Oh What A Time... - #154 Christmas Special (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we have a Christmas special for you in which we’ll take a good look at a whole array of festive traditions. This history of the Christmas annual, the history of the Christmas film and how about the history of our favourite Christmas stories.This week we’re still obsessed with keys, scams and grand pianos. If you’d like to get involved with the conversation you can reach us here: [e-mail]! The comedy history podcast that has spent as much time talking about the invention of custard as it has the industrial revolution is here with its first ever live show! Thursday 15th January at the Underbelly Boulevard in London’s Soho. 🎟 Tickets are on sale now: https://underbellyboulevard.com/tickets/oh-what-a-time/And thank you so much for subscribing guys!You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O Watertime is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up.

For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time. Hello, this is part two of Christmas. Let's get on on the show. I've got to say January, obviously, the most depressing more than months. But not on January the 15th when we're doing a gig up in the belly boulevard. And why is it not going to be depressing? Well, because Tom now, as such a season joke right, he can't turn it off.

The guy is just joke after joke after joke after joke. The man has an illness. Yeah. But obviously terrible for his family and his home life, but great for an audience. It means he can't sustain friendships for any length of time. Oh, God. No, no, and his wife hates him.

No one will ever love him. But if you want to be warmed up by laughter for an hour and a half. Leasy guy. I'm really looking forward to it. I genuinely am. I think it's so much fun. Yeah, absolutely. If you do want to get a ticket, as we say, 15th of January in hip-cooled Soho in London, we'd love to see you there.

You can click on the description of this episode. There's a link in there, or you can go to ohwatertime.com, or you can go onto the Underbelly Boulevard website. So on this episode, we are discussing Christmas in the first part you heard Ellis talk about the history of Christmas annuals. And now, Tom, what are you going to tell us? I'm going to be telling you all about the history of Christmas. stories. Let's kick things off by asking this question. What is your favourite Christmas story? All the stories. What's your favourite? My favourite Christmas story is my favourite story, Christmas Carol. It is just classic. I'm reading it at the moment. I read the Christmas Carol. Dickens

a Christmas Carol every December because it gets me in the mood. Do you? Oh, that's so nice. It's longer than you think. Right. As a parent of two young children, I have less time in December than I always think. probably 50% of the time I don't get to finish it. Right, okay. So it actually bleaks me out before Christmas because this... So do you not get to the point where there's redemption in the story? No, no, no. I often don't get to redemption.

And then it's Christmas Day and then I try and pick it up on Boxing Day. And it is quite impressive. Ellis has got no idea that Scrooge turns it round. No, no, he just thinks it's a document of a really horrible man. I think the last time I realised that Scrooge turned it round was about 2021. Okay. I think I finished in 2021. Which is your favourite of the three ghosts out of interest?

I have a clear favourite. Mine's a Christmas present. I like that. All the bounty, all the warmth. I just love that part of it. The thing I have often wondered is things like the ghost's rattling chains, did Dickens invent that? Or was that a ghost trope prior to Charles Dickens?

That is a fantastic. Because I noticed the ghost ruttling chains last year, I thought, I wonder, did he, if he made that, that's another thing he's added to language and sort of literary canon. Well, I don't know about the chains, but Christmas Carol had a huge impact on our view of Christmas and future writers' views of how Christmas, what Christmas is and how it's shaped. And we will come to that. So you said Christmas Carol is your favourite Christmas story, and I completely agree with you. Can I make one more point? Oh, yes. My vision of Tiny Tim has forever been destroyed by an annual.

Oh, right. Oh, okay. The drummer, the 1980s satirical show starring Griffries Jones and Mel Smith and Pamela Stevenson and others, Andrew and Atkinson, not the 9 o'clock news. My dad had a not the 9 o'clock news annual, which I just picked up one day, and they did a sort of parody of Tiny Tim where Tiny Tim loses it because he hates being called Tiny Tim. and he smashes Scrooge over the head with one of his crutches basically knocks his sort of blows his brains out so whenever I read about Tiny Tim and he's nice in the book I'm like that's not how I've imagined this since about 1986

he's like a foul-mouthed little kid who's like fuck you Scrooge just call me fucking Tim for God's sake just to let you know Chris was 100% convinced you were going to mention the small frog from a Muppet's Christmas Carol When every Christmas Carol, I can't see anyone, Tiny Tim, is always the little frog. He's always a little frog. That scene, Chris, with the little crutch lent against the wall in the corner when they're seeing Christmas future is just utterly heartbreaking. Do you know as well?

