Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #24: July 31st 1986 - Toneh Adleh Aht Ter Spandaah Balleh

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: no, really - how do you soil a bra? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees us getting our hands down the back of the sofa on another random episode of Top Of The Pops - but as it's 1986 - a year we haven't done yet - we're half-expecting to touch a maggot-infested rat, or an open pot of hair gel with all mould on it. We needn't have worried, though, this particular episode has real-life Indie bands that you only see in the music papers in it, and they've actually let an actual woman co-present the show, a mere 21 years after it first started. The downside being that she's stuck with Mike Read, looking like the third member of Black Lace. Musicwise, it's the usual mid-80s bag of cat's arseholes. As Morrissey pointed out at the time, you weren't allowed on Top Of The Pops unless you were black, a fact borne out by there being no less than five non-Caucasian appearances - Doris out of Five Star, Stedman out of Five Star, and the other three people who were in Five Star. Spandau Ballet make their comeback. Paul McCartney gets in people's way on the Bakerloo Line. Stan Ridgeway has a flashback with a storeroom dummy. Chris de Burgh shits out what could be the worst No.1 of the decade. And Morrissey starts becoming a proper bell-end. Al Needham, Sarah Bee and Taylor Parkes come together for a long, hard stare at the summer of '86, veering off to discuss the buttons that do nothing on the Tube, Melchester Rovers' turbulent 1985/86 season, how difficult it is to carve someone's name on a bullet, and the proper way of reacting to someone asking you why you're so fucking crap. We swear. A lot.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for the small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. What do you like listening to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music Chart music

Hey up you pop crazed youngsters And welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music The podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee. I'm your host, Al Needham, but arseholes to me, it's all about the other two people who are with me today and they are in order. Your friend and mine and the world's friend, Taylor Parks. Hey up Taylor. Yeah hello, back again. My other guest today is none other than the first lady of chart music, Ms. Sarah B. Hey up, Sarah.

Hello, dear. How are we? I'm quite all right, thank you. Good, good, good. It's bloody cold, though. It's horrible, isn't it? Spring's fucked off. And I haven't had a lot of sleep.

So basically, I'm just going to... No, but that should make for an entertaining ramble. I'm just going to say whatever comes into my head. And you'll have to fucking deal with it. Anything pop and interesting happening to your two of late? Sarah, your book's come out. It has. I've got a book out.

Plug that fucker. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. I've got... I can't do like a book plug. That's terrible. Right. Yeah, it's great. I can't do a book plug. That's terrible. Right, what's it called? It's called Will of the People.

What's it about? It is a Brexit bedtime story about a bloke called Will who fucks everything up. Excellent. And where can we purchase this from? You know, all good bookshops and on the internet and all that sort of thing. And bloody water. It's in Waterstones, this one. My last one didn't get to Waterstones. Fucking hell. So, you know, like good bookshops and on the internet and all that sort of thing. And bloody water. It's in Waterstones, this one. My last one didn't get to Waterstones.

Fucking hell. So, you know, like Poncy actual. I've got no idea where, though, because it's like a bit of a novelty book. So I don't know where. I've been in. It's like, I don't know where it is. So if anybody happens to spot one in the wild, you know, do let me know. And also fucking pony up and buy it.

All right. Well, while I've got your ear, we do need you to, to explain to us how easy is it to soil a bra? We have this conversation last episode where Neil told us that on his perambulations around Coventry city of culture, every now and then you'll see a massive bra lying about. And we got into a conversation about you know how easy is it to soil a bra have you I mean I don't want to make it personal but has there

ever been a time where you've just gone oh my bras suddenly filthy I've got to love it massive bra sorry I'm just I'm taking uh this is my takeaway from this is not the how soiled it is but how massive it is um well this is what Neil was saying. I don't know why they need massive bras in Coventry, but Clinton would do it. Massive bras! Maybe it was Lady Godiva. Oh, so it's like they found Richard III under the car park

and they found Lady Godiva's undercrackers in a hedge. In Coventry, yeah. In Coventry. How easy is it to soil a bra? I don't... I've never been asked that. I'm going to have to contemplate it. Well, this is what children are supposed to do.

I don't know if they don't... The thing is that they don't... You know, unless there's something wrong, they don't normally get very dirty. I mean, they just sort of sit there and they sort of mind their business, really, and they do... You know, they hold up what they're supposed to hold up.

