31st December 1983-6th January 1984

And so to the return of this feature where every week we leaf through the pages of what’s surely one of the most famous publications in Britain. To kick off the new series we’re still feeling a bit festive so we alight on an issue from one of those awkward Christmas-at-the-weekend years when the New Year winds up in an edition of its own, mingling with some more familiar workaday fare, and an issue whose contents promise the tantalising feature “Delia Smith uses redundant Stilton”.

ON THE COVER: There’s still a day of 1983 to go but unsurprisingly the arrival of one of the most iconic years of the 20th Century was big news. The Beeb marks this with a series of Arena specials on George Orwell throughout the week in a host of marvellously inconvenient slots – the final episode broadcast on Wednesday 4th January at 5.40pm – and also two nights of Beyond 1984 on BBC2 on the 1st and 2nd, mixing documentary and studio debate chaired by Nick Ross. On the first night, RT’s exhaustive timetable points out that at 7.17pm – the programme starts at 7.15, but you can avoid all the frippery – economist John Eatwell will be arguing “initially the people of Britain are in for a very tough time, but that in the long term we could have a rosy future”, while later Philip Hughes, Chairman of Logica, says that “following the shift from the manufacturing to the knowledge-based industries, the challenge will be how to deal with the unemployment it creates, and how to learn to live a world in which we may only work two days a week or 26 weeks a year”. The next night is suitably Orwellian in tone as Stephen Sedley QC asks, “Is it possible that by 2009 your right to have children be determined by what kind of person you are – that your activities will be monitored by the state?”

RING OUT THE OLD: So we’ve got a few holiday days to have a nose at, though New Year’s Eve isn’t much different from a normal Saturday with SuperStore and Grandstand during the day and Jim’ll Fix It and Little and Large at teatime. Arabian Adventure starring Christopher Lee at 6.30 is getting its first showing on the Beeb, then at eight it’s Frank Muir with the first part of Best of British Comedy. A normal episode of Bergerac is followed at ten, because it’s a Saturday, by Match of the Day. Something very special at 10.45 is the last ever episode of The Good Old Days, then at 11.45 who better to see us into the New Year than Marian Foster and Keith Chegwin at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry to launch Heritage Year. Then at 12.10am Michael Barrymore says At Last – It’s 1984!, with The Shadows and Harvey and the Wallbangers keeping people up. As a Sunday, New Year’s Day is a bit dull, especially in the evening where after Songs of Praise they can only squeeze in The Two Ronnies and the premiere of Fame – the film, not the series – and it’s time to go to bed.

IT’S THE NEW SEASON ON BBC1: And a new season of kids’ shows to boot, with John Craven’s Back Pages most excited about the arrival of Fonz and The Happy days Gang on Thursday, with Henry Winkler himself on the blower to RT. “The scripts have all the atmosphere of Happy Days and the animators are among the finest in the world. I was allowed constantly to adlib so that the Fonz really came across. I played the character myself because I have three children and I wouldn’t want them to have someone trying to imitate the Fonz. It wouldn’t be right!” Grange Hill is back too, and producer Kenny McBain reveals “there’s a head lice epidemic, the computer gets misused and a tragedy involving a newcomer stuns the whole school”. There are returns too for Grandad and Think Of A Number plus the return of Wildtrack, shoved forward to January rather than its familiar springtime slot to replace Animal Magic which has just been axed. And the school holiday shows run right up to Friday 6th, though goodness knows who’s still off school then, with Play Chess and Glasgow gang Why Don’t You.

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES: And for the young and the young at heart, there’s the return of Doctor Who, during its brief sojourn on weeknights and yet again rescheduled by hopeless BBC1 controller Alan Hart so it now runs on Thursday and Friday nights. The enthusiasm exhibited by the Beeb to the series can be illustrated by the billing for episode one – “6.40 DOCTOR WHO starring PETER DAVISON in Warriors of the Deep. First of a four part story by Johnny Byrne”. That’s it. The night before there’s new drama with seaside saga Cockles, starring James Grout and Joan Sims and after the news Whicker’s World starts a new run with Alan spending three months voyaging on the QEII. Alan tells RT readers, “If you have always longed to experience the dreamtime escape of the pools winners, we shall be cruising the Pacific on Wednesday nights during January.”

NOT A REPEAT: We assume a live transmission of Die Fledermaus from the Royal Opera House was pretty exciting if you’re into that kind of thing, and BBC2 devoted four hours of New Year’s Eve to it so it must be good. The World Darts Championships come throughout the week from Jollees Nightclub, Stoke, and on Friday night at 7pm is a mildly historic occasion as Newcastle vs Liverpool is the first ever live FA Cup third round tie. Though the big attraction for us is Aladdin and the Forty Thieves, a panto on New Year’s Day afternoon, replacing the All Star Record Breakers as the big pan-CBBC festive entertainment. Sarah Greene plays the lead, and other highlights of the cast are Terry Nutkins as Wishee Washee, Brian Cant as the Emperor of China, Carol Chell as Mrs Chow Mein, Kenneth Williams as, ahem, Mustapha Drink, John Craven as, natch, “Newsreader” and the thieves being a motley line-up including Gary Wilmot, Barry Took, Mat Irvine, Howard Stableford and Jonathan Cohen.