When I read Dickens' Christmas Carol, I can imagine every character being different except for Tiny Tim and Fuzzy Wig. Fuzzy Wig is always the bear. in my mind. I say Muppets Christmas Carol is possibly my favourite movie of all movies. I love it so much. I've not watched it for years. It's amazing. I love it.

This opening scene where it goes like birds eye view over the sort of snow-dusted roofs of London. I just find it so emotive. Anyway, we're not talking about Muppets at Christmas Carol. We're talking about Christmas stories and Dickens in general. I'm going to take you back, okay, to the autumn of 1843, okay? This is before Dickens has written a Christmas Carol. and Dickens is in a bit of a rut which is a writer I find

quite comforting that even Charles Dickon had writers Brock that's great, pleased to hear that his recent... What did he do? His most recent novel which was at that time Martin Chuzzlewit and shit basically yeah that had been the response

genuinely. It'd not gone down well at all, the British public hadn't liked it the overseas market even less so and America hated it okay America's a big market obviously they thought it was an unfair satire on their civilisation and even began sending abusive letters to Dickens so people hate this book so much

he's getting letter after letter after letter and worse still Dickens' publisher gets cold feet and demand their money back which I would say you can't do after it's been public Oh my God I think if it's out there and people aren't liking it I don't think you can then ask for your money back because you've signed it off

Did he have an agent? Well Sarah and Emily my agents would go ballistic Well, at least I like to think that they would Well, we read the book Penguin have got a point Absolutely. You need to sell the house

It's that bad So he's getting all this abuse It has been a disaster In the genuine sense of the word It's been a disaster So to clear his mind He goes away And he sits down to write a Christmas story

And the Christmas story he writes Is the greatest Christmas story of all time It's a Christmas carol which is a decent repost, I think. I wonder, I was thinking about this, if you write something that good, when you finish, you have any awareness

that you have just written one of the greatest stories of all time. If a friend has said, oh, you just written something, how is it? Are you pleased with it? Are you saying, I'll be honest,

I think it's one of the best stories that's ever written, or do you have no idea? No, your ego would have to be the size of Canada to think, yeah, that looks like one of the, and the people who do say that

always look stupid. That is true. That said, it is a Christmas carol. What a book. And Dickens, you say the ego, Dickens did know he was on to something, okay? He was so pleased of this. He paid for the edition himself as a gift book and put it on sale on the 19th of December 1843. So he thinks this is going to be big. He's got confidence. He's put his own money into it. And by Christmas Eve, this is less than a week later, the addition was entirely sold out. So all 6,000, copies are gone. Two more additions followed before New Year and they both sold out as well.

So very quickly, momentum is building and this book is selling. In fact, get this. This is incredible. By the following Christmas, 11 more print runs were necessary and they all sold out. Wow. And American sales alone ran into the millions

despite anger over Martel Chuzzlewit. So America hated him because of Chuzzlewit. Then he releases his new book. Millions of copies are sold. 11 print runs in a year. Isn't that mad? Just print run after print run are sold out. It's the 1843 equivalent of Slade cynically writing a Christmas song

because they know they'll get royalties for years and years. Like Dickens, he's written a book that is such a Christmas classic. It almost becomes synonymous with the season, even all these years later. I think there's no almost about it, Chris. I think it's directly affected the season. It has had a profound impact on. our view of Christmas, it's like a deeply important moments in what Christmas has become. I mean, imagine being the publisher that has asked for the money back previously and led to him

then going out and trying to do his own thing because you pissed him off so much. Imagine that. Yeah, you're basically your, your DECA records turning down the Beatles, aren't you? Yeah, saying that guitar groups are going out of fashion. Saying, how have you soured your relationship with Dick, you are aware it's Charles Dickens. This is one of the great, yeah. Anyway, so a Christmas carol completely transforms Dickens' career. Over the next few years, he produces an annual Christmas novel, The Chimes in 1844, cricket on the hearth in 1845,

Battle of Life in 1846, and The Haunted Man and the Ghost Barg in in 1848, establishing in the public consciousness the look and the feel of a true Christmas. His writing, over this time, as I say Chris, completely shapes what Christmas is now. Indeed, Christmas was a theme Dickens his work and one that he just couldn't let go of. It was there in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. His triumphant later novel, Great Expectations,

opens on Christmas Eve. That's a fantastic book as well, Great Expectations. That's absolutely one of my favourite books. Have you read that? No, I've read Oliver Twist and the Christmas Carol and his ghost stories. I've got a compendium of his ghost stories, which is great. I've never read Great Expectations. I've not read Great Expectations.

