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

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

The New Year Party 1983/84

As another year draws to an appropriately ignominious end, the three brave souls of The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour weather the cold to trek north of The Border and warm their weary cockles by the fireside of Caledonian hospitality, and perhaps enjoy a dram or two into the bargain...

Yes, it's time for The New Year Party, BBC Scotland's televised Hogmanay bash from the arse-end of 1983, where the two Bs (McCue and Torrance), are joined by the two Ms (Moone and Anderson) for an evening of songs, dancing, comedy, dancing, pipes and yes why not let's have a bit more dancing. There's something for EVERYONE here! Providing everyone doesn't mind the dancing.

How many laws of the space-time continuum have been broken in Glasgow to fit so many people into a studio which is clearly three adjoining store cupboards with the walls knocked through? How many officers of the Health & Safety Directive have been ignored in allowing those people to drink and smoke to their hearts' content throughout? And how many of Scotland's audiologists managed to rack up the overtime in January due to the catastrophic hearing damage caused by that Olympic-sized pipe band?

Mak your muckles, deep fry your kebabs, press Play and find out...

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Programme: The New Year Party
Broadcast: Saturday 31 December 1983, 23:30
Production/Channel: BBC Scotland, BBC One (Scotland)
Music: David Pringle
Producer/Director: Anne Somers, Alasdair Macmillan
Starring: Bill McCue, Bill Torrance, Moira Anderson, Maggie Moone, Hector Nicol, Sydney Devine, Colette, 'Tiger' Tim Stevens, The Boghall & Bathgate Pipe Band, The Double Bill Dancers, Pipe Major Robert H Martin, The Jim Johnstone Scottish Country Dance Band

AND KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR...

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

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

The 70s Stop Here! / The New Year Show

HOOTS! Grab the hand-sanitiser, whatever's left of the scotch and remember to stick a lump of coal in your pocket for The Peggy Mount Hogmanay Hour! Messrs Velvet, Blackout and Bognops rouse from their festive sloth to see in the new year, or perhaps more pertinently see out the old.

We drop in with Dame Penelope Keith assuring that us The 70s Stop Here!, an unequaled archival treat which prizes schedule-filling over entertainment value. But the razzamatazz is cranked back up as we jump forward six years, down two channels and up across the border for STV's The New Year Show, where a clinically-lit studio in Glasgow plays host to Dame Russ Abbot (yes, again), Dame Lena Zavaroni (yes, again) and a swathe of 'well-worn' light entertainment stereotypes under the auspices of Dame Jack McLaughlin. It is indeed a time for looking forward, not back.

Which of our heroes was dragged out and around the houses at midnight at the end of December as a six year old? Which of them finds himself trapped in a time-vortex as New Year's Eve replays its televisual self verbatim and the new year becomes the old year again? And who suffers an on-mic flashback to day zero of a pathological trifle aversion?

Forget your old acquaintances, and find out...

(NOTE: If you want to count down to midnight with us in the show, start the podcast at 23:12:10. That's twelve minutes and ten seconds past eleven o'clock at night. Lovely stuff.)




Subscribe/Like/Follow 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. 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