I've never... No, personally, I've never, no, personally, I would never kind of go, oh, do you know, that's chafing, I'm going to... They're really expensive. Like, proper, you know, a decent... He says as if he fucking knows.

You should be able to get them on the NHS, really. But, you know, there's lots of things you should be able to get on the NHS that you can't get now. So, in answer to your question uh pass fair enough we asked matron but she wouldn't tell us so let's ask you before we go any further of course we need to once again drop to our knees and give thanks to the lovely lovely pop craze youngsters who stepped up to the mark and paid their child support for the bastard child called chart music and these people include ian james king rudy millard paul campbell bobby treetops gen w paul shields andrew graves oh they all heard the call they all got their hands in the pockets

and they all said yes yes, chart music. We know how much effort and diligence goes into finding new ways to describe a show waddy waddy record. Take this humble offering and give us more of that sweet, sweet podcast. Thank you. And let's name some more people who are on it so we can just get the fucking thing out of the way. Nick Duffer, Mike Mel graham clark ted rogers

we got ted rogers's money i'm doing that yeah i'm doing that sign i'm doing that hand gesture that no one can see sarah richardson darren lamb patrick deacon and sam hooper whose name i got wrong last time because i am a bellend. Because, Pop Craze Youngsters, if chart music is making your nature rise like we know it is, you've got to get out of your seat. You've got to go to patreon.com slash chart music. You've got to yank our G-string open

and you've got to shove that money right down to the gosset. You're very good at this. Anyway, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to July the 31st 1986. Now then, this is the first

one from 86 that we've covered and I can tell you now that out of the collection I've got, which is bound to get bigger sooner or later because Top of the Pops is heading that way on BBC4. This is a year we're going to cover many a time and not because it's run full of brilliant music because it clearly isn't but there is some mad shit knocking about. So panel, your thoughts 1986, music wise?

Well, by this point I was fully entrenched. This was my horrible year right this was my sort of half educated teenage music snob yeah 84 and 85 i'd been learning the history getting a grounding going to the record library and getting out all that all those albums i'd heard of but hadn't heard so by 1986 i was ready for the rut and i I had the C86 tape and I liked the Smiths and Jesus and Mary Jane. The only black artists I liked were dead or close to dead. And I was that horrible kid, you know, like raging about daytime radio brainwashing people

who I probably imagined as a flock of robot sheep voting Tory because the papers told them to and watching mindless TV pap. No comprehension of what the world's really like. And that sort of knee jerk rubbish, like that archetype, which never really died and in fact is now enjoying a renaissance. God help me, that was me. And I had the wit to clamber out of that over the next year or two but the chills never left me and i've wasted a lot of the next decade or two battling that phenomenon which i now realize cannot be defeated because it's naturally occurring and it's always there in culture and politics and everything people trying to find themselves trying to find an uncomplicated cause

to make them righteous and create a heroic narrative uh of themselves and it's the roots of tyranny and you can't fight it directly you can only try to limit it but this period from me being 14 or so this is where my insider knowledge comes from. Sarah, you were eight, weren't you? And was music becoming a definite part of your eight-year-old diet? Yeah, very much so, yeah. I mean, I think I was sort of four or five when I first remember getting into it. So I was, you know, well on my way,

but also it was still quite grown grown up and scary and mysterious um but also there was wham i liked wham also um i was looking at what was out this year and um pleased by the pet shop boys without this year which is obviously an absolutely cracking album um which i hope i had the wit to be into at the time but i don't know um i can't remember. Hounds of Love came out in 1985. And then The Whole Story, which was Kate Bush's really amazing best of, came out this year, 1986. And my mum had both of those, which meant that I listened to them all the time. So I just listened to loads of Kate Bush all the time at home.

It was great. By the time this episode came out, we were one week removed from the wedding of Prince Andrew andrew and sarah ferguson seeing as we're a week or so away from another third division royal wedding i thought it'd be nice to see what the pop stars uh of the time had to say about that royal wedding uh thanks to an article in smash it so shall we play a game yeah go on okay which duo said i'm not a royalist by any means, let's just say that. The wedding, I'll be taping it, of course, to burn. I'd be quite happy to see them all in exile.

They should all get married to American divorcees. Actually, nuke them. Nuke the royal family. Which duo said that? Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. The KLF. Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. Was that an actual thing, though?

They were very prescient about the American divorcees, weren't they? Definitely, yes. So which rock band said this? I've always been a royalist. I like the Queen and she does a great job. Having met Charles and Di, Charles three, four, five times, on layman's terms, he's a smashing bloke. I've got nothing but praise for all of them,

except Mark Phillips. I'm not mad about him. The Queen has to do so much. They send her off to Umbongo land and they dump something in front of her and she thinks, I've got to eat this. They're the hardest working band in the world.

