Backlisted - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

For this year’s Backlisted Christmas Special we are joined by the poet and novelist Clare Pollard and our producer Nicky Birch to discuss not just a book, but adaptations of a book – and there are hundreds to choose from – and all have contributed to making it perhaps the most famous Christmas story of them all: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Written in six weeks in 1843, it was a massive and immediate success, selling out its first run of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. It has been in print ever since and has come to define the festive period for millions of readers, listeners and viewers. We explore why and how this fable – terrifying in parts, warm and reassuring in others – has exerted such a hold on our collective imagination. We each pick a favourite version (you’ll have to listen to find out which) but also range over others from Richard Williams’ celebrated 1971 animation to those featuring Mister Magoo and Ebeneezer Blackadder. Plus Andy has compiled a special festive playlist for you to listen to over the mulled wine and marzipan fruits. There never was such an episode!  And finally, on this most special of days, we’d like thank you all for your support during the year and to wish you: A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!   * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's Christmas Day! Thank you. Hello everyone. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! And welcome, welcome, welcome to the special Christmas episode of Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today, you find us on a bitter foggy night inside a dreary and dusty set of chambers in the city of London. It is 1843. We watch as an elderly man in a threadbare dressing gown and nightcap sits huddled next to a meagre fire. He's slowly eating

a bowl of watery soup when suddenly a bell begins to ring. I'm John Mitchinson, publisher of Unbound, where people crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And for this Yuletide special, we welcome two guests, our producer, Tiny Tim Burt, shall I say. Lisa, can I come and do the Christmas special? Of course you may. And making her backlisted debut, the writer and editor Claire Pollard. Claire, thanks for giving up your Christmas day to do this.

It's a Christmas miracle. It is a miracle. It is a miracle. Claire has published five collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, most recently Incarnation, and her poem Pollen was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2022. She has been involved in numerous translation projects, including translating Ovid,

which she toured as a one-woman show, and she was editor of Modern Poetry and Translation for five years. Claire is also a playwright. I feel this is one of those guests where the guest is so overqualified to come on and do this. years. Claire is also a playwright. I feel this is one of those guests where the guest is so overqualified to come on and do this. Do you know what I mean? Thank you again

for giving up Christmas. We could be doing so much more. Apologise to your children on our behalf. Claire is also a playwright. Her play The Weather premiered at the Royal Court Theatre. A novelist, her first novel Delphi was published by Fig Tree in 2022 and the second, The Modern Fairies,

follows in 2024. And a soon-to-be children's author, The Untameables, I love that title, The Untameables, is published by the Emma Press next year. She has also written a book, Nonfiction, Fierce Bad Rabbits,

The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books, which was published by Fig Tree in 2019, and which Penelope Lively described as being essential reading for every thinking parent. I further will say non-thinking parents should not rule it out. It's brilliant. One of the best books on children's writing ever, I think. Thank you so much, Jim.

What will you be doing this Christmas? Because it isn't really Christmas Day when we're doing this. Sorry to let daylight in on magic. I'll be at my sister-in-law's on Christmas Day with the family. And for New Year's Eve, my husband now is co-owner of a pub in Margate.

So we're going to have a pub. Wow. Okay. Very Dickensian. Do you say you're at your sister-in-law's? Yeah. What's her name? Sian.

So will Sian hear this on Christmas Day? Yes, yes. Merry Christmas, Sian. Merry Christmas, all that family there. And Happy New Year in Margate. Well, the format for this festive show is a little different. The book we're going to cover, you've perhaps guessed, is a familiar one, arguably the most famous Christmas book of all. But as well as discussing it as a book, we've each chosen some of our favourites among the

hundreds of different adaptations that have made since it was first published in 1843. The book, of course, is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, or to give it its full title, A Christmas Carol in Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Dickens wrote or to give it its full title, A Christmas Carol in Prose, being a ghost story of Christmas. Dickens wrote it in six weeks in order to hit the Christmas market, and the book was a massive and immediate bestseller, selling out its first run of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. Chapman and Hall, the publishers, issued another 10 editions in 1844 alone, and in the US it quickly outsold all of Dickens' other books. More than any other book, it has come to define the festive period.

The fable-like quality of the story, terrifying in parts, warm and reassuring in others, allows A Christmas Carol to adapt itself to whatever generation needs from the celebration of Christmas, be it anti-capitalist tract or cosy middle-class party, which is exactly what we're here to explore. This being a or cozy middle-class party which is exactly what we're here to explore this being a cozy middle-class party now well now um the thing is the thing is eagle-eared uh backlisted listeners will recall that we made an episode on great expectations by charles dickens years ago. And we just want to clarify, therefore, that this isn't an episode about Charles Dickens. It is inspired by Charles Dickens, but it's much more about the life and times of A Christmas Carol.

You will recall, if you've heard the Great Expectations episode, that you can't hear this anymore because of the copyright reasons, but we did play an extract of an extraordinary musical adaptation of Great Expectations by the DJ Mike Reed, featuring Miss Havisham singing Cobwebs and Cake. And I would like to apologise in advance that there is no music in this episode, but please be assured that I have prepared a Christmas playlist of different songs inspired by a Christmas carol, which will be available on Christmas Day for people to listen to. In the show description, you can link to it.

Yeah, and featuring several of the musical adaptations, which we may or may not be discussing in the course of the next hour or so. So why don't we go around the table, first of all, and see if we can remember when we first became aware of what hard question but claire i can start with you when did you first become aware of a christmas carol either written down or watched or what yeah it is hard because for most of us it's a childhood memory so we're really going back my dad absolutely loved christmas carol and would have it on every year so i guess i was four or five i don't know the alistair sims version but also he was a big fan

of albert finney because he was a salford lad too and sort of modeled himself on saturday night and sunday morning and all that so um we like the Albert Finney version. Don't worry, we'll be discussing Scrooge starring Albert Finney very shortly. You raise a valid point, which is this is such a well-known book that one of the things I found when rereading it for this was it's difficult to believe that it was written by an actual person and that there's ever been a time where it didn't exist. Do you know what I mean, though? Seriously, it's so um embedded in the

culture it's become like a folk tale or a mess yeah but also i mean we was a catchphrase in our family was my grandmother would always say there never was such a goose that would always come at christmas lunch they never were often we weren't eating goose i have to say mostly we were eating turkey but that was always the line but also also, Daz, you raised another valid point. Turkey. One of the reasons we eat turkey in the UK and around the world on Christmas Day is partly as a result of the success of A Christmas Carol. It is true. A bird is what you had on Christmas Day.