Great Expectations is a mind-blowing work. It's so brilliant. And our mutual friend, which was his last completed novel, similarly recalls some Christmas pass when a character drank copious amounts of tea and grumbled all the time. And this work had a huge impact on the writing landscape with every writer who's taken something from Dickens finding it impossible to escape his portrait, his view of Christmas. So even towering literary figures like Tolstoy turned in quasi-Dekensian Christmas stories such as Papa Panov and the famous scenes in war and peace.

Likewise, listen to these names, incredible. Dostlespie wrote Christmas stories also in a Dickensian mode, as did Oscar Wilde. To make, influencing people like that. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible, isn't it? That's huge. The guy had talent.

He had something. Okay, I'm willing to concede that. And of course, in Wales, an incredible 20th century writer followed Dickens' lead and wrote a Christmas story that's been a classic itself ever since its publication in America in 1954. What is that, Elle? You'll know this.

Dylan Thomas, A Child Christmas in Wales. Correct. A Child Christmas in Wales. I read that last year to get me in the mood as well. Oh, did you? Yeah. I've never read it. I need to. It's nice. It's very short. It wouldn't take you long. It's a lovely little book, actually. Sean Harries, who's a mutual friend of Ellis and I, brilliant comedy writer who wrote much of Man Down and also her new show, which is called...

Oh, Death Valley with Timothy Sport. Fantastic. She told me about, was it at your school where you had a drama teacher? Well, you can tell the story. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in primary school, we did a, I mean, primary school, we were sort of 10 or 11. But in Welsh language primary schools, Welsh medium primary schools, is an enormous amount of emphasis put on performance, in particular singing and acting. And we did a production of a child's Christmas in Wales. We were too young. It was incredibly intense The teacher basically He saw it as his sort of masterwork

Right And he was like, I need more intensity More intensity And how old are you at this point? Like nine First question what is intensity Yeah he'd adapted Because Charles Christmas in Wales

He's written in English But he'd adapted it into Welsh He translated it And we weren't intense enough as a group in Key Stage 1 or whatever it was. I love that. So a child's Christmas in Wales began as a radio piece broadcast on the BBC in 16 December, 1945, as part of the Children's Hour programme,

which is exactly 80 years ago. Audiences then loved the mix of childhood memoir and fiction with Thomas' delivery adding a special pizzazz. Here's how it famously opens. One Christmas was so much like another in those years, around the Seatown Corner now, and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices

I sometimes hear a moment before sleep that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six beautiful writing in fact some 20 years later

in 1965 another Welshman left his mark this time Richard Burton at this point at this point Burton is a huge acting star He was the best paid star in Hollywood at one point

Wow and the Burton Taylor relationship and phenomenon was in full flight. But Burton, he sort of yearned for something more fulfilling, a different creative and intellectual life. And he began to publish stories. One of the most notable of these stories was called Christmas Story, which still stands out as kind of a unique contribution to the world of festive fiction.

On the surface, have you heard of this, Al? No, I've never read this. So on the surface, it's very much a post-Dill and Thomas tale of what it was like growing up in South Wales. But you can also see the influence of Dickens in the tale, of a motherless boy figuring things out in Christmas Eve. Once again, the opening of this is beautiful. And when I read this for the first time,

as I finished it, I said out loud, alone in my room, oh, that is lovely writing. Because his mother died when he was very young. Oh, really? So this is how the story starts. There were not many white Christmases in our part of Wales and my childhood, perhaps only one or two. But Christmas cars and Dickens and Dylan Thomas

and wishful memory have turned them all into white. Isn't that lovely? Oh, yeah. And I think that is such a telling way of viewing Christmas stories, their ability to shape our idea and our memories and our experience of what Christmas is. It's kind of they have such an impact. Like, let's look at Dickens, for example,

that idea of love and sharing time and together. And these stories I used to read, let's say the snowman, in my memory, it's right, my Christmas is white. The truth is I probably experienced a white Christmas twice in my entire childhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But because it's so wrapped up now, this idea of what Christmas Eve is snowfall. And it's just kind of, in my mind, that's what it was. I remember my little sister going to visit Father Christmas in a shopping center in Kmarthen when she was about seven.

And he said, oh, ho, ho, ho. What would you like for Christmas, little girl? And she went, I want a white Christmas. and he went Um Well Father Christmas will try his best

But obviously Not sure the elves can You know Come on I mean I can't change the weather I can buy you a Barbie Or whatever it is you want

But a snow I mean And obviously you didn't know what to say And I did my mum And then it wasn't a white Christmas That year It rained because it was Wales and then it snowed eventually for about half an hour, four months later.

