Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #2 - February 9th 1984: When You Want To Suck And Chew It

Episode Date: January 16, 2017

The second edition of the podcast which asks: who would win in a massive cage fight amongst Radio 1 DJs of the 70s and 80s? This episode, we enter the late winter of George Orwell’s visionary magnum opus – but not even in his worst nightmares would he have imagined the Ministry of Pop Telly trying (and failing) to throw the No.1 single down the memory hole. And a Top 40 with two Thompson Twins entries. Thankfully, we’re spared both of them, but what we actually get is cow-heavy and laden with the musk of the lower reaches of the charts, heavily influenced by the Channel Fourification of pop music, and overseen by Dave Lee Travis and his YTS lad Gary Davies. The Smiths make their second appearance, Nik Kershaw models the 2048 Little Chef uniform, Madness give up doing the Bummer Conga and go all serious, and we’re shocked to learn that Madonna isn’t black. And Marillion see fit to bring eight synths into the studio when there’s really no need. Al Needham is joined by David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes in a serious pick amongst the brightly-coloured rags of the mid-Eighties, and check for stains. Sorry for the delay on this: there’s been technical mither we need not go into. (loads of swearing and explicit descriptions of what eleven year-olds think Paul McCartney does) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're doing a survey about heavy metal music. Come on, surprise me. Say it's brilliant, please. Say it's brilliantly cold. It's brilliant. You don't have to. What do you like listening to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music.

Hey up, you pop-crazy youngsters, and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that reaches down the back of the settee of old episodes of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host, my wingman, the wingco, David Stubbs. How are you, David? How do you do? Not so bad, not so bad.

And as always, we have a third opinion. In this episode, it's another former Melody Maker writer, Taylor Parks. Alright. So, Taylor, as always, when we have a new guest, we ask two questions. First one is, when did you start watching Top of the Pops? It was always there.

It was always there. Virtually my first memory is the Bohemian Rhapsody video Chilled to the Marrow by Brian May's looming Isaac Newton face. Yeah. When was it not there? Never.

Did you watch it with your family? No, I had my own place. No, yeah, of course I was. Yeah. When was it not there? Never. Did you watch it with your family? No, I had my own place. No, yeah, of course I was. Yeah, but, you know, it was family entertainment, wasn't it? That was the, when you watch the old ones, this is what comes across. It's, they've got one eye on the family. Well, both eyes on the family.

It's not really a rock and roll experience it's a it's like a variety show oh but yeah okay when did you stop watching top of the pops probably about the same time as i stopped doing lots of other things so david what's been what's been going on since we last spoke oh you had a book launch didn't you i did have a book launch yeah 1996 and the end of history I mean everyone who's doing these kind of books about years at the moment like John Savage in 1966 and so it just looks like

I'm third tagger along on a bandwagon but I swear I didn't know they were doing those books when I started doing this which goes back a long long way but I just thought that 1996 would be a perfect year to kind of home in on because it was a sort of, it was the apex of something slightly hideous, but in a way the kind of the end, the impending end of things,

the end of the 20th century, just obviously temporarily, but also culturally. The 21st century, you know, as it came, you know, did bring with it things, you know, like the internet, things like the effective end of both rock and pop music i think as we knew it um so it just seemed you know appropriate 20 years on and all that uh like the book out on the subject excellent and a book i've read recently man really enjoyed it oh nice one cheers um and where can you get hold of it um oh i think um um repeat a book to the publisher um there's a place called Burley Fisher, I think, in London.

It's always possible to drive people towards independent retailers or whatever. And then obviously there's Amazon or whatever. Yeah, of course. Right. Taylor, you got taken for a ride, didn't you, by a pop personality of the 1980s. Do tell us all about it. Yeah, I was driven the length of Southend Pier in a golf cart with the bloke who replaced Jimmy Somerville.

It was a Bronski beat. That's John John, isn't it? John John, yeah. It was quite an experience. And I hit that perfect beat for it. It's a surprisingly good record when you hear it now. It really is. Which is probably why he likes to talk about it so much.

But it's a nice shout. The only thing I've got to chip in in things I've done recently is that I went on a karaoke night with Chris Needham. It's terrible to think that too few people just realise just how momentous that is yeah I know I think it was probably the highlight of the decade so far for me I have to ask Al what

did you choose on karaoke did you do I've had the time of my life what was no well I gave it much serious thought, I mean the way it went was apparently every week that the karaoke's on, Chris always goes on first and he always does the

full version of Master of Puppets followed up by the Ace of Spades so he's knocked out two biggins there I mean I suggest to him that we do Dead Ringer and I offered to be shared to his meatloaf but he wasn't comfortable with it so um so I did uh since you've been gone by rainbow and then we both did fight for your right to party it was you know it was one of the highlights of

my life I feel like I was there it was a good mix you see because you know like we're like Donny and Marie you know know, I'm a bit, little bit hip hop and he's a bit thrash metal and that was the one tune where we could just meet on, you know,

on kind of like the same ground. So, this episode sees us going all the way back to February the 9th, 1984.

This is deep into Top of the Pops' flags and balloon phase, where every episode felt like pop star Hawaiian night at the bowling alley. 1984, where were we, chubs? I was last year at university, and I was actually putting on clubs, you know, nightclub nights and things like that. There were a kind of weird mixture of, like, goth and hip-hop,

and nobody came. You know, uh nobody came you know when i say that you know when we say nobody they mean oh under 100 people i mean i mean under one person i mean zero nobody came there was one called meltdown and then it was um what was the other one called um i can't even remember what what it was called meltdown was the first one it was called um and these actually have a meltdown actually um in utter despair at the absolute emptiness of the dance floor before me no i mean you know when i say no one came i mean literally no one came taylor what were you doing in 1984 um i was 11 uh and three quarters and i mean i was doing what everyone was doing when they were 11 come on not not letting you get away that easily what were you doing at level three quarters

they're waiting to be 12 what music we're into i genuinely can't remember apart from you know like the beatles and stuff but nobody ought to know about that i was that i was just about to become a fully fledged pop kid but i was just sort of on the verge it was still I was still watching Top of the Pops uh as entertainment like it's a sort of David Attenborough thing you know what I mean rather than something that was uh really about my life you know I was still watching it in the way that I watched it as a six-year-old rather than uh as a as a chart consumer I mean I was I was just about to get ready to fail all my O-levels and kind of like still in my sort of mod phase,

just really hanging it out. By this time, I was the last mod at school and probably wearing a pair of really battered jam shoes that I had to top up with Tipp-Ex every few months and just looking like a twat and having no girlfriends. I remember saying to an older kid at school, yeah, I'm a mod.

And he started laughing uproariously and he said, you don't even know what a mod is. And I said, yeah, I do. He said, right, what is it then? I said, a mod is someone who likes fancy clothes. And he was like, no, actually, he said, a mod is someone who likes fancy clothes. And he was like, no, actually, he said, a mod is someone who likes madness and the jam and has a scooter.

And it just gave me a laundry list of things that a mod had to do. And I thought, years later, looking back, I was more right than he was. Yeah, definitely. You were clean living under difficult circumstances weren't you yeah that was the point in my life

and he'd just seen quadrophenia too many times yeah this is well I think that when at what point in my life was I living the cleanest

I would say probably probably about February 1984 excellent that's convenient isn't it so what was in the news

at the time? Well, Libya had just released two British hostages, but decided to keep four more just to be bastards about it. The US are pulling their Marines out of the Lebanon because of the bombings and all that kind of stuff. TVAM is on the verge of closing down again. Meanwhile, in the sports world,

Robert Maxwell is about to buy Man United. Yeah, what a shame that didn't happen. And the Sarajevo Winter Olympics are in its second day. But the big news on this day, February the 9th, 1984, is Yuri Andropov has snuffed it. This very day. Oh, yeah, it was a bleak time. Yeah, they were dropping like nine pins at the time with the leaders because you had, in short order, you know, you had Brezhnev, then Andropov, then Shenenko, who you can probably hear a little bit. And then, of course, what's his name, which is around the corner?

Gorbachev or Gorbs. So, yeah, strange, desperate, odd time to be in the, you know, Soviet Union, I guess. So on Russia, they're getting loads of solemn music right about this time while we're about to fizz with pop excitement. Our drop-off was at least more prominent than Chanyenko who lasted about

a week. His only thing he ever did was to be in the Two Tribes video and he didn't even do that. He didn't even do that. It was an actor in his skin. Do you think anyone showed Chinenko the Two Tribes video? To kind of like cheer him up? Imagine, no, honestly, if you were in your hospital bed

and you were really badly hurt, if someone come up to me and said, oh, look, here's a video of you kicking Ronald Reagan up the arse and grabbing him by the bollocks, that would perk you right up, wouldn't it? On the cover of the NME is the Smiths, unsurprisingly. On the cover of Smash Hits, on the other hand, is Marilyn, who's with a fan that he met on Jim'll Fix It.

With Jimmy Savile as an intermediary as well, yeah. The story mentions a young lad who's there to ask Jim to fix it for him to meet Rolf Harris. That's terrible, isn't it? Yeah, it's just like he couldn't go for 10 seconds in the 1980s, could he, without sort of tripping over one or the other of them. Can you imagine his story now? I mean, surely someone's approached him in his local newspaper after, you know, after recent events came out. But remember, if the BBC is privatised soon,

that would never have happened. Yes. The number one LP is Touch by The Eurythmics. Over in the USA, the number one hit single is Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, five months after we'd had it and got bored of it. Of course, this is around the time that Culture Club are on the A-Team.