A goose. Massive impact on the poultry trade. Is that right? Massive impact. Thomas Carlyle read it and he went out and bought a turkey. It was the first thing he did. Also, the phrase Scrooge is now to be a miser. Absolutely. is that right a massive impact thomas carlisle read it and he went out and bought a turkey was the first thing he did also the phrase scrooge is now to be a miser absolutely and it's on the gcse syllabus now it's like a it's a text that everybody everybody knows at the point you

probably know the story of the premise of a christmas carol uh before you encounter any actual telling of it john so can you remember your first? Can you actually remember your first? I can remember it vividly. I was about four and my grandmother started to read it to me and I got hysterical. By the time Marley's face with its strange light, like a bad lobster in a cellar around it, I tapped to get her to stop. And every time she tried to read it to me, I burst into tears. I mean, gradually, obviously, with passage of time, I kind of got over it and then we would read it together. My grandmother and I read it together every Christmas with great illustrations in the book and I have

read it every year ever since without fail, which is a bit the only it's the only book that i do it and i don't in some weird way i don't know why i suppose every time i read it i'm just i'm just astonished by how much he packs into such such a short you're the you're the um it's like i'm with the lord of the rings it's you're the christopher lee of a christmas carol i read it every year i think it's like a ritual though lots of people would watch it every year without fail. I think it's like a ritual, though. Lots of people would watch it every year without fail, right? Maybe not read it, but it's almost like the secular version of going to church, I feel, a little bit. It's like this ritual you put yourself through and you come out at the end feeling like a better person, don't you? One of the things that really kind of makes it special is that there were a lot of people in the 1840s

who were mortified by what was happening because of the industrial revolution and poverty. And, you know, this was a live issue and the book was inspired by him going to Cornwall and seeing the sort of the children of miners and then Saffron Hill, you know, kids in the before preteens, you know, working as prostitutes. He was completely traumatized by it. And whereas your average Victorian would have written a tract, Dickens turnsens turns it into fairy tale which is essentially what the book is nikki when do you believe you first became conscious of the text i don't know about the very first time i

became conscious of it because i would have seen scrooge and scrooge and etc. But I was involved in an amateur dramatics production when I was in primary school of A Christmas Carol. What is involved with me? I played a character. Who was? Who was Marley. Plum parts. Well, you think so, but actually Marley doesn't feature very heavily.

He just comes on and says, you will see these ghosts, right? The ghosts. And I was most disappointed because the fun stuff was actually, you know, yet to come. But I also got a little bit confused because at the same time, I was just getting into the music of Bob Marley. And it is also Bob Marley. And I remember going around saying, I'm playing Bob Marley. Anyway, it was a slightly confusing moment. But nonetheless, I did. Bob Marley was dead to begin with. Yeah, I'm playing Bob Marley. Anyway, it was a slightly confusing moment. But nonetheless, I did...

Bob Marley was dead to begin with. Yeah, I did enjoy the whole experience. That was my first encounter. So you caught a fire of A Christmas Carol. That's excellent. I can tell you, I don't know when I first read A Christmas Carol, but the version of A Christmas Carol that first I can remember being gripped by

was the cartoon version that was made for American TV in the late 60s, early 70s by Richard Williams. By Richard Williams. I can remember one school holiday at the age of maybe six or seven. This animated version was just on TV as a kind of scheduled filler.

And I can remember it so clearly. It was the first time that story that appears not to have been authored, except we know factually that it was. That secular gospel, that musical, that folk tale, it's the first time I can remember being completely gripped by it, even though I knew what was going to happen. That's one of the brilliant things about Christmas Carol, like all good stories, every time it's told, you think it might end differently.

Incidentally, listeners, you're going to hear me eat a mince pie in a minute. Oh, yes, please. John, we're going to turn to you to tell us a bit about A Christmas Carol. One of the things I hadn't appreciated, I've been reading a book, John, I don't know if you know this book, it's wonderful. It's called The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge by Paul Davis. times of ebenezer scrooge by paul davis and it's a history of versions of a christmas carol through until about 1990 which is when it was published one of the things that i learned from this book is that when dickens is a christmas carol first appeared with dickens's reputation for journalism attached and certainly his popular success with the pickwick papers there was resistance to it because it was quite challenging in its urban setting you know 50 years later it would be seen as a very a folk tale a traditional christmas the goose at the time that wasn't the case at all was it people were astounded that the christmas

could exist in that environment yeah also a couple of things dickens is 31 right and he's not doing very well at this stage he's had a quick paper's a huge success but then nickleby did well but then martin chuzzlewit absolutely bombed so he's got serious financial problems and he he writes a christmas carol amongst other things to make money that's what he wants to do and he puts himself on a profit share because he thinks he'll make more money but this is there's such a great parable in this he really liked he wanted it to be nicely produced, a nice paper, a nice... So he only made £230 profit on the first run of the book.

He was expecting to make three times as much. I hope he sold the film rights. To put it in perspective, that is about... No, but the really interesting thing, then it is incredibly successful. It goes in... And it's a word of... But the point is it's a word of mouth. It's a cultural success, right? It's a word of but the point is it's a word absolute cultural success right it's a word of mouth within

we're not sleeper it lands they can't keep up with demand and it's so popular really but people already pick up on it and start retelling it and start retelling within within six months but by you know of it being published there are eight different productions of it going on being produced in London. Does he make money for that at the time? The genius thing, okay, 10 years after it's published, he suddenly realises that what he needs to do with A Christmas Carol is to perform it himself. So he, I mean, it's an astonishing thing that he does. He goes and if you can still see the chat box, he reconfigures it.

And then he performs it. He does all the voices, performs it in front of an audience, and it goes mental. And that's where Dickens made more money from performance than he did from publishing. Because he goes, he tours tours the uk but he also tours um i think one year he did 27 kind of live performances of the book what's interesting about that is you've presented that john um you know the christmas carol a christmas carol is a book about a man who is very obsessed with money yeah Yeah. And one of the things why we probably enjoy A Christmas Carol is we can probably see some of Scrooge in ourselves

and we can sort of see some of Dickens in Scrooge or Scrooge in Dickens. So the idea that he writes the book, he doesn't make much money, he watches as it becomes this huge popular phenomenon and after a while he thinks, well, I need to cash in on that. And that's one of the reasons why he turns it into a performance piece. And it's powered by the basic ideas, right, are that people matter more than money. And it's never too late to change. That kind of sums up what's going on in the story.