And I remember my mum going, you see, it's Father Christmas. He was late, but he's what a bloody legend. He got there in the end. He got there in the end. Yeah. I went to see a Santa when I was about, I guess, probably about seven, the local community centre. And as I walked in, he went, hello Christopher, come sit on my knee.

And he was like, you know, they usually go, what do you want? He was like, you want a bicycle this Christmas. He nailed everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you also support West Ham, don't you? And your favourite player is Trevor Morley? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pass forward 20 years.

I said to my dad, do you remember when we went to that community centre and the father, he just knew everything? He was like, it was your uncle Barry. You load of facts about your auntie. How's that out? That's amazing. we went to see a Santa last year and my then three-year-old was dressed up as Santa Claus

we got a taxi into town and he was on my knee and then midway through the journey he faced me looked suddenly ashen and vomited into my own mouth and it turned out he had norovirus and I was absolutely covered I had to get out of the cab my wife my other child and our friends

continued on to see Santa and Pip and I had to make our way back to my house. Both of us covered in everything. And then, of course, as soon as I got home, I swiftly became the most ill I've ever been. Oh, no. And it was just horrendous. Him still dressed as Santa,

me unable to deal with the situation. So for me, my most recent trip to Santa was not that pleasant. Well, this is a humble brag, but I volunteered to be Santa at my kids' Christmas fair last year at their primary school and I got numerous complaints from parents I didn't know for being too thin and I thought

fuck you no one else wants to do it I'd give anything for that sort of feedback Yeah yeah They're like Father Christmas been on a diet Is he? Well I don't know

I watch one like And I printed out all the complaints I printed out all the complaints I printed out all the complaints and handed them around at the school gate Yeah And they were like Not very magical isn't it a thin Father Christmas

Well, get you a fucking new to it then. I don't want to do it. So, Burton writes his story. Too buff. He's too hot. It could not be Christmas, isn't he? A ripped Father Christmas. Father Christmas isn't meant to be sexy, guys.

Why is mummy sitting on Santa's knee? Is it supposed to be my time, mummy? So, Burton writes his piece. What's money doing to Father Christmas? Burton writes this piece. It's beautifully written. In fact, he loves it so much. He writes a second Christian story. This one is actually much darker, much harder, much sort of grimier. Tells something perhaps of Burton's alcoholic father. His own fears are not living up to expectations as he wrote, the wage packet had gone forever, poured down his throat, and it would be a black

Christmas. And this demonstrates how Christmas stories are not always cheery, but they do all share the inner logic of redemption, which is definitely true. That is their purpose, just as Dickens envisaged with his character, Scrooge. And even Burton's alcoholic minor father, who managed to put himself in hospital after an explosion underground, learns his lesson in that story. And so lived another 40 years and died at 83, is how it says. And whatever they do for us, Christmas stories offer the simple truth that we can all be good if we want to be.

And I love a Christmas story for that. I love that redemption story. I love the coming together, the sort of the love, the sharing that comes inevitably at the end of these stories. And even like little things like the snowman, that child who's alone meets a child, goes and meets his snowman, flies out and then that party with Father Christmas, all the dancing. I just love it. It's just such a lovely feeling that all of these stories share. Right, let's chat Christmas movies. I actually found out two weeks ago that Batman Returns is a Christmas movie.

I didn't spot any of the seasonal effects. Oh, Elle, me and Tom were on the Eurostar a couple of weeks ago. Who should walk into the terminal? Mr. Tim Burton. Really? Yeah. Did he get my chassell? No.

No. I'm not sure I'd recognise Tim Burton, actually. It's quite a niche celebrity, isn't it? It's worth saying he went through our area and into a large glass lift above which we're written the word first class lounge. So he disappeared from our view very swiftly, Ellis. But then our friend James had an awkward moment where he couldn't work at the toilet door on the Heuristart. And Tim Byrne was outside. It was on those toilet doors where he like, the lock button and the open button is exactly the same.

Yeah. So my friend James just bottled it, just left the toilet while Tim Burton was like, what's this guy doing? That's funny. And then someone wrote on our WhatsApp group, The Shankmare before Pissmas, which was a bit of fun. Yes. Very good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's rattle through some of Christmas fields I'm not going to talk about. Love Actually. Thoughts and I like, I do like Love Actually, no? No, I actually couldn't get through it. I enjoy it, but I see it was problematic. Die hard Love it

Never seen it Home Alone I love the Home Alone Amazingly my kids didn't like it Couldn't really What I realised about the Home Alone Franchise is that it introduces the idea of burglar

Into kids who haven't necessarily Had that thought before Right Yes That's what I've experienced My daughter has got quite Sophisticated taste And says that she's bored

Of slapstick And I was like Okay fine you're 10 Yeah yeah I think Home Alone is a fantastic movie. Great Christmas film. It's so well told. Come in!

