TV gold in hidden collection from Christmas Times past
I WAS only looking for a book for my son but I couldn’t believe what I found.
I knew the book must have been in there somewhere, even though I hadn’t seen it since the mid-1990s. In the corner of my parents’ attic, next to an old dusty cricket bag, I could see three bags of what looked like books. It had to be in there.
It wasn’t. The bags, instead, were full of memories and nostalgia that would transport me back to the magical Christmases of my childhood.
Inside the bags, for some reason, lay 40 years’ worth of Radio Times and TV Times magazines. Every one of them a Christmas edition, starting from 1977 right through to 2017; every one of them with a different memory on its front and a glut of TV gold in its listings. Why were these items, some, older than me, still here in an attic which is also home to some wonderful Subbuteo figures and some terrible deck chairs?
It seems crazy to me to keep all these things. I don’t keep anything. The first time I got a front page (or splash, as we call it) of the Carmarthen Journal I kept that, but only because I wanted my mum to believe me when I told her I was a journalist.
But this? Keeping four decades’ worth of useless, redundant TV guides?
I’m a big fan of the festive period. I’m a sucker for it, if truth be told, but my dad has taken Christmas fandom to a whole new level. I immediately spent the following hours pouring over my discovery and looking up what I would have watched on Christmas Day when I was young, when television, and life itself, seemed far less complicated.
There were only four channels for a start (three before Channel 4 launched in 1982), and Christmas was the one day of the year when whole families would sit and watch TV together.
Nowadays, it’s easy. You get up Christmas morning, you turn on your TV and see what’s on. Right now, later today, tomor- row night, next week, whenever..... everything you need to know is at the end of your finger.
But, there was a time, before the boom of Sky, Sky Digital, Sky Q, Freeview, BT, Now TV and all the rest of it, when people had one option when it came to planning their festive television rituals.
They bought the Radio Times and the TV Times and circled programmes that they wanted to watch. And if they were really high-tech they would get a nine-pack of blank VHS tapes from the cupboard and start organising a year’s worth of films, dramas and comedies.
This is why this mammoth collection of fire hazard exists in my childhood attic.
One thing unbeknown to me is that, until the deregulation of TV listings in 1991, the Radio Times only used to publish the listings for BBC1 and BBC2, while ITV listings were published in the TV Times. That meant people had to buy two magazines just to find out what was on three channels.
I’ve already had my Christmas present. This is all I wanted, finding these festive televisual bibles last week.
Of course, the importance of television in general can be overstated; it can be elevated so that it enjoys a be-all and end-all status in people’s minds when in reality, ultimately, none of it matters. The advent of Christmas TV is a new and modern thing when measured against the true magic of Christmas.
But, television has, or certainly had, the ability to unite. For one day a year, at least, everyone’s eyes were on one thing, and people laughed and cried together. For that reason, maybe it really does matter.
From now on, I’m going to start buying the Radio Times every year.
I’m going to keep hold of them (sorry, wife) and then, hopefully, in about 2058, when we have 17,000 channels and tiny flat-screens under our eyelids, my son can find them and feel the magic that I felt last week.
It might not have represented the true meaning of Christmas, but it was magic none the less.