Do you remember that episode? No. For some reason, they run into Culture Club and they get on really well and the whole thing ends with Culture Club at a cowboy bar doing Karma Chameleon and

everyone's firing their guns in the air and really enjoying themselves which was nice even B.A. Baracus had a smile on his face never saw it, I remember it there was a trend Phil Collins was on

Miami Vice and stuff, it was like British pop stars and Phil Collins was the first person I ever heard say wanker on the television as well, on that episode of Miami Vice. I think the Americans didn't know what he was saying. Well, it's like, it's cute, isn't it? It's like in Britain, you can say mad. If you have like a snooty Frenchman on telly, you can say mad.

And it's like, everyone knows what it means, but it's not in English, so it's okay. That's alright, yeah. And the other thing about American telly that does my headings, they can say piss any time they like. Yeah, and crap, crap as well. Piss, crap. Yeah. I think Phil Collins was the first

person that said wanker at on television. Yes. And of course, the number one LP in the USA is Thriller, as it would be for most of that year. So what else was on telly this night? Well, ITV's repeating Carry On Laughing, presumably the one with a clip of Sid James with his eyes closed, holding a pair of maras and thinking that Barbara wins as Tits,

which always confused me because even then even at that age I kind of knew that tits shouldn't feel like maras BBC 2's running the African Queen with Humphrey Bogart Channel 4 News is on the new channel BBC 1's showing highlights

from the first day of the Winter Olympics so yeah, not really much competition at the moment. So, shall we get on the magic sofa and go all the way back to 1984, chubs? Let's do it. Yeah, all right. We start with Yellow Pearl by Phil Linnet, which is the current Top of the Pops theme tune.

Co-written with Midyore when he was a stand-in of Thin Lizzy in 1979, it was on his solo in Solo LP in 1980, which also featured Billy Curry of Ultravox and Rusty Egan of Visage. It was remixed for Top of the Pops when it came their theme tune in July of 1981, and it got to number 14 in January of 1982. How do we feel? In the canon of Top of the Pops theme tunes,

where does this stand, David? Hmm. About third or fourth, I think. Right. As low as that? Yeah. yeah um but that might not be that might not be their fault it might just be an association with the times really and also i might that might be discounting still later themes so yeah perhaps i might have to upgrade it to second or third really you know i'm a kind of whole lot of love guy obviously but

and after that really it's just sort of desperate also running um and it's all a little bit kind of silvery and desperate um but um but so yeah so i might have kind of loaded my sort of you know disdain for the decline of pop and civilization onto the particular tune which is not fair opening credits are nice i want the they, Taylor? Yeah. This is the coloured singles flying at the camera. I thought it was TV trickery. I saw a thing recently. No, a bloke just painted a load of seven-inch singles

and just wanged them at the camera. This is the top of the pop theme tune to me, you see. This is the one. This is the Yeah, if I'm humming to myself or strumming the guitar and i need a drum fill that is my default drum fill now that's the one that's how it goes deep at an early age the lyrics are a bit mentalist um about about the asian sorts and how they're going to take

over the world with their technology whilst using that very same technology to make the record i mean we have lyrics such as it is foolish under the guise of love and liberty that we should capitalize on rob and fell the poor for the socialistic tree someone's been listening to rush there haven't they anyway our hosts for the evening it's we've entered the era where they uh where they they double up on the hosting duties. And this week we have Gary Davies and Dave Lee Travis. In pairs like policemen. Yes, yeah. And a very weird pair in it too, isn't it?

I mean, to my eyes. I mean, DLT is about 39 going on 57. And Gary Davies is the younglingling he's quite new to it the whole effect is it does really smack of bring your child to work day doesn't it well definitely I mean it's this real sense of this hideous continuum that like you know Gary Davis is just the kind of the Travis apprentice basically and Travis is looking in 30 years Travis's apprentice yeah this is it and in 30 years time I iron the personification of what you will be in a kind of uninterrupted continuum.

Yeah, it is grim. I mean, do you think that we're doing this as kind of training them up? Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah. I hesitate to use the word grooming, but absolutely. Yeah, it's... Yeah, and there's that whole... There's kind of perma crap leather jackets that kind of oh yeah throughout sort of pop history never seem to go we're never in fashion

but never go out of fashion somehow and uh that kind of hideous well let's talk about what they were in i mean dlt looks like he's just come back from a car boot sale he's got this kind of like yeah dlt is 39 by the old rules you know i mean the idea that dl t is is significantly younger than me in this in this it's terrifying it's monstrous because of course i mean to see this he does look like he's 39 but he doesn't look as if the midlife crisis has ever affected him affected him really is it and he looks like what he is, a DJ who actually at home has no records whatsoever, for whom this is purely a kind of professional engagement, and for whom being on something like Top of the Pops

is really, it's for him a kind of transition career step, whatever, he'd be much more happy and at home on a Top Gear type show or whatever, discussing the various merits of cross-flying radial tyres. Yes, and of course he was just about to host the, oh, what was it called? The Golden Oldie Picture Show. My God, I've seen some clips from that.

Unfortunately, there's not a full episode available on YouTube at the minute, so you don't get to see him introducing the clips. But what clips are there are quite astounding. I mean, it was a tv show that basically said oh let's take all these old records and make pop videos for them taylor you've you've seen a couple aren't you yeah i've got a couple it's you'll never you'll never see anything like it it's fantastic what's your favorite uh or most most memorable the best one they ever did was Strawberry Fields Forever which

was accompanied by a film of people at a pick your own strawberries farm. And the only thing I really remember about it was the bit where it goes da da, there's a big zoom in on a strawberry.

I don't know if I can quite convey how fantastic this is in words. But there was a video made for that, for Strawberry Fields Forever anyway. Yeah, precisely. But they obviously just thought it wasn't good enough.

It had the beetles in it and it was psychedelic and stuff. The other thing about DLT is that he's obviously really hard. He's really unpleasant. He's one of these light entertainment personalities who didn't necessarily have the image of hard men. But when you look

at him, you can see you would not want to get into any kind of physical altercation with this man. You would crawl away from it. He's not a nice man. There's a few of them. Tommy Cannon is another one. you look at Tommy Cannon he rocks

Ted Rogers more animal than man it's not pleasant at all, there's something really unsettling about the DLT's presence on TV for all this cuddly stuff, he comes on and he says presenting tonight

it's Butch Davis and the Sundance Pilchard, which is... Yeah, he did lean on the Pilchard motif quite a lot, didn't he, throughout his career? It's not even a joke. There's not any way in which that has the structure. It's not a joke. It's not.

So, Taylor, if there was a cage fight between every single presenter of Top of the Pops, you'd say that DLT would come out on top? Savile, yeah. Savile? Yeah, you'd end up with Savile with his thighs wrapped around DLT's neck and his ankles crossed. A great wrestling move and then DLT trying to hook the eye up

yeah and then in another corner of the cage just a mound of soft lads sat in tour jackets just making a low groaning sound yeah absolutely who's going down first then?

Alan Freeman, Kid Jensen, tied up down in the fucking ball. So who's going to suffer that? I can't see Mike Reid lasting very long. Andy Peebles. Out like a light. I think Kid Jensen might be able to handle himself to an extent it's Canadians isn't it they're an unknown quantity they're never quite sure

Peter Powell's got no fucking chance well he got a note from his mum so that's DLT taken care of for the minute Gary Davis Taylor do you want to describe what Gary Davis has got on? The new fresh face of Radio 1?

Yeah, he's dressed like Gerard Malanga. He's got this kind of leather fetish wear, but he's got it a bit wrong. It's like the leather jacket, leather trousers, and a white T-shirt, but his leather jacket has got a sort of furry collar and an elasticated waistband it's one of those leather jackets that isn't really you know what i mean it doesn't it's one

of them doesn't quite make the jackets that it's one of them leather jackets that you'd be you know you pester your mom for one for christmas or birthday and she gets that and you're like mom no and just sulk for the rest of the day because you know you're only going to get like two weeks worth of wear out of it. You know, not the kind of jacket you could stencil a crass logo on the back of. No, it's the sort of jacket

that might have a little kind of logo of a flying eagle or something over where the breast pocket would be. It's just... Yeah, and on on the inside it would have a lining made out of an old map or something pastel-y and shit. It's just not

the leather jacket anybody really wants, is it? So, Gary Davis, he was the former manager of a disco in Manchester, which is a bit alarming, given the civilian undertones. But he started DJing at Piccadilly Radio in 1979. He joined Radio 1 in 1982 to present a Saturday night show and was offered the presenting gig on Top of the Pop soon after

because he was young. Young, free and single and likes to mingle, as he used to say. Yeah, his whole image was based on how attractive he was to women. It's a really strange thing in retrospect. People did fall for it. People were told, this is an attractive man. Yeah. And he did have a large female following.

And you look at him now, it's just incomprehensible. And also, they introduced themselves as saying, large female following and you look at him now it's it's just incomprehensible and also they they introduce themselves as saying it's the manchester lads presenting the show tonight well okay dlt but gary davis yet who knew that he was from manchester like from the mean streets of weatherfield you know i'll go i'll go to the foot of our stairs how he was not from Hemel Hempstead it's just

yeah by 1984 he's in the afternoon slot which he took off DLT DLT

definitely on the downward downward curve of his of his radio one career there yeah mind you it is

1984 well exactly yeah really the fact that he's on the curve at all is pretty pretty appalling really you know they were long due a kind of you know these people were

were kind of you know ripe for a kind of a Matthew Bannister cull really for quite about 10 years really weren't they yeah he's got about a decade left in him hasn't he DLT that's frightening isn't it at this point yeah

yeah absolutely yeah and even then he feels you know a bit like status quo demonstrating outside Radio 1 who wouldn't play the singles anymore so like for crying out loud man you're about a quarter of a century past yourself I'd say but there's nothing else he can do that's the thing. I mean, look at him.