But there's some madness in this book when you read it. And we'll talk about this maybe a bit later. The lists, the endless iterations of things. He's obviously, he wrote, he spent hours wandering the streets, sometimes 20 miles a night, making the, telling himself the story in his head. And then he wrote it in six weeks, bangs it out. And then it kind of, as you say, Andy, it gets taken over by the world then he wrote it in six weeks bangs it out and then it kind of as you say andy it gets taken over by the world and he gets it back so one year he did 127 performances of

christmas carol and to packed houses i think he it made him about one and a half million quid in one year in today's saying as well you can only perform it because it's a novella right because it's not like his other, you know, it's not a full novel. And he did, yeah, exactly right. It must be the most successful novella of all time.

Yeah. It'd be hard to think what else, what other short books like this. Yeah. I love a short book. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Claire,

have you seen A Christmas Carol performed in a one-man show or a reading no no i haven't john of you no i haven't i know simon callow is supposed to do a really good one patrick stewart and simon callow both in latterly have performed it as a piece and they tend to perform the whole thing whereas in fact dickens dickens didn't dickens had a clear sense of what went over with the audiences so that every time he did it he would um tweak it he would concentrate this is another thing we're going to talk about he would concentrate on the cratchit family

christmas yeah and in that era the family christ Christmas within the urban setting was the hook of a Christmas carol. Whatever else or other parts have fallen and risen in the years since, that was the thing that people responded to. Like a good stand up. He refined his. Absolutely. And he also would improvise around it as well. People say that when they went to see him, he was always working in new bits. Never the same show twice. i mean you you must find

this in the theater in your theater work well i've done a one-woman show so i guess it was similar it was based on my book but i yeah okay cut it and work with the director and and with presumably with audiences as well you listen to what yeah works yeah as a poet as well that's often how i i mean i think the thing about dickens too is that he it killed him i mean the performances killed him i mean he put he was put so much into it i mean his son says at the end you know that by the time he he he performed at such a level of intensity physically couldn't withstand it all right So before we move on to our first non-Dickensian telling of the tale, let me ask you each very quickly, very quickly, what do you think is the hook of A Christmas Carol?

Nicky. Redemption. John. It's never too late to change. It's about changing your script isn't it i suppose i think it's about three ghosts four actually four ghosts there are four ghosts that was in the title but are they are they ghosts well now here we go are they ghosts are they oh we haven't even got onto the Freudian readings of this thing

I can't wait Claire which adaptation of Christmas Carol have you brought for us to discuss I would like to discuss

Scrooged the 1988 comedy with Bill Murray I am familiar with it directed by Richard Donner

who also did Superman and the Goonies and Lethal Weapon and a lot of my favourite films of that era. I'm giving myself away now. I guess I watched it first when I was about 11 or so. It should be said that I was a sort of very clever, obviously, but also a lonely, depressed and cynical child.

Hey, welcome to the book world um and for me sort of the the holy chamber of humor was probably blackadder garfield and bill murray you know i i loved sort of cynical deadpan here is there a garfield christmas carol i bet there is. I also absolutely loved the female lead in this film, Karen Allen, who was Marion Ravenwood in Indiana Jones

when she drinks the men under the table. I think that had a rather outsized influence on who I wanted to be when I grew up. Yeah, when Bill Murray made this film,

when I watched it when I was 11 or 12, I guess it was, I'd always watched Christmas Carol, but this was a Christmas Carol for me. And it seemed so directly to appeal to everything that I loved. What is the premise of Scrooged for anyone who hasn't seen it?

So this is the really clever thing. It was a contemporary update at the time. I mean, I showed it to my kids this weekend and it's like a history piece now because it's in the 1980s, but it was very, very contemporary at the time i mean i showed it to my kids this weekend and it's like a history piece now because it's in the 1980s but it was very very contemporary at the time which i always like you know art that's about now it felt really cutting edge but it would have been very easy for them to update it so he was a sort of 80s banker a sort of wall street banker or something but instead what they've done is make him an executive at television studios and they're doing a live version of Christmas Carol that they're putting out on Christmas Eve.

With Buddy Hackett as Scrooge. John Houseman doing the voiceover. So I think that's really clever. It means he's not called Scrooge. He's called Frank Cross. Mr. Cross. He does have this. It's quite a very on-the-nose character.

Yeah, OK. Maybe that's not that clever. He does have his. It's quite me as a very on-the-nose character. Yeah, okay, maybe that's not that clever. But it allows it to be very meta, you know, quite postmodern and have enormous fun because you can see the original and they get to sort of poke fun at the original and the sentimentality and what we might accuse Dickens

of being twee or sentimental. There's this fabulous bit where Tiny Tim is played by an acrobat and at the end they're sort of cured and they throw away their crutches and do somersaults and things like that. So they get to have all sorts of fun, I think, with the original and both showing which beats are the same and then making certain beats different. I think it's very playful.

They can skirt around the story in really clever ways. When you were 11, did you think it was primarily funny or primarily dramatic or primarily scary funny I think it's sort of savagely funny it's real

they really lean into the black humour and that's why I would argue it's one of the best versions because I think that's where Dickens falls down a bit the Dickens because I think that's where Dickens falls down a bit the the Dickens starts the I think the voice at the beginning Dickens his own voice is very funny and and early on Scrooge does make a couple of jokes doesn't he about you know he thinks people should put a stake of holly through the heart of you know people who go on about Christmas but then actually Dickens says Scrooge was not in the habit of cracking jokes.

He sort of thinks, oh, I shouldn't make him tell jokes. That's too merry. He makes a stupid joke with Marley, the gravy joke. You know, we'll come on to it, but they're a bit like Statler and Waldorf in that scene. He can't resist having a ghost and Scrooge do a bit of shtick, Andy. A bit of shtick. But actually sort of misanthropic people

like Blackadder and Frank Cross actually do make the best jokes in real life. Often it comes from that dark, nihilistic place. Thank you. And I think in Scrooged, they really lean into that and it's very, very fun. The bit where he tries to staple antlers onto mice.

