chase, Dick Emery and Porridge.'

I remember Christmas Eve ‘75 as being something of a televisual non-event. Our Dad had gone off on a gig as he did every Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and this year my brother, who was starting to take a serious interest in drumming, had gone with him. Mum was in the kitchen making mince pies and sausage rolls, and I was left with nothing to do but watch television (again!) Unfortunately, the schedule for this evening wasn’t a patch on last night’s line-up, with the exception of Porridge. From 18.30-19.55 BBC1 offered up Walt Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase – hardly seasonal fare, this 1956 adventure film was based on an actual incident that took place during the American Civil War. I watched it, but only because the alternatives were This Is Your Life and Coronation Street on ITV and Carols from Kings on BBC2: and I’d probably had enough of carols after the school concert. I wanted Christmas Eve to feel Christmassy, and watching some old trains chasing around America just didn’t do it for me. I could have helped out in the kitchen, but I’d probably only have been in the way. Even after half a century I can still remember what a dull evening that was. Bah!

Christmas Day: 'Get: Typewriter, Jasper Carrott Rabbits On, Goodies Book of Criminal Records, New Goodies LP, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, Shadows Greatest, desk diary, talc, pen, Eagle freighter, file thing, felt tips, mars bars, other sweets, Penguin Book of Comics, Dr Who & the Daemons, Dr Who & the Terror of the Autons, Highfly, Blue Ridge Mountains, Round the Horne [book], Space 1999 game, money. Watch Some Mothers Do Ave Em and Morecambe and Wise.'

Presents are a useful shorthand to those items of popular culture that I’d latched onto during the year. New arrivals for 1975 included Jasper Carrott, and, for me at any rate, The Shadows: this compilation was the first of their records I ever owned. John Miles’ single ‘Highfly’ had caught my attention when it popped into the Top 20 late in the year. He would enjoy his biggest success the following spring with the single ‘Music’ .

Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy was the first retrospective album from The Who, rounding up the band's key releases from 1964 to 1969. Provisionally titled 'The Who Look Back', the eventual title was a description of the four band members: Daltry (Meaty), Moon (Beaty), Entwistle (Big) and Townshend (Bouncy). The album has survived in mint condition. By complete contrast, The New Goodies LP cashed in on the comic trio's chart success earlier in the year. On vinyl, the Goodies became, effectively, The Oddies, with Bill writing all the material and performing the bulk of it, with backing from top session musicians including former Tornado Clem Cattini. The Beatles/Beach Boys-inspired track Cricklewood anticipated The Rutles by three years with its Penny Lane pastiche.

The Penguin Book of Comics was an essential overview of British and American material, illustrated with examples from classics of the genre and a few more obscure moments. Inexplicably, Dundee publishers DC Thompson refused permission to reproduce any of their comics, essentially writing themselves out of what is otherwise a comprehensive history. George Perry and Alan Aldridge produced the first edition back in 1967, with the latter supplying some of his distinctive and eccentric illustrations. This was a reprint of the updated edition from 1971.

Round the Horne was a collection of scripts from the BBC radio series of which I had yet to hear a single episode. All I knew of the programme was Kenneth Williams' language-mangling folk singer Rambling Sid Rumpo (his name a parody of American singer and raconteur Ramblin' Jack Elliott). I'd been put onto the series by a friend at school, but repeats were few and far between and I wouldn't get to hear an example for a good few years. These days, it's a regular fixture on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and over the years I must have heard most, if not all of the episodes. Curious, then, that I didn't recognise a single one of the scripts when I flipped through the book again. The guy on the front with the guitar is presumably meant to be Rambling Sid: so why doesn't he look like Kenneth Williams? And the girl looks nothing like Betty Marsden. What were they thinking of?