He's a failure as a human being. He's a failure as an adult. What's he going to do? He's just clinging on. It's the great curse of TV presenters. What they do is essentially worthless. So you can't turn your hand to anything else once your number's up.

Yeah, and also he's defined himself too well as the hairy cornflake, and he's really left him nowhere. He's painted himself into a hairy corner, basically. Good evening, it's Thursday, and time for another edition of Top of the Pops with Butch Davis and the Sundance Pilchard. Yes, it's the Manchester Lads presenting the show tonight, And it's also the Manchester Lads starting off the show tonight

With a song called What Difference Does It Make Here are the Smiths DLT and Gary Davis point out that they come from Manchester Which is something people from Manchester never do, and introduce the Smiths. Whilst doing so, Gary Davies chops Travis in the throat in a comedic manner. Good.

Now, I'm not going to say much about the Smiths because, to my mind, they're like the Doors. They're a good enough band, there's some decent tunes there, but the lead singer's a bellend. And that's all I know about the Smiths, and that's all I care to know. So let's hear it from your point of view. David, how important were the Smiths at university? Oh, no, I mean, this felt really kind of significant

and really sort of bracing at the time. I mean, in a sense, what you've got in the 60s, you know, the pop music, whatever was happening, felt like a kind of sort of strong reaction against the sort of the monochrome nature of culture you know black and white tv the sort of the eternal grayness of existence or whatever and then by this point i mean top of the pops has already become very overflooded very overlit with kind of mauve strobes or whatever and there's a feeling that culturally everything's about over colorized and they represent a kind of reaction against colour, a retreat from colour,

back into this sort of indie kind of monochrome, this kind of one-face sort of sadness, whatever. And in a way, there is something all-stranger kind of refreshing about that, that, you know, that kind of sort of, you know, that reminder of kitchen sink reality or whatever and, you know, in the midst of all this kind of slightly false gaudiness, et cetera, et cetera.

I think that was part of his appeal. It's a slightly adolescent gesture. Of course, later on, when he talked about reaction against colour, he realised that Morrissey actually was reacting against music of colour, i.e., you know, reggae, Diana Ross, et cetera, et cetera. And the thing about the Smiths, eventually, what is kind of annoying to them,

they're the first group since punk who haven't really, who refuse to engage with black music, who are going back to this very kind of caucasian sort of jingly jangly um um you know music style that really in which there are sort of no funk disco reggae whatever elements whatsoever and uh that's a slightly more kind of depressing break than i there the set is a radical departure from the sparseness of the 1970s uh and you know they've actually spent some money on on some lights and you know it looks like like the best disco in in town really the best disco in nottingham now well yeah the honesty yeah yeah yeah let's let's be clear

the best disco in london did did not look like that even even in 1984. No. So, Morrissey in the middle of it, to my mind, he looks like some sulky lad who's been dragged out on a work stew to Barry Noble's Astoria, and he's not having a good time. But there's one song that comes on that he actually likes, and he's gone out to dance to it, and then he realises that no one else is dancing to it, but he's going to brazen it out anyway. I mean, he does look a bit weird.

And that song is by The Smiths. Yes, yeah. That's the really terrible thing. Actually, I did get this. When I used to do my club in 1984, you get people who come there, sit sullenly, and then, of course, I'd whack on, what difference does it make?

And they would come out, and Austin Tate has this sort of floor sort of emptied of the hip-hop fans or whatever. Then he would come on, and they would kind of sashay around, you know, like arms aloft or whatever, you know, doing the one foot shuffle. You can't walk off, can you? You've set your marker down. And then, yes, that's right. And then back down they'd sit again.

Taylor, what are you feeling? Is this stirring anything in your musical loins as an 11-year-old? Well, this is a couple of months before I got into the Smiths. I got into the Smiths with William, it was really nothing, which I had and thought was incredible. But, yeah, at this point, I mean, I would have seen this, but I don't remember it at all.

People say that every time the Smiths were on top of the Pops, it was like an event. This feels a bit like a non-event. There's no flowersvent there's no flowers there's no uh he doesn't do anything yeah he stops he stops the gladioli in the back pocket after after this charming man yeah this when you look at this you it is very obvious when you look at morrissey in this clip you can see the seed of the shithead to come but it's easy to say that in Ripsby, it's like Fidel Castro

it's easy to look back and say oh we should have known but yeah, I can see how you'd have been carried away with it, I disagree with David that there's no funk in the Swiss music by the way, Johnny Marr was a massive funk head and if you listen to what

he's played, loads of it's ripped off like nile rogers and stuff it's just they have the least funky drummer in the world is manu like even more than rick buckler right this is like the whitest drummer that you could ever hear um so it's this sort of clod hopping feel to all the music but yeah this But yeah, this one... In fairness to Johnny Marr, yeah, definitely. I mean, he has that kind of taste and he is sort of trying a bit. And I mean, obviously the funkiest thing about it is his guitar. But yeah, it's something that's sort of suppressed and drowned out by other factors of the Smiths.

And also, in fairness to Johnny Marr, he looks really cool in this clip. It's like Morrissey hasn't really made an effort for this one. But Johnny Marr looks really good. He's a very small man playing a very big guitar. But you've got to say that he's a very good-looking chap. This song would only go up one place the following week, where it peaked. They'd never get any higher than number 10 in the charts during their normal career but a re-release

of This Charming Man would get to number 8 in 1992. What a great start to the show from the Smiths. Next is a young man who must have a big smile across his face. Currently he's had some great records out, not the least of which is this one at number 32. With Wouldn't It Be Good, here's Nick Kershaw. Yeah!

DLT has three women on the go, but one's a goth who stares at him in disdain. Did you notice that? I did, yeah. Yeah, just... Yeah, she's likes. What the fuck was she doing there? I think she'd just been pushed into the... Just you, over there.

You look a bit weird. Go over there now. Stand there. What? What? No, just stand there. You don't have to do it. Just stand there. Just this blank stare. Just like, oh God oh god yeah or even more active than that active

reproach it is i am from 30 years hence i stare with you the reproach of the 21st century yes definitely yes and dlt introduces the debut of nick kershaw. He was born in Bristol and grew up in Ipswich. And before this, he was in a jazz funk covers band called Fusion. His first single, I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, flopped. This is his second. And as I've said, it's his Top of the Pops debut. And I think this is a prime example of the serious musician who's been kind of like pushed into being a pop gunk.

I think, though, that this was just something that happened at this time. the serious musician who's been kind of like pushed into being a pop gunk i think though that there was a this was just something that happened at this time there was not just nick kirk or the howard jones as well and it was the first sign of like you know of what happened up until that point is people like abc depeche mode simple minds various people that you know part of the whole kind of new pop thing in the early 80s you you could trace them back to punk. They'd had some sort of punk origin and there was some sort of like, sort of implicit sort of spiky sort of radicalism in their music

or whatever that made them left field even though they kind of, you know, they were there to be kind of subvert top of the pops in some way. They were there to bring some sort of, you know, smuggle in some sort of attitude or whatever. With someone like Nick Cush and Howard Jones, you realise all they've done is sort of whack, you know, spike, tease up their hair a bit, whack in some highlights

and, you know, just give themselves a kind of spray-on veneer of, like, post-punk electro-poppiness or whatever. But they're actually just really... Yeah, it doesn't front them. Of course, a jazz fusion band. They're just sort of old muso songwritery hacks just trying to sort of get with the kind of 80s look. And it was only a matter of time before, like, you know, these kind of geezers sort of get with the kind of 80s look um and it was only a matter of time before

like you know these these kind of geezers sort of trundled in basically sort of supplied you know essentially sort of mor with a kind of very superficial sort of modern sheen or whatever and i mean although it's a giveaway man the way to look at it i mean even a european wouldn't dress that badly i mean you know with the snood and the kind of you know and that kind of ridiculous white border suit it's somebody that's like sort of you know, with the snood and the kind of, you know, and that kind of ridiculous white border suit. It's somebody that's like, sort of, you know, it's such a cack-handed attempt at sort of second-hand neuromanticism. Yeah, he's got this fancy

white jacket with sort of elaborate fastenings on it. A snood, highlighted mullet, and fingerless gloves. It's like a cross between... Really long fingerless gloves as well. Yeah, for what must have been quite short fingers. It's like a cross between... Really long fingerless gloves as well. Yeah, for what must have been quite short fingers. It's like a cross between

Blake Seven and Albert Steptoe. Well, I've got down Futurist Little Chef. If Future Chef rebranded itself in 2015, they'd all look like Nick Kershaw. Very Little Chef.

Speaking as not a giant myself, but yes, he was a very, very small man, Nick Kershaw. And what he didn't seem to understand, I'm fairly convinced that he had a stylist. He doesn't strike me as the sort of bloke who'd go out and buy those clothes. I think he was probably being styled. And whoever did it didn't understand like the for instance like how short men should not have big hair right as kevin keegan never understood it's like i know this being a bit of a short ass if you uh if you wear anything or have anything on you that's too big or too eye-catching it looks like it's wearing you and this is what's happened to Nick

Kershaw which is what's even funnier is that in the video to wouldn't it be good which they obviously spent a lot of money on and yet here he is on top of the pops himself and they're not showing it he's got that suit with a film playing on it this I can't think of a any example of clothing that could possibly be more eye-catching than a suit with a film playing on it. Because it was made out of the same material as Marlon Brando's suit in Superman. Is that so?

