Jon Jacob looks back at some children's TV Christmas extravaganza's and considers how they, like the Strictly Come Dancing, are the perfect start to the festive celebrations.
End of term parties are better than Christmas Day.
I haven’t conducted exhaustive research to back this up. On the contrary, my evidence is largely anecdotal, highly subjective and suspiciously partisan. But seeing as it’s very nearly the Festive season and we’re meant to be filling up on Christmas spirit, I figure forgiveness for a wild assertion should be fairly straightforward to secure.
The excitement I experience about the end of term has its roots, inevitably, in childhood. To be specific, there was only really one end of term which mixed the excitement of impending escape and the anticipation of a big celebratory event – that was the end of the autumn term.
As we skidded to the end of lessons and the big carol service, contemporaries I’d long struggled to get on with at school suddenly took on an entirely different guise. Everyone’s mood had changed. The territories established by each school year were abandoned: everyone appeared to be everyone else’s friend. One year at school, I sent fifty Christmas cards and got sixty back. Unprecedented. Never beaten.
That end of term warmth was reflected on TV too. , and before that, Play School and are the broadcast equivalents for the school Christmas phenomenon.
Roy Castle leading a group of dancers in a 1978 edition of 'All Star Record Breakers' - TV's equivalent of the end of term school show.
All Star Record Breakers was an annual Christmas ‘extravaganza’ borne out of the weekly programme Record Breakers. It ran from 1974 to 1982.
I was never a big fan of Record Breakers. From an early age (soon after the thrill of seeing the tallest man in the world on TV wore off) I saw the programme for what it really was: a televised trot through the Guinness Book of Records, fronted by a trumpet-playing presenter whose cheeky smile, twinkling eyes made me, and breath-taking exuberance made him the equivalent of the kid at school everyone wanted to be a bit like. Let’s just call that jealousy on my part and be done with it.
All Stars was ‘event TV’. I remember that much. My memory of its content is scant, but its effect was striking. Children’s TV personalities from across the 主播大秀 join together in a glittering fun-filled extended edition – the TV equivalent of Whizzer and Chips Summer Special.
Festooned with big musical numbers, loads of energy and very wide smiles, All Star Record Breakers was the moment when the artificial boundaries between TV programmes were temporarily dismantled. All of the 主播大秀’s TV presenters now appeared themselves as friends of one another, creating a whole other imaginary world in my head. They probably gave each other cards and presents in the canteen. And like Bucks Fizz, they probably all lived in the same house together somewhere in the country, assuming they didn’t have an apartment they shared in Television Centre with Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin, John Craven and Maggie Philbin.
I’m also not entirely sure whether All Stars was my first TV Christmas extravaganza, or whether it was Blue Peter’s Christmas edition. After weeks of struggling to make and then subsequent light each candle on the Blue Peter Advent Crown, : presenters gathered around a Christmas tree, joined by a procession of local school children kitted out in scarves and thick bobble hats to sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing under hot studio lights. Presenters exchanged gifts on TV, seemingly allowed to open them before the big day. And they got real gifts too. Simon Groom once gave Lesley Judd a puppy. I seem to recall Peter Duncan getting a tool kit.
Blue Peter's Christmas edition from 1981 - an evocative wintry setting under the glare of hot studio lights.
If All Stars was the TV version of an end of term Christmas show, then Blue Peter’s Christmas edition (still running today) was the TV carol service. These were the magical moments of television, when viewers marvelled at how the implicit barriers constructed by the grammar of television were broken down. Excitement and anticipation mixed with the tantalising sight of familiar faces participating in a show-home illustration of our own Christmas celebrations. Heady visual cues.
Strictly Come Dancing has a similar effect on the senses. After weeks of regular feel-good doses, we skid towards the end of term with a vast dance floor ahead of us, numerous lights bouncing off every available shiny surface, and the chance to do our own ‘sofa salsa’ along to the signature tune for one last time. There’s an unshakeable sense of camaraderie – we’re not just observing that but participating in it as viewers too.
There is a sense of occasion about the whole affair. Not just because it’s the final and we want to know who the winner is. Like All Stars, Blue Peter and school Christmas parties, us viewers get to treat ourselves with a lavish event none of us have had the inconvenience of having to stage, and from which we don’t need to get our parents to pick us up at the end.
My perception of Strictly behind the scenes triggers memories of the school Christmas show. Weeks of rehearsals culminating in the thrill of afternoons taken over by vaguely glamorous-sounding occasions like ‘dress rehearsals’ or ‘run-throughs’. School-children normally marooned by the protocols imposed by tyrannical contemporaries throughout the rest of the year, now bonded with kids they never dreamed they’d be ‘cool enough’ to get on with. An eclectic mix of young performers convened in a way they knew all too well they wouldn’t once term started up again in a few weeks’ time. This unusual billing and the feelings which emerged from it was something to savour.
The Strictly series has at its heart a similar eclectic billing. The Final is the prize for our series-long commitment. It’s the first of the big Christmas ‘parties’ – self-contained on our screens and not needing us to tidy up afterwards - which eases us towards a more personal festive celebration. As much as I adore Christmas Eve and the big day itself, it is the end-of-term party which stokes the greatest excitement in me. And from someone who is renowned amongst his colleagues for not especially liking parties, that’s saying something.
Jon Jacob is Editor, About the 主播大秀 Blog
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