Yes It's Number One

TOTP 24/2/77 (tx 1/3/12): oh, what a circus

2012-03-01T22:55:00.003Z

Here's something entertaining One For The Dads has found - Legs & Co on Larry Grayson's Generation Game in 1978. Patti, Rosie, Gill and Pauline to be exact, plus friend Floyd and a couple of others, doing a very teatime-friendly version of ballroom disco dancing, while Flick is in charge of choreography, scoring and getting a round of applause for not being male. Of course Larry and Isla have a go afterwards.

Meanwhile, here's someone's stream of consciousness version of Pops recappage.

Noel this week, before a chart the captions for which have turned an uncomfortable mushy peas green. Barry Biggs is still in the top ten.

Heatwave – Boogie Nights
Lots of videos this week but none with a more forceful setting than this. Heatwave are in virtual silhouette at the front, some neon pink lines behind, and every so often a set of full beam lights dazzle everything in their path as the two singers sway in a fashion that suggests meaningfulness. Eventually the lighting change reveals a band costume of black jumpsuits with some sort of yellow 'sun rays' motif around the wide collar and belt. On the energetic frontmen it works a treat. On the '70s British detective series criminal of the week' keyboard player and the well built, defiantly English session drummer, less so. Midway through the clip gets the Toppotron™ treatment, excitingly this week at a slight angle to the shot, the proleteriat in at least one Panama hat and who knows how much poor knitwear shuffling before their telescreen. Noel calls it "a somewhat melodic way to get proceedings underway" as if it's MOR pop, while not for the last time this week the applause at the end is overlaid by a medium-sized youthful sounding cheer. One or the other, come on.

The Racing Cars – They Shoot Horses Don't They?
"One of the songs that is particularly beautiful at the moment" is Noel's take on a ballad that takes the average RPM down hugely, before offering a blacksmith-based pun that does nobody any good. Once you've got over how alarmingly singer Morty looks like Bill Bailey with short dark hair and Simon Pegg's eyes it's notable how carefully it treads the line between anthemic and catatonic, never one thing nor the other. At the end the guitarist starts kissing/biting the neck of his instrument, possibly just because he can.

The Real Thing – You’ll Never Know What You’re Missing
And out of the tombola this time comes Eddie in the hat to go with his wedding suit from last time and a jacket that looks like it's made out of his dining room carpet, a white jacket with velvet pantaloons and the other two looking like they were rushed on stage in what they arrived in, including dungarees. Had they still not learned from the Americans about coding their gear? There's an acoustic guitar restored to the lineup too.

Mary McGregor – Torn Between Two Lovers
"She doesn't know whether to marry McTavish or marry McGregor". No. Serious, Noel, no. The video is a series of shots of tight close-ups of McGregor's face, but she still feels it necessary to hold a mike throughout. These were the early days of promo shoots, maybe some still needed the crutch.

Electric Light Orchestra – Rockaria
And another video, a full ELO onstage extravaganza in which the track's opera singer starts high up in a false castle and a quartered screen reveals Jeff's gang going at it ten to the dozen. Duelling cellists drag their instruments at right angles around the stage.

Barbara Dickson – Another Suitcase In Another Hall
Before Barbara can get underway Noel wants to introduce us to some people, Andrew Lloyd Webber looking about twenty while simultaneously not actually looking young at all and Tim Rice looking like a provincial PE teacher. Noel starts with a very strangely worded question: "Everyone says to me you've got so many hits on that LP, so many hits behind Evita, is that true?" Lloyd Webber, understandably confused, points out the first single was a number one and they've released the second. "I think we like this one at the moment best" Rice offers when asked which his favourite is, which is handy. It turns out to be both Noel's record of the week and his prediction for a number one, so its chances are sunk well before it can ever begin. Dickson looks very stern in her knockoff Laura Ashley, choker and ostentatiously huge flower in hair. To add artistic merit there's a shot from the far side of a harp being played by a disembodied hand. At the end a man in a bobble hat looks nonplussed.

Earth Wind & Fire – Saturday Nite
As ever, Noel's off on his own logic perambulation: "The next introduction sounds a bit like the sort of insurance company you'd need cover from if you were going to walk round a volcano". Having given Legs & Co mini-tunics that make no attempt to cover the underwear Flick seems to have set them on autopilot and let them go on the standard uptempo move set. Gill's trying, though, if the addition of what seems to be a Chaplin sped-up shuffle qualifies by itself as trying to add something new. It's not impressing the audience surrounding the dancefloor, who spent three minutes listening to disco, watching professional dancers and don't move a muscle throughout. Some men at the back stand with their arms tightly folded, women at the front look like they're being forced to be there. Is this Legs & Co's first time in front of a live audience on the regular show? They really needed to involve the crowd more, unless Flick's still reeling from the Ruby Flipper reproach - they did crowd participation a few times - and vowed not to go that far again.

Leo Sayer – When I Need You
"Two weeks at number one, it's got to stay there even longer". It did! Noel got a chart prediction right! Stopped clock and all that. Leo, the very definition of 'always available', gets all sort of multiplication camera tricks, but more telling is his standing before a catatonically swaying audience with his hands in his pockets again. It doesn't mean casuality by itself, Leo. Before cueing up Bowie's Sound And Vision to play under the credits - and at this stage of 1977 aren't we all waiting for certain gifts of sound and vision? - Noel promises Leo will be joining "the Swap Shop supergroup this coming Saturday". And yes, this was a thing - the show put together an actual supergroup which recorded covers of Roll Over Beethoven and Bo Diddley under Mickie Most's production. Leo sang, with backing from John Miles, Suzi Quatro, Kenney Jones of the Faces and... John Christie! 1977 was going to be marvellous for him after all.

And yes, he still had that smug face he pulls. Via this set of Swap Shop Book 1978 scans, which also features actual slides used in the chart rundown

EDIT NEWS: videos by Bryan Ferry (This Is Tomorrow) and Boston (More Than A Feeling, which you'd have thought would have been more of a pull than Rockaria)

TOTP 17/2/77 (tx 23/2/12): after the spike

2012-02-24T18:49:00.000Z

Hello, everyone following the Guardian mention/online link about to become quite confused. You want the next post down.

Ruby Flipper update! Now there's a factual concept that hasn't been exerted in thirty five and a half years. A newspaper clipping of their rejection has been unearthed dated 19th August 1976, the date of broadcast of their face-making meisterwork Let 'Em In and also, adding mystery to that previous side issue, the last week of Cherry's still unexplained break. Three and a half months it seems to have taken for the BBC to decide they were wrong. The BBC spokesman - offical quotes! - claimed viewers were missing the all-girl nature of the dancing, which maybe gives away quite something about their actual purpose by this stage.

And as we've brought up Signora Gillespie, something else I've stumbled across since we all last met in this place is her perhaps sole piece of choreography work, Enya's Caribbean Blue video from 1991. This is known because there's an lengthy making of the video feature (part two) to which she contributes, still with the Rapunzel-esque tresses of her heyday but with the crucial addition of a bumbag. Also, though it's not mentioned, one of the nymph-like figures in the video is a young Martine McCutcheon.

"Don't panic, you've got the right channel" asserts Paul Burnett. Not one of Radio 1's great and legendary figures, Burnett, despite being in charge of the Tuesday afternoon chart reveal and being DLT's sideman on Convoy UK. It's this intro that was used at the start of the Big Hits 1977 compilation, odd given it's his only appearance of the year - he seemed to be doing one Pops a year at this stage - and he's not a figure any casual viewer would ever connect with the programme's storied past.

Is that another new angle of the Rose Royce Cortina?

Suzi Quatro – Tear Me Apart
We're seeing a lot at the moment of what the glam stars did next once Chinn and Chapman had stepped aside - Slade, the Rubettes, Gary Glitter, Mud last year. Suzi of course was pretty much doing this stuff from the off (and this actually is a late period Chinnichap), but her swapping of leather for fringed jacket-cum-catsuit - the angles never make it entirely clear - while the rest of her band donned the black biker accroutement of her heyday perhaps just to tease us, demonstrated how she'd now willingly let her country side eke out. Yeah, another one. Having started with an alarmingly wayward note she never quite finds her new range but can still play a bass the size size as her, and her showmanship credentials are renewed quite apart from her looks deep into the lens and vigorous upper body shaking - that is when she's on camera at all, the director fascinated by closeups of the guitar - as she spends most of the break with her foot up on the piano. It's a wonder she isn't trying to play it with the heel. If it's a muted instrument, perhaps she was. Less than lucidly, Paul calls it "a new chart contender". Yeah, we'd assumed that already.

The Moments – Jack In The Box
Just because, Paul refers to this as "a Tony Blackburn record of the week... and it made the charts". No, surely it's Noel's selections that tend to stiff. It's matching powder blue suits all round it transpires as well as doing virtually all the singing Harry Ray is the only one into the art of movement to. At one point he nearly goes for a spin on the spot and gets halfway before thinking better of it. At another there's some impromptu knee bending. The director, confused, zooms in on the back of his head. Bunched up uncomfortably in the middle of the stage, Ray's bandmates strive to look interested.

The Brothers – Sing Me
There's a very awkward moment when the camera lingers on Paul while pulling away towards the stage as he gathers up the mike cord, looks downwards while grinning and looking mildly embarrassed as if in realisation that, given a national telly platform on the nation's pop conversation hotspot, "it's always exciting to see a new band in the charts" really was the best he could come up with on the hoof. Brown suits and very wide open lapels on yellow shirts are the dresscode this time. There's now a hand gesture developed for 'paper kite' and a tug on the cord for 'pull my string', so the time in the spotlight is teaching them tricks of stagecraft alright. At the back of the audience a woman wears a red hat with a remarkably broad brim. You know that 'Barry Manilow from above' cartoon gag? It must be like that.

Boz Scaggs – What Can I Say
"A fabulous thing" Paul labels it. Doesn't bother with the title, though. It's the overmanned video clip again. And they left it in the edit ahead of a song that isn't on again.

Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Again Paul doesn't name the song, but he does stress that "we're very fortunate" to have her here as she has to go back to the US straight afterwards. Judging by her outfit - scarf around neck, functional white dress, notable lack of item (YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN) - she'd done most of the packing before arriving at the studio. The orchestra for their part sound like they're merely on holiday, leaving the little regarded on record Hammond organ player to do the heavy lifting. The funky bassline is apparently being played by osmosis. At least Thelma's giving it plenty, staring out the front row, shimmying, adlibbing and a huge note to near enough close. People are clearly impressed. Well, some are, a good swathe of the crowd not even waiting for the full fade out before racing across for the earthier delights of...

The Rubettes – Baby I Know
With Tony Thorpe singing, not Alan Williams, you're right. Chiefly of interest this time is bassist Mick Clarke, who is giving it one last go on his own in resuscitating the white flat cloth cap from their heyday. Is he intending to stand out further? Given how unrepossessing his colleagues look it doesn't take much.

Mr Big – Romeo
The mildly disturbing wild card from the last show has a video every bit as quixotic. One of the singers is only wearing an open leather jacket on his top half, which given they're serious minded AOR makes it all the more alarming he's liberally slathered himself in baby oil. The other one has a camera angle that exclusively films right up his nose. Loads of dry ice and backlighting and no small amount of visual tricks, one a kaleidoscopic Bohemian Rhapsody nod, Mr Big having toured with Queen.

Tavares – The Mighty Power Of Love
Legs & Co are in the studio with an audience, which seems rare these days. It's a 'see what's around' week, everyone in a different coloured leotard, a differently wrapped beige scarf and, for flavour, a tambourine, shaken and tapped against the other wrist vigorously throughout to reflect the instrument's position high in the mix on the record. Wouldn't that make a hell of a noise in the studio? Can you get tambourine deadeners? (Don't answer that) Maybe that's why the crowd aren't all that enthusiastic compared to earlier, though something clearly happens to Patti up front as she puts her right leg out in accordance with the choreography, makes a surprised face and glances down at where her foot was. "A beautiful performance", apparently.

Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Very hesitant, Paul. And this man read out the chart rundown. Not a man always given to dynamism, Leo, as he stands stock still at the mike in what appears to be an ice hockey jersey, hands actually in his pockets for a good two and a half minutes. Look lively, Leo, much as the song may not demand it and all the director can come up with is multiple panning shots. Perhaps knowing we need something for the big finish, the Earth Wind & Fire outro seems to be focusing on the audience without telling them. Some leave, some stand around chatting, a large camera is dragged into shot for no good reason and with only a couple of exceptions everywhere is a tableau of awkwardness and knitwear.

EDIT NEWS: A song we'll see again but not in this version, Manhattan Transfer's Chanson D’Amour given the Legs & Co treatment, worth a look not for Burnett's comedy French accent but the leg work and the country thematic costumes with a hint of Where's Wally - on the occasions Ruby Flipper had two routines a show one would almost always be lost, but they decided the other was superior? - and a song we won't see again, Les Gray's unbecoming solo cover of Groovy Kind Of Love in a white jacket producing a rose out of seeming thin air at the end. He makes about as convincing a loving balladeer as Danny Dyer would.

"You don't look like 'em, George!": the 1989 Brit Awards revisited

2012-02-20T11:30:00.002Z

It's the Brit Awards tomorrow, a charade of an annual event but at least they seem to have given up on the primary 'anything can happen' promotional angle this year, which as well as suggesting nobody should be interested in the music and awards blithely overlooks that the things that did make a press impression didn't happen on camera (Prescott's soaking), should really not have happened if the production team had a clue what they were doing (Brandon Block's gatecrashing, Sharon Osbourne trying to wrestle Vic Reeves off the mike), had a significance well beyond the ken of the commercial sector it was being presented to (Bill Drummond's machine gunning) or all of the above (Jarvis - the show director missed it and the footage of his appearance didn't surface until three days later) More pertinently the awards weren't restored to live TV until 2007, the event having taken place the day before transmission since... well...

Television has surely never seen such a major abdication of sense as when Samantha Fox, her UK charting days already behind her, and Mick Fleetwood, thrown in at the deep end on the back of his band's revival a couple of years earlier and on the promise of international footage sales, were put forward as hosts of the 1989 Brits. It was doomed well before we saw a moment. Rehearsals went to pot, the cleaners wouldn't let anyone in for much of the allotted time, the autocue was out of anyone's eyeline, Fox was overly nervous, Fleetwood was overly pissed.

Marvellously, instead of the lead-lined vault you might have envisaged, the whole thing has turned up online. Let's walk through it together.

Part one: your hosts come on and do something that's either a knowing gag or a cockup before Fox reveals it to be a cockup - before they've even spoken - a namecheck for Bruce Springsteen silences the kids and Julian Lennon turns up a little late before the sight of four grown adults standing around sheepishly on live TV.

Part two: The Four Tops are repeatedly introduced and then Boy George appears anyway, before Fleetwood starts introducing George for the next award anyway. Then an exclusive video message from Michael Jackson gets lost, meaning the show underruns, leading to all sorts of malarkey come the end.

Part three: Fox so spectacularly loses her place/grip that she ends up having to admit it on camera. "Wind away!"

Part four: Mick misses his cue while personal grooming, then the director gives up during his intro. Alan Price comes on to introduce the Brits School, points to Kenneth Baker and watches him nearly get booed out of the building.

Part five: A glorious fiasco of silence and confusion right at the start with Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood and Gary 'are you not going to have a look at the possibilities first?' Davies. Nobody remembers to mention what the award actually is. Get your feet off there, Bros. Our hosts then fail to co-ordinate their Def Leppard intro.

Part six: Some comedy is attempted. The Best Classical Recording winner gets the shortest shrift you've ever heard. Fox is given the line "it's still possible for a female to sell her songs and not her image" and delivers it without apparent irony.

Part seven: Ken Russell imposes himself as only he could. Fox gets totally baffled by a routine about the height difference. Phil Collins' speech threatens to never end.

Part eight: Tina Turner has to stop Annie Lennox walking off stage the wrong way. The silences are getting longer. The chairman of the BPI tells Mick he's "done a wonderful job for us tonight".

Part nine: Lifetime achievement winner Cliff Richard is introduced too early and then his big speech build-up payoff turns out to be telling off the whole audience. He then walks off right in the way of the shot.

Part ten: Randy Newman and 'The Mark Knopfler Supergroup' closes the event. Randy Newman! Ending the Brits broadcast in 1989! Randy Newman! And the song didn't even chart in the end. The thing doesn't even stagger to a dignified finish as the floor manager manages to mislead Fleetwood as to how to end once the size of the underrun is discovered. A fitting climax.

The disappeared: 10/2/77

2012-02-16T12:00:00.001Z

Just the four shows have been wiped in 1977, though there may be more that are unbroadcastable for whatever reason - UK Gold and Einsfestival didn't show a lot from this year, and at least one programme has had to be reconstructed from off-air clips. This one, DLT's first outing of the year, is definitely AWOL... at least in vision, as it exists as a hissy homemade audio recording and is preserved on YouTube: part one, part two, part three. That still means we have visuals to fill in:

Sailor – One Drink Too Many
Actually this, Sailor's last visit to the show, does exist albeit in quality little better than flickbook. Sailor have claimed they took the title a trifle too literally but you wouldn't necessarily know on this evidence, apart from they seem to have left the Nickelodeon behind and Henry Marsh has moved on from white suit and Benny Hill minor character glasses to anticipating the look of Andy Partridge from XTC. That set with the triangles at the back debuted last week for Gary Glitter and you'll see it a lot more this year. Not especially lunatic seeming, DLT.

The Detroit Spinners – Wake Up Susan
This must have been in the studio as the pace of the intro on the recording is noticeably slower than the recording. Awkwardly this was a 1976 hit in the States and in the meantime it seems they'd changed lead singer. Compare 1976 and 1977 live version versions, see what you reckon.

Kiki Dee – First Thing In The Morning
I've listened to three versions of this and can't work out whether it's meant to be a ballad or not. This seems to be orchestrally backed, which might explain it. Picturing something long, flowing and maybe taffeta. "It could be a top five sound" enthuses DLT. It was a number 32 sound.

Boston – More Than A Feeling
The video, though it'll be on again if you feel you're really missing out.

Brotherhood Of Man – Oh Boy (The Mood I’m In)
As will this, though not for a month or so. You might have reasonably thought we'd seen the last of them at the end of 1976, but their none too subtle shift into an ersatz Abba was instead first signposted here. There's not so much as a twist on the last line.

Bryan Ferry – This Is Tomorrow
"21 today, or to be precise a couple of days ago..." Does he mean the song? Because Ferry was a full decade older than that and his birthday's in September, and nobody would have believed he'd have been 17 when Virginia Plain was a hit. The video, and again we'll get a rerun.

The Racing Cars – They Shoot Horses Don’t They?
Won't be the Rhondda Valley's ~~slowest~~ finest's last visit either, even though the "top five, I'll be bound" single peaked at 14.

Heatwave – Boogie Nights
"They don't shoot ladies, fortunately" No, I should hope they didn't. Legs & Co at ease. "I've heard of wearing my heart on my sleeve but that is ridiculous" comments DLT and one can only imagine the clothing budget, especially as they've left in the extended intro.

Johnny Nash – Birds Of A Feather
First appearance in eighteen months years for the commercial reggae progenitor with the sort of performance that makes one wonder whether it was with a crack session band Jesse Green-like or whether he had to stand there awkwardly held to the orchestra's whims. There's some definite woodwind there.

Julie Covington – Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
Its only week at number one, meaning 7.30 viewers have missed its entire chart run. It was only the video again, but they've actually dragged Julie in to explain herself, claiming her lack of studio appearances was down to her lack of time - really? - and the need for a symphony orchestra. Johnny Pearson must have been looking daggers at her. Covington plugs Rock Follies "and, erm, that's it" before having to clarify the subject of the song, Evita having been released in 1976 as an album but not becoming a hit until the 1978 stage version. "She made her mark!"

TOTP 3/2/77 (tx 9/2/12): ITMA

2012-02-09T21:13:00.003Z

Oh, hang on, that's from the wrong show, sorry about that. (No idea who made that, by the way - Charlie Brooker was first to make its presence public but it has a ring of Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper about it, especially as one of the band names is similar to something they've used)

"Another half hour of super sound and view for you" promises a bouffant Kid Jensen, which is a lie right off the bat as the proper version is nearly 40 minutes long and would have been even then. Just about scans, too. New pictures abound this week, as Leo Sayer meaningfully observes himself back at us in a mirror and Gary Glitter looks like he's pinned against a wall by an unseen firing squad. Please, say nothing. More importantly, though, we have a second, head on shot of the Rose Royce Cortina, this time with the roller up. Can't say it's affected the looks much.

Thin Lizzy – Don’t Believe A Word
You again. As if this isn't the third time we've seen it we get the screen/dancing effect, which we must come up with a catch-all title for before next week. Of chief interest this time is a man in a brown sheepskin jacket, tie and tache who appears to be trying to bust out some proper moves irrespective of whether he actually can, whether that be to the music or just generally in life. A very quick cutaway to some shifting youngsters disguises the Noel-in-background moment. In a neat shot, and as if to save on the costs of operating the crane camera, Kid backannounces "their latest 45" - hardly latest any more, Kid, more 'current' - as off to the right a figure in silver appears on the performance stage making for a neat segue to... hang on, it's not...

Gary Glitter – It Takes All Night Long
Who says you don't get surprises on television any more? Even Calvin Harris tweeted his surprise, which at least means another covert celebrity viewer flushed out. In case you missed it there's a sort of backstory here, which is that when Jonathan King got cut out last July he complained to the papers (the Mail, bravely for him), about a month later as it happened, and the DG issued an apology ("his performance will not be edited out of any future repeat" - starting again, are they?) Even so, you'd kind of think they'd have played safe and left this year's three Glitter appearances on the unedited versions, especially as the Mirror caught on to the first one claiming he'd "be seen singing a 1977 number, believed to be I’m The Leader Of The Gang". Which was a 1973 number. Good work there. Anyway, Kid's enthused, stomping along to the intro even if he does leave the last word off the title. Gary's well past the point of pop reward here so seems to be morphing into some sort of creepy glam crooner affair, dressed in a suit possibly made of Bacofoil. He actually looks nervous at the start, such is the magnifying power of the close-up. Then he starts singing come-ons in the creepiest voice he can muster and making Carry On-randy faces directly at us. At one point, having spent much of the time between vocals with an arched back and a haughty provenance, he mock-airs his collar before staring straight down the lens and stage whipsering "what a night!" before prancing up some stairs and, frankly, shaking his arse. Also bear in mind he was only 32 at the time but looks deep into middle age, and you don't have to consider anything else about him to feel the black ice forming where warm blood used to be.

Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes – Don't Leave Me This Way
Knowing we need someone to stir the loins back into order, here come Legs & Co. "There's a whole lot of directives in the chart this week" comments Kid, possibly the most deathless thing he's ever said. Elegance is the watchword following last week's Victoriana, moving on a decade or three as the budget really gets pushed out once more. Evening gowns, opera gloves, drapes, even a big old chandelier. That does mean not much space to work in, meaning a fairly vanilla for their standards number involving lots of circling the external parts of the set, striding around in pairs and limbular expressiveness in a line.

Boz Scaggs – What Can I Say
Kid promises "a very special guest", so he'd better deliver. In the meantime a video of Boz and his huge band, including two drummers and one of the three backing singers having a tambourine to hand

The Real Thing – You'll Never Know What You're Missing
The camera stays on Kid for a long time after he's introduced the song as he looks progressively more concerned. As it's a slow smootchy one, with more than a nod to Homely Girl, and maybe having seen the Pips the other week they've dressed up in their wedding suits for the occasion, flowers in the lapel holes and everything. Chris Amoo, who always has to be different, has augmented his outfit with a huge explorers' hat that any church goer would insist he remove before the service. It seems to be a perfectly reasonable live vocal, Amoo giving it plenty of huge soulful exhortation throughout the last third to remind us of his frontman status.

Silver Convention – Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout Love
Repeat from two weeks ago of the bra'd up German Three Degrees.

The Rubettes – Baby I Know
And they say pop acts grow up too fast these days. Just three years after Sugar Baby Love, the Rubettes had reverted to their archetype as session men and gone ersatz country rock. They even look the part, Alan Williams sporting a receding side parting and Les Gray-by-way-of-Parker glasses. The Rubettes, unsurprisingly, are no Eagles. In terms of studio manufactured bands going their own way, they're some distance from the Monkees. This did however lead to the wondrous spectacle of the Rubettes UK trending on Twitter and people becoming confused. You would have to ask, wouldn't you.

David Soul – Don't Give Up On Us
Last time (until Christmas), thank goodness. Even crowd dance cutaways can't really save it. It's after this that Kid reveals his special guest, and "I didn't disappoint you"... Thelma Houston. Good, except she was pretty much unknown here at the time, promoting her first single as she was, her own Don't Leave Me This Way, presumably why she wasn't on to perform, unless that was due to her work permit or something. As with all guests she doesn't get to do much, merely name her single and announce the credits song, but like Terry Kath she adds an element of impromptu dance too. Unlike Kath it's a song you actually can dance to, Heatwave's Boogie Nights, and it actually looks like dancing rather than an acid flashback. Kid again wishes us "good love" to close. If that was his attempt at a catchphrase it really wasn't working out.

EDIT NEWS: Boney M and Leo Sayer, both of whom we've seen before and will see again. That's how editing these shows should work.

TOTP 27/1/77 (tx 2/2/12): think pink

2012-02-02T22:20:00.002Z

We're still very much in the teething stages of establishing what sort of pop musical year 1977 will be, and it really doesn't settle down for a few weeks yet. David Soul and Boney M may be emergent already, but around them is still a certain amount of mush and shots in the dark. The dark, coincidentally, is where Tony Blackburn was told his combination of lumberjack shirt and straight-from-the-bin-round brown jacket with big lapels would best work.

The brown Cortina, registration NCP 303P, must have had a thorough wash by now. Could the BBC not be bothered to ask the label if they had anything better?

The Brothers – Sing Me
Starting with recent Opportunity Knocks winners, which puts them on a level par with Bonnie Langford and Little & Large, who like these men also adapted their Knocks-conquering routine into reggae. You have to make time to watch their first Op Knocks if only to admire the harp and vocal trio and wonder how anyone was supposed to judge cting against music. The Quality Street Orange Crunch wrapped-coloured shirts have been retained now alonsgide scarlet trousers, albeit without the matching jackets for the full effect, and they're taking this post-Nicholas reggae to the masses with much less exuberant stagecraft, the instrument head waving and livewire moves having been used up at Hughie's behest. It's a litany of bad metaphor, from ships to kites, where obviously "I come down when you pull my string". Tony moves his shoulders in some approximation of rhythmic motion in the background. Tony is keen to mention that they actually are

David Parton – Isn't She Lovely
"Talking about singing things, here's a lovely song..." There's a link that wouldn't work on the page, and barely works out of the mouth. Yes, it's that man again, still with eyes firmly closed and expression forcefully pained. The boys one side of the stage bop about expectedly. The girls on the other side are nonplussed, as well they might be. And let's watch that mid-song break stagecraft in action: some very forceful handclapping, what seems to be him putting his fingers to the corners of his mouth in a 'smile, bastards!' motion with no great facial joy, going across to the other side of the stage only to find they aren't interested either, giving the rose from the lapel of his white suit jacket to a random girl, wandering off the stage to press two sets of flesh, and back for the climactic verse. The camera nds up focusing on a girl near the front who clearly does not want to be seen swaying to this song at all, especially not on national television with her mates watching. The director lingers on her to teach her a lesson. "Isn't she absolutely lovely" Tony renames the song before predicting it'll be a number one sound. Its imminent fall was inevitable from that moment.

The Eagles – New Kid In Town
Not the most immediate of songs to give the Legs & Co treatment to, which may be why Flick opted for the opaque. Hanging around outside mock Victoriana shop fronts, one of which advertises 'CEGARS', in frilly dresses, big hats, long gloves and fur stoles may not have been what Don Henley and Glenn Frey quite had in mind but the relaxed pace allows for some character work you don't tend to get in Legs routines. Patti alone pulls four different expressions in her first three seconds on screen. The loose story framework is surprise and intrigue at Lulu, who gets many solo routines in portraying, well, a new kid in town. At the end Sue and Pauline find acceptance of her anew.

Barry Biggs – Sideshow
The shoehorned into pink frilly suited effort from the pre-Christmas show. Given how much specialised editing has had to be done to cram as much as possible in this week it's a mystery why they didn't just leave this out...

Status Quo – Wild Side Of Life
...or this on its third appearance. As the intro, in which Tony asks of an overmade-up woman "it's your birthday today, isn't it Barbara?" before hijacking her low-key celebrations by mentioning it's his own birthday coming up (January 29th, in fact) and he's "looking forward to being a teenager", of course. Afterwards he appears to suggest he was having "a really good truck".

Mr Big – Romeo
Not the Mr Big who did To Be With You but a band who make Smokie look like Black Sabbath incorporating a man who just stops himself short of complete falsetto and a poodle-permed co-singer, both of whom consider "step back inside me, Romeo" to be a winning approximation of subtle kinship mentality. The keyboard player has an open leather jacket with nothing underneath, the bassist is sporting a Panama hat. It's a complete mess of imagery.

Andy Fairweather Low – Be-Bop ‘N’ Holler
Tony calls it "Be-Bop A Hula", which is something else. In fairness it's not a song heavy on either be-bop or hollering but does feature two drummers, one of whom seems to play nothing but rimshots, and Fairweather Low seemingly singing through a closed mouth - not in miming, in the sound of his voice. Just in front of Drummer Two someone seems to have turned the dry ice machine on full setting and just left it.

The Moments – Jack In The Box
For some reason as Tony introduces this video clip the camera focuses for a long time on an empty stage shrouded in artificial mist as if something or someone is going to emerge. And then they don't and the director remembers to cut to the clip. The three Moments are wearing pink suits! They wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the club lounge they're performing in today in those. As their fine range of facial hair and a tremendous tight afro soul up a storm - "it sounds like a game but it's a dog on a chain"? - the fake screen projection returns. Someone in a cardigan right in front of the screen could kill with the ferocity of his shoulder thrusts if he doesn't learn to control them properly, but the producer's not thought this bit through as to the side of the screen we get to see people emerging from backstage. Two appear to be being marched out. Two others, sitting down throughout, embark on a play-fight. Eventually someone who looks like he'd be in Madness in three years' time starts hopping from foot to foot. Meanwhile back at the Moments an older woman sitting on grinning appears for a couple of seconds and disappears again without explanation. Tony mentions it was his record of the week, not wanting Noel to have oneupmanship.

The New Seekers – I Wanna Go Back
"We haven't had a new record from the New Seekers for a long time" Tony confidently states. Seven months, Tony, that's how long before they'd last been on the show. A classic Pops trick sees Eve Graham's head merged in over the hole in an acoustic guitar being plucked for the intro. This line-up involves two acoustic guitars, an inaudible electric bass and a lot of swaying from foot to foot in time, not to mention a hell of a truck driver's gear change. Are they playing this live? It cuts off early, and not before time.

David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
"Do you like David Soul?" "I think he's lovely, yes". That's fortunate. Video, clearly, a quick goodbye and Rose Royce play us out.

EDIT NEWS: Ten songs in half an hour! No, it didn't really flow well. Should have been two out, really, to stop the piecemeal mid-song cuts and repetition but just Julie Covington again. We've seen a suggestion this has been cut twice - and the week it went to number one has been lost, though she's on again at Christmas - because of Argentina's current Falkland sabre rattling, but that seems somewhat hasty. Maybe it's been cut because the montage they're using is so deathly dull.

TOTP 20/1/77 (tx 26/1/12): records of the weak

2012-01-26T23:14:00.003Z

"No, don't worry, you don't have to telephone me" reassures a luxuriantly follicled Noel. Bit late in his Pops career to be making Swap Shop references, he'd done plenty of TOTPs even in the three months since the show had been launched.

Slade – Gypsy Roadhog
First time we've seen them, too. With glam but a fading memory already, even Slade are having to dress down. All things are relative, of course, Noddy, shot for the entire first verse in unflattering close-up, sporting a Homburg hat bearing a massive set of peacock feathers, while Dave Hill has gone the fringed cowboy jacket route. Which are fine, but they're no mirrored stovepipe and metal nun, are they? As far as songs about the idiomatic realism of drug abuse go, a hard riffing song in which every second line starts "powdered my nose" isn't entirely subtle. Still, Dave's enjoying himself, all round the place.

