On the last day of 2025 I had an enthralling viewing experience in the early evening and, in the minutes before the Bells, another one which threatened to send me to snoozeland before they arrived.

The latter was BBC Scotland’s Hogmanay 2025 which, while ably presented by Amy Irons, left no Scottish cliché on the shelf.

A wee burst of Flower of Scotland?

Check.

A cover of folk singer Dougie MacLean’s Caledonia?

Check.

A lone piper at Edinburgh Castle? Maybe some fireworks over the Capital on the stroke of midnight?

And the obligatory Auld Lang Syne singalong to follow?

BBC Scotland's Hogmanay show hosted by Amy Irons 

Just the job. Hogmanay sorted for another year.

The same touchstones are wheeled out every old year’s night because, so the thinking goes, this is who we are.

It captures us to a T. A diet of all that makes us proud to be Scottish is what we expect at the big calendar change. Isn’t it?

Viewers like me who are equally proud to be British would have waited in vain for any nod to that element of our identity. On the last day of the year, it seems, we’re concerned solely with our Scottishness.

Let me tell you about my early evening viewing experience, watched by an audience of only one – me – on my home computer.

It is a half-hour film of my grandfather Fred Brocklebank’s 65th birthday party in May 1982 – footage, which until this week, I was unaware even existed.

Everyone alive today who was at the party in Aberdeen will remember it well.

That is because it was thrown in the style of the TV show This Is Your Life which was current at the time.

The unsuspecting birthday boy arrived at his daughter Averill’s house thinking it was a small family celebration. What he didn’t know was that it had been weeks in planning and that, sitting quietly in the next room, surprise guests from yesteryear were awaiting their cue.

Naturally my father, a senior figure at Grampian TV in those days, bagged the ‘Eamonn Andrews’ role of host.

Just like the Irish presenter of the real show, he had a big red book and, inside, a well-researched script telling the story of his father’s life.

Unlike Mr Andrews, he had a crew of rank amateurs. I was the sound man. Then aged 14, my job was to cue the This Is Your Life theme tune (sourced for the occasion from Thames Television) at the moment the surprise was sprung on Grandad and to give another blast as each guest walked through the door.

My cousin Nicola, aged just ten, was in charge of visuals. Her role was to display the appropriate photographs of her grandfather as his timeline progressed.

The cameraman – though I had quite forgotten there was one – was my brother Andrew, then 15.