I love it. The efficiency in which it moves through everything. It's just so brilliantly written. I love it. Home Alone 2, where is it Merv electrocutes himself in the sink and briefly turns into a skeleton, is I think one of the funniest scenes in any film we've ever seen. It always makes me how well after.

Yeah. For a point, by the way, Chris, do you know why Donald Trump's in it? Because he owned the Plaza Hotel. Correct. So he insisted on having a little role. That's why he's there in it briefly. I went to the year last Christmas and I was like, we've got to go to the Plaza Hotel. We've got to go. It was rubbish. Was it really? Yeah. What's like this? It's, it's, you can tell it's where Home Alone was, but it looks so much smaller in real life. Oh, does it? It's tiny. It's not very impressive.

Well, he's only a kid, wasn't he? So he must have been a big on the movies. Alex Brooker went to the Plaza Hotel last Christmas and he bought like a Home Alone experience and that experience involved like eating like a bucket of ice cream and then like Kevin does in Home Alone too getting in the limo with the pizza and getting like a limo ride around New York but what Alex realised it's like

it's just like being in a taxi for two hours you're just driving around and that's really rubbish it's worse than that because they were stuck in New York traffic and his wife was getting increasingly, understandably, annoyed about the situation as he ate pizza and they weren't moving through New York. That's funny. Absolutely.

It looks great on paper, but the execution isn't quite fair. So let's talk about the very first Christmas films. You've got to go back to 1890s. So you've got the invention of motion pictures, yeah. In 1897, the audiences could watch a short film called The Christmas Tree. I bet that is rubbish. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It will be. Absolute shame. In 1898, another short, simply titled Santa Claus, showed Father Christmas climbing down a chimney and delivering presents to sleeping children. Both of those films lasted barely a minute. And viewers said, it's a blessing. But the purpose is already being laid out

to visualize the Christmas myth and reinforce the magic. The cinema, from itself, earliest days embraced Christmas as a spectacle. But then Dickens came to the big screen in 1910, 20 years later, and Christmas films have reached feature length. And when they did, they turned inevitably to Charles Dickens. In 1916, the American Studio Bluebird Photo Plays released The Right to Be Happy, the first full-length adaption of a Christmas Carol. Short versions of the story had existed before, but this was the first time audiences could sit through Scrooge's full redemption arc in the cinema. Wow. That would have been handy.

back for you in 1910. You could have finally seen Scrooge emerge from the trauma of all these different Christmases to be a better man. Yeah. Yeah, so Dickens in 1910 so that means you're still almost 70 years away from Muppet's Christmas

Carol. Yeah. I loved Scrooge with Bill Murray. Yes. I've never watched it. I love that bit when he gets shot and then he has a glass of his skin it's coming out of the bullet holes.

I've never watched Scrooge. I'm going to do. I might do that. I might do that this weekend, actually. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I just love Bill Murray. I could watch him in anything. So let's go now post-war, and now we get, for me, the birth of the classic Christmas film. So this is the 40s and 50s. So Christmas films had existed earlier, but this is the golden age now of Christmas cinema.

A Wonderful Life, is that in there? Wonderful Life, 1946. Great movie. I went through a run of about five years of seeing it every Christmas. Sometimes I didn't go on my own. The Curzon in Soap. Once again, Ellis's no idea He turns it round

He's got to leave A bit the kids up Oh, she's an old maid That's how that ended Oh well The bank's gone bust And they all go home Yeah

I like the idea You've never seen the end of a film The Sixth Sense You've got no idea he's a ghost It's just this guy You can see dead people Yeah Yeah

God films are hard isn't they? Andy Dufrayne doesn't get out of Shoreshank. Just watch this. Just watch this film about a guy who's serving a life sentence. Oh, man.

Yeah. So, three films cemented the modern idea of Christmas on the screen. So we've got the wonderful life which talks about, which is a love, known 46. The Miracle on 34th Street, 1947. Oh, yeah.

