Jogos de Natal 1982
 (Quartet / Trio)

Jeux Sans Frontičres Specials

Entrants 1982: Belgium (B) • Great Britain (GB) • Netherlands (NL) • Portugal (P)

Presenters:
Walter Capiau (BRT - B)
 Vince Hill (BBC - GB)
Dick Passchier (NCRV - NL)
Eládio Clímaco and Yvonne Ferreira (RTP - P)

Production Credits:

National Games Designers: Adolfo 'Popi' Perani (Quartet) and Stuart Furber (Trio); National Producers: Guido Depraetere and Jan Geysen (B), George R. Clarke, Allan Stuart and Geoff Wilson (GB), Dick van 't Sant and Harry van der Steeg (NL), Producers: António Bivar and Joao Nuno Nogeira (Quartet) and Geoff Wilson (Trio); Directors: Etienne d'Hooghe (Quartet) and Bill Taylor (Trio)

Produced by RTP (P)
in association with BRT (B), BBC Manchester (GB), NCRV (NL)
 

Key:
International Christmas Special
● = Winner of Christmas Special
 

  ▲ = Promoted to Position / ▼ = Demoted to Position
 

P

Quartet - Jogos de Natal 1982

Christmas Special
(First Version)

Event Staged: Saturday 23rd October 1982
Venue: Praia Dourada (Gold Beach), Carvoeiro, Algarve, Portugal

European Transmissions (Local Timings):
BRT 1 (B): Sunday 26th December 1982, 4.45-5.45pm (as Kwartet)
BBC1 (GB): (not transmitted)
 RTP (P): (not transmitted)
Nederland 1 (NL): (not transmitted)

Celebrity Performers / Competitors:
Roger de Vlaeminck, World Champion cyclist (B)
Dana, singer (GB)
Hans Kazŕn, magician (NL)
Paulo Caetano, bullfighter (P)

Theme: Sports and Festive Games

Teams: Blankenberge (B) v. Plymouth (GB) v.
Hilversum (NL) v. Praia do Carvoeiro (P)

Team Members included:
Blankenberge (B) - Françoise d'Alphen, André Marmanaud, Danny van Teyne, Martin de Recke, Karin van Teyne;
Hilversum (NL) - Fred Benavente, Leontine Ceulemans, Lisette Hordijk, Catherine Keyl, Sipke van der Land and Henk Mouwe.

Games: Rescue the Mayor!, Postal Delivery (Mayors' Game), The Beer Cans, Blindfolded Bellringers (Celebrity Game), Decorating the Christmas Tree, Spin the Wheel (Presenters' Game), The Caged Ball Catchers, Collecting Ping Pong Balls (Celebrity Game), The Water Taps, Sorting the Food (Presenters' Game), Clowns and Wine, Dressing Up (Presenters' Game), The Trifles.

Game Results and Standings

Games

Team / Colour

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Points Scored
B 4 4 4 4 4 5 2 3 4 -3 4 4 4

GB

 3 2 4 1 4 5 4 1 2 0 2 2 6
NL 1 3 4 3 1 -5 1 4 3 0 1 4 2
P 2 1 4 2 4 -5 3 2 1 -4 2 3 8
Running Totals
(Leading teams shown in red)
B 4 8 12 16 20 25 27 30 34 31 35 39 43

GB

 3 5 9 10 14 19 23 24 26 26 28 30 36
NL 1 4 8 11 12 7 8 12 15 15 16 20 22
P 2 3 7 9 13 8 11 13 14 10 12 15 23

Result

 Team

Points

1st
2nd
3rd
4th

 B • Blankenberge ●
 GB • Plymouth
 P • Praia do Carvoeiro
 NL • Hilversum

43
36
23
22

Team Personnel

One innovation brought in for this programme was that teams participating in this competition would be drawn from particular professions in each town, rather than from the sports fields of those places. Consequently, the competition saw British Royal Navy medics take on Belgian amateur dramatic actors, Dutch television professionals and Portuguese hotel waiters. Despite this, the team names were given on screen as the locality represented by the competitors, with the Carvoeiro team being named after the resort's beach.

Media Attention

On Saturday 22nd May 1982, the British newspaper Daily Mirror, ran a story entitled Knocked Out!, which revealed the 1982 series of Jeux Sans Frontičres would be the last. It went on to suggest that British producer Geoffrey Wilson was "looking for a new formula for international fun and games" and that "a try-out programme [would] be filmed on a beach in the Algarve [which would] be ready for Christmas viewing."