Yes, that's very good. It's amazing. One of the things I found watching Scrooged again, I didn't see it when it came out, but I had seen it. It's interesting, isn't it, how Christmas films, regardless of how they land at the time, and this was a big hit, but It's a Wonderful Life, for instance, was not. Because they're on every year

and you see them over and over again. I don't think Elf was a massive hit or anybody liked it very much when it came out. And now people love it because they get used to it and they see it over and over again. But Scrooged, I had forgotten what a hip film that is in some ways. So, Carol Kane is in it.

It's very funny. David david johansson i was thinking that trumpet sounds like and the camera pans across miles i was thinking how on earth what were the conversations in 1988 where somebody said to miles we need you to just rock up the sound stage and and that makes it all the more culty and fabulous now doesn't it it does yeah yeah it does i think scrooge scrooged is a fantastic film to watch at christmas it's just it's funny it's clever it's as you said it's dated but that also then adds a brilliant element to clever it's as you said it's dated but that also then adds a brilliant element to it now like as you said it's a historical piece now that may you know our children would i think would find that funny because it's it feels of its time

there's one thing i just don't understand why bill murray shouts all the way through so yeah i think it was really quite fraught on the film set and the writers and the director and Murray all coming at it from different angles. Yeah, yeah. Richard Donner had just come off a big hit with a couple of the Superman films and Bill Murray had come off Ghostbusters

and taken a break. And the writers and Murray, as I I understand it didn't see eye to eye with Donna because no one as you say was quite agreed on what film they were making and also Donna had no eye for comedy so he's constantly saying to Bill Murray more Bill yeah Bill said we made it so fast it was like doing a movie live. He kept telling me to do things louder, louder, louder. I think he was deaf. Well, that explains that. That's brilliant.

But I, as a student of comedy, I found it really interesting to watch again because actually I can sort of see what Bill Murray means. There are gags that don't, the editing is sort of weird. The beats are a bit weird for where you would expect the joke to land. But it has a sort of psychotic intensity. Well, psychotic intensity. Here is my observation about Scrooged. Scrooged is a remake, not of one, but of two films or books.

What's the second one? First one is A Christmas Carol. To me, watching it again i thought okay this is fascinating an executive at a network is mad as hell and won't take it anymore and breaks into a live broadcast to tell the audience directly it's a remake of network starring peter finch yeah and mad so I'm not going to take it anymore. But seriously, it really is. It's like using The Christmas Carol to address how popular culture and television eat themselves.

They go round and round and round and round. And so Bill Murray grows up, doesn't he? The character Mr. mr cross what is his formative influence as a child yeah there's an amazing scene in the original christmas carol um there's a scene where scrooge i think often gets forgotten because it's hard to televise but where he's reading and all the characters almost seem alive to him ali barba and robinson crusoe and the parrot um and I think that's done particularly well in Scrooged where it's sort of his villain origin story and

he's taken back to this little house that has no Christmas lights up and he's he's just stuck in front of the TV at Christmas and that's and his dad is like a kind of mr. McCorber figure yeah so, yeah. So I think we should, I just want to read this quote from one of the writers because I thought it really made me laugh. And then maybe you would read us a bit of the carol

because we haven't actually heard any Dickens yet. One of the writers said this, I won't swear because it's a family show today, isn't it? But I'll bleep myself. O'Donoghue was very critical of the finished film. He said,

We wrote an effing masterpiece. We wrote It Happened One Night. We wrote a story that can make you laugh and cry. You would have wanted to share it with your grandchildren every effing Christmas for the next hundred years. The finished film, on the other hand, was a piece of unadulterated, unmitigated, leap, stolen.

I like it. I like it. Have we got some of the text? Okay, so I think I'm going to read a little bit of A Christmas Carol, which is to do with the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Belle. This might lead us actually onto the Finney version

because I think it's done superbly in the Finney version, partly because in Scrooged, I think the relationship between Frank Cross and Claire is really well done. And take sort of, there is a rom-com struggling to get out of A Christmas Carol, isn't there? With that sort of lost love.

And it runs with that, I think, very effectively. Particularly in the Ghost of Christmas Future scenes, where he said to her, you know, she's working at a homeless shelter, and he said, scrape them off, Claire, you know. And it imagines what it would be like if she actually listened to him. And she's this very stony, rich, nasty, cruel woman in the future. I think that's really, really well done and you believe that's something that would redeem him in a way.

I often think the Ghost of Christmas Future is just literally someone saying, you will die. But I feel that part of it's carried through really well. So, yeah, I like the rom-com element of Scrooged. And so I'm going to read this from the original, the Dickens. It matters little, she said softly, to you very little. Another idol has displaced me. And if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come,

as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve. What idol has displaced you he rejoined a golden one. This is the even-handed dealing of the world he said there is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth. You fear the world too much, she answered gently. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. You know what?

It wasn't bad, was it? It wasn't bad. You fear the world. Well, you said we might go on to Scrooge. We will go on to Scrooge. Musical adaptations of Christmas Carol. Of course, there are many of them. I'm toyed with talking about a surprisingly faithful adaptation,

an animated one from the early 60s, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, which I saw last week. Now, the two things to say about Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol are, first of all, it is very true to the original text, apart from the fact they had to put in a load of jokes about Mr. Magoo not being able to see stuff, which slightly jibes with the visions of the spirits. But the songs for Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol are amazing.

And they were co-written by Jules Stein. And Jules Stein was the collaborator with Sondheim on Gypsy. I was thinking when I was listening to the music, I was thinking, this is much, much better than it needs to be for Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. And that's why. Because they got the absolute top of the shop composers to work. So you can hear that.

I think it's on Spotify. You can watch some of it, some of those numbers on YouTube. It's interesting, isn't it, that a lot of these adaptations, they get kind of A-game players. I mean, actually, the Donner team was amazing for an 80s movie.

But you mentioned the Richard Williams adaptation. It was beautiful, extraordinary. players i mean actually the donna team was an amazing one yeah for an 80s movie but the you know you mentioned the richard williams adaptation is beautiful extraordinary he's amazing english animator he went on to do roger rabbit uh amongst other things but he um the exec producer on that christmas carol was the great chuck jones uh was it yeah and and and the he the animation that williams does uses all the incredible john leach illustrations from the 19th century it's one of the most beautiful and then gets back alistair stim as it were from beyond the to do the voice of scrooge so that's wonderful okay so so animations and musical adaptations come on to scrooge scoge's musical is made in the late 60s, 1970s, and believe it or not,

I'm sure we talked about Scrooge before on that listed. Because it's clearly, as a film musical, it's clearly inspired financially by the success of Oliver. Yes. Right? So it's a big kind of set piece musical.

