White Heather Club
Watching the New Year fireworks on TV last night at midnight I found myself remembering some ghosts of black-and-white Christmases past. New Year's Eve TV did not always consist of such 'snappy' and colourful extravaganzas compared by cheerful big-boned women from Buckinghamshire. When I was a teenager this slot used to be filled with interminable broadcasting from 'Over the Border' I'm afraid . Those were the days of the legendary 'White Heather Club' when somehow the Scots took over all 'Hogmanay' broadcasting after dark on December 31st with shows such as "The Kilt is My Delight". You think I'm making this up, don't you? But it is true. Until the whole scene was axed around 1968 this was all that was on offer on the Beeb at New Year
I seem to remember that this show featured more than its fair share of a kilt-clad Andy Stewart singing "Come in, come, it's nice to see you ..." and "Haste ye back, we love ye dearly ..." and the like, interspersed with a bunch of dancers resembling agile ironing boards jigging around and churning out reels and 'Strathspeys' and the like. The actual 'club' consisted of around three or four of those little round white painted cast iron tables and chairs at which various dour Scots persons were seated. As an simple minded teenager I wondered a lot about what you did in such places, somehow the penny never dropped with me that it might all be a kind of fantasy and that most people in Scotland didn't leap around in dress shirts flashing their sporrans and the Stewart tartan. Bizarre - yes, that is what the whole thing was. A bit like Cilla Black always saying on 'Blind Date' "and how are you all up there in Bonnie Scotland?"
Maybe the "White Heather Club Land of Lost Content" can be another of those fantasy islands I find increasingly creeping into my thinking these days. Somewhere out there in the gloaming is this mysterious Brig o'Doon and on the other side it is always Hogmanay and an ample bosomed Fiona or Mary is lingering at the White Heather Club, her soft auburn hair shining in the candle light, as she breathes heavily like a horse and waits for me to partner her in an eightsome reel. Here it might be perpetually just before midnight, the piper is just about to play, take your partners ....
Do you think so?
posted by Iain @ 6:09 am
3 Comments:
Does anyone remember 'first footing' on the stroke of midnight?? Or was this....I use the word 'was', because I do not see or hear of it happening for years now. Perhaps it was just a north eastern thing in the pit villages, and shipyard streets. It consisted of a dark haired man going outdoors just before midnight and standing on the other side of the gate ready to walk up to the front door, with a lump of coal in his hand. He knocked on the front door and asked for admittance, as the New Year came in. It was supposed to bring you good luck through the coming year.
Just like anonymous I remember the first footing. I lived in Sunderland then. The new year was not accepted until all the ships on the Wear, - and there were lots and lots of them way back then, - heralded the arrival of said New Year with a chorus of sirens and hooters. The whole scene is long gone now.
Aye it was a braw scots affair in the old days. Jimmy Shand and his band......
Happy New Year folks.
We had something to be very thankful for in those days, when we had to put up with the Scottish New Year stuff every year....the Krankies hadn't been invented yet!!
Moira Stewart was a lady trotted out every year.....Chick Murray too was there to lift everyone's spirits with a bit of humour, when it was all getting too much to bear!! What have you stirred up here Iain!!
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