Christmas Minus Fifty

 

A look back at the pop cultural highlights of Christmas 1972

As we clock up yet another Christmas, it’s interesting to reflect on how many of the old chestnuts still roasting on the open fire of popular culture weren’t around this time half a century ago. Oft-repeated Christmas episodes of The Likely Lads, Porridge, The Good Life, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and even Steptoe and Son had not yet been produced. On the radio, Christmas music lay as thinly on the ground as powdered snow: no Slade, Wizzard, Wham, Band Aid, Jona Lewie, Macca, Greg Lake, Pretenders: absolutely nothing existed from what has since become the default pop soundtrack to Christmas. So what, then, were we watching, and listening to on that long ago Christmas of 1972?

Let’s start with Christmas Eve, on BBC1, where broadcasting did not begin until 10am. Programmes kicked off in traditional festive flavour with a Christmas Eve mass from, of all places, Kings’ Heath, Birmingham. This was followed by a cartoon rendition of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (illustrated, according to the Radio Times, ‘in the style of the original … by “Phiz”’. So far, so festive. 

Next up was a travelogue to Jerusalem (try finding anything like that in this year’s schedule), followed by a concert by the Vienna Boys’ Choir. So far, the day’s television could easily have hailed from several decades earlier, as did the next offering, Robert Youngson’s silent movie compilation, The Golden Age of Comedy. Unfortunately, my 1972 diary had fizzled out during the summer holidays, so I have no record of whether we sat down to watch this, but I suspect we probably did. We may have left the set on for Mary, Mungo and Midge: at eleven years old, I was rather too old for such nursery fare, but I adored Johnny Pearson’s theme music. At the time, I imagined it to have been written specially for the series: only much later did I discover that all the music cues were selections from the KPM library.

We certainly didn’t stay around for the next offering, Disney’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. The BBC always tended to include Disney items in their Christmas schedules, but they bored me rigid. I can well remember a subsequent year’s Christmas Eve television including Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase, which was promoted so heavily you’d have thought it was a Hollywood blockbuster. As if this wasn’t enough, there was still more Disney to come at 5.20, in the form of Disney Time. I found this kind of clip compilation somewhat more digestible, but history has not dealt kindly with its antipodean presenter. Between these two festive wedges of Disney was sandwiched another travelogue item, Around the World in Eighty Minutes, described in the Radio Times as ‘a Guided Tour of our Spectacular Planet with Joyce Grenfell, Kenneth Allsop, David Attenborough and Tony Soper’. 

The news at five past six was followed by a twenty-minute film about children with muscular dystrophy. Again, it’s hard to imagine anything like this featuring on prime time Christmas BBC1 these days, where the likes of EastEnders and the merit-free Mrs. Brown hold sway. A respectful mood was maintained across the next two items, namely ‘the story of Jesus told in pictures’ and the obligatory Carols with Kings’ College Choir (almost the only item on offer that can be found in this year’s schedules).

Having done its festive public service duty, the BBC then kicked back and devoted the bulk of the evening’s viewing to a broadcast of the 1961 movie West Side Story, almost certainly its first outing on British television. The main news summary at 9.50pm was followed by an Omnibus profile of Judy Garland before what was for me the highlight of the evening, A Ghost Story for Christmas. Lawrence Gordon Clarke’s film of A Warning to the Curious was only the second in what would become a recurring strand of festive adapatations derived mostly from the works of M.R. James. I definitely stayed up to watch this, having seen the very atmospheric promotional trailer for it which had been aired several times in the run up to broadcast. This demonic offering was offset by the Midnight Eucharist, followed by closedown.

So much for Christmas Eve on BBC1. But what did the other two channels have to offer as alternatives? On BBC2, programmes didn’t start until 4.30pm, with an hour long film, Money at Work: The Poverty of Nations, examining how British aid money was being spent in under-developed countries. Other items during the evening included a festive quiz, Christmas! What’s It All About?, an episode from Alastair Cooke’s ongoing series America, the panel show Face the Music, a play, a Spike Milligan offering, and best of all by a very long way, Alan Bennett’s film A Day Out. This elegaic offering focused on a cycling club outing on a summer Sunday before the First World War, and featured fine performances from a cast of established and up-and-coming character actors. A very young Anthony Andrews appeared briefly, in a cast that included James Cossins, Brian Glover, Fred Feast and Philip Locke.

Christmas on ITV was, inevitably, a much more populist affair: one has only to glance at the cover of the double issue of TVTimes to get a flavour of what was in store. Christmas Eve started traditionally enough, with a Service of Lessons and Carols at 9.30am, followed incongruously by a repeat of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. I was never one to miss an episode, so I can say with certainty that I saw this. I’m not sure if we hung around for the festive edition of pop show Lift Off that followed at 11.00, but if we did, then the next offering was a definite cue to switch off the set: Stars at Christmas With Songs at Christmas featured an eclectic line-up of mostly venerable performers including Frank Ifield, The Beverley Sisters, Bob Monkhouse, and someone called Leila Khalil Utshant (who was neither a terrorist nor a song by the Teardrop Explodes). The archives were raided for the next item on the bill, the 1952 feature film Ivanhoe, which in spite of its age, boasted a production in Technicolor. 

Christmas Eve being a Sunday, ITV’s generic football offering, Star Soccer, filled its customary slot at 2.15, ahead of a song and dance revue, Christmas Company, with a bill that managed to find room for the Mike Sammes Singers, Jack Parnell and his Orchestra (ubiquitous TV performers of the era), and current pop chart one-hit wonders, Lieutenant Pigeon, whose hit 'Mouldy Old Dough' had been roosting at number one during October and November. Sunday also meant The Golden Shot, which by this point in its run was being compered by comedian Norman Vaughan, whose inept handling of contestants has to be seen to be believed. This was followed by Sleeping Beauty On Ice (whose TVTimes listing mysteriously includes Police 5 presenter Shaw Taylor!). Further spectacle followed with a staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I’ve always hated musicals, especially those with Biblical storylines, so I think it’s safe to say that we were either tuned to BBC1 or, more likely, visiting relatives, since I distinctly remember seeing part of the evening’s big feature film, Gigi (1958), on our aunt and uncle’s colour television. Elsewhere in the schedule, ITV’s evening line-up found room for a children’s carol competition (hosted by Alan Partridge inspiration Fred Dineage), a musical special presided over by comic entertainer and pianist Victor Borge, and an Aquarius looking at the Christmas story. In common with BBC1, ITV also featured a midnight mass as an end to the day’s programmes.

What’s remarkable about the line-up on both channels is the lack of festive specials from the big comedy and entertainment names of the era, which both channels were keeping in reserve until the following day. And contrasting today’s schedules, where brand-new drama and comedy tend to dominate prime time on Christmas Eve, both ITV and BBC1 took the ‘easy’ option of filling their mid evening schedules with feature films. Of the two networks, it’s BBC’s offerings that have fared best down the years, with A Warning to the Curious having been broadcast in relatively recent years, as well as featuring on a DVD collection; Alan Bennett’s A Day Out would also enjoy several repeat broadcasts and is still available to view as part of a DVD collection. Of ITV’s schedule, pretty well the only items one could select to watch today are Captain Scarlet, Ivanhoe and Gigi.

Next time, we’ll consider what Christmas Day had to offer.