It stars Albert Finney, who at that time was one of the biggest British film stars in the world. Marley is played brilliantly, though probably not as well as the young Nicky Boone, by Alec Guinness. An absolutely superb performance by Alec Guinness. The film was directed by Ronald Neame, and Alec Guinness and Ronald Neame have worked together

in David Lean's Dickens adaptations but they'd also worked together on the film adaptation of The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Carey which is another book

we've talked about on Batlisted. Ghost of Christmas Past is played by Dame Edith Evans. Ghost of Christmas Present is played by Kenneth Moore

and you know Christmas Yet to Come is another guy in a hood For me as a great lover of musicals and film musicals it has lovely little set pieces in it The score is by Leslie Bricus who had worked

with Anthony Newley in the early 60s had great success with Stop the World I Want to Get Off had written Bond music and what have you. There's a wonderful set piece called Thank You Very Much, which is probably the best song in the movie. Look at that on YouTube if you don't know it, which is so brilliantly choreographed. It's like the whole, it's almost like Ronald Neame said,

well, this bit's good so we can coast some of the rest, right? But here's the Christmas miracle. I was at a bad record fair last week. I have done nothing for the last few days but watch versions of Christmas Carol. So I'm already feeling quite psychotic and I'm quite open to messages from the universe. So I'm at a record fair and I'm leafing through a box of records

with nothing interesting in it. And in there was this. No! Oh, the Scrooge soundtrack. Wait, wait. It's the soundtrack LP of Scrooge. It's got a lovely gatefold sleeve and an insert with lots of pictures.

So I thought, oh, that's quite... And then there was a little sticker on the front. I read it and I thought, no, it can't be. Is it? It's signed by Albert Finney. No way. Regards, John Albert Finney.

That's amazing. I looked it up on the internet and that is his signature. And who would bother to forge it, right? There's also a signature from Michael Medwin, who's one of the other actors, and from Anton Rogers on the inside of it. Wow. What are the chances?

That is insane. Isn't that... What are the chances of that happening? Have you played it and sung along? I have, yes. Oh. I actually think... I poured myself a large whiskey, sat on my own,

and did exactly that. Albert Finney, to me, is Scrooge. Like, he plays Scrooge as I imagine Scrooge. And I'm going to come on to talk about Michael Caine playing Scrooge. But I think Albert Finney does it perfectly. What he's so good at, though, is because he was aged up so much, he's the best young Scrooge by far. Those are the moving scenes to me.

Scrooge, to the best of our ability to tell, was about 57, 56 or 57. So not an old man really right i think albert finney has that level of kind of anger and you know and and sort of fear that he induces on people and he's really you know he does grumpy scrooge properly it's proper albert finney role though isn't it all the rest is bloody propaganda yeah and, you know, poor relationship, driven, poor relationship with a woman allows that to go. As you say, the rom-com element is often forgotten. That scene actually makes me cry.

The scene where she leaves him, it's incredibly powerful. I think he's also... Summer is like a cocktail. It has to be mixed just right. Start with a handful of great friends. Now, add your favorite music. And then, finally, add Bacardi Rum. Shake it together.

And there you have it. The perfect summer mix. Bacardi. Do what moves you. Live passionately. Drink responsibly. Copyright 2024. Bacardi.

It's trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum, 40% alcohol by volume. Albert Finney, young Scrooge is the hottest of the Scrooges over the years. Go back and check that out. I think it's kind of flawed Scrooge, but I do really

like it. And that's an appropriate moment for us to break for this Christmas message from our sponsors we don't just want to talk about film adaptations this being backlisted we wanted to talk about a book and we so we all went away and um did some looking around and thinking about what was a a good retelling of a christmas carol and uh for my money, and I think John and Claire's, the one that we all responded to so well was published about 10 years ago by a writer called Chris Priestley.

And it's called The Last of the Spirits. Now, you may or may not have read this i i it doesn't matter about spoilers does it with the christmas carol um but i have to say this this little novel the last of the spirits the chris priestly written for children i thought was the most inspired and ingenious weaving around what we know from Dickens' Christmas Carol with a story that subverts it and explains it and presents it to you anew. What's the setting? It's quite brilliant.

Well, first of all, Nicky, I just need to read you what inspired it from dickens so this is from stave the end of stave three of charles dickens a christmas carol and scrooge is talking to the ghost of christmas present from the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet and clung upon the outside of its garment. Oh man, look here, look, look, down here, exclaimed the ghost. They were a boy and girl, yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate too in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand like that of age had pinched and twisted them and pulled them into shreds.

Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked and glared out, menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. Spirit, are they yours? Scrooge could say no more. They are man's, said the spirit looking down upon them, and they cling to me appealing from their fathers this boy is ignorance this girl is want beware them both and all of their degree but most of all beware this boy for on his brow i see that written which is doom unless the writing be erased. Well, brilliantly, Chris Priestley uses that as the starting off point for his book, The Last of the Spirits, which is about two street urchins, one of whom is called Sam rather than Ignorance, and the other of whom is called lizzie rather than want and i'll just read you

the beginning although that reveal is not made till midway through the book but when you go back and read the dickens original you say oh that's really good this is how this book starts last of the spirits the boy had never spoken to the old man before nor scarcely noticed him the old man Last of the Spirits. beetled his way to his office to the old man the boy was just another tiresome obstacle to be avoided to the boy the old man along with all the other hard-faced strangers like him was yet another reason to hate the world and then we go forward and sam and lizzie watch scrooge for it is he talking to marley's ghost in the knocker, right? And here we go. Sam looked on. As soon as the old man opened the door, he would attack him.

He had a length of lead piping in his coat pocket that he had picked up when he had fetched the books for the fire. He would knock Scrooge down and they would rob him. He would not set out to kill him, but some men's skulls were thinner than others. Sam was puzzled to hear the old man talking. At first he thought there was someone else there, but he soon realised that Scrooge was talking to himself, muttering wildly and shaking his head like he was fresh out of bedlam.