Donna Summer – Winter Melody
Having judged the chart "interesting", possibly in the Chinese proverb sense, it's the latest in a long line of anodyne Noel Records Of The Week. In this case it's a live clip with one of those audiences that burst into mass spontaneous applause after the first line, interspersed with a dramatic presentation wherein Donna sits about bored, drinks from a silver goblet and looks at an open hearth fire before, in a nod to the fact it's been stealthily climbing since before Christmas, unhooks and regards at length a massive silver bauble before looking out of a window at some falling snow. The melody goes to prove she can't fully command a country ballad melody, so the soul backing singers and strings are fed in eventually. The next time Summer appeared in both show and charts, it'd be for I Feel Love.

10cc – The Things We Do For Love
It doesn't get an intro link again. Band insistence? The video again, but through the magic of CSO there's a couple of cuts to it allegedly being shown on a big screen while the entire audience ungainly shuffles about, not sure whether you can actually dance to it but willing to give it a damn good try.

Jesse Green – Flip
Appearing from behind the screen, a pan held for the entire first verse which means people keep distractedly walking across the shot, Green hasn't brought his flautist and uncomfortable band this time. What he has brought is his sense of rhythm, which keeps threatening to break out - a little shuffle here, a Bruce Forsyth-style running on the spot there. What he actually does during the break is a triumph of stage minimalism, as some soft shoe shuffling Sammy Davis Jnr style turns into the running man and then just knee and elbow lifting on the spot before some sort of attempt to put one foot in front of the other in sequence as if walking a tightrope. It's the fact you can't see the feet that just about saves whatever shred of dignity he retained.

Elvis Presley – Suspicion
See, Clash, some Elvis in 1977. But not for much longer, and this song was fifteen years old anyway. This, it's fair to say, is one from the bottom of Flick's ideas chart, the girls starting in big white hats and overcoats doing standard moves against a cityscape backdrop, occasionally with a lamppost to lean against, and we pretend (although Noel had pre-empted it in fairness) that some sort of small outfit is underneath and will be revealed in the fulness of time. 45 seconds, that takes, the reveal being red outfits that lie somewhere between Playboy Club corset and swimming costume.

Leo Sayer – When I Need You
There shouldn't be an edit here but there seems to be, Noel on the same emptied set starting "now here's something that makes quite an impression" over badly faded out applause. This is a Noel record of the week too, Sayer reflecting the showbiz glamour of having the breakfast show's priority tune by turning up in his dad-goes-golfing outfit of bright yello jumper, big collar and grey slacks. They put him in the kaleidoscopic rotating lenses when appropriate, but it doesn't help.

Thin Lizzy – Don’t Believe A Word
"Especially for Flynn's new girlfriend Lizzy, this is Flynn Lizzy" What? WHAT? NOEL, WHAT ARE YOU DRIVELLING ON ABOUT? The performance from just before Christmas repeated. Noel doesn't mention their number one bet, nor that you can still see him from that show in the background.

Silver Convention – Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout Love
We've only come across these from that chart picture of three women with their hands on their knees; now it merely transpires they're a poor man's Three Degrees going disco. If the purse lipped spoken word to open is meant to invoke the Shangri-Las, the spangly blue bikini tops and matching trousers with ruffles on the bottom scream 'suburban nightspot'.

David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
"Strikes me that everybody's talking about this gentleman..." The video, as you know because he didn't come over once in 1977. This is going to be a long few weeks filling this bit. Boney M play us out with the minimum of fuss. Recorded version. Obviously.

EDIT NEWS: Gary Glitter. Well, obviously Gary Glitter, who was not just some distance past a point where he could have been any influence on pop when he made It Takes All Night Long but had just come back from a retirement to get over not selling any more, being on drugs and having to pay tax. No idea at time of writing whether it'll be reinstated for the unedited repeats (EDIT: yes, it did), but given Jonathan King got an apology off the BBC for cutting out It Only Takes A Minute it's possible, even though the Mirror kicked up a stink-ette in the week only really notable because they assumed the song shown would be Leader Of The Gang. Also hopefully it means people on message boards will stop going "will they show gary glitter lol", as they have been doing ever since the rerun was first announced (EDIT: no, they haven't) A clean edit point means the show can also lose the clip straight after it (EDIT: except it isn't, the episode guide I work off had it wrong, it was after Legs & Co which explains that awkward edit), the Drifters video shown the programme before last.

TOTP 13/1/77 (tx 19/1/12): it gets better

2012-01-19T21:52:00.003Z

And we're properly off as we mean to... no, not go on, David Hamilton's presenting presence isn't indicative of a go-ahead attitude in and of itself. The first new chart of the new year reveals a whole host of new photos, including Donna Summer in a furry hood, all of Status Quo except the drummer looking off to the left of camera, a snapshot of a Cortina going through a suburban car wash for Rose Royce - that may not even have been a file photo - and most notably John Christie, because a) it means enough people liked Here's To Love to send it chartwards and b) he's wearing a T-shirt with a golliwog on. We've seen a golly before on the reruns, there was one on Marmalade's bass drum skin, but even given the unfortunate associations since those days it's a curious thing for an earnest singer-songwriter to be donning in his big promo shot.

Gallagher & Lyle – Every Little Teardrop
As with Sheer Elegance last week, this would be the last we'd see of the duo of MOR punchiness, new brooms and all that. They weren't to know, which was why they splashed out on a two man brass section, one a saxophonist in a big hat and Hawaiian shirt of low advisedness who seems to be miming along to a trumpet part. The presence of an organ as well as Lyle (or Gallagher)'s electric keyboard means they can spread out right across the front of the stage, but all the bopping on the spot in the world can't make it sound like someone heard a Steely Dan record I can't quite place right now, probably one from 1977's future for all I know, and decided to recreate it in a toned down fashion. Diddy reckons it'll be "a big one for '77". It reached number 32.

Barry Biggs – Sideshow
Performing under a spotlit spider, Biggs has left the pink ruffled shirt at home this time in favour of a soberly coloured suit but he's still wandering awkwardly up and down a very small area of a big stage. At the end a big pan out crane shot gives us a glimpse, sequestered away in a corner behind some loosely held in place boards, of Johnny Pearson and a couple of his orchestra, for the first time in this whole repeat series. Union demand?

Rose Royce – Car Wash
"And the splendid chassis you see belong to Legs & Company!" So put Diddy down as one who uses the full name. We start with Sue and ~~Lulu~~ Gill in Smith & Jones head to head fashion, albeit they never wore caps, stuck their tongues out at each other (ad lib?) or were generally female. The pan out reveals they've blown the month's design budget on an illuminated 'CAR WASH' sign, some arrows on the floor and four rotating brushes, while the girls are outfitted in small fringed ponchos, leotards and knee socks-cum-woollen legwarmers. Give or take a tiny skirt or six, this is pretty much what you imagine Legs & Co wore every week if you didn't have direct documentary evidence. The ensemble is, helpfully for people like me who get confused, topped off by a hat with each dancer's forename on. It's a quick way of garnering individual personality, I suppose. The routine is the kind of ensemble piece Flick always did for disco, involving a lot of work in parallel lines, wandering in and out of the middle and general jumping back and forth before a spot of synchronised movement from the elbow upwards. "A bunch of cheeky girls" adds Diddy, both referring to the amount of gluteus maximus on display and accidentally opening a mind portal to a very different future form of female pop interjection. If only he'd known.

David Parton – Isn't She Lovely
"There's a very controversial record out at the moment - I don't know who started the controversy" says a man who must have somehow been aware that Anarchy In The UK had only the previous week been withdrawn by EMI and so on balance someone rush-covering Isn't She Lovely because Stevie Wonder wouldn't put it out as a single. Then again, we are talking about a middle aged man with a chicken in a basket cabaret circuit type walrus tache and largely pink striped jacket with clashing half-open shirt underneath whose facial expression as he sings suggests he's also in the middle of a bad bout of constipation, eyes closed and everything, though in this context that looks a trifle mocking. And he's not so much singing as shouting to a tune, not entirely capturing the subtlety and swing of Stevie's vocal style. Like Paul Nicholas, his idea of filling the break is to run round in a circle. He then blows a kiss to the audience, absolutely fails to get them to clap along with him and then picks out two unfortunate girls to kiss the hand of. At this stage he resembles a politician trying too hard to look populist at an overlit rally. By the end he's pointing at the camera.

Status Quo – Wild Side Of Life
Or "Wild Wild Side" as Diddy calls it. Same video clip as last time, Quo obviously being far too big for the show at this time. Unlike the 80s, when they became really successful and would pop in at the drop of a key change.

Liverpool Express – Every Man Must Have A Dream
Billy Kinsley, here bedecked in one of Slik's castoff US college jackets, was wearing the band's own T-shirt in their rundown shot. "There are quite a few new entries in the chart this week" commends Diddy, introducing a song we've already seen. Different performance, because all the festive touches wouldn't have made sense this far into January. The drumkit doesn't seem to have moved since Gallagher & Lyle set it up. Still, kit sharing makes it easier for visiting bands. Somehow the massive ending seems even more jolting against the rest of the tune this time.

Pussycat – Smile
Oh, they're back alright, for one last curtain call. It's much like the big hit, except less so. Everyone looks slightly more scary, we get better shots of the frontwoman's gap in the front teeth and there's lots of fringing on yellow dresses going on. Nowhere, however, is a gun used as a slide, and that's where their studio work falls down.

David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
Soul had a big 1977 and didn't come over for single promotion once. It's as if he had a big hit TV show to film or something. Lots of baleful looks to camera and overlaid shot fades going on, as well as a still photo of a man on a horse halfway through for no reason at all. Back in the studio the audience has formed a gangway in front of their beloved leader Diddy for the final link, although they're not so respectful that he doesn't have to admonish someone for pulling on his trouser leg. After he's made a very strange high pitched "woo!" noise waving us goodbye, I Wish under the credits gives Stevie a PRS double.

EDIT NEWS: Ah, an old friend. The video to Julie Covington's Don't Cry For Me Argentina was all that we lost, strange when there was a video we've already had on the show kept in the edit. We should see it again anyway, at Christmas if we don't contemporaneously.

(By the way, 1977 is the year on Pick Of The Pops this Saturday)

TOTP 6/1/77 (tx 6/1/12): ring in the new

2012-01-07T14:36:00.005Z

1977 - the year of Evita, Keith Richards' drugs bust, Studio 54, Saturday Night Fever and punk breaking. Chris Martin, Kanye West, Ronan Keating, Shakira, Danger Mouse, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Richard Archer of Hard-Fi and Claire from Steps were born. Elvis, Marc Bolan, Bing Crosby, Ronnie Van Zant and Maria Callas died. Also, not a single Top Of The Pops making it into the top 20 of the weekly TV ratings all year, something that didn't happen again until 1985. Truly the alpha and omega of an era, as we'll come to learn better together throughout 2012.

Oh god. This goes on all year.

No need to take too long discussing The Story Of 1977, except it's an odd form of marketing to preview a series which runs all year in prime time with an hour long trailer telling you nearly all of it is shit until punk arrives and changes everything (which obviously explains why Mull Of Kintyre, released in November, became the best selling single of the whole decade), making sure first to tell you you wasted your time over the previous eight months watching the previous year's output being rerun. Too much block revisionist history (1977 was a relatively calmed year in terms of inflation, unemployment and strikes, certainly nothing like the three day week of 1974 or the Winter Of Discontent of 1978) and plain deliberate ignorance of Pops' role - it's a family entertainment show based on the biggest selling records of the day (or in Story Of terms the old guard "clinging on"), not a rival to So It Goes - to discuss, but whoever got the reliably rotten Sue Perkins to claim the bulk of its guests "were all novelty acts" over a clip of Jonathan Richman needs taking far away from a place of pop culture influence.

Anyway. Here it is on iPlayer for the next week and another couple beyond that due to repeats, and if you don't mind spoilers here's Big Hits 1977.

So what had BBC4 got to offer the part-timers, those making a night of it who'll forget about the rest of the run and mildly irk those of who sat through Glamourpuss to get to this moment, godammit? Unusually we start with the rundown followed by the first surviving appearance of Kid Jensen - that's how he's referred to in the credits, so like Floyd/Floid that's only how this blog will refer to him - who remarks that there just wasn't a new chart published that week. Actually there was, and one of those you're about to see was on the way down. Boo, TOTP. BOO. Also, John Christie had entered the top 30. It happened, ladies and gentlemen, though he immediately started falling so the temptation to call him back in was averted. And it's with that inaccuracy ringing in our ears we embark upon the pint/quart activity of cramming eleven songs and a playout into 35 minutes.

Sheer Elegance – Dance The Night Away
And here's how to get a new year off to a flyer. This would be Sheer Elegance's last appearance, which is a shame as they've finally learnt the value of not colour clashing in alarming ways. Not that this getup isn't alarming by itself, as the red shirts with large white patch and ruffled plunging neckline are augmented by white trousers so tight Cliff Richard would wince. The hook this time is classically soulful but limited by only having one really able member the trio were never destined as anything other than a footnote, especially given the not inconsiderable US competition on the same show.

10cc – The Things We Do For Love
Without a link - no idea whether by cut or design - we're into a video shot in an overspotlit performance space of a band we last saw on the second BBC4 show of 1976. Some nice close-ups of some tambourines at one point. "Broken up but not down" Jensen points out, this being their first single without Godley or Creme.

Tina Charles – Dr Love
"A real disco delight" Kid calls it, which can only mean another singer held hostage by the orchestra's overemphasis. Actually despite the ever eager trombones they're getting the hang of the rhythm, largely through so much practice you'd imagine, and Charles is in full voice. She's also in full figure, not unreasonably given she was four months pregnant, but the cumulative effect of the lack of movement and the large kaftan means the audience are having to provide the movement visuals for her. Dr Love seems to be a similar type to Dr Kiss Kiss. Maybe they're related.

Smokie – Living Next Door To Alice
Stop that. "The pride of Bradford" - Kid's not entirely comfortable in his early Pops days, but he knows the value of a brief description - have invested in a lightbox with their name on. It finally adds something to their stage presence, though it's undeniable that Chris Norman's hair is lustrous, shiny and full of vitality more than ever. Definite extra Rod Stewart tinge to his vocals too.

Gladys Knight and the Pips – Nobody But You
Interesting staging here, as the orchestra, all in orange shirts, are visible behind Jensen during his introduction. For her own protection from the British winter Gladys is sporting a lurid green scarf over her red top. Three minutes later, an indication of why all British cod-soul should just give up on the spot, and with the Pips in matching grey jackets and light blue trousers the male groups could learn a lot too. The audience are unsure whether to look on in envy or jig about slightly to the gospel tune. "Didn't I tell you we had a special show?" Jensen appraises, though the appreciation is dimmed by the thought presenters say something like that every week.

Jethro Tull – Ring Out Solstice Bells
Very appropriate that the last of the Christmas songs would be shown on Twelfth Night. Jensen calls them "unpredictable", something immediately undercut by this being a repeat.

David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
"I think this next sound will be the next big number one" A correct prediction! A Top Of The Pops presenter got a chart prediction right! Stopped clock being right twice a day and all that, but see, it's the youth that really know the chart score. As big as this was there's some awkwardness around its presentation as Soul never came over to promote it, nor indeed any of his other 1977 hits. Legs & Co are thus pressed into service in their nighties for a routine based around a large circle, maybe based on Soul's assertion "it's written in the moonlight". Before long the early tactic of lying, standing and running about in a circle is abandoned in favour of the usual formation emoting for a couple of minutes until all six gather back in a circle to get down on their elbows and, through the faerie majick of CSO, admire a picture of Soul himself. Phh. Never gave Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe that extra treatment.

The Drifters – You’re More Than A Number In My Little Red Book
On video and amid a misty studio setting, this week's Drifters do their supercharged cabaret suit routine.

Clodagh Rodgers – Save Me
"A sound that's got all the ingredients for success" is as maybe, but Rodgers has found an extra pitch in the shape of a dress with a spectacularly plunging neckline. Twenty-plus years ahead of her fashion time, maybe. And maybe it's to distract from the song, which sounds like Smokie on their fag break.

Boney M – Daddy Cool
Now then. Boney M becoming huge European stars is attributed to this late 1976 performance on Germany's Musikladen, where young people who'd never seen such wild movement and outfits went mad for the single release. So they get to Pops and are told they have to either re-record the song without Frank Farian or sing live over the orchestra's rendition. Ah.

First thing you'll notice is Bobby Farrell trying not to panic too much that people might discover it was Frank Farian rather than him providing the vocals on the recording. He sounds nothing like himself, essentially. In turn the girls' lack of harmony practice is also shown, someone definitely singing flat, and the die is cast. The dancing and synchronised movements can't be as energetic since they have to retain some energy for the singing, and they've been put on a tiny stage with people behind them as well as in front. Before the singing proper has started Farrell has already nearly fallen off the back, severely limiting his wild abandon potential. The sequence at 1:40, where Farrell either forgets the words or is embarking on an emergency self-regulation attempt. Checking the recording there doesn't appear to be a mariachi section in the equivalent moment at 2:26 (it's actually strings, big drums and one trumpet in the middle), but put that down to the arranging invention of Johnny Pearson. Just after that, presumably covering for the heavy breathing bit as there's kids watching, Farrell is required to fill for an English speaking audience requiring all the bi-linguality he knows. He doesn't do it very well. We don't see them right after finishing. They might well have run away. The woman next to Jensen (his evaluation: "something new and different". Yeah, you could say that) at the end is a visiting Donna Summer, whose interview requirements are to name her new single, thank Jensen for his happy new year welcome and introduce...

Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born
Mathis is still in his jungle hideaway for one more week. Money Money Money is the credits playout, Jensen's final words being "Goodbye and good love!" Um, if you like.

On This Top Of The Pops Day

2012-01-01T12:15:00.002Z

Happy new year! 1977 won't start until Friday (viewing)/Saturday (posting), but every day of this year the formerly Twitter-bound On This TOTP Day concept will be recorded in a permanent archive at http://totpday.blogspot.com/

A farewell to 1976, by Bob Stanley

2011-12-29T10:00:00.002Z

After all last week's recapping exertions I've left the concluding words on the musical year 1976 to someone who can express its core ideals much clearer than I could - writer, Saint Etienne member and established font of pop knowledge Bob Stanley, whose own blog Croydon Municipal is highly recommended.

When the Top Of The Pops re-runs began last spring, a lot of people saw them as evidence that 1976 was pop's worst ever year. This could only be said by people who hadn't lived through the cheap thrills of the Glam era only to be left high and dry by the tame, tawdry charts of 1975. To put 1976 in context, let me explain the desperation of pop music a year earlier. Only twice in my life have I left the charts alone - for a few months in 1987 when I was an indie puritan, and in early 1975 when I simply lost interest. I bought and devoured Shoot! and football took up all my headspace. Only for a few months, but for pop to have fallen off the radar of the ten-year old me so completely that I didn't know who was number one, still shocks the adult me.

So there were gaps in my musical knowledge of 1975 (fully revealed when the first Guinness Book Of Hit Singles was published in '77) that I'd happily fill in years later - a no.3 hit by the intriguingly named Moments And Whatnauts turned out to be the priceless Girls, with its bright yellow string-machine chords and daffy sexist lyric. But much of it was a desert. My ignorance suggests the kids at school weren't paying much attention either. Clearly there was a pop deficit*. I'd occasionally hear something high in the charts and remain unimpressed - Bobby Goldsboro's lonely housewife murder ballad** Honey made it all the way to no.2 just seven years after it had oozed its way to the same position in 1968; Mud tied a lead weight around Buddy Holly's Oh Boy and somehow scored a number one.

Even the Bay City Rollers' simplistic mix of Spector and Glam, like a dessicated Wizzard, had seemed much more appealing, much brighter in '74 (Shang A Lang, Summerlove Sensation) than it did in 1975 (Bye Bye Baby, Give A Little Love) when they owned the chart as completely as the Beatles in '63 or Frankie in '84. Just a year before, Mud scored a streak of Glam classics - Tiger Feet, The Cat Crept In and (maybe best of the lot) Rocket. 1975 felt like pop's oxygen supply was low, for Mud*** and for everyone else.

Pop analyst Tony Jasper once posited that 1976 felt like a carefree, bubbly year for pop because most of us were blissfully unaware of the punk holocaust about to condemn the likes of Steve Harley, the Rollers and even dear old Mud to chart oblivion. Well, having lived through '75 and '76 I'll vouch for it being a breezy year, but maybe because something, anything would be an improvement on the year before.

So how did things improve?

There was one sparkling trend that stands out for me. Though it continues to split the jury clean down the middle, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - number one for nine weeks, straddling the end of '75 and the start of '76 - was unquestionably ambitious. It harked backed to a lost world when pop singles became complex structures, not just for kids, aiming to break the three minute barrier and smash the bluff blues base of R'n'R. Good Vibrations set the bar unfeasibly high in 1966. Richard Harris's Macarthur Park and Barry Ryan's Eloise stretched the blueprint thrillingly in '68, just as the new blues boom rendered this ornate style unfashionable.

10CC were first to revive it (Rubber Bullets, The Dean And I) but it was probably the influence of the Bo Rhap behemoth that made the extended, multipart single a feature of the 1976 charts. The Four Seasons had been brought in from the cold with a disco hit (Who Loves You) and a Northern Soul re-issue (The Night) in 1975; 1976 brought us their epic Silver Star (no.3 in May). A working man dreams, like Scott Walker's Humphrey Plugg, of being surrounded by beautiful women, "ecstasy on their faces". The bulk of the song is a galloping fantasy, but its middle section thumps out his "nine to five" job, seemingly sought out for him by a domineering wife. "Ain't living but I'm alive" he sobs.

Who else tried this lark? John Miles' Music (no.3) showed that, in the wrong hands, it could sound pompous, risible; David Essex's urban psychodrama City Lights (no.24) was so long it became one of the first 12" singles, and a startpoint for Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds; Simon May's Summer Of My Life (no.7) sounded like Terry Scott concocting a Home Counties version of Macarthur Park; Showaddywaddy's Trocadero (no.32) minced up a '58/'68/'76 pop lineage, though not quite so thrillingly as that may suggest. Away from the chart, David Gates' Suite: Clouds, Rain picked up Capital Radio airplay. If for no other reason, this odd trend nullifies the idea that 1976 was a pop nadir.

There were plenty of women on the chart, but girls were nowhere to be seen. Tina Charles, though short and busty and cute as a button, was way too mumsy to be a pre-teen dream; Dana's Fairytale (no.13) and Twiggy's Here I Go Again (no.17) provided late period hits for one-time teenage cuties, now definitely out of range from the realistic fantasies of sweaty 14-year olds. Kiki Dee, whose first single was in 1963, finally scored a brace of Top 20 hits. An odd strain was the 1976 girl group, with no members looking under the age of 25: the Chanter Sisters, the Surprise Sisters, Glamourpuss. Who were these acts aimed at? And how much thought went into their Top Of The Pops performances? The industry wasn't short of money, but very little of it was spent on a stylist for the poor Chanter Sisters whose excellent single Sideshow was sunk by a godawful TOTP must-see performance. None of them scored a Top 20 hit.

The 1976 charts behaved as if we had outgrown cute boy or girl-led pop. Stranger than the half-assed girl group revival was the lack of poster boys. David Essex and the Bay City Rollers had been the pin-ups of '75, but both had sharp drop-offs in '76 (Essex failed to reach the Top 20 at all). Flintlock scraped into the Top 30, just, with Dawn ("is breaking my heart"), even though they were on tv EVERY WEEK on You Must Be Joking and Pauline's Quirkes. The Wurzels? JJ Barrie? Maybe they just primed a nation's pre-pubescents for the pin-up star of '77, the decidedly not young David Soul, whose appeal (I'm wildly presuming here) was that he could be your best friend's handsome dad. Whatever, 1976 produced no new teen sensations. Agnetha was the only true pin-up, but she'd first wiggled her blue satin pants on TOTP in spring '74, and again she was closer to Legs & Co's territory than Mary Weiss or Clare Grogan.

Disco 1976-style was a very varied beast and none the worse for it. The BPM count varied from Isaac Hayes' hyper, whip-cracking Disco Connection (no.10) to Andrea True's slo-mo porn'n'cowbell classic More More More (no.5). Neither used the patented Philly hi-hat, soon to be ubiquitous. Wild Cherry's Play That Funky Music (no.7) trounced any funk-rock hybrid before or since, while UK acts the Average White Band (Pick Up The Pieces) and the Climax Blues Band (Couldn't Get It Right) created genuinely timeless club hits, the latter with a neatly sinister feel - just what was it that they couldn't get right?****.

The hot hot heat defined another sound of '76, with the blazing summer surely affecting chart positions. Wings' Let 'Em In (no.2) was an exhausted sprawl on a day bed; Steve Harley's Here Comes The Sun (no.10) flounced; Dr Hook's prolonged sexual antics on A Little Bit More (no.2) left them "flat out on the floor" in temperatures consistently in the eighties; David Dundas' Jeans On (no.3) was another lazy mooch in the shade; and Elton and Kiki's Don't Go Breaking My Heart was as summery and all-conquering (six weeks at the top) as 45s get.

The aforementioned Surprise Sisters turned in one of the worst singles of '76 with their trashing of Got To Get You Into My Life. What on earth were they doing? Without any context, their crazed supper-jazz with forties burps made no sense. But there was a pre-war swing revival in the air - Essex DJ Chris Hill would pepper his soul sets with blasts of Glenn Miller, and his set was influential enough to push Miller's In The Mood into the chart; the swing legend's Tuxedo Junction gave Manhattan Transfer their first hit (no.24) in March); Maureen McGovern recorded a new version of Ginger Rogers' The Continental (no.16) which, chirruping from an Alba transistor radio, sounded like it was from 1935; Winifred Shaw's lovely minor hit Lullaby Of Broadway WAS recorded in 1935. The Chi Lites' You Don't Have To Go (no.3) had one of the year's strangest productions, with a trippy echo-drenched chorus and unexpected female squeaks on its extended coda, but also made room for a silent screen-era brass section. Beyond Chris Hill's contribution, and possibly the influence of Bugsy Malone, I can offer no explanation to this trend. It peaked and died when Manhattan Transfer went mainstream (to the point of being used as a Terry And June punchline) a year later.

Amidst these short-lived fashions, there were a few TOTP clues on what was to come. Heavy Metal Kids were proto punk, and had no obvious connection to the Pub Rock scene that birthed Eddie & The Hot Rods. I remember seeing She's No Angel at the time and thinking it really stuck out like a sore thumb, quite scary (too scary to crack the Top 50, as it turned out). The backing group looked like a fat Strokes, and singer Gary Holton was some kind of Clockwork Orange/New York Dolls hybrid. Not altogether GOOD, but still they had something that almost everything else on the show lacked - here was a bit of bleedin’ energy at last. And how much did Thin Lizzy's performances jumped out of the screen? Everyone was actually dancing, not just doing that sad TOTP shuffle, to The Boys Are Back in Town (no.8). Likewise, Status Quo's propulsive Mystery Song (no.11) was a hard diamond in the midst of smug piano-led ballads by John Christie and Randy Edelman.

Of course "what was to come"***** was a bunch of low-level chart positions for a mixed bag of acts, some of whom (Graham Parker & The Rumour? The Tubes?) would barely be tagged New Wave these days, let alone Punk. But the Top 30 countdown would have at least one representative of the new order most weeks from April '77 onwards. 1976 was a very light year, in all senses of the word, and things were about to get considerably heavier.

* there were good records released in 1975, but most were albums: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, Blood On The Tracks, Gene Clark's No Other, Neil Young's Zuma, Dion's Born To Be With You. Even then, these were hardly heralds of a musical future.

** the singer has killed her, hasn't he? Listen to it again and tell me how's she died of natural causes.

*** Mud managed the rare feat of scoring six hit singles in 1975, none of which were much cop. 1976's sleek Shake It Down was a great improvement, and is a clear forefather of the later Rob Davis-penned hit Groovejet.

**** the intro was possibly pinched for Pink Floyd's much less oblique Another Brick In The Wall.

***** Noel Edmonds predicted it would be slimy singer-songwriter John Christie, and Tony Palmer's All You Need Is Love documentary saw great things ahead for Black Oak Arkansas and Stomu Yamashta.

TOTP 26/12/76 (tx 22/12/11): farewell to all that

2011-12-23T18:08:00.002Z

And as our BBC4 year began with Tony Blackburn, so it ends 33 retained shows later with Tony keeping Jimmy company. Jimmy is, of course, wearing a Santa suit, cigar in, pack of cards fascinatingly in hand. Less explicably, on the table is front of them is a Ludo game box and a large pink triangle with what seems to be a picture of a dog on. No mention at all in the intro of this being the second show. Given the Legs & Co quotient forthcoming, how late did they schedule back then?

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
Of the many studio performances, this is the one with the Union Jack design above the stage, in which everyone seems to be providing live vocals. Surely they had the option otherwise, even if they needed the practice ahead of Eurovision.

Billy Ocean – Love Really Hurts Without You
Tony finds the sight at close quarters of Jimmy pretending to be surprised hilarious. "Right over there", this is Billy at his most conservative of dress sense, which is saying something given he's wearing an all-in-one linen outfit, the jacket part of which boasts massive lapels over a pink tanktop, and in which he seems to have shoved something a little extra for the ladies' imaginations down the front. Performing in front of a glittery curtain he comes across as soul's most self-confident, not to mention optimstic, working men's club performer. Two people right down the front have the same curiously designed hat on that they were exhibiting right in front of our openers, which means these clips come from the 25th March programme, the week before BBC4 picked up on them.

Sailor – Glass Of Champagne
We join Tony struggling to open a bottle of the titular. Well, thanks to less than snappy editing we join him as he's holding the bottle at right angles as he comes to the gradual realisation that he really should be seen to be giving it all he's go if this is going to look realistic at all. You may argue that any chance of realism left the studio when Jimmy arrived, but there you go. Jimmy revels in drinking his "BBC tea", though there doesn't seem to be anything in the cup. There being anything to genuinely drink doesn't seem to have affected Sailor, who started off this crazy BBC4 ride and now turn up in its first phase's death throes, who start off by toasting us with their appropriately half-filled glasses - there's *two* champers bottles on the band's trusty Nickelodeon - and then go on to look like that was but the televisual tip of the iceberg in their day of getting sloshed. Everyone's in bow tie and flannel, drummer Grant Serpell seems to be sporting a cape, Henry Marsh (who, incidentally, recently married Dee Dee out of Pan's People) is sporting a top hat, a cane (though he carries both off with much more gravity than Paul Nicholas ever could) and an inane grin (that less so). Georg Kajanus already has streamers around his shoulders and general being. Nothing untoward has happened to Phil Pickett's appearance. The big bass drum on the side of the Nickelodeon is proved to be there for more than decoration. The second time Marsh bends down to beat it and and Nickel-oppo Pickett crouch down and do something for the camera, which is unfortunate given the camera misses it. Towards the end the balloons are released, but all uupon Serpell, who in close-up looks not unreasonably suddenly both excited and confused. Literally, when the director cuts back to a full stage shot there doesn't appear to be another balloon drop point anywhere. Before long everyone but the professional and perhaps most sober Kajanus has abandoned their station to fight the balloons off. Jimmy, who appreciates a good sailor, seems to be transfixed.

Wings – Let 'Em In
The Real Thing are setting up on the Quantel-fied screen behind them, as if this were real time. Instead it's Legs & Co and that delayed attempt at one-upping their predecessors. Problem is, being as they're still bedding in there's little sense of fun, spontaneity or character about Legs yet, so presented with some doors in a circle all they can come up with to do is walk through them in dressing gowns, the full coverage presumably the leverage for being in their pants for the other three new routines. And yeah, sure, there's opening and closing of doors in sequence, but there's no sticking their head through and making an amusing face and/or wave. There's no gratuitious arse-waggling. Nobody claims to be Martin Luther. There's no way of getting round it, this routine is just walking. A little eavesdropping and waiting enters later on, but that's to fill out breaks as much as anything.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
Tony proffers a box of Terry's All Gold, which Jimmy doesn't give a second look. If Billy was holding back on the colour clashing, the Real Thing have gone all out on their return, the open-fronted mustard coloured fringed jacket still losing out to whichever Amoo brother it is in the time honoured silver dungarees off one shoulder/neckerchief/glittery hat combination, and just for emphasis both of outfit and place in the band he's on a raised stage-within-a-stage. There's a girl in the audience in a sailor's hat. Her luck was in earlier in the night right enough.

Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
The multi-layered beard and latent homoeroticism of the video. Jimmy in introduction chooses to hide behind a balloon. Fair comment.

