December 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the BBC VT Christmas tapes, a series of risque and hilarious bloopers compiled by the BBC’s VT department. These festive mash-ups of outtakes, blunders and specially filmed comedy sketches were never meant for public viewing and were shown to staff at Christmas parties. Their story has not been told before - until now! This is the latest documentary from comedian Rhys Thomas, creator of Brian Pern and director of the Emmy Award-winning Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender.
The Christmas Tapes featured some of the BBC’s biggest stars. In those days of formal presentation, viewers were used to watching polished television programmes featuring respected professional broadcasters. It would have been unthinkable in 1978 to transmit footage of these personalities turning the air blue in moments of tension.
The Video Tape department was situated underneath the BBC’s famous doughnut courtyard. Editors would cut all the mistakes out of recordings to hone perfect programmes. In 1978 a young VT engineer called Grant Watkins had the idea of saving all the funniest outtakes and cutting them together to amuse fellow staff.
The first Christmas tape is infamous for a saucily re-edited interview with Princess Anne, where she appears to confess to Grandstand host David Coleman that she has experienced sex several times! Editing her answers out of context led to gales of laughter at the Christmas party, but news was leaked to a journalist and the Princess Anne story made the front page of The Sunday People. BBC producer John Lloyd believes that the Princess Anne edit was inspirational on the kind of comic editing later seen in Not The Nine O’Clock News, which began in 1979 and featured footage of politicians and royalty intercut with comedians.
Despite the tabloid headlines, the BBC VT team pushed on with a new tape the following Christmas. It is packed with bloopers from the BBC’s best-loved series, but it was clear to ev
