Decades of Christmas Past: 1993

Christmas 1993 saw some changes in my personal circumstances compared with a decade earlier. For one thing, I was no longer going out to work: I’d become freelance in 1991, so aside from work commitments, I was a free agent – albeit one with limited resources. I kept a partial diary this year, mostly as a place to record out-of-pocket expenses that could be claimed back on my tax return, and the Christmas period saw a full run of entries beginning on Monday 20th December and continuing on into January.

Monday 20th December brought what everyone wants for Christmas – snow. I'd spent the afternoon visiting a friend, and drove home into a virtual blizzard. Despite the worsening conditions, I went out later to meet up with some other friends at a rural pub: surely not a great idea. The gritters had been caught out, and even the dual carriageway A38 was like driving through mashed potato. At home later, I watched Newman and Baddiel’s Christmas in Pieces. Now, there’s a comedy double act that time has forgotten. I think this 30-year-old relic must now qualify as a ghost of Christmas past; or to put it in the idiom of the show’s two infantile history professors: “You see an old television programme that nobody remembers apart from really old people? That’s you, that is.”

The snow endured overnight, thanks to sub zero temperatures, and the following morning I took some Christmas card-type photos around the Cathedral in Lichfield, where I was now living. The odds on a White Christmas must have upped considerably, but we were to be disappointed: the following day brought a thaw and heavy rain. Bah, humbug…

One festive tradition that has endured down the years is the Christmas Double Issue of the Radio and TV Times. As the above image shows, the RT now included complete programme listings across all available channels, meaning that one no longer had to buy the TV Times as well. The cover artwork was by Mick Brownfield, whose work monopolised the festive RT covers during the early 90s. I didn't care for this year's offering, and I seem to recollect seeing a few complaining letters about it in the new year. You couldn't argue with Brownfield's technique, but the toothless kid was an ugly image to have staring up at you from the coffee table over the festive season. I folded the front cover inside out so as to avoid looking at it. Brownfield had provided the covers for 1991 and 1992, but 1993 was his last year on the job, and I bet that gappy-toothed kid had something to do with it.

Wednesday the 22nd gives us a couple more clues to the prevailing televisual climate. At 6pm, the BBC2 offered us a Star Trek premiere in the form of the previously unbroadcast Plato’s Stepchildren. Best described as interesting but awful. Later in the evening, my diary records that I watched the final episode of Stark, a three-part serial produced in collaboration between the BBC and the Australian ABC network, and based on Ben Elton’s novel of 1989. I remember the novel generating a fair amount of media interest on its release. Comedian writes novel? Whatever next? Step forward Stephen Fry and… just about everybody else. As to the TV adaptation of Stark, if it wasn't for my diary entry, I’d have assumed I never saw it. Less than nothing of it remains in my recollection. Which is probably for the best. Having said which, I suspect Elon Musk may still be hoping to turn the novel’s premise – super rich bastards abandon eco-disaster Earth in spaceships – into a reality.

That same evening (December 22nd), on video, I watched Monday night’s episode of Prime Suspect, now in its third series. But again, like Newman and Baddiel, this award-winning show seems to be sliding slowly into obscurity. Netflix made it available to stream in 2013, but that’s a decade ago, as was the blu-ray release from now-defunct Acorn Media. It was certainly one of the most talked about TV series of its decade, and made Helen Mirren a household name if she wasn’t one already.

Thursday 23rd December saw the UNCLE movie The Karate Killers get an airing on BBC2. I’d probably already got this taped, so didn’t bother with it. BBC1 offered us David Attenborough’s Life in the Freezer, a compelling 6-part profile of Antarctia. And you can still watch it, as the whole series has been made available on iPlayer.

My diary reports that I also watched the rom-sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, in which Nicholas Lyndhurst cheated on his present day girlfriend by wandering back in time to the Second World War. Wikipedia describes this as a ‘science fiction’ sitcom, but that makes it sound like Red Dwarf. There was no sci-fi on show here, just a rather pedestrian form of time travel (he merely strolls down a certain street). This week’s was the final episode of its first series. I didn't follow it into the future, but I’m sure it’s probably playing on some satellite channel even as we speak.