He seemed for all the world to be talking to his own door knocker. Somehow this eccentric behaviour blackened Sam's mood still further. It outraged him. It goaded him. Why should a witless old fool like this live in comfort and plenty whilst they starved and froze? A crisp, wintry contempt for the old man settled on Sam's heart like a rhyme of frost that all the heat of the Indies could not have melted. It felt good. All these years of hating the world have made him feel powerless, but now he had but one target.

He would make this one man pay, and that would be enough. Wow, that sounds like quite a chilling children's book. It's like having a second film unit, you know, for the Christmas Carol. That's the genius thing. You get to relive quite a few of the key scenes, like the Cratchits, the Christmas lunch, and the ignorance and want scene.

It's just, I think it's as clever an adaptation as I've ever encountered. What did you think? Yeah, it reminded me, I watched Wicked, the musical this year with my kids. It's a similar thing where you see the action from a completely different angle and it transforms you. Do you think, Claire, that children who haven't yet found the Christmas carol story could love and enjoy The Last of the Spirits? Ooh, no.

I'd show them The Muppets first. Work them up to that one. It's quite dark. It's probably like 10 10 to 12 at least so i would hope they'd encountered it before chris priest's first book was a really great little book called uncle montague's tales of terror one of the things i found quite interesting about this one is um and this is backlisted. Despite this novel being published in 2015 and still in print, it was quite difficult to track a copy down.

I downloaded it on Kindle, though. As John says, I thought it was ingenious in the best way. It has plenty of life of its own, and he doesn't bank too much on integrating it with Christmas Carol. Just enough, just enough. If you want to find it, might you find it on bookshop.org, Andy? I believe so, obviously. Or in a library.

Or in a library. Or in a library. So that is Last of the Spirits by Chris Priestley. I think before, Nicky, we move on to your choice which let's be honest many many or people listening to this uh love above and beyond all adaptations of christmas carol can we just mention um a couple of the the other ones we talked about alistair sims film of christmas carol you boy what day is this becoming a popular internet meme um could we mention none of us have seen this there's also uh there was a 1975 pornographic film

passions of carol the three ghosts behave in a traditional did you watch it as research i i was able only to find a synopsis nikki i'm afraid um it looks really terrible so that's uh that that was an excitement and um i wonder um nikki i think you've got a clip from another extremely enjoyable adaptation which we should just talk about before we move on if you're in the uk you'll get a chance to see this as it's coming back on iPlayer this Christmas but one of the brilliant adaptations was the Blackadder Christmas special which like in all good comedy they they subvert the story in a very sort of Blackadder way Blackadder if you know Blackadder which I hope most people listening do if you're fans of British kind of literature and comedy and

film and things like that you should know black adder but black out of the character is always incredibly mean you could say he's like scrooge but what they do is they subvert it and say actually he didn't start off mean he started off terribly nice um and so his his sort of uh coming of age story is how he came to be uh to be mean what would happen in the future if I was bad? Um, heavens, is that the time? I really must be off. I'd love to see Christmas future. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's terribly melodramatic. Look, just show it, please.

All right. Hail, Queen of Spixia, Supreme Mistress of the Universe. So then he gets shown this future where Queen, who normally plays Queen Elizabeth, she is the sort of ruler of the universe and she's there with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and all the characters by her side. And he comes in in his gallant way,

like he does in all the Black Adders. And I'll just clip to the end of that scene. I must respectfully insist that you hand over to me the supreme command of the universe, sew a button on my spare uniform, and marry me this afternoon. I thought you'd never ask. So let's get this straight.

If I was bad, my descendants would rule the entire universe. Maybe, maybe. But would you be happy? And so that is why he is bad. But one of the things I find really interesting about that, like Scrooged, Blackadder Christmas Carol, like the recent television adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Stephen Knight. Knight, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Responsible for Peaky Blinders. Which I didn't think worked. But what's so interesting about all these versions is they rely on you, the viewer. Knowing the story. Enough of the story. That twisting the story, no Dickensian pun intended, becomes the point knowing the story enough of the story that twisting the story no Dickensian pun intended becomes the becomes the point

of the thing Claire I don't know what you thought of the Stephen Knight Christmas Carol I haven't seen that one haven't you seen it no but I love

the Blackadder one and I re-watched it just last week what's very clever about it is it the whole idea of you know charity at Christmas

yeah it sort of takes that to its sort of natural end point. Because I think Christmas Carol does have a problematic relationship with money. As we now know. As in that bit I read out of A Christmas Carol,

it says, you know, we blame the poor and yet we're very severe on people who try and make money. But it's a bit of a fudge, the ending, really, isn't it? You can only buy the big goose because he's got a lot of money. And if you behave like that every day of the year,, isn't it? He can only buy the big goose because he's got a lot of money and if you behave like that every day of the year you wouldn't have any money. Chris Priestley has to

do something quite cunning I mean I thought it was actually clever what he does but he has to deal with it. It's a bit of a fudge too It depends I think whether you think I'm not saying it has to be one or the other but in different eras, different readings

of A Christmas Carol would make you think that the character of Scrooge represents a system of seeing the world, or does he represent personal redemption? Is he, in the classic formulation, is he an individual or is he a symptom? And you think and in a sense it's the same um problem that you identify claire with dickens wants to have his christmas cake and eat it yeah he wants to have scrooge be somber but make jokes the idea of him as a miser isn't quite right. It's that he's a financial wizard for using his powers for evil. He's a Bill Gates at the end though because he may be a financial wizard

but in the end he is doing good works and is that a legitimate thing? You're still making money off people. Indeed. But that's why one of my favourite versions of Christmas Carol is The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

because I think in some ways it improves upon the original why one of my favorite versions of christmas carol is the grinch who stole christmas because i think in some ways it improves upon the original go on um because it ends with the grinch takes all the stuff off people but christmas still comes you know he didn't stop christmas from coming it came somehow or other it came just the same you know i always choke up when i'm reading that to my children it's not about stuff so i I think, you know, Dr. Juice solves the problem. Also, one of the things that people found objectionable about A Christmas Carol was the Dickens' Christmas Carol, was that how much of it was about food. Oh, well, yeah.

They was, you know, it's not spiritual. One of the criticisms, especially in the later Victorian era, was that it was insufficiently spiritual. It was too concerned with eating a lot. In fact, that idea of Scrooge buying presents for everybody. That's quite new. In the Albert Finney, he actually goes to a toy shop and spends about 10 minutes in there, doesn't he?

