TOTP 8/12/77 (tx 20/12/12): Christmas double issue

Tony Blackburn in his casual golfing top welcomes us, Donna Summer's Love's Unkind takes us down the countdown, and we all get to admire the inch-perfect skill of the designer.



Generation X – Wild Youth
A close-up of a guitar? With Tony around are we in A Bit Of That Sort Of Rock mode? We're certainly in the bleach'n'sneer department for Gen X's second appearance but the first we've seen on telly, though Billy, gloves to match his leather jacket, really has to try and gain the gaps where he can do that lip snarl thing. The guitarist meanwhile has the drooping blonde fringe that the Police would sport for a bit and Birdland would later take up. (Hands up who thought Birdland would get a relevant reference on here?) Tony James on bass manages to break his strap and has to perform some running repairs in the break. By the end Billy's just shouting and James has abandoned the instrument almost completely, lifting it high on the punch-along beat.

Hot Chocolate – Put Your Love In Me
"Here's a group that never made a bad record" Tony avers. It's another triumph of the directorial art, using both fish-eye lens and fading shots of the band members in turn up over a long shot of the stage before Errol gets to do his straight-faced, big-collared thing in closeup. Then on the way towards the end the effects budget gets blown for another week as everything briefly goes into flickering psychedelic colours, violins cascade, Errol hits a falsetto note or two and then things just continue as if nothing untoward had happened.

Chic – Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah)
Or as Tony calls them, Chick. No Francophile he. Nile Rodgers tells a story of coming to TOTP in 1975, we think with Labelle, and having only known genre divided radio up til then was surprised to find following them on stage at the recording of what he'd been told was this big modern pop show was Mike Reid's telling of The Ugly Duckling. He's not here, it's Legs & Co in their showgirl outfits, shiny boob tubes/small tops and pants each with a trailing set of feather boas like psychedelic Pepe le Pews and a matching armband. Dancing under a set of geometric shapes hung from the ceiling that wobble occasionally just as the girls move under them there's very much a flapper dancing vibe going on, though you can't really get away with much else dressed like that.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band – California
"I was in California a little bit earlier on this year, and to sing all about that here's Manfred Mann's Earth Band". Either the song actually is about Tony's holiday, which seems unlikely if not overdoing it, or it's not the greatest holiday destination tip I've ever heard. The guitarist, looking like a lost member of 10cc, opens by strumming his guitar unconvincingly before his singing colleague, who with beard and woolly hat seems to be a prototype for Badly Drawn Boy, except in a barely forgiveable rainbow jumper that even a Playaway host would pass by, exudes. It sounds like American country rock, as so many tried to back then. It turns out, though, that it's the drummer we should have been watching, as not only is he wearing a massive headband despite being bald but he bursts out laughing at the guitar solo, surely something he'd be used to by now.

Bonnie Tyler – It’s A Heartache
The show seems to have been edited by pinning the 3.5" videotape to a wall and firing a staple gun at it. Bonnie's back, a vision in a country singer white suit. No room for band theatrics this week with a tiny stage, but she sounds like she's getting used to her new voice. Tony makes sure to credit her as being from "beautiful Wales".

The Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love
"Number five in our sensational chart", they're under the lights again. This time with audio wobbles!

Graham Parker & The Rumour – New York Shuffle
The smallest man in pub rock returns! Still in shades, as expected, the Rumour run through some rhythm and blues (as opposed to rhythm and rock) enlivened when Parker joins in the guitar solo by mouthing it right at camera with a circular mouth as if he were a particularly rock-conversant goldfish, all while pumping his right arm to indicate some form of excitement. We lose Bing Crosby's White Christmas here presumably for film rights reasons, though it used to be a staple of TOTP2's festive show. Still, we jump straight on to a song that's just as legendary...

The Banned – Little Girl
Yeeeees. In all senses of the drawn-out sucking of air through teeth. The Banned were members of prog rockers Gryphon chancing it for the quick buck - their past members list on Wiki includes such delights as Rick Mansworth, Ben Dover, Tommy Steal and naturally John Thomas - though with their clipped, reedy riffs, Mockney singing drummer, skinny ties and cheap shades they actually seem to have accidentally invented new wave. Halfway through drummer Paul Sordid - that doesn't even work! - in his cream scarf runs to the proper mike and with the beat merrily carrying on regardless he goes through the motions of pointing and glaring through the shades. The audience look appropriately bemused. "I love that one" Tony lies.

Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
Tony slings his arm around a woman who seems less than enthused about the prospect and introduces a clip we're just going to have to get used to. The gift that keeps on giving, Belfast sees us out.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.