SOTCAA are preparing an article on a lot of them, I believe.

Indeed there are a great many xmas tapes, but the most famous in this country are the BBC ones of the late 70s.

Many clips from them are used in various Auntie's Bloomers - if you ever see a fuzzy block in the top left/right hand corner of the screen, it's the xmas tape DOG being blurred out.

Some interesting stuff on them, but I lot of it is rubbish...

*rifles through hazy memories*

Wasn't there an early BBC video release that compiled the releaseable bits of two or three of them???

A friend of mine went to the States last week and got hold of a doule album - 2 and a half hours - consisting entirely of ridiculously famous dead people's out-takes. Bing Crosby saying "fuck", John Wayne mouthing off about "fucking hippies, line 'em up against the wall and shoot 'em", Elvis breaking off mid-recording session to say that he's forgotten the lyrics but that everyone who says he's on drugs is an evil liar, they're evil, these people, he's not on drugs, etc etc - two and a half *hours* of it. Genius.

So do we have to wait until Tom Baker corks it before those of us outside the industry get to see the footage of him pissed in the Doctor Who studio kicking K-9 around the place?

There's was also a load of ones done by ITV regions at that time. I've got a load on tape (unbeleivably shit quality). A lot of it admittedly dull ("merry xmas from all at Westward" and so on and so on.) But some good stuff, Billy Connoly and Kenny Everett swearing like troopers is quite fun. The BBC ones are best though, you can't top Sue Lawley swearing.

Victor Lewis-Smith used a lot of this stuff for TV Offal, didn't he? Stuff like the cast of Rainbow going on about Rod Jane and Freddy "banging" and "playing with thier twangers" and the old man abusing Channel TV reporters.

>I have on tape, two of the 'BBC Christmas tapes' (you know the ones the VT dept used to put together at Christmas which circulated inside the BBC) from 1978 & 79 - does anyone know if any more are in existance and if so from what years and what sort of things are on them?
>
The first five BBC Christmas tapes, which I have on VHS, each run for around 60mins; they were called:

1978 "White Powder Christmas"
1979 "Good King Memorex" (has Fawlty Towers outtakes on it)
1980 "Little Parcels" (has Not the 9 O'clock News)
1981 "VT Xmas Party Tape"
1982 "Kevin's New Job"

A friend of mine, a former BBC employee who got all those copies, tells me that tapes were made every year up until about 1990, because it cost too much money, the technicians put more effort into their Xmas tapes than they did into their programmes, and of course the BBC wanted to use its own outtakes in Aunties Bloomers, which started I think in 1991. After that, the BBC Christmas tapes became comedy pastiches, and I've seen piss-takes of "Scooby Doo" and "Dr Who" filmed in and around TV Centre using VT staff as actors - all terrible.

I've seen Christmas tapes from LNN and all of Central TV's tapes, from which all the Blockbusters, Auf Wiedersehn Pet and Bullseye bloopers originate, and clips from Yorkshire's, which contain loads of Countdown and Calendar bloopers. I know that in the 70's and 80's the various ITV regional companies used to have a competition to see which of them could make the best Christmas promo tape. The chairman (in the clip I saw it was Yorkshire TV's Sir Paul Fox) would record a congratulatory message and present an award.

The 70's BBC ones were the best, however, despite all the numerous tits and gratuitous "Legs and Co" dance routines, for all those ononistic VT editors.

Simon done:

>A friend of mine, a former BBC employee who got all those copies, tells me that tapes were made every year up until about 1990, because it cost too much money,

Thanks to Mr Birt and his 'you have to pay to sit in that chair, even though there's no one else around to sit in it' attitude, the Chrimbo tapes dried up.

I've seen a Yorkshire one with a load of 3-2-1 outtakes on it (mostly the crew pretending to be shagging), plus the Beeb ones mentioned above. In fact, I showed the Beeb ones to some of the staff there who'd never even heard of 'em.

Erm, that's it.

Cheerio

Steve

When I was working at local radio in the late 80s, I managed to get copies of some early 80s Christmas tapes that included some BBC Radio outtakes - including a bit of Alan Freeman swearing and pissing himself (laughing, I hasten to add) while doing a Pick Of The Pops from 1972, and even more extraordinarily, Jimmy Young opening his show with "We're only on one fucking leg at the moment". Great advert outtakes as well (including one beginning Hello Tony come in, that will make sense to no-one. But it might be the funniest thing I have EVER heard. The corpsing of the *actors* is just phenomenal.)

> Great advert outtakes as well (including one beginning Hello Tony come in, that will make sense to no-one. But it might be the funniest thing I have EVER heard. The corpsing of the *actors* is just phenomenal.)

Some of the corpsing is amusing, eh?

<waits for audience laughter. not a sausage>

>> Great advert outtakes as well (including one beginning Hello Tony come in, that will make sense to no-one. But it might be the funniest thing I have EVER heard. The corpsing of the *actors* is just phenomenal.)
>
I know I'm on very safe ground (smug ground, some might say) for nominating as the funniest thing ever something that almost no-one else will know about. Sorry. But it is. One day I'll sort out a download of it. Won't be for a while though.

BTW Al - just for you:
[Read in South Walian/Swansea accent]
"This is "By The Way". Calligrapher Ieuan Rees has become something....[breaks off hearing noises in background]...John, I was in the middle of a bloody link! Fuck off out, sharpish!"

<sniggers>

Sincere apologies to absolutely everyone else.