Hell’s Bells... it’s Hogmanay TV
COURAGE everyone: we survived Christmas TV, despite two episodes of Bake Off designed to inspire the audience to troop through to the kitchen and survey the home baking on offer with the same face Mary Berry, right, pulls when she thinks she smells Brussels sprouts. now all we have to do is get through Hogmanay telly. 7PM: Reporting Scotland. Special late festive edition of happy stories tonight, although there will be a weather forecast from Kawser Quamer, sent to stand by largs seafront apparently being blasted by firehoses. 7.30PM Facts Are Chiels That Winna Ding. Members of Taggart, River City, Breaking The news and local panto discuss Scotch myths in a special overlong documentary about some aspect of couthy tartanalia. Expect plenty of chuckling over how unambitious, pawky and rubbish Scottish popular culture used to be. 8.30PM: Only An Excuse for the ladies. One-off edition of the football skit show, finally aimed at a female audience. Celtic’s Stuart Armstrong amuses us by testing out Swedish saunas, while Hearts’ Alim Öztürk takes us through his workout routine. 9.30PM: no, you Can’t Watch Graham norton. Another chance to relive the moment where one of your relatives seizes the remote control and tries to find BBC1’s output for the rest of the UK on a Freeview channel. 10PM: you Can Start Drinking Properly From Here On! Jackie Bird and some musical cardigans offer a live Hogmanay singalong from Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket.
Meanwhile, after being criticised for putting too many SnP supporters on their Hogmanay show, STV invites Alan Cumming to host music and chat with the Scottish Resistance choir singing ‘if it wasn’t for Westminster, a Scottish Hogmanay would have suntans and ice cream’, and Derek Mackay MSP counting us down to the Bells. 12.02AM new year Reflections. Derek Mackay delivers an apology for failing to deliver an accurate estimate of the count to the Bells. I AM about to head off to Ayr railway station. According to our Transport Minister, Humza Yousaf, something called a ‘ScotRail train’ is due to arrive here before 2017. The excitement is palpable. The young are asking us oldsters what it will look like… THERE was no escaping We’re Going On a Bear Hunt. Channel 4 aired it on Christmas Eve and then again on Christmas Day. So if you let your kids watch a cartoon where a little girl puts a scarf around a big depressed bear, maybe also make them watch The Revenant for a reality check. IKEA really wants teenagers to stop trying to spend the night in one of its vast out-of-town stores, after a video of two teenage pranksters staying overnight in a Belgium store went viral, and sparked a craze. But not everyone wants to sleep in an IKEA store: some people just went in for some reindeer salami during an August bank holiday and still haven’t found the way out.