Christmas Day television included the British TV premiere of The Wizard of Oz, but I passed on that one. I also passed on (or rather, was unable to watch) Laurel & Hardy’s feature film Pack Up Your Troubles, which clashed with the Christmas dinner. At 17.50, we got a festive edition of Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game, now firmly established as a Christmas evening telly tradition, then Some Mothers Do Ave Em, with a brand-new Christmas episode that sadly failed to maintain the standard of last year’s. The forty-five minute episode was like three separate stories stuck together – Frank working as an elf in Santa’s grotto (Santa being portrayed by an implausible George Sewell); Frank taking a driving test; and Frank showing off his DIY prowess to David Jacobs. This last sequence went on far too long and relied too heavily on the collapsing furniture routines that the series had by this time done to death. I’m sure Morecambe and Wise did better, although I can’t remember this year’s edition in any detail. Fear not – it is available to watch on BBC iPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qrxq/the-morecambe-and-wise-show-christmas-show-1975

Next time: Boxing Day and beyond...

December 75: Week Three

Monday 15th: 'Read OHMSS. Orchestra cancelled. Watch The Goodies in which they are buried in concrete for 75 years. 10 Days [to Christmas]'

The cancellation of the school orchestra practise was always a cause for celebration, because attendance kept us late at school every Monday evening, and being in the orchestra was a ball ache of epic proportions. As I’d opted to do music ‘O’ level, I was obliged to be in the orchestra, and in order to do so had taken up the clarinet, simply because there happened to be a clarinet available: it had once belonged to my Grandad.

Orchestra was presided over by the school’s ageing music teacher ‘Doc’ Terry. To this day, I have no idea if he was a genuine 'doctor' of anything, but it seems unlikely: he'd once owned a shop selling records and sheet music, and had played in dance bands in the 1930s – my Grandad remembered him. If he had any feel or love for music, it was undetectable in his crotchety, ill-humoured demeanour. "You're about as much use as a sack of potatoes" he would inform someone whose playing wasn't up to scratch ("a sack of potatoes is quite useful" we muttered to ourselves). A bout of throat cancer had left him with a strange croaky voice that sounded oddly like W.C. Fields, but he still smoked a pipe during lessons, unthinkable in this day and age. Music lessons consisted mostly of our listening to ‘set pieces’ whilst following them in a score while he polluted the air. When we weren’t doing that, it was ‘orals and aurals’ which meant singing notes that Doc played on the piano. The only worthwhile thing he ever did for me in three years of music lessons, was telling me I had perfect pitch – I could name any note he played. But that hardly lets him off. My abiding memory of those ‘orals and aurals’ is of Doc hammering the keyboard so hard as to risk destroying the instrument whilst bawling ‘IS THAT THIS NOTE? IS IT?’ at one of our unfortunate classmates who was tone deaf and couldn’t sing a note in tune to save his life (or ours). 

Cartoon of 'Doc' Terry, circa 1977. No idea who the portrait behind him was meant to be.
He called everyone 'Tommy' so as not to have to remember our names.

The orchestra was diabolical. We’d have given the Portsmouth Sinfonia a run for their money. The violin section was the worst, consisting of a few youngsters hopelessly scraping away. Everything was taken at a funereal pace; years later, if I should ever chance to hear a professional orchestra playing one of the pieces in our repertoire, I’d always be surprised at how fast it sounded. Doc’s manner was little better during these practise sessions, but softened somewhat when we were joined by members of the Girls’ Grammar on the other side of town, to whom he presented an avuncular air, whilst keeping his beady eye fixed on the rest of us. He was, without a doubt, the worst teacher I ever had the misfortune to encounter. This blog marks his sole appearance on the internet... which is probably just as well.

Tuesday 16th: 'Carol Concert in evening. No school, really: carol practice morn, games in afternoon. Read OHMSS. See that ATV is making a new Space:1999 series.'

The carol concert was, of course, presided over by Doc, but the choir sounded a lot better than the orchestra, especially when we were accompanied by the school’s impressive church organ, with its full complement of stops, diapasons and enormous pipes. I’ve no recollection of what we performed this particular year, but alongside the familiar carols, there was usually something exotic or ancient thrown in – one year, it was a modern carol by the composer William Mathias – another, it was Adam lay ybounden, a 15th century text with a modern setting by Boris Ord. 

A small announcement in the television column of this evening’s Birmingham Evening Mail offered up the potentially exciting announcement about Space:1999. If I'd known what was coming, I'd have been a lot less enthused...

Wednesday 17th: 'Stay at home instead of going out in evening. Finish special XL5 story. Watch the Benny Hill Show. Read OHMSS.'