Yes. Ah. But Marlon Brando was a little bit bigger than Nick Kershaw, even then. Yeah, wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes? They probably wouldn't fit you, Nick. I think you'd look even more like a clown. Well, I mean, before we move away from his outfit, just want to point out that apparently the gloves were there

to cover up his wedding ring. Because the record company wanted him to remove the ring to attract lots of teeny fans he wasn't having any of it so the compromise was the long fingerless gloves which later caught on with the fans, so there you go and of course he's wearing the snood

the famous snood which was the albatross around his neck if you will but yeah the most significant thing about this is definitely yeah the in 1984 1984 is all about pop music sailing towards the event horizon of the black hole that was band-aid um yeah and one of the ways that it started to tear itself apart as it approached this was that all the new chart acts uh were either ex-punks or ex-proggers.

And you can see it a mile off when you look. Kershaw is obviously one of the ex-proggers, right? There's him, Howard Jones, King, Kajagoogoo, Tears for Fears. You know that these people were listening to either Jazz Fusion or Yes, or still are, but were listening exclusively to that two years ago. They just put a bit of slap on and gone for the shiny coin. Nick looks massively uncomfortable as he grinds on stage, surrounded by frightening-looking laser-like spotlights and whoops from the audience.

I mean, by this time, of course, the audience have been absolutely prodded with a stick to enjoy themselves, aren't they? And there's no need for it. This is not a kind of song you can go, whoo, to, is it? That's certainly true, yeah. And at one point, the camera pans in

with his eyes closed and his hands behind his head, looking for all the world as if he's getting true, yeah. And at one point the camera pans in with his eyes closed and his hands behind his head looking for all the world as if he's getting a nosh. This is when he's singing Don't Want To Be Here No More or whatever it is with his eyes tightly screwed. It's like really feeling it, really meaning every word of it.

That's true actually about Nick Kershaw. I remember thinking at the time Nick Kershaw would never listen to Nick Kershaw records and he has the air of somebody who would like, it was the last thing in the world he'd do is listen to a Nick Kershaw record. He's just thinking of the recording studio he's going to build in his barn

once he's got this shit out of the way. And of course he's got a synth on stage, but it's right to the side, isn't it? I mean, he's on a bare stage with a synth pushed right against the wall, which he has to awkwardly turn around and play. Yeah, they make him play the... He chooses to play that synth because he doesn't know what to do with his hands. If you're watching him, he's just on the stage.

He hasn't even got a mic. He's just there miming. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. He's not a natural mover. He's not a natural mover. He's not a natural performer. I mean, obviously the question that needs to be asked is, Howard Jones or Nick Kershaw, where do you stand? Where did you stand on that important fault line in 1984?

They were both pretty despicable. But, of course, Howard Jones made humans live. And, you know, that's like, hey, all lives matter. I think, you know, that really counts against him for me. Taylor? Well, Howard Jones are better tuned, but that kind of appalling sanctimony of his lyrics is just, he was a regular in Smash Heads,

and he'd always be there lecturing the kids about eating meat and not being a bigot and all that sort of stuff. And it's like, don't try and live your life in one day. It's good advice. Unless you're a mayfly, of course, then you pretty much fucking have to, don't you? Anyway, the single jumped right up to number 14 and would spend three weeks at number four.

I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me was re-released in the summer and went to number two. Fucking hell. He nearly had a number one hit single. He'd have another six top 40 hits, but chart-wise he was pretty much done by 1985, although he did go on to write the one and only for Chesney Hawks in 1991, which probably meant an extension on the studio in the barn.

Yeah, upgraded to 256 track. The last time our next band were on Top of the Pops, that was around about nine months ago with a song called Garden Party. They're back with Punch and Judy. Here are Marillion. Gary Davis has only one woman with him but then again he is the YTS lad and he announces the return of Marillion

Marillion they were formed in Aylesbury I'm going to keep that in, fuck it they were formed in Aylesbury in 1979 and were seen as the lone standard bearers of neo-Prog in the early 80s were constantly dismissed by the music press as Gabriel-era Genesis imitators. They'd already had two hits in 1983, He Knows You Know and Garden Party. And this is the first single from the new LP Fugazi

and it's gone straight in at number 29 yeah it's i mean yes exactly yeah let's show we move on to the next song yeah i don't think we should tarry too long on the sort of you know the subject of brilliant but i mean it's just extraordinary really i suppose it's clearly channeling peter gabriel yeah uh although i think on this occasion there's an attempt to sort of mask that with a but it's just extraordinary, really. I suppose it's clearly channeling Peter Gabriel. Yeah. Although I think on this occasion, there's an attempt to sort of mask that with a little element, a bit of face paint to give it a sort of slightly more up-to-date Adam Ant feel.

But I can only agree with Fish. I mean, he's just this enormous geezer. And I just imagine that at every stage in his life, when he sort of tried to do this kind of thing, that whether it was family, friends, eventually a record company or whatever, or an art person, they were too shit scared to say to him, look mate, this has been

seriously done before, man. I don't know what you're trying to think here. It looks like this kind of big, raving, loping, psychopathic loon that if you were to kind of mention to him that his act was perhaps a touch derivative, it would tear your head off at the roots. So that's the only way I can account for it, really,

the whole fish thing. Not so much Beowulf as Beowulf. Taylor, Fish versus Dave Lee Travis. Oh, God. I don't know. I can tell you what, though. I'd pay for that. Yeah, I would as well.

Two members of Zoo are seen trying to skip along to the opening bars of this song and then laugh and give up. Yeah, but it's in 1709, isn't it? It's a time signature. It's ludicrous. It's ludicrous. Even when, as you well know, I was a Meridian fan at the age of about

12. Yes, we need to come to this, Taylor. You wrote an article on The Quietus about being a Meridian fan at this age. Yeah, I mean, a very passive kind of fan because I was 12. You know, you don't really just listen to the records. But, yeah, you're going to ask me about this now. Yes, I am, yeah.

What was it? What was it about them that appealed to you? Well, I think to a 12-year-old, they have the right mixture of pompous self-pity uh showboating self-regard and ludicrously overreaching ambition which spoke to me at that age you know because that's what it's like when you're 12 or 13 but now i'm an old man it's the exact opposite it's all about uh self-loathing and self-neglect and very narrow horizons. But, no, at that age, it seemed to be a world of musical possibilities.

I didn't know anything. Did you think it was growing up music? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Because I didn't know anything, you see. It's like you're 12 and you're very impressionable, very easily impressed. Fish looks like a new romantic caliban with painted face and thick comedy eyebrows. 30 years before teenage girls adopted that very same look. Yeah, and he's got this sort of paint on him, but it's not like a proper Peter Gabriel paint job.

It's like he's just been decorating the loft in a psychedelic mirror, and he's got it all down, the sort of shabby grey clothes that he wore to do it. It's the most half-arsed attempt at theatrical rock I've ever seen in my life. He does sort of lumber around the stage in an unnerving way, like some sort of enormous squaddie.

He was a bit pissed up when he's trying to engage people in conversation in a pub and everyone's desperate to avoid his eyes. That kind of unnerving effect of it, that's it. We're at a stage now in 1984

where people playing synths is commonplace and it's just a thing now. But I think Merillion have overdone it on the synth front, haven't they? Do you want to guess how many synths there were on that stage? Zero. I counted eight. Eight synths in two bands.

Yeah, arranged in descending order of size. So he's got a big DX7 or something at the bottom. Then at the top, he's got a little Casio Vialto. It's almost like a joke. It's like the synth equivalent of double-neck guitar. Just complete excess. Like, too many. He said, surely by 1984, you could just get one that had all those sounds on it.

Well, you'd think, wouldn't you? But it is proper music played by proper musicians, isn't it? Yeah, you can see when you look at them that they came out of the new wave of British heavy metal, like the band. If you look at the band, they've all got the frothy mullets and the tight jeans and white trainers. It's like an insight into how much prog there really was in that music as well.

If you listen to a number of the beast and records like that, there's this sort of prog waiting to burst through the, through the metal surface. You know, it's like, that's where they came from and that's what they are. So Punch and Judy would drop three places and go out of the charts two weeks later, but they'd have two top five hits with Kaylee and Lavender the following year and be in the charts on a regular basis

right up to the mid-90s. Fucking hell, when did Phish leave? Oh, I don't know. They got a John John in, didn't they? Yes, they did, yeah. Phish Phish. Oh, they are a superb band. They're really in there for you.

Now then, four places below that at number 33 in the charts, Elbow Burns and the Racketeers. Ever wondered what a night in New York was like? DLT is surrounded by four... This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Four women as he bigs up Meridian and then asks if we've ever wondered what a night in New York would be like. Fucking if we've ever wondered what a night in New York would be like. Fucking hell, can you imagine what a night in New York would be like with DLT? It would end badly, wouldn't it?

Yeah, very out of his depth. Elbow bones of the racketeers were formed by John Rinsky, a fashion photographer from Detroit who was in with Kid Creole. And the racketeers were assorted Kid Creole acolytes, including singer Stephanie Fuller. It's his second week in the charts, and it was hanging at number 33.

