Live into 85

Live into 85
Genre	New Year's television special
Presented by	Tom O'Connor
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Production company	BBC Scotland
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	31 December 1984 (1984-12-31)

Live into 85 is a New Year's Eve television special that was broadcast by BBC1 on 31 December 1984. Broadcast from the Gleneagles Hotel near Auchterarder, Scotland and presented by Tom O'Connor, the special was themed around Scotland's Hogmanay festivities.

The special was a retool of the BBC's then-traditional New Year's specials from Scotland, with its producers aiming to produce a show that would have a broader appeal to English viewers after years of increasingly downmarket and perfunctory shows. The special would feature appearances by pop band Modern Romance and singer Maggie Moone, who would be joined by other Scottish performers and guests.

Facing a number of production setbacks (to the point that the programme went off the air sooner than planned), Live into 85 was poorly received by viewers and critics in England and Scotland alike. The poor reception to Live into 85 prompted the BBC to end its networked Hogmanay specials after 32 consecutive years in favour of different formats, and relegate its Hogmanay-centric coverage to an opt-out on BBC1 Scotland.

Background

In 1953, after having used varying outside broadcasts to mark the new year, BBC TV began to network Hogmanay-themed variety specials from BBC Scotland—such as The White Heather Club—as part of its New Year's Eve programming, which usually featured a mix of music, comedy, Highland dance, and poetry performances. They most often featured talent such as Jimmy Logan, Kenneth McKellar, Andy Stewart (who later defected to a competing special produced for ITV), and Moira Anderson, while the City of Glasgow Police choir and pipe bands also made regular appearances. The specials were often criticized for their stereotypical kitsch and tartanry, with the press also questioning whether specials based distinctly on Scottish traditions were relevant to audiences outside of the country.

By the 1980's, the BBC's Hogmanay specials had become perfunctory, coming from increasingly dilapidated studios and venues with rowdy audiences, and lineups consisting of "slurry-voiced and red-nosed late-middle-aged performers", and old-fashioned comedians whose material relied on regional humour and in-group/out-group jokes about the other Home Nations.

Production

In 1984, the programme makers were reinvigorated by the English National Tourism Board making "Make it Live in 1985" their slogan and set about making that year's broadcast more inclusive towards English viewers. Hiring the Bootle-born entertainer Tom O'Connor as presenter, the English band Bucks Fizz, and the Birmingham-based singer Maggie Moone of Name That Tune fame, a dwindling budget meant that the remaining acts comprised Moira Anderson, Chic Murray, Buff Hardie and Stephen Robertson, John Grieve, Bill Torrance, the Pipes and Drums of British Caledonian Airways, the Jim Johnstone Scottish Country Dance Band, and the Tom McShane Dancers, all from Scotland; Murray was in poor health at the time and would die a month later, while Bucks Fizz dropped out after a tour bus crash on 11 December, and were replaced by Modern Romance. That year, ITV mounted The Hogmanay Show, a po-faced Hogmanay special similar to those aired in previous years, which featured Andy Stewart and other Scottish acts.

O'Connor visited Gleneagles Hotel, the recording location, the day before broadcast, to recce the scene; disgusted by the lack of emergency tape, he badgered the producer until he agreed to film one of the bands and some other segments. The day of broadcast, temperatures were no higher than 4 °C (39 °F), conditions were hazardous, and several acts were late arriving. It also became apparent that the producers had failed to secure the venue for exclusive use, resulting in an audience of rowdy revellers who were often seen staggering into shots, disrupting cameramen, and caught on microphones; a drunk audience member attempted to peer up Maggie Moone's skirt while she was performing, and another sexually assaulted her.

Over the course of the broadcast, a drunk John Grieve forgot his lines and stumbled into laughter when attempting to recite a poem, the kilted Pipes and Drums of British Caledonian Airways refused to return to the venue's freezing cold car park after their performance, and Chic Murray (who was meant to be the traditional first-foot) was so flustered by the continuing presence of the Pipes and Drums that he became too bewildered to perform, and spent his segment berating the floor manager; eventually, the programme was taken off air early after Modern Romance performed "Best Years of Our Lives".

Reception and aftermath

Live into 85 was poorly-received by critics in both Scotland and England, and many viewers complained about the programme's poor quality; writing for the British Comedy Guide, comedy historian Graham McCann observed that "the Scottish newspapers appeared to be inaugurating a period of national mourning". Norman Harper of The Press and Journal described the special as "an hour of televised tripe", writing that "you could hear the toes curling; you could feel the heat of embarrassment as the whole show whirled gaily down the plughole. Putting it out on the national network compounded the felony. The whole of Britain was watching us make fools of ourselves." Dennis Hackett of The Times described the special as "a shambles in content and production", though felt that ITV's offering wasn't much better.

Retrospective reviews were not much better; Scott Murray of The Guardian wrote in December 2008 that the special was a "spectacular car-crash" and singled out Grieve's attempted contribution as "bloody awful doggerel", while the Daily Record described it in December 2012 as "one of Scotland's most embarrassing telly gaffs". Andrew Roberts of The Independent wrote in December 2014 that O'Connor "merited a special television award for maintaining his sang-froid".

McCann remarked that Live into 85 was "so stupendously awful that it killed that deeply dubious broadcasting tradition [of Hogmanay] stone dead", having led the BBC—as well as ITV and Channel 4—to phase out their broadcasts of Hogmanay-themed specials. The following year, the BBC repeatedly reassured viewers that that year's offering would be free from bagpipes, accordions, and kilts; 1985's show began with Terry Wogan walking on stage with his flies down. No official end-of-year show was mounted for some years; 1987 featured a special New Year's episode of the BBC's soap EastEnders, while Clive James filled in seven years between 1988–89 and 1994–95 with his own scabrous rantings and Angus Deayton took over thereafter. Hogmanay would not be featured in a BBC New Year's special broadcast outside of Scotland again until 1998, when BBC One aired New Year Live—an equally-shambolic adaptation of BBC Scotland's Hogmanay Live format that was presented by Carol Smillie and Fred MacAulay.