‘Going out in evening’ actually meant accompanying my parents on our regular midweek trip to visit our Grandparents, who lived around half an hour away. There was a decent fish and chip shop just around the corner, from where we would usually get cod and chips, bringing it all the way home in the car. Saturday afternoon was similarly set aside, with the ritual of going down to the newsagents’ to fetch our Grandad’s copy of the Birmingham Evening Mail, plus whatever comics my brother and myself were reading at the time.

Thursday 18th: 'Break up! At 2.35 (report). Watch Space:1999, ‘Another Time, Another Place’ (from bk2), Love Thy Neighbour and a new Carry On Christmas. Play guitar. Read OHMSS.'

Yes, we got a school report at the end of every term. It might even survive somewhere, though (perhaps fortunately), I don't have it to hand...

Friday 19th: 'David comes. Go to Mere Green. Get mum’s xmas present. Read OHMSS. Watch Top Cat & It’s the Wolf. See a bit of King Kong.'

Where exactly did I get to see ‘a bit of King Kong’? (And which bit, one might also enquire). Consulting the programme listings for this evening, we find the last in a six-part David Attenborough series on BBC1 at 5.15, Fabulous Animals, which tonight looked at legendary and unknown creatures. Although the listing doesn’t mention Kong, and my diary entry wasn’t more specific, this is almost certainly where I saw him: the programme followed Top Cat (which the BBC still insisted on billing as ‘Boss Cat’).

Saturday 20th: 'Watch Star Trek ‘Wink of an Eye’ and Laurel and Hardy ‘Another Fine Mess’. Go to Nanny & Grandad’s & Wilde [sic] Green. Get film edition of OHMSS. Do more to Supercar annual, leaving written stories until have got typewriter [for Christmas].'

‘Holiday Star Trek’ was a short-lived festive tradition that had got going the previous year (https://sundayinoldmoney.blogspot.com/2024/12/advent-sunday-in-old-money-day-23.html) and now made a welcome return. The season ran until 2 January, comprising a grab bag of twelve episodes from across all three series of which the best were Amok Time (22 December), Dagger of the Mind (23 December) and Operation – Annihilate! (24 December), all of them duly noted in my diary. 

As my diary also makes clear, I knew in advance what I was getting for Christmas – I’d asked for a typewriter, to assist in my comic-making activitites. I still own it to this day, but it hasn’t been used in a very long time. It last saw action when I photographed it to use in the design for the Network DVD sleeve of the series Jason King, (left) a typewriter having featured in the opening titles. The Silver-Reed model featured a ribbon that could print in black or red, the colour being selected by the small switch that can be seen on the far right in the pic below:

Sunday 21st: 'Read OHMSS. Change to Film Edition. Do more to home-made Supercar annual. Play guitar. Watch Holiday Star Trek at 12.00. Listen to the Double Top Ten Show with Hoots Mon by Lord Rockingham’s XI. Watch Goodies Rule – OK? & Punch review.'

I’d never heard Lord Rockingham’s XI’s festive hit until this year, as it had charted before my time and had never been revived in the years since. The XI were the house band on TV’s rock and roll programme Oh Boy!, led by Harry Robinson and featuring the legendary Cherry Wainer on organ. Harry Robinson later conducted and composed the backing for Nick Drake’s song ‘River Man’, as well as many different TV themes. The descendants of the real Lord Rockingham (a title defunct since 1782) mean spiritedly took the band to court over their use of the name. ‘Hoots Mon’ was the XI’s only significant chart hit, reaching number one at Christmas 1958. With its cod Scottish interjections, I think we can rule out a revival in this era of heightened sensitivity to pretty well everything...

Next time: an eight-hour day of television... and the worst Christmas Eve TV schedule to date

When Schedules Change

 

December 9, 1980

It should have been just an ordinary Tuesday evening’s television. The evening news at 5.40pm, followed by Nationwide. The 1966 Paul Newman film Winning was scheduled to air at 7pm, an action drama focused on the efforts of a racing driver to win the prestigious Indianapolis 500. The two-hour film was to be followed by a party political broadcast by the Labour Party, some eighteen months into what would prove to be a full eighteen years in opposition. After the 9.00 News, Play For Today presented the comedy drama of a researcher from the future who arrives in London in 1980 – The Flipside of Dominick Hide.

