There’s a silver Christmas tree behind Mike Read, so it must be the Pop Quiz festive special. Team captain David Essex is joined by Mari Wilson and Leo Sayer who face down opposing team captain Hank Marvin as well as Captain Sensible and Duran Duran’s John Taylor (cue deafening screams from the female audience when he’s introduced and any time he gets a question right).
After this febrile Pop Quiz atmosphere, it’s good to relax with something a little more sedate – namely highlights of the 1982 Snooker World Championship. Although Alex Higgins (no stranger to bad behaviour) was involved, for once he kept his emotions in check until after the final ball was potted to claim an improbable second world title (ten years after his first). Rather delightfully, today’s programme is available in full on YouTube.
Next up it’ll be The Kenny Everett Television Show. Geoffrey Palmer, Janet Street Porter, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Terry Wogan, Lulu, Billy Connolly, Barry Cryer, Russell Harty and Pamela Stephenson all pop up – which is good going for a 30 minute show.
From ITV, I’ll take Way out West (I always tend to associate Laurel & Hardy from this era with the BBC, so it’s a slight surprise to see them on ITV). The other ITV pick today will be John Wells’ Anyone for Denis? at 8:45 pm.
Treasure Hunt debuts on C4. They didn’t take the easy way out with this first episode – deciding on an O.B. from Bali. But (unless they were all cut out) technical glitches were minimal. Stop the clock!
Archive Television Musings 
Who can forget Captain Sensible, his parrot, and that song Happy Talk?
As a child of the 80s I was very much inspired by the pop psychology of all those Rodgers And Hammerstein classics. If you don’t have a dream, how can you have a dream come true, You Will Never Walk Alone and that Climb Every Mountain. We even sung ’em in assembly.
LikeLike
I was aged eight in time for Christmas 1982. Old Father Christmas 🎅 came down the chimney and left me an Hornby Inter City Train Set.
Complete with headlights! Wow! It looked superb as it stopped at my own replica model of Severn Tunnel Junction station. Then it went on through replica miniature model of actual Seven Tunnel! Otherwise known as my bedroom with all the curtains closed.
LikeLike
Just to add. When I was a lad. I was always curious as to why a tunnel which was seven miles long and took seven minutes to travel through on a train was not known as the Seven Tunnel. As opposed to the Severn Tunnel. It is still a mistake I make today! Who will ever forget travelling through the Severn Tunnel for the first time and realising with horror that the River Severn is above you? Especially at the age of around nine or ten – now that’s what I call ear popping excitement.
LikeLike