Bruce Forsyth And The Generation Game New Year's Day Special

As the annual festive battle wears on to decide whether the family will spend this evening watching new spangly Content™ from a surfeit of modern entertainment platforms or a much-loved VHS tape of yuletide specials from yesteryear instead, it is a time of high resolution - it is a time of low resolution - and it is of course time to try and forget about making New Year resolutions altogether...

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is no exception to this televisual knife-edge, and has opted this Hogmanay to watch Bruce Forsyth and The Generation Game's New Year's Day episode from 1973. It's business as usual at Television Centre with a seasonal twist, which means the side-eyes, barbed comments, bickering and general failure to understand any of the rules means the programme should match the mood of your living room, perfectly.

How arbitrary is the scoring system for vast swathes of this game? How axiomatic are Forsyth's helpful hints during its climactic round? And how apoplectic is Ernie going to be when he remembers in three days' time it was the headphones he wanted?

Resolve to press Play every day (or until you forget, around January 4th) and find out...

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: Bruce Forsyth And The Generation Game
Broadcast: Monday 01 January 1973, 18:00
Production/Channel: BBC One
Music: Ronnie Hazelhurst
Director: Roger Ordish
Producer: Alan Tarrant, James Moir
Starring: Bruce Forsyth, Anthea Redfern, Tony Hawes, June Whitfield, Liza Goddard, Jon Pertwee

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The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com

Farmhouse Kitchen / Bullseye 1987 Christmas Celebrity Special

Well the halls are decked, the porches have been lamped and the back passage is well and truly stuffed, which can mean only one thing: it's time once again for The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour Christmas Special! Yuletide is a time for extravagance of course, when year-end budgets are well and truly blown in the name of celebration and merriment. So naturally, our hosts have found two exceptions.

First up on the roster is a look at what we're all going to be eating on the big day, as Dorothy Sleightholme and Stella Boldy show us round Yorkshire Television's innuendo-laden Farmhouse Kitchen, then it's round to Jim Bowen's for a game of the old arrers with some big names in 1987's Bullseye Christmas Celebrity Special. And if a tea-urn full of warm lager isn't quite your thing, some salted almonds are sure to help the drinks go round...

How contained is Bowen's umbrage at having to actually learn lines for a fully scripted show? How restrained is Sleightholme's fury at having to share her studio with a co-presenter? And how ingrained is the urge of three podcast hosts to scour online marketplaces for every single piece of vintage tie-in merchandise that was ever flogged on-screen?

Press the Play button before someone at Central Television realises nobody is keeping a score, and find out...

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: Farmhouse Kitchen: Preparing For Christmas
Broadcast: Friday 20 October 1978, 13:30
Production/Channel: Yorkshire Television, ITV
Music: Reg Wale
Producer/Director: Mary Watts, Andy Gullen
Starring: Dorothy Sleightholme, Stella Boldy

Programme: Bullseye 1987 Christmas Celebrity Special
Broadcast: Sunday 27 December 1987, 14:45
Production/Channel: Central Television / Chatsworth Television, ITV
Writer: Kate Herbert, W&R Chambers
Music: John Patrick
Producer/Director: Bob Cousins, Richard Bradley
Starring: Jim Bowen, Jan Leeming, Bob Carolgees, Duggie Brown, Geoff Capes, Rusty Lee, Steve Nallon, Jockey Wilson, Eric Bristow, Cliff Lazarenko

You can Subscribe, Like, Follow, Rate and Review on:



The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com

Murder She Wrote

Ah, the haunting season seems to arrive earlier every year, and what better way to avoid the hustle and bustle of shoppers laden with absinthe, last minute pumpkins and Tripe Trifle™ than to join the hosts of The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour as they lean into the dark nights with some terrifying television?

This year's Hallowe’en special is a callback to the podcast's formative roots, as Murder She Wrote's Night Of The Tarantula comes under supernatural scrutiny. Leaving the good folk of Cabot Cove to manage without her for a few days, Jessica Fletcher takes a jaunt down to Jamaica to visit an old friend. But while she's packed the sort of wardrobe that could be used as an Ishihara test, it soon becomes apparent that Jess has forgotten to bring the spider-repellent. And the snake-repellent. Oh, and zombie-repellent…

How many glasses of wine can you get out of a bottle from the duty free at Sangster International airport? How many different accents can you crowbar into a single mansion lived in by one family? And how many lines in the sand has Danny La Rue crossed for Angela Lansbury to dish out this sort of theatrical vitriol?

Press Play before Arnold races out of the door, and find out…

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: Murder She Wrote
Broadcast: Friday 02 November 1990, 20:00
Production/Channel: Universal Television, ITV Network
Writer: Chris Manheim
Music: David Bell, John Addison
Producer/Director: Robert E Swanson, Robert Van Scoyk / Vincent McEveety
Starring: Angela Lansbury, John Rhys-Davies, Shani Wallis, Grand L Bush, Cheryl Arutt, Nancy Valen, Hurd Hatfield, Ji-Tu Cumbuka, Patrick Massett, James Lancaster

You can Subscribe, Like, Follow, Rate and Review on:



The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com

The Undersea Aventures Of Captain Nemo

Not quite ready to surface from hibernation, The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour ekes out the last of the dark nights by curling up at the fireside with a good book. Well, the hosts welcome a new guest, crack open a bottle or two and watch a version of that book on the telly. Obviously...

