For over 40 years, ITV’s It’ll Be Alright On The Night has been a staple of the TV schedules. Often airing around Christmas time, the show collects behind-the-scenes moments where stars of the day struggled with malfunctioning props, tripped over stray cables, or simply forgot their lines.
But the idea for the show has its beginnings in a secret video that sparked a national scandal. The Christmas Tape was compiled by the corporation’s video editors and was never intended for public consumption.
But in December 1978 all that changed when a copy of that year’s Christmas Tape, entitled White Powder Christmas, was leaked – sparking national outrage.
Princess Anne’s answers to innocuous questions were edited into a new context (Image: Bettmann Archive)
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Spliced among the skits and bloopers collected by engineers in the ’s VT department was an interview with Princess Anne that had been doctored to make it seem as if the Beeb’s leading sports anchor, David Coleman, was asking her some very racy questions indeed.
Podcaster says the leaked clip “would get the VT crew as as well as the itself into a royal round of trouble.”
In the video, Coleman appears to ask ‘Have you, yourself, ever experienced any sex?” To which she replies, “No, I don’t think so.”
The leaked video caused a national scandal (Image: Sunday People)
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Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em star Michael Crawford appeared in skits filmed for the video (Image: -)
The video was peppered with clips from cult US comedy Kentucky Fried Movie (Image: LMPC via Getty Images)
That line then lends a very different context to the Princess’s next answer, where she says that Captain Mark Phillips – her husband at the time – would rather be beaten by her than anyone else.
The couple were, of course, both keen equestrians but the way the clip’s edited makes it seem as if they would be putting their riding-crops to a very different use.
“It may have produced a funny outcome for a private Christmas party,” Adam says, “but this one made it out to the press. It’s fair to say that readers, publications and indeed the royal family were most displeased with the revelation.”
BBC newscaster Kenneth Kendall linked the skits together (Image: -)
Adam added: “In today’s context it’s a relatively harmless gag that some would consider cheap and crude but back in 1978 when this sort of deliberate misinterpreting hadn’t been done before it would have been quite the boundary-break.”
One typical headline of the time, filling page one of the Sunday People, read “ANNE TELLY SPOOF SHOCK FOR .” More than one manager feared losing their job, but the videotape editors were unrepentant.
The following year’s Christmas tape, which was entitled “Good King Memorex” featured a spoof commercial for the Sunday People and several VT engineers could be seen in the video wearing t-shirts with the outraged front page printed on them.