December 1961 highlights It may be more than forty years ago, but no fewer than three of today's programmes are still running today (Blue Peter, Points of View and Panorama); one was recently ended (This is Your Life) and one has been revived (Come Dancing) - though with a very different format, of course. Blue Peter was still on its original presenting team of Christopher Trace and Leila Williams; the show included Packi's Adventures drawn and told by Tony Hart, while Chris and Leila brought us to J in the Blue Peter alphabet and showed us how to make a doll's house. The programme was still only shown once a week. Meanwhile at 5.45 Patrick Moore was making predictions about space research in 1962: will there be more unmanned rockets to the moon and planets? Will a space-station be launched? And will men try to reach the moon?  Winston Churchill's World War II memoirs formed the basis of today's programme at 6.25; on other days, shows in this slot sandwiched between the news and Tonight included Andy Stewart's White Heather Club, World Zoos, Pit Your Wits and Percy Thrower's Gardening Club.
Later on this evening, Sid James, having been cast aside by Tony Hancock, starred in his own sitcom, Citizen James. In this edition he turned his attention to 'the problem of the teenager of today'. Other comedy stars with their own sitcoms this week included cover star Harry Worth, and Jimmy Edwards in The Seven Faces of Jim.  On Tuesday night Alan Freeman presented the game show Play Your Hunch. Earlier this year the legendary DJ had taken over Pick of the Pops on the Light Programme on Saturday nights - he would continue to present it, on and off, in various formats, and on various radio stations, for nearly forty years. Disc jockeys on the Light today included David Jacobs and Jimmy Young who, no spring chicken in 1961, was playing records for teenagers.
The Light Programme was a place for drama as well as music and light entertainment, and on this day Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley (right) starred in an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story The Reigate Squires (which is set in what is an extremely pleasant town, or so I'm told...)
And in Radio Times 2-8 December 1961 The new-look Radio Times for the 1960s was little more than a programme guide - there were no feature-length articles or interviews, instead there were merely short programme previews placed between each day's listings. Programmes previewed included the third series of 'that indefatigable programme', Juke Box Jury which, for the first time, was coming from outside London. It would be recorded in Portsmouth, where the BBC was staging a number of shows this week as part of an 'At Home' week. Another 'phenomenal success' was Dr Kildare, which only been running on the BBC for the past seven weeks, but was already scoring audience figures of over eleven million and increasing. On a more sober note, Radio Times also previewed The Uncrowned King, a portrait of the Duke of Windsor, which was to be broadcast almost exactly 25 years after he gave up the throne. 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Radio Times Covers | 