This was the BBC’s intended schedule, as published in that week’s edition of the Radio Times. What went out that evening was radically different, on account of a tragic event the previous night in New York City.

John Lennon had always believed the number nine held some significance in his life. “It’s just a number that follows me around,” he once said in an interview. His earliest address was 9 Newcastle Road, Wavertree. He was born on the 9th of October. There were many more significant number nines in his life, leading him to compose the songs 'Revolution 9' and 'No.9 Dream'. And although it was December 8 when he was murdered in New York, it was already December 9 in his home country.

On the morning of December 9 1980, I’d visited our local library. On coming out, around lunchtime, I entered Preedy’s newsagents opposite, where I saw Lennon’s face staring up in black and white from the top of a pile of the Birmingham Evening Mail’s lunchtime edition. The stark headline said it all: ‘John Lennon Shot Dead.’ I still have that newspaper. Returning home, I turned on Radio 1, where wall-to-wall Lennon and Beatles tracks were being played. I couldn’t believe what had happened. The world couldn’t believe it. Paul McCartney declared it was ‘a drag’ when doorstepped by the media, a remark he immediately regretted and certainly didn’t mean.

At the BBC, the evening’s programme schedule was torn up. Nationwide, originally scheduled to end at 7pm, was extended to ninety minutes, with much of the programme consisting of a tribute to the late Beatle. I’d got my first video recorder less than four weeks ago, and had blank tapes at the ready. I recorded the Nationwide tribute, which was followed by a special screening of the film Help! The Beatles’ lightweight comedy was not, perhaps, the most appropriate memorial, but it showed Lennon the way many of his fans would choose to remember him – as Beatle John, mop-topped and still a creative world away from 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. Over on BBC2, the scheduled edition of The Old Grey Whistle Test was hastily retooled, with Andy Peebles brought into the studio – he’d interviewed Lennon just two days earlier, talking about the recently released album Double Fantasy.

On BBC1, normal service, of a kind, was resumed at 9.00 with the news, albeit the bulletin was dominated by Lennon’s murder, and overran by some twelve minutes. The Flipside of Dominick Hide, originally scheduled to air at 9.25, went out instead at 9.37. The play, which was well received by critics, and went on to become a minor cult classic, can’t have benefited from the schedule upheaval and for many viewers would have been totally eclipsed by the news from New York. I finally got to see it myself two years later, when it was repeated ahead of its sequel, Another Flip for Dominick. I found it charmingly offbeat, original and different; but I certainly wasn’t in the mood for it on December 9, 1980...

Over on ITV, there was less to see. The commercial channel owned no Beatle films that could be shown, and with ad space having been sold in advance, the primetime schedule was non-negotiable. For the record, viewers in the Anglia region would have seen Crossroads at 6.30, followed by a quiz, Gambit, and a half hour comedy. At 8pm, there was a networked two-hour drama starring Tom Bell, The Sailor's Return, followed by News at Ten. It was only in the post-news slot that anything changed, with the scheduled late night film replaced by a very poor studio discussion about Lennon's life and work that hardly bore comparison with the BBC's fulsome tribute.

Somewhat ironically, the BBC's play, The Flipside of Dominick Hide, dealt with a visitor from the future who accidentally alters history and becomes his own destiny. History had indeed been altered on December 8 1980. For years, a Beatle reunion had been rumoured, denied and rumoured yet again. In the months before Lennon's murder, there had been renewed contact with Paul McCartney – and who knows what might have happened if events had panned out differently.

The BBC's Genome database, derived from Radio Times listings, still presents the evening's television as it was originally intended. Reading it is like receiving a communique from a parallel universe where John Lennon is still alive, and a loser from Hawaii was never born.

December 75: Week Two

Continuing my trawl through the pages of my 1975 diary for the month of December. The diary itself is now falling apart, and has to be held together with an elastic band. It wasn't even, in the strictest sense, a 1975 diary, since it only included numeric dates, without the days of the week, so it could be used for any year. It looks like it might have come from a discount warehouse – my parents spent a lot of time shopping for bargains in such places in the austere mid-70s.