ABBA – Fernando
Again. Jimmy uses "as it 'appens" twice in a sentence, as if he has a reputation to keep up or something. "I can't stop eating these nuts, Jim" is Tony's straightforward reponse. Even though there's a studio performance they could have shown it's fireside wistfulness of the video.

Rod Stewart – The Killing Of Georgie
Ah, Diddy's favourite. For the third song in a row it's the video, Rod perhaps unwisely given the subject matter flouncing about on a great big stage with only a microphone and big blouse for company. "I would like to tell you a horrific story about him (Tony)" Jimmy starts the link out of a song about homophobic murder.

Our Kid – You Just Might See Me Cry
After three videos, a repeat of the massive buttonhole flower-enhanced studio performance of "one of the youngest groups to make it this year", suggesting there were younger groups who've fooled us plebs but not the pros. Perhaps my favourite wrongheaded #totp tweet this year, even ahead of the weekly "why are BBC4 showing 1976 again?", is the person who moaned "was there a TOTP in 1976 Our Kid weren't on?" Yes, all but three of them, and one of those has been wiped and one was months later.

Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born
"Don't know if you know him or not", Jim? Haven't we all seen this enough by now? Three Pops-programming appearances in four days. TOTP2 captioned it as being from 1977, which shows how much departments observe what each other is doing.

The Four Seasons – December '63 (Oh What A Night)
At last, something new! Even if it is just Legs & Co, and a Legs without Patti at that. There is speculation that they recorded the other three dances for one show and then had to make up the numbers (or possibly they were set to fill in for an act that became available and had to make a late change) only for Patti to fall ill, which makes sense. Small bra and pants all round again, each in different colours and augmented with glittery headdresses and a bit of chiffon in the back so you can't ogle them from behind. The director's solution is to shoot all the close-ups from below to even less subtle result. The five are on stages around the audience in the middle, whose job is to wave strands of tinsel around to no discernible atmospheric effect.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
"One of my favourite records of the moment" says Tony ahead of another video. Me? I'd rather see Terry Kath's Mississippi dance again.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
The problem with the 'waddy... well, more than one, but for the purpose it was that with the overmanning two members often seemed to have little to do. That's been solved by giving them miniature guitars of little potential resonance, so that's that sorted and them happy. Once again it's the black/white switcheroo, but this time mixed in is a perspective joke as drums and timpani subtly shift between the front and back of the stage, the consistently pissed off looking Romeo Challenger to the forefront in the black. Oddly Dave Bartram doesn't get to change at all, but there's a reason for that. When he gets down on his knees at the lip of the stage for the first "I wanna talk sweet talk..." bridge he grabs a young lady's hand - maybe the young lady at the front of the previous shot from the back of the stage seen holding a 7" record - and then, the old charmer, brings out a sprig of mistletoe, albeit very ragged and battered looking mistletoe. The expected is elected not to be carried out. Understandably, everyone makes a large gap at the front when he tries for the second time. A few streamers thrown around, back in the studio Jimmy puts out his cigar and then uses it to burst a balloon by Tony's head. "And it's goodbye from him!" And it's goodbye from 1976, as a time entity then and as a concept now.

Top Of The Pops will return in 1977, on 6th January 2012. The blog has one more post before the end of the year.

Whichever year you want to read that as.

Christmas listings guide

2011-12-23T15:48:00.001Z

In case you wondered, this is what BBC1 screened alongside those two TOTPs at Christmas 1976:

CHRISTMAS DAY

8.40am Ragtime
The same episode screened a year earlier. BBC Christmas repeats!

8.55am Sing Noel!
"Pupils of Essex schools" carol their hearts out.

9.45am Hong Kong Phooey

10.10am Appeal
Angela Rippon on behalf of Televisions for the Deaf. Special televisions? Pre-Ceefax?

10.15am Christmas Morning Service from Coventry

11.15am Rod Hull and Emu
Guest starring Rolf Harris and 300 singing children.

11.45am Four Clowns
Clips of Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keason and Charlie Chase, whoever he was.

1.20pm Holiday on Ice
The forgotten lingua franca of Christmas telly as it used to be, ice skating extravaganzas.

2.10pm Top of the Pops

3.00pm The Queen

3.15pm Billy Smart's Christmas Circus

4.15pm Oliver!
The Ron Moody/Mark Lester/Jack Wild 1968 version.

6.35pm Evening News
Peter Woods pulling duty today.

6.45pm Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game
Which became at that point the most watched single game show ever. Don't know who was on, mind.

7.45pm The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show
With Angela Rippon (yes, that one, and it seems she wasn't even billed in the listings to make sure it was a surprise), John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, Kate O'Mara, Elton John, the Nolans and the Singin' In The Rain routine. It's being repeated on BBC1 on Boxing Day at five to one.

8.45pm Airport
The film that launched a thousand disaster movies. Christmas night, though?

10.55pm News

11.00pm Parkinson's Magic Show
Parky gets his favourite three magicians to perform for him.

12.10am Weather

12.12am Closedown

ON OTHER CHANNELS... BBC2 take up three hours with a clip show, Forty Years, and another 50 minutes with the memories of one man marooned on the remote desert island South Georgia. ITV go with the 1968 Doctor Doolittle, the Please Sir! film, the New Faces Winners Show featuring nobody you've heard of, Christmas Sale of the Century, The John Curry Ice Spectacular and Rod Steiger vehicle Waterloo, but most interestingly at the directly competitive time of 2.15pm Christmas Supersonic from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where in the presence of Princess Margaret, Russell Harty and Joanna Lumley introduce Marc Bolan, Tina Charles, the newly unretired Gary Glitter, John Miles, Guys 'n' Dolls, Twiggy and Linda Lewis. I can't imagine TOTP shook. Here's the big finish.

BOXING DAY

9.25am Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan
Sunday regular doesn't stop for the season.

9.55am Playboard

10.10am The Selfish Giant
Canadian animation based on an Oscar Wilde short story with heavy Jesus overtones.

10.35am The Little Mermaid
The original Richard Chamberlain-voiced version.

11.00am Sunday Worship
From Notting Hill Methodist Church.

11.45am Flash Gordon
Part eight of the original 1936 serial starring Buster Crabbe.

12.05pm Tarzan And The Huntress
Prime Weissmuller.

1.15pm News Headlines

1.20pm The Waltons
Again not stopping just because it's Christmas, this would have been the first run of series 4.

2.10pm Top of the Pops

3.00pm The Wizard of Oz

4.35pm It's A Christmas Knockout
Filmed at the Olympic Ice Rink in Italy, Leeds take on Belgian, Italian and Dutch teams.

5.35pm Little Lord Fauntleroy
The last of the acclaimed six part serial of the book.

6.05pm News

6.15pm Songs Of Praise Special
Families fill the Albert Hall.

7.25pm Dad's Army
The orange-based japery BBC2 are showing in prime time tomorrow.

7.55pm Love Story
Unseasonal prime-time film choices mean often having to say you're sorry.

9.30pm The Val Doonican Show
With Nana Mouskouri, James Galway, Tony Blackburn, Terry Wogan, Arthur Askey, Janet Brown, Henry Cooper and Cliff Michelmore.

10.20pm News

10.30pm A Man for All Seasons
Paul Scofield's masterwork.

12.25am Weather

ON OTHER CHANNELS... BBC2 put out a mid-afternoon review of the golfing year called Of Chips And Putts, which is an excellent title. Later on came a Royal Ballet version of the Tales Of Beatrix Potter, a seasonal Face The Music, The Barry Humphries Show and the autobiographical Summoned by Bells: Sir John Betjeman. ITV meanwhile bought in Bill Cosby-fronted The World of Music and a TV version of Peter Pan starring Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye before Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent's, groo, Rock Nativity, Stanley Baxter's Christmas Box, Kirk Douglas film Catch Me A Spy and, in a very BBC2-like move, Scottish Opera's The Merry Widow from the Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

1976 returning

2011-12-22T17:40:00.001Z

The last recap (but, please be aware, not last blog post) of the year is coming tomorrow; until then an amuse-bouche to the year's music. I put out an appeal on message boards and my other account to see if any DIY musicians fancied having a go at covering some of the songs that have been on the TOTP run, and... well, the response wasn't all that it could have been. Four useable covers were received, in fact. And here they are:

DOWNLOAD

Body In The Thames - I Want More
Enigmatic Stockholm-based noisy electronic artist samples part of Can's disco-Kraut meisterwork and then works round the rest

Clownbomb - Devil Woman
Enigmatic DJ-cum-solo project inserts distortion into Cliff's being-got-from-behind morality play

MJ Hibbett - Combine Harvester
Urban agriculturalism from the venerable scion of the indiepop scene, who's about to release an album of his Edinburgh Festival hit sci-fi rock opera Dinosaur Planet

Vom Vorton - Howzat
Lo-fi sunshine power-pop cover of Sherbet's cricket as breakup extended metaphor by Derby singer-songwriter. Download his recent album for free

TOTP 25/12/76 (tx 20/12/11): literally, Christmas has come early

2011-12-20T22:58:00.001Z

Well, it looks like we might have made it. Yes, it looks like we made it to the end. This retrospective year of Glamourpuss and Harpo. Of the sisters Chanter and Surprise. Of Dr Kiss Kiss and Shake It Down. Of Ben Goldacre's Noosha Fox revelation and Alexis Petridis' Guardian article. Of whether young people who've somehow stumbled across this would think Liverpool Express were one of the defining bands of the age. Of the rise and fall of Ruby Flipper, literally in the case of TVC15. Of trying to understand Noel's links, DLT's concepts and Diddy's parting. And, of course, that late run to infamy by John Christie. And now we only have a two part look back at 1976 to go.

Question for commenters to pad out your comments and additions to this show - what's your choice of outstanding moments of Top Of The Pops 1976? As some sort of memory jog, here's a Spotify playlist of a lot of what was featured.

DLT and Noel, a partnership that would produce something rather less suited to family viewing sixteen years later, are your hosts, and someone must have booked the studio as they're in front of a chromakeyed wall behind a full set table at the near side of which is an enormous turkey. There's two on its far side, you may say.

Slik – Forever And Ever
Getting in early, DLT's gag for this link is to pretend to have drifted off, unable to be roused. It doesn't show great commitment to what's ahead of us all when you're acting like that in the first link. This Bay City Rollers song at 33 1/3 - written by the same people who were responsible for the Rollers' original hits and had originally been recorded by the substantially less portentous Kenny - was a number one in February but we've seen Midge and co's baseball jacketed US culture fetishising outfits since. What we haven't seen before, because with hits comes dignity, is the keyboard player's matey grin and nod to camera mid-chorus. On the wall behind our hosts there's shots throughout of aftermath and crowd, so we get to see Slik wander nonchalantly off stage...

Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
...as our duo contrive some pundom based on Noel's "flower arranging art". You know this video by now, as even though it's not been on the show since 1st September it's ingrained on every single one of your neurons.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
A shaking with excitement Dave Lee Travis with a knife in his hand. Must we fling this filth at our pop kids and their families? Or indeed this filth, as Legs & Co's two performances are both costumed around bra, pants and accessories. In this case that means big white furry hats the shape, colour and consistency of marshmallows, possibly so they don't catch their deaths of cold, and some sort of arrangement around long necklace-like strands connected to the hats plus wristbands and strips tied to their pants of similarly consistency. It's like mink bondage. A director has the idea of shooting the intro chorus from below, which coupled with pointing and spinning suggests a very wrong Soviet Pennies From Heaven adaptation. Not unreasonably, there's a lot of women standing off to one side, arms firmly folded. A group of gentlemen at the back sway to the beat. One chap caught close up seems transfixed, not moving a muscle. Amid all this, with what must for once have been more than three days' notice Flick doesn't really seem to have got a handle on it.

JJ Barrie – No Charge
Noel makes a Light Brigade joke. If it's meant to provide levity linking into one of his studio appearances, it doesn't work. This is still, after all, No Charge.

Laurel & Hardy With The Avalon Boys feat. Chill Wills – The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine
Yeah, interesting, this. Not just because of its fact - partly Peel's fault, apparently - but also it was a number two at Christmas 1975 and yet is still counted, crossing over as it does into the first couple of weeks, as a 1976 hit. And they're right there in the stu... no, wait, it's the clip from Way Out West. Several more courses, a smaller turkey and a bottle of wine now bedeck the presentational table. Noel tells DLT to "use your loaf". So he does, with a loaf of bread cut in half and enacted by Travis as a talking mouth. It makes Noel and the offscreen crew corpse. That must have been a long shoot.

Tina Charles – I Love To Love (But My Baby Loves To Dance)
The big turkey is back. Behind it Noel elects not to make a joke having been put off by DLT combing down his shirt, claiming he's "trying to clear up my dandruff". It's plausible. Unlike what they've done to Charles, as despite the huge studio floor completely empty apart from three crew and a camera taking reverse angle long shots she's ended up being filmed in one shot on a fairly narrow gantry, her movements even more restricted by some scaffolding and a couple of boxes. She hasn't helped herself sartorially with a test card of a jumper design and big scarf. Was there a draft up there? She should have said something. No explanation of her predicament is forthcoming. Tight schedule? For the Christmas Pops?

The Wurzels – Combine Harvester
You can't imagine the Wurzels had a lot on as they've come back for a studio encore sitting with the audience in the round on a small tractor, as is their wont, without so much as a tuba in sight. Pink shirts, brown waistcoats and brown cords are the dress code this time along with the signature neckerchiefs. Despite the passage of time since this was an unknown song "she made oi laugh" gets an actual audience laugh. Despite some stout singing along things don't really get going until fake snow and balloons get dropped and much batting about of the latter commences, leading to a widespread failure to be really listening any more. One balloon manages to knock Pete Budd's live mike partly round, though just by shifting his posture he's able to continue. A man standing to the side of Budd is enjoying it rather more than a man of his more than mean audience average age should be, waving his arms about all over the place. Has to have been a plant.

Cliff Richard – Devil Woman
Pretty sure this hasn't been on before, as there's an audience in shot, some of them are still theateningly holding balloons (imagine that Cliff/Wurzels green room conversation), no backing band and Cliff is wearing trousers of an acceptable size. A fire is superimposed over him at various points, which is certainly a quick and cheap way of denoting the concept of devilment. Cliff's still largely playing to camera rather than the people, though you may argue his baring yards of hairy chest isn't a way to play to anyone. Congratulations to the audience member who turned up in a red wide brimmed hat, much as it must be blocking plenty of people's views.

ABBA – Mamma Mia
DLT claims it's a Liverpool song - "when the kids came home from school hungry they knocked on the door and said 'mam, I'm ere!'" DLT is from Derbyshire. Apart from Bjorn finding a gap between the girls' heads so he too can sing his inaudible backing vocals direct to camera it's the three session men, and they look the part, we really need to be watching given all ABBA routines are part of the national consciousness these days, standing out only by not being allowed to wear the same colour-coded electric blue outfits as the main four. The drummer looks bored and/or distracted beyond comprehension, not a good look if you're pushed to the front of the stage. This again seems to be a new in-studio version, raising the possibility they may have been watching their own song being loosely interpreted earlier on.

Hank Mizell – Jungle Rock
The bread face has been put at the front of the table with a banana in its mouth, and already it's more likeable than Noel. Legs & Co are back, and we get to compare and contrast now as on the very first show of the run Pan's People in their dying embers worked this to a hunting motif with cameos by whatever animal costumes they could find in the back of an old storage cupboard. With time and expense the whole jungle hunting side is explored further with the ladies doing a wardance in parrot feathered head-dresses and about as small Indian reservation fancy dress bras and pants as could be got away with in pre-Hot Gossip days. As if from a 1940s cartoon they're taking the cannibalistic option on jungle mores, doing a war dance round a large cooking pot, in which stands a bemused Tony Blackburn, who has clearly been given no clues on what to do so just has to stand there observing the madness for two and a half minutes. Before long a whole new menagerie joins in, and clearly the advance notice has paid off with some relatively more elaborate costumes with a hint of Victorian theatre about them, although some of the heads are more Cubist. With a tiny amount of studio space delinated by fake trees, six dancers basically circling the pot with progressively less energy plus extras in varying bear and crocodile outfits variously Susie Q-ing here and ring-dang-doo-ing there doesn't leave a lot of physical room for self-expression and it becomes lots of people trying not to overtly bump into each other, especially when the camel arrives. Still, the girls are visibly having fun, attempting to find partners for the close. An alligator has a balloon attached to its tail. Lulu exchanges pleasantries with a tiger (and if anyone can lipread her - it's right near the end - do tell) Tony Blackburn stands in his pot, unloved, forgotten and alone, watching the young people and not so young crew members have fun without him. Your heart bleeds. No it doesn't.

Pussycat – Mississippi
DLT produces a knockoff Emu in the wrong colours. "I had problems with a man called Hull" Noel comments in a textbook injoke as it attacks. (If anyone does know...) This is a repeat of the studio performance with the girls in black and mysterious wavy lighting effects overlaid. You've probably heard this enough recently.

Demis Roussos – Forever And Ever
"Here's something really big in Greece - BBC potatoes!" Noel and DLT work between them before both collapsing into laughter at their own joke. Not even technically a new joke either - when this was number one Noel introduced it as "the really big thing in Greece at the moment - no, not a BBC hamburger". Demis didn't come over for that single but he's over for the Christmas crowd in an alarming outfit, a red all in one with plunging neckline and an open full length coat. Like Cliff, despite being surrounded by transfixed kids he sings entirely to whichever camera is operational. Even when the Ladybirds take over he just looks straight down the lens at us in a statesmanlike stance for fully twenty seconds or more. He then gradually raises an arm in the air and watches the camera as it circles him for another twenty seconds.

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
While DLT continues to attack Noel's hair by proxy, a girl in the audience shot behind them is making a note of something. Quick supermarket trip on the way home, maybe, but some things can wait for the bus journey. This is the video. All of it. This has a video, don't know if you're aware of that at all. Again, this is a 1975 hit that carried on over into the new year, making one wonder if it should technically count at all for 1976. Our hosts see us out with DLT having a health and safety existential crisis as he realises the big turkey of continuity turmoil is real before, bizarrely, Noel announces "we leave you with Legs & Company (always the full version of the name with Noel) and a bit of Wings". Instead, the show ends. How odd. There is a Legs & Co routine to a Wings song on the Boxing Day show, but that's one hell of a glaring editing cock-up. Did someone forget how long Bohemian Rhapsody is? Or just maybe was Noel making a joke about the turkey? Even for him that would be cryptic and unnecessary.

REMINDER: TOTP2 Christmas 2011 is Wednesday 7.30pm on BBC2, though you'll have to be wry about that yourselves; the Boxing Day 1976 special is Thursday at 8pm.

TOTP 23/12/76 (tx 19/12/11): the last Noel (except he does one of the Christmas shows)

2011-12-19T21:44:00.004Z

As the first, and in fact only, of our pre-'76 Christmas surprises... Noel's Gas Disco II - This Time It's Warming Milk.

"Hellooo!" Noel jauntily begins, assuming a level of excitement unbecoming. He reminds us there's "just over a day to go", so BBC4 are keeping the timing in some sort of curious order. Steely Dan have crept into the top 30 with Haitian Divorce and are duly noted by a photo that makes them look exactly like the sort of studio workmen they are. We note from the Kursaal Flyers picture that the bloke in the Panama seemingly always wears it - and the guitarist's garland, actually, and the singer seems to have a very rectangular, short at the base and top head. Then David Soul appears at 11 and we spy 1977 hovering in the distance. Speaking of which, Anarchy In The UK was at 38. It didn't get any further as EMI dropped them in the first week of January and withdrew all stock.

Thin Lizzy - Don't Believe A Word
Ah, vintage Lizzy, that'll see us through with their Marshall stacks and the director's fades into green-tinged CSO effects. Phil's rocking the less vintage pink neckerchief/open shirt combination. It's a very studious performance bar Scott Gorham's long haired grinning charm, Brian Robertson refusing to make any sort of rock solo faces which might be why it passes without a single proper shot of his guitar. Couldn't they fit a camera in down that side? That's just bad set design if so. Noel can be seen nodding along on a piano-bedecked stage off to one side as if he understands and afterwards warms up his celebrated powers of prediction; "just been having a shocking argument with those guys cos I think that'll get to number one and they don't think it will. I reckon that'll be about the second number one in January of '77". It peaked at 12. Can you imagine, though, the entertainment of seeing Noel Edmonds having a row with Thin Lizzy? Not least because Noel really didn't want to be getting into a shocking argument with them given Brian Robertson had weeks before broken the leg and collarbone of different men before suffering artery and nerve damage to his hand and being knocked unconscious, both by bottles, in a backstage brawl with another band. So surely he couldn't play if he was that badly off? but clearly that performance was filmed in the same session as Noel's links... I don't know.

Barry Biggs - Sideshow
Not the same as the Chanter Sisters' Sideshow, let's say that first off, but a loping reggae cover of Blue Magic's US hit by Biggs, who for his big showcase has chosen an all pink version of the sort of ruffed outfit being exhibited over on ITV's The Comedians, albeit they'd have other reference points for all pink suits. Must be said, while the organ solo isn't exactly Ansell Collins the orchestra give reggae a better going than they gave Althea & Donna just over a year later, but Biggs without the record's production effects is just a large man with a receding afro and huge bow tie pacing back and forth singing in awkward falsetto. Halfway through, as it's Christmas, the director lets the cameraman plough right through the thick of the audience just like he used to, mowing at least six people down on his way. "Congratulations to Barry" Noel says afterwards for no good reason. It's his job to sing like that.

Status Quo - Wild Side Of Life
A video of very much standard three chord blues rock Quo, even if they don't get down to synchronised guitar neck action at any stage, although there is face to face playing-off and Alan Lancaster sporting the sort of shaggy perm that must have made him the envy of the nation's footballers. Huge, it is. Proper horsehair sofa atop.

John Christie - Here's To Love
Right at the end of the year Noel pulls out his greatest prediction yet. "If you get tipped for the stardom bit and you're called face of '77 or something, it can be a bit of a lumber, but I'm prepared to lumber this guy because he's come over from Australia, he's had a good '76 but '77 is going to be marvellous for John Christie." Now, I've been trying to work this out as he's not got a Wiki entry and as far as I can tell his most notable release is a 1974 album after he was discovered by Dave Clark (of the Five). He went on to sing and write for Clark's Time musical, and that's about the size of what Google throws up. As you can probably gather, this turned out to be his only UK chart hit, peaking at 24. All this folderol, however, is far from the story, as watching it might explain why he went no further, and give one in the eye to those who thought Elton's appearance a couple of shows back would see the end of chancers at the piano. Already comfortably in a Lidl Gilbert O'Sullivan groove, things start going wrong at the end of the first chorus when, in his white jacket over T-shirt and having already performed through a fixed grin, he sings the last line straight down the camera to his side before jerking his head back and pulling so self-satisfied a smirk, again directly at camera, that it becomes clear that he's not so much channelling Elton as Richard Stilgoe. Much more wobbling his head and entire upper body like his seat is covered in barbed wire and smirking at camera follows before from nowhere a chorus of Auld Lang Syne strikes up at the end of the bridge, which Christie starts miming along to and then gives up on. And just when he starts elongating his notes and you think it's finishing, a drum fill is followed by another round of Auld Lang Syne, an even creepier closed-mouth expression and... the entire audience wandering in in one line behind Christie in the crossed arm Hogmanay celebration singalong style, despite it being eight days ahead of proper time. Not many of them know how to do it or what they're doing. At this stage, especially when he breaks into falsetto over a ludicrously extended coda passage that merely suggests he couldn't think of how to climax the song without all the crashing cymbals, violins, falsetto notes and production weight he could find, you fear it may never end. Even then it fades out. God. Imagine being in the audience that week having to play along to this man's whims.

Stevie Wonder - I Wish
"What a strange thing over my left shoulder" says Noel, who's popped up among the throng only to be surprised by a light. He then manages to come up with another way of introducing Legs & Co without actually introducing Legs & Co. You know that whole thing about how some moments in pop mean as much in our current climate as they did then? "One of the most influential groups of individuals to come to this country. For the very first time, we present the men from the International Monetary Fund." No it isn't, it's Legs & Co in suits, another full covering after the Grandma's Party cameo which brings the mean average of body cover up after the Maid In Heaven skinfest. In which of Flick's fevered imaginings did she see old-school stereotypical City banker's suits - no umbrellas, mark you - as the best interpretation of prime Wonder, unless they were ordered in for a Money Money Money runthrough that was ditched when the video arrived? Actually, they begin with a Charlie Chaplin walk, which may have been the true intention, in which case it's even more inexplicable. Just to add a further layer of end of year madness, there's a screen behind them onto which is projected a seventh dancer, clearly masculine, strutting his own independent disco moves. He even gets a shadowy solo. What's that about? In fact... ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to Top Of The Pops, albeit in reduced circumstances, your becostumed friend and mine Mr Floyd Pearce! You'll see him a few more times in 1977 and 1978 too.

Paul Nicholas - Grandma's Party
Noel seems to have got distracted by the title. "It'll be the usual thing, stale doughnuts and elderberry wine that tastes like cocoa". That famous Christmas foodstuff, doughnuts. Silver topper this time, plus cane and robe, but no extraneous dancers this time which makes him look a little lost. The cameraman runs over something/somebody before he's even started. That may explain his attempt to cover during the harmonica solo, which involves Nicholas walking out in front of his mike, turning 270 degrees anti-clockwise, then indulging in a few seconds of frantic running on the spot and leg waving before the time honoured pretending to have pulled a muscle gag. Noel suggests he rub himself down with a Radio Times, a classic old school BBC way of, um, quelling lustful thoughts. What does Edmonds think the song's about exactly? Oh, one other thing about this song. After referencing his previous hit - "the bells are ringing and the captain's here" - he suggests - "Mr Sax is swinging from the chandelier". Mr Sax? Would that be one of those who plays reggae like it used to be, and if so has Paul or anyone at the party checked he hasn't merely hung himself out of desperation at what Paul assumed his type to be?

Liverpool Express - Every Man Must Have A Dream
Again, so much airtime for a band nobody now remembers, even if Noel makes time to claim the song is "really growing on me so quickly it isn't true". At least they're costumed in the festive spirit with singer Billy Kinsley, seen at first in the middle of a kaleidoscopic image, in a huge woollen scarf and the pianist sporting a Santa outfit, suggesting he won the short straw draw backstage. Kinsley, it turns out, is wearing a baggy all-red outfit, which may well have been the best he could muster in a hurry. The guitarist is playing a twelve-string but only the top half. At the end out of nowhere arrives a crescendo drowning the thing in strings, timpani and a huge horn crescendo, which seems a little like the coward's way towards grandiosity when the rest of the song is built on so little. "Horribly overacted at the end but what a fabulous song" remarks Noel, which causes some background ruffling. Yeah, Noel, you show 'em!

Mike Oldfield - Portsmouth
No ribbons, gifts or parrot in the video. Instead some lithe young women do a Morris dance routine that's not that far from the meat of Legs & Co's, in Oldfield's huge studio as he sits impassively by playing bodhran. And acoustic guitar. And tambourine. And accordion. And kettle drums. Alright, Mike, you're a multi-instrumentalist, we get it. Look like you're having fun at least.

Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born
Deep in the heart of the plastic potted jungle Johnny, your Christmas number one hitmaker, gets out his director's chair, hums along with the music for what seems like minutes to start and eventually tells of how everyone will feel great upon the Second Coming. With meaning, too. The new number one is back luck for the girl at the end who's holding a Showaddywaddy album, who when we first see the final link is dancing with Noel to an undanceable song ("thank you for the dance" "That's OK!" No, of course she never seemed comfortable). The woman to Noel's other side holding a cracker is less lucky, but both of them fall victim to a hasty director when they start singing happy birthday to Noel, who would have been 28 (yes, really) the day before, and hence the day of recording. We don't even hear them get to the end of the first line. Instead it's Jethro Tull audio and a kaleidoscope pan shot of the lights, the old style credits sequence we've not seen for a while. Meanwhile John Christie is back in the dressing room imagining all the glory and wonders sure now to come his way in 1977.

1976 Christmas Day tomorrow!

The disappeared: 16/12/76

2011-12-18T10:00:00.001Z

Evidently the last missing show of the year, and with only four to come in 1977 we're slowly reaching a point of kept stock. As the show before the show before the big end of year roundup it's a mix of stuff we're seeing a lot and the odd underdog for filler, all barely capably helmed by DLT.

Smokie – Living Next Door To Alice
Even starts with a song that started the show two weeks earlier. Too many BBC repeats at Christmas!

Tina Charles – Dr Love
Mud – Lean On Me
See what I mean? As you may note, this has missed out on all three showings.

Jesse Green – Flip
Ah, our old friend of too many appearances for a single that peaked at 17. On this one he ditches the flautist and lets his funk rhythm guitar rip. We can but hope for synchronised stepping.

The Stylistics – You'll Never Get To Heaven
Sounds a bit like Walk On By, doesn't it? Actually released everywhere but the UK in 1973, this is Legs & Co's contribution, involving a lot of chiffon, I imagine.

10cc – The Things We Do For Love
They were having some time off the TOTP studio - they'd been in at the start of the year with Art For Art's Sake but wouldn't revisit until Dreadlock Holiday in 1978 - so this was the video, perhaps the same live clip source as when I'm Mandy Fly Me charted. That's not the video in the link, I doubt, but I like the way the secondary director misses all the important close-ups.

Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born (Soleado)
He's coming...

Chris Hill – Bionic Santa
Now then. This video I want to see, and also don't. Chris Hill was a popular soul DJ who at Christmas 1975 had a number ten hit with Renta Santa, in the style of the 1950s comedy records where a narrator conversed amusingly with clips of songs with apposite lyrics, kind of one step down from the Barron Knights. This was the follow-up and also reached number ten. Very much in our interests, too, as it features clips of Here I Go Again and Dr Kiss Kiss.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
Once more with the quick change artistry. There was a new performance taped for the festive show, you may be relieved to know.

TOTP 9/12/76 (tx 15/12/11): there's no-one quite like grandma

2011-12-15T22:12:00.003Z

"Sometimes you see a piece of footage and think, "Oh that's why pop music exploded then". A perfect example is the series of Top of the Pops shows from 1976 currently being shown on BBC4: they are collectively so nauseating – badly shot, terrible sexist middle-aged DJs, awful novelty records – you can immediately see why punk had to happen." - Jon Savage

I'm not sure directorial quality is what drove Rotten and McLaren to the barricades, but never mind. Pops never really changed once punk did happen, of course, it just had a lot of second tier punk bands on instead of earnest singer-songwriters. Anyway, we begin this compressed run of the last four shows of 1976 in eight days (five TOTPs in eight if you count the TOTP2 Christmas special) in the company of a flywinged David Hamilton.

The Kursaal Flyers – Little Does She Know
Hang on, what? I wonder how many turned off thinking it was a repeat of the last show when this came on. Someone has to have pulled out late as it's rare enough that the same song opens the show twice, never mind on consecutive eligible showings. To make it even more jarring, even though they're in the studio with Diddy the set is different and the band are differently arranged everyone still seems to be wearing the same clothes - same check suit, same garland, same Panama hat. Perhaps they did that knowingly. Even the laundrette theme is kept up, this time with oversized fake big box powders. Obviously there's a Brand X, but primarily stationed at the back is Sudso, a washing powder brand later brought to life in Harry Enfield's Norbert Smith: A Life. Coincidence? (Yes.) Someone's learnt their lesson with fewer full-face close-ups of Paul Shuttleworth and more precisely the much discussed teeth, but we do get to see in fuller motion his filling during the instrumental break, involving a lot of back and forth pacing and wanton arm swinging, even a pelvic thrust at one juncture. At least someone's pleased to be back there.

ABBA – Money Money Money
Diddy seems restrained tonight - few jokes or even attempts, no Tony Blackburn references. The one time he does get to show off he's manaically throwing fivers back over his shoulder to somehow illustrate the central tenet of this song. Let's hope nobody was severely injured in the rush. It's the proper video this time, featuring plenty of iconic use of the satin all-in-ones alongside closeups of small amounts of money, which maybe defeats the song's purpose, and Annifrid laughing in the back of an open topped car, with all four in formal evening dress suggesting they got the suits and dresses on hire but couldn't think of anything else to do within the budget.