Additional Information

This programme was designed to round off what was then thought to be Jeux Sans Frontičres' final year, and hopefully augur in a new format which would allow for the continuation of the series without the involvement of the European Broadcasting Union, which had reportedly been demanding large participation fees from the main broadcasters involved - including the BBC (this same issue had seen the Germans leave Jeux Sans Frontičres in 1980).

Unfortunately, this pilot show proved to be a disastrous affair. Ostensibly a festive special, it started off as Quartet with four nations taking part - Belgium, Great Britain, Netherlands and Portugal - but ended with just three, with the Belgians reportedly leaving the programme – for wholly understandable reasons. The build quality and design of the games for this event was of a standard greatly inferior to those made for other Jeux Sans Frontičres competitions, cheaply produced and fragile, and this led to a number of equipment and prop failures.

Interspersed between the games were entertainment spots with the guest stars: Dana sang If You Really Love Me; magician Hans Kazŕn performed entertaining tricks with metal rings; Roger de Vlaeminck, although famous as a World Champion cyclist, performed a stunt riding display on a trials-style motorbike; and Paulo Caetano entertained the audience with a dressage performance on horseback.

The recording was completed, with the Belgian team from Blankenberge winning the competition in fine style, 7pts ahead of their nearest rivals. However, Dutch celebrity Hans Kazŕn later recalled that it had quickly become apparent in the Outside Broadcast vehicle, where the pictures and sound were received, that the footage was unusable. Unhappy with the technical quality of the programme, the production team announced their intention to remount the entire competition later in the week on Thursday 28th October (a date that was already reserved for further recording, possibly of a second edition of Quartet). The Belgian team considered this decision to be grossly unfair to them and protested. When the producers refused to sway on their decision, the BRT personnel present withdrew the Belgian team from the programme and asked to be supplied with a recording of the otherwise unfavoured first version. It was this, albeit edited from 90 minutes to an hour, which the BRT ultimately screened on 26th December 1982 and subsequently archived. It appears that Belgium was the only country to air this version of the 1982 Christmas Games.

Made in Colour • This programme exists in Belgian archives (as Kwartet)

 

P

Trio - Jogos de Natal 1982

Christmas Special
(Second Version)

Event Staged: Thursday 28th October 1982
Venue: Praia Dourada (Gold Beach), Carvoeiro, Algarve, Portugal

European Transmissions (Local Timings):
BRT 1 (B): (not transmitted)
BBC1 (GB): (scheduled for Thursday 30th December 1982, 6.00-6.50pm, but not transmitted)
 RTP (P): Saturday 1st January 1983, 5.30-7.00pm (as Jogos de Natal)
Nederland 1 (NL): Saturday 1st January 1983, 8.18-9.20pm (as Zeskamp-Speciaal)

Celebrity Performers / Competitors:
Dana, singer (GB)
Hans Kazŕn, magician (NL)
Paulo Caetano, bullfighter (P)

Theme: Food and Drink / Television / Naval Shipping

Teams: Plymouth (GB) v. Hilversum (NL) v. Praia do Carvoeiro (P)

Team Members included:
Hilversum (NL) - Fred Benavente, Leontine Ceulemans, Lisette Hordijk, Catherine Keyl, Sipke van der Land and Henk Mouwe.

Games: Plucking the Chickens (Portugal), Building the Cannon (Great Britain), Building Television Sets (Netherlands), Serving the Dinners (Portugal), Collecting the Magazines (Netherlands), Tying the Knots (Great Britain), Lighting Christmas Trees (Netherlands), Bottles, Glasses and Trays (Portugal) and Lighting 1983 (Great Britain).

Game Results and Standings

Result

 Team

Points

1st
2nd
3rd

 GB • Plymouth ●
 NL • Hilversum
 P • Praia do Carvoeiro

26
25
24

Additional Information

As a result of the withdrawal of the Belgian team from Blankenberge following the completion of the first recording, the second version of the programme went ahead with only three of the original four teams and was - for obvious reasons - renamed Trio.

