Strange as it is to recount, I have less recollection of Christmas 1983 than I do of the festivities ten years earlier. Not having kept a diary that year, I have no idea what gifts I gave or received, though by this time, LPs were almost guaranteed for Christmas, and annuals had been replaced by gift books of varying quality, none of which has left any lasting impression.
One thing I can say definitively about this festive season was that it was my first as an employee: I’d joined the staff of a small Birmingham-based advertising agency back in May, and in the week before Christmas we all decamped to a corner pub diagonally opposite the Hippodrome Theatre. The pub retained its Victorian interior and was decorated with photos, playbills and sheet music reflecting its long history as a watering hole for thesps and music hall entertainers like Dan Leno. Our traditional Christmas dinner was served in a rear function room of Dickensian aspect, the smell of boiled sprouts and turkey wafting through to the saloon bar while we had our pre-dinner drinks. The jukebox was playing Paul Young’s Love of the Common People, which was currently riding high in the charts. The windows were all steamed up from the cooking. This is the clearest memory I have of that forty-year-old Christmas, and I have to look elsewhere to get a better idea of what else might have been going on.
The pop charts offer a few clues, but nothing significant. Christmas singles were, of course, unavoidable by 1983, with the most enduring of this year’s crop proving to be the Pretenders’ 2000 Miles. I’d heard a novelty single on the radio one afternoon at work, which Steve Wright suggested might be the work of XTC. I didn’t believe it myself – surely they wouldn’t stoop to such banal festive tat as Thanks for Christmas? But Wrighty was right: under the pseudonym The Three Wise Men, the Swindon trio had released a Christmas single replete with trumpets, twelve-string guitars and sleighbells. Despite getting Radio One airplay, it failled enter the Top 100 singles chart (as a meaasure of its lack of success, the theme from Terrahawks sold more copies). I bought a copy of XTC’s effort out of loyalty to the band, and got over my initial antipathy towards it.
Elsewhere in the Top 100 of Christmas week, Elton John’s dreary Cold as Christmas had crawled up to an unimpressive number 33 while Slade’s Merry Xmas Everyone was out on its third release, ten years on from its original success. Slade’s activities weren’t confined to reissues, however, and their current release My Oh My was aimed squarely at the New Year’s Eve crowd with its folksy singalong melody. The top spot that year had been annexed by acapella vocal group The Flying Pickets, whose arrangement of Yazoo’s Only You had nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas: this didn’t stop them from appearing on the Christmas Top of the Pops dressed as snowmen. I hated it as much then as I do today. Also appearing in the ‘Christmas single that isn’t Christmassy’ category was Paul McCartney, whose Pipes of Peace included Indian tablas but not a single sleighbell. Only the video made clear its festive aspirations, with Macca recreating the famous Christmas truce between the front line troops of 1914. By this time, my musical tastes were drifting away from the Top 20, and in the whole top 100 of Christmas week, there are only a handful of records I own – and two of those were reissues.
I was also drifting away from the television set, so I don’t have any particular fond memories of that year’s festive line-up. Christmas Eve on BBC1 included a repeat of the Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em special of 1978, followed by a seasonal edition of Pop Quiz. The evening’s main event was the premiere of the movie Flash Gordon, a mere three years on from its theatrical release. Flash (ah-ah) was bookended by Little and Large and Val Doonican. Later in the evening came an edition of Bergerac (snore) and a Christmas special of The Good Old Days, a show I always took great care to avoid seeing. In fact, judging by the schedule, I’m sure I must have been out that evening. I didn’t see Flash Gordon until nearly twenty years later.
BBC2 offered a more interesting line-up, including an adaptation of Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie and a couple of Cary Grant movies. But none of it rings any bells.