Jethro Tull – Ring Out Solstice Bells
Lock up your impressionable kids. The Tull hadn't had a hit for five years and apart from an unlikely top 40 placing for a reissue of Living In The Past in 1993 wouldn't again, which means there was a whole swathe of kids unused to Ian Anderson's ways. And oh, those ways are out in force tonight - not just the manaical flute playing on on leg, or the staring down the camera lens like a man possessed by many daemons even when it's not pointing straight at him, but the full neckerchief inclusive country squire outfit, the kicking out in time with power chords, some threatening pointing, the twice mid-held note readjustment of the hat to a rakish angle before pulling the flute over his shoulder as if off to battle with it as his weapon, which in the circumstances may be the case. And then the first verse finishes. The director, perhaps the only man thinking this could do with some visual aid, chooses to montage some kaleidoscopic circular lights around him, but those are seen off as Anderson removes his hat for final push emphasis. Most people, with a hat in one hand and a flute in the other, might limit their gesticulations. Not Ian. At the end, as some actual tubular bells are played by a man in a similar hat and expression, the keyboard player emerges in his crimson jacket to take up the handclapping slack in nothing that resembles strict time and Anderson remembers he was supposed to be miming that flute part, he's not even half spent.

Mike Oldfield – Portsmouth
Well, there's only one way Legs & Co can approach Oldfield's sailor's hornpipe and that's full doublet and hose. Except with microskirts, obviously. And big hats with a feather in the top. And knee length boots that look like they're made out of cricket pads and carpet underlay. And then getting the whole audience to wave blue ribbons for some reason. Hang on, they're not supposed to represent the sea's waves, are they? Given there's a model palm tree at one end of the rectangular stage they must be. So why are the Middle Ages Legs doing their routine on a mock desert island? While Portsmouth is technically an island, there's nothing in Oldfield's score that suggests underlying Robinson Crusoe tendencies. There's some leapfrogging and Pauline jumping on someone's (commenters!) back who then hightails it back off to the wings before come collective can-can strides, another Patti solo before the routine takes on hat-twirling and jumping properties. And then... cue parrot! Not that it does anything other than sit there looking away from the action slightly bemusedly, but that's really pushing your concept routine to its cliche potential. The climax comes with all six throwing something small, plentiful, shiny and round into the willing if tired of arm by now audience. Possibly sweets, probably not money maybe secret memory wiping drugs. Who can say. Diddy makes sure to credit the parrot. Chalky, apparently. Bought off Jim Davidson, perhaps.

Tommy Hunt – One Fine Morning
As Legs & Co tidy up and remove hats in the background Diddy makes sure to mention Hunt's previous hit, which we didn't see. "He's right over there so let's meet him" he then suggests. We can't, Diddy, he's on television. We're at home. Against a backdrop of red light shells with some sort of dark gauze over the middle, lighting tips straight out of a bordello, Hunt's attire also seems to be inspired by the Middle Ages, this time a long brown smock with a single large attachment in the middle which seems to have been sewn on seperately to both sides, part-Robin Hood follower, part-medieval knight school play. Hunt, bubble permed and ready for action, keeps threatening to break into full body popping when he gets a couple of seconds, but when he gets a proper musical break that allows him to start really moving his extremities atop the wedding cake stage he looks less like the James Brown he is in his mind and more attempting to stamp out a small fire. If only his mike technique was as advanced, as he keeps pulling the mike away from himself mid-line.

Dana – Fairytale
Diddy has company, "some young people who've come over from Northern Ireland". They're from the Youth Peace Group, which Diddy doesn't touch on in favour of mentioning they're spending part of a week they won in London at the studio instead of shopping or furthering their cause or something useful. Having questioned them on what they make of it (kids: "brilliant!" Diddy: "terrific!") they get to wave at the camera as their compatriot is introduced. As followers of the comments will know, this was on a recent wiped show and went down well. Basically it's simple, classy 70s pop with a hint of Cliff and a video for which, after a light blue colour fill effect at the start and after the first chorus, required very little outlay, Dana and her neckerchief seemingly doing the whole thing in one or two takes with one or two cameras in an otherwise empty studio. She puts her all into the singing, credit her with that.

Paul Nicholas – Grandma’s Party
And from simple concept to this... thing. If, as the Rezillos would maintain two years later, TOTP is "a stock market for your hi-fi", here's our Eurozone. Instead of Diddy in vision we get a shot of a pastel Christmas card scene against a blank screen - did someone forget to record this link and he have to fill afterwards? - as he introduces "some very lively grandmas". And yes, it's that man and his bowler and cane again. Just in case we hadn't spotted, the first line is "I brush my bowler and I grab my cane". That's creating an image. No mention of why he's chosen a mid-length towelling robe instead of proper clothing as he's not getting ready for the party, he's on his way or actually there for most of the song. Behind him Legs & Co in hats, glasses, long coats and skirts are your partying grandmas. Who says Flick was too literal? Excellently, during a section of freeform gran dancing one of them - Lulu, it's reckoned - struts across the lip of the stage in front of Nicholas and to his evident double take surprise while he's singing. Got to take those standing out opportunities while you can.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
New number one, sort of. Diddy concludes his description of the band with "from Leicester!" as if it's an actual selling point. It's the black/white suits routine from last time, even though they were man enough to come in and film a new setting for the Christmas show, of which more next week as you know.

Special bonus material
For probably the first time all re-run, possibly under the guidance of latest producer standin Stanley Appel (who'd permanently take the show over in 1991 and give it an ill-fated revamp) there's a proper outro this week rather than credits over the number one or shots of some lights. Remember the days when not everyone was expected to be into football and those who were weren't shy about mentioning it? Look how uncomfortable this girl is being propositioned by the man who is still Fulham's matchday announcer before a chance to... no, not 'see', more 'experience' the audience dancing on camera. Levels of comfort and proportion of people watching the monitors just in case seem to have remained constant throughout the years. Watch for the forearm-first style of the well fed kid in the big scarf and huge flares, the girl inventing Phil Oakey's hairdo about four years too early and those Northern Ireland peace corps really moving.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-12-14T17:23:00.000Z

Eyes down, look in, everyone, here's how the next week and a half of Popsness pans out:

Top Of The Pops 1976 (9/12/76)
Thursday 15th, BBC4 7.30pm (repeats Thursday 11.55pm, Saturday 1.40am)

Top Of The Pops 2 Christmas 2010
Saturday 17th, BBC2 11.05pm

Top Of The Pops 2 Christmas 2009
Monday 19th, Watch 7pm

Top Of The Pops 1976 (23/12/76)
Monday 19th, BBC4 8pm (repeat 1.40am)

Super Troupers (documentary about dance troupes on TV, specifically the TOTP set and Hot Gossip)
Monday 19th, Radio 2 10pm

Top Of The Pops 1976 (Christmas Day)
Tuesday 20th, BBC4 8pm (repeats 3am, Christmas Day 10.50pm)

Top Of The Pops 2 Christmas 2010
Wednesday 21st, BBC2 7.30pm (repeat Christmas Eve 10.25pm)

Top Of The Pops 1976 (Boxing Day)
Thursday 22nd, BBC4 8pm (repeats 1.30am, Christmas Day 11.40pm)

Top Of The Pops
Christmas Day, BBC1 2pm

Sir Jimmy Savile at the BBC: How's About That Then?
Wednesday 28th, BBC2 7pm

The disappeared: 2/12/76

2011-12-12T10:00:00.001Z

Missing post-April show seven of eight, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why the wiped set were from the first three months and last two of the year. Ed Stewart's in charge, doing so well he won't be invited back for another nine months. Stewart will be part of your Christmas festive entertainment, taking charge of Junior Choice on its annual 9am Christmas Day revival on Radio 2.

Actually, before we start, that reminds me - next Monday, the 19th, at 10pm on Radio 2 is a documentary about TV dance troupes, fronted by Arlene Phillips but her Hot Gossip are the only non-TOTP team mentioned in the station's description. Yes, even ver Flipper get a look-in.

Smokie – Living Next Door To Alice
Yes, alright, there was this notorious cover, but that was itself a cover - apparently it was well known for a cafe in Nijmegen, Holland to play the track, fade it down at the end of the chorus and everyone present to shout that rejoiner back. A record company man visited the cafe one evening, saw this in action and got to work on a version, which Smokie and Chubby themselves reworked. Just to add a further layer of obfustication, the source material is also a cover, a Chinn-Chapman song originally recorded by Australian vocal trio New World. You will all being well see this performed on the show eventually anyway, on the first TOTP of 1977.

Mud – Lean On Me
Les glasses on or Les glasses off, do you reckon?

Tina Charles – Dr Love
As with Smokie this reappears at the start of the new year after falling victim to a good solid wiping. Let's face it, though, this was only ever going to be the second most notable disco Doctorate song of 1976.

Queen – Somebody To Love
Legs & Co continue their rock interpretation sideline with the car insurance shilling choral wonder supposedly intended as the new Bohemian Rhapsody.

Barry White – Don’t Make Me Wait Too Long
Don't know what the promised video version would have entailed, but as usual I see faint images of dry ice, shots from below into the lights and ungainly close-ups of a sweaty brow.

Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born (Soleado)
A warning shot across the bows of a future number one.

Yvonne Elliman – Love Me
Electric Light Orchestra – Livin’ Thing
These were both on the last wiped show, also in video form, and in this precise order too. Someone getting lazy at the end of the year? I know the Christmas show production is a big commitment, but...

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
A brand new number one! And they couldn't be bothered to return to the studio and record it all again. Maybe the changeover stuff took too much out of them last time.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

2011-12-09T10:00:00.000Z

And so we reach the apex, the embodiment of Christmas hitmaking at a time when TOTP was at its height or thereabouts. Because it kept coming back Slade actually got to do this on two seperate Christmas shows, going walkabout the following year, but I've picked out the first because it demonstrates something about the show's technical limitations and those of its production ideas. There's a reason why you don't have a stage invasion at the start of a song, not least on television as the weight of numbers means we even manage to lose a tall man in a big mirrored hat in the crowd, and while the little cheer at 1:53 is a clue that something's happened by the time the director finds Noddy again something both savoury (if it's whipped cream) and unsavoury seems to have happened out of shot, which defeats its purpose. Still, worth missing Nod's big moment to admire the movement of that crane camera at length. Someone kisses Noddy at the end too despite having seen the state of him.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Dennis Waterman & George Cole - What Are We Gonna Get 'Er Indoors?

2011-12-08T10:00:00.003Z

Oh, pop culture. What are we going to do with you? 'Interpolating In The Bleak Midwinter', apparently, and going on the recorded version there seems to be some ad libbing and half-forgetting of lyrics going on. Stage fright?

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: The Specials - Do Nothing

2011-12-07T10:00:00.000Z

Not the most festive number, but think of Christmas cliche - family get-togethers, too much turkey and bad jumpers. The latter must have been what whichever Special had in mind, because Jerry doesn't strike me as the type, when this performance was envisaged, proving the most effective gags are the subtlest, something the duo Simon Bates chats to before they come on would have done well to learn (though fair's fair, there's a couple of good lines in there, it's just a shame he feels the need to giggle after each one) Actually the show was broadcast on 18th December 1980, but when replayed on the first show of 1981 it must have taken on the required comedic poignancy.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: The Snowmen - Hokey Cokey

2011-12-06T10:00:00.001Z

What is this? Well, it's a 1981 conceptual pop idea from the conceptual pop idealists at Stiff Records, some uncredited people doing one of the great party records in costumes not actually designed for knee bending or arm stretching. Rumour continues to this day that it's Ian Dury on vocals, but quite apart from that no definitive biography has ever linked him to the song it sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Dury. A more likely candidate is Jona Lewie, a Stiff artist fond of both Christmas hitmaking and novelty hits under a pseudonym (hello, Terry Dactyl & the Dinosaurs), not to mention that future hot shot video director Nigel Dick has claimed to be in one of the costumes and he was in Lewie's backing band. (Which of course means he made an appearance on a definite Lewie TOTP showing - he's on the tuba and claims alongside him is John Otway) The men in top hat and tails at the back had been participating in Godley & Creme's Wedding Bells earlier in the show; at the start is unlikely proof of Simon Bates' S&M tendencies.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

2011-12-05T10:00:00.000Z

Christmas songs, performances from Christmas shows and general festive cheer all this week, starting with the notorious 1984 Christmas show run-through of the song that may well have changed everything. Nearly everyone involved was on the show anyway but with playback miming in force and that crucial word 'nearly', see the incapacitated George Michael replaced by a Sting who clearly isn't concentrating, and at 1:22 that pretty conclusively isn't Bono. Not to mention Black Lace among others getting onto the end of the group chorus and that, even though Culture Club were on the show, Boy George clearly isn't ready to join in with the onstage frivolity along with everyone else. No wonder Bob looks bashful. Two questions arising near the end: who is that holding a bass as the credits start, and what do you suppose Odile Dicks-Mireaux did with their days?

(better but unembeddable quality here)

TOTP 25/11/76 (tx 1/12/11): in which Jimmy Savile unites Glasgow

2011-12-01T22:15:00.004Z

I made a mess of this in the comments box the other day so let's get this straight - now all the schedules are out, here's how BBC4's 1976 commitment comes to its thrilling conclusion, namely by still taking a Sky At Night week off and then having to compress the denouement into four days:

Thursday 15th, 7.30pm - 9/12/76
Monday 19th, 8pm - 23/12/76
Tuesday 20th, 8pm - 25/12/76
Thursday 22nd, 8pm - 26/12/76

Both the Christmas shows are in hour long slots, though originally they were 50 minutes long, and are being repeated back to back on Christmas Day from 10.40pm. Seems a bit odd to keep the Sky At Night slot next week when that means having to cram an extra show in out of time on a Monday, but there you go. And then last I heard The Story Of 1977 is being shown on New Year's Eve, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. (EDIT: the reason why there's nothing on Wednesday is that's when BBC2 are screening the annual TOTP2 Christmas special, at 7.30pm)

It's our first Jimmy Savile show since his passing, and immediately we get a taste of the man's work as he pretends he can't work out whether to talk into the mike or a stick of rock. A cheap gag, but the visual comedy of Jimmy's rapid double take just about keeps the idea afloat.

The Kursaal Flyers – Little Does She Know
There's something very Southend about the construction of the name in lights sign above them, and not just because it says 'KURSAALS'. The band, meanwhile, are all over the shop. Paul Shuttleworth is about an alarming a frontman as we've seen in 1976, sporting the kind of tousled, short at the sides cartoon Teddy Boy pompadour that wouldn't be seen again this side of the Stray Cats, a spiv's pencil moustache and the sort of teeth that explains all those jokes Americans make, particularly noticeable in his instance from his insistence on singing held notes through them as much as they'll meet in the middle. Whether his choice of shiny blue suit and matching cummerbund was meant to somehow offset all this isn't clear, but standing next to Richie Bull in a Hawaiian shirt with garland of what may be daffodils, crimped hair and what seems to be a developmental version of a Zapata/David Crosby tache it seems as if he couldn't quite go the full sartorial distance. As for the rest of the band there's a white suit jacket like their mentor Lee Brilleaux's, a Panama hat like Geoffrey Boycott's offset with second hand car dealer chic and a prominently placed drummer in shorts who plays entirely in double whacks and looks a bit bored of it by the last verse. Behind them a washing machine spews constant bubbles. What sort of image is this? It's like a workaday Camden Britpop band gone back to late period rationing. The song's laundrette love given the full Spector by Mike Batt, here with what seems to be castanets and cymbals at the front of the mix, is reflected in a mighty set of Shuttleworth body language gestures and full-throated singing, which just means more unflattering closeups. Jimmy calls them the Kursaals as well for some reason. Maybe he wasn't sure about the full name either. It was they that brought the stocks "as it happens, do you see", but all they get from him is a "that one is going to go up the charts". It'd be a different story had Noel been around.

Dr Hook – If Not You
Standard live clip, which allows us to talk about Jimmy's top, if the credits are to be believed the work of one L Rowland-Warne. Here, you'd better have a look at it yourselves.

Now, what's going on there? Rangers and Celtic did actually play the previous night and maybe Jimmy had the top lying around from a previous incident when he'd accidentally angered some Glaswegians with football/religious talk and took a broad approach to allaying their annoyance, but then he never really showed a wider interest in the game. He could have clumsily chosen it to reflect music and the show's broad church. This is all far more interesting than the song, in which someone to "patch my pants" and "kiss where it hurts" is requested before one of their million guitarists plays a smug solo.

Billy Ocean – Stop Me (If You've Heard It All Before)
Jimmy gets someone else, "a real life disc jockey" to introduce this one, someone wearing a T-shirt all of which we can read says 'Join Jim'. Self-promotion? And if so, by whom? As usual Billy has mixed and matched his attire and it's supper club night, which means the huge bow tie, grey waistcoat and tight matching trousers. You can see his religion, as they say, though Jimmy would know what trouble that can lead to. No wonder the director spends the first twenty seconds trying to tactically lose him out of the bottom of the shot and not too long later films him upwards from behind. More castanets show up. Did an extra percussionist turn up with the orchestra?

Be Bop Deluxe – Maid In Heaven
Jimmy namechecks the floor manager, and due to the lost shows here's our first naming of Legs & Co. This seems an auspicious choice of dancing material, presumably a late replacement for something else, and it's clear Flick and the girls aren't quite sure of the best movements to interpret Bill Nelson's art-prog outfit into. So it's lots of shaking, some meaningful arm movements and bobbing around, repeat. There's some brave experiments in synchronised arm circling towards the end that only succeeds in taking everyone out of tight choreography. The costume designer meanwhile must have had a bad experience in a children's art class as the Co are all wearing paper tassels attached variously around their person and to their underwear, the thinking of the lack of garments perhaps being... that they're Top Of The Pops dancers, yes, but also flashes of skin detract from whatever they're trying here. Come the end there's a tight shot of Sue heavily breathing, which I'm entirely sure was in no way meant in any other way than to suggest she got more exercise.

Cliff Richard – Hey Mr Dream Maker
Jimmy and sailors! Again! They all wanted in on those Savile and seamen (just don't) special links. Jimmy gets so animated he begins waving his arms about wildly. "We're in a hurry, you see" he explains, before linking to a ballad that seems to last years. Cliff, wearing a black T-shirt with white specks and a spider by way of HR Giger design that suggests less soulful pop long stayer and more patron of a goth clothing shop in Kilburn, is shot almost entirely in insert with some sort of meaningful film, bleached out and partly recoloured in pale red like someone wants a craft Bafta, in which a woman (it very briefly goes to normal colours at one point but not for long enough to identify her) wanders round some trees and looks around a bit, intercut with shots of branches and specks of light. It's not clear what it's supposed to represent, unless everyone who watches it will die horribly within seven days. After he's finished singing and once he's done with pointing, Cliff raises the mike cable above his head, not in victory but as if spent of life force. Maybe it got him too. Oh, no, wait, that can't be right.

ABBA – Money Money Money
"We aren't half in a hurry tonight!" Jimmy reasserts, which can't be right given how much time was taken up just then. Even with a gift of a title Jimmy's struggled with this one, asserting "many years ago everybody in the pop business was skint" but now we have a song "for all the new pop types". In the video Agnetha gets the white dress, Annifrid the black, both with glittery headbands in their colour and no sense of choreography as Agnethea struts and Annifrid... doesn't.

Elton John – Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Jimmy's found two girls in Union Flag waistcoats. Meanwhile Elton is liberated from the pretend vocal booth only to be placed in one of those studio settings where you're not quite sure whether the audience are watching him at the time, so dark is everything but man and piano in the lights. The soberness of Elton's suit is offset by the biggest tinted glasses he could find and the director reaching instinctively for his box of cascaded mirror image-based effects as seen most effectively with Joan Armatrading. Of course with Joan you had a good head shape and nothing else to get in the way, here you've got huge glasses and a great big piano so the effect is lost. By the end he gives up and points a camera at a monitor, the cheapest effect in his arsenal.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
Jimmy's getting brave with the setting now, absolutely surrounded by girls, one of whom chooses the very moment he starts talking to somehow lose her seating position, reacting with a jump and yelp as if she'd been electrocuted. Suspiciously, as she shifts wildly about and the camera pans ever closer to Jimmy's face we see she's holding flowers the same as our Kursaal friend was sporting and a stick of rock. So there's someone he's trying to get off with having promised them a moment on telly only for their reactions to taint it. Chicago, it transpires, is a three syllable word with every one enunciated. Just the video again. Gah. Wanted to see Terry dance to Mississippi again.

And one last note right at the end as producer turns out to be Johnnie Stewart, who created the whole enterprise but left in 1974 and must have been tempted back as a stopgap. For the occasion he's earned himself the man-on-chair-holding-jacket silhouette, which is grand of him.

The disappeared: 18/11/76

2011-11-29T10:00:00.000Z

After the Legs & Co naming ceremony on the 11th another piece of TOTP history this week as David 'Kid' Jensen made the first of 69 appearances as host. While most famous for the sixteen with John Peel in 1983 and 1984 he turned into an entirely useable if not all that initially authoritative host (that'll be down to the nickname, I'll wager - he held onto it until 1980) He only joined Radio 1 in September in the drivetime slot but had made his name in a late night slot on Radio Luxembourg and more importantly had pop TV experience with ITV, firstly 45 alongside Emperor Rosko in 1974-75, so well thought of it got a Christmas Day special in 1974, and then parallel with this stint the Yorkshire TV junior quiz show Pop Quest alongside a pre-Tiswas Sally James - here's the 1976 final. And now he's graduated to the top table and been granted...

Mud – Lean On Me
Here we find the great loss of 1976. Not the song, on which the new kings of disco retreated to a limp Bill Withers cover, but the fact this was on the show three times, reaching number 7... and all three have been wiped. Perhaps out of pity. Don't worry, they'll surely make it up with the next hit sing... oh, there wasn't another.

Bonnie Tyler – Lost In France
As we've just seen.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
As we've just seen. Though the element of surprise has gone.

Yvonne Elliman – Love Me
As with last week the studio work knocks off early and the rest of the show is videos and dancing. Elliman was a Broadway musical actress who'd have her biggest hit, If I Can't Have You from Saturday Night Fever, in 1977 but for now took another Barry and Robin Gibb song of desperation to number six.

Electric Light Orchestra – Livin' Thing
Jeff Lynne works through more of his Beatles obsession for what would become their biggest hit until 1979.

Dana – Fairytale
We'll see this video later in the year, but suffice to say it's not as balladic as you're probably imagining. Quite Cliff-like, actually.

Peter Frampton – Do You Feel Like We Do
Kind of guessing Legs & Co didn't do all nine minutes... They're on a run of being given rock songs to interpret, there's a cracker next week, but they haven't quite settled in enough yet. Also this is a really awkward pace for getting movement out of.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
Three weeks at number one, two of which have been wiped. How's your luck?

The disappeared: 11/11/76

2011-11-28T10:00:00.001Z

We've done quite well for surviving shows recently, seven in a row, but now the meat of the wipings kicks in with four out of six lost perhaps forever. Luckily that's as many as are officially missing in the whole of 1977, but unfortunately this first one... well, we'll see. DLT hosts.

Eddie & The Hotrods – Teenage Depression
Another Hotrods opener! Much the same direct, raw post-pub pre-punk energy unaccustomed to 1976 TOTP, so you can imagine much the same tricks being pulled by the director to try and rein it all in.

Billy Ocean – Stop Me (If You’ve Heard It All Before)
We'll see this before long anyway. What lurid clash of colours can Ocean have envisaged this time?

Guys 'n' Dolls – Stoney Ground
A few recovered shows and fragments have come from Guys 'n' Dolls members, but apparently not on this occasion. Maybe they preferred the scaffolding staging of Supersonic.

Leo Sayer – You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
The video, presumably the one we saw the show before last.

Neil Diamond – Beautiful Noise
The video. Don't know if it's the same as this - the video bit, not the pensioners clapping along - but there's a lot more percussion there then the song suggests.

Dr Hook – If Not You
The video! Studio double booked for the second half? It had quite a while near the top so will be on again.

Hank C Burnette – Spinning Rock Boogie
And now, here's the crux. This is the week when ?????? became Legs & Co... and we'll never see it or what Flick did with this lightning bolt 1971 surf-rock instrumental. (In fact we may never have seen it at all as Burnette was invited to come over instead but refused to re-record, have re-recorded or mime.) But! Glancing through Once For The Dads we found the shot released to the Press Association of the girls, the displayed new name and the winner! Elaine Coombes, 16, of Salisbury, says the accompanying details, and she did indeed appear on this show this week and looks delighted to be there.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
And as if to come down from that excitement a new number one, with the video we've already seen shown.

TOTP 4/11/76 (tx 24/11/11): we've had lots of letters

2011-11-25T19:01:00.001Z

Fourth last retained show before Christmas, but it looks like Noel has been a little ahead of schedule by surrounding himself with big sacks. Oh, no, it's the other possible gag: "tonight's programme is dedicated to everyone who wanted me to get the sack".

Steve Miller, who we'll see later, gets a cutout that doesn't work in two dimensions, pointing the guitar head right at camera as he is. It's almost as alarming as the Pipe Smoker Of The Year Lalo Schifrin.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
Since we last saw the 'waddy, in the real world singer Dave Bartram has retired and secondary frontman Buddy Gask has died, so consider this a tribute. The canned applause at the end of the countdown completely masks Romeo Challenger's big kettle drum intro, surely revival rockabilly's most exciting moment that doesn't involve Den Hegarty. There's a big concept to this one as it's been recorded twice, once in white suits, once in black suits, the former the default but with clips of the latter being cut in gradually more often. It's a neat method of confusion, not that a stage full of faux-Teds in Daz-sparkling suits really needs more visual gimmickery to stand out. Bartram makes an appealing frontman, lots of side looks to camera and for the bridge getting down on his knees on the lip of the stage so as to greater appeal to the girls who it turned out rarely returned the compliment in awestruckness terms, but they'd got to find something for the two auxiliary members to do other than BVs, handclaps and turning in circles. Everyone, after all, is already doing that step-forward-step-back thing. Lots of tipping of the shot to the side too, which we haven't seen since Dancing With The Captain, appropriately given in conjunction with the band's perpetual motion it threatens seasickness. Eventually Bartram sits on the front of the stage and then does so in black too, which spoils the impression of in-the-moment improvisation. As a crowning coda Challenger gives the timpani one last double whack after the playback has finished. That natural reverb goes a long way.

The Manhattans – Hurt
"The sound in the chart with the big deep voice at the beginning - no, not Lena Zavaroni!" Girls behind Noel actually laugh. One falls off a small ledge in mirth. He's found his level at last. Just nobody mention that Zavaroni was going to have had all the chart success she'd have by mid-1974. This video in all its overhead spotlit, dragging nature was on back in October. It feels longer, actually.

Steve Miller Band – Rock 'N' Me
Those sacks? They seem to contain a lot of letters of potential names for what Noel pointedly refers to as "our new all lady dancing group". In fact "you've ruined it, totally ruined it" - us, Noel? The problem is at your end, surely, if you can't find time to read and weight up all the suggestions. Leaving the announcement to "DLT next week" - yeah, about that... - he instead bids "see you next week for that announcement", which seems undue of him. For their third week of nameless wondering the girls are lost in a fog of dry ice amid a song that (knowingly) rips off the intro to All Right Now. Some patented strutting, shimmying and smiling follows in tops and skirts of a variety of lengths and glitteriness. Gill and Pauline get to do some backwards back arching work but in truth it all looks a bit of a mess of routines. Now, I got this wrong last week, but getting a bit of a solo at the end as everyone else retreats mysteriously into the gloaming... that is Patti, isn't it?

The Who – Substitute
This is fascinating for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, Noel is correct in saying the live footage shown is from their gig at Charlton Athletic's The Valley, but it's the show from 1974 rather than that from May 1976 that set a longstanding record for the world's loudest gig (and from which this marvellous piece of Moon/Townshend exchanging of views comes). In fairness Noel doesn't give a year so maybe he'd hoped nobody would look it up. Secondly, what's it doing back in the charts anyway? To promote The Story Of The Who, in fact, and perhaps latch onto that aforementioned gig. Thirdly, it doesn't seem the clip is that well circulated. Even to a BBC considerably better off than it is now when it's reduced to putting 35 year old stupid pop show repeats on its arts and learning channel, how much must it have cost to clear?

Bonnie Tyler – Lost In France
Noel's keen to mention Bonnie is from South Wales; I'm keen to mention that the hexagon backdrop has been redesigned so it looks even more Holnessised to our modern eyes. Can't work out if the lights coming back from its surface are CSO or reflections. Bonnie's enjoying herself alone on stage , which is far more that her audience are visibly doing. Noel, even by his own standards, is stretching things: "She obviously went Toulon, went to Rouen, Paris the thought". Nobody laughs at that.

Tavares – Don't Take Away The Music
The glittery bolero/matador jackets and even more dry ice than Legs & Co got are back.

Climax Blues Band – Couldn't Get It Right
Noel lets on that he'd only just found out that they're British, though in fairness otherwise would be your first impression. He then calls the song Couldn't Get It Wrong, because he's a wit. It's a new performance, as shown by the singer's heavy five o'clock shadow and a new band logo sign right behind the drummer's head. The letters flicker with lights! Though that may be visual editor majick, actually, as shown when the cardboard star for some reason attached to the bass changes shade. A group of kids near the back shuffle self-consciously in an attempt to look hip, grin and then just turn round and watch the monitor instead. At the end one of them, and someone else across the other side of the crowd, wave at the crane camera. Yes, we can see you.

Before we get to number one, Noel has guests of some standing joining him by those kettle drums. Terry Kath, Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine of Chicago, in fact, whom Noel soft soaps by going on about how their number two sound should be number one. Behind his back Peter is doing lots of pointing that he imagines is self-effacing. Noel's interview technique makes Jools Holland seem like David Frost, starting with asking the wrong person what inspired the song ("experience") and then failing to get anything of note out of anyone. Noel consciously mentions jet lag. Not sure that's the half of it.

Pussycat – Mississippi
It's right at the end of their little chat that the real gold comes as the music starts, maybe out of producer blind panic, and we get the sight of Kath, a large man, starts dancing. I say 'dancing', he kind of bends at the knee while air guitaring and making an appropriate face, one part meaningful to at least four parts downright mocking. The director cops out and cuts to a close-up of Noel's face lest the moment of a fourth week at number one (for a song placename "nowhere near Chicago") be spoilt by his full move set. God knows it would have been far more entertaining than that video again.

TOTP 28/10/76 (tx 17/11/11): there's a whole Lalo Schifrin goin' on

2011-11-18T19:43:00.001Z

Shocking news with which to start this week, as thanks to singer-songwriter and Paul Weller bassist Andy Lewis it turns out the silver mics were more often than not complete fakes (read down the end). I don't know what to believe any more.

Some confusion this week, as BBC sources claim this was screened on 27th October but nowhere seems to back up a move to Wednesday night. Unless of course you know differently. Tony Blackburn in charge this week and he's wearing a blue T-shirt on which is the slogan to end all running gags, 'I HATE DIDDY DAVID HAMILTON'. Now, I doubt this story was well known at the time, but just over a year earlier the future Johnny Rotten was spotted by Bernie Rhodes (who was co-conspirating with Malcolm McLaren at the time) on Kings Road wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with 'I HATE' written above the name. The idea, however fleeting, that this may not be mere coincidence opens up fascinating alleyways of thought.The chart rundown is worth noting for Harry Nilsson having a new entry with a pointless reissue of Without You (which we won't see on the show), because a) they've spelt his name 'NILLSON' and b) he looks almost exactly like Bon Iver.

Alan Price – Kissed Away The Night
This is a prosaic way to start, a solo single by the former Animals organist, who for reasons best known to himself is wearing an off-yellow T-shirt with a drawing of Andy Capp in the middle. Must be a northern unity thing. The song aims at being a treatise on community and the working day but gets drawn back by some horribly clunky rhyming. The actual opening verse requires archiving in full:

Overhead morning planes are roaring
Under the bed the dog is snoring
Down the street rolls up (something) taxi
Boy, am I glad I'm not on my jacksie

That's roaring/snoring and taxi/jacksie. Lord preserve us. To make matters worse during that last line he delivers a look to his band that equally says "I can't believe I'm being allowed to say the word I'm about to say" and "look at me about to use a very mild curse!" The performance never quite recovers. Tony, duly impressed, looks into the wrong camera and then calls it Kiss Away The Mild Nights. He then remembers to suggest we get a pencil and paper. Actually, Tony, a postcard would be more immediately helpful than paper.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
"Doing so well in the charts at the moment" Tony somewhat pointlessly adds. This is the plain studio shot performance video about which little can be said except for noting Peter Cetera's hair, as long and lustrous as on any Head & Shoulders model.