Monday 8th:Read OHMSS. Watch The Goodies. Orchestra cancelled. Play Monopoly. Dave is away so retain Supercar Annual.'

The Monopoly set was a fairly recent arrival, a wartime 'austerity' edition that came from our Grandparents. The principal difference between this and 'normal' Monopoly sets was the playing pieces: when the original game was devised, they'd been chosen randomly from a charm bracelet, and were traditionally presented as tiny 3d objects – a Scottie dog, a racing car, a boot, etc. Our set had simplified pieces, printed on cardboard and slotted into coloured wooden bases. The houses and hotels were basic wooden shapes stained red or green that looked as if they'd been cut from strips of beading. Games could go on for days at a time...

In tonight's repeated episode of The Goodies, the trio took a satirical look at the film industry. 

Tuesday 9th: 'Read On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, David’s Supercar Annual & The Story of Pop. Wrap up Xmas presents. Nothing on TV.'

Wednesday 10th: 'Go to Nanny & Grandad’s. Read Supercar Annual & OHMSS. Nothing on TV.'

‘Nothing on TV’ was a common complaint in my diaries of this era, and shouldn’t be taken literally. There wasn’t a strike on or anything like that: just an evening’s worth of programmes that held no appeal for me. So what, exactly, did ‘nothing’ consist of? ITV’s primetime schedule for Wednesday 10 December 1975 began at 7.00pm with This is Your Life: a must-see programme for many viewers, but one that I never bothered with. Coronation Street followed at 7.30 – the soap was this week celebrating its 1000th edition, an event which earned it the cover on the TV Times. Benny Hill followed at 8.00pm, but as we were visiting our grandparents, I didn’t get to see him. The rest of the evening consisted of a documentary about Mongolia (9pm-10pm: imagine anything like that being on ITV in 2025!) followed by News at Ten and football coverage from 10.30. 

BBC1 offered us the wartime movie Ice Cold in Alex, which I discovered a year or so later (and was coincidentally scheduled this past week), followed by the 9.00 News and Sports Review of 1975 (which definitely equated to ‘nothing’ in my book). Tonight at 10.45 was followed by The Sky at Night. BBC2 was a decidedly dry affair, with the evening programmes beginning at 7.05pm with Trade Union Studies, followed by Newsday and The Vera Lynn Show (looking decidedly anachronistic in the schedules of 1975). Arena at 8.35 examined the career of ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, followed by Face the Music, a rather erudite quiz which I’m only now discovering via repeats on BBC4. At 9.30, Globe Theatre presented ‘a season of distinguished television productions from overseas.’ Try finding anything like that in the schedules of today! At 10.25, In Concert featured ‘a young Australian singer/pianist’ John Christie, whose career can’t have been helped by his sharing the same name as the notorious Rillington Place murderer… Newsnight followed at 10.55: this wasn’t the discussion programme that’s still going today, but a 15-minute late night news summary.

And that’s ‘nothing on TV’ for you... 

Thursday 11th: 'Watch Space:1999 ‘The Full Circle.’ Finish drawing second story in S Car Annual. Read Supercar Annual & OHMSS.'

Space:1999’s first bona fide stinker premiered this evening. I abhor anything with cavemen in it (making an honourable exception for 2001), and tonight’s episode had the crew of Moonbase Alpha transformed into gurning, grunting, animal skin-wearing neanderthals, after venturing into a patch of mist. Naturally, the script offered no explanation for any of this. 

Friday 12th: 'Start on giant-size Fireball story for exhibition. Last film before Xmas, ‘When 8 Bells Toll.’ Watch Sykes & Tom & Jerry. Read OHMSS.'

The 'giant-size Fireball story' was probably the biggest comic strip I ever drew, taking up an A2 piece of art board, and drawn in the manner of Mike Noble. I don’t recollect what or where the exhibition was. I do know that the comic strip hung around the art room at school for a long time afterwards. It may still be there for all I know. There is, however, no chance at all of its being sold online as a Mike Noble original...

When Eight Bells Toll was presented by the school film society, about which I shall expound in greater detail elsewhere...

