As the annual festive battle wears on to decide whether the family will spend this evening watching new spangly Content™ from a surfeit of modern entertainment platforms or the much-loved VHS tape of yuletide specials from yesteryear instead, it is a time of high resolution - it is a time of low resolution - and it is of course time to try and forget about making New Year resolutions altogether...

Well the halls are decked, the porches have been lamped and the back passage is well and truly stuffed, which can mean only one thing: it's time once again for The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour Christmas Special! Yuletide is a time for extravagance of course, when year-end budgets are well and truly blown in the name of celebration and merriment. So naturally, our hosts have found two exceptions.

Ah, the haunting season seems to arrive earlier every year, and what better way to avoid the hustle and bustle of shoppers laden with absinthe, last minute pumpkins and Tripe Trifle™ than to join the hosts of The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour as they lean into the dark nights with some terrifying television?

Not quite ready to surface from hibernation, The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour ekes out the last of the dark nights by curling up at the fireside with a good book. Well, the hosts welcome a new guest, crack open a bottle or two and watch a version of that book on the telly. Obviously...

Coming under subaquatic scrutiny this week is 1975's Canadian animated odyssey, The Undersea Adventures Of Captain Nemo, in which everyone's favourite Victorian squid-puncher gets a nuclear-powered, modern - if educational - twist.

What are the temporal implications of casually inventing Zoom-meetings and Wikipedia decades before the technology required to run them? What are the legal consequences of failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay? And what are the ethical considerations around having two unpaid child dogsbodies in an enclosed space where someone's smoking 80 Capstan Full-Strength a day?

Get someone to push Play for you and find out...

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to [email protected]

JINGS! They said it couldn't be done! Well, they said it *shouldn't* be done, and they turned out to be right. Yes, it's another edition of The Peggy Mount Hogmanay Hour, and drunken sassenachs Velvet, Blackout and Bognops have stormed the passport control booth at Hadrian's Wall on a haphazard hunt north of the border for some Caledonian culture...

Christmas comes but once a year, yet thrice it 'casts into your ear(s)! Yes, with the dinner eaten and the games over, the party is in full swing as The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour's festive delving culminates its way to the yuletide jamboree! Approaching an advanced state of refreshment, Doctor Velvet, Blackout and Ozzy Bognops are in the mood for some salt-of-the-earth tinkling of The Old Joann-oh™, and so it's naturally to The Light Channel they turn.

And boogey-woogeying its way down to a studio-approximation of the East End is 1982's incomparable Chas & Dave's Christmas Knees-Up, where the cockney duo rattle out a handful of their own hits while playing host to Jimmy Cricket, Lennie Peters, Cosmotheka, Albert Lee and Eric Clapton. Variety shows are bread and butter pudding to this podcast of course, and live musical acts come under particular scrutiny - so it's anyone's guess as to how far the goodwill of this particular season will stretch...

Are Chas and Dave starting to regret phoning up their most famous mates for a jam? Has Lennie Peters come down to sort out some right muppet who's bin bad-maafing his mannah? And is Alyn Ainsworth hiding in the Rancor pit?

Put your beer in the sideboard here, let mother press Play and find out...

(Bonus points and/or an extra jellied eel will be awarded to listeners who can sing along AND do the harmonies)

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to [email protected]

No, you're not seeing double - this is the second of the Peggy Mount Calamity Hour Christmas Specials! Although given that trouble co-ordinating and an inability to communicate clearly are the order of the day with this festive viewing, blurred vision just feels par for the course frankly.

To get them in the mood for games, our hosts revisit ITV's 1979 Christmas-edition of Give Us A Clue, a show whose very title suggests that things are supposed to get clearer as they progress. In actuality the exact reverse seems to have been true that day in Thames Television, but with an assemblage of light entertainment royalty such as this, who's keeping score? Certainly not Michael Aspel, that's for sure...

Who proposed stripping the catering budget down to Netto egg sandwiches for the preceding eleven months to allow the off-licence run for this show to take place? Who was responsible for retooling the on-screen countdown clock, but then decided to blow that money on another bottle of port instead? And who's going to break it to the orphans that Dickie Davies has opened all their presents?

Rely on a production-runner to press Play thirty seconds sooner than they usually would, and find out...

(Bonus points and/or an extra Cadbury's Rose (just the one) will be awarded to listeners who know what a Spelk™ is)

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to [email protected]

"And hark", proclaimed Producer Ken, "before the clock strikes Christmas Day, you will be visited by THREE podcasts!". 'Oh here we go' thought Scrooge, just wanting to get on. "You must learn from the pod of telly past, the pod of telly past and then the pod of telly past." Well, he'd expected repeats at this time of year, but Scrooge didn't argue because he'd looked through the Radio Times and hadn't even taken the top off his red marker...

Yes it's the first of the festive specials from The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour, and to set the scene the boys need to go RIGHT back to ITV's Christmas With The Larkins. Blazing a trail through the fledgling sitcom-market, Dame Peggy herself berates and bellows her way to a yuletide family gathering with all the farcical trimmings and mishaps we've come to expect over the intervening decades. What can go wrong? Oh, everything.

How many trombone wah-s are acceptable as the comedown to a punchline? How many household appliances can be used to defrost a turkey? And how many instances of imminent or actual violence need to be in a script before Peggs will greenlight it?

Look, you're not pressing Play right - let Peggy take over and find out...

(Bonus points and/or an extra Quality Street will be awarded to listeners who pick up on the Stewart Lee reference secreted in this episode)

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to [email protected]

Darkness falls across the land, the drinking hour is close at hand; to tear apart your very soul, and delve into The Glory Hole! Yes as dusk strikes on the year, The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour turns its attention to a truly seminal piece of vintage television that's sure to put the willies up anybody...

Well, the weather may be warming up but there's a chill in the air at MountPeg Towers. Producer Ken's back from the paper shop and he's brought something to put the willies right up Doctor Velvet and Blackout. Naturally, their combination of morbid curiosity, short memory span and chronic boredom means they're only too willing to oblige...

Setting up stall for dark things to come once the TV schedules re-ignite, the first issue of 1984 horror comic Scream comes in for a playfully gruesome dissection. All manner of horrors await our heroes as reality melts, death is only a heartbeat away, and dreams and nightmares collide in 32 pages of panic that'll have everyone cowering under the continental quilt...

Is a shovel the best implement for fighting off a horde of rabid cats? Is the front garden the best place for burying an unembalmed body?And is neat vodka suitable for sterilising plastic fangs?

If you think you're brave enough, click Play and find out...

The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour is a free podcast from iPorle Media, which holds production copyright. Opinions and recollections expressed are not to be taken as fact. The title and credit music is by Doctor Velvet. Audio segments from television programmes are presented for review and informational purposes only under fair use, and no ownership of these is claimed or implied by this show. Email enquiries to [email protected]