Yeah, so this is a really interesting thing. So one of my favorite bits of this is this is pre-Santa Christmas. So before Santa, the sort of weird Dutch importation from America, Father Christmas was a kind of almost like a pagan sort of frost god, a kind of personification of jollity and feasting and kind of light. And that's very clearly, I might just, I forgot time, should I read that just that little bit of where he sees the ghost of Christmas present? This seems to me to be absolutely, this is classic Dickens. But this is a vision of Father Christmas, really. The ghost of Christmas present is Father Christmas pre-Santa.

And he goes into the room and he sees this. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened the crisp leaves of holly mistletoe and ivy reflected back the light as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney as that dull petrification of a hearth had ever known in scrooge's time or marley's, for many and many a winter season gone, heaped up on the floor were to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long reeds of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings,

barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth cakes, seething bowls of punch that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state, upon this couch there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch in shape not unlike Plenty's horn and held it up high to shed its light on Scrooge as he came paping round the door. Come in, exclaimed the ghost. Come in and know me better, man. Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before the spirit. He was not the dogged street she'd been, though the spirit's eyes were clear and kind. He did not like to meet them.

I am the ghost of Christmas presents, said the spirit. Look upon me. Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe or mantle, bordered with white fur. The garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capacious breast was bare as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet observable beneath the ample folds of the garment were also bare and on its head it wore no other covering than a hollyweath set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free,

free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor and its joyful air. Man, this is what we had before we got Santa Claus. Do you know what? We've all eaten your food because that otherwise is going to put our dinners to shame. That sounded like the meal we had in the Greek restaurant last night. We're going to listen to another clip in a minute,

but I want to set it up by just reading one short passage from The Life and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge by Paul Davis. This is near the conclusion of his book about what the carol has meant at different points in its history. Scrooge was Dickens' words to begin with, but Scrooge was better than his words and more, infinitely more. The text of A Christmas Carol penned by Dickens' words to begin with. But Scrooge was better than his words and more, infinitely more.

The text of A Christmas Carol penned by Dickens in a few months in 1843 was only the beginning of the larger culture text of the carol written over the last century and a half and still being written today. John Lucas has said that the power of Dickens' text derives from its compressed intensity, a quality shared with Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience of suggesting more than its states. Reaching beyond its words, this expansive text probes our cultural memory, explains the particulars of the changing present, and prompts our hopes and expectations. Its power is creative. As memory, the carol recalls more than its previous tellings. It is more than the sum of its Christmas's past. We cannot remember when we first knew the story.

It is allied in our consciousness to our awareness of day and night, winter and spring, rooted to the elemental wish that the fearful ogre become fairy godfather. Tiny Tim and Scrooge in Fairy Tale reenact Beauty and the Beast. As the archetype of the Senex and Pua, the old man and crippled child, they express human life in its temporal extremes. In Ghost Story, these mortal figures transcend youth and age, innocence and experience to perform a supernatural drama on Hamlet's stage, where time and eternity meet.

Like Coleridge's ancient mariner, we have a compulsive need to retell this story, to search in the ritual of telling for things lost or forgotten. As memory, the carol is myth. Tell him, Mr. Pinch. Come on, come on. Do it now. If you please, Mr. Scrooge, it's gotten colder.

Any bookkeeping staff would like to have an extra shovel full of coal for the fire? We can't do the bookkeeping. Yeah, all of our pens have turned to inksicles. Our assets are frozen. How would the bookkeepers like to be suddenly... Unemployed! He's waiting!

This is my island in the sun. I believe you've convinced them once again, Mr Scrooge. Okay, so we've talked about numerous different versions of Christmas Carol Dickens. We've had musical cartoons, humorous, satirical, ghost stories. Nicky Birch has, as ever, chosen what's perhaps the platonically ideal version of a Christmas Carol. Nicky, what is it called, please? It's The Muppet's Christmas Carol.

It's actually not called that. Is it not? Go on, tell me what it's called. It's called The Muppet's Christmas Carol. The Muppet's Christmas Carol. Thank you, Andy. I appreciate that. I hoped and prayed that would happen. And it did. Years.

Okay, good. Well, as you heard, it's called The Muppet Christmas Carol, and it's from 1992. And it's the musical version. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a musical version. And it was the fourth Muppet film. And the first one directed not by Jim Henson, but by his son, Brian Henson. Because I think Jim Henson had died at that point.

That's right, yeah. But Brian had worked on previous ones, so it wasn't kind of completely new. And actually didn't do that well when it first came out. Muppet's Christmas Carol was up against aladdin which did very well um but has sub and it was panned by the critics so subsequently done very well as you said like christmas movies yeah um has come back if you grow up with it you tend to overlook tend to come back yes i don't say the songs by paul williams so um one of the kind of clever things is that they have dickens in it don't they and gonzo is dickens and and that's

great gonzo and rizzo uh they're the narrators and they also provide all the comedy value because there isn't the story itself it hasn't got so much comedy in it so they're much slapstick not much slapstick so basically dickens uh gonzo's character is just kind of constantly you know they're they're getting windows sort of smashed in their face and falling off things and generally providing all the kind of traditional Muppet humour. Whereas when the rest of it can be quite dark at times. So for children, you imagine it's like every now and then there's something that everyone's going to laugh at to balance it off. It's joy comes, I'd say, the best thing about the Muppet film is every scene that Kermit's in.

So Kermit plays Gratchit, right? And Kermit's in. So Kermit plays Gratchit, right? And Kermit is the star. He just brings so much joy and he's like this kind of full of joy of Christmas. So every scene he's in, he tootles down the road going, this is fantastic. Christmas is amazing. Isn't it wonderful?

I've got the joy of Christmas. Look at my family. And when I talk to Scrooge, I don't mind, even though he's horrible. He's my employer. And then sort of Scrooge I don't mind even though he's horrible he's my employer and then sort of Scrooge is played by Michael Caine as a human

as opposed to a Muppet because the wonderful thing about the Muppets is they did have humans and puppets together and Michael Caine plays the whole thing completely straight he doesn't do humour in it.

Apart from actually that one little clip that we just heard, that's really his only, the whole thing he plays it as if he's doing some kind of Shakespearean piece. And so the juxtaposition between Kermit and Michael Caine is kind of wonderful, really. So, yeah, I'm not a musical fan, as we have explored on many locklisted shows. Andy and John are more into musicals than me, but it's still wonderfully enjoyable. And there's a few things I think, you know, room for improvement, personally, in the film.

