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 7th, 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.
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| 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