Christmas Day television no longer included the once obligatory visit to a children’s ward, but children featured prominently in the morning schedule, offering ‘songs, pictures and thoughts about the Nativity’ at 9.50. Not a broken leg or later-to-be-disgraced celebrity presenter in sight. But not so fast… because the dread antipodean bearded one whose name we dare not utter managed to worm his way into the listings, with an animated adventure, The Little Convict, featuring his character Jake the Peg.
Christmas Top of the Pops occupied its time-honoured post-prandial slot of 2pm, leading viewers nicely up to the Queen’s speech. The rest of the afternoon was given over to Blanketty Blank and the 1950 film of Treasure Island, which despite its 33-year-old vintage was at least in colour. Following the news at 5.25pm, up popped another Ghost of Christmas Past in the shape of Jim’ll Fix It, whose contents included ‘how to crack Christmas walnuts.’ I’m saying nothing.
The evening’s big hitters came courtesy of The Two Ronnies, All Creatures Great and Small and the inevitable Only Fools and Horses – which in scheduling terms was surely The Mrs. Brown’s Boys of its day. Except that it was funny. I’m sure I sat through all that lot. In the immortal words of Robert Scarborough Ferris, ‘Christmas night, full of food, you just want to sit back in an armchair and watch the box.’ Unusually, the Christmas edition of The Likely Lads does not appear to have been dusted off this year, although The Good Life’s Silly But it’s Fun got a lunchtime outing on Boxing Day. I most likely recorded this. It was followed by the feature film Bridge on the River Kwai, perfect scheduling for a Boxing Day afternoon. Pass the nuts…
Boxing Day’s festive nightmare came courtesy of Keith Harris and (the) Orville, who hosted their Christmas party at 4.35pm. I declined the invitation. And, oh dear me, it just got worse after that. Who, honestly, wanted to see the Circus World Championships on this or any other day? Only the participants, I’ll wager. I bloody hate circuses (sorry, I seem to be turning into Alexei Sayle...)
Then… having seen off that sawdust-ridden offering, we got... Paul Daniels (good magician, but whose brand of schtick I liked not a lot)… Kenny Everett (never got him at all… the endless manic carrying on. Next, please…) Oh God, Rocky. As in Sly Stallone, rather than the chocolate biscuit or Raccoon. I may even have watched a bit of this, though I promise never to do so again.
Over on BBC2, the evening line-up included A Life in the Theatre: Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (thanks, but no thanks) and the ballet of La Scala presenting Romeo and Juliet (cue old Man Steptoe grimacing face). These were the days when BBC2 was still determinedly BBC2. It was left to the graveyard slot to bring out the best two items of the day, and wouldn’t you know it, they clashed. Over on BBC1, we got the first ever repeat of 1974’s Ghost Story for Christmas, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, while BBC2 offered us The Ipcress File. You could, of course, record one whilst watching the other, but you couldn’t record both. My VHS copy of Abbot Thomas dates to a decade later, so if either offering made it onto tape, it was Ipcress.
So much for popular culture, but what of the climate? Did it snow? This was, after all, the 1980s, and only two years on from a notably wintry December where snow lay crisp and even for most of Christmas week, although the failure of a single flake to land on the Met Office roof during December 25th meant it failed to meet the criteria for an official White Christmas (as recognised by bookmakers). Christmas 1981 certainly had lying snow where I lived in the Midlands, but 1983 didn’t quite measure up, with the Met Office monthly report summarising conditions as ‘mostly mild and unsettled’, the monthly maximum temperature having been recorded at Colwyn Bay on the 27th, at a balmy 16.5 degrees. And you thought global warming was invented by Greta Thunberg… Snow did actually fall, albeit too early for Christmas, by which time the milder weather had set in. Moderate to heavy accumulations were recorded on the 11th and 12th, mostly over higher ground from Wales and the Midlands northwards. I can’t remember whether we got any at home in Birmingham, but I usually photographed any notable snowfalls and have nothing to show for this particular year.
So this was Christmas… and what did we do? Sorry, I can’t remember. Maybe I’ll do better in another ten years’ time…
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