So we're clearly at the stage now where expensive videos were a big deal on Top of the Pops. And I'm very surprised watching this episode, that this is the first video that we've actually seen. Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't really quite feel... I mean, it's just a performance, largely, isn't it? episode that this is the first episode this is the first video that we've actually seen yeah yeah and it doesn't really quite feel i mean it's just a performance larger isn't it with like you know just a rather extravagantly staged performance um i mean you know i can only commend this the fact that kid creole you know august august darnell was um you know involved with it um

and kid creole were fantastic um they were in the early 80s, you know, in terms of that kind of Zeddy type kind of, like Heidi kind of hip sort of, you know, retro, new pop sort of, you know, he was actually the top of his game with all of that. Also, Lovely Blow, I interviewed him about 10 years ago. And it was just an interview. It wasn't a photo shoot or whatever. And it was just the roundhouse.

He was doing some musical. And he turned up really sort of real gent. But he turned up like 10 in the morning to this thing he wasn't in like his kind of like tall leggings or anything like that or sweatshirt he was absolutely dressed to the absolute nines as kid creole type right down to the tie pin you know and the fedora and that you know that is just that's just him it's what he does you know at the same time he was just an absolutely lovely friendly amiable chap um but um but this it's it's this is almost like the kind of midpoint between in the culture between kid creole and the coconuts and i don't know jukebox musicals or

something you know it's just um um and that's reflected in the video because that's essentially bugs him alone but we're grownups that's right and also and also one thing to notice as well this is the first and I think only sighting of black people on this episode of top of the pops yes that's a bit of normalness isn't it yeah maybe they would say I mean maybe that's why it was featured despite the fact they don't we had only just text

held the position at 33 maybe some of all shit yeah we need yeah yeah yeah because that's what the BBC alike you know yeah more of Morrissey Morrissey Yeah, because that's what the BBC are like, you know. Yeah, Morrissey was on earlier taking notes for a statement he'd make 18 months later saying that to get on Top of the Box you have to be bylaw black. Yeah, that's right. Yes, he talked about a conspiracy in favour of black music. Yeah, well, there's not much evidence of it here.

No. God, Morrissey's a twat, isn't he? Yes. Taylor, what's this doing for you? Anything? No, this is a blank space in my memory. And I find it a little bit disturbing to think that there was a record that was in the top 40 when I was 11, of which I have no memory at all. It's like the missing day in the week of a serial killer.

It's frightening that it's not there but I'm not missing much it's not I mean this is it's like the beginning of that 80s thing where aspirational equals nostalgic and clever equals ironic you know I mean there's that it's just like culturally it's just like a just a big sink so the single would stay at number 33 the following week and the week after that

and the week after that before dropping out and the band never troubled the charts again four weeks at number 33 that's amazing isn't it how do you do that you couldn't even rig it. It's probably a record. Yes.

Oh, take me for a night Watch me dance How about bands in the racketeers in mighty New York? OK, here's the band making their debut on Top of the Pops tonight. They are Rob, Rick and Meggie. The song is called Soul Train. The band, Swansway. Gary Davis is up in the scaffolding with loads of women and his hand resting awkwardly on an Asian girl's shoulder

as he introduces Swan's Way. Formed by three musicians who lived on the same street in Birmingham in 1982, their first single flopped, but a filmed appearance on the tube in late 1983, which was repeated and followed up with a live performance, pushed this song into the chart where it currently sits at number 34. Now, we need to talk about Channel 4, don't we, chaps? Been on the air for, what, 18 months or so? About that, yeah.

You know, people go on how influential MTV was on the charts of the 1980s, but in the UK, Channel 4 was far more important wasn't it i mean all of a sudden you have a handful of new music shows things like air say rockers road show max headroom wired club x and the tube and you know top of the pops is has always been this chart show but all of a sudden you've got other programs that that are pushing things into the chart one of the things about the 70s is that like it was there was this always felt i was this desperate desperate shortage of pop um you know you just had two or three little outlets you know more sorts of tinsel like you know top of the pops of the 70s or maybe the algorithms whatever

but i think by the 80s you're really getting getting this sense that there is actually an overload of pop. You're almost getting the feeling there's actually too much of it. That, you know, could do with some sort of pop cult, basically, you know, like sort of humane chappies with like shotguns kind of roving out into the kind of, you know, onto the pop tundra and like, you know, massacring a few of them. Because it really is beginning to feel like, you know, there's this great sense of overload now. And it's just like, you know, there's lots of people from of overload now, and it's just like, you know, there's lots of people from like 56, 70 still around, but, you know, coupled with the kind of, you know, the rise of the new lot and really it's suddenly becoming, it's

feeling very, very crowded and overlit and ubiquitous all of a sudden. Taylor, the tube, it gets a surprisingly small amount of love nowadays, doesn't it? Yeah, I never watched it much. I didn't. It was partly...

Did you have a channel for it, your arse? Yeah, I mean, it was not very good reception. That was part of the reason why. It was the better reception on the little black and white portable that we have that we take away to the static caravan in the summer. So sneak in and watch things like the comic strip presents on that and sit there going, it's not very funny, but it's rude.

Yeah. The red triangle films, which on your portable would be kind of like dark grey triangle films. Yeah. I remember one time, I remember one time my sister, when she was 14, convinced my mum and dad that her and her mate had to stay up to watch sebastian the uh derek jarman film which featured two blokes bumming against a mountain

that she had to stay up and watch it for geography homework i was so proud of us. Yeah. Also, also my parents were the sort of, uh, uh, sort of working class parents who sort of wanted to go up in the world. And that meant not, not watching dirty stuff like, you know,

sort of, uh, things where people swear and stuff on the TV. Um, and I would say, I want to watch the tube. There was somebody on, I want to watch the tube. No, you know, because I think it might've been after the groovy fuckers business. And it was like I want to watch the tube there was somebody on I want to watch the tube

because I think it might have been after the groovy fuckers business and it was like no you're not going to watch that filth and I was like no no go on so while they were out of the room I put the telly on switched it to channel 4 just as they came back in the room a bloke took his trousers down and waved his arse at the camera and that was

that was the end of me ever being able to watch the tube until I was quite a lot older but I didn't miss it I don't like that sort of ironic smugness of Jules Holland and I never liked that Paul Yates thing of like ligging down the wag club

and all this sort of stuff I wasn't interested in that world I didn't like it didn't want to know anything about it and the, especially considering it was made great play of the fact that it was filmed in Newcastle, had a real sort of smug London feel to it

that didn't mean a lot to me. Yeah, I always felt right at that point. I mean, I was in my early 20s at the time. The Tube seemed to think it was a lot hipper and a lot cleverer than it actually was. The level of discourse you get in the music press say like at NME or whatever, was really pretty high, and to try and transcribe that attitude

on the TV, it was always going to fall way short. And it was almost like, you know, also in the content of the show, it was just like, hey, we're not going to give you the kind of thing we've got on top of the pops, we're going to play Annie Lennox. Oh, wow, you know. And it was just like, great. And it almost like, it was summed up when you got to the kind of thing with Jules Holland saying, all you groovy fuckers. And then of course you know, had to kind of like, great. And it almost like summed up when you got to the kind of thing with Jules Holland saying, all you groovy fuckers.

And then, of course, you know, had to kind of like roll back cravenly on that particular kind of excess. You know, it just showed how desperately circumscribed they were by the fact they work on TV. So there seemed to be a lot of, you know, there seemed to be sort of a show that was a little bit too sort of pleased with itself. It wasn't really able to kind of, I don't know, be sort of an enemy on TV or whatever. So let's talk about the song shall we because you know the tube basically got this song into the charts you can contend that this is the first of three songs that were in the charts because

of the tube so it's very very 1984 is this song actually just in terms of almost like the Thompson 20 type layout of the kind of you know the haughty female kind of on ostentatious percussion or whatever and the fact they kind of mentioned soul in such a conspicuous way because they're you know they're kind of set up in such a way as the only way they can actually sort of exude any soul is just by mentioning a lot and overly acquiring it by osmosis um you know there

was this kind of big preoccupation about soul at the time by people um who had this kind of weird sort of envy of the authenticity and spontaneity supposedly of black music and culture not not necessarily the most recent stuff the disco or the hip-hop but uh you know the 60s and 70s stuff the authentic soul real blackness of things you know and it just seemed to be sort of vaguely It just seems to be vaguely leading to that. It's like the thing about white musicians, especially indie musicians now, it's not that they've got a problem with

black musicians, it's just they don't like it when they're black and alive. It's just a little bit of safe distance. They patronise them in peace. Curtis, Marvin, R.I.P. Yeah. One more.

Yeah. Can you imagine people on the actual Soul Train dancing to this, though? I would absolutely imagine. No, I think they would be politely ushered away and informed that they got the wrong studio. It's just all a bit shabby, isn't it? It's a bit embarrassing.by isn't it it's a bit embarrassing

they're named after the only bit anyone's ever read of a la Rochelle Stuttgart and it's

the singer looks like you know those films where a middle class bloke becomes a football leader and like

falls in with he's got that look about him you know like it's all a bit it's all a bit tawdry. So Soul Train moved up to number

20 the next week, but no further. The two singles that they also released that year failed to dent the top 40 and they split up in 1985. The Soul Train was decommissioned. Oh, Dr. Beachy. It's time now to have a look at the top 40 with Dave.

No, I don't want to do it. I'm sorry. Fiverr? Number 40 is a chart entry from Slade with Run, Run Away. And at 39, Lionel Richie is Running With The Night. 38, this week it's Hold Me Now from The Thompson Twin. And a brand new entry at 37 is One Small Day from Ultravox. Chart entry at 36, Break Machine and Street Dance. And at 35, Speed Your Love to Me from Simple Minds.

