The bells are not far off now, and perhaps the only certainty in 2022 is that we all face uncertainty in the year ahead.
Our lives are fraught and stressed in ways most of us have never experienced before and, for older generations, someone reassuring is missing in their Hogmanay viewing – a short, much-loved Scot in a kilt with the power to make you both laugh and cry, and to see you into the New Year with a warm, optimistic glow.
Andy Stewart hosted the BBC’s New Year parties from 1959 to 1968 – but in those nine years he set the tone for Hogmanay TV for decades to follow.
The entertainment legend who called Arbroath home was propelled to poll position by BBC Scotland’s visionary head of light entertainment, Iain MacFadyen, creator of The White Heather Club.
Scotland’s own song and dance man
The story goes that while a student at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Stewart had been told to clear out a basement room, and came across a box of musical material which would change the course of his career.
The songs he found convinced him to abandon acting and become an all-round performer – eventually, Scotland’s own song and dance man.
MacFadyen spotted Stewart’s potential, drew it out, moulded it and gave it a platform.
As Hogmanay host, Stewart had exactly what MacFadyen was looking for, not least that he retained his Scottish accent in his rich singing voice.
And it wasn’t only his talent, but the warmth he projected and emotional connection he created which would attract people to the show from across the four nations of the UK, and worldwide.
The first White Heather Club Hogmanay in 1959 featured Stewart as host along with Jimmy Logan, Robert Wilson, Duncan Macrae, Bobby Watson, Anne and Laura Brand, the Joe Gordon Folk Four, the City of Glasgow Police Male Voice Choir , The White Heather Dancers and Jimmy Shand and his Band.
That year actor Duncan Macrae, the eponymous Captain in Parahandy, started an annual tradition with his lugubrious rendition of Wee Cock Sparrra.
For the next few years no Hogmanay was complete without it.
Popular Hogmanay fixtures tumbled from grace
John Grieve, MacPhail the engineer in Parahandy, was also a popular fixture in many of the early shows, with his trademark doggerel ‘As New Year’s Eve approaches I get sadder every day/ It makes me mad that I get sad for I know I should be gay.’
Two decades later with the White Heather brand of Hogmanay tumbling from grace, Grieve would bring shortbread tin TV into disrepute by coming on drunk, unable to recite his trademark poem and collapsing with laughter.
Chic Murray, popular in Andy Stewart’s shows, also disgraced himself on that show, and ‘Live into 85’ ended up so bad that the BBC didn’t broadcast any Hogmanay-themed programmes the following year, telling viewers they ‘would not hear a bagpipe, an accordion or the swirl of a kilt’ for a single second of their 1985 offering.
But back to the age of innocence at the White Heather Club.
As friends, family and neighbours gathered to wait for the bells, they knew an hour of clean, couthy fun lay ahead, hosted by someone they admired and loved.
Instead of being in the pub, they were home, together.
A giggle over Andy Stewart’s Donald Where’s Yer Troosers
When they went first-footing afterwards, the show would be the first topic of conversation because everyone had been watching it.
It wasn’t just about a giggle over Andy Stewart’s Donald Where’s Yer Troosers and a welling-up over his A Scottish Soldier, there was dance too, and skits with satire and wit.
The feeling was that you couldn’t start the New Year without the morale-boosting fuzzy glow of optimism from the show, things wouldn’t be the same.
Inevitably, times moved on and after The White Heather Club delivered their final Hogmanay programme for the BBC on New Year’s Eve 1968, Andy Stewart defected to ITV for New Year shows in 1969, 1970, 1973, 1975 and 1977.
But he was no longer the Radio Times cover star, ending up relegated to guest on Hogmanay programmes for the BBC in 1976 and Grampian Television in 1979, 1980, 1983 and 1984.
Established in the public’s imagination
Even so, the fact remained that he had appeared on networked BBC Hogmanay shows for most of the sixties – establishing him in the public imagination as a regular part of any New Year show, whether he was there or not.
As explained on andystewart.info: “To the uninitiated or the casual viewer, (or those south of the border), it didn’t really matter who the presenter was: Peter Morrison; Bill McCue; Johnny Beattie; they assumed it was Andy Stewart anyway.
“Because it always was, wasn’t it?”
Jools Holland acknowledged his huge debt to Andy Stewart describing how the idea for his Hogmanay Hootenanny came about while caught in a traffic jam caused by Andy Stewart’s funeral.
The town was brought to a standstill in October 1993 as the 59-year-old was laid to rest while the pianist, singer and founding member of Squeeze was on tour.
Passing of the baton
He said: “A strange but true story is that I was on tour in Arbroath when the idea for the Hootenanny was first mooted.
“We’d just heard on the news about Andy Stewart, who had been the face of New Year’s Eve in Britain throughout the sixties.
“It was his memorial and on the news they were saying to avoid Arbroath because there were traffic jams.”
When show producer Mark Cooper later called the musician asking about the possibility of a Hogmanay show, only one idea was in Holland’s head.
“I was touring at the time and said to Steve, my tour manager: ‘Go straight into Arbroath, I don’t care about the traffic, we’re having a cup of tea and we’re paying our respects’.
“It was like the baton being passed on,” said Holland.
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