Friday 31 December 2021

Take The High Road / Family Fortunes Hogmanay Special


OCH! Well help our boabs and jing our crivvens, The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour finds itself queuing once more at Berwick's passport office in an annual pilgrimage northward for the New Year's Eve celebrations, where all Blackout, Doctor Velvet and Ozzy Bognops have to declare is some pretty firm Opinions™ on the television of years past...

Their first-foot is a trip to the rural majesty of Glendarroch, where domestic strife and highfalutin corporate angst stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Will auld acquaintances be forgot in time for the bells to ring in the new year? The only way to find out is to Take The High Road. Then it's a rest from All The Drama and onto All The Fun (or a percentage thereof); no festive season would be complete without a visit from Les Dennis, here this time to host a hooting Hogmanay Special of Family Fortunes as he pits two Scottish clans against one another in a survey-analysis to the death.

Does every croft North Of The Border have a special room where all the sound effects are kept? Do ITV's gameshow booking department only have the phone number of one village hall in Scotland? And how long can Blackout keep doing that accent before half his family disown (or claymore) him?

Make it YOUR New Year's resolution to hit PLAY and find out...

(NOTE: If you want to count down to midnight with us in the show, start the podcast at 22:49:04.
That's forty nine minutes and four seconds past ten o'clock at night. Smashing.)




WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:


Programme:
Take The High Road
Broadcast: Wed 31 December 1980, 13:30
Production /Channel: STV, ITV
Writer: Peter May, Don Houghton (Created By)
Music: Silly Wizard
Producer/Director: Clarke Tait, Peter Barber-Fleming
Starring: Edith McArthur, Paul Kermack, Muriel Romanes, Marjorie Thomson, Peter Finlay, Iain Agnew, Caroline Ashley

Programme:
Family Fortunes Hogmanay Special
Broadcast: Fri 28 December 1990, 19:00
Production /Channel: Central, ITV
Writer: Howard Imber, Wally McKinley, Garry Chambers, Mark Goodson (Created By)
Producer/Director: Tony Wolfe, Jenny Dodd
Starring: Les Dennis, The Smith Family (Terry, Michael, Jerry, Tommy, John), The Nisbet* Family (Wilma, Sandra, Grace, Margaret, Roberta)


*
NISBET!


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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. 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

Friday 24 December 2021

Ludwig / Christmas Night With The Stars


Splash the halls with pints of sherry, fa-la-la-la-laaa etc, it's the joyous culmination of The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour's Yuletide Extravaganza! The final baubles are placed on branches which have already begun shedding into the carpet, the last odd-tasting chocolate is snaffled from behind a cardboard door and washed down with booze it's socially acceptable to drink before 10am, and the well-thumbed double issue of the Radio Times lies open with more biro circles than a spirograph test sheet. Yes, the true meaning of Christmas is celebrated here: watching the telly with a drink in your hand...

Messrs Velvet, Bognops and Blackout retire from a day's important wassailing to observe a mechanical egg making a festive forest look all tacky and low-rent in Ludwig, and then witness the BBC's 1972 light entertainment budget get well and truly rinsed with the stellar (if unrehearsed) line-up of the final Christmas Night With The Stars.

Is a Christmas episode of a programme still a Christmas episode of a programme if it's titled Christmas but no one in it says the word Christmas? Is a Christmas episode of a programme still a Christmas episode of a programme if it's filmed in August and the only seasonal set decorations get added via blue-screen in early December? And why does this podcast keep watching things with Cilla Black in them, when that's clearly only going to go one way?

Unwrap the Play button to find out...



WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:


Programme:
Ludwig (Christmas)
Broadcast: July 1977, 17:35(?)
Channel/Production: BBC One
Writer: Jane Tann / Susan Kodicek
Director/Producer: Mirek Lang / Peter Lang
Starring: Job Glover

Programme:
Christmas Night With The Stars
Broadcast: Mon 25 December 1972, 18:55
Channel/Production: BBC One
Writer: Garry Chambers, Barry Cryer, Ronnie King, Wally Malston, David McKellar, Spike Mullins, David Nobbs, Michael Palin & Terry Jones, Neil Shand & Joe Steeples, Peter Vincent, Dick Vosburgh
Director/Producer: Michael Hurl / Terry Hughes
Starring: Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Cilla Black, Lulu, The Young Generation, Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Clive Dunn, John Laurie, James Beck, Arnold Ridley, ian Lavender, Mike Yarwood, Adrienne Posta, Polly James, Nerys Hughes, Mollie Sugden, Sheila Fay, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Nosher Powell, Sally James.




Subscribe/Like/Follow on:

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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. 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

Friday 17 December 2021

T.Bag's Christmas Turkey / Cilla Black's Christmas


As dear Laird McMullington of Kintyre once slaved 'pon his bureau to note: "The moon is right; the dander's up; we're watching channel three tonight; there's absolute hell on". And as cumbersome as those lyrics may appear in their written form, it's worth noting that his same ditty goes on to employ the carefully chosen libretto "ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding ooh ooooh". So y'know, you take your cultural insight where you can find it...

Back on terra iracundia however, messrs Velvet, Bognops and Blackout inflict upon themselves a duology of televisual flagellation from the light channel in the form of T.Bag's Christmas Turkey and Cilla Black's Christmas - two vintage yuletide offerings which evidently did their very utmost to fly the flag for Scrooge-like militant atheism in the living rooms of children and adults alike. So at least everyone's catered for. Which is the meaning of Christmas, we suppose.

Did our Lady Of Perpetual Outrage Dame Pegatha Mountbatten have an inadvertent hand in Thames Television's resounding lack of franchise-renewal? Is a heart-melting sense of festive poignancy overdone by depicting Baroness Cillosis Blackjack as some old lady who sits around the house waiting for guests who never turn up and talking at the television? And is it just true that no good terrestrial Christmas programming has ever been broadcast on a channel which has adverts?

You'd certainly be forgiven for thinking so...



WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:


Programme:
T.Bag's Christmas Turkey
Broadcast: Thu 26 December 1991, 09:50
Channel/Production: Thames, ITV
Writer: Lee Pressman, Grant Cathro
Director/Producer: Glyn Edwards, Charles Warren
Starring: Georgina Hale, Peggy Mount, John Hasler, Laurence Bouvard

Programme:
Cilla Black's Christmas
Broadcast: Sat 24 December 1983, 19:45
Channel/Production: London Weekend Television, ITV
Writer: Vince Powell
Director/Producer: Noel D. Greene, David Bell
Starring: Cilla Black, Frankie Howerd, Julio Iglesias, The Bee Gees, George Benson




Subscribe/Like/Follow on:

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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. 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

Saturday 11 December 2021

Watch:The Nativity / To The Manor Born


Christmas may only come once a year, but The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour presents an unholy trinity of seasonal specials to keep you warm during the darkest month. Doctor Velvet and Blackout invite Ozzy Bognops round for yuletide reminiscence, irreverent chat and lashings of booze as they delve into the televisual archive and summon the ghosts of Christmas past...

Selecting from the festive kids' menu our trio draw the curtains, flip out the screen-glare shields and brace for a dead leg and an all-expenses-paid trip to Bethlehem in Watch. Then it's back in good old blighty where everything is refined, restrained and furiously beige as tradition meets aspiration in To The Manor Born.

Will there really be Peace On Earth when a TV presenter ends up stranded in Television Centre alone with a pair of scissors, two cameras and four hundred empty shoeboxes? Will there be goodwill toward men when a sitcom prime-time Christmas Special is commissioned seemingly in the second week of December and with the budget of a clip-show? AND WILL THERE BE ANY PORT LEFT?

Crack open the eggnog and hit Play to find out...




Subscribe/Like/Follow on:

Apple Podcasts / iTunes Spotify Google Podcasts Podbean Mixcloud Stitcher Tune-In YouTube Soundcloud aCast RSS feed Facebook Twitter


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. 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

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