Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

[Zincubus]

As above , think it was Leslie Crowther back in the 60's who used to visit a children's hospital on Christmas morning !?!?


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[George 1978]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

I made a similar comment in the "Christmas When You Were Growing Up" thread a few days ago.

Anyway, I mentioned that Crowther also did the ITV Christmas morning visits in the first half of the 1970s and Jimmy Tarbuck did the latter half of that decade.

Ray Allan, Frankie Howerd and Rolf Harris of all people (ironically when he was also the Christmas number one) was on the BBC in the 1960s as well.

[Zincubus]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

Any ideas what the program was called ??

I need to see a few clips just to refresh my dreadful memory so I need the name to search through YouTube and the net .

I'm wondering if the parts I do recall are simply false memory syndrome or whatever it's called or simply mistaken memories ..


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[Heather74]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

Any ideas what the program was called ??

I've had a look on Darren's Christmas TV thread for Christmas day and it was called Leslie Crowther: Meets The Kids, also listed in a different year Rolf Harris: Meets The Kids.

Copied from Wiki

From 1964 to 1967, Crowther presented Meet the Kids, an annual trip to a children's hospital ward that was screened by the BBC on Christmas Morning. He would walk around the ward meeting the patients, and the show would feature a surprise celebrity, and a present hidden under each bed. Typical locations were Great Ormond Street or Hackney Hospitals. In 1969, Crowther switched to ITV, and A Merry Morning was screened annually, following the same format, usually from the Seacroft Hospital in Leeds.^[3]

[George 1978]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

If it helps, I know that when Yorkshire TV did them, they had the following presenters in these years:

1969: Leslie Crowther
1970: Leslie Crowther
1971: John Alderton (I assume that Crowther was possibly unavailable due to panto commitments? Or the fact that Christmas Day was on a Saturday that year - Alderton used to look rather like Crowther at the time - he did when he was in Please Sir!)
1972: Leslie Crowther
1973: Leslie Crowther
1974: Leslie Crowther
1975: Jimmy Tarbuck (Tarby joining Yorkshire TV to present Winner Takes All earlier in that year was probably one of the reasons why he took over from Crowther)
1976: Jimmy Tarbuck
1977: Jimmy Tarbuck
1978: Jimmy Tarbuck (not transmitted due to a strike at YTV which caused problems with networked programmes - for example, the Christmas edition of 3-2-1 to be shown in January)
1979: Jimmy Tarbuck (this was actually the 1978 edition which was eventually transmitted exactly a year later - some people thought that it was a repeat due to the fact that it came from the same location as "last year's")
1980: Don Maclean

Ward Allen and Roger the Dog appeared in the 1973 and 1979 editions, and by the time we got to 1977, we got guests of the time such as the Wurzels and Tina Charles.

It would have been great if allowed different ITV companies to do the programmes so that they could come from hospitals around the country just like they did the Christmas morning church services at the time.

[Zincubus]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

Thank you !!


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[George 1978]

Re: Help ... Children's hospital visit Christmas morning TV program ??

I remember going to hospital as a child for a scheduled operation back in 1988, but it was during the fourth week of June - I would have liked to have found out what would happened in my ward if I had been in exactly six months before or afterwards!