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The TV Cream Advent Calendar: Door 8

Where are the quizzes? Right here!

TV Christmas specials is today’s theme:

a) What was different about the kind of format Coronation Street adopted to mark Christmas 1975, and then also at Christmas 1987?

b) In the Christmas episode of Yes Minister, what was the central issue of the campaign Jim Hacker used as his bid for Prime Minister?

c) Which never-popular yet endlessly-repeated sitcom mustered a Christmas episode boasting a cameo from David Jacobs?

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Claire

    December 8, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Ooh! I know the answer to two of these!!!

    b) Sausages (and whether the europeans were going to force us to rename them to emulsified high-fat offal tubes)

    c) Some mothers do “ave” “em”

    Any more Yes Minister or any Fry and Laurie questions, I’m your woman. As for Corrie I’m afraid I’m not sure so I’ll see if I can find out…

    Claire

  2. DavidS

    December 9, 2007 at 9:56 pm

    Racking my brains over the Corrie question; the only thing that springs to mind about 1987 is that I think it was the first time that the Street had been on on Christmas Day when it didn’t fall on a regular Corrie day. Don’t imagine that’s the answer though…

  3. John Rivers

    December 10, 2007 at 11:10 am

    Re: Corrie

    I reckon it was an hour-long episode…

  4. Chris Hughes

    December 10, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    I’ve a feeling the 1975 Christmas episode of Corrie involved Annie Walker reminiscing about Christmases past “down those famous cobbles”, interspersed with old clips.

    And I think the 1987 episode was the first time there’d ever been more than two episodes in a week. Hilda left to go and live with Dr Lowther in Derbyshire.

  5. Ian Jones

    December 10, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    Sausages: correct, or more precisely the Eurosausage (the proposed standardisation of the banger by the then-EEC). Some Mothers: correct. Coronation Street: Xmas 1975 one was indeed mostly made up of archive clips cued in as the normal residents ‘remembered’ them; for 1987 I was thinking specifically of the special one-off omnibus edition, which was the first time they’d done that and was a sneaky ruse to make sure Coronation Street came out top of the ratings for that week. And it worked.

  6. Claire

    December 10, 2007 at 5:36 pm

    Ian wrote:
    a sneaky ruse to make sure Coronation Street came out top of the ratings for that week. And it worked.

    And with 27 million viewers, not just for that week either!

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