Status quo. Status quo. Seriously. Oh, what? I properly pulled that out of my actual arse because I didn't care. Well done. Come on, I properly pulled that out of my actual arse because I didn't care brilliant come on we're smashing this yeah you are you are

okay Witch Lead Singer said I would have hated to be born into the royal family it's a cushy number compared to being a tramp I suppose but it has serious disadvantages the last royal wedding we watched in San Francisco, but Andrew and Fergie are a really gruesome couple. He's really

obnoxious and she's really ugly. We just need to see if an alternative band said that. Pete Wiley. Er... Oh, I hate these games. What, you just... No, you don't. You love them.

Robert Smith. Robert Smith! Oh, what about that? Which alternative band said, I really do suspect that the Queen is retarded, honestly, because I don't ever remember seeing the Queen talking or having a conversation. She doesn't seem to have any insight to anything.

Oh, the Jesus and Mary chain. It's hard to tell because they're all in your voice. So I just think I'll need them. The Jesus and Mary chain. Taylor's cheating. Taylor has gone to his cupboard to look this up furtively. Yeah, the cupboard in my mind. It's dark.

Which lead singer of a rock band said, well, one doesn't like to put down the royal family, but I'm sure Andy could have done better than that. It'll be interesting to see if Fergie can get the measurements down in time for the wedding, otherwise there isn't going to be much room for Andy

at the altar. Oh, fuck that. Fuck whoever that is. Fuck off. If it's somebody whose music I like, I officially no longer like their music. Lemmy. Oh, Lemmy. Yeah, he's charming then, isn't he?

It's just, you know, he's just being ribald. Okay. One last one. One last one. I'm fanatically in favour of the royal family for the prestige they bring the country and the amount they do for the country. People who want to get rid of the royal family

should be shot, traitorous scum. Morrissey. Gary Newman. Gary Newman said that fucking hell some things just stick in your mind so in the news this week a soviet passenger liner sinks when it collides with a carrier ship, the Tory cabinet backed Thatcher on no sanctions on South Africa, while protesters in Edinburgh lob eggs and tomatoes at her,

Boy George is fined £250 for possession of heroin, while Steve Strange is fined £500 for nicking a cheque book and a cash card at a party. Sebastian Coe was pulled out of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. But the big news this week is that FC Hamburg have invited Samantha Fox to sing at halftime during their friendly with Liverpool in an attempt to quell hooliganism. Holy shit, we need... What an idea.

It's like that thing in the day-to-day come to life, isn't it? But they were having hardcore pornography on the big screens. We need to find footage of this. Not hardcore pornography, but Sam Fox. Well, we don't know if it happened or not. Right. Well, we should investigate this. I mean, that's the thing, though.

Yeah, we should. But it'll end up as a kind of Apocalypse Now scenario where, you know, you get the kind of go-go dancers and all these kind of sex-crazed mar get the kind of go-go dancers and all these kind of sex crazed marines just kind of clambering over each other and kicking each other in the head to get to the women. It just doesn't sound, it's not the

same principle as playing classical music in the bus station to stop the youth from rioting. I don't think it's going to work. On the cover of the NME this week is Jam and Lewis. On the cover of the NME this week is Jam & Lewis. On the cover of the latest smash, it's Hollywood Beyond. The number one LP is True Blue by Madonna.

And over in America, the US number one is Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. And the number one LP is the soundtrack to Top Gun. So, me dears, what were we doing in the summer of 86? Did I have guinea pigs at that time probably had guinea pigs i don't know i was i wasn't in the habit of stalking eight-year-old girls in a in another town then sarah sorry about that times change i was i was hanging out with with guinea pigs and being being happy to not be at school because school was rubbish so yeah I think I was just angry

that I still had too much puppy fat to wear leather trousers oh mate yeah I was one of those people you know unique a bit different just like everyone else Just like everyone else.

