Looks Unfamiliar: Ben Baker – Just Cross That Four Out And Put A Five In

Now - The Christmas Album (Virgin/EMI, 1985) - listen to Ben Baker and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

Joining Tim for a special Christmas edition is writer, broadcaster and quizmaster Ben Baker, who’s looking back to the original Now – The Christmas Album from 1985, which has since been quietly consigned to Christmas Past for all manner of reasons – and some of them are more ‘problematic’ than others. Along the way we’ll be revealing the identity of ‘The Anti-Tim Song’, debating what we would have put on a second volume instead of just shuffling the same songs around again and again, exchanging some very frank opinions on Fairytale Of New York, and unveiling our new foolproof scheme for alluding to now-disgraced celebrities without actually naming them.

If you enjoy Looks Unfamiliar, why not buy us a coffee here?

About Ben

Ben Baker is a writer and broadcaster. You can find his website here and follow him on Bluesky at @benbaker.bsky.social. Ben Baker’s Christmas Box, Ben’s book about the festive television schedules looking at forty years of the best, worst and weirdest Christmas TV, is available from here.

Buy A Book!

You can find more thoughts about the Now That’s What I Call Music! phenomenon in Tim’s book Keep Left, Swipe Right, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. Like a caffeine-dependent Paul McCartney, I would enjoy simply having one.

Further Listening

If you’re looking for further Looks Unfamiliar with a festive twist, you can find Ben talking about Bernard And The Genie here, Mr T’s Christmas Dream, There’s Something Wrong In Paradise, God In The House, To Hell With The Devil, Highway, The Flint Street Nativity, the 1990 Bullseye Christmas Special, Adam And Joe’s Fourmative Years and TFI 1998 here and The Goodies: Snow White 2, Roland’s Yuletide Binge and Grange Hill For Christmas here. You can also listen to me and Ben chatting about the BBC schools programme Watch‘s retelling of The Nativity here.

Ben has also appeared on Tim’s Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Ant-Man here, Cloak And Dagger here, Avengers: Endgame here and I Am Groot here. You can also find Ben on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV talking about Round The Bend here.

Ben also appears in The Best Of Looks Unfamiliar alongside Suzy Norman on Hugo The Hippo, Richard Littler on the episode of The Waltons with a Poltergeist, Gary Bainbridge on Radio City’s Jack Your Body parody Deadly Boring, Tim Worthington on It’s A Shame by Kris Kross, Phil Catterall on the On The Hour Christmas Special, Mitch Benn on Two-Stage Self-Assembly Ice Cream Cones and Darrell Maclaine on Blockbusters Bubblegum, which you can find here.