All Star Comedy Carnival

Overview

An annual Christmas special produced by ITV, containing new mini-episodes of popular British sitcoms and light entertainment programmes, with some musical interludes. It was hosted by Des O'Connor in 1969, Max Bygraves in 1970, Mike and Bernie Winters in 1971 and Jimmy Tarbuck in 1972 and 1973. Created as a direct competitor to the BBC's Christmas Night with the Stars, all had short five minute sketches devised and produced for transmission within the festive period, written by the original writers of each comedy series.