Saturday 13th: 'Put up tree & decorations. Watch Tiswas with Captain Scarlet ‘Attack on Cloudbase’. Go to Erdington. Get Xmas TV Times. From green market get 2nd Man from Uncle Annual. Also get cuban heels & sweater. Watch Dr. Who.'

Captain Scarlet was one of the first episodes I was able to see in colour. It had been stripped, somewhat incongruously, into Tiswas since earlier in the year, and I’d managed to catch a couple of episodes this way, although to do so meant having to sit through much of Tiswas – and I may be unique amongst my generation for never really liking the programme. A lot of my friends at school used to tune in, but their appreciation was always of a post modern ironic variety.

Cuban heels? In 1975? This looks like an early indicator of where I would be heading, sartorially speaking, a few years down the line...

According to the diary, I’d already put up the decorations on Sunday 7^th, but those were almost certainly a small tinsel tree and some dusty old paperchains that went up in my bedroom. Today’s efforts involved the ‘big’ tree, a five foot example dating from 1961 and made of green paper rather than tinsel.

Laurel and Hardy's chart success is reported in the Birmingham Evening Mail, 18.11.75

Sunday 14th: 'Listen to Double Top Ten Show & Top 20. Nothing on TV. Do special XL5 story. Play guitar.'

Listening to the top 20 countdown on Sunday teatime had been a ritual in our household since the late 1960s. During autumn 1975, I’d not been able to watch Top of the Pops because it clashed with Space:1999 on ITV. So the Sunday top 20, still presided over by Tom Browne, was my guide to what was happening in the pop charts, which were getting all festive...

Greg Lake’s future classic ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ had entered the top 40 on 30 November, but would be kept off the top spot by Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ which had taken up residence at number one the previous week. By Christmas, the chart was bedecked with numerous festive offerings dotted around the top 40 like fairylights: Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Trail of the Lonesome Pine’, extracted from the soundtrack of their 1937 feature Way Out West, vyed with Greg Lake for the number two spot. Although not festive in content, the L&H single had clearly been released with the Christmas market in mind.

Dana’s dreary ‘It’s Gonna be a Cold, Cold Christmas’ peaked at a respectable number 4, while Chubby Chcker’s ‘Let’s Twist’ again was exhumed for the party market. Judge Dread, whose records were subject to a blanket airplay ban by the BBC, offered up ‘Christmas in Dreadland’ for anyone into his particular brand of reggae with filthy lyrics. Steeleye Span’s ‘All Around My Hat’, whilst again not referencing Christmas as such, clearly aimed to take advantage of the season of goodwill to all folk rock groups, while Mike Oldfield’s ‘In Dulci Jubilo’ was unambiguously seasonal, soon to be taken up by the BBC as a festive music bed for their Christmas programme trails.

The Wombles were slipping: ‘Let’s Womble to the Party Tonight’ only managed number 34 and would prove to be their last chart entry of the 1970s. The Carpenters did no better with their cover of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ (peaking at no.37), and Freddie Starr’s unnecessary cover of ‘White Christmas’ didn’t deserve its highest chart position of No.41. The Band of the Black Watch attempted to hitch a ride on the Laurel and Hardy bandwagon with their version of the comedians’ signature tune ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’, but only managed a position of No.37. If Christmas 1975 taught any lessons to the aspiring stars of the era it was that you didn’t need festive trappings to secure that coveted Christmas number one – just originality and panache, as evidenced by Mr. Mercury and friends.

Next time... from the school orchestra to Lord Rockingham's XI

December '75: Week One

Fifty years ago, I was keeping a diary. Mostly, it's a record of what I watched on TV, the books I was reading, the music I was listening to. I never imagined myself re-reading those entries half a century later, and in many respects little has changed: I'm still watching many of the same TV series, and playing the same records. For the month of December, I'm going to revisit my entries week by week, looking at what's changed and what hasn't, what deserves to be remembered and what doesn't... 

Monday 1 December: 'Ill. Watch Clapperboard (with an excerpt from A Hard Day’s Night) + Batman. Do Supercar annual. The Goodies in Big Bunny.'

