Diaries of Christmas Past

 

When I started this blog, back in 2016, my original source of reference was the diaries I’d kept, sporadically, beginning in January 1971 and detailing, for the most part, what I saw on TV, what comics I read, and so forth – the idea being to convey some idea of how it felt to encounter some iconic pop cultural phenomena on their first appearance.

The diaries were seldom written in any great detail, and there are often large blanks, some of which I filled in at the time by referring back to copies of the Radio and TV Times to remind myself what I’d watched and when (I was in the habit of keeping whole copies from around 1976 onwards). But as a general rule, I would write in a little more detail around Christmas time – television tended to up its game, and there were new toys, books and records deserving of a mention.

So, for my next few entries, I’m going back to the diaries of the 1970s to see what I was watching all those Christmases ago. The first diary that contains any entries around Christmas time is 1974, and starting on Sunday 22 December, I note that I watched the big film on BBC1 that evening, Grand Prix... these days seldom seen on television, and a very distracting movie to watch on account of its reliance on split screen techniques. The Sunday-before-Christmas primetime slot suggested the BBC considered it a blockbuster, and it was certainly promoted as such, but today it is a near-forgotten movie.

Of much greater enduring interest that same evening, separated from the big movie by the news bulletin, was the Omnibus documentary Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy, a timely retrospective of the film careers of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, which yielded valuable archival interviews with many survivors of the era including their boss, Hal Roach Jr, who outlived his two comedy stars by several decades. This was the first L&H documentary ever attempted on television, but sadly, save for occasional exhumations of choice interview clips, it has languished in the archive for years.

Since 1972, holiday seasons meant daytime television repeats, and the BBC were running episodes of Star Trek throughout the festive season, billed as ‘Holiday Star Trek’, in a short tradition that would continue into the following year. Somewhat amusingly, the Radio Times billing refers to ‘the return of the real-life Captain Kirk’, the cartoon series having lately usurped the original in the schedules. My diary records that I saw the episode brodacast on Monday December 23, the classic tranporter malfunction tale The Enemy Within. The diary also records that on the same day, I saw ‘Boss Cat’ (I actually wrote it thus, preserving the BBC’s own appellation) – this at 9.55am. Later on, there was a Christmas Blue Peter which illustrated the theatrical ‘Kirby Wire’ flying harness in operation on the pantomime circuit. But the evening’s must-see programme came at 9.05pm on BBC2 in the form of a Horizon episode looking at the work of special effects in film and television, a subject which already fascinated me. Aside from glimpses of classics like King Kong and Mighty Joe Young (neither of which I had seen since the 1960s), the programme also offered viewers a fleeting first glimpse of Gerry Anderson’s Space:1999, which would not come to air for another nine months. Two great documentaries in a single festive season? The BBC would never reach such heights again, at least not in my estimation.

Monday December 23 concluded with what was fast becoming a Christmas tradition in the form of a filmed adaptation of an M.R. James ghost story. I’d seen my first of these back on Christmas Eve 1972, with the eerily atmospheric A Warning to the Curious, itself the second in the series and arguably one of the best editions. 1974’s offering was without doubt the very best: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas featured a notable performance from the great Shakespearean actor Michael Bryant – a face familiar to me from his memorable single-episode appearance in the series Colditz. I’m not sure I found Abbot Thomas quite the equal of A Warning... at the time, possibly on account of its antiquated atmosphere, and more obliquely realised threat, but when I finally saw it again, on a 1983 repeat, its greatness was instantly apparent. By that time, video recording was available and I had the presence of mind to commit Abbot Thomas to VHS, in which form I re-watched it on many successive Christmases... when a little slime may or may not have bubbled under the front door...

Christmas Eve ‘74 brought us what would go on to become a perennial classic festive sitcom episode, in the form of The Likely Lads (losing it’s ‘Whatever Happened to...’ prefix for this one-off festive edition). It’s probably the best of all of Bob and Terry’s televised adventures, albeit nobody knew at the time that we’d see no more of them (aside from 1976’s cinema outing, itself a staple of festive telly in years to come). We’d been out visiting relatives during the afternoon, but were back home in time for the lads' festive special. The episode has been much repeated over the years but today is to be seen in slightly modified form, a reference to Rolf Harris having been expunged by the BBC. Those wishing to see the unbowdlerised version are advised to seek out the DVD release.

This classic was followed by the evening’s big film Ice Station Zebra, receiving what must have been its British television premiere. The trails for this focused heavily on Patrick McGoohan’s scenery-chewing performance... ‘put another torpedo up the spout, blow another hole in the ice, but GET ME THERE!’ he roared.

Christmas Day highlights, as recorded by the diary, were The Generation Game, Mike Yarwood and Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. No mention of Morecambe and Wise, and for good reason: inexplicably, there was no Eric and Ernie Christmas Show that year. Frank Spencer had bagged the cover of the Christmas double issue of The Radio Times (in the days before it had become, ahem, ‘legendary’) and his show, airing at 7.15pm on Christmas Night, was clearly the big draw of the year. One festive televisual tradition that seems to have fallen out of favour this year was the ‘Christmas Night With the Stars’ compilation, a mix of sitcom snippets and variety items that had been a popular Christmas Day tradition for at least a decade.

Boxing Day brought another festive tradition in the form of a Beatles movie. You only got one a year, and this year’s offering was Help!, going out at 10.30 am immediately after Star Trek’s dodgy Halloween outing Catspaw. Elsewhere in the schedules, The Magnificent Seven lost out in our house to ITV’s big evening movie offering, The Valley of Gwangi, with the dinosaur exiting stage left just in time to turn over for a slightly disappointing Christmas Steptoe and Son on BBC1 at 9.05. The ‘Harold wants a holiday and the old man doesn’t’ trope had been played out on previous occasions, and it’s a shame that Galton and Simpson chose to revisit this well-worn scenario for what would prove to be the very last episode of their classic creation.

With that, the festive telly entries in the 1974 diary begin to fizzle out... there were new LPs waiting to be played (one of them is still waiting, 46 years later), annuals to be read, games to be played. Was 1974 the year of Haunted House? The diary makes no mention, but does refer to something called Spy Trap, which despite the intriguing title, was a fairly primitive variation on ludo.

The diary does include honourable mentions for Top of the Pops ‘74 and the traditional ‘complete’ Dr. Who serial Planet of the Spiders, both duly noted for Friday December 27. And speaking of that pesky timelord, he’d only gone and changed his appearance, because Saturday evening brought the intriguing prospect of a new face in the Tardis.

New Year’s eve offered an Old Grey Whistle Test special, a tradition which arguably continues to date in the form of Jools Holland’s ‘Hootenanny’. And on New Year’s Day itself, we got an episode of UFO, The Pyschobombs... which was my first look at the series in colour.

Next time, we’ll fast forward to December ‘75...