'Radio Times' legendary Christmas issue: 2013 cover revealed

Dated for the festive fortnight of December 21 to January 3, the cover features a painting of Father Christmas and, as RadioTimes.com puts it, "one of the nation's favourite snowy friends." Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! The design is taken from Raymond Briggs's Christmas stories, The Snowman, Father Christmas and The Snowman and the Snowdog. The issue runs to an extent of 280 pages and, as well as full listings for TV and radio output, including movies, on all the main terrestrial and digital channels operating in the UK, it features articles, such as an extensive interview with Steven Moffat, the co-creator of Sherlock, which returns to UK television screens on Wednesday, January 1, 2014. Having first gone on sale in 1923, when it was marketed as "The official organ of the B.B.C.", Radio Times is now in its 90th year of publication. It was an in-house BBC Magazines publication until 2011, when it was transferred to Immediate Media Company. Since 1969, the Christmas issue has been double-sized, covering 14 days of programming instead of the usual seven. For many years now described as the "Legendary Christmas Issue", Radio Times originally referred to it as the "Christmas Number", at a time before 1969 when the issue contained a single week's worth of programming details. As for the cover, traditionally, the Christmas issue features a generic festive artwork, atypical for the magazine, which, since the 1970s, has almost exclusively used photographic covers relating to specific programmes for the week in question. for all other issues. Exceptions to this have included for the Christmases of 2005 and 2009, when Doctor Who themes were used on the covers, and 2008 and 2010 when Wallace and Gromit were the cover stars. The Radio Times 2013 Christmas double issue goes on sale from tomorrow, Saturday, December 7, 2013, in London and the south of England and nationwide in the UK by Wednesday, December 11.