That's a good movie. The 90s remake. I love that. Oh, yeah. White Christmas, 1954 and these films help people process the trauma of the Second World War, the great

depression. The enormous disruption to global societies. We think of them as Christmas films, but they're essentially trying to heal society. Quite a lot of pressure there as a writer. We're doing a film together. What's your main name of this film? To help people heal and process the trauma of the Second World War, you put quite a lot of pressure

on me there. Do you know what, that's a really really good point, Tom. Because I've been in those meetings where the execs like, well, actually what we hope to do with this. Yeah, right, okay. Oh, yes, you want a big sort of thing to kind of rival under debt. Right, you want humanity to try and process the second world war through this film.

Okay. What's the deadline? A month. Right, a month. Okay. You've got four weeks. Well, obviously, I'm going to have to do it because it's a good opportunity. Yeah.

I worry. I love a Christmas film. Tom, why don't you write a Christmas film? Like, it's such a shoeing. I'd love to write a Christmas movie. Yeah, it's a thing I used to do. You need to do it. I would love to do it. Maybe I will.

And maybe you'll be the best movie ever. I think it really helped people process the trauma of the Second World War, which is another reason you should do it. So these Christmas films establish the visual, emotional language of Christmas cinema, snow-covered streets, big band, soundtracks, family, reunions, redemption, generosity, second chances. and for reasons no one's ever really explained, it's always snowing.

These movies did for Christmas film what a Christmas Carol had done for Christmas literature. They fixed the mood, the message, the imagery, forever. And then we get into the 1990s. Young Ellis James, young Tom Crane, young Chris Skull, we're all watching Jingle All the Way, 1996. It's starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's putting in one hell of a performance.

Two fathers competing to buy the must-have toy of the season. Turbo Man. It's actually a really good movie that. It's a really good movie. It's really funny, yeah. I've got a lot of time for it. It's up there, do you go away? Yeah, he's great in it.

So it's a film about two fathers competing to buy the must-have toy of the season Turbo Man, and it looks ridiculous. But as anyone who lived through the Teenage Muton Ninja Turtles shortages of the early 90s and the cabbage patch doll shortages

of the 1980s will know it's a satire of real-world toy shortages. Oh, big time. Huge. I remember Teenage Muton Ninja Turtles. My mum, like running around town, toys of us, they'd be like a Royal Rumble. People running in.

It was chaos. Yeah, yeah. Riots over those. I never got one because my Australian cousins promised they were going to send me one. So whenever I asked one we got to Christmas, mum would say, I can't buy one because your cousins are definitely going to send you one. And, of course, after four years, and it has not seen out, it just never turned up. Every year I'd ask for one.

And mum would go, I'd love to. but there's one coming. There is one coming. That's why you're so damaged. Explains a lot. But Tom will love this section now. Anyone who grew up in Britain over the last 40 years, when someone says Christmas film,

there's one title that sits above all the rest. Muppet's Christmas Carol. That is... The Muppet's Christmas. No. This one was broadcast on Boxing Day and 1982 on Channel 4. Snowman.

On a Raymond Briggs, 1978 picture book. It's upsetting. The Snowman, it became an instant seasonal staple. I actually really wanted to watch it the other year, and I had to buy it on Amazon Prime. And I was like, I'll buy the HD version. I don't think you can get a HD version of The Snowman. It's like it's got the same amount of pixels, like it was shot on a potato. Yeah, it's got that a sort of 80s animation grade, grain to it, which I actually like.

You haven't quite tuned to the tennis. But I love that. I love the imperfections of it. It's beautiful. When you say it's too sad, Elle, I agree. I think the final scene of the boy dropping to his knees. Oh, off agony. And then cue the credits just dropping down,

just coming down the screen. It's just heartbreaking. The final image is him just on his knees. I don't think my kids can handle it, actually. I'm not doing it. I'm going to show it to them. Because I know that I can't handle it. Does every version of it include David Bowie doing the intro?

There is a version of that. But the one I've got doesn't have that, no. My favourite Christmas TV experience is Wallace and Gromit. Really? Which I watch. It's always shown on Christmas Day on BBC well in the morning. And I always make a point of watching it. Because I absolutely love Wallace and Gromit.

The original one? All of them. Ron Trouser is probably my favourite. Just to be clear, you sit down and watch all of the Wallace and Grommies. Well, they're only half an hour each. Okay. when my wife Sophie was in labour with our first child she was like I need to put something on the telly

that's just like comforting and familiar that was Wallace and Gromit she was in late for about eight hours we watched end to end Wallace and Gromit and it was perfect the train track scene is such a great bit of comic writing it is so funny it's amazing yeah yeah yeah with a milk bottle

at the end when he plops into it It is class. Oh my God, I'm going to watch one as a grommet off. My safety film, where I'm stressed, and I filmed a pilot in Spain once. I was there for a week, and I found the whole thing quite stressful. I watched Finding Nemo every night in the hotel where we were at filming. Every single night. That's my safety film.

