Andrew Eaton-Lewis: ‘McFly are performing a greatest hits melody. Be calm. You will be drunk’

AT FIRST this will seem irrelevant to a Christmas TV special, but bear with me. One of my fondest childhood memories is of watching movies in Lochranza village hall on Arran in the early 1980s.

They would only show one film every summer (at least that’s what I thought; it may have been a white lie by my parents so they didn’t have to endure Mission Galactica again), and no one seemed to know how to change the reels seamlessly, so half way through the movie would stop abruptly, usually in the middle of a really exciting bit, and there would be ten minutes of juice and biscuits. But it was about the most exciting thing I could imagine at the time. It almost didn’t matter what the film was. Usually it was James Bond.

There was only one other time of year when watching something on a screen was this pulse-quickeningly thrilling: Christmas Day. Oddly, I can barely remember anything I ever watched as a child on Christmas Day. The Snowman, probably. A film, possibly (Indiana Jones?). But I can remember being very, very excited just about the idea of watching Christmas TV. It was the power of ritual, obviously – not just TV, but TV with a belly full of turkey, the fire on, presents opened, and licence to eat all the After Eights I wanted.

I still get excited about television, but it’s always about something specific (final episode of Homeland, tonight!). I don’t even own a television these days – a laptop and iPlayer put paid to that. Christmas Day ritual at my house now means dusting off the DVD of It’s A Wonderful Life, usually in a double bill with something like Die Hard. I miss my childhood TV Christmases, but I’m also wary of any attempt to go back. Try to recapture your childhood as a grown-up and the result is, well, The Phantom Menace. And we all know how well that turned out.

This year, though, is different. Thanks to a combination of 1. a flat that should have had its central heating finished two months ago yet somehow hasn’t (long story, let’s not get into it) and 2. family members kindly taking pity on us, we will be spending Christmas Day this year in a house in Rosyth with a big couch and a widescreen TV.

I find this thought slightly terrifying, even if I’m not quite sure why. What if it brings back terrible, suppressed festive TV memories that I’d somehow managed to block out until now? I like my family very much, but will my hazy childhood nostalgia be ripped apart, the way it was by The Phantom Menace? What is Alan Carr: Chatty Man, other than something I’ve managed to avoid until now? It has, I see, McFly performing a greatest hits medley. Be calm Andrew. It’ll be fine. Unlike when you were eight, you will be drunk. «

Twitter: @aeatonlewis