British production team members present on location were drafted in to produce this remounted production. They were to take over from Quartet director Etienne d'Hooghe, who had been dismissed by co-producer António Bivar following the debacle of the first recording. This proposition was not entirely without its logistical problems. In a 2023 telephone call, former It's A Knockout producer Geoffrey Wilson revealed that the language barrier was a real challenge as the new producer (Wilson) and director (Bill Taylor) spoke no Portuguese and the camera crew that they had to work with spoke no English. In the end, they all convened and stayed up late into the night, trying to work out a series of signals, explaining what the BBC meant by a mid-shot and so on, and eventually - somehow - they managed to strike up a rudimentary understanding sufficient to make the programme.

One person who got on very well with Wilson and Taylor was Hans Kazŕn, the Dutch magician, who went on to note in later years that their meeting led to Hans getting his first work in the United Kingdom as a magician on television.

As with the 1982 International Final, the games in this remounted special were designed by the competing countries and were different from those seen in the first staging of this programme. Portugal designed games about food and drink, Netherlands' games were on the theme of television and Great Britain's centred on Naval shipping. While at first glance, the Dutch game 'Lighting Christmas Trees' might be thought to be off their theme of television, there is the possibility that it was influenced by the Gerbrandy Tower, a partially guyed television mast in IJsselstein. Every year at Christmas, lamps on the guys are lit and the mast is transformed into the world's largest artificial Christmas tree!

Quite possibly due to the way in which this Christmas special had to be hastily rethought and redesigned, little thought appears to have gone into the possible outcomes of these games as several produced ties. In fact, two of the nine games played ended with all three teams getting three points each.

Even with the second recording, the problems continued and the BBC, in particular, were concerned that the programme was not of a broadcastable standard. The surviving 1" master tapes retain their BBC VT Recording Report forms and these are quite damning about the technical quality of the recording. The earliest, dated 28th November 1982, notes: "Vision of variable quality. One camera produces bent verticals on picture. Most of material is 4th or 5th generation." A subsequent report (dated 9th December 1982) included within the 1" master tape of the edited transmission version pulls no punches: "Possibly the worst quality show I have ever seen in every respect. It doesn't off-lock [break up] however, so satisfactory for TX (transmission)."

The BBC listings magazine Radio Times was advised of the programme title and content for their Christmas double-issue and the BBC1 transmission was scheduled for 6.00-6.50pm on Thursday 30th December 1982. However, even over and above the technical concerns mentioned previously, there was something of a storm brewing with It's A Knockout's star presenter, Stuart Hall, who was allegedly disgruntled about not being a part of the next phase for the series, at its centre. It soon became apparent that the programme was now something of a hot potato and was eventually pulled from the schedule to keep Hall - then a very big name at BBC Manchester - onside. It was replaced with a hastily compiled retrospective, Best of Knockout, hosted by Hall. You can read more about this in Knockout TV. As the Christmas issue of Radio Times had a lead time of nearly a month back in the early 1980s, by the time the change was made to the schedule it was too late to replace the Trio listing with one for Best of Knockout. Without that listing, of course, It's A Knockout fans would not have noticed the substitution or been aware that there was a new JSF-type series which had been made and then not broadcast.

The BBC did not retain a copy of Trio in their television archives and the result was never publicised in Great Britain. However, two 1" broadcast master tapes have been preserved in a private collection since the 1980s. One of these is the final programme, complete with Vince Hill commentary, while the other - about 50 seconds longer - is an edit from prior to Hill's dubbing session.
 
The surviving 1" master tapes of the BBC version of Trio.
Photo © Alan Hayes, 2023
 

The programme, however, was transmitted in the Netherlands and Portugal. Newspaper archives give transmission dates and times for the Christmas special, with the Dutch listing (titled Zeskamp-Speciaal like all JSF Christmas specials on the NCRV) revealing sufficient detail to be sure that the transmission was indeed the Portuguese special. Since newspapers would have been printed little more than a day ahead of the transmissions, it is 99% certain that this broadcast did in fact go ahead.

Regardless, Quartet / Trio must count as a sorry end for the first era of Jeux Sans Frontičres.

Made in Colour • This programme exists in a private collection
Dutch version does not exist / Portuguese version may exist

 

JSFnetGB Series Guide pages researched by
Neil Storer and Alan Hayes
with Ischa Bijl, Julien Dessy, Sébastien Dias, David Hamilton, Denis Kirsanov, Paul Leaver, Philippe Minet,
Christos Moustakas, David Laich Ruiz, Marko Voštan and JSFnet Websites