Another chart entry at number 34 is Swan's Way and Soul Train. And still at 33, Elbow Bones and the Racketeers and Night in New York. 32, Nick Kershaw, Wouldn't It Be Good? And a chart entry at 31, 99 Red Balloons from Nina. Number 30 is a chart entry also, Somebody's Watching Me from Rockwell. And Marillion have a new entry at 29 with Punch and Judy 28, Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke

from The Alarm and Shannon with Let The Music Play are at number 27 We have a new entry at 26 and you're going to have a look at a brand new video now from Madness with Michael Caine DLT and Gary Davis go through a pantomime of bribery before announcing the bottom end of the charts

going into Michael Caine the 18th single released from Madness the follow up to The Sun and The Rain and the first single from the new LP Keep Moving not only does it feature the voice of Michael Caine who originally knocked them back but was talked into doing it by his daughter it also doesn't feature Suggs on vocals. It's Carl Smith, formerly known as Chaz Smash.

And obviously, because it's madness, it's a video clip. Now, David, this is the debut of serious madness, isn't it? Yeah, mature madness. Yeah, it's like, you know, I suppose they could spend the rest of their career in tight trousers and doing the old kind of bummer conga, you know. Bummer conga. But, you know, obviously there's a huge amount invested in it because they've been so successful that they're not just going to, you know, they're obviously going to sort of find some way or other,

you know, to have them carry on. But really it gets a bit too, you know, it culminates in doing a version of Scrooge Plitch's Sweetie Skull, you know, which just seems wholly incorrect to me. And so by this stage, it's almost like, I mean, the thing about madness is, you know, the madness of this house of fun and baggy trousers and, you know, unabashed pop, you know, for like, you know,

for little kiddies discos and grownups who don't give a shit to sort of, you know, bop around to whatever. And I don't know, maybe they could have tried to do a sort of, you know, be like Chaz and Dave or something, just do what they do forever, you know, and not try and sort of do something that's more shaded and earnest so yeah I don't

I mean this clearly has not I mean this has not gone down in sort of madness legend you know it was only seeing this in fact that was reminded that they ever did it but there's a lot invested in the video and everything but yeah it's the beginning of the end of madness phase one you know I you know then obviously got retro madness later on and everything. But yeah, it's the beginning of the end of Madness Phase 1.

You know, then obviously you've got Retro Madness later on. Yeah, not great. Carl Smith, he was Chaz Smash, and he was always a slightly problematic member of Madness. I remember he was interviewed by the NME in the early 80s. He says, we don't mind who comes down to our gigs, anybody, National Front, whoever, as long as they have a good time.

And the rest of the band, shut up, jazz, you know. So we did shut up for a while and now it's actually, you know, seems to be in the kind of, it's been a large sink.

in quarantine for a while, yeah, now finally. Very much, very much the, the Professor Griff of madness. Yes. Taylor,

you were in the, you were in the, in the zone, you know, your age group. Oh yeah, consensus at our school was that they'd lost it we preferred the we preferred the early nutty ones but you listen to it now it's quite a

good record it's not it's not a great record but it's a good record yeah um but it is a bit weird with that sort of brian ferry singing and uh doesn't doesn't sound an awful lot like madman no i mean you're right. They've always been seen as a kids' band, which to my mind is just patently unfair because, you know, to me, Slade and The Suite and bands like that are kids' bands.

I didn't feel I had to be 16 to get the most out of them. All I wanted to do was just run around to school disco and skid about on my knees at weddings and, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah, and skid about on my knees at weddings and you know that kind of stuff um yeah and the thing about kid stuff is that when when people who are accused of doing kid stuff try to stop doing kid stuff and to grow up a bit it's always terrible it's always all it's always more profound and and more intelligent when when it's for kids, right? Yeah. Like when the goodies try and do social comment and stuff, it's always a bit bad, you know.

You have to own it. You have to, you know, you have to do it right. Yeah. So the video's a pastiche of the Ipcris file and is played almost completely deadpan. Yeah, it should have been a parody of jaws for the revenge yes it's all i think it's jaws for the revenge that is it i know it might be jaws 3d but from memory i think it's jaws for the it's definitely not jaws 5 cruel jaws because that's a that's an italian

production yeah yeah i mean the video's a disappointment as well, isn't it? I mean, it's very nice and you're just sitting there waiting for them to just go off on one. It just doesn't happen, does it? The thrill's gone, hasn't it? Yeah. The 80s are dying and it's only 84. Yes. So the single jumped up to number 13

the following week and peaked at number 11 which was the first Madness single to miss the top 10 since The Prince which was their debut. They split up two years later and then reformed to playing lots of feels to angry middle-aged skinheads. It's a bit

like West Ham Chelsea, isn't it? It's not somewhere you want to go. Certainly not somewhere you want to take your kids. No. There'll be no bummer conga going on there. As it was known at Oxford University. Still making great videos,

that's Madison, aren't you, Kate? Yeah, well now, a lot of people know about that, don't they? It's time to look at the middle section of the charts now,

with you, Gary. No, I don't want to do it time to look at the middle section of the charts now with you, Gary. No, I don't want to do it. $1,000? That'll do nicely. Yay. And a 25, Howard Jones and What Is Love. A 24, Human Touch from Rick Springfield.

A 23, Musical Youth and 16. Snowy White and Bird of Paradise is at number 22. A 21, Nobody Told Me, John Lennon. Thomas Dolby and Hyperactive at number 20. And at number 19, Manhattan Transfer with Spice of Life. At 18, Pipes of Peace, Paul McCartney. At 17, China Crisis and Wishful Thinking. At 16, it's Shakey and Bonnie with A Rockin' Good Way Good Way At 15 I Am What I Am, Gloria Gaynor

Big Country and Wonderland are at number 14 And at 13 The Smiths and What Difference Does It Make At 12 the love theme from the Thornbirds, Juan Martin And at number 11 it's Echo and the Bunnymen with The Killing Moon Now we move back a little bit further down the chart to a record which was a new entry in at 37. One Small Day, we welcome back Ultravox. We have another chart run down and more bollocks with fake money. Jack is high against you. And your hammer is coming down.

We have another chart run down and more bollocks with fake money. And then we're introduced to Ultravox. Originally formed in 1974 as Tiger Lily. 1970, fucking four. They went through a string of band names in the late 70s until they settled upon The Damned in 1977. And then they found out a few weeks later that somebody else was using that name. So they changed their name to Ultravox.

The New Damned. Yes. Lead singer John Fox was replaced in 1979 by Midyur, who'd previously been in Slick and The Rich Kids and was currently with Thin Lizzy, as we've already pointed out. This is the first single off their new album, Lament,

and is a new entry at number 37. Everything's in the upper part of the charts this week, isn't it? We haven't had one top ten single yet. So, Midyar actually mentioned this episode of Top of the Pops in a Smash's interview when he said

I don't like Morrissey, I think he's a bit of a prat. We were on Top of the Pops and he turned up looking like everyone else in normal, ordinary clothes. Then he changed into his perfectly unironed shirt which he pulled out of his trousers at all the right angles and away he went. He's not a

he's not a real person he's a facade like Des O'Connor which is the absolute ultimate insult. At my school a real person. He's a facade like Dez O'Connor. Which is the absolute ultimate insult. At my school, the biggest insult you could give anyone is that they look well Dez-er.

Have you seen Sir? My sister used to go on about, oh, you're not going out wearing that. You look well Dez-er, Dad. And I used to go, what the fuck are you going on about? He says, yeah, Dez-er,

like Dez O'Connor. It's a little bit rich though, of old Midge, because he was the absolute fraud. I mean, of all frauds really. I mean, you know,

somebody that started off as a kind of Bay City roller wannabe with Slick, and then as a punk wannabe, you know, with Rich Kids. And then, you know, and then sort of like before, sort of, you know, acquiring the kind of leadership of Ultra wannabe, you know, with rich kids, and then sort of like before sort of acquiring a kind of leadership of Ultravox,

you know, when the kind of electropop wave comes in. So he's a three-time bandwagon jumper, although by this stage it's almost like they're not really anything really, they're just this sort of nondescript sort of power pop rock of some sort. It's hard to really describe really all the All the kind of elements of his kind of sort of hack rock career are kind of melded into this sort of jelly sort of mediocrity.

