ITV's regional structure makes that easy, and this 55 minute slot is handed to the company that knew best how to make Scottish programmes for Scottish people about Scottish things - Scottish television.

The usual Scots stars of the time appear, but the most interesting appearance is by Eric Merriman towards the bottom of the listing.  Scour the schedules of television and radio comedy in the 1950s and 1960s and Merriman's name will appear somewhere, usually on something still remembered today - 'Beyond Our Ken', for instance.

Above all, the change from weekday to weekend contractor and vice versa was set at midnight.  Granada rushed to be off air on Friday just before midnight, despite it sometimes being early afternoon before ABC opened on Saturday.  Likewise ABC was off before midnight on Sunday, despite Granada not appearing until almost 5pm the next day.

But sometimes a special dispensation is required.  Sometimes it isn't possible to be off by midnight, and the alternative - handing over to the other contractor for them to closedown immediately after the 'bridging' programme was obviously ludicrous.

So it was on New Years' Eve when that day fell on a Friday.  Rediffusion in London, ATV in the midlands and Granada in the north stayed on air past midnight, in 1965 carrying a Rediffusion programme.  The programme in question, 'The New Year Starts Here' was a thinly-disguised edition of 'Ready Steady Go'.

Granada closed down as normal after the end of the day's broadcasting, but the announcer had the unusual opportunity of noting that it was Saturday morning before he turned off the lights.