"The past is one thing you can do nothing about." - Channel 4 adverts & continuity, Christmas 1994

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• published: 05 Dec 2011
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Nuns on the Run comes to an end and we get that Bill Murray trailer again, followed by one for Channel Four's Christmas theme of 1994, "Black Xmas", which does come across as patronising but was sincere. By "Black" they essentially mean "West Indian" in particular. Programming includes a rare showing - it may never have graced our screens since - of Stepping Razor/Red X, the exemplary documentary about legend and douche Peter Tosh; a documentary about the rising sound then still called "jungle" before white people got into it and rechristened it "drum 'n' bass"; what turned out to be the last ever episode of Desmonds, which died with its star, Norman Beaton - he passed away just a week before it was aired; and inally, Mark Lamarr and an incomprehensible man seeing the new year in live from K-town, in a special that was oddly scripted by Cheryl from Grange Hill. Just to bring you down again, there's a programme caption for a grim-faced documentary about a missing Vietnam veteran and his wife who's convinced he's not dead. Then, adverts, starting with the late Lord Sutch, screaming about Sekonda watches and their expensive imitations. Sekonda were the only watchmakers I know of to flaunt their cheapness in this way. Then there's a short bit of nonsense from the early-90s Yorkie campaign with the vaguely Denis Leary-looking fugitive which went nowhere. Next: Christian Dior, you wasted your life. A bit of abstract art that tells you less than nothing about the fragrance, obviously, but looks cool. Then: flu is like being trapped in a prison made of a bed. Benilyn soothes. Okay, but what if I get Scarlet Fever? WHAT THEN? (I genuinely did get Scarlet Fever after Christmas a couple of years back). Then: MUPPETS! Anyone who doesn't love the Muppets isn't worth knowing. Having just got the Christmas Radio Times today (only one working day after it come out in That There London, which is a first), I can confirm that the Muppet Christmas Carol, advertised here, will be on this Christmas - Christmas Eve, in fact, which is perfect. I command you to watch it, as if I needed to. Also: a Muppet Family Christmas, which is fun. That Jim Henson died so soon and so arbitrarily basically proves that it is impossible for a loving God to exist. Merry Christmas, you poor doomed bastards. Next, Paxo! Alongside sprouts, the quintessential BECAUSE IT'S CHRISTMAS foodstuff. We don't usually have turkey in our house, and we still have stuffing. Here's a succession of delicious turkeys anyway. Then: beer. Worthington's draught bitter, to be precise, and a hard-hitting exposé into its impact on the British refrigerator community. Starts out feeling vaguely like a PIF, albeit as imagined by Tim de Jongh or someone. Next, meat. The 1990s campaign from the British meat Marketing Board, uniting pig, lamb and cow flesh under the banner of "the recipe for love", accompanied by the light fingers of George Shearing. Here's a young Will Mellor, world's handsomest ugly bloke, home from college and inexplicably embarrassed about his heterosexuality. Then: Safeway, the late supermarket whose stolid image eventually led to their extinction and the rise of Morrison's - a chain previously unheard-of in my neck of the woods. Here's their famous mascot, middle-England's incorrect answer to Look Who's Talking, with the deadpan voice of Martin Clunes as a sort of home counties Garfield. Except a human. As you can see, he wasn't a very likeable character. Jane Horrocks is his foil. Finally, Orientals! Or Asians, if you're American. Persons hailing from the far east. For no obvious reason, a huge epicanthic family is employed to advertise Persil and/or Hotpoint. One of those washing machine/detergent advertising team-ups. Not quite the Brave and the Bold. No pun intended. Then another trailer, for the Cutting Edge documentary that proved so popular it was repeated only months later. It's "The Club" about some dickweed golfers in a dickweed golf club for dickweeds. The best thing about it is the late Preston Lockwood - you might remember him caressing a snake in Doctor Who in 1983 - wandering through the film like a skeletal Greek chorus, grumbling that he's a shit player and he hates golf anyway. He died the following year. There's an obvious joke to make about Channel Four doing a golf documentary, and surely enough the announcer makes it. Finally, the start of another trailer, for "Secret Friends", a film written and directed by Dennis Potter from his own novel and starring Alan Bates as a panicking man who may or may not have murdered Gina Bellman, who apparently bears no residual bitterness from Blackeyes. The recording is abruptly murdered halfway through. Tomorrow: something different.