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Just wondering, did anyone else notice that during the Christmas Day special the residents of Nonnatus House were settling down to watch “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp”. I seem to recall there was a TV version of the Palladium panto televised over Christmas ‘67.

There was a TV version of Aladdin around that time featuring Arthur Askey, Charlie Cairoli and Roy Castle. That may have been the one they watched.

Geoff_W wrote:Just wondering, did anyone else notice that during the Christmas Day special the residents of Nonnatus House were settling down to watch “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp”. I seem to recall there was a TV version of the Palladium panto televised over Christmas ‘67.

Audio from two of the tracks from this special has been released earlier this year on the Dusty Tapes CD "On TV Vol.4 1967-1968": "Me Oh My" by The Shadows and "Friends", billed as performed by The Shadows but in reality performed by Cliff Richard & The Shadows.

Iain Purdon wrote:There was a TV version of Aladdin around that time featuring Arthur Askey, Charlie Cairoli and Roy Castle. That may have been the one they watched.

I can't claim to recall all the artistes appearing in it, but Rediffusion London networked "Aladdin" with Cliff and The Shadows on Christmas Day 1967. The only other name I can immediately recall was actress Vanessa Howard. I have very good personal reasons to recall that Christmas Day 1967 was a Monday, but Rediffusion operated Mon-Fri inc, so it had to be a weekday.

Cliff and The Shadows had had a long association with ATV (probably because of the Grade Organisation being their agents) and even a relationship with ABC TV ("Oh Boy!" and "Thank Your Lucky Stars"), but they made several programmes for Rediffusion in the last year or two of that company's franchise.

I didn’t know that panto had been done for TV! I assume the footage no longer exists?

Iain Purdon wrote:I didn’t know that panto had been done for TV! I assume the footage no longer exists?

It fitted into an hour's slot, so was obviously an edited version of the 1964 original.

I'd say it was late enough to have been kept by Rediffusion and not routinely wiped. The archive is now owned by a company called "Archbuild", though whether they have a copy seems doubtful (see URL below. with Paul Rumbol's remarks).

Incidentally, the Shadows' numbers (Genie With The Light Brown Lamp and Little Princess) were excised and the group "played" Snap, Crackle And How's Your Dad?, with John Rostill miming the bass part on a toy piano.

https://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/11085/rediffusion-christmas-day-1967-extract

\for what it's worth, here's the IMDB entry for the production: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1555566/?ref_=ttep_ep32

Cliff

Not the greatest image, but this entry from the site http://www.its-behind-you.com/tvpanto.html appears to be at variance with that in IMDB, in respect of the inclusion of Joan Palethorpe (as 'So Shy') and Audrey Bayley (as 'Tai-Ping') as featured in the initial Palladium pantomine...


Bill