Leo Sayer – You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
But first, comedy. Tony chooses this moment to point out his T-shirt slogan, at which Diddy himself creeps out from behind him in an 'I HATE TONY BLACKBURN' T-shirt. It's a battle for hearts and minds alright. They exchange some light remarks about "the new look for 1977" before indulging in a swift shuffle on the fade into the clip, Diddy with the broadest shit eating grin on his face. Difficult to tell whether this is the video or a specially shot piece, but the presence of a shadowed mike might be a clue even if there is no audience in sight. Sayer begins in silhouette like the start of Bohemian Rhapsody, of which this might be a polar opposite of a song. After that he and his yellow cardigan gets shot in mirror image then standing in the middle of what seems to be a huge soundstage, nobody else visible even when carefully peering into the dark. As for the title he may feel it but doing it is another matter, unless some sort of knee bending or twitching like Alf Ippititimus counts. Then there's a cut back to him with some frantic backlighting, which is what passed for excitement then.

Joan Armatrading – Love And Affection
Now faced with the prospect of jazzing up some lovingly wistful acoustic-led folk-pop, the director goes the close up on strings route with Joan's head superimposed over the sound hole. After about a minute of that followed by slow head and shoulders and top half of body shots the graphics people give up waiting and decide to superimpose many reflected images of that one shot over and over from different distances, because they can. There's an awkward moment during the sax solo when, with our man wailing on one half of the screen in CSO, the main shot stays tight on Armatrading's head instead of following the guitar playing or cutting to a wider angle as would happen now, as after all the singer's face is unlikely to be doing anything when not singing.

Lalo Schifrin – Theme From Jaws
Please remember, this competition is now closed, and has been such since 1st November 1976. "You don't have to have one quite as big as that."

Lovely stamp drawing. Meanwhile the dance to Schifrin's lounge-disco cover is a triumph of staging, as first we get some cut-out waves with a hopelessly realised fin moving around and about over which is superimposed our six new friends expressing facial shock. That's save for Lulu, who when scared for her life apparently reacts by sucking her cheeks in. Then there's some sort of bare legs and feet kicking in mid-air motif, following which comes the meat, those we must either call Our New Dancers or ?????? in short, somewhat figure hugging all in one wetsuits. That's what they paid the money and got shot of the boys for. Not much teamwork is going into the troupe's work yet, there being a lot of jumping about and running around but not much actual evident choreography in front of the sea representation with the fins still moving about as if by magic or underpaid stagehand. Patti gets a lengthy solo spot to close, which is somewhat upfront when attempting to press a favourite on us. "Fins ain't what they used to be" Tony retitles it, which somehow doesn't earn him a solar plexus punch from one of the two girls flanking him. "I wonder what you're going to call them next week" he wonders. Same as we'll call them for years afterwards, Tony.

Simon May – Summer Of My Life
As with Chicago and Leo Sayer Tony presses home that this was his record of the week, which doesn't reflect as well on him as he'd like to think. At last an audience turns up to watch him plod through this again while staring right down the camera, the hint of a smug smile on his lips. Not with that weak a vocal you're getting away with this sort of thing, May. Tony gets caught in a titular reverie: "Didn't we have a lovely summer? All that lovely sunshine, not like all the terrible rain we're getting now. Still, we could do with it, couldn't we." Always the cheaply populist DJ, Tony.

Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music
The faux-live video, and Wild Cherry's frontman is dressed as 1976 funk men should be - reflective jacket, no shirt, semi-hairy chest, medallion. Textbook "really feeling it" facial expressions for his guitar solo too. Also the drummer's yellow T-shirt reads 'DRUMS'. The amazing self-captioning man there.

Pussycat – Mississippi
Only its third week at number one but it already feels like forever. This week they're back in the studio and keen to show off their new kimonos. The lead sister seems to have a little trouble hitting her correct notes at first but before long we're back into the professionally delivered country lament we know oh so well. Professional delivery is of course no use.

It's like punk happened

2011-11-15T10:00:00.001Z

I made this list for a comment a couple of months ago but as I've seen it brought up in some places since, especially given the announcement BBC4 are continuing on to 1977, it may be worth bringing it to a proper audience. Although conventional British pop history has it that punk was born in 1976 and revolutionised the whole country the following year, it's a music press fallacy to some extent. There were no punk singles until late October 1976 and certainly it was something largely being chased up by a faction within the music press - the Sex Pistols were on the NME cover dated 2/10/76 but only as an adjunct to then-supposed fellow travellers Dr Feelgood, while in the first half of 1977 there were as many covers featuring Dolly Parton and Genesis as there were the Clash and Damned, while the five covers from July of that month, according to Wikipedia, mix 'Murder at a punk festival' and 'Anti-Punk violence' with Frankie Miller, Steve Harley and Nick Lowe. And when they did go for it they put the MC5 on the cover twice in seven weeks despite that band having been inactive for nearly five years.

In our little prime-time enclave certainly initially there was little appetite yet for getting pissed and destroying. The record buying public continued on their way unhindered - David Soul, Leo Sayer and Brotherhood Of Man all appear in the year's ten best selling singles - and given not so long before then punks were being seen as a credible threat to the national way of life it's not like TOTP was going to bend to their will, especially with the Clash refusing to appear, the Damned briefly fizzling out (Music For Pleasure got bad reviews and they split up for a year or so), the Buzzcocks either considered too independent (Spiral Scratch) or too banned (Orgasm Addict) and the BBC in general still unsure about which way this was all heading. 1978 and 1979 was very different in booking terms, but we'll get there in time.

As such, here's a cut out and keep guide to all the punk-affiliated TOTP appearances in 1977:

19/5/77 The Jam - In The City
26/5/77 The Stranglers - Go Buddy Go (the other half of the double A side that featured the banned Peaches)
14/7/77 The Saints - This Perfect Day; Sex Pistols - Pretty Vacant (video)
21/7/77 The Jam - All Around The World
4/8/77 Television - Prove It (don't wait up for this, as far as we know it's been wiped)
25/8/77 The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes
1/9/77 Elvis Costello - (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
15/9/77 Generation X - Your Generation,
22/9/77 The Stranglers - No More Heroes
27/10/77 Tom Robinson Band - 2-4-6-8 Motorway; Sex Pistols - Holiday In The SUn (under the credits)
10/11/77 Elvis Costello - Watching The Detectives
3/11/77 The Jam - The Modern World
8/12/77 The Banned - Little Girl (already onto the cash-ins, here members of prog third-raters Gryphon chancing it)

The Alternative TOTP Canon #40: Whale - Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000Z

Clown wig and Groucho glasses/tache set, Bardot blonde wig, interpretative boa waving, shouting. That's the spirit! Watch for the guitarist diving into the crowd and the crowd throwing him straight back onto the stage.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #39: Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11

2011-11-10T09:00:00.000Z

The song that proves nothing ages as badly as ideas of what the future will look like, but you can't say the TOTP team weren't trying to fit in with the image with the colour oversaturation, the visual effects and of course the explosions. For all that, the band's disappointment that all the audience are doing is clapping in time much as they would for Wham! must have been palpable. The band aren't doing anything to help, though, they're just standing there with their haircuts!

The Alternative TOTP Canon #38: Billy Howard - King Of The Cops

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000Z

Yes, this was recorded for the show, it counts. Couldn't he have thought of a second joke per character?

The Alternative TOTP Canon #37: Status Quo - Marguerita Time

2011-11-08T09:00:00.000Z

From the first show of 1984, also the twentieth anniversary special, here's another piece of kit rearrangement as a spectacularly pissed Rick Parfitt walks into, mounts and eventually brings crashing over Pete Kircher's drumkit. Quite the job he does on it too, the whole thing from floor tom to allegedly weighted down bass drum right off the riser in one move. Listen to the appreciation his handiwork gets. Before that is plenty of old school rock and roll showbiz, not counting 0:56 when Rossi spots his mike has fallen out of its stand. Also note Jim Lea of Slade on bass as Alan Lancaster hated the song (or his wife was pregnant, depending on which piece of self-mythologising you believe) and left the band shortly after.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #36: The Who - 5:15

2011-11-07T20:03:00.001Z

No particular theme to this week's five Alternative Canon entries, just cherry pickings from the wide, wild sweep that was Top Of The Pops. This, for instance, comes from the 500th show from October 1973 and is the full version of the clip you may have seen on Later last week - just rare (the rest of the show has been wiped), scintillating footage of a great rock band near enough to their height. Plus in the last 55 seconds you get some mike swinging, windmilling, a scissor kick and to close some Townshend/Moon patented auto-destruction, apparently due to the former's annoyance at the Musician's Union stance as their members were supposed to be on strike. Eventually some audience members are moved enough to throw their wigs at the band.

TOTP 21/10/76 (tx 3/11/11): this competition is now closed

2011-11-03T22:38:00.002Z

Parish notice first: were you in the audience for a TOTP recording in 1977? A BBC4 team are putting together the launch documentary for next year's rerun fun and want to hear from you if you were, by emailing david.maguire(at)bbc.co.uk

"Ello darling!" Yeah, of course he'd start like that. Well, here's a turn-up, it's Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart. He was a very occasional visitor to the presenting roster, doing thirty shows between 1968 and 1977, of which still exist... wait for it... three! The last show of 1971 (for which he wears an eyepatch for some reason), a last hurrah in September 1977 and this one. In fact having done 21 shows in 1971 and 1972 he had a three year gap before returning for three in 1975, two in 1976 (a second in December - wiped, of course) and a last hurrah in September 1977. This latter period coincides with his time on Crackerjack*, and he did Junior Choice until 1980, and indeed still does on its annual Christmas Day morning revival on Radio 2. Is he proud of that CV? Will he lose his bearings and attempt to introduce Windmill In Old Amsterdam? Let's see.

Making a return to the countdown is the black and white cutout, this time of Lalo Schifrin smoking a pipe - that was the best promo shot that could be offered? - against a lurid purple backdrop. That sort of low-tech associating got us through that troubled decade together.

(* CRACKERJACK!)

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – (I Believe) Love's A Prima Donna
Some rousing organ from a man in the early stages of attempting to look like Roy Wood shepherds in Harley in a red suit, casually leaning on the mike stand before launching into a full set of studied interpretative gestures, never losing eye contact with the camera. So the director decides to test him on that with three sudden and unrepeated wipes to other angles. He nearly misses the first, immediately catches the second and decides not to bother with the third, intenion of staring into your very soul denied. The latest of several things we haven't seen for a while to turn up this week is the punctuative intercut shot of some lights rotating. Unusually, it's the lights rather than the lens that are rotating, though you have to say the studio could do with jazzing up in that respect, it's either moody spotlighting or full-on. As we enter the final stages the guitarist, who looks a bit like Art Garfunkel, comes over to have an arm draped round them Mick Ronson-style, except the effect this time is somewhat different and, had Boy George seen this one instead, might well have turned him straight. "Some lovely guitar work in that as well" Stewpot offers before somewhat ungrammatically suggesting "before you can say Cockney Rebel that'll be up in the charts, I'm sure". It peaked at 41, outside the countdown range. Ah, the TOTP presenter kiss of death.

Demis Roussos – When Forever Has Gone
There's a big announcement and big thread running through the show this week as Stewpot promises a competition, one which "everyone watching this evening has got a chance of winning", as if someone unaware of it might guess the address and question. "Get a pencil and paper within the next fifteen to twenty minutes" he further advises. Now, you know how sometimes Jimmy Savile (RIP) will just carry on for ages at the end of an intro because the timings aren't as they should be? Stewpot seems to have a similar problem here, in that he finds himself needing to string out an intro because the music isn't coming in, but instead of spewing forth filler babble he finds himself going uncomfortably staccato. "Lots of good records. Lots of lovely people on the show. And what better. Next. Number two. In the charts. Demis Roussos." It's like his circuitry was breaking down. This is a different performance to that made at DLT's table side and amid shots of a vast space-like blackness perhaps borrowed from Whistle Test after being shorn of their logo it's the grand return of the Noddy Holder's Hat Memorial many mirrored stage backdrop. Standing here stoutly, someone comes up with the idea of training three cameras at him, one profile, two from either side of the face, capturing every glance aside. He gives his all, we'll say that for him.

Paul Nicholas – Dancing With The Captain
Stewpot is flanked by two young blonde girls in ties, white trousers and untucked shirts, looking vaguely like sailor costumes in fact. "You might recognise two of the faces here" - actually, Ed, there's only two people there, so in that you're asserting nobody recognises your face - "they're two of the daughters of the Beverley sisters, Teddy and Joy", pointing to each in turn. Teddy and Joy were two of the actual Beverley Sisters, so clearly their daughters didn't deserve publicly given names yet. I have consequently no idea if these are the precise daughters of Teddy and Joy who formed a close harmony group called The Foxes,, but from the matching dress you'd imagine so, which would explain why, even in 1976, anyone bar Ed Stewart should care about two of the daughters of the Beverley sisters being introduced to a Top Of The Pops audience. Why might we recognise them anyway if the best Stewpot can come up with is identifying them by their mothers? You might go on to rhetorically ask why a 1976 Top Of The Pops audience should care about the bloke from Godspell prancing in a bowler hat singing about having a party on a ship, but such is pop life. In fact how Stewpot actually ends is "...Teddy and Joy. Here's Paul Nicholas!", so clearly he can't come up with much either. Paul's back in the studio, white jacket and bowler as per, nobody else out to help him this time. This means he has no fallback when he finds he can't help himself on the ad libs. All I'll say is the captain seems to have developed a Jamaican accent. Reggae like it used to be, indeed. Audience members try their best but Nicholas still effortlessly laps them for enthusiasm at this stuff. Orchestra and overmiked Ladybirds make a mess of this, by the way, though it proves they had a specialist penny whistle player.

Rod Stewart – Sailing
Stewpot, sitting at a piano briefly wearing a top hat with an unidentifiable picture in it, reminds us of the pressing need for pencil and paper before promising "lots of good sounds and lots of good sights". If we hadn't been primed by its first appearance his next statement would make for a spectacular non sequitur: "A lot of you saw that marvellous documentary on the HMS Ark Royal. Here's Rod Stewart again". This is the proper video, shot in cinema verite style as Rod in various combinations of often open shirts and tennis shorts wanders around a barge, looks pensive on an aircraft carrier, hangs around with a blonde woman (EDIT: Britt Ekland! Of course!) and talks to some people.

When that's done, we get to the burning issue. Stewpot declares himself "a thorn amongst six roses", the new TOTP dancers. They even get to introduce themselves, all in cut glass RP. Now, given Ruby Flipper (three of whom made the leap across, of course, not that they're treated any differently) were just introduced as if we should know them and have now been got rid of like so much Greek currency this seems effusive, but then again Pan's People did eight years' service and then as far as viewers could see were just handed their cards without warning. Someone must have got the unions involved. The competition is to give them a name, the required details of your postcard entry - Stewpot just said get some paper earlier, if we had to go to the extra expense of a postcard he should have said so - displayed on the time honoured huge replica complete with cartoon of a stamp - 'DANCERS COMP.' via BBC Television Centre W12 8QT, of course. All entries must be in by first post 1st November and "a set of judges" will make the decision, the winner somehow giving the group their name "formally". By decree? How does that work? It's something of a surprise all this made the edit, actually, with modern BBC compliance structure you wouldn't have thought a repeat could go around giving out addresses.

John Miles – Remember Yesterday
Oh blimey, another man and his piano and his earnest plaintiveness. Miles is wearing far too tight a shirt and far too shaggy a blonde haircut for a man of his balledic standing. As is his trademark it changes pace between the verses and chorus, it being unfortunate that both speeds are pedestrian.

Average White Band – Queen Of My Soul
"Some lovely girls around me" - does that count the bloke at the back? - "we've got some lovely girls for you now". It's the debut of Dance Troupe To Be Named but not that auspicious a beginning, stuck out on a tiny stage in tops that are attached to long bits of fabric they have to keep hold of throughout. All six get their turn at smiling at their own close-up twice over before some spinning and general veil waving. Still, it's something to build from.

Climax Blues Band – Couldn’t Get It Right
Or as Stewpot goes and calls it, Gonna Get It Right. No, that's the exact opposite. The Musician's Union demand to re-record everything before air really drives a coach and horses through this one that no amount of green flare solarisation or the tremendous volume of hair on show can cover for, as the groove develops leaden boots and Colin Cooper sings the whole thing as if he has other things on his mind. Perhaps it's the saxophone he holds onto like a pacifier throughout. Buy a strap, man. When he does actually play it it's both in melodic tune with and in the mix completely overshadowed by the guitar solo so ends up pointless.

Pussycat – Mississippi
"Time to introduce our number one, and who better than the number one boxer in Britain and Europe, Joe Bugner!" Well, Stewpot, there's you, given that's what you're there for. Bugner had in fact won the British and European belts off Richard Dunn nine days earlier, a year after being KO'd by Ali, which supposedly made him ideal for going "Pussycat, Mississippi" as if he wasn't expecting to be asked. And, bar a wave, some standing around looking useless and the regulation comedy sparring on the fade to the video - Crazyboat again - that's the whole of his contribution. Hope he had other things to do within TVC that day.

Ruby blue

2011-11-01T10:00:00.001Z

After seven months, just as quickly as they arrived, they, or at least their collective self, were gone.

Odd thing about that photo is from the whole cache of Pan's People and Legs & Co promotional pictures all the girls are either in matching outfits or specially designed branded gear, and yet for this one and only proper Ruby Flipper meet-the-gang set everyone's in the clothes they arrived in. (It's not too far from very likely that Lulu dressed like that when casually out all the time, and we now know Floyd wore the oddest assortment when off screen too. And as for Philip's sophisti-gay biker look...)

Were Ruby Flipper ahead of their time or a joyous error of judgement? Certainly you could do more, and more idiosyncratic full routines, with mixed sex outfits as some of those we've sat through together have shown - you can't imagine Legs & Co in all their soft focused smouldering glances and two sizes too small tops putting on the duality of A Fifth Of Beethoven or the morality tale of Young Hearts Run Free (and now we all know them so much better we can better appreciate Philip's cock-eyed acting here) Yet it's telling that towards the end of their run on this repeat set that's probably given them a higher widespread profile then they had at the time even BBC4's own continuity was calling them Pan's People. Seems the popular memory recalls two sets of dancers and the rest were mere minority interest flotsam. But oh, what flotsam.

Again, I fully believe Pat Cash headband/open waistcoat/short shorts is how Cherry dresses on most functional occasions

So it's March/April 1976 and Ruth Pearson, the final active original member of Pan's People, has decided to retire and move behind the drapes. She and Flick Colby have observed the rise of disco and believe it's time men were subsumed into the next phase of Pops dancing. Without telling fearsome BBC head of LE Bill Cotton (Ruth: "it felt like it was time for a concept change. Everybody in the group could see it was time for a change") plans were drawn up for a troupe named, after a fashion, for their overseers, RUth and FLIck. Mary Corpe and Lee Ward, who'd only joined Pan's the previous autumn, both left, Mary telling the press "it's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies. They do not want to see other men." Cherry and Sue stayed on and open auditions at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden found Lulu Cartwright, only 16 (and apparently Cherry had been her head girl at ballet school), decade older Royal Ballet School graduate Patti Hammond, Philip Haigh (nee Steggles), formerly of Nigel Lythgoe's The Young Generation, 17 year old Floyd (also known as Floid, but we'll go by his spelling in the credits for now) Pearce and potential Paul Nicholas-a-gram Gavin Trace. Launched onto television at the beginning of May it was all carried out with the minimum of fuss, and actually not much publicity as far as I can tell, even Noel referring merely in passing to Pan's People, at the end of a beloved eight year stint, being "sort of moved slightly stage left" at the end of Flipper's introductory Stylistics routine. Notably, that aforementioned individuality was prized of the new group. Philip: "(Flick) wanted us all to have our own individual look. In Pan's People they'd all worn the same things each week and she thought that looked a bit dated." And so out came the wide variety of costumes, the thrown together bits of business and the acting. Oh, the acting.

It's just that it didn't make the same impression on the viewers. Gavin was let go by mutual consent in mid-July, Flick feeling he couldn't keep up with the weekly turnaround of new routines, and was pretty much never seen again. Then in October the producers let it be known that Ruby Flipper would be going no further and arrangements would be made for an all-female troupe to take over. Flick was notoriously unhappy, feeling she'd been given an ultimatum to retreat to the same Pan's People ideas or lose her job, but was told ratings were suffering for it and as well as the gender issue, these by all accounts being pretty close to the actual words in the letter given to Flick, "young teenage boys would not want to see white girls dancing with black boys". (Lulu: "I don't think any of us realised what was going on. I think if it had been on ITV we would have got away with it.")

Sue, Patti and Lulu stayed on for the as yet unnamed new set, Cherry went off to the theatre and then... well, you've read all that, Philip rejoined Nigel Lythgoe's team and then the Brian Rogers Connection before branching out on his own and Floyd... well, here's some further background details.

Actually, first off Floyd became Legs & Co's token man, making nine utility appearances with them over the following 15 months (here's one) plus being a part of their cameo in the notorious Joan Collins vehicle The Stud. After that he jumped ship and joined Arlene Phillips' Hot Gossip, then rapidly making a name for themselves on Kenny Everett's show. He literally grew up in public. You want a proper clip, don't you? Here's one from a 1983 live show, notable also for being the track, one from the early Human League catalogue, Floyd sings on the troupe's flop 1981 album Geisha Boys And Temple Girls. In Hot Gossip when Floyd got the short straw costume things turned out slightly different.

Hot Gossip fizzled out towards the mid-80s; beyond that I know he's on the Doctor Who single Doctor In Distress and in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

I know Gavin's got her arm round her but Patti's merely blinking, alright?

So, the grand Pops experiment was brought to an abrupt end. And yes, I'm going to kind of miss them.

Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG, 1926-2011

2011-10-29T15:12:00.001+01:00

Bevin Boy, miner, Mecca ballroom manager and owner, Tour of Britain cyclist, professional wrestler, marathon runner, British Rail and seatbelt safety shill, self-claimed first DJ to operate dual turntables and a mike in 1947, Honorary Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games, honorary Royal Marines Commando Green Beret, cigar aficionado, pink Rolls-Royce driver, friend of royalty and Prime Minister, charity fundraiser to the estimated collective tune of more than £40m, fixer, Knight Commander of Saint Gregory the Great, honorary doctor, Knight of Malta, freeman of Scarborough, Radio Luxembourg DJ 1958-1967, Radio 1 DJ 1968-1987, active DJ until 1997 and man synonymous with the greatest chart music show of all. Hosted Top Of The Pops 279 times in all, from the very first to the very last, though his last regular appearance was a one-off in July 1984 and helping The Top Of The Pops Train Special a month afterwards. All this, reader, was his fiefdom.

TOTP 14/10/76 (tx 27/10/11): apocalypse Flipper

2011-10-28T18:59:00.001+01:00

Should do open threads every week. But I won't.

What's with David Hamilton climaxing his intro about "number one sounds" with a heroic air punch? And anyway by Blackburn's lore they can't all be number one sounds.

Tavares – Don’t Take Away The Music
And we start with... a video. Would have been weird enough in the video age, here it just makes you wonder who pulled out too late to properly replace. Instead we get a video clip filmed in a right pea-souper of dry ice, Tavares' five members mere shadows in the mist from the opening angle. This despite the light refraction safety consciousness of wearing bolero jackets festooned with sequins. They can't quite decide whether their moves should be synchronised or not, leading to awkward moments where some are spinning and some ski-shuffling. They then approach the mikes a bar early and their shadows can't save them from awkwardness. With their afros those are some shadows too. The lead singer gets to hold his mike. That's how important he is. Diddy sticks his arm out at the end as if they were just across the studio, grin of gratification writ large.

Sherbet – Howzat
Or as Diddy and his starched collars pronounces it, How's Dat. It sounds like he's approximating an Australian accent, though of course it sounds more West Indian. Maybe he's channelling a concerned Pluto Shervington. This is a repeat from two weeks ago, which Diddy still animatedly clicks his fingers to before the beat has started.

Simon May – Summer Of My Life
Someone shouts something unintelligible over the applause, to which Diddy remarks "yes, more indeed". Didn't sound like anything that concise. According to David "it's always nice to welcome a newcomer to the top 30, especially when it's somebody who has written the song that they sing". REAL MUSIC. A pan out reveals Diddy is on a massive platform well above May's piano on the studio floor. It's little man syndrome. Spotting an audience very much in the shade and for the most part watching the monitor instead is more interesting than the Crossroads-originating song (which May's Wiki claims was "one of the best selling singles of the year", which I suppose is true if you count down far enough) which starts as a poor man's Gilbert O'Sullivan until a truck driver's gear change which turns him into a poor man's John Miles. The director has realised it needs spicing up so has wedged Lulu into a blue taffeta dress and got her to twirl round and fling her arms about a bit in overlay. Between times... well, you can see why May largely stayed off screen.

Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music
Ah, time for Diddy's Tony Blackburn jibe. This time it's a crowbar in for the line "you've got the body of a 20 year old man". You know the rest, but it still gets huge laugh from techs and a decent one from the man who's just told it. So overwhelmed is he he forgets to namecheck the artist. So this is the final fling for Flick's dream of a mixed sex Top Of The Pops dance troupe (until Zoo, but not even their members remember them) and if you didn't know, which is likely given as expected we're given no hints, that Floyd and Philip's days were numbered the fact they're in casual gear and the girls are in nothing more than midriff/bra exposing shawls and dresses slit to constantly expose the stocking tops, and by the three second mark all three females have flashed their knickers at camera, might just give a hint. After an opening which invents vogueing a decade or so before it was ever necessary to do so there's some tight choreography going on on a massive stage. Go on, guess which member the first "play that funky music, white boy" is implicitly addressed to. Ah, you'll miss his boggle eyes to camera, admit it. As for the boys' only dual/solo moment they seem to be re-enacting, of all things, the Tiger Feet shoulder-lean back-other shoulder routine. Floyd does get a lengthy solo, his conditions for being in the mother goose costume presumably still being enacted right at the death. And off they sail into a forgotten status that will befall their unique presence in the show's storied history until a station the existence of which they surely could not have anticipated back then resurrects their entire oeuvre 35 years later. Wonder if they've deigned to watch themselves. "Some fabulous outfits there" Diddy approvingly nods, presumably not of the T-shirts. Or indeed Philip's jacket, which has something written on the back. From freeze frame I can make out 'WHEEL & BRAKE' and half a phone number. A fallback job already set up?

Liverpool Express – Hold Tight
"If you want more music on Top Of The Pops"... well, yeah, that's the idea. Kids must think Liverpool Express were one of the biggest bands of the era. On the set that some say looks like Blockbusters but I reckon looks more like giant Duplo bricks they've come as a slightly seconded Pilot. What the bassist has physically come as in a broad brimmed hat, wide lapelled black jacket with white lining over black shirt and big cream coloured bow tie one can only speculate. The person who's brought their Wolves scarf is keen, at least.

David Essex – Coming Home
"This is Bev and you can all see who Bev likes - who is it, Bev?" Diddy enquires of a girl in big glasses, Rubettes cap and, tellingly, Essex monographed pink scarf. "About to do his new tour" Essex's chirpy charm, aided by a large red with white spots handkerchief rakishly tumbling from his breast pocket and silver musical note brooch on the other lapel, has every effect in the book without resorting to effects thrown at it - fish eye, overlay, picture-in-picture (capturing David in the throes of elbow dancing) turning the lens round, unforgiving extreme close-up. Then at an appropriate moment the director finds a girl singing along to it. The producer threw a lot at the song too, incorporating both sleigh bells and two clarinet solos, both played right down the camera. If only TOTP76 was 3D retrofitted. (FAO BBC: never do this) The player is wearing shades and sports a tache too. Still the song feels like it lasts hours. David Essex and Simon May on the same show. Who'd have thought, so far down the line, there'd be a more direct connection.

J.A.L.N. Band – Disco Music (I Like It)
You'd think such shows would have standard audience waiting list procedure, but along with a bunch of early 30s women surrounding Diddy for his link, two of whom start it by indulging his desire for an arm in arm jig as if he'd been listening all along, are two sailors. What was it with sailors and these links? Had they been waiting around all week just in case? Did Jimmy invite them and they got the dates confused? One of them looks about eleven years old. As the disco funk drops the women get their dance back on while Diddy graduates to pretend clicking with both hands. The Brummies are really not bad at the fat grooves thing either but the attention is taken by their huge scarf-wearing singer's perpetual motion, running back and forth, sometimes on the spot, his bandmates that can move vainly attempting to do so in the style of a good soul revue. It's supposed to get across the restless energy of the genre. Instead it reminds the modern viewer (me, anyway) that Buster Bloodvessel also moves like that, though he was less keen on the jumping from left to right the singer has broken into by the end. Also worth noting is the saxophonist using a break to put in the least effort ever put into playing bongos.

Pussycat – Mississippi
"I'll see you on Radio 1 and Radio 2 tomorrow afternoon" - ah, those were the days - says Diddy before announcing the new number one, receiving a snatched kiss from a woman and reacting with the time honoured swoon and faux-faint. Where would you stage a video for a Dutch country band with harmony female vocals? Yeah, on a paddle steamer, thought so - 'Crazy-BOAT', in fact. To mix the visual metaphors even further cowboy hats and pretend guns are in evidence. The slide guitar player ends up using one of the latter's barrel in close-up. One of the men, presumably the drummer, basically spends the video sitting around looking distant. More interestingly, so far there's been two rundown pictures and two performances by Pussycat and they've had a different look in each. You'll never gain a lasting image that way.

On this day: 28/10/82

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

Well, hoped you liked this trial period of On This Day onto the blog. If you want to keep up after today, why not follow the Yes It's Number One Twitter account. For now, some audience members give it their best in both moves and dress to keep up with post-Soft Cell makeweights Blue Zoo.

On this day: 27/10/77

2011-10-27T09:00:00.000+01:00

As said the other day, were Darts Showaddywaddy's fault? There must have been some lift-off point for doo-wop and 1950s rock and roll tropes becoming popular. Whatever, Darts had the not so secret weapon of the nuts bass vocalist's nuts bass vocalist Den Hegarty, here taking advantage of the fact Pops literally couldn't fit the pianist on the stage by attempting, albeit hidden largely from our view by the audience, to take the man out himself.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1977: Here's some careful and sensitive analysis of political and religious turmoil. Yes, it's Boney M's Belfast.

- 1983: one clip from this has been on here before, King Kurt (not Curtis, Tony) getting tarred and feathered. From the same week, Musical Youth dress as junior wine waiters and cover Desmond Dekker.

- 1988: somewhat missing the point, Tom Jones and the reductive (as in only two of the original five still involved) Art Of Noise take great minimalist pop and maximise it. Of course he gets on the piano. Elsewhere, Milli Vanilli. Miming. Obviously.

- 2000: Blur's last appearance in the original line-up, and Graham Coxon takes the opportunity to break out the deerstalker.

On this day: 26/10/78

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000+01:00

And somewhere in Suffolk, or wherever he was living at the time, a bearded man sobs.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1978: interesting show all round, this, as Tony Blackburn uncomfortably introduces a peeved Elvis Costello - note pointed gesticulation - and the revelation of what happens if you make Legs & Co (Patti, Lulu and Pauline at least)'s outfits with only tinsel to hand. Last week I discussed Legs & Co appearing on the 1978 BBC VT Christmas tape, but in 1977 a fuller lineup in oddly Spanish outfits gave Instant Replay a seperate run-through.

- 1995: in case you'd ever wondered, this is Cher's natural hairstyle.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #35: Pete Wylie - Sinful

2011-10-25T10:00:00.001+01:00

It's John Peel Day, in commemoration of his death seven years ago today. This is the source of his celebrated "break wind in your kitchen" promise/threat (it peaked at 13 but he still didn't), but the never knowingly self-undersold Wylie deserves a look for much more than that. He's brought his own dancers along, The Little Sisters Of The Anfield Road End apparently, and he very much knows where the cameras are.

On this day: 25/10/84

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000+01:00

Here's an intriguing team-up - habitual TOTP 'takers' Madness back up Feargal Sharkey on his first solo single Listen To Your Father. Chas Smash had written the song and it was released on their own shortlived Zarjazz label (also home to Suggs and Chas' highly odd 2000AD tribute Mutants In Mega City One by the Fink Brothers)

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1979: a classic example of a US disco singer giving at all she's got in the face of the orchestra, Viola Wills swings it in her pantaloons.

- 1984: who's the backing singer here, Limahl or the woman who appears to be mixed above him?

