First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 12th 2021


This week I’ve got SANDY McGREGOR with me for our now traditional pre-Christmas mildly festive natter (Well, we did one of these last year so it counts, and that’s how traditions start), even though we’re a bit earlier with this year because I’ll be doing another Christmas show next week as well, you lucky people.


So, as we don our festive jumpers to sweat through another July afternoon, we are transported back to a typical Christmas at McGregor Towers back in the days of three-channel television with push-button tuning. Amongst other things, we discuss Christmas movies on TV (including the terrors of CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG), various attitudes towards watching the Queen's Speech, the strange transformation of Christmas Day news reports, the abundance of circuses, television shows bothering folk in hospital, TOP OF THE POPS (including a rather surprising first music purchase), the popular science of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and the strange and mysterious world of the Christmastime football fixture list.


In addition, as a preview of next week's longer chat with him, there's also an extra segment featuring BEN BAKER talking about his new book "BEN BAKER'S CHRISTMAS BOX" another in his fascinating series of publications celebrating all things Christmas TV related.


PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.