The ghosts aren't... OK, right, come on, I've held back now. The spirits in The Muppet Christmas Carol are irritating. Sorry, everyone, I'm about to say some lovely things about it, but they are the weak point, aren't they? We've not spoken about the ghost much, have we? Yeah, for me, Gonzo is the star, because I think it's a great piece of storytelling,

and when you read the original, it's framed as a piece of storytelling. Dickens' voice is so strong. And he, you know, as we said, it was oral. It was meant to be sort of read by the fire. And I think framing, putting Dickens himself in it is the genius. One of the things I might say is controversial is I don't think Michael Caine is that good in it. That is controversial. Yeah, because he just like he he switches from being mean to being nice like straight away there's like a very quick switch it's christmas day quote unquote so i'm gonna i will let that

go but let me tell you something i went to see the muppet christmas carol uh for me the muppet christmas carol is the christmas gift that on giving. There's so many little things to love about it. For example, I went to see this on the big screen a few days ago. By a coincidence, it was being screened near me.

You're living in some vortex. I know, right? Dickensian kind of coincidence. I come out and there's a signed copy of Scrooge by Albert Finney. Anyway. Come this way, sir. We're showing them that love is Christmas Carol.

We could be Andy's ghosts right now. Well, but the thing is, I had a similar experience earlier in the year. I went to a big solstice night screening of The Wicker Man. And it's a long time since I'd seen The Wicker Man on the big screen. And one of the things that I really, we mentioned Christopher Lee earlier. Christopher Lee's performance,

which seems when you watch it on television too big, is perfectly judged to be watched in a cinema. It's fantastic in a cinema. And seeing, I have to say, I'm going to say these words out loud. You've not seen The Muppet Christmas Carol till you've seen it on the big screen. Because Michael Caine is a brilliant screen actor.

And in the cinema, the thing you've just described is not a problem at all. I mean, I think he is fantastic because what he does is he pitches the performance to that screen despite being surrounded by little puppets who are incapable of going larger or smaller. But does the big screen,

official friend of the show, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, his point, does it make Miss Piggy any less miscast as Bob Cratchit's wife? I suppose that shows that the lack of good female parts. But they could have made her a ghost. There's no female parts apart from Miss Piggy. So bad.

The Muppets we know and love. It's a bit of luck that Fozzie wig happens to fit. But it's a waste of Fozzie Bear and it's a waste of Miss Piggy. Fozzie Bear would have made a great Christmas present. He'd have been brilliant as a big-hearted kind of... But I tell you, Nicky,

the other thing about The Muppet Christmas Carol, which I think, as a musical, it's a really good musical. Paul Williams, I think, had up to that point written all the songs for all the Muppet movies. Yeah. And starting with

rainbow connection in the first one and the songs are great and again you know i think the songs are better than the songs in scrooge yeah they're much better the season to be jolly yeah but also and when it's funny it's funny and when it's scary it's scary as you said, it's got some bits of Muppet business. The thing I found watching it the other day was it's made in the early 90s when you would assume some, though not all of its audience, still remembered quite a lot of the Muppet characters and what they were there for from the TV show. Watching it now, the Statler and Waldorf conceit, you wouldn't know what that was.

You wouldn't. And yet it still works. So there's something kind of, but maybe that's Dickens. Maybe it's the archetypes work rather than the Muppet archetypes. It's also very interesting because technology has come on a long way since that, and that was a film where the Muppets were using puppeteers, right? And so there was an amazing scene where Bob Cratchit is walking down the road with his son and singing the season to be jolly and they show the Muppets legs.

That was a big deal. There's a weird bit in Dickens where he's talking about that very large turkey. And he says it was so big big the legs underneath it was snapped like like sticks of sealing wax which is very odd thing to say in just apropos of nothing but i felt i've when i last watched the muppets christmas carol kermit's legs are really troubling nicky was there a bit from the dickens original that that reminds you of part of the Muppet Christmas Carol or vice versa? Well, yes, I thought I'd read an early bit where it was a bit like the clip that we played at the beginning of this from the beginning of the book. Once upon a time of all the good days in the year on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house.

good days in the year on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy with all, and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. It had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so much very smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room. And so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter

and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. Well done. Not particularly christmasy end you know well i'm afraid it's a time now for us to leave you to your tinsel and turkey thank you to claire for joining our party and helping us spread good cheer and merriment to all our listeners if you want show notes with clips links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 201 that we've already recorded please visit our website at backlisted.fm though it's

too late for christmas if you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose backlisted as your bookshop and we're still keen to hear from you on twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Spirit Manifestations. If you want to hear Backlisted early and ad-free, subscribe to our Patreon, www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. And you can join in the book chat there. Oh, your subscription brings on other benefits, Nicky. If you subscribe at the lock listener level for a monthly fee, that's roughly twice Bob

Cratchit's original annual salary, you'll get not one but two extra exclusive podcasts every month. It features the three of us talking and recommending the books, films and music we enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who enjoyed our What Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you'll find us now. It's an oral plum pudding bursting with book chat. Oh, please.

I'm going to have to go and take a take of Rennie. Oh, plus lot listeners get their names read out, accompanied by lashings of yuletide praise and gratitude like this. Neville Hall. Thank you. David Hooper. Thanks, David. Thank you.

Catherine Millican. Thank you. Autumn L. Mather. Thank you. Madeline Watts. Thank you. Leslie McFarlane.

Thank you. Joanne Nafi. Thank you. Dara Cotter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Merry Christmas to you all. Claire, is there anything you would like to add about Christmas Carol or versions of a Christmas Carol that we didn't cover? We didn't talk about the Doctor Who Christmas Carol with the late Michael Gambon in it, but it isn't very good.

So never mind. Or the Marcel Meursault 1973 BBC mime version. And I guarantee you folks... Not very good on audio podcasts that way. I guarantee you someone will tweet saying can't believe you didn't mention er. But anyway, we tried to cover as many as we could. Claire, is there

anything you would like to add? God bless us, everyone. Yay! Superb. Thank you all for listening. We will wish you all a very Merry Christmas. And as Dickens himself said at the end of his last public performance of A Christmas Carol,

from these garish lights I vanish now forevermore with one heartfelt heartfelt grateful, respectful and affectionate farewell. Merry Christmas everybody. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!