Yeah. So, well, let's talk about the snowman. Go on. It's not Alid Jones, singing, walking in the air. No, it's not. That's right. He released a single afterwards. It's not a la joke.

I thought that's what he's famous for. He released the single, didn't he? Yeah, so he got to do it on top of the pops, but he's not the one who sings it in the film. Correct. So he's the milly vanilla of 80s Christmas culture. Chilly vanilla when it's a snowman, isn't it? Very good, Tom.

There's that joke reflex. Very good, Tom. Very good, Tom. Why do I feel like I'm an eight-year-old and I have my head patted by my dad? Very good, son. You go sit in the corner now, the grown-ups are speaking. So you've touched on there many elements of the snowman,

him falling to his knees, hands in the air, like a Vietnam film. But one of the distinctive features for it for me was that it contained no dialogue at all. It's a story entirely carried by animation music and, of course, walking in the air, which I've just discovered wasn't sung by that fraud, Alan Jones.

He was the original Mr. Bean, that old kid. All physical stuff. When all the snowmen are dancing? Oh, God. So you've blown my mind with an Alan Jones fact. Do you want a snowman fact that may blow your mind? Yes. Which is that it's obviously based on the 1978 picture book,

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. But the 1978 picture book isn't a Christmas story at all. What? How? What's I mean? In the book, the boy doesn't meet Father Christmas. There's no North Pole sequence. All of that was added for the television adaption.

No way. It was added. to pad it out for running time and explicitly to anchor the story to Christmas and it worked, didn't it? No way. That film is now inseparable from the season. So when are we meant to believe it was set then, Chris? Is it like January?

Yeah, I've got like maybe the four months after Christmas Day when it did snow. That's blown my mind. That's amazing. But there's a Christmas tree in the original, isn't there? I think there is in the original book. You'll have to dig the book out. Yeah.

Feel free to email. Oh, look, Correction's Corner is always open. Hello at Oh, What a Time.com. But my understanding is that it wasn't originally a Christmas book. Right. But not all Christmas films are festive and cozy. There's also a long tradition in Britain of spooky stories at Christmas, trailblazed, I would say, by Charles Dickens.

In 1971, the BBC launched a ghost story for Christmas, a strand of seasonal television that adapted classic supernatural fiction by M.R. James, Charles Dickens, and later Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Nesbit and E. Benson, and the original run ended in 1978 with The Signal Man, becoming the standout episode. And the series was revived in 2005 and continues to this day. Even earlier in 1962, the BBC had broadcast an adaption of Oscar Wilde's, the Canterville Ghost on the 23rd of December, reinforcing the old Victorian idea that Christmas is the perfect time to tell a chilling tale by the fire.

Oh. For most of the 20th century, Christmas films were a shared family ritual before home video and streaming Christmas television schedules were one of the few times of a year when everyone watched the same thing at the same time. So Christmas movies were national events viewed together in living rooms repeated annually until they became tradition.

There's a thing in Germany where all the stations have agreed for years and years they showed the same like eight minute short film in black and white that was like shot in the 50s that has become a tradition which is like the butler of a really

wealthy man who's gone blind, pretending that all his friends are still alive and playing every single character in a dinner party. I have actually watched it is quite funny, but all the German broadcasters, all the channels, they agree, they all show this film simultaneously. That's amazing. Every Christmas day. I mean, it could be worse, couldn't it? All the German TV shows decide, channels decide to show the same film that's 70 years old and the same Are you sure you want to do this? I think it's important that everyone sees the same message. Christmas schedules, it was such a big thing.

I was actually in Tesco's the other day. The Radio Times, I was like, shall I buy it? I've got a TV guide on my deli. No, I get that, Chris. I'm always tempted. But there's something about the Radio Times. Well, it's so emotive. It's so nostalgic, isn't it?

It's just, yeah. That's so exciting. That's something you don't get now. The Radio Times are flicking through and doing a red ring around the things you want to the world. It's just brilliant. What a feeling. When you see the viewing figures for like only falls and horses

and the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, I know it's like the whole country shut down. But now you don't need to do that because you can just watch anything at any point. We've just discussed many different programmes now. And as Tom, you touched on, the Christmas television experience has been completely fractured by choice. You've got streaming, essentially infinite options, but also less collective memory.

