Monday 22nd: '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 23rd: '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...
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