- 1990: this is what both chart rundowns and Jason Donovan's show looked like then.

- 1996: a leonine Suede introduced by Steve Lamacq. Again: Steve Lamacq hosting TOTP!

In 1977 I hope I go to TOTP heaven

2011-10-24T15:58:00.002+01:00

In case you didn't catch the news, Alexis Petridis tweeted over the weekend that the BBC4 re-run continues into 1977 and a documentary will launch the shebang on New Year's Eve. Of course going on the 1976 launch doc that means it'll be 45 minutes about how rotten the show and all its featured music is during the year and then fifteen minutes covering stuff from other shows, but you can't have everything.

On this day: 24/10/91

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000+01:00

How much do you think Vic Reeves wanted to be a rock star on Top Of The Pops? Well, technically, Born Free had already put him there, but with the Wonder Stuff he gets the full rein of the stage. He also forgets a line in the second verse, ends up scrabbling around singing down the washing machines at the back of the set in the mistaken belief one had a camera in and has to fill at the end for an otherwise headbanging Miles Hunt, but these are mere trifles. "I can't keep a straight face" says Dortie afterwards, keeping a straight face.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1985: refusing to acknowledge the possibilities of a keyboard stack, Jan Hammer gets the treatment all one man synth artistes got when they weren't very televisual, that is to say some directly related film gets cut into their performance.

- 1991: once the washing machines had been set aside for Vic and co, the rest of the stock from Curry's was given to Carter USM.

- 2003: two confusing, conflicting examples of pop females seeking cred. You'd never have guessed there was a Bond film released two months earlier from Emma Bunton's Maybe; on the other end of the glamour scale comes the great lost reality pop show winner, Alex Parks. It's said nobody (bar friends and family, obviously) knows what Parks, the Ani di Franco-loving Fame Academy winner for whom the descriptive word 'pixieish' seemed obligatory, is up to now, beyond rumours of further education enrolment.

On this day: 23/10/80

2011-10-23T09:00:00.000+01:00

Alright, for the first time in this featured format let's step into the cultured world of Legs & Co. Hands off Pauline, you cornflake brute! And after that, yes of course they were always going to get Ottawan's D.I.S.C.O., but what's the car park theme about? It's not enveloped into the routine, they could have done it on a bare stage for all the movements are affected by their surroundings.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1986: a couple here from opposing angles. Firstly the Housemartins, who are apparently playing the same night in Aberdeen. Not a live show that week then, Gary? No idea what tune Paul and Stan are dancing to but it's not Think For A Minute. Then it's Cyndi Lauper, gradually emerging from the gloaming.

On this day: 22/10/81

2011-10-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

Disco medleys had reached an out of control level by the end of 1981. I know what the building blocks of this are, but I still don't quite understand what it's for or who those people are.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1987: Was (Not Was) may have got dressed up neatly but they only remember hiring those dancers halfway through.

On this day: 21/10/82

2011-10-21T09:00:00.000+01:00

You know the Piranhas' big hit Tom Hark; what you may not recall is Boring Bob Grover and co returned two years with another big band favourite given new lyrics, Lou Busch's Zambesi. With Paul Young's celebrated backing singers The Fabulously Wealth Tarts, a Pete Waterman production and a parrot suit for the drummer they were away.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1982: Kool & The Gang believe in strength in numbers, and all in the same Evel Knievel cast-offs.

TOTP 7/10/76 (tx 20/10/11) open thread

2011-10-20T19:00:00.004+01:00

Hello. This is little known Top Of The Pops retro blog Yes It's Number One. We're not here right now, we're about 150 miles away from our computer. If you see a man who seems deprived of fresh air sidling up to strangers and going "...but a month after they joined, you see, Dee Dee decided to retire through injury so they were back down to five with just the one original member left...", do say hello.

Of course, being away on a Thursday presents a huge problem, which is why I'm trading on the success of the comments box community and letting you fill in and make the sarky remarks this week. Using YouTube and assuming they don't put the wrong one on, here's a quick guide to what you can expect **SPOILERS**:

- Jimmy Savile in a Union Jack/Flag coat
- One of T Rex in his pyjamas and Marc in too much eye makeup
- Pussycat looking less scary than their picture suggests
- Rick Dees - on video! Plus the odd clip of becostumed Ruby Flipper as padding
- England Dan and John Ford Coley in a village hall
- Sir Jim with some sailors. Again
- The Detroit Spinners as frantically Flippered
- A huge bloke from BBC Radio Medway
- The Manhattans, of which there isn't that much to say (apart from according to one YouTube upload the band didn't have a copy of the shown video)
- Paul Nicholas' difficult second single, still with the bowler, this time with Sue and Lulu as distraction. Everybody cheerin', nobody steerin'
- a new appearance by Smokie, being amused and gurning in their own ways
- Yeah, ABBA again
- But no Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

Go ahead, then, and I'll see you late Monday or so in the comments and then properly back to recap business next Thursday (with an Alternative Canon in the middle). Also, can anyone in the meantime point to evidence that suggests these will continue into 1977? A lot of people seem convinced it's been confirmed but I don't know of hard say-so.

On this day: 20/10/88

2011-10-20T09:00:00.000+01:00

Isn't it embarrassing when your big Interflora order arrives at the wrong time?

A genuinely unlike much else number one single, that. Incidentally the caption meister is wrong, the line in question is "Ross and his dependencies" after engineer Ross Cullum, but indeed at 2:41 is a reference to "Rob Dickins at the wheel". And we know who Rob Dickins later married, don't we? Well, let's not dwell on that for once, especially when we've found he was on Going Live! that same year.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1977: as the most cursory of listens will confirm, this isn't the Heroes you're used to. That really doesn't sound like Robert Fripp's effect laden guitar or Eno's synths, whoever's playing piano seems to have been borrowed from the nearest boozer and David hardly seems arsed until he gets to "you will be queen", at which he loses it entirely. From the same week Legs & Co don sports gear, cowboy hat and a lei for, erm, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

- 1994: The 1600th show demanded a fitting guest host. What it got was pop's man who wasn't there Jarvis Cocker. He started with his polar opposite Michelle Gayle. Having then had to work through Let Loose, Ultimate Kaos and Tom Jones, by the time he got to Elastica he'd gone a bit mad.

On this day: 19/10/78

2011-10-19T09:00:00.002+01:00

Where does the influence of Showaddywaddy lie? Not in the teddy boy revivalism, which they were never really cut out for, but in the doo-wop mini-revival of the late 70s that brought us Darts, Rocky Sharpe & the Replays and, oh, all the others. Here's the perennial TOTP standbys with Pretty Little Angel Eyes. With superb timing, after 38 years (he was 26 here!) Dave Bartram retired as singer just yesterday. Not unreasonable, given my experience of seeing them over the summer. They've just got a second drummer back as well but Bartram's voice is absolutely shot. By Hey Rock'n'Roll he was positively Norman Collier.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1978: Legs & Co, the tree years. Well, how would you interpret Macarthur Park?

- 1989: Debbie Harry's solo career was imbued with the blocky production values of the day, but otherwise she still very much had it, even in khaki. The bear came with the crew.

- 1995: and you thought the recently mentioned Steve Lamacq was an unlikely Top Of The Pops host? Some men suit receding hairlines.

- 2001: an hour long, Savile co-hosted special to mark the show's return to TV Centre. Really, who cares?

On this day: 18/10/90

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

A fabled example of when counter-cultures meet the prime-time mainstream, the Happy Mondays' first appearance is more famous largely for who they backed up with (and that'll be coming up here in November) but their slot for Kinky Afro showcases their Northern urchin approach to perfection, basin haircutted Shaun Ryder with hands in pockets, Bez very much plotting his own route.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

- 1979: proof that Suzi Quatro didn't need leathers or dance routines, though she could still grapple a bass to within an inch of its life. A fascinating sideline is that at rehearsals she knocked off an inhouse rewrite of that song for VT's Christmas tape, the concept of which must have taken some previous explanation. He's A Sports PA failed to trouble the scorers. (The same year, in fact, as the engineers got to indulge in Legs & Co's take on Nice Legs Shame About The Face)

- 1979: meanwhile the children of Abbey Hey Junior School were doing their worst and there were high knee lifts all round for The Selecter.

- 2002: remember the New Rock Revolution, kids? For highly strung garage rockers The Vines' Craig Nicholls, legibility was other people.

The big list

2011-10-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

Just to keep up with the times, nearly five months after our last look let's glimpse at the album chart at the point we've got to, w/e 2/10/76:

1 The Stylistics - Best Of The Stylistics Vol.2
Something you may notice about the top four from this so-called golden age. And this is the second, lesser volume! Just this one week at number one, prompted in part by their writers Hugo & Luigi stealing them away from Thom Bell for their own label and also by Can't Give You Anything (But My Love) going top six months after volume one had been released - it's also got Funky Weekend and Can't Help Falling In Love on.

2 ABBA - Greatest Hits - Abba
Released mid-April, it wouldn't leave the top ten until mid-November.

3 The Beach Boys - 20 Golden Greats
Freshly deposed after all of ten weeks atop, this only came behind the above in the end of year sales chart. Neatly chronological too, so you get the good time surf anthems on side 1 and the teenage symphonies to god on side 2.

4 Diana Ross - Greatest Hits 2
Actually just Greatest Hits but the UK alone had already had one in 1972.

5 Rod Stewart - A Night On The Town
Number one for a couple of weeks before the Beach Boys onslaught and still dodging up and around the list presumably partly due to people thinking the resurgent Sailing would be on it.

6 Bay City Rollers - Dedication
On its way to number four, but that'd be a portent of the tartan end times as it was their first album not to make the top three. Within five weeks the new rhythm guitarist Ian Mitchell would already be out.

7 Neil Sedaka - Laughter And Tears

8 Dr Feelgood - Stupidity
A new entry and it'd go to number one a week later, the first ever live album to make it there so quickly. Brilliant cover shot, telling you all you'd need to know about them at the time.

9 Demis Roussos - Forever And Ever

10 Wings - Wings At The Speed Of Sound

11 Manfred Mann's Earthband - The Roaring Silence
The Chanter sisters credited with backing vocals.

12 Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - Derek And Clive Live

Some very careful skipping round the content there. (And of course Pan's People had been replaced by then, as all involved SHOULD HAVE KNOWN). This was its second week in the top 50 and its highest position.

13 The Eagles - Their Greatest Hits 1971-75
This is the one which ties with Thriller as America's biggest selling album ever, 29 million copies shipped. Here it had spent four weeks at number two but would stay in the top 50 until mid-December 1977, and then would pop in a few more times until 1982.

14 Be-Bop Deluxe - Modern Music
On its way to number 12.

15 John Denver - Spirit

16 Rod Stewart - Atlantic Crossing
Here's the one with Sailing on.

17 Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading

18 Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive
Out in May, peaked at 6, spent the rest of the year in the top 40.

19 David Bowie - Changesonebowie
The first proper Bowie compilation, despite not featuring Starman or Life On Mars, which you'd kind of think would be pre-requisites for a 1976 David Bowie compilation.

20 Dr Hook - A Little Bit More

21 Gladys Knight And The Pips - The Best Of Gladys Knight And The Pips

22 Gallagher And Lyle - Breakaway

23 John Denver - Live In London

24 Various Artists - Great Italian Love Songs
Sounds like a cheap compilation that's managed to licence That's Amore; in fact would peak at 17.

25 Daryl Hall And John Oates - Bigger Than Both Of Us

26 Eric Clapton - No Reason To Cry

27 Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

28 Nana Mouskouri - Passport

29 Roxy Music - Viva Roxy Music

30 Various Artists - Summer Cruising
And just below this lot Bryan Ferry's Let's Stick Together entered at 31 and would peak at 19, while at 32 coming down from a high of 15, the Wurzels' Combine Harvester. Ah, the times.

On this day: 17/10/91

2011-10-17T09:00:00.000+01:00

Back in his Radio 1 breakfast days Simon Mayo had a record of relaunching novelty songs into hits - Donald Where's Your Troosers, Kinky Boots - and Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life became the biggest of the lot. It's not clear whether he picked it up from football chants or vice versa, but its surprise success must have been manna to the wiles of Eric Idle, who appeared on the show and laid waste to the studio.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:
- 1991: It's more difficult than you might have thought to find clips showing Noddy Holder in his full mirrored hat regalia, but by Slade's death rattle (Noddy left the following year) he and his band had become a poor man's Wayne Hussey. FACT: Only Cliff appeared in the TOTP studio more often than Slade.

- 2003: labels are so hard up these days even Kylie has to arrange her own light show.

TOTP 30/9/76 (tx 13/10/11): Dave wants to hear Demis Roussos

2011-10-13T22:21:00.002+01:00

Quick poll - should I migrate the On This TOTP Day feature from Twitter to here? It might get in the way of recaps and such business, but it means I can fill the detail out and pre-schedule a load in advance.

This week's show, then. As we know from when the relevant week's TV listings were featured here it's DLT hosting, and... well, let's save the rest of the preamble for a moment.

Can – I Want More
The anatomy of performance:

0:03 Is he playing us with that pause for digestion - he definitely ends up spitting crumbs out - or has he not thought this concept through? Choose your answer carefully and within knowledge of who we're talking about here.
0:04 Notice that his tank top has 'DLT - RADIO ONE' in the pattern. Someone knitted and sent him that out of goodwill.
0:13 Jeffrey Daniel, surely?
0:17 Must have been some dissolution in the ranks the day that photographer came round.
0:57 So the first thing to point out, apart from how for the unprepared this must be quite a frightening sight, is that isn't actually guitarist Michael Karoli. In fact nobody in the corners of the web that you'd think might know seems to know who it is. It's not Lou Reed either.
0:59 For all the centrally positioned camera time he's about to get because the band probably misled the director at rehearsals he's a bit tentative, whoever he is, he's been given a mike but never uses it. All four proper members are officially credited with backing vocals with no given lead, so it's only fitting.
1:01 Clearly wants to mark his territory, though, I can't recall seeing that prominent an amp before on this run.
1:03 Meanwhile Holger Czukay is wearing the colour of trouser that we well know is very much in this (autumn 1976) season.
1:13 Look, they've even taped a note to his mike stand. Chord charts?
1:22 He's even set 'his' pedal board up.
1:28 So now the director's going to let loose on them, this red saturation effect direct from contemporary Dr Who invasion scenes used when the director gets bored of the men standing a little too far away from each other for single shot comfort, which is often.
1:40 OSTENTATIOUS AMP SETTINGS FIDDLING. Followed by a power chord, just to make sure.
1:49 Are there warnings for the colourblind attached to this? Are there heck.
1:56 First swing towards the crowd, and doubtless the first "what is this?" thought bubble.
1:58 Look at the stage and stop chewing, you.
2:06 A hell of a swinging rostrum camera shot, circumnavigating the front of the stage and those few people who turned up to see this recording five (!) weeks earlier in eight seconds flat. Must have been a specially brought in expert, Ken Morse himself possibly, the regular TOTP team would have decapitated at least four of them trying that. Followed by some frantic work on the camera cuts.
2:44 Now he's positively hokey-cokeying on 'his' pedals.
2:55 The very moment the director realises our guitar hero's not going to be involved and he might have been sold a pup.
3:28 She's easily distracted, isn't she? Watch for the moment of lurking cameraman realisation.
3:39 Intrigued by the odd noises coming from next door to rehearsals for that year's Porridge Christmas special, Richard Beckinsale sneaks in. Watch the girl with Cherry-length hair next to him, she's really freaking out to that funky disco-kraut sound.
3:44 So instead we pan to some newly flashing scenery. The glamour.
3:47 Oh, he's got his eye in now for taking plausibility on his instrument to the limit.

And so, some sort of moment. Had they kept it in the early version first time round you'd have seen Noel tell us "we were going to have them at the beginning of the show but you can't have a Can opener". Five '76 weeks later he gets proven wrong and with some casual viewer-wrongfooting style. DLT, just to seal it, forgets to back-announce them. Maybe there are people confused to this day as to what it was. Or they guessed a name, taken pot luck and bought Tago Mago (someone on Twitter claimed to us to have done so), in which case the best of British to them.

Randy Edelman – Uptown, Uptempo Woman
So why the food-based humour, Dave? "I've been working so 'ard on the show today they haven't given me a lunch break!" You've been working on the show, DLT? What's semi-permanent newish producer Brian Whitehouse been contributing? This, anyway, will be a theme, but not before "a gentleman who's sure to be number one in a few short weeks", again demonstrating the powers of prediction for which the presenters have become legendary - it peaked at 25. Edelman, who gets to play his white piano in the tight round, looks and dresses like Brian Conley's spoof kids' presenter and thinks a wider British audience would be interested in a New York-referencing song about falling in love and then splitting up with a woman of a higher class which doesn't have a punchline, or point, or reason to continue on the same track given it's signalled its final intentions by the halfway mark. The first verse hasn't finished by the time most of those around him have started moving to a much faster tempo in their heads which just looks odd as the rostrum camera circumnavigates the piano lid. Smithers, have Randy Newman killed.

Sherbet – Howzat
DLT's eating a banana. "I've brought this on to mention that when I was a kid I used to enjoy dipping a banana in a certain substance. Now that certain substance is all over the stage behind me." What is he on about? Is it a euphemism made all the more horrible by who's delivering it? So that's your welcome to this country, Australia's Sherbet, with your 10cc pretensions and your song which will be played all the time come the invention of Twenty:20 with its chorus that seems to be in a different key and tempo to the rest of the song. The singer seems to be dressed as a 1970s wrestler in blue ringmaster jacket and plunging neckline waistcoat-cum-unitard, while the drummer has the most elaborate tom-tom setup you'll see. Piled up the side, they are.

The Ritchie Family – The Best Disco In Town
DLT's drinking a capuccino, and obviously has froth on his nose and beard. Sherbet's guitarist is just caught before the lighting change looking across out of equal parts hope and pity. As regular readers may have spotted this is Cherry's last stand and she's being sent off not with the song, which is perhaps the first medley to trouble us duly only that nobody really knew what they were or how to do it so it just sounds like some people chucking phrases in, but with a special costume effort, as in she's the only one permitted a bra top where everyone else is given full coverage. Oh, they knew their audience alright. Flick's drilled them on the routine too, a sparse stage and familiar songs giving a free ride. Not so well off are the costumiers, who've given everyone cream outfits, squaw skirts for the girls, combat trousers for the boys and colour-coded cowboy boots all round but with lots of ribbons, bits of cloth, bits of wool and things you find hanging up in Chinese restaurants attached for no reason other than to fly about and get in the way. Obviously Cherry gets plenty of prominent screen time, including the crucial final solo, but note Floyd's two solo spots, perhaps to make up after all his family and friends saw the previous week's show.

Tina Charles – Dance Little Lady Dance
DLT has a box of chocolates. This "lovely little package" - yes, he goes there - has an absolute unflattering tent of a dress on and an absolute unflattering song to work through, especially when she seems to call her paramour a "cooker". If he is it's the wrong host for his purposes this week. She also looks like a nervous Rebecca Front, but that's by the by. She's certainly not the surest of performers, unlike the orchestra's flautist and wah-wah pedal guitarist, who seem keen to get their union subs this week. Charles, lest we forget, was the original (uncredited) vocalist in 5000 Volts, and indeed despite our woman/men and their errant talkbox most knowledgeable sources suggest that hit was a fluke and they never recovered from Charles' departure. Everything comes back to 5000 Volts round here. It's like a very limited Six Degrees Of Seperation.

Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
DLT has a chicken leg that looks like he had to fish it out from the back of the sofa. "Now they're trying to kill me with a camera!" he moans as the crane comes nowhere near him. This is a repeat of something I had nothing to say about first time, bar the eventual failure of Van McCoy-style disco flute to last the course. Thing is, this is Nice And Slow's fourth appearance on the show plus an instrumental play at the end, so had two not been wiped this frankly nondescript piece of flute-disco fluff would have become as ubiquitous as 5000 Volts. That's odd, as of the songs that have been on the show so often thus far ver Volts had a slow climb and a reputation from I'm On Fire and Mud were a popular band on the show catching the zeitgeist before it fled them forever. This was Green's first hit and while he had a couple more top 30 singles he never really did anything again - this peaked at 17 and is on this week after a surprise one-off rebound to 23. How out of character is this? He's listed on Wiki as 'Jesse Green (reggae music)', which reveals he drummed for the Pioneers (Long Shot Kick De Bucket, Let Your Yeh Be Yeh) and Jimmy Cliff. Strange business all round.

Demis Roussos – When Forever Has Gone
Finally, the punchline. DLT has a full dinner service with wine, grapes, a candle, the works. According to his version of events the BBC for some reason treating him even though he's been wolfing down food and drink all half hour. "Actually, the truth is they're trying to impress our next guest because..." Because he's a great big fat bloke who might have seen the odd full table spread in his time, Dave? Brave given he's in the studio and with not much of an audience this week it's not so far for him to travel and smash your face in for the perceived slight, and we won't be trying to hold him back for more than the radial reasons. "...he's used to all this high flung living". Caught it. What's high flung mean? Demis makes some sort of noise-cum-comment in the background here but we can't catch what exactly it is, especially as it seems to come with reverb. He's doing the service of not looking DLT's way upon being introduced, which must mean something. In his voluminous purple kaftan at one point he's superimposed on shots from above (which seems to be off a mirror, it's not a monitor), from the back and close up from the side. Basically, they're not quite sure how to direct it. His all-embracing posture at the end is one of a thankful man still willing us to take him to our collective hearts. It's at this point that things go so far beyond the pale they may as well come back round and start from the beginning again, as DLT has now donned his own massive purple smock and over the still full layout shouts the dread words "Demis? Come over here, darlin'!" Two men in large beards and large kaftan/robes next to an open candle flame is asking for trouble, or at least a related gag. What we get is the pair of them sharing a glass of "our lovely British plonk, Chateau BBC 1914" - he's Greek, DLT, don't start making oblique jokes and expecting him to comprehend - before, with inevitability aforethought, Dave asks Demis what goodbye is in his native language and then attempts to copy his pronunciation. Demis has the good grace to chuckle.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
Seems a bit of a letdown now, this. It's been number one long enough, for starters. But finally they've found a proper copy of the video, which proves Anni-Frid could do proper moves and choreography if she wanted.

The early days

2011-10-10T10:00:00.002+01:00

In the last post I mentioned in passing the shows from early 1976, and presumably some must be wondering why the repeat run began in April. Actually it's not too illogical, or at least not as illogical as the archival procedure - of the first 13 shows of the year seven are missing, three more only exist because of offline recordings David Hamilton found in his archive and had restored very recently, and reputedly one was rescued by a member of one of the bands, and in those four cases it's not generally known whether the full thing is in broadcast quality.

However episode guides survive, and so to take this opportunity to square the year's circle here's a rundown of what went on earlier than BBC4 have been able to let on in that year...

1st January
Actually we can prove this is one of those that survived all along because most of it is on YouTube - part one, part two and part, um, four. The missing element is Abba, oddly, given TOTP recordings of plenty of their other appearances survive and this was just the video. As Jim says several hundred times throughout the nature of the date allows them to give three new bands their TV debuts, Slik being the one that we'd hear more of (and by the way, pop onto Spotify if you can and check out the Best Of Slik that's recently appeared, in particular The Kid's A Punk B-side Slik Shuffle, Midge's own Van McCoy rewrite) Difficult even now to find out more about boogie merchants Bo Flyers apart from the way they made the set worryingly wobble, while Glyder (which, having fallen victim to the Abba censor, can be seen on its own here) surely had too many members for comfortable touring. Two acoustic guitars, bass, electric guitar and mandolin, plus inaudible sax? Come on. If only Billy Howard's King Of The Cops had appeared a bit later in the year, we'd talk about nothing else for weeks. Am I supposed to know who the woman in the elaborate shades is?

8th January
This one exists too and is on YouTube in bitty pieces - this is where that Itchycoo Park comes from, while also around are Tony Christie, R&J Stone (We Do It, from the advert - and to think people who worked on that TOTP2 got paid) and ELO. Also featuring Sailor on their way to number two with Glass Of Champagne, a debut by our old badly dressed friends Sheer Elegance, Barbara Dickson, a bit more of the Bohemian Rhapsody video and Osibisa's Sunshine Day, which we can only hope looked like their Supersonic performance.

15th January
Abba are in the studio, it says here. Apparently it isn't the same as the studio recording for the Christmas show, so that's one short cut ruled out. Also popping by were Mike Oldfield, 10cc (Art For Art's Sake) and the Walker Brothers (No Regrets), while Pan's People did their thing to Barry White's Let The Music Play and the Fatback Band's Do The Bus Stop. What, just stand there?

22nd January
David Hamilton's debut, and of course that means this show exists. Somewhere. He gets a lot of repeats and repeat visits, Slik now at number 12, plus Smokie and Pan's People doing Paul Davidson's Midnight Rider. Bohemian Rhapsody still number one...

29th January
...but not any more! Mamma Mia takes over in a show in which Pan's gets not only December '63 (Oh What A Night) but also, erm, Baby Face by Wing And A Prayer Fife And Drum Corps, which sounds like some sort of marching band equivalent of the Portsmouth Sinfonia but was in fact a studio disco outfit put together by the current musical director on Dancing With The Stars covering a 1926 standard. Kiki Dee pops in to rest her legs too, Cliff Richard and The Sweet debut new songs (Cliff's is Miss You Nights, Sweet's was the last we'd hear of them for two years) and the TOTP Orchestra themselves get an increasingly rare appearance on camera to rework Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade, which for some reason was at 26 and would peak at 13.

5th February
Slade's unremittingly weak boogie Let's Call It Quits debuts, and for this year they did. One really interesting appearance is by Be Bop Deluxe with Ships In The Night (here on Whistle Test), with Bill Nelson's unshowy guitar heroics one of the chief connectors between prog and art rock. We'll see them again much later.

12th February
Found as recently as January this year from a Philips N1500 recording uncovered on eBay. Here's a fragment of it, featuring Dollar-spawning sextet Guys & Dolls. The thing this show is famous for is also online, Lesley Judd joining Pan's People as they take on Manuel & The Music Of The Mountains - the then Blue Peter esconsed Judd had been in a pre-Pops troupe for the Dickie Valentine Show in 1966 alongside Flick, Babs and Dee Dee. Otherwise there's new Marmalade and Billy Ocean plus Slik make number one, but look! The Surprise Sisters! One of the early humour resources of the rerun, they had previously enjoyed a number 38 smash with the Andy Fairweather-Low penned, Tony Visconti produced La Booga Rooga.

19th February
After a few weeks of the same old songs on and on again, a good clean wipe this week. The Four Seasons are at number one, while new stuff appears from the Glitter Band, Andy Williams, LJ Johnson, Evelyn Thomas (two Ian Levine discoveries, which doubtless means this wiped show really exists somewhere too), Pluto Shervington, Manhattan Transfer, St Andrews Chorale (who are what their name sounds like, and their Cloud 99 would later in the year be given words and given to Johnny Mathis as When A Child Is Born) and Pan's People dancing to the Who's Squeeze Box.

26th February
Again, a David Hamilton week. Having failed to make the Bus Stop a worldwide smash the Fatback Band were back to try (Do The) Spanish Hustle. CW McCall's Convoy gives DLT ideas, Status Quo pop in, Tina Charles' I Love To Love (But My Baby Loves To Dance) would go to number one a week later and Pan's People get the Stylistics' Funky Weekend. Two months later a new group of dancers would take on the follow-up for starters.

4th March
Paul Burnett's only showing of 1976 just prior to taking over the chart rundown sees Dana, Peters & Lee, disco also-rans The Chequers, Gallagher & Lyle's I Wanna Stay With You and Pan's People Do The Latin Hustle. Also, ahead of Eurovision Brotherhood Of Man showcase the UK entry, so we're getting closer to where we joined in.

11th March
But not so close as quite a few songs that you probably wouldn't know now couldn't make an appearance. There's a lesser T-Rex effort, London Boys, plus Mary Hopkin's shortlived comeback, Chris White, someone called Rainbow Cottage and Pan's get Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes.

18th March
Be Bop Deluxe get repeated fully six weeks after Ships In The Night's first appearance, plus Randy Edelman's version of Concrete And Clay, John Miles gets to go on about Music at length for the first time, David Essex and the Eagles somehow get danced to.

25th March
The Save Your Kisses For Me reign of terror begins plus The Miracles' Night Life, the Tommy version of Elton John's Pinball Wizard, the ever willing Hot Chocolate and Yesterday is given to Flick and her girls. See, even Diddy knows who we're most interested in. And by 1:13-1:20, so does the director.

The Alternative Pan's People Canon: The Chi-Lites - Homely Girl

2011-10-07T10:00:00.002+01:00

Another one from the Pan's People back catalogue while we have time to spare, and while the dresses are relatively well known through repeated clippage when such is required they don't spend the whole routine prancing about in them. In fact this fulfils both our immediate requirements: prime Gillespie and a triumph of literalism. Observe the tumbling, vitality filled locks, that alluringly flashed chest, the winning smile... and as for the girls it's a classic of the Plain Jane genre as ugly ducklings (with the aid of screwed up faces, marker pen freckles and the sort of dungareed outfit not to be seen again on the show until the appearance of minor The Real Thing members) turn every so often into baby-doll dress swans. It's a wonder the 'carousel of disenchantment' move never took off in the clubs.

The Alternative Pan's People Canon: The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

2011-10-06T10:00:00.004+01:00

There's already been an Alternative Pan's People Canon collection, but given this week's theme there had to be an appendix of something appropriate. Appropriate might be the wrong choice of word for the family element of the show, mind, given Flick seems to have taken the barely hidden subtext of the song, charting in reissued form in early 1976, to her literal heart. Everyone goes for it on some peculiar tangents that start, especially on the first two lines, with patented movements-sticking-to-the-words but soon enough turn into B-movie witch-based schlock. Cherry certainly seems going on the first chorus to have missed her true calling in that regard. That the whole routine is built around a large mushroom in an enchanted setting and was choreographed by a hip American who was just out of her teens around 1967... I'm saying nothing.

Dance dance revelation

2011-10-05T18:13:00.004+01:00

If this is a theme week, best have a post every weekday of it. Proving that they were sometimes on shaky ground with rock and roll, quite the inverse of their single's statement, here's a Pan's interpretation of Johnny B Goode from their 1973 Two Ronnies residency.

It's also been noted that Monday was Louise's birthday. Rest assured everyone at this end is gyrating their abdomen while kneeling on some scatter cushions in tribute. (It's also Sue's birthday on Sunday, but I haven't thought of anything for that)

Ladies' night

2011-10-04T10:00:00.004+01:00

Did you catch the passing reference yesterday to the 1974 special Pan's People In Concert? Well, as luck would have it, and yes, this is the show with the much reshown gyrating-to-free-jazz routine...

Difficult to know where to begin, isn't it?

(Previously on Yes It's Number One: Babs on This Is Your Life)

Cherry shake well

2011-10-03T10:15:00.000+01:00

One of the things I've been careful with on this blog is not to make too much of the in-house dance troupes. Partly because there's loads about them online anyway going into fulsome and frank detail and much other discussion is of the 'men fancied them but they did stupid routines' postmodern one-liner sense, but it's something you've got to tread carefully round. We know why it happened, maybe we don't appreciate from this distance the late 60s to mid-80s success of specialist dance teams on television from The Young Generation to the Brian Rogers Connection, but there still seems something out of place about reinterpreting someone's carefully honed work in such a choreographed close to studio time fashion. It's natural, though, then when you delve into everything a TOTP offers in detail as this blog has there's things you can't help but notice that turn out to be specific to the given time frame. One thing that seems to have happened as far as Ruby Flipper goes is that one member has been getting the bulk of the good, unembarrassing (cf Young Hearts Run Free) roles, and in doing so earning themselves a not inconsiderable amount of new personal followers and appreciative commenters.

Not for much longer, though. The next TOTP showing next week will also mark the end of... no, not an era, but something. A something that started at Christmas 1972 like this (and moreover, because this clip hasn't got the relevant introduction attached, like this:

Flick called that the worst routine they ever did, by the way, largely due to the volume of those dresses.

While it's Babs or Dee Dee, often Louise too, who usually get dragged out whenever nostalgia TV comes calling, Cherry Gillespie seems from the three and three quarter years she served as a TOTP dancer to have become a totemic presence. Actually that seems to have been the case at the time - it's rumoured she had a clear lead in personal fanmail at their height. Is it the horse's mane length hair? The eyes? The frequently part-bared and constantly toned body? The faces to camera (of which, as I didn't pick up at the time what with being new to this back then, there's an excellent mock-baffled example of 0:31-0:35 into Ruby Flipper's debut) Or all of the above?