The Christmas film no longer binds the kind of. country together in quite the same way. They're just another corner of the content marketplace, depressingly. And in the end, Christmas films reflect the age in which they were made. White Christmas reflects the post-war American optimism and 1950s prosperity. Jingle all the way reflects the 1990s consumer frenzy and the snowman reflects a gentler pre-digital broadcasting world. It certainly represents a pre-HD world. These films don't show Christmas, they show and record what society wanted Christmas to mean at that moment in history.

And I'll end on this. The thing I like more than anything else to watch on the telly at Christmas, I do this every year, Top of the Pops 2. I can't get enough of it. No, the thing you like doing, we had a very funny, drunken conversation about this.

You and I, Chris, both love to watch the Chaz and Dave Christmas special from 1982, which if you are a cockney like Chris or if you're just Cockney Jason, like I am, because I know, Chris, it is the best bit of television. You will see all year. It is fantastic.

So what happens in it? Channel 5 seemed to have the rights to it. It always seems to be on Channel 5. Did they put it on Channel 5? Yeah, it's from like the early 80s. Watch it. And what happens? It's a knees up.

It's a knees up, right? So I think it's like ITV. It's the Chaz and Dave Christmas special. It starts with a zoom into the... It's an amazing... single shot of the Chas and Dave pub door opening up it sweeps inside

and there is approximately 1,000 drunken cotties having fabulous television and they are 100 miles an hour they're flying out the gates dancing and Chas and Dave launch what's the what's the first song on the sideboard the sideboard song the sideboard song

the sideball song's great it's the killers launching Mr Brightside but it's in a pub yeah yeah yeah and it's the 80s and What's great, I urge everyone listening to this, you've got to this Christmas make time to find the Chas and Dave 992 Christmas special on YouTube. There are so many great moments in it.

There's old bloke's 80 and like young girls are like 20 and they're swinging like dancing arm and arm and they're falling all over the place and there's like heavy smoke in the air and everyone's drinking like flat lager and then he brings out like Lonnie Donegan and they have such a good gig they absolutely smash it

yeah and you're like Lonnie Donigood my old man's a dustman and he just rips into three classics and people just losing their mind the whole time yeah I don't care I don't care if he comes down here I got more being a sawboy here let me have to whatever's over there

every Christmas I will tweet a video if I see it on Instagram right then I'll retweet it and go like this is culture well to to wrap this up Chris I've got a question for you what is better Christmas Carol as written by Charles Dickens

a work of fiction which has reshaped what Christmas is or Chas and Dave live in their park If you said to me You can only You can only have you

You can only From now on Your Christmases can only contain either a Christmas carol or the 1982 Chaz and Dave Christmas special I hate to break it to you I know exactly what I'd choose

Jazz and Dave all day long. Sorry, Dickens. Christmas Carol's great, but the Christmas Carol doesn't bring out Lonnie Vonnigan who starts ripping it. I will watch it. I genuinely will make a point of watching this, and I will feedback.

I'm going to have to watch it tonight. The other kind of thing, I almost know off by heart the time codes for when really funny things happen. It's incredible. Why do I feel like you're trying to impress me on a date? I know the time codes when really funny. Anyway, my name's Chris.

Oh, dear. What are you drinking? Merlo. What fun episode that's been. And if you are looking for one final Christmas treat, if you're trying to work out what to buy your wife, husband, friend, cousin, whatever. Mistress. Mistress, yeah.

Mistresses, yeah. The male equivalent to a mistress, whatever that would be. side piece, I think is what young people say, isn't it? Gigolo. No, I don't think it's that, Elle. Don't buy that, no. What's the word? Never mind.

The point is, Elle, what should they be buying them? They should be buying a ticket, bringing all of your mistresses to, oh, what a time, live at the Underbeda Boulevard on the 15th of January. It's a 7.30 p.m. kickoff. Absolutely, and I'm really looking forward to it. But if you can make it, but you can't make it,

we hope you have a lovely Christmas with all you hold dear, including your mistresses. Tie by. There you go. Well, actually, that's it for Oh, What a Time in 2025. This is our last main feed episode of the year. Unless you're feeling festive and want to treat yourself to an early Christmas present and become an Oh, What a Time subscriber via our Patreon. where you will get two extra episodes this year.

And access to all of our previous sackload, our Christmas sack full of old subscriber episodes that are available for you to listen to. But if you decide that you're going to be a Scrooge this Christmas and not sign up to the patron, well, let me say, have a wonderful Christmas. And here's hoping that your icy heart will melt in 2026. But thank you for supporting the show.

We'll see you very soon. Bye, bye, bye. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. Oh, What a Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, add free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh What a Time group chat. Plus if you become an O Water Time All-Timer, myself Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up.

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