The Father Christmas Affair

The Father Christmas Affair

When it comes to Christmas Eve 1976, the stand-out show is always going to be 'Porridge : The Desperate Hours', but 'Are You Being Served? : The Father Christmas Affair' is not bad as a lead-in for this still regularly repeated slice of classic Christmas comedy.

But quite a few people still remember the 'Ho, ho, ho, little boy - have I got a surprise for you!" animated Father Christmas unit that gives Mister Humphries a bit of a shock when it opens its arms in a very friendly fashion.

Mr Grainger gets to do a song-and-dance routine, evem if he does make a bit of a hash of it. But then, he has similar difficulty when persuading some spaghetti to safely make the journey from his plate to his mouth. In both cases, his approach seems to be to muddle through and hope for the best. But don't knock it if it gets the intended results.

The question of his make-up in the final scenes is a little more tricky, though it would be interesting to know what Donald Waugh, playing the boy here, makes  of his character's enthusiasm for "a real Father Christmas".

Mr Humphries gets a special Santa costume that Young Mister Grace is familiar with, giving us a valuable insight as to where he's spent at least one evening recently.

It's left to the viewers to decide which of the various Father Christmases they'd like to visit them in the small hours, although Mr Lucas' half-size one might require fewer mince pies left overnight, I suppose.

This one's cheery enough for Christmas Eve and hopefully this blog post is, too!

So we'd like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and hope you get something exciting in your sack tonight!

Our video about 'The Father Christmas Affair' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)