TANTALISING-SOUNDING PROGRAMME WE’LL NEVER SEE: A Kick Up The Eighties seems to have been completely forgotten about now, even the Kevin Turvey stuff, but it was a very popular show in its day and it was back for its second series on Tuesday at nine. And like its stablemate Not The Nine O’Clock News, it had its way with a billing. “A dramatised re-enactment of the Second World War. Filmed entirely in and around the Arndale Shopping Centre, Leeds. 1: Hitler annexes Dewhurst Butchers and WH Smith. Chamberlain tells him to stay out of Tesco. Hitler’s 8th Panzer trolleys invade Tesco. Chamberlain declares war and sends in task force across the car park and into Burton’s Outfitters. Japan makes a surprise attack and bombs Woolworths. Next week: America fights to regain Safeways.”

ROB BARKER’S ADVERT SPOT: “A Ford Granada L for £7094?” It happened! In fact, “It actually costs as little as some other cards with smaller engines. Yet the Granada L has all the refinement and all the engineering features you expect of such a car. It’s a Granada through and through. It gives such a successful balance between comfort and driving satisfaction that it once prompted Car magazine to comment ‘The Granada now out-rides and out-handles some of the best cars in Europe’.”

THE SO-CALLED GOLDEN AGE: When 2nd January is a Bank Holiday nobody seems very excited about coming up with special programmes for the fag end of the holidays, so it’s a half-arsed Monday on BBC1, the imported The Grinch Grinches The Cat-In-The-Hat followed at 5.40 by all two and a half hours of It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. That’s followed by the second part of Best of British Comedy, which no doubt would churn out some ace clips but which is the third clip show in primetime in eight days, the first part on New Year’s Eve being preceded on Boxing Day with Lenny Henry’s Laughing Matter.

WOULDN’T HAPPEN NOW DEPARTMENT: As well as preparing for a new series of the Oxford Road Show on Friday, on Wednesday on BBC1 Peter Powell finds time to nip to the Birmingham Powerhouse for the Team Disco Dance Championships, at 6.40 on BBC1. Organised by Mecca Leisure and arranged by Ernest E Smith, the teams all represent the National Association of Youth Clubs with cabaret coming from Bucks Fizz. Then after that at 7.10 is So You Think You’re Switched On, the very last in the long-running series of quizzes with Cliff Michelmore that had been running on and off since 1965, and a real when-worlds-collide experience as Lenny Henry and Toyah team up with Esther Rantzen and Barry Cryer to answer telly questions posed by the likes of Steve Race at the piano and The Barron Knights.

HOUSEKEEPING: We’ve already done Saturday night on BBC1 but just to point out that on Radio 1 it wasn’t Adrian Juste at midnight doing his “show that lasts two years” gag but instead The Classiest New Year’s Eve Disco Party with Gary Davies. After the holidays the daytime line-up was 6.00 Adrian John, 7.00 Mike Read, 9.00 Simon Bates, 11.30 Mike Smith, 2.00 Steve Wright (but Gary Davies on Friday because Wright was on Sunday as well), 4.30 Peter Powell, 7.00 David Jensen, 10.00 John Peel. Si, Pete and Jane are on Blue Peter, still on Monday even though it’s a Bank Holiday but inelegantly shoved in at 4.25 between Final Score and the rest of the Grandstand. The Rhythm Pals are presenting Pops and a momentous edition too as the show celebrates its twentieth anniversary and introduces a band who are “very 1984″, and THAT Frankie Goes To Hollywood performance.

THEY’VE HAD LOTS OF LETTERS: The Five Doctors had attracted a bumper postbag. Graham Cruddas of Dudley was suitably inspired to suggest, “I hope the popularity of the Doctor will cause the BBC to repeat some of the earlier episodes from the archives. Does anyone remember when the original Doctor was trapped in a kitchen sink? Or the insect Zarbi, Peter Butterworth as a renegade Time Lord, the Yeti in London’s underground, the Doctor attacked by a trimphone, robophobia? Please show some of the old series again – after all, you have a new audience now.” Not everyone was so pleased, though, Jennifer Saunders of Liverpool saying, “The amount of time Tom Baker was given was disgraceful. He was one of the best-liked and longest acting of all the Doctors and was my personal favourite.”

PRONUNCIATION UNIT ASSEMBLE!: Ronald Ransom of Cheltenham asks, “Why had the BBC turned Grenada – presumably named after the Spanish town – into ‘Gren-ay-da’ and Dominica into ‘Domin-ee-ka’? And can we now expect to hear someone playing the ‘harmon-ee-ka’?” So, what’s right? RT says, “Some editions of Radio Times recently carried an advertisement placed by the Grenada Tourist Office which took the trouble to confirm the pronunciation ‘Gren-ay-da’. ‘Domin-ee-ka’ is the recommended pronunciation which appears in a pre-war BBC booklet of place names, so there has been no recent change. This Windward Island should not be confused with the Dominican Republic (stress on the second syllable) which, along with Haiti (pronounced ‘Hay-tee’) is situated on the island of Hispaniola. The origin of the name Grenada, by the way, remains obscure.”