Just like everyone else. I just got it out of the way early, that's all, you know. So I could have this sort of continue, have a sense of superiority. But when I was like 19, I had a sense of superiority over the people who were going through that phase then, like you're supposed to, because I got it out of the way when I was a kid. Well, around about this time, I was waiting to start college again but going to a

different college the one I wanted to go to so I was I was well looking forward to that but the the big event round about this time was that I finally understood and got into hip-hop uh I had a mate who bunged me tapes he was he got a job and I hadn't so he was spunking all his money on vinyl every weekend and he just taped stuff for me and he i asked him to do me a billy bragg compilation and he did and on the other side i looked at it it's like oh run dmc raising hell whoa you know not going to be interested in that um got bored with billy bragg really quickly and then just turned the tape over and uh piper, the first triconic, was like, oh, fucking hell, I get this.

And this is going to be what I'm going to listen to for the fucking rest of my life. It was so fucking good that I remember lying in bed listening to it. Even as the batteries were winding down, it still sounded fucking mint. It's a weird thing. I quite liked hip hop as well,

even though, I mean, I wasn't sort of snobby about that or anything, but it just, for some reason, it didn't seem quite as vital and important and of the moment to me as sort of terrible bands ripping off the Velvet Underground.

I don't know why. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One has been running the Commonwealth Games all afternoon and then the six o'clock news and regional news in your area. BBC Two has broadcast the 1941 film Non But The Lonely Heart where Cary Grant pretends to be a cockney followed by two and a half hours of racing from Goodwood then Hyde, a repeat of fame

and then more Commonwealth Games coverage. ITV has screened The Sullivans, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, the Ray Allen game show Three Little Words, a repeat of Me and My Girl, where Richard O'Sullivan plays a widow father, then the computer-based kids show The Game, Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden, The Moomins, Nature Trail, the Finnish drama series Under the Same Sky, Connections,

The News at 5.45, Crossroads, and of course is currently screening Emmerdale Farm. Channel 4 has put on the films Gangway and The Frozen North, then Dancing Days, the Brazilian disco soap opera of the late 70s, and then another film, Footlight Parade, before running Channel 4 News. Sarah, as is our want at this time, what the fuck it was, Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden. See, I knew you'd ask me this. It's not Blue Tulip, Rose Reed, is it? That'd be fucking mint. I have no idea. I mean, obviously I'm familiar with the Moomins, as we all are, but I don't know what this was.

I'm going to have to find out because it's a good band name, actually. You don't want to know about Blue Tulip's Garden. You literally don't want to dig too deep. All right, then, Pulp Craze youngsters, it's time to go way back to late July of 1986. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have.

Feed Parade, the Top of the Pops. Your hosts for this episode are Mike Reed and Janice Long. We've already discussed Mike Reed in Chalk Music 20, and at this stage of his career, he's minding the late morning slot on Sundays at Radio 1 in between Peter Powell and Jimmy Savile's old record club. Although the latter isn't on this week as he's running a hill race at the Commonwealth Games.

Good for him. And he's a few weeks away from presenting the final season of Saturday Superstore. The supermarket, and some might say, happy shopper, swap shop. Sarah, Saturday Superstore or Number 73? Oh, Number 73 all the way, definitely.

Why? Because I have so few memories of Number 73, but it seemed to be sort of more properly anarchic instead of just, I don't know. Yeah, I never liked Saturday Superstore. I just found it a bit weird and a bit forced I think and what do you think

of Mike Reid at this time he's quite oily he's too young to be that oily like he's really leaning into the oil do you know what I mean

there's no real creepiness but there's a there's a sort of nascent creepiness it's just the sort of I don't know you get the feeling, because he's sort of doing, he's very Bantz, you know,

before Bantz was a thing, but also in that way that you just think you have to humour him even though he's not funny because he might turn nasty. Taylor, what's happened to Mike Reid since we last spoke about him in 1979? Well, it's seven and a half years on, and he's still doing the same job. And despite that full head of raven hair, he's showing every hour of those seven and a half years.

And yet, in another way, he hasn't changed at all. He's just caught up with himself. You know what I mean? He's no longer trying to be the cool kid of Radio 1, which is sort of progress of a sort. I hated Saturday Superstore. What I didn't like about it was that it was too high concept, right? They brought it in and it was like it's in a shop.

So everything, like when we do a competition, we're going to call it like a giveaway or something, or when we do this. And so everything had to be supermarket themed. And as always happens with those things, after about like a month, they just stopped doing half of it because it just got in the way

and it was just really embarrassing, just left by the wayside. Yeah, it wasn't very aspirational, was it, for the kids watching? Oh, here's a new show and it's set in the place that you're going to work at and fucking despise.

