Merry Christmas and a Happy New, oh, sh*t, b****cks! Can we go again?

B.D. (Before Digital) everything in TV land was recorded on tape. The department who would oversee every piece to camera, live feed or studio recording was known as VT. These TV geeks never saw the light of day holed up in their bunkers, but at Christmas they would entertain themselves, and everyone else in TV land with their compilation tapes of bloopers, parodies and general fuck-arounds. Where do you think the blooper show idea came from? Dennis Norden and his 5,037 It'll Be Alright on the Nights would never have happened if his producer hadn't been stuck for an idea whilst working at the BBC...

This BBC VT tape is from Christmas 1979 in the style of a evening rundown of shows for Christmas Eve. At 0:59, the clean-cut Sue Lawley shows just how foul-mouthed she really is.

Now in TV hell, the morning ITV franchise TV-am produced this slice of Christmas cock-uppery. Fuck. I sound like Dennis Norden now. Anyhoo, in this early 80s selection, at 3:40 Kid Creole pops up without his Coconuts and it's lovely to see him again.

Yorkshire TV, the ITV franchise for Yorkshire (obviously) uses it's biggest programme in 1977, the soap Emmerdale Farm, as the coat hook to hang these dodgy old clips from. Isn't Tom Baker a bad-tempered old sod! At 3:04 he's being all actor-y and c*ntish just like he is in the BBC VT tape above.

And finally, here's Julie Andrews in a VT collection of out-takes and bloopers from her US TV series, The Julie Andrews Hour which only lasted half a season in '72/'73. Of course we all know Julie swears like a navvy these days, but the crew on her show belly laughed at comments like "Big tits" at 4:20. And yes, doesn't "bastards" sound weird coming from the mouth of Mary Poppins.

Muchos Gracias to prisoner5 (!) on YouTube for uploading all the shizzle!

*********************************************************

Todays Christmas song is my absolute favourite version of Rudolph. It's by Billy May (me neither) and every four mambo-type bars or so there's a little nugget of comedy. At 1:34 Carol Channing comes in like a drunken skunk with "Holly berries!". And at 2:06 "Kris Kringle!" ALWAYS makes me howl.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo - Billy May (zShare)