It's all of the above.

Flick tried to dissuade her, but Cherry insisted shitting on the dressing room floor was her good luck charm. (pic source)

But then it's also possible to say she was much more than that on the sly, which is why if you discount Babs' globetrotting human endurance feats for their rarefied nature she seems more than her contemporaries to have made something of a go at a showbiz life after Pops. From Hemsby, near Great Yarmouth, she was a ballet school prodigy of whom the Daily Telegraph wrote in 1972 "she seems bound to develop into a major artist". When Andi Rutherford got married and became pregnant she chanced the open audition for her replacement, got a unanimous nod and a couple of months short of 18 years old she became the then fifth girl of the troupe.

The Pan's People Kites range needed some fine tuning

And so a place in televisual dancing history was assured. She was there circumnavigating the dogs for Get Down. When the Monster Mash costumes were being doled out, she became a bat in a curious furry costume with a tellingly balletic routine. She gets a solo in the celebrated 1974 folly Pan's People In Concert.

"...and then I'll get Robin to sack the rest of them!"

And when the Ruby Flipper bandwagon rolled in she became the senior member, being seven months older than Sue. Here's her celebrated solo spot to Misty Blue, which was never discussed here at the time of reshowing because a) it got edited out of the first showing and b) there's not really much you can add.

And then it ended. Well, to be accurate she ended it. It's not entirely clear at this distance why she left early, even less why she had that three week break not long before, but she went on to play Connie in the award winning original West End run of A Chorus Line from January 1977, so maybe rehearsals started around then.

Gillespie may have done more theatre work, and there are suggestions to that end, there's little online record compared to the years of bit parts she got when returning to TV after that run - Casualty, Minder, Blankety Blank (five times), Metal Mickey, Crown Court, Bergerac (which is on YouTube in full - she first turns up 4:55 into part one) and a guest slot with Morecambe & Wise, albeit on one of their lesser 1983 shows for ITV. In addition she's female lead in the video for Dire Straits' Private Investigations and has credits in Octopussy, where she's the titular character's henchwoman, and The Bitch, as 'Disco Girl'. Nothing like stereotyping.

Her major post-Pops TV work came in 1983 as she took third billing behind Wayne Sleep and Bonnie Langford on the BBC dancing roustelay The Hot Shoe Show. Here's a couple of clips of her work there. The song on this got released as a BBC Records single, which was about as successful as the Pan's People 1974 single she takes lead vocals on. According to the uploader the here unseen punchline is the mystery beau is a Boy George-alike.

And here's an ensemble piece chiefly featuring the always delightful sound of middle class white Brits rapping, and especially so when one is Bonnie Langford. Roxanne Shante rests easy in her bed.

With no listed onscreen roles since 1991 we can only assume Cherry subsequently settled down to raise a family with music industry big shot husband Rob Dickins, though she's continued to do voiceovers - here's an example - and in fact can still be hired for such. And if you must know, here's a clip of a Pan's mini-reunion last April at the opening of a Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition of photos by Harry Goodwin. We shall never see her like again. Well, there's not the telly dance troupes any more.

TOTP 23/9/76 (tx 29/9/11): duck and cover

2011-09-29T22:19:00.000+01:00

Relevant information: Pan's People And TOTP Dance Troupes will have an interview with Lulu of Ruby Flipper (and at that time she was only 16! Some of you are feeling a little embarrassed now, admit it) and Legs & Co up some time in October.

Tony Blackburn back in charge this week, and there's suspicious amounts of blank space around him in the frame... and it turns out it's another "crikey, Nicey's just read my mind!" moment as Tony pretends to forget the title again, only this time it's not himself reminding him in the speech bubble, it's Noel direct from the wiped show in a suit with a purple and orange tie going through the title one word at a time. Tony's sense of achievement upon realising is not palpable.

Elton and Kiki are already down to 26, the record buying public certainly wiping their hands of that whole mess as quickly as possible. One new entry seems to be just represented by a shaped blur, but we'll come back to that one.

Smokie – I'll Meet You At Midnight
There's one heroic orchestral figure with which to start. In front of an audience including a woman in an Uncle Sam hat and her friend who looks quite a bit like Lulu Flipper and nearly takes a highyl visible tumble, Chris Norman makes love with his eyes to a wandering camera crane before a sudden lighting change reveals - egads - a man with a double-necked guitar! Norman's full throated post-Rod growl and some sterling work by Johnny Pearson's men elevate it from being just another MOR strummer song type, as I suppose does the oddly French textural lyricism, and the audience seem as keen as they ever could be, though a crane swing round reveals much of the front of the stage is taken up by a big camera, reflecting the stage lighting uncomfortably, which might be why it gets turned down for dramatic effect too early meaning our show-off guitarist is in the shade for a whole verse and pre-chorus. Next to it a girl in a lime green coat and what seems to be a cut down version of Noddy Holder's hat stares listlessly at the back of the redeveloped stage. Maybe it was she that nicked all the mirrors. It's one of Tony's favourite songs at the moment, apparently.

The Wurzels – I Am A Cider Drinker
"A nice half-pint of that lovely scrumpy they call cider"? Cider's not an obscure term, Tony - in fact if anything the concept of scrumpy is more parochial to the Zummerzet set. And what's with the undersizing of portions? Same performance as last week, not cut to so many ribbons this time, and it allows us to consider a) whether, after Drink Up Thy Zider, whether the Wurzels doth protest too much, and b) when these were shown in Germany a couple of years ago what must that populace have thought of us?

Kiki Dee – Loving And Free
"We're going to change the mood somewhat right now, very dramatically in fact". Well, that's one way past the impossible link when you don't have Jim's indefatigable resources of bringing working men and women on as props or Noel's free associating style. Although Kiki's in the studio once more she's still sitting primly upon a high stool, and through the turned down lights we can make out, not an audience or anything so prosaic, but the return of the wedding cake tiers. Electric blue eyeshadow, overlaid candle flames, you can't say they're not trying to breathe active life into the performance.

Bay City Rollers – I Only Wanna Be With You
Tony drags the most nervously monosyllabic girl he can find on screen to exchange pleasant badinage on the basis that she and her friend have attached tinsel to their berets, which are of course "sensational" in Blackburn Land. The song Tony refers to as "I Only Wanna Be, of course, With You" is in video form, where we get to observe Les mistaking gurning, shoulder movement and an open shirt for charm and a fresh outbreak of tartan.

Rod Stewart – Sailing
Speaking of overwhelming Scottishness aforefront... Sailing had been number one just the previous September but was being as the theme to Sailor, a BBC documentary about the Ark Royal. There were people who missed its four weeks on top in 1975 but suddenly caught on a year later? Enough to take it to number three, in fact, though last week (as in the week before original broadcast) The Killing Of George FamNO, DAVID had been to number two so everyone won all round. But mostly Rod. Tony has the two hat girls up with him and they really don't know where to look. Rod looks like an older Noel Fielding at a Wurzel Gummidge fancy dress party and the camera doesn't cut away from a head and shoulders close-up of him for a full fifty seconds. It's hypnotising. Then millions of swaying children gradually join in on choral BVs. Eventually a serious outbreak of arm swaying takes hold leaving Rod eventually crouched on the floor, spent and craven. It's like Emu's Pink Windmill Show had a budget upgrade (and, erm, a loss of Rod, Emu and Grotbags. Work with me here.) Would it be churlish to mention most of one whole section is swaying their arms in the opposite direction to everybody else? *thinks* No. Tony makes sure to mention Sailor is on at 9.25 tonight on this channel. No it isn't.

Rick Dees & His Cast Of Idiots – Disco Duck
You'd, erm, better just watch this. Floyd must have lived next door to a single magpie farm.

If ever a routine promised one thing at outset (close-ups of Sue's waggling arse) and delivered another (some people in big impressionistic duck suits) it was this, though I can't imagine Floyd was particularly keen on that design of waistcoat. He's getting the chance to display his swagger move set, though, gets a good few seconds of full-on solo work like he'd never had or have again after becoming human once again and he even gets to mouth along to the words as part of his choreography. Floyd was only 17 then as well, until that moment it's like everything he's worked towards. Look how nonplussed the audience are at the costume change. Observe how studiously his fellow dancers ignore the presence of the large cloth beast (except, needless to say, Cherry, who at 1:31 is definitely looking up at something and failing to stifle a grin, which might explain why she's missing from the wide group shot eight seconds later) Note from 1:17 that Philip is still miming along to the words. And cry. Cry for the lost hope of the optimistic young television dancer and the patience of the exalted choreographer who once believed in her charges. Is that Floyd himself in the costume? Is that the respective Flipperers in those costumes? Were they assigned one each if so or was it just who got to the pile first? What the fuck is Tony doing at the end? We might never know.

'Disco Duck' was trending on Twitter half an hour after the show finished. Our work here is done.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
Ah. A return to earthier stuff, if you'll forgive the phrase. Before then, Tony re-emerges in his own dry ice holding an oversized egg ("someone said I should go to work on an egg. You can definitely tell pantomime season is approaching"), never quite recovering his composure. A different performance this week, where one clever shot has Chris Thompson and Mann delivering their lines across each other in the same still shot. Thompson is meanwhile dressed more sedately, unless you count the big purple hat and the visible yellow T-shirt with a big red S on like a six year old attempting a customised Superman kit. There's no close-ups of the drummer so we don't get to tell whether he's wearing a Benny-style woolly hat or a Basil Fawlty-style big head bandage.

The Drifters – Every Night's A Saturday Night With You
Trouble with showbiz professionals drilled to within an inch of their corresponding life is there's not all that much to say about them once the fact all four Drifters are wearing yellow trousers, which seems to have been a popular colour amongst the 1976 soul community, has been taken in. Take heed, The Real Thing, these people talked to each other about their styling for big television occasions. Meanwhile an errant cameraman has evidently blazed an unnecessary trail given the big gap between groups of audience members right at the front with not even a wire visible between them. No wonder quite a few are now looking out specifically for maurading EMIs.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
"The show tonight is rather like David Hamilton - a little shorter than usual". Couldn't get through the whole thing without one, could he? And of course that line doesn't work, not when the last TOTP we saw was the same length, and not in a slot where they're all this length, and David Hamilton has always been the height he is. He should have thought ahead 35 years for such anachronistic eventualities, should Tony. Wisely Tony says goodbye before the song this time, which is the Australian performance again. See the way Anni-Frid plays fast and loose with the concept of choreography. By the end of the second chorus it's abundantly clear she missed her true calling as the Swedish Alf Ippititimus.

The disappeared: 16/9/76

2011-09-26T10:00:00.000+01:00

There's a little awkward patch of wiped shows here. From September to before Christmas 1976 six shows out of 17 have been wiped, and while it's not actually as bad as that sounds - there's an unbroken run of seven weeks after this, for starters - here two shows out of three have been lost, meaning in BBC4's timeline there's a lot of repetition between last week and this one coming. One artist ends up on the repeats three weeks in a row, earning them an unfortunate 5000 Volts-like consistency. In better news, we here get to skip a week of Noel's free associating.

Tommy Hunt – Loving On The Losing Side
Hunt had been in the Flamingos of I Only Have Eyes For You fame and a good decade or more on had a shortlived spell as a Wigan Casino favourite, which with its string arrangement can only mean a well meaning visitor to our shores being held to hostage by Johnny Pearson.

Tina Charles – Dance Little Lady Dance
Speaking of which, I believe this is the performance for which she got to her run-through and discovered the orchestra were playing it at twice the speed of the original and she couldn't stop because she feared getting a bad reputation and never being asked back. Which she was, which demonstrates something about grinning and bearing it.

J.A.L.N. Band – Disco Music (I Like It)
Blunt. This slab of British disco was on the TOTP2 repeated special a couple of weeks ago and will be on the show again.

The Real Thing – Can’t Get By Without You
Two appearances for this perennial lover's soul favourite, both wiped. Again, we can only imagine who got the mustard coloured waistcoat this week.

Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
Someone must have really fancied this song's chances, this is its third of four appearances and it still never got above number 17. It's not like he was in the country for ages either, this is a repeat of his one studio visit, as is the next showing.

Pussycat – Mississippi
Losing out to the wiles of the archivers twice in a row! There's always a next time.

Starland Vocal Band – Afternoon Delight
Unlike for the Starlands ("they suck!"), who do a Can't Get By Without You. Shame Afternoon Delight never followed Morning Glory onto the show.

Gheorge Zamfir – Doina De Jale (Light Of Experience)
This is that strange entry denoted in the rundown by a man playing pan pipes, which became a hit after being used by a BBC religious programme called The Light Of Experience, described by the BFI site as "Series in which people relate experiences which have changed their lives". It's Ruby Flipper's turn for the week but the record seems a slight thing, surely far too slow and hesitant a melody to get much more than vague arm waving while crouched in blowsy sheet dresses out of.

ABBA - Dancing Queen
At least for sanity's sake we miss two of the six weeks this spent atop the pile.

TOTP 9/9/76 (tx 22/9/11): the great pub rock revival

2011-09-22T22:53:00.003+01:00

Something of a sea change for the rest of the 1976 run as all the remaining shows are half an hour long in their original form, so no excuse for editing from here on it (except possibly the show before Christmas which might run slightly long, and of course we don't yet know what slots the Christmas shows themselves get) The repeats are still on, though.

As a further aside, I liked this blog post about TOTP.

Jimmy Savile in charge, and as offputting as his bright orange tracksuit top with plunging neckline is as a hors d'oeuvre we only get a top half shot for now, which is a blessed relief for three or four minutes.

Eddie & The Hotrods – Get Out Of Denver
Punk! Well, it's not, it's rough-house pub rock by way of rockabilly as punk doesn't arrive in single form until late October and not on TOTP until May 1977, but in comparison insomuch as by this point they'd had a residency at the Nashville Rooms with Strummer's The 101ers and in February had booked the Sex Pistols as tour support only to drop them when at a preliminary gig at the Marquee Lydon smashed up their gear (getting the Pistols their first ever music press coverage, for what it's worth) This was from a live EP and sounds it too, the energy and enthusiasm somewhat stymied by the start of the performance being overlaid with a set design that says less rock'n'roll attitude and more One World Roots Festival 1998 logo and by an audience that don't yet know how to approach this music. Several people attempt some sort of solo jive. Two people with 'RODS' on the back of their jackets, having heard this all before, point at a monitor instead. Barrie Masters, with his migraine-inducing green squiggly jacket over bare chest, has been separated from the rest of his band by a pit full of youths. That band includes a bassist with the logo of the US fanzine Punk on his T-shirt and a drummer pointlessly in just his pants and very long stripy socks. It's not like he'd been sweating the whole night through to that point. Maybe it was his thing. Or he was on a bet. Towards the end the camera definitely, finally runs someone over as it closes in on Masters, swingingly briefly but wildly to the left before crash-zooming in on target. Jimmy then wanders on set, in front of that seperately projected backdrop, a bar too early with the visual effect still on so only his outline can be seen at first, and it's not a pretty outline. "Gonna go to number one, that, as it happens" he confidently predicts. It got to number 43, as it happened.

Twiggy – Here I Go Again
Someone's definitely got into the habit of not cutting Jimmy off when he starts rambling at the end of sentences, just letting him wind down like a Duracell bunny. "And how are all you ladies and gentlemen at home? Very well, we hope. Have a nice time. See you soon. Here's Twig." See you soon? Maybe he anticipated everyone drifting off during this, especially as it's the video with less of a budget than Pops had managed.

The Wurzels – I Am A Cider Drinker
Jimmy Saville surrounded by seamen. Don't. Three of the crew of HMS Daedelus "from the boiling high seas", as he puts it, which suggests he doesn't know that much about the properties of large expanses of water, or for that matter sense as he then calls them "the BBC seas". They don't manage everything, Jimmy. Wonder if the show was recommended by those bored pisstaking sailors in the crowd the other week, and if so what must these three men of the tides have made of the circumstances of the moment at which they had their television break. No sousaphones made their way through this week, so it's rags on sticks all round and collective knee bending. Bizarre as this possibility seems, I wonder if this is an orchestra job - they're definitely re-recorded vocals and the rhythm seems a little flat-footed. We do get the extra bits performed live, though. No samples here.

Lou Rawls – You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine
Haven't mentioned Jimmy's bottom half yet, and for a good reason - it's the smallest pair of red athletic shorts you'll see. You really do fear for shots from anywhere below. Surrounded by people in homemade T-shirts the slogans on which aren't entirely readable - 'MIKE AND MARTYN' something say two - Jimmy has help introducing a real hodge-podge, like Flick had three ideas and just couldn't decide, except that this week it really wouldn't be driven by the lyrics. Stage right, Floyd in a silver reflective suit and matching top hat waves a cane around, another of those short straw efforts he seems to keep being assigned (oh, just you wait for next week). Stage left, three of the girls do the time immemorial ostrich feather routine. Middle front, Cherry and Philip play out a modern morality dance part-trad part-mating ritual, Philip in an entirely car spray silver outfit with cape and hat attached to the top of said cape, Cherry with a toga/throw rug and a huge blue flower in her hair. Although everyone clearly goes through their own fulsome routines throughout it is this pairing that get the bulk of screen time and as you'd expect from that pairing there's an overflow of nods to camera - over the shoulder, little glance, the lot - though at least Philip isn't miming along this week. Jimmy, arm on a girl's shoulder, says "yes indeedy" four times in a row.

Cliff Richard – I Can't Ask For Anything More Than You
An advance in the director's art as we get the first few seconds actually off a studio monitor, later overlays giving the impression of infinite Cliffs. Well, it fills the big black space. It's another staging of the same falsetto-friendly arrangement, Cliff back in his too tight jeans as well as a small medallion. You wouldn't think he'd be the type.

Bay City Rollers – I Only Wanna Be With You
Now Jimmy's sitting down, giving those unsettingly thin pins a full airing. We're pretty much towards the end of Rollermania, with a new bassist sporting huge flares and barrelling through a cover without much due care and attention. Only Les even has tartan on, and that's on his shirt. There's a weird bit where a triangle appears at the top of a long shot of the stage with close-ups of the band members' heads as they work through the break. The orchestra adds an unwarranted triumphalist tone.

Kiki Dee – Loving And Free
How come Jimmy always gets the nurses on? It's established he does a lot of charity work, but that's no excuse to keep dragging on, as here, five ladies from Stoke Mandeville. If ever there was a time we needed orange overalls and awkward dancing it's now as Kiki and her fringe sits on a high stool and sings a light acoustic ballad that reeks of Two Ronnies middle bit.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
Same as last week. You'd better get used to this song. Oh yeah, IT'S NOT DOUCHE.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
Now Jimmy's surrounded by every female in the audience, some of whom are even listening. Presumably they still hadn't found a full broadcastable version of the video as this is a performance from something called ABBA In Australia (the whole thing is on YouTube). In a triumph of 1976 editing Jimmy is intercut to say goodbye before the end of the first verse and over the start of the chorus rather than a sensible point, given the whole clip goes on to be shown. It's not like people really knew it then as well as we know it now, after all. Costume is credited to 'Nicholas Rocker', who is a man that exists and has a costuming iMDB credit, but it seems presumptious to call that a costume, more something nicked from an athletics store cupboard.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #34: REM - Orange Crush

2011-09-21T21:40:00.003+01:00

Well, how's Simon Parkin meant to know what it's about? All REM songs were cryptic crosswords in tone around then. An expert team of musicologists are carefully examining this clip frame by frame for evidence of miming and are expected to report back shortly.

The disappeared: 2/9/76

2011-09-19T10:00:00.001+01:00

Another of the wipeouts comes next, this one with Diddy David Hamilton in charge, which is interesting for reasons I'll get to.

Pussycat – Mississippi
Unusually, at least so far, this is already in the top 30 and, though we haven't seen it yet in repeat run time, features a rundown shot featuring about as disturbing a shot of the three sisters' faces as could be managed. We'll see this anyway in due course.

Hot Chocolate – Heaven Is On The Back Seat Of My Cadillac
And we've already heard this, with Errol brandishing that mike stand as a weapon.

Tina Charles – Dance Little Lady Dance
And this will be on again too. It's that sort of chart season. It's a bit like I Love To Love and may not be given that sympathetic a reading by the orchestra.

The Real Thing – Can’t Get By Without You
This is on agai...oh, wait, only on another wiped show. Introducing lover's soul to the wah pedal of disco, we can only imagine what new mismatch of clothing is on show here. Well, we'll have to.

Barry Biggs – Work All Day
Biggs' next single is on, but this in context of what we've seen so far might have proved an interesting staging, an early lover's rock hit made for gesticulating with arms outstretched to an uncomfortably shifting audience of girls.

Wings - Let 'Em In
The second half of the show being four videos and a repeat. Did someone else need the studio at short notice?

Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
The repeat, not that there was much to really say about it last time.

Bryan Ferry – The Price Of Love
Jerry and all Bryan's other glamorous friends get another turn.

Rod Stewart – The Killing Of Georgie
And here we come to the true crux. Hamilton had the foresight to keep videoed copies of eleven of his twelve appearances on the show (between January 1976 and March 1977), finding some believed wiped in his archive in recent years and returning them to the BBC as part of one of their occasional appeals. The only such show still missing is this one, and if you ask us that more than likely is due to an incident he talks about now where a record company executive spiked his lunchtime drink and he took about twenty takes at this introduction as he kept calling the song The Killing Of Georgie Fame. The show's official tie-in book says he was sacked from the presenting rota after this. According to actual fact he was back six weeks later and another three times after that before moving to Radio 2 and out of youth culture. THE OFFICIAL BOOK, BBC. YOU HAVE FACTS AT YOUR DISPOSAL SO WHY NOT USE THEM. Here's all six minutes plus of the video, surely not all of which can have been shown. It's not exactly a laugh riot, especially when you know it's based on a true story of a friend of Rod's.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
As mentioned last time, when it entered the chart the BBC seemed to have an incomplete copy of the famous video that cuts the first half of the first verse out. Of the two shows currently on YouTube that cover their number one run the first takes a clip from another source, the second reverts to the proper video. This could be anything. Tommy Hunt's Loving On The Losing Side plays us out.

TOTP 26/8/76 (tx 15/9/11): prepared loads of material about Can, then BBC4 went and edited it out of the prime time version

2011-09-15T22:53:00.003+01:00

And that's despite featuring it in the introductory documentary. I SIGNED THAT PETITION AND THIS IS WHAT THEY DO? What did they consider appropriate?

Noel Edmonds going meta, for starters. Rattling his watch, bemoaning how he might miss Top Of The Pops if we don't get on with it, this is but the start of one of those weeks where his idea of presentation runs to nobody else's wise idea.

Rude reggae man of yore Judge Dread is at 30 with Y Viva Suspenders. We will not be seeing this at any point.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
No, he doesn't say "revved up like a douche" (it's "duece", as in the common name for the 1932 Ford coupe the Beach Boys popularised. Well, it's a Springsteen song, he'd be nothing without an ostentatious blue collar car to rev) A future radio friendly mini-classic to begin with, and a curious array of men to perform it. Firstly we see Manfred himself, looking about as Dutch as a man can in a half undone sailor top, but that's as nothing compared to singer Chris Thompson. Not only is he sporting long hair in curls and a purple hat with his glasses, but he's accessorised his T-shirt with a multicoloured Colgate stripe across with rainbow coloured braces. It's as if Rod, Jane and Freddy had lost a member to commercial prog. With the drummer stranded right across the far side of the stage from Mann's keyboard set-up about as far as he can go there's never a comfortable all-in camera shot of the whole band, let alone their massive banner which covers the mirror backdrop. Perhaps it was rustled up in a hurry after some of them fell off. The really long vocal fade halfway through seems to briefly confuse the director, pulling back about as far as he can. Noel calls it "accessibly sensible". Rock and roll!

The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
Ruby Flipper, of course, the first of many appearances tonight. It seems someone is trying to make a go of them at the death, especially the whole controversial mixed gender thing, as here we have three of the girls on podiums behind, up front on his own, an attempt by Floyd to assert his own credentials. Obviously having women gyrating bits in turn, Patti especially judging by the regularity of the close-ups of her hot pants, behind him means he's going to be playing second fiddle no matter where he stands, which might explain why his head bobbing, limb flailing turn is so manic, at least three times the speed of the females. Surely nobody choreographed this as much as just wound him up, possibly literally with reference to his tightly wound hair, and let him go. In a couple of weeks he'll be back... no, that would spoil things. The audience repay his energy by sitting down swaying while clapping to a much slower rhythm.

Robin Sarstedt – Let’s Fall In Love
The difficult second single, eh? For this sap beyond reproach Sarstedt has elected to wear the highest waisted trousers known to man and a lothario's slightly opened white shirt. However, he's still Robin Sarstedt, and as such it always seems he's making up in hair volume what he lacks in appeal. The Ladybirds taking off in a different key isn't helping either.

Acker Bilk – Aria
"What a beautiful song, what lovely words" Noel enthuses. Actually, he said it about a song that was edited out, but we doubt he'd have truly meant it in either case as it's just a device for him to go "if you really like lyrics... if you like to see someone singing words and really making them meaningful" and link into an instrumental. Yes, Mr Acker Bilk in the teeth of 1976's family pop roundelay is a very odd thing, especially as it's at funereal pace until joined by the sort of studio strings and drumbeat buskers these days have on a tape playing behind them. Noel is at pains to point out that Acker is "the one with the bowler hat, the one with the white dress was Sydney from Ruby Flipper". Patti, actually, Noel. Unless that was a joke, and if it was that was obscure even by your standards tonight.

The Chi-Lites – You Don’t Have To Go
Making an impromptu video out of 1930s cartoons used to be done quite a bit on the BBC and the Chi-Lites aren't exempt, their storming groove given this one, a Tex Avery no less, in a really ropey print. "Some delightful creatures on that film" Noel marvels.

James & Bobby Purify – Morning Glory
So engrossed is Noel in his concept intro about autumn fashion ("note the see-through jodphurs" he specifies, even though nobody is wearing them) that he forgets to name the song or artist. Finally Ruby Flipper are back to full strength, but Cherry's clearly in the doghouse after her leave of absence as she's pushed out to the side for most of the performance and covered in scarves and sashes even though her costume is as flimsy as those of her female colleagues. One of them manages to land over her face in closeup. Being Cherry, of course there's A Look To Camera, a boggle-eyed one at that. Although clearly enthusiastic to be back under the Colby yoke for a bit she also seems to be a little out of step with the choreographed moments for a lot of the time, and this is Top Of The Pops so they were hardly difficult. The men get shirts and plus-fours of a slightly glittery hue and Philip gets to work his Camp Walking Man schtick with a little bit of Bruce Forsyth Thinker thrown in. He keeps cutting into shot as if he knows the future of mixed sex TOTP dancing is under threat and after Floyd's spectacular affair earlier has to keep his face in the frame.

Cliff Richard – I Can’t Ask For Anything More Than You
Cliff Richard doing falsetto. Once heard, never to be forgotten. He seems to be on a stage of a new design being watched by nobody, which suggests nobody else wanted a part of it either. There's an odd moment towards the end when someone claps five times in quick succession and then stops, and not at a point where it could obviously have been finishing. Flick coaching her charges in the background in the art of simultaneous movement?

Gallagher & Lyle – Breakaway
I'm not going to attempt to transcribe Noel's entire intro here, in which he claims the duo are "more unpleasant than you could ever imagine human being being", because not only does it come from nowhere and have no punchline but he has to go on around the same subject for ages, growing progressively more tiresome than he already was. The restrained adult drivetime duo are the only ones lit at first, apart from a bassist caught in the reflected light, making it look as if they've turned up with a drumkit but no drummer. The secondary keyboard player has a triple decker of boards for no audible reason. Lots of slow pans from a high rostrum camera angle fill things out. Noel pretends to receive a wad of cash a little late in the sentence, and frankly the wrong side of the song, to 'change his mind'. Someone giggles.

Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The last time we'll get this (bar Christmas), thank goodness. It's at this point that Noel finds out what command he has over his audience. With Ruby Flipper warming up in front of him, he suggests they can't show the video again only to get shouted down before he's completed his sentence. That's how popular all that fake studio business was back then. Noel extricates himself from that cul-de-sac, just about, with "we want to dance!" Still in their Morning Glory gear Ruby Flipper oblige, paired off into two girls for every man before forming a big kicking chorus line, throughout which Floyd and Philip mime all the lyrics, the latter even when not clearly on camera. The girls meanwhile keep up their fixed rictus grins, except Cherry who appears to be on the verge of collapsing in helpless giggles. The manly men in the crowd have no reaction to the girls in their bras and tight pants right in front of them. In the background Noel is at first awkwardly shape shifting with the best of those around him and later when clearer in shot, though he can't surely have known, attempts to put two seperate girls off their jigging stroke through chat for which Noel still seems to be proffering his dead mike, and he has an arm around the second victim. What business could he be plotting? Whatever it's not immediately obvious as Noel throws from performance to credits by describing a room packed tight with people giving it the full kick-to-the-left-kick-to-the-right as "the retreat from Moscow set to music". The battle of Stalingrad, more like.

EDIT NEWS: Well, Can, as I just said. Editor permitting it should be on again in three shows' time, but you won't then get to see Noel calling them "an absolute wow" or specifying how they've come "a very, very long way indeed" as if they've never had Americans in the studio. Also a Stylistics video in which nobody is sitting down, and which looks like this. Oh, Noel. Noel, Noel, Noel.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #33: Sue Wilkinson - You Gotta Be A Hustler If You Wanna Get On

2011-09-13T10:00:00.000+01:00

One thread running through a lot of this Canon, and quite a few of the accepted faces of TOTP legend, is oddity or plain being out of place, the sense that should it get a high enough profile or sneak into the upper end of the charts anything could be presented to the prime-time pop kids. Originally titled You Gotta Be A Scrubber... but changed on the advice of the head of Radio 1, the late Wilkinson (she died of cancer in 2005) was a model and actress who had an in-house songwriting job and had worked with Chas Jankel of the Blockheads. This was released on Hendrix's manager Chas Chandler's label and hammered by a Radio 1 DJ - our source forgets which but thinks it may have been DLT. Those are facts. Actuality is something different as even by out of place's standards this represents an enigma, a plainly bizarre entry into the show's catalogue, as the kids would say a WTF. Here we have a monologuist on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a tremendous amount of cynicism only matched by the levels of subtle playing to camera. So many questions. Why is she standing like that? Why has the drummer (Don Powell of Slade, actually) set up a full kit if he only plays shaker and muted cymbal? What's with the ruler twanging on the edge of a table? What are the audience supposed to do for two and a half minutes?

2011-09-11T17:30:00.000+01:00

Got Spotify? Here's a playlist of the best of TOTP '76 so far. It's not everything that's been on, just a kind of extensive Hits So Far including everything I could find that's been played in the studio (including one that's been re-recorded by the singer 'alone', but it really couldn't be left out if we're compiling this thing authoritatively)

Put yourself in the picture: the other lot

2011-09-09T10:00:00.000+01:00

To conclude this week's rifling through yellowing copies of Radio Times - and again, big thanks to Steve Williams for locating and typing up all this week's output - something from that RT we began the week on, 30th September 1976. Rod Stewart had the cover to plug a documentary about him on The Lively Arts, and there's also a feature on the new series of Whistle Test, which began on Tuesday at 11.10. This is how proper grown-ups' music was described in the mid-70s:

It's far from old and grey yet, you can't whistle most of the music it broadcasts, but it certainly has passed the test of time and popularity. Pop music's lively television magazine programme, The Old Grey Whistle Test, begins its sixth year this week. The show is still young at heart, serious in purpose, proud of its pioneering and always ready with a few surprises.

Pop music wears so many faces these days, it fairly boggles the ear to define Whistle Test territory. You might call it 'album music' or durable contemporary pop. More ephemeral single hits get their moments on Top of the Pops, while middle-of-the-road music surfaces all around. Whistle Test, however, dwells on what's new and what's classic in serious quality pop.

Fans of the programme run the gamut of age and taste. Letters occasionally arive requesting earlier transmission so that ten year old Algernon can watch Paul McCartney's Wings flap, for instance. Conversely, there's the apocryphal tale of the pensioner who got such a tonic from a Whistle Test gig by Dr Hook and The Medicine Show that he wrote in to enquire if he could get Dr Hook on the National Health.

