Hogmanay - in The Media

In The Media

Between 1957 and 1968 a New Year's Eve television programme, called "The White Heather Club", was presented to herald in the Hogmanay celebrations.

The show was presented by Andy Stewart who always began by singing "Come in, come in, it's nice to see you...." The show always ended with Andy Stewart and the cast singing, "Haste ye Back":

Haste ye back, we loue you dearly,

Call again you're welcome here.

May your days be free from sorrow,

And your friends be ever near.

May the paths o'er which you wander,

Be to you a joy each day.

Haste ye back we loue you dearly,

Haste ye back on friendship's way.

The performers were Jimmy Shand and band, Ian Powrie and his band, Scottish country dancers: Dixie Ingram and the Dixie Ingram Dancers, Joe Gordon Folk Four, James Urquhart, Ann & Laura Brand, Moira Anderson & Kenneth McKellar. All the male dancers and Andy Stewart wore kilts, and the female dancers wore long white dresses with tartan sashes.

Following the demise of the White Heather Club, Andy Stewart continued to feature regularly in TV Hogmanay shows until his retirement. His last appearance was in 1992.

In the 1980s comedian Andy Cameron presented the Hogmanay show on BBC Scotland while Peter Morrison presented a show called "A Highland Hogmanay" on STV/Grampian. This was axed in 1993.

For many years, a staple of New Year's Eve television programming in Scotland was the comedy sketch show Scotch and Wry featuring the comedian Rikki Fulton, which invariably included a hilarious monologue from him as the preternaturally-gloomy Reverend I.M. Jolly.

Since 1993, the programmes that have been mainstays on BBC Scotland on Hogmanay have been Hogmanay Live and Jonathan Watson's football-themed sketch comedy show, Only an Excuse?

About 10 minutes before the end of Lewis Black's special "Surviving the Holidays with Lewis Black" on the History Channel, Craig Ferguson described Hogmanay as follows:

In Scotland, New Year's is called Hogmanay. And it is a time when people who can inspire awe in the IRISH for the amount of ALCOHOL that they drink decide to RAMP IT UP a notch.

Evelyn Waugh once defined Hogmanay as "getting sick on Glasgow pavements."