Wham's Last Christmas

[George 1978]

I assume it was 1991 and not 1975, considering the "919"?...

[George 1978]

Wham's Last Christmas has become the Christmas number one for two years running! The first time this has happened in the British charts (although Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was a Christmas number one in two seperate years, 1975 and 1991 - the latter following Freddie Mercury's death). Mary's Boy Child...

[George 1978]

In the wilderness of the Christmas television scheduling this year, 5STAR (Sky Digital channel 128) will show the classic 1980 film Fame during the eleventh hour of Christmas Evening, around the same time as "On Christmas Night" will be on BBC One as part of the late evening's schedules. Searching...

[George 1978]

ADDENDUM:

1) The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are on the 29th, 30th and 31st December, post-watershed, and not on Boxing Day onwards like in previous years;

2) There will be no New Year's Day Message from the Archbishop of Canterbury on 1st January 2025 presumably due...

[George 1978]

I almost envy you to be honest.

[George 1978]

Amazing how she was associated with Play School; "she was such a hoot" as the late Brian Cant once said in an interview when he was asked about the co-presenters that he worked with, but stepping back, she was known for other things as well.

Mind you, Stevens was a presenter in...

[George 1978]

The new Christmas TV schedules have been publicised this week as promised - at the moment I have been getting most of my information from Digiguide and the fantastic UK Christmas TV website which seem to agree with each other in most areas, and thankfully, not many programmes called TBA are listed,...

[George 1978]

And of course, he won the World Snooker Championship in 1979, beating Dennis Taylor (who was yet to wear his famous "upside-down" glasses at that point), 24-16 in a possible 47 frame match - did they play so many frames as that back then? I know that the limit is 35 frames in a final....

[George 1978]

It has not been a good year for Welsh snooker players; firstly in July we had the passing of Ray Reardon (Clive Everton wasn't Welsh but we still lost him in 2024), and now we have had the demise of Terry Griffiths who has died from dementia aged 77. From collecting coal from local mines; collecting...

[George 1978]

I would compare the NHS with Skoda. To be fair though, they do look after us when we need them.

[George 1978]

When you say Tommy Duckworth's grandfather, do you mean Jeff Horton who was played by Dicken Ashworth, or do you mean Jack Duckworth?...

[George 1978]

I have just watched Hope it Rains on YouTube - I don't really remember it when it was originally on. It does feel like a sitcom with a poor setting and I was surprised that it reached two series - Fawty Towers, it wasn't.

Holly Aird really stands out to me as Jace Elliott in each epiosde...

[George 1978]

ADDENDUM: Prescott was defeated himself in 1966 when he stood against Conservative Sir Ian Perciival in Southport - ironically, the same constituency had elected its very first Labour MP at the 2024 General Election.

[George 1978]

I thought that she had passed on a few years ago as well, but I was probably confusing her with Dame Barbara Cartland. I believe that some of her novels were adapted as TV dramas mostly for ITV companies.

It was ironic she was born in a city in West Yorksshire, but it actually was Leeds...

[George 1978]

Cilla Black presenting Surprise, Surprise, I enjoyed, but when our Cilla presented Blind Date it was the thin end of the wedge as far as I was concerned. Ironically, as someone who is "not currently in a relationship" I would have been eligible to appear as a "contestant" on that...

[George 1978]

I knew that there was something very British about the old NHS frames - but then again, the NHS was British as well......

[George 1978]

Looking at John Prescott's General Election results in Hull East while he was MP, he defeated quite a few rival candidates over the years who had become household names nationally after standing in other constituencies. Prescott's first Conservative rival was Norman Lamont in 1970, two years before...

[George 1978]

An actress who plays a stroppy character - one tends to think whether the woman is like that in real life throughout the episode they appear in if they are there as a guest.

[George 1978]

There's a clip on YouTube where LWT has had technical problems during the evening, and the first minute of so of The Gentle Touch has the end of that evening's Play Your Cards Right and Bruce Forsyth talking anout a contestant's safari suit! Same ITV company for both programmes, but it looked so surreal!...

[George 1978]

Yes, it's nothing like the Radio 2 that I associate with - even Zoe Ball is leaving just before Christmas. Instead of Radio 2 mid-mornings, I mostly listen to Nicky Campbell on Five Live instead....