Coming under subaquatic scrutiny this week is 1975's Canadian animated odyssey, The Undersea Adventures Of Captain Nemo, in which everyone's favourite Victorian squid-puncher gets a nuclear-powered modern - if educational - twist.

What are the temporal implications of casually inventing Zoom-meetings and Wikipedia decades before the technology required to run them? What are the legal consequences of failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay? And what are the ethical considerations around having two unpaid child dogsbodies in an enclosed space where someone's smoking 80 Capstan Full-Strength a day?

Get someone to push Play for you and find out...

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: The Undersea Aventures Of Captain Nemo
Broadcast: Monday 26 June 1978, 10:20
Production/Channel: Rainbow Animation, ITV
Writers/Producers/Directors: Jean Mathieson & Al Guest
Starring: Billie Mae Richards, Len Carlson



You can Subscribe, Like, Follow, Rate and Review on:



The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com

Live Into '85 (the New Year show)

JINGS! They said it couldn't be done! Well, they said it shouldn't be done, and they turned out to be right. Yes, it's another edition of The Peggy Mount Hogmanay Hour, and drunken sassenachs Velvet, Blackout and Bognops have stormed the passport control booth at Hadrian's Wall on a haphazard hunt north of the border for some Caledonian culture...

Unfortunately that all sold out a week before Christmas, and all that's left in the gift shop is BBC One's near-legendary end of year debacle: Live Into '85. Laird Tom O'Connor joins with Marquess Maggie Moone and Marquee Moira Anderson to host a rousing night of comedy, dancing, music and fun! Or again, that's what Tom had been booked for until discovering it had sold out etc. More guests appear entirely at their own risk. As at least one of them found out.

Were the BBC cutting broadcast costs by pulling the plug on this while Big Ben was still chiming? Were Big Tom's Pipe Band cutting parking costs by keeping the minibus engine running outside? And what were the management of the Gleneagles Hotel hoping to achieve by combining their all-you-can-drink bar with the crèche?

Push Play to have the answers revealed and branded into your eardrums forever...

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: Live Into '85
Broadcast: Monday 31 December 1984, 23:40
Production/Channel: BBC Scotland, BBC One
Music: David Pringle
Director: Alasdair MacMillan, Anne Somers
Starring: Tom O'Connor, Moira Anderson, Maggie Moone, Bill Torrance, Chic Murray, John Grieve, Modern Romance, Buff Hardie, Steve Robinson, Pipe Major James Liddel, The Pipes and Drums of British Caledonian Airways, The Jim Johnstone Scottish Country Dance Band, The Tom McShane Dancers

You can Subscribe, Like, Follow, Rate and Review on:



The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com

Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees-Up

Christmas comes but once a year, yet thrice it 'casts into your ear(s)! Yes, with the dinner eaten and the games over, the party is in full swing as The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour's festive delving culminates its way to the yuletide jamboree! Approaching an advanced state of refreshment, Doctor Velvet, Blackout and Ozzy Bognops are in the mood for some salt-of-the-earth tinkling of The Old Joann-oh™, and so it's naturally to The Light Channel they turn.

And boogey-woogeying its way down to a studio-approximation of the East End is 1982's incomparable Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees-Up (YouTube edit / ITVx version), where the cockney duo rattle out a handful of their own hits while playing host to Jimmy Cricket, Lennie Peters, Cosmotheka, Albert Lee and Eric Clapton. Variety shows are bread and butter pudding to this podcast of course, and live musical acts come under particular scrutiny - so it's anyone's guess as to how far the goodwill of this particular season will stretch...

Are Chas and Dave starting to regret phoning up their most famous mates for a jam? Has Lennie Peters come down to sort out some right muppet who's bin bad-maafing his mannah? And is Alyn Ainsworth hiding in the Rancor pit?

Put your beer in the sideboard here, let mother press Play and find out...

[Bonus points and/or an extra jellied eel will be awarded to listeners who can sing along AND do The Thirds]

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees-Up
Broadcast: Sat 25 December 1982, 21:30
Production/Channel: London Weekend Television, ITV
Music: Alyn Ainsworth, Trevor Brown
Producer/Director: David Bell, Alasdair Macmillan
Starring: Chas Hodges, Dave Peacock, Mick Burt, Jimmy Cricket, Cosmotheka, Albert Lee, Eric Clapton

And for your attention, a story in three acts:

This drink-stability liability:

And of course these absolute legends:

So rub-a-dub-pub
and Merry Christmas
from
@PeggyMountPod!
x X x

You can Subscribe, Like, Follow, Rate and Review on:



The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet, with additional live accompaniments by Ozzy Bognops. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to PeggyMountPod@gmail.com