By the way, do you want to know what the headline of the Smash Hits interview was? If Joan Collins can be a sex bomb at 50, so can I. Am I right? Fucking well done, sir! Seriously, if all the books that I read five years later stuck in my head as much as

the pop charts and smash hits of the mid-eighties I'd be one of the world's leading public intellectuals this is just what a waste what a waste if Joan Collins could be a sex bomb at 50 so can I that's something that's something to aspire to isn't it I'm 50 in a couple of years time

if Joan Collins could be a sex bomb at 50 so can I I'm going to say that to myself every morning when I'm in the shower and of course tell you if you need an example how far away we are from the glory years of the early 80s here's Ultrabox being a proper

band with proper instruments? Yeah, not needed. This is an astonishingly windy record. They're pumped up with empty space like a colonoscopy or something. It's supposed to sound like the view from a helicopter, you know what I mean? But it's like a helicopter flying over

fucking Dagenham or something. It's this terrible sort of spurious grandeur. It's like... I mean, we've got U2 and Simple Minds knocking about now. And Ultravox obviously fancies a bit of that. Yeah, but they're still

trying to keep this sort of sense of mysterious sort of European sophistication like in the chart rundown where uh one of the entries just before one of the entries is uh juan martin who did the theme from the thorn birds and gary davis is doing the countdown and he makes a point of saying juan martin like trying to pronounce this is when football commentators and stuff would always pronounce foreign names just phonetically in English

Gary really it's like he's been to Marbella or something he's like no I know all about this stuff tries to pronounce it properly and in 1984 that was like having a croissant for your breakfast you know what I mean that was really go ahead really forward thinking or a cappuccino

yeah but this is yeah this terrible that was really go ahead really forward thinking or a cappuccino yeah but this is yeah this terrible early to mid 80s attempt at British people trying to be

sophisticated Europeans it's like you know there's something really sort of Del Boy about it something really and what's what's Majore wearing

can you remember oh dear god it's not quite a snood is it no no no it's like quite a snood is it no no no it's like a black smock but with short sleeves and I've just got in my notes

the band are in dire need of a stylist but not Nick Kershaw's the only good thing you can say about him apart from his very insightful words on Morrissey quoted earlier only good thing you can say about Miju, apart from his very insightful words on Morrissey

quoted earlier, is that at least he didn't try and milk Band-Aid, right? Like he was half of the Band-Aid team, wasn't he? And unlike Geldof, he didn't you know, everyone's forgotten. Like, you know, unless you're a

sad obsessive about this stuff. People have just forgotten that Mijura had anything to do with Bandai. That's how it should be. Just fade into the background. Your work is done. It can't be said of everyone involved in that particular project.

Yeah, yeah. The point is if it got weller or someone like that to even, I don't know, Bono in the edge to the theme, it would have been too much, too idiosyncratic. You need somebody, say the utterly bland and catch-all like Midure, really, to write that particular theme.

Give it just enough of a windy Celtic feel. Yes, yes. So, one small day would jump eight places the following week, but get no higher than number 27. They'd have a follow-up, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, which got to number three, and the band would survive into 1988.

Welcome back to One Small Day. OK, it's time to have a look at the top ten, and this time you're reading it out, and so are you. Oh. Gold bar. You haven't you're reading it out, and so are you. Oh. Gold bar. You haven't been near Heathrow Airport, have you? And at number ten, the Eurythmics, and here comes the rain again. At number nine, it's Duran Duran with New Moon on Monday.

At eight, Fiction Factory and Feels Like Heaven. Seven, we're going to take a holiday with Madonna. At number six, That's Living Alright, Joe Fagan And at number 5 with their second record in the charts, The Thompson Twins and Dr. Doctor Moving up to number 4, Matthew Wilder and Break My Stride And down onto number 3, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun From Cyndi Lauper At 2 this week, Queen and Radio Gaga And at number 1, It's Frankie Goes To Hollywood With Relax

DLT and Gary Davis run through the top 10 with some gold bars and Radio Gaga. And at number one, it's Frankie Goes to Hollywood with Relax. DLT and Gary Davis run through the top ten with some gold bars, and Travis makes a very poor Brinks Matt robbery reference. And then definitely skip over the fact that the number one single is banned by the BBC. Yes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Relax. Frankie Goes to Hollywood performed in Liverpool in 1980 and they first came to national attention with Appeal Session in 1982, followed by a film with a band playing an early version of Relax in the Liverpool State Ballroom in February of 1983,

which was on the Tube. Anyone seen that? Yeah. Yeah. What did you think of it at the time? I mean at the time it just seemed like a bit of kind of worthy channel for regional pop

the idea that this would become one of the dominant moments of the 1980s really does tell you about the kind of the nature of Trevor Horne and his production and the way it could absolutely take something over and really, you know, and really sort of build it into something

glorious. You know, The Art of Noise, you know, really it was. And great because I think, you know, he needed the both. You couldn't just have, you know, Trevor Horne just going through the kind of big bouncy sort of production motions. He needed some subject matter and I think it was great

subject matter. You know, it's great to have that and it was a magnificent pop moment I think the one thing you could take away from that appearance on the tube is you could tell pretty quickly which of the band members were gay always important they're basically wearing

vest and pants aren't they it's like they've been punished at PE. But while Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford look extremely comfortable, the other three just look like really low-level wrestlers, don't they? They were signed by Zhang Tum Tum soon afterwards. The song entered the chart in November of 1983 and took nine weeks to get into the top 40. It appeared on

Top of the Pops when it reached number 35 and then on January the 11th Mike Reap was playing it when he noticed the cover art and a press advert that claimed the band would make Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes. He then yanked it off the air and claimed that he'd never play it again. It was then banned by the BBC, which made it the first top 40 single to be banned since Too Drunk to Fuck by the Dead Kennedys in 1981. And two weeks later, it became number one. Of course it did.

Where's the fun in trying to listen to a banned single when you've already heard it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, and it was the most ridiculous. I mean, I think that with God Save, even with God Save the Queen, you could probably understand,

yeah, I guess the BBC can't really play that, I suppose. I can understand why they do it, I obviously disagree, but with Too Drunk to Fuck, I remember Tony Blackburn having to introduce it by saying, and number 17 is a single by a group who choose to call themselves

the Dead Kennedys before marching on with a little hit parade. Or I'll judge dread or whatever. I'm sure it was all a bit risque. But, I mean, in this instance, it was just absolutely ridiculous. It just made the BBC look absolutely stupid. You know, it really did. And it was one of those kind of, you know,

it was one of those significant smashing 90 moments or whatever, which, you know, it was just, it just revealed of you know it was one of those significant smashing 90 moments or 10 which you know it it was just it just revealed um you know the kind of absurdity of the kind of people that were um acting as you know custodians of pop you know the kind of highest broadcasting level it was ridiculous taylor what did this song mean to you at that age oh everything i was 11 can you imagine you don't have to imagine but can can you imagine? At our school, it was... I mean, for a start, nobody even knew or cared that they were gay, right? It was just rude, right?

People talk about it now, it was like the first really aggressively gay record. It was just rude. Nobody cared whether it was gay or straight. It was talked about cocks, you know. Eleven years old, this is fantastic. This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened.

Except that, because of course at 11 you're at that age where it's quite peculiar. You know what sex is, but you don't know anything about it, anything at all. So there was a, we got it a bit wrong. It was generally, in our playground it was generally considered that the lyrics went relax don't do it when you want to suck and chew it which which is quite good advice if you if you don't want to lose friends well it sounds like a round trees fruit pasta lad but but yeah this uh this thing of being completely fascinated by this new world of sex about which you knew absolutely nothing. There was a kid in our playground, I remember him saying, you know,

when you do it, when you do it with a woman, you have to lick them out. And everyone was sort of like, what? You have to lick lick them. And somebody else said, what does that mean? Lick their shit. And everyone said, what? He was talking about, yeah, like picking up a shit and licking it. And everyone just sort of stared at him. And he said, well, Paul McCartney used to do it. And I queried this.

And he said, yeah, I read it in a book, I said what book do you read this in oh it's just a book about Paul McCartney what was it a biography of the Beatles yeah yeah it was a biography of the Beatles it said he was always a very sexy man, that's the quote that stuck in my head, he was always a very sexy man going around you know

licking Jane Asher's shit and stuff it's yeah it's it's hard because when i was that age that the only sexual advice i was given was that you you had to get a girl down on the floor and my mates would say you know oh yeah yeah you just you know of course it was the thing was because it was the 80s oh what you're gonna do it when the four minute warning goes off oh i'm gonna get a girl down on the floor. And it's like what? Like rugby tackler or something.

I mean, we've been used to seeing kind of like obviously gay people on top of the post for quite a few years now. But you're right. Absolutely nothing like the two in Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I mean, Paul Rutherford looked like Yosser Hughes' younger brother, for starters. And he was probably the first gay person on top of the pops who you just didn't feel the need to take the piss out of and actually looked really cool and think, you know, actually, I wouldn't mind looking like him.

To the 11-year-old eye, there is something in that. But Holly Johnson looked really cool. It's like, I'm not sure that outside of Liverpool, Paul Rutherford really looked that cool, because, you know, the Tash was very time and place specific. But Holly Johnson, you look at him even now, he looks fantastic. He's got this slick back hair and a nice suit and sort of little gloves,

little sort of like strangler-type gloves to add an element of menace. Not fingerless? No, no, no, no. Bucking the trend. It's like he's got prop actual gloves as if to say, you know, my fingers go all the way to the end.

And two obviously out gay men singing about hedonistic sex in 1984 seems incredibly brave nowadays, doesn't it? You know, this is the year that Claire Rayner put a Johnny on a banana. And, you know, the word and the message that was being put out was, you know, gay sex equals death. What, as early as this? Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a, know, gay sex equals death. What, as early as this? Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a yeah, 1984. In the 1980s obviously you had, you know, it was so unspeakable a thing that they had to have that ridiculous advert with the icebergs. There was homophobia at all social levels including institutional, governmental level, you know. And yet

you do get a lot of gay pop. And I mean, you know, clearly these days, I mean, even the Tories have got a float at Pride or whatever. And the idea is that homophobia is now institutionally outlawed, supposedly, and it's absolutely out of the question. And now pop is strangely heterosexual. Where's all the gay gone? Where's all the queer gone?

It's very strange. It's almost like once the battle for civil rights and recognition was won, there's no need for any more gay pop. Something like that's happened. Or is that just part of the overall sort of blandness of 21st century pop? I'm not quite sure.

