The Funny Side of Christmas The Funny Side of Christmas The Funny Side of Christmas is a Christmas special broadcast by BBC1 on 27 December 1982. Presented by Frank Muir, it comprised one comedy sketch each from 10 contemporaneous English comedy series: "Butterflies", "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", "Last of the Summer Wine", "The Les Dawson Show", "Only Fools and Horses", "Open All Hours", "Smith and Jones", "Sorry!", "Three of a Kind", and "Yes Minister". The sketches below are listed in the order in which they appear in the programme. It's Christmas Day, and no sooner than Reggie has settled in to relax
Christmas cracker tradition of wearing festive hats is believed to date back to Roman times and the Saturnalia celebrations, which also involved decorative headgear. Christmas crackers are also associated with Knut's parties, held in Sweden at the end of the Christmas season. The "Oxford English Dictionary" records the use of "cracker bonbons" and the pulling of "crackers" from 1847. Tradition tells of how Tom Smith of London invented crackers in 1847. He created the crackers as a development of his bon-bon sweets, which he sold in a twist of paper (the origins of the traditional sweet-wrapper). As sales of bon-bons slumped, Smith