Christmas Eve started with a Just William reading on Radio 4. In the afternoon, I watched the classic film Genevieve for possibly the first time. It would not be the last. The evening’s entertainment all came courtesy of VHS tape, on which format I revisited the old Christmas editions of Get Some In! and The Likely Lads. The latter was my prized recording from Tuesday 23 December 1980 of what was only the second screening of this Christmas comedy classic. These days, it can no longer be seen in its original form as Bob’s line ‘I can even take Rolf Harris’ (in reference to Christmas televisual tat) has been excised from all future broadcasts.

Over on ITV, meanwhile, Melvyn Bragg might shudder today at the recollection that The South Bank Show presented a special programme about... Cliff Richard.

That was it for Christmas Eve on the box. Christmas Day on BBC1 offered the resistable Back to the Future III for the afternoon’s entertainment (we didn’t bother), and the by now obligatory Only Fools and Horses at 18.05: ‘the worst ever’ according to my diary. This year’s piece of festive ‘fun’ saw Del put through the emotional wringer when his wife Racquel walked out on him. If that wasn’t enough, hard on its heels came EastEnders which could always be relied on to serve up a thick slice of seasonal misery. Birds of a Feather (8pm) may have done better, but as I seldom watched the series, I neither knew nor cared. The evening’s big film was Ghost, but I’d already seen that at the cinema. My diary records that I spent much of the day at our parents’ house reading one of my brother’s Christmas presents – The Kenneth Williams Diaries, which I’d given him myself (cunning, eh?) Boxing Day  on BBC1 included Keeping Up Appearances and One Foot in the Grave, which are almost the yin and yang of 1990s suburban sitcom. Did BBC2 do any better? Well, yes, as a matter of fact: Christmas Day brought us another repeat of The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, now getting its third outing. And this time I taped it.

Boxing Day was not, technically speaking Boxing Day this year, falling as it did on a Sunday. In years past, such as 1976, when December 26th fell on a Sunday, it was known as Christmas Sunday, and 'Boxing Day' became the Bank Holiday Monday, the 27th. My 1976 diary confirms this, but by 1993, the diary insists that Boxing Day was December 26th, with the 27th listed as 'Christmas Holiday'. I always think it's a pity when these old traditions fall out of use.

Despite Monday being a Bank Holiday, some of the shops were open – another sign of the times. From our local Woolworths, I bought a VHS tape of Gerry Anderson's The Secret Service at the reduced price of £5.99, for which you got a whopping four episodes. VHS tapes had also been amongst my Christmas presents, including the Dr. Who serial Terror of the Autons, which I was already making my way through. The evening's TV on BBC1 included shows that I either never watched (Lovejoy) or had fallen out of love with (Last of the Summer Wine). Fortunately, over on BBC2, we were offered a night of programmes curated by comedy flavours of the month Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. I sat through most, if not all of this, taping selected items including a rare Dad's Army sketch from 1972's Christmas Night With the Stars. The big draw for me was Mike Leigh's Nuts In May, which I'd never seen before.

Snow fell again overnight, with my diary recording that there was 'quite a covering' the next morning. This was inconvenient, as I'd arranged to test drive a brand new Vauxhall Corsa that day, and had to postpone until the 29th. My current vehicle, a Rover Metro ('they've rebadged it, you fool' – Alan Partridge) was utterly unreliable, having a tendency to run slow and/or stop altogether in driving rain. The designers had included two pointless vents on the bonnet, which seemed to serve no purpose other than to allow rain into the engine compartment. It was only a few years old, but it had to go, and indeed it did. The snow didn't last either – the diary records that it was gone by evening.

And with that final thaw of 1993, we reach the end of this seasonal look back across the decades. I won't be visiting 2003, its having being a festive season that I'd prefer not to remember; and 2013 is just, well, too recent innit? Whatever decade you choose to inhabit, have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. 1964 is just around the corner – for me, at any rate.