But where has it all gone? There was so much then, there's none now. It's weird. So Relax would stay at number one for two more weeks when it was knocked off the top by Naina's 99 Red Balloons and then it would drift out to number 31 at the beginning of May, but then it

turned round and went right back up to number two by July, eventually becoming the second biggest selling single of 1984. That's incredible, isn't it, when Frankie goes solo with number one and number two. Was that to do with remixes and stuff like that?

Them all having the same serial number? Like the jam used to do with their 7 inches and 12 inches? Yeah, might well be. I mean, you know, it was a real sensation then when something went straight into number one. I mean, obviously number one then, then a great deal more than number one now. I do miss the days when things would clamber

steadily up to the sort of top of it, and then make a kind of slow, gradual descent, so they've made a graph of it. It'd be like the outline of Everest or something like that, or whatever, or sort of on a table mount or something like that, if you were there for six, seven weeks or whatever.

The slow descent was weirder, though, because it's like, surely it's gone. The moment's gone. When you see Top of the Pops is from, like, late January, and it's got, like, Christmas records, and they're still in the – they're, like, number 14. Who went out in the third week of January to buy, you know, never mind the presents?

Yeah, yeah. And so that's nearly it for tonight. Thanks very much indeed for watching. Next week, Top of the Pops presented by Simon Bates and Peter Powell. That's a lot from us here. We've had a lot of fun this Thursday. Join us again next week for another Top of the Pops. Until then, have a gold bar.

So, in the place of relax is Holiday by Madonna, which is the third Madonna single and her first UK hit. The UK cover had a picture of a 1950s train station instead of a pic of the artist, as they didn't want British DJs and punters to know that she was white. There's always a barrier to sales in this company, being white. It entered the charts in January after a filmed appearance at the hacienda which was screened on the tube there you go that's number three david would it would

it have bothered did you buy this yep i did and it would have bothered me to know that she was white you know i was one of these little hipsters that was kind of going out and buying imports funk imports at 4.99 a go and my god you £4.99 back then was £4.99. And yeah, you know, real serious cashiers sort of surrounded these records. And I would have assumed, when I first got the first single, that was Everybody.

And I assumed that she was like, I don't know, Angela Beaufort, Melba Moore, all these kind of sort of, you know, sort of divas that were doing the rounds at that time. And I assumed she was black. And yes, I must admit that I did feel ever so slightly short-changed that I was um when I realized that she was she was white you know they they didn't they knew something there they knew about people like me and our mentality because you hear it you hear the other examples of um of of white singers that

people think are black and you just go well what twat even thought that? I mean Rick Astley, did anyone actually really think he was black? Morrissey It's not that she sings with such a full-throated gospel vocal or anything like that, it's just the nature of production, normally people who are on that kind of you know, who are on that kind of

conveyor belt of sort of like D-Train type jellybean funk they just tend to have black singers, it was unusual for white singer to be um in that particular world taylor is there anything in this song that would make you think that she was going to have a massive long career um no it's it's a new york uh uh funky dance record isn't it with with some sort of uh chirping over the top i'm a bit of a Madonna sceptic, to be honest. I like a few of hers, but

I don't think she's all that much. The only one of these early ones that I really like is Borderline. Stuff like Holiday, to me, it always sounds a bit... How dare I say it? It sounds a bit white. It's just not... It doesn't sound quite as rich or quite as dirty

as the best of those sort of records. It's a little bit squeaky. I mean, yeah, this is just what it is, really. It is just a sort of fairly light, disposable, sort of funky, sort of synthy, you know, 12-inch or whatever, and a little bit about celebration in every nation and all that. You know what I mean? Madonna, I suppose, really gets going

when she sort of gets into this sort of narcissistic, sort of perpetual self-reinvention, the material girl thing, all that kind of stuff, where she seems to sort of chime in with a mildly kind of obnoxious note of the 1980s or whatever. Then it all gets going from there, really. But yeah, at this point, I was still buyingonna singles because i quite like that kind of sort of light dance floor stuff but no i never imagined that you know i just imagined she was on a power

top teeny marie or something like that yeah kelly marie kelly marie so holiday moved at one place the next week and no higher this is the only song from the top 10 that's on top of the pops this week. She went on to just do everything, really, and pretty much everyone. So what's on telly afterwards then? Well, the BBC One is going into the living planet with David Attenborough. BBC Two's running a 40-minute documentary

about lonely women from Chicago travelling to Ireland in the hope of hooking up with some single farmers and fishermen itv is running the steam video company with william franklin and barry crier and channel four is going to majorca in an episode of treasure hunt with annika rice and kenneth kendall so what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow chaps well oh well i wasn't in the playground or what we're talking about in the playground tomorrow, chaps? Well, oh, well, I wasn't in the playground. What we're talking about on campus. On the quad.

On the quad, yes, yes. Down at the Bodleian. It would have to be the Smiths, I suppose, still. I think it was still, I mean, even though they'd still got this charming man under their belt. It was still something that, even still the second time around, it was still something that was kind of very, very striking indeed. It felt like one of the very few new things

in sort of 83, 84. It's mostly time when lots of things from the early 80s are kind of dying away, really. So probably that, but of course there is the absence of relax, you know, that world of like being a bit of an eyebrow raiser as well Definitely, Taylor? Madness, it's all over

Right Is there anything on this episode of Top of the Pops that we actually like? I do like, I mean I think I would have said at the time, I would like that, what difference does it make and I do like I mean I think I would have said The Time I would like that What difference does it make And I would like

You know And I would like Madonna You know Holiday And then in between No No

No It's strange And I mean just Like you say It seems to be A slightly disorganised episode Like I don't get the feeling

That this is all Strategically planned That they would only have They would have no black people On this week it sounds more like kind of cock-up really or probably only afterwards thought hang on, we didn't have any top ten singles, did we?

why's that? I'm sure the thing was just ever so slightly more random when it came to programming back then and I'd definitely put this down to cock-up rather than conspiracy it definitely has a B-team feel about it, doesn't it? yeah, yeah, yeah and it also comes down to who was available or whatever. Of course.

I also get the impression that they have to fill in, because, of course, there's three or four precious air minutes that they can't fill because they can't play Relax. Yeah. So I get the impression that maybe one or two of the performances go on a little bit longer than you would expect on this particular edition. Yeah, I can imagine you're right. I can imagine you're right,

because they usually cut the video short, don't they? But they don't on this one. Yeah, no, no, no. They usually get they usually cut the video short, don't they? But they don't on this one. No, no, they usually get a bit truncated, but there's not much truncation on this one. So what does this show tell us about music in 1984? That it was not quite as good as

1983, but still better than 1985. Yeah, yeah. It was, I mean, from a sort of absolute pop perspective, I mean, I suppose, yeah, it feels like sort of end times to me, really. You know, there's an awful lot of these things. There's a lot of, as is always the case in pop music, there's a lot of kind of weird malingras that are still overlapping

with the kind of, you know, the new stuff, even as it's sort of beginning to fade um um yeah there is a slightly depressing moldy air about this particular episode um episode edition um and yeah it was it was in between times really i think it was i mean yeah live aid was about to become the new sort of hideous thing as taylor mentioned on the old event horizon um and that would kind of alter you know the whole sort of hideous thing, as Taylor mentioned, on the event horizon. And that would kind of alter, you know, the whole sort of, you know, I mean, Live Aid was everybody wanted to get back together and feel together again. It was one of those kind of events, like Rave and like Oasis.

You know, I think there's a sort of sense of disparateness, you know, in the 80s and in terms of pop, you know, and tribalism, whatever. And I think people were sort of pining for one massive big thing again. Live Aid offered a sort of sense of that, and that's why I think Queen was suddenly kind of revived. People just wanted to worship superstars again. Yeah. And I think, like, you know, the whole...

In a sense, you know, by 84, everything's still slightly determined by punk, but less and less so post-punk and new pop. Yeah. And all that's kind of fading away, and the Nick Kershaws people are coming in. So, yeah, it's a kind of sort of a fading time and in between

time well on that note we bring proceedings to an end I'd just like to say thank you to Taylor Parks always a pleasure and I'd like to say thank you to David Stubbs and thank you very much you're welcome sir you're welcome don't forget we do this on an occasional basis

we'll try and get the next one out as soon as we can, but we don't know when that is, so I won't bother you with it just now. But you can reach us on Facebook at facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast fuck Twitter. Thanks for listening. Have a gold bar.

Chart music. We've got to get into the bargain, so thanks for the call. Sorry if we couldn't get through. What have you brought with you? Lots of glamorous Frankie memories, yes. I've got a pair of trousers I wore on tour in America. By Anthony Price. Anthony Price trousers. I've got a French gold disc for a certain A record. We'll call it Relaxed Juice for the second one. I've got a glamorous leather jacket that I wore on the Relaxed video,

but it's changed colour since then. It's good, it's nice. This is an effigy of Pads. You won this in Germany, this is a German award. It's a great wrench for them to give this away. And like, you know, that kind of sign thing. Our new single, Welcome to the Pleasure Doom. Which we're going to see in a second.

Indeed. And you've got a question. Yeah, we've got three questions, actually. The first one is, only a true, yeah, only a true Frankie fan could answer this. Who did we do our first radio interview with? That's number one. Okay. What was odd about that interview?

And who banned Relax? That's the one. Okay. What was odd about that interview? And who banned relax? That's three questions. I know the answer to one of those. Don't give it away, Mike. You can't give it away. You can't give that one away. Can I? Very quiet.

All right. Those three questions to Superstore, BBC Television, London, W12, HQT.