Stanley Baxter
In the prosperous Golden City, in an unspecified Middle East, the humble shoemaker Tack finds himself coming to blows with a thief who has entered his shop and ends up on the Grand Vizier Zig-Zag, who orders his arrest (while the thief manages to escape). Tack is sentenced to death, but the young princess Yum-Yum takes pity on him and saves him momentarily by ordering him to repair her shoes. The spark strikes between the two, but the thief has a very ambitious project in mind: to steal the golden spheres that protect the city from the top of an imposing minaret. Thus begins a flurry of adventures that will see Tack and Yum-Yum grapple with the enemies of the kingdom.
Dame Edna Everage takes questions from a celebrity audience about her life and career.
Bing Crosby and his family spend Christmas at the estate of distant relative in England.
While posters urge austerity and vigilance in wartime Britain, 'Joey Boy' Thompson has never had it better. In a cellar beneath his East London fish shop, a gambling club thrives – and austerity provides a nice black-market sideline. But the dolce vita crumbles when police arrive in a lightning raid, and offer Joey and his fellow reprobates a stark choice: sign up for active service, or face another stint inside. Thus the lads find themselves heading off to Italy, determined to make the best of it...
When Dexter Munro (Baxter) and his new wife Juliet (Sally Smith) get married, they decide to escape Juliet's meddling father (James Robertson Justice) by buying a rundown cottage and doing it up themselves. But when the cottage proves to be more ramshackle than they thought, and the scale of the repairs needed far out of their budget, the newlyweds are forced into calling on Juliet's father after all. Before long he's employed incompetent builder Josh Wicks (Ronnie Barker), and the situation goes from bad to worse.
A Scottish civil servant (Stanley Baxter) must learn how to drive a Bentley to impress his girlfriend's (Julie Christie) tycoon father (James Robertson Justice).
A former burglar trying to go straight joins a rehabilitation scheme using much the same methods as AA. Through the process, he takes work as a department store Santa, where the endless parade of goods and money, not to mention the pretty young shop hands have him like a moth to a flame in no time flat.
Comedy set in World War Two, starring James Robertson-Justice and Leslie Phillips. Sir Ernest Pease (Robertson-Justice) is a self-important scientist who is sent undercover on a bombing mission to monitor the effectiveness of his latest invention, a new-fangled radar. When the plane is attacked, he parachutes to safety - only to be sent to a POW camp, where he takes on the alias of Lieutenant Farrow. There, the somewhat happy-go-lucky bunch of Brits suspect their acerbic new fellow prisoner of being a spy, and all sorts of culture clashes and misunderstandings ensue.
The sketches are Nationwide with jokes across the UK and Thumpalong with Reg Varnish. We then have an episode of Upstage Downstage. There is a sketch set in a canteen of California during WW2 which ends with an attempt to undermine American morale using well-known American entertainers. There is a brief discussion about bias in the news followed by a news report. Maurice Chevalier is in heaven and sings about how that he is glad he is not alive anymore. The show concludes with 2001 - A Royal Wedding Odyssey where Prince Eric marries a singer. There is a mass phone-in where you are able to ask questions of the participants.