"We've gone out of our way to make it a music programme on television, not just a television programme with music," said Michael Appleton, Whistle Test's confident 39 year old producer. "Basically my idea is to mix acts and styles to widen the musical specturm of the audience. Of course. it's desigend to entertain, but I'm interested in educating as well. We approach pop as an enduring form of music." Appleton's dark beard was one of three that were bobbing at me at the Whistle Test GHQ at Television Centre, a sort of fall-out shelter surrounded by LPs instead of sandbags. Tom Corcoran, the director, supported a rakish little blonde goatee. The best known beard in the room belonged to the programme's long time presenter, Bob Harris.

In an era when the disc jockey or compere is more likely to 'sock it to you' with decibel overload, 'Whispering' Bob Harris, as he's affectionately called, suggests a country doctor who's just gently reassured you that the baby didn't swallow the weed-killer after all. Son of a former Northampton detective inspector, Bob, who is 30, was briefly a police cadet. He became of of two founding editors of London's Time Out magazine. Somebody at Radio 1 heard his dulcet voice and measured his encyclopaedic knowledge of pop, and he became a DJ, joining Whistle Test regularly on its second series.

Harris and Appleton are particularly proud of boosting new talent. Focus was a blur before the show, a clear success after. Alice Cooper was just on the way up, Babe Ruth was unknown - before they passed their whistle tests. Despite booking a significant roster of established stars, Appleton says, "I prefer new people to big names". Still, musicians at all stages of development have found that the show is a stimulus to their recording sales and general public appreciation.

The forty minute format generally takes two directions. The 'special', when the talent and theatre or studio are available, will become a concert - by the likes of Queen, Chick Coren, Rory Gallagher or Nils Lofgren. The more usual magazine format becomes a survey of what's current and choice in pop/rock/reggae/blues, generally built around a live interview. Harris clearly prefers the filmed interview, with the chance to edit to a high polish, but a live interview can yield some fun best left unedited.

For example, there was the record producer who lost his voice while in colloquy with 'Whispering' Bob - making it one of the quietest interviews in the history of television.

In a field where chaos is the order of the day, how do they plan shows?

Appleton and Harris listen to stacks of albums each week; they fairly eat vinyl for breakfast. While Appleton is in charge of the content, their taste runs in similar channels. Occasionally, Harris has said on camera he's not that overwhelmed with a track or an act, but always in good taste. "He's not a yes man," Appleton says, and he ought to know.

The Whistle Tester were eyeing a big scheduling board for the upcoming series, and there were many blank spaces. Only a special by Janis Ian was set. But there will be field trips to Amsterdam and West Berlin and Macon, Georgia, of all places, to devote shows to the best local talent available. Also in the works is a bit of classic Buddy Holly film, and some clips from a new film by Led Zeppelin. By next May, they hope to do a week of Rock Proms in stereo from an as yey undecided venue.

Whistle Test tries to launch each year with something extra special, like the Edinburgh reggae concert, the 10th Cambridge Festival or the Lennon interview. This year Appleton considered he's got a real treat for fans - Hard Rain, an hour's film of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue shot in Colorado by NBC and only just shown in the States.

Put yourself in the picture: the 1000th show

2011-09-08T10:00:00.001+01:00

For this cutting we go forward in Radio Times time, to 30th April-6th May 1983:

As milestones go, Thursday's celebration of 1000 Top of the Pops will be a bit special. A stereo link with Radio 1 and a parade of stars past and present will honour the longest-running pop show on television. Among the screenful of DJs in charge for the night will be JOHN PEEL. Here he reveals how his attitude to he show has changed over the years.

"Top of the Pops is a national disgrace. All it does is reflect the very worst of popular taste, with no effort being made to present anything remotely progressive or innovative. Anyone who appears on the thing should be ashamed of themselves."

The above, taken from a student newspaper, typifies the ill-tempered invective which has rained down on Top of the Pops over the past nineteen years; surly stuff from critics who neatly sidestep the fact that the programme has never had pretensions to advancing one rod, pole or perch beyond that which its name some unequivocally states.

As Top of the Pops regular Sara Norman remarked in an aside to your correspondent, although she cares for such non-chart bands as Weekend and Everything But The Girl, she doesn't believe they should be on the programme unless they have a hit single.

Producer Michael Hurll goes further. Top of the Pops makes no attempt to set fashions - although others would argue the point - or establish trends, he says. It is, however, "a form of access programme. If viewers buy the records, the artists appear on television. We can change the packaging, we can't change the content."

The content of the very first Top of the Pops, transmitted on New Year's Day 1964, from an unfrocked church in Manchester, hardly required changing. The line-up reads like an archivist's dream. The Beatles' I Want To Hold Your Hand was at number one, and the toothsome foursome appeared on film, as did Cliff Richard and The Shadows. Live in the studio, and miming as prettily as you like, were Dusty Springfield, The Dave Clark Five, The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Hollies and The Rolling Stones. The twisting and jitterbugging were in the charge of the Go-Jos, who were eventually to hand over the reins of office to Pan's People, from whom they passed in turn to the shortlived Ruby Flipper and Legs and Co, before coming to rest with Zoo.

Featured disc jockey on that first Top of the Pops was Jimmy Savile, who still surfaces from time to time to present the show. Savile was senior disc jockey when I made my debut on the programme in 1968. Half mad with terror, I forgot the name of Amen Corner and was banished into the outer darkness for 14 years, apart from a brief appearance as a mandolinist with The Faces in 1972.

Nowadays, in tandem with the hunky Canadian David 'Kid' Jensen, I crop up fairly regularly. Kid and I arrive in the studio at 3.30 and we are each handed a thirty-page document detailing every aspect of the impending programme, from the charts themselves to the names of the cheerleads. We seek out Michael Hurll for a brief discussion of the line-up, our roles in the proceedings and the preceding weekend's Football League action, before retiring into a corner to devise and rehearse our lively ad-libs.

At four o'clock we record the chart rundown and the Top Ten Video Show, the latter a recent innovation but already a popular feature of those Tops of the Pops that the Kid and I introduce. Once these have been recorded and approved, the stages are set for a dress rehearsal, something of a trial for Kid and myself, as our prettily-turned quips are usually met with huge indifference by the company, compelling us to retreat to the bar to reconsider our lines.

When we return to the studio the audience has been admitted. Sara Norman and her shipmate Caroline Wooden have, they compute, attended seven editions of Top of the Pops. Caroline enjoys coming to the studio because, as she remarks with engaging frankness, it is free. Also it provides Sara and Caroline with an opportunity to meet the bands whose records they buy. So far they have exchanged pleasantries with Blancmange, Bucks Fizz, Orchestral Manoeuvres, Soft Cell and Duran Duran.

Although the bands and, to a lesser extent, the disc jockeys are the focus of Top of the Pops, it is the cheerleaders who hold the live action together. As Caroline observes, the cheerleaders ensure that no one feels left out; they cajole the audience into dancing and generally create the required atmosphere.

It is not always easy for Kid and me to remember that we are working for the millions watching television, rather than the hundred or so gathered in the studio. Some of the latter, seeing the presenter as the only obstacle between them and a nationwide television debut, work hard at heaving us out of the way and the jostling for position can be pretty tough.

Michael Hurll says that the 1000th Top of the Pops will stick principally to the business of reflecting the week's charts, although about ten minutes of the 50-minute edition will be devoted to clips from earlier programmes. There will be, he concedes, 'a bit of a party atmosphere'. This will also be the first stereo Top of the Pops, with the celebrations being carried simultaneously on Radio 1.

One thousand editions on, Alan Freeman, who introduced the second Top of the Pops, admits that 'the programme is better than ever now'. And that ill-considered quote at the beginning of this article? Why, that was John Peel, interviewed in 1967.

Put yourself in the picture: the DJs

2011-09-07T10:00:00.002+01:00

In case you like me were wondering, either side of Peel are Paul Gambaccini (yes) and Tom Browne. A handful were interviewed therein for that special edition, and here are a selection of their thoughts:

Tony Blackburn on who he is
"I think my job is to be artistic in sound. I think I'm painting a portrait in sound. I'm also trying to entertain the audience. My show is what I call U-rated entertainment... something which goes into the home and will not offend anyone at all."

Dave Lee Travis on his role
"My function is to enlighten the listeners by guiding them towards new music which they might not have heard otherwise and, like any other disc jockey or pop star, I'm there to amuse the listeners and be a friend in the home. You can't really do more because it isn't a political thing and it isn't your place to start discussing politics."

Kid Jensen on what he is
"A broadcaster - a communicator, and perhaps a friend. I like to have a lot of fun on the radio... And often when I go on live gigs I feel rather like a politician because, like a politician, a disc jockey obviously has to be liked by people."

Dave Lee Travis on saving lives
"Whenever I have to read a motoring flash, I always try to put a little bit extra into it. If only one person listens to what I say when he's driving along the motorway at 70 miles an hour virtually up the exhaust pipe of the car in front and in the driving rain, and if I have the effect of making him think for a moment how silly he is and thus make him pull back a bit, then it's been worthwhile."

Tony Blackburn on progress
"I think people take popular music too seriously. At the moment everyone's talking about punk rock. That will probably last for another two weeks and then be replaced by something else. But all the time there are a number of good artists, not affected by the trends, who keep on turning out good records year after year."

Dave Lee Travis on not being Bill Grundy
"Punk rock is exciting and good for the entire business. Eighty per cent of it may be rubbish, but the other 20 per cent might be good. And I'm sure that out of punk rock will come some good, new and exciting bands."

Kid Jensen on enlightenment
"I read a lot of Zen, but I would never mention that over the air. I can't impose my own views in that way."

Tony Blackburn on forseeing modern day commercial radio
"If I were in charge of a popular music station I would rotate the same 30 records all day"

Incidentally, these interviews are accompanied by photos of the DJs with pop stars they like and know: Tony and Cliff, Jensen and Linda Lewis, DLT with Hot Chocolate, Patrick Olive in a ridiculous white boiler suit. Annie Nightingale, who I've not included for synchronicity reasons, is with Eric Clapton.

While the big pile of RTs is out, let's focus on the RT Generation Game Christmas Special of 1974, which as well as various games and interviews with Brucie with stuff also includes quizzes, recipes, "Old Took's Almanac", a huge pic of Pan's People with a caption on how they stay in trim ("Dee Dee Wilde 34-24-35, 5ft 5in does The Dirty Dog - good for diaphragm and legs") and a photo shoot with all the Radio 1 DJs, apart from Noel, and their tips for 1975. So that's...

TONY BLACKBURN with DESIGN
"They fill a slot with the departure of The New Seekers and appeal to both youngsters and their mums. Now the only thing the have to do is get the right song."

JOHNNIE WALKER with CHAPMAN WHITNEY
They both come from Leicester and were founders of Family which they dissolved so they could develop their own ideas. "I dont like categorising music, it's either good or bad. Chapman Whitney's is good."

STUARTY HENRY with TRAX
A soul group brought up within the sound of Bow Bells. "They've got a nice tight soul sound which is synonymous with the States. You've got to combine visual gimmicks with good sounds and they have both."

DAVID HAMILTON with JIM CAPALDI
The drummer from Traffic who's recently issued a solo album of his own compositions, strongly influenced by what's happening around him. "He's now becoming a commercial musician, writing material for hit songs and is thinking commercially. The business needs solo stars and Jim has the talent to become that."

JOHN PEEL with BE-BOP DELUXE
Bill Nelson who was reforming his band is a blues rock guitarist from Yorkshire with a successful first album behind him. "I've followed his career and given him some fatherly advice. He's a good guitarist, plays with a bit of attack - tearing into a solo like he's been waiting to play. You haven't heard that sound since Hendrix died."

PAUL BURNETT with SPARKS
The Mael brothers came over from The States and successfully reformed Sparks. "Musically speaking, they are starting afresh and provide us with a picture which is quite separate from the sound."

EMPEROR ROSKO with JOHN MILES
A Geordie who started his musical career at 15 backing Billy Fury. Now a solo act, which is highly rated in discos. "John is in the same category as Rod Stewart. He's got a gutsy singing voice and writes and plays most instruments in the musical spectrum. It's only a matter of time." (the picture of Miles is very different from his Music look,
sporting long hair and huge platform boots)

ED STEWART with BAY CITY ROLLERS
Started in Edinburgh five years ago, most recent hit was Summer Love Sensation. "The Rollers sell colour, personality and freshness. They have a happy sound that people want to watch, listen and dance to."

DAVE LEE TRAVIS with ROCK REBELLION
Once backed Screaming Lord Sutch, now a rock'n'roll band in their own right. "They're one of the tightest rock'n'roll bands in the country. Brilliant! Rock Rebellion's live gigs are fantastic. They have drive, much too good to be passed over."

ALAN FREEMAN with KIKI DEE
She started at 16, mostly in cabaret and was the first white lady on the Motown label. She always felt misdirected until Elton John recognised her great soul sound and signed her on. "At last she's been given the chance and the facilitis to develop her enormous talent and potential. She's a natural singer."

Put yourself in the picture: TV

2011-09-06T10:00:00.000+01:00

So what accompanied TOTP on BBC1 Thursday nights in September 1976? Well, with all specific listings corresponding to the 30th (for which the corresponding show won't be on until mid-October, but never mind)...

3.55 PLAY SCHOOL
Presenters FLOELLA BENJAMIN, JOHNNY BALL and JON GLOVER
4.20 ASTRONUT
More adventures of space traveller Astronut and his earthbound pal Oscar
4.25 JACKANORY
With MICHAEL JAYSTON
Princess Spindrift by SHEILA MACDONALD
4.40 BLUE PETER
with JOHN NOAKES, PETER PURVES, LESLEY JUDD
From Blue Peter: Inside The Archives, a complete and comprehensive BP episode guide compiled by former editor Richard Marson published in 2008 and just about still in publication, we know that the series started on the 13th with 'JOHN ON CRUTCHES AFTER GO WITH NOAKES FILMING MISHAP', on Thursday 16th 'WATER SAVING TIPS' (well, it was 1976) sat uneasily alongside 'WOMBLES WEATHER MACHINE + PA "RAINMAKER"', by Monday 27th they were on to 'BBC TEA LEAVES FROM CANTEEN FOR COMPOST', and the 30th offered 'SUB LOO AND PERISCOPE' and 'PENGE JUNIOR LATIN GIRLS TEAM'.
5.5 JOHN CRAVEN'S NEWSROUND
5.10 THE ODDBALL COUPLE
Elegant Spiffy and Messy Fleabag have nothing in common except a habit of falling into the same kind of trouble.
5.35 NOAH AND NELLY
in SklArk
Told by RICHARD BRIERS and PETER HAWKINS
5.40 EVENING NEWS
with KENNETH KENDALL
5.55 NATIONWIDE
The scene Nationwide co-ordinated this week by MICHAEL BARRATT, FRANK BOUGH, DILYS MORGAN, VALERIE SINGLETON and BOB WELLINGS
6.45 TOMORROW'S EUROPE
from the Royal School of Artillery, Larkhill. RAYMOND BAXTER, WILLIAM WOOLLARD, MICHAEL RODD and JUDITH HANN look at the prospects for European collaboration on weapons for the rest of the 20th century. Will European countries pull together to achieve more punch per pound, or wore separately to win the battle for lucrative arms exports in a European tug of war? If you were a Middle East defence minister, would you buy British or French missiles? German or British submarines? A German-Italian-British field gun? Or simply buy American?
(This series began on September 16th, preceded by Bellamy's New World)
7.10 TOP OF THE POPS
Introduced by DAVE LEE TRAVIS
TOP OF THE POPS ORCHESTRA
RUBY FLIPPER (though this was their last showing in the six-strong lineup)
Musical Director JOHNNY PEARSON; Choreography FLICK COLBY; Sound KEITH GUNN; Associate Producer PHIL BISHOP; Producer BRIAN WHITEHOUSE
7.40 HAPPY EVER AFTER
Starring TERRY SCOTT and JUNE WHITFIELD
Mistaken identity can lead to all sorts of problems, especially if you're Terry.
8.10 KOJAK
Another episode starring TELLY SAVALAS as Police Lieutenant Theo Kojak, a tough cop with a tough job in a tough town - New York.
9.0 NINE O'CLOCK NEWS
with KENNETH KENDALL
9.25 SAILOR
A frank account of life on the ocean waves in one of Her Majesty's ships. A series of ten programmes.
9.55 GANGSTERS
A series of six programmes by PHILIP MARTIN with AHMEA KHALIL, ELIZABETH CASSIDY, PAUL ANTRIM, PAUL BARBER, ALIBE
PARSONS, SAEED JAFFREY and MAURICE COLBOURNE as John Kline
Incident 4 - On the top of a modern skyscraper block, there is a general falling out of friends. Can John Kline avoid execution at the hands of three gunman? What is the extent of his partner Dermot Macavoy's treachery?
10.45 TONIGHT
with its nightly look at some of the people and topics that provoke, entertain, worry or interest us. DENIS TUOHY is in the Tonight studio and Tonight's reporters are out and about at home and abroad.
The Day Debate: ROBIN DAY examines an important topical issue with the people involved.
11.25-11.29 WEATHER
JACK SCOTT with prospects for this weekend and October

Meanwhile, BBC2 has Play School and the Labour Party Conference, then Open University between five and seven, and then...

7.10 TAKE ANOTHER LOOK
at The Beginning of Life
Throughout the animal kingdom, the creation of new life from an egg and a sperm is a both beautiful and mysterious process. Narrator ERIC THOMPSON
7.30 NEWSDAY
Presented by MICHAEL CHARLTON and CHARLES WHEELER, including every Thursday UK REPORT from BBC news correspondents in Britain, with ROBIN DAY at the Labour Party Conference. Newsreader PETER WOODS.
8.5 DIARY OF A VILLAGE
One year in Heddington, Wiltshire. A documentary serial in eight parts.
8.35 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The new monthly edition of THE BOOK PROGRAMME in which guest critics review a selection of the month's top titles in conversation with ROBERT ROBINSON. This month's critics are RICHARD HOGGART, GERMAINE GREER and MICHAEL BILLINGTON
9.0 THE HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL: OKLAHOMA!
11.15 LATE NEWS ON 2
11.25-11.30 CLOSEDOWN
MARTIN MUNCASTER reads THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN by WH AUDEN

Put yourself in the picture: radio

2011-09-05T10:00:00.002+01:00

It's another week off for TOTP on BBC4, which means a week of special content. The Alternative Canon has been put away for the immediate moment, though, in favour of something that might give a rounder picture of TOTP and of BBC music of the time. Comments box regular and Creamguide editor Steve Williams has gone through his back issues of Radio Times to dig out some worthwhile material relating to what we discuss here. First off, as it's something the presenters rarely fail to plug at the end, here's the Radio 1 schedule for the weekdays beginning 27th September:

6.0 As Radio 2
7.0 NOEL EDMONDS
9.0 TONY BLACKBURN
12.0 PAUL BURNETT
including at 12.30 NEWSBEAT with LAURIE MAYER
2.2 DAVID HAMILTON (Also on Radio 2 VHF)
4.30 IT'S DLT OK!
5.45 NEWSBEAT
6.2 As Radio 2
11.0 JOHN PEEL (Also on Radio 2 VHF)
12.0-12.5 As Radio 2

The simulcasting was due to BBC cutbacks the previous year, dropping a lot of live coverage, specialist shows and several DJs, including Stuart Henry and Bob Harris. In Peel terms it was the year of the inaugural Festive 50 and also the year he started finding out about punk - he'd already seen the Pistols live but by this time really only had the first Ramones album, which he'd got hold of in May, to play. Which he did. A lot.

On Saturday:
6.0 As Radio 2
8.6 WALLY WHYTON with JUNIOR CHOICE
10.0 New series - KID JENSEN
Radio 1's new music man with two hours of the best sounds around
12.0 PAUL GAMBACCINI
1.31 SUTHERLAND BROTHERS' TOP 12
The Sutherland Brothers talk to Brian Matthew and choose their 12 favourite records to make up an imaginary album
2.30 ALAN FREEMAN
5.31 New series - IT'S ROCK 'N' ROLL
Pure unadulterated rock 'n' roll introduced by STUART COLMAN. This week's studio guests - SHAKIN' STEVENS AND THE SUNSETS and the latest releases are reviewed by GEOFF BARKER.
6.30 IN CONCERT
FRANKIE MILLER'S FULL HOUSE and STEVE GOODMAN introduced by PETE DRUMMOND
7.30-12.33 As Radio 2

Emperor Rosko had been presenting that Saturday morning slot but left to return to America due to family illness, necessitating a slight switch round - his show was on til 1pm, then Top 12, then Fluff from 2, then Gambo 5-6.30. Kid Jensen - nickname given by Paul Burnett, apparently, and professionally stuck until he was 31 - had been at Radio Luxembourg since 1968, when he was 18, and was clearly thought highly of at the BBC as he was joined the TOTP roster in November (wiped, unfortunately) Gambaccini had begun his long running US charts rundown a year later. Freeman's brief included classical music. Yeah, the BBC weren't entirely sure what the station was yet.

Colman's story is an interesting one - having been bassist in a band called The Flying Machine who had a Billboard top ten single, in 1976 he jointly organized a march to the BBC protesting about the lack of rock and roll music on the station. The corporation called his bluff and called him in. It's Rock 'N' Roll lasted for three months, playing classic rock'n'roll and live recordings, before being replaced by Alexis Korner's blues and soul show, but a little while later Epic got him to produce his mate Shaky and Colman was at the controls for his initial run of success, including This Ole House, Green Door and Oh Julie. Meanwhile he was extending his brief with slots on BBC Radio London and a weekly Melody Maker column, as well as producing anyone who wanted a 1950s vibe to their songs and eventually the Cliff Richard and the Young Ones Comic Relief version of Living Doll as well as the Mel Smith and Kim Wilde Rocking Around The Christmas Tree.

And on Sunday...

6.55 As Radio 2
8.0 PLAYGROUND
Magazine programme of special interest to young listeners introduced by DAVID RIDER and including YOUNG IDEAS IN ACTION
8.32 WALLY WHYTON with JUNIOR CHOICE (Ed Stewart evidently being on holiday)
10.0 SIMON BATES with ALL THERE IS TO HEAR
1.0 JIMMY SAVILE
1.0 The Double Top Ten Show; 2.0 Speakeasy
3.0 ANNE NIGHTINGALE'S REQUEST SHOW
5.0 INSIGHT
A magazine programme that takes a close look at the people, events and developments that influence today's pop music, introduced and edited by STUART GRUNDY
6.0 TOM BROWNE with the TOP 20
7.0-12.33 As Radio 2

Playground, as the scheduling suggests, was a show for younger listeners which features Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin as sidekicks. Bates had been at the station only since July, moving from, oddly, Radio 2 and taking over from Paul Burnett. Insight is described here as "a series about those with a special interest, e.g. humour, surfing, stars from the midlands."

TOTP 19/8/76 (tx 1/9/11): the doors of perception

2011-09-01T20:31:00.002+01:00

Just to say the usual cut and thrust of the active comments box will have to do without me for a week or so (that's why this is up so early, almost all of it had to be written in advance off YouTube uploads so I could get it up tonight), but for next week's repeat-blank week I've dragged in a regular commenter of televisual archival note to electronically reproduce some excellent written archive material.

It's another Dave Lee Travis conceptual opening, I'm afraid. Using some doors, the purpose of which you'll see later, he opens a door outwards on one half of the screen and says hello to himself coming inwards through the same door on the other half. At least it shows mirror image effects are quickly progressing.

Hot Chocolate – Heaven Is On The Back Seat Of My Cadillac
It's a Brit-funk odyssey with which to begin, and one that at the off uses the changing tones effect we last saw on the 5000 Volts backline on their fabled first appearance. Errol has bought a portable mic stand like Freddie Mercury's and has decided on his own form of outre garments, sporting loads of necklaces and a Olympic medal size-besting medallion as well as a sparkly bolero jacket and silver trousers with the sort of tremendously high waist that we seem to be learning was incredibly fashionable back then. They're not as tight as some have managed, but they're getting there. Well out in front of his bandmates it's already clear that he's being groomed as the face of some interchangeable men. He and most of his band's crazy feet just can't keep still to the rhythm either. Some late fish eye lens work demonstrates... that... the BBC had a fish eye lens and they wanted to use it, but we already knew this from a year of closing credit abuse. Given the vigorous thrusting he's carrying off with it we must just cut away before Errol can consider actively grinding the mike stand. Awkwardly, DLT does his next link from between audience front and stage with a crane shot swooping in from the back of the room, which means we get to see his own unsure bop. He lands his cue perfectly from range, though.

David Dundas – Jeans On
"Hit sound three", a new iteration of the more common "number three sound" line, with "a few young people you may well recognise". Same as we saw last week.

5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
"I'm very sad to say this record stayed at number eight this week - it's got to go higher next week, it's fantastic!" DLT chides, before delivering the band name in an approximation of Barry White's tone. Amazingly/desperately they actually came into the studio on four seperate occasions even though their box of stagecraft tricks was pretty much up after two. Linda, the Lynn Faulds-Wood of lover's disco, has trousers on. Guitarist Martin Jay, of errant talkbox fame, is sporting an open mustard coloured waistcoat and nothing underneath. It was the times. For the record, as this is where 5000 Volts and TOTP part company after a storied run: Jay later helped out Tight Fit and is now in a corporate entertainment band, his CV listed therein claiming work with Take That, Jason Donovan, Sonia, Michael Ball, David Essex, Cockney Rebel, Buggles, Twiggy, Mike Batt, P J Proby and Bombalurina (Timmy Mallett, then). Sadly Kelly died in 1998.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
A new entry at 26. The video, which surely everyone knows. It's too obvious! There's nothing to be gleaned or learnt from it! Well, except for DLT's outro line, "I'll dedicate that one specially to David Hamilton, he loves that record". Did he? Or is that a 'Queen'-related diss? If so it's not lasted the ages.

Bryan Ferry – The Price Of Love
And still Bryan can't be bothered to come into the studio. He's lost his own pimp tache but not Jerry Hall's attention as she gets to wave a cushion around as other women generally look coquettishly to camera in slow motion.

Wings – Let 'Em In
Here's perhaps the most unrepossessing thing DLT has ever said, and there's plenty of competition.

Ringing the bell apparently caused temporary but virulent seasickness in the mid-70s. Those of you with 42" plasma screen sets, let us all know how that bit came across. There's really too much stuff to discuss in so scattershot an interpretation, the fourth in just this run of Macca-related songs. Still no Cherry (I think we can do away with TOCG if she's not going to be omnipresent and nobody on the show mentions a thing about her exits and forthcoming re-entrance), so everyone's trying to take her crown as expressive ruler. Having made a fine effort last week Lulu seems to be less than convincing (what is she doing at 2:31? Dietrich as a defrocked nun?) and despite Patti's best come-on efforts it seems to be the men making the headway, specifically Philip at 1:18 - a future as a Duncan Norvelle stunt double eluded that lad - and then the sequence starting at 2:33 with implied Dr Hook-style homoeroticism then, after some vigorous arse-waggling, Floyd... well, you tell me, but it might be connected to his 3:05 hustling. Wonder whose insistence the bit just after that came from. A routine for this must have been decided well in advance as I can't imagine those doors were just lying around in a BBC stock cupboard in those designs but there's not that much actual dancing in it. There's some leaning and forearm work, and then about halfway through some fancy walking after which Floyd tries to style it out while heading backwards. Opening and closing doors does not qualify as dancer choreography. DLT says something about a cat flap, perhaps as distressed as the rest of us.

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
After that we needed familiarity, and the video shot on the cloudiest day possible gives us that. DLT makes some gag about needing a security guard around Harley's props, suggesting erroneously that this was somehow made at the BBC's expense when we've just seen what extra levels the LE department can reach given the right musical impetus. "Here comes the rain should be the title of the next one!" DLT ungallantly suggests.

Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
Firstly, flagrancy from the drummer has to be pointed up. He's playing above his hi-hat! It's not at all moving. Green doesn't come across as the most charismatic performer, and when TOTP has played the instrumental version of your song over the end credits last time out maybe you need to be forceful, which may have been why he has a flautist with a droopy moustache standing right next to him. Unusual instrumentation and of its time facial hair is always a winner. The only other detail that can add light and shade to a fairly rote disco makeweight is that Green, who you may also note is the only person making his debut on the repeat run tonight, and 5000 Volts share a Best Of for no connective reason I can work out.

Twiggy – Here I Go Again
DLT is leaning on some bongos as "my knees are going to go weak", apparently because Twiggy has grown her hair. As he then goes on to highlight her "gorgeous voice" he might just be being kind above and beyond. She's changed into a purple dress and red boots and her vocal's been turned up a bit but very little is otherwise different, right down to her placing on the set and the picture montages against lights and second angle shots.

Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Look, I haven't got much time this week to mess about with this again. Even DLT sounds bored, complaining "do I really need to tell you?" Afterwards is a curiosity, though, as while wearing a glittery hat with elastic under the chin he tells us "there will be a new number one next week". Eh? Without spoilering he couldn't have known whether there would be. Maybe he meant 'may be'. Or maybe he had a touch of the Ortis Deleys. Anyway, the Stylistics' 16 Bars sees us out. Next time out on the 15th there's only one song you'll have seen before on here, and not before time.

EDIT NEWS: Edits within edits, for the most part, as for some reason BBC4 decide to squeeze as much of the whole show on as possible, maybe out of repeat-fuelled boredom. That's surely the only reason they'd keep Steve Harley in again. Oddly, though, Dancing Queen losing half a verse seems to be in the original broadcast, though it's not as if nobody's ever heard it and doesn't know that it comes out of the introductory chorus with "anybody could be that guy". Johnny Wakelin still misses out, though, which is a shame if only for the intro where DLT has two girls on each arm and nearly drags one backwards off the stage as he tells us kids are resultantly rushing out to buy tom-toms. Are they? Are they really?

The disappeared: 12/8/76

2011-08-29T12:00:00.000+01:00

The second of eight missing shows from this run would have gone here, and as well as depriving Tony Blackburn of his repeat fee this is what we're missing out on.

The Equals – Funky Like A Train
But a train isn't funky. (Though this is a title that has left me spending the last five minutes going "there is nothing you can name that isn't funky like a traaaaaaaain..." to myself. Yeah, I know.) It does include a train impression, though. Like the New Seekers in a way, the Equals were very much yesterday's band by this point, Baby Come Back ten years past. I don't even know if that's Eddy Grant leading - he's credited withn production and writing but every other source says he left the group in 1976. No, it didn't chart, but it's great rare groove funk and it would have been great to see how this was presented.

Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
Woodland, multilayered beard, affectionate chest stroking, you know the drill.

Starland Vocal Band – Afternoon Delight
"And here's some people that are certainly an afternoon delight, Ruby Flipper!" Really can't imagine what sort of routine they could all have got out of this soft rock, even if it did come with none too subtle allusions that must have got Flick sweating profusely.

Status Quo – Mystery Song
Rick's chest, Francis' blow-wave, Alan Lancaster's posing, you know the drill.

Guys'n'Dolls – If Only For The Good Times
You know how I said this episode had been wiped?

Maybe it's from one of the band's private collection, there's certainly enough of them. David Van Day and Thereza Bazar, the future Dollar, are in there, as is Bruce Forsyth's daughter. For such an auspicious occasion that wedding cake tier stage has been built right up to almost vertigo inducing levels. Maybe someone gets thrown off it after the edit point.

The Chi-Lites – You Don’t Have To Go
Oddly, that link is to a near future TOTP where a video of 1940s cartoon clips, as was de rigeur around that time, was presented as this song's video, but in this week they were in the studio, it says here.

Jimmy James and the Vagabonds – Now Is The Time
Eye-popping from Jimmy, wide collared red shirts and grey blazers for the Vagabonds, anti-revolutionist zeal, you know the drill.

Tavares – Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel
The video, though you sort of know what the video of a 1970s dancing soul collective would look like by now.

The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
This one exists as well, as it's a Ruby Flipper performance that was repeated two weeks later. Spoiler alert: no TOCG! (A NOCG, perhaps) But loads of Floyd!

James & Bobby Purify – Morning Glory
Ver Flipper do this one too in two weeks' time, TOTP having shown the video this week. Lots of videos this week. As I say, the music industry was on holiday.

Cliff Richard – I Can’t Ask For Anything More Than You
But Cliff never takes a holiday! Having been buoyed by Devil Woman's success he somewhat ill advisedly decides to sing half of this one in falsetto, maybe because his producer suggested it was the way to make him into a new disco star and/or maybe because he's really easily led.

Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Pink overalls, smug expressions, awkward dancing together, you know the drill. Credits spotlight on Lou Rawls, y'all, and You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.