Our second host, born in Liverpool in 1955 as Janice Chegwin, Janice Long spent two years as a cabin crew worker on Laker Airways, worked as a shop assistant and in telesales, and was also a contestant on the first ever episode of 3-2-1, before becoming an assistant at BBC Radio Merseyside in 1979 and eventually presented the local music show Street Life on Sunday nights. After moving to the weekday afternoon slot, she interviewed Paul Gambaccine, who was so impressed by her that he recommended her to his bosses at Radio 1.

impressed by her that he recommended her to his bosses at Radio 1. In late 1982 Radio 1's transmission time was expanded and the simulcasts with Radio 2 were abolished and Long was drafted in alongside Mike Smith, Adrian John, Pat Sharp and Gary Davis. She started on the Saturday evening slot and was then promoted to the 7.30 to 10pm weekday slot, where she still is on the evening this episode went out. She actually got through to the final stage in 3-2-1, you know. Yeah, yeah, brainy woman. Her and her husband at the time, they rejected Dusty Bin, a holiday in Copenhagen, a St Bernard's dog and a year's supply of brandy,

a speedboat and just missed out on the Vauxhall Chevette and they eventually won a silver tea service worth two grand. She looked really fucking dischuffed when they won that. They were giving away a St Bernard's dog. Yeah, three, two, one. This was my question. Yeah, how does that work? Well, you're off of the dog and if you didn't want it, they'd chuck it back in the kennel and give you 100 quid. Well, like they were going to kill the dog and put him in a dusty bin or anything. Well, I don't know.

Anything could happen on telly at that point. St Bernard's, you'd have to think really carefully before going. Have you seen the size of them? Yeah, they're big fuckers, aren't they? They're like horses in dog costumes with a sort of Persian rug over them and brandy around their neck. Yeah. It's not going to end well, is it?

You couldn't actually get... It is a dog and it is a fuckloads of brandy. Yeah. So what do we think about Janice Long then? If you don't count the disc girls who played the records in the background in the mid 60s episodes of Top of the Pops this is the first time they've given the woman

an opportunity to do this shit she's great it's a man's job though isn't it standing there and introducing show waddy waddy that's man's work that is it's a strenuous kind of and of course it's really important that you have a man

surrounded by women at all times that's just nature isn't it? No Janice Long was great she's really natural she's an excellent counterpoint to whatever bloke whatever hundredweight of bloke

she was on with and slightly you can tell with her and Mike Reed, you can tell that she's sort of, you know, slightly, they have kind of good chemistry, but it's mostly her just kind of dealing with him, I think. It's good chemistry, but it's not sexual chemistry, is it? No, it's like presenting chemistry. This is no Frank Boff and Selina Scott routine.

But she's not doing, of course, she's not going to roll her eyes, but there's that slight widening of the eyes at the camera, like get a load of this guy face. You know, which, yeah, she's really great. She's lovely to watch. She seems like such a nice person that you don't

want to point out how kind of amateurish and vacuous she really is. But the fact is that doesn't matter. He's having a go at fucking Janice Long now. No, but the fact is that doesn't matter he's having a go at fucking Janice Long now no but the point is that doesn't matter because the genuine niceness neutralises

that and it goes a surprisingly long way because the point is she's doing a job which consists in its entirety of being a human presence in between pop records. So it mostly seemed to attract people who were neither talented nor nice. When in fact, you only have to be one of those things.

So if somebody comes on and they're genuinely nice and they seem like a genuinely warm, friendly person, you sort of forget that what you're actually hearing is a load of froth. I do take issue with the whole vacuous thing in terms specifically of her or anyone else because that is the job. You're not going to be able to shoehorn in

a sort of philosophical discourse, are you? I mean, you've only got a couple of seconds between Joanne Joanne and Phil Collins, so I think you may be expecting a little too much of people Well I'm not expecting it but I know what you mean

And also when you compare her to the other female pop presenters of the time like Muriel Grey and Paula Yates you know she's a lot more avuncular She kind of like knows her job and she does it. Hang on. So avuncular, doesn't that pertain to...

Isn't that of an uncle? Is there an auntie? I was going to say, she's avuncular. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what she is. I mean, the one thing I liked about Janice Long is that I like the fact that she presented everything

with an even tone she wasn't like John Peel she wasn't disparaging or anything like that but you know you always knew what she liked and what she didn't like I mean particularly the latter because she always reacted like a man watching her sons play football you know they'll either

be a little bit of a clenched fist or a thumbs up almost as if you're saying oh come on now Re Racco and the Bunnymen. Hello, welcome to Top of the Box. We kick off tonight with Spