Being a grump (click here for a grumble about Christmas), the prospect of a New Year evening fills me with a fair amount of dread (and no, I don’t mean that I’m a Rastafarian). For me, cheering at the stroke of midnight on December 31st/January 1st is a slightly empty experience. I mean, what exactly are you cheering? The survival of another year? ‘We made it! Yeah!’ That’s a bit depressing isn’t it? Even worse than especially drunk people is the thought of watching the New Year come in with the telly.
As ever, BBC One is going to give us some fizzing and popping to make those avoiding the cold feel all special. Of course, it won’t be champagne TV, more a cheap sparkling wine from Kwik Save with a prawn ring from Iceland. ‘And now we go up to Manchester to see some people getting rained on, balefully looking toward the sky and cursing the rain in between huge glugs of Stella Artois…’. So what is on the box tonight?
Naturally, New Year’s Eve TV isn’t a complete wash out. For pop fans (and I mean that in the strictest sense of the word) can sit down and enjoy Jools’s Annual Hootenanny (BBC Two, 11.05pm, running until 1:15am) which this year has Paul McCartney, Brave Kylie, Kate Nash, Madness, Seasick Steve and loads more besides. To give the show an air of something tradition, we are treated to the Pipes And Drums of the first Battalion of the Scots Guards. It’ll have to do until some clever sod in a white jacket invents smell-o-vision so we can sink deep in a cloud of whisky, the smoke from party poppers and spew.
As touched upon, BBC One will be going up and down the country saying hello to various local broadcasters who will surely be getting blind drunk on camera as they fear their jobs after it was announced that the days of local news were numbered. All we can hope for is Nick Knowles going over to the news team in The Midlands, who are hammered and yelling abuse about the swine that swings the axe over their heads. In among all that is a game-show with Graham Norton and some vintage Jools Holland clips.
ITV, the runt of terrestrial TV, are kicking things off at 11.15pm with Countdown to Midnight: Take That and Guests Live at the O2 Arena. That means, should you be a woman at home with some girlfriends, you can time your drunkness to the strains of Take That and the Sugababes and dance around the living room like there’s no tomorrow! For the paranoid out there, there IS going to be a tomorrow.
Channel 4 just aren’t bothering this year, deciding to show some Monty Python and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. In fact, no-one else is bothering either, with FIve and the various digital channels all showing what they normally have on. The only tip-off I can give you is ITV3 which is showing the wonderful Elvis pairing of Aloha from Hawaii and the sublime ’68 Comeback Special (starting at 10.45pm).
So, where will this grump be? Well, I’d like to tell you that I’m a rather decadent being, who will be dancing around in a major city drinking fine cocktails and sharing a giant wrap of coke with Charlie Brooker… but alas, I’ll be in a small town in Ireland watching some jazz. A bebop version of Auld Lang Syne anyone? Have a cracking time tonight you lot… get drunk, make some new friends and be very merry indeed. See you in 2008.
