They most often featured talent such as Jimmy Logan, Kenneth McKellar, Andy Stewart, and Moira Anderson, while the City of Glasgow Police choir and pipe bands also made regular appearances.
Filmed in increasingly dilapidated studios and venues with rowdy audiences, their lineups comprised intoxicated, late-middle-aged performers and old-fashioned comedians whose material relied on regional humour and in-group and out-group jokes about the other Home Nations.
[4] The Bootle-born light entertainment personality Tom O'Connor was brought on as presenter, along with the English band Bucks Fizz and the Birmingham-based singer Maggie Moone (of Name That Tune fame) as performers.
[4] Murray, who was meant to be the traditional first-foot, was in poor health at the time and would die a month later,[4] while Bucks Fizz dropped out after a tour bus crash on 11 December and were replaced on short notice by Modern Romance.
[4] O'Connor visited Gleneagles Hotel the day before the broadcast to recce the scene, and was sufficiently disgruntled by the lack of standby recordings to badger the producer until he agreed to film one of the bands and some other segments.
[5] Meanwhile, a drunk John Grieve forgot his lines and stumbled into laughter when attempting to recite a poem, the kilted Pipes and Drums of British Caledonian Airways refused to return to the venue's freezing car park after their performance, and Chic Murray was so flustered by the continuing presence of the Pipes and Drums that he became too bewildered to perform and spent his segment berating the floor manager.
[8] Andrew Roberts of The Independent wrote in December 2014 that O'Connor "merited a special television award for maintaining his sang-froid".