It was unusual for me to watch Clapperboard, Granada’s film review series aimed at younger viewers, partly on account of the fact that Clapperboard tended to be shown at around 4.20pm when I wasn’t yet home from school. On this occasion I was off sick. Back in 1975, it was worth tuning in just to see a small snippet of A Hard Day’s Night: I’d only seen the film once, and wouldn’t get to see it again until a BBC2 season of Beatles films at Christmas 1979.

Monday nights through autumn 1975 had meant a date with The Sweeney, but the series had ended the week before, with the deferred episode Thou Shalt Not Kill – its original scheduled transmission had been cancelled on account of a recent real life hostage situation, the so-called ‘Spaghetti House Siege’ which lasted between 28 September and 3 October. The Sweeney’s intended series finale, the semi-comic Trojan Bus, had been shown in its place on 3 November.

Tonight’s episode of The Goodies was a repeat of Invasion of the Moon Creatures AKA Big Bunny, first seen on 8 December 1973 and never repeated again after this broadcast. Following their chart success with ‘The Inbetweenies’/’Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me’ the following year, and more notably, ‘The Funky Gibbon’ in March '75, the trio were aiming at the charts again with ‘Make a Daft Noise for Christmas’, which only just scraped into the Top 20. 

Tuesday 2 December: 'Watch The Invisible Man ‘Klae Dynasty’ and the return of a series of repeats of Are You Being Served, Up Captain Peacock. The Staff Bog.'

US import The Invisible Man had been in residence on Friday evenings since late September, and now began a couple of weeks of being shunted around the schedule as the BBC raced to cram in all the available episodes before Christmas. The premise was unnecessarily clunky: in order to make himself ‘visible’, scientist Daniel Westin (David McCallum) had to don a rubber face mask and wig (presumably fitting the latter over his existing invisible hair?) If ever there was a case of the creators of a series not thinking their concept through properly, this was it. Only twelve episodes were made, and the show was replaced the following year by the very similar, but more straightforward Gemini Man – who only had to flick a switch on his watch to activate his invisibility. Personally, I find posting anything on social media works just as well...

Tonight’s repeat of Are You Being Served, Up Captain Peacock was one I already regarded as a classic: Peacock is rewarded for his twenty years’ service at Grace Brothers with the key to the ‘executive washroom’. This provokes the ire of the much longer serving Mr. Grainger, who at one point in the episode grumpily informs Captain Peacock that he’s going to ‘the staff bog!’ Hence my diary entry.

Wednesday 3 December: 'Film, Our Man Flint with James Coburn about trying to take over the world by controlling the weather on an island. Read Dr. Who and the Abominable Snowmen.'

It seems hard to credit now, but Our Man Flint (1966) was ITV’s big film of the week, earning its star James Coburn the cover of the TV Times. The two Flint films from the mid 60s, tacky cash-ins on the Bond phenomenon, are mostly forgotten today; and who needed Bond by numbers anyway when ITV was giving us the real thing. Dr. No had been on only weeks before, next to which Our Man Flint had all the credibility of Carry On Spying. Probably not even that much, actually...

James Coburn is also largely forgotten today, a name that seldom if ever troubles the compilers of pop culture retrospectives. His star was already well in the descendant by the mid 70s by which time he was in a relationship with the singer/songwriter Lynsey de Paul, even assisting her with her songwriting. As she put it herself in one of the UK’s less impressive Eurovision entries: ‘where are we? Rock bottom…’

Dr Who and the Abominable Snowmen was, of course, the classic Target paperback novelisation of the Patrick Troughton adventure which, in its televisual incarnation had been junked by the time I came to read it. Re-reading the book for the purposes of this blog, I find it hard to understand why the serial is such a fan favourite. There's the usual amount of to-ing and fro-ing, with characters getting locked up, escaping, and so forth, and the Yeti making occasional incursions – but as monsters they simply don't do enough: they can't speak, they use no weapons and whilst they might well have worked on screen, on paper they never come to life. The story is the usual schtick about an alien intelligence trying to take over the Earth, this time by smothering it in goo.

Thursday  December: '2 weeks to break up. Read Dr. Who and the Yeti. Space 1999 ‘Earthbound’ & Dr. On the Go A Run for Your Money. Start OHMSS again.'

Tonight’s Space:1999 was one of the best episodes from series one, with a memorable ending that saw returning character Commissioner Simmonds (Roy Dotrice) blackmail his way onto an alien ship bound for Earth, with disastrous consequences.

Dr. On the Go was rather less memorable. A fun series to watch at the time, I’ve never felt the need to revisit it, despite having owned it on DVD for nearly twenty years, and have no recollection of this evening’s episode.

Having finished with Dr. Who and the Abominable Snowmen, I returned to another snow-covered setting for my second reading of Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, easily the best of the Bond novels. My choice of books was sadly not reflected by the weather, which remained resolutely dull, dry and mild. In Greg Lake's Christmas hit 'it just kept on raining', but the Met Office monthly report tells us otherwise: rainfall totals for December ‘75 were below average and the monthly summary was ‘mild in north, cooler in south: mainly dry’. This would not be a white Christmas...

Friday 5 December: 'Read OHMSS (2^nd time). Borrow Supercar Annual off David. Read Supercar Annual & do more to own version. Go to Nanny & Grandad’s. Trinity Tales.' 

Trinity Tales is a red herring, because I didn't get to see the series until a repeat run in 1977, and the diary entry was added later on, simply to note when the episodes had originally been shown. Alan Plater's serial was a modern day take on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, following a group of rugby supporters on their way to Wembley for a cup final. En route, each occupant of the supporters’ club mini bus tells a story, which is acted out by the cast, of which Francis Matthews and Bill Maynard were the stars. A forgotten series today, it’s probably worth a revival on BBC4 or even Talking Pictures...

The Supercar Annual was a thorny issue: my friend David had nabbed it literally from under my nose at our grammar school’s Christmas bazaar, and I had to make do with a 1967 Avengers Annual instead. As a form of atonement for sniping the Supercar Annual, David had lent it to me for a week or so while I set to work creating an original one of my own. Today, you'll easily find that old Supercar Annual on eBay, but back in the 1970s it was a rare find indeed, and it took me years to track down a copy (thank you Nostalgia and Comics...)

Saturday 6 December: 'Go to Lichfield in morn. Get: Dangerman ‘The Exterminator’ from a book bargain place (must go again), ‘Thunderbirds’ paperback from a bazaar, the 3 Drs and Dr Who Monster book. Go to Sutton in afternoon. Get Space:1999 6. Watch Dr. Who. Film, The Last Voyage. Supercar Annual.'

The Last Voyage (1960) is another largely forgotten flick, a disaster movie before the term had even been coined. Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone and Edmond O’Brien starred in a spectacularly destructive epic depicting the sinking of a cruise liner, directed and written by Andrew L. Stone (a highlight in a mostly undistinguished career). A condemned liner, The SS Ile de France was destroyed in the Sea of Japan for the purposes of the film, grievously annoying its owners who issued instructions that no such practise would be allowed in the future, and insisted that the vessel’s name be obliterated before filming could start. Stunts like this didn’t come cheap: the film had a budget of over a million dollars, but took two million at the box office. I remember it as a decent, if unsubtle effort, the most memorable scene being Robert Stack attempting to reach his young daughter who is trapped on the far side of a massive hole that’s been blown through the decks of the liner. The special effects were much praised at the time of the film’s release, and had the virtue of being done for real.

The Last Voyage was once a staple of BBC action/adventure film seasons and matinees, and was scheduled no fewer than eleven times between 1970 and 2007: 1970 (10 January), 1975 (6 December), 1979 (19 May), 1983 (18 June), 1993 (29 Jul), 1995 (7 September), 1998 (11 April), 2000 (14 Oct), 2004 (18 February), 2005 (9 Sept), 2007 (9 Sept). These days, you'll struggle to find it anywhere.

Sunday 7 December: 'Watch Laurel & Hardy ‘County Hospital’ & Tom and Jerry. Read Supercar Annual & OHMSS. Do more to Supercar Annual. Put up decorations. Listen to Top Twenty & D.T.T. show.'

Just a typical Sunday in 1975 – Jimmy Savile at lunchtime, Laurel and Hardy in the afternoon. When I wasn't watching television, I was drawing, or putting up some old Christmas decorations in my bedroom.

Next time: Christmas in the pop charts... Captain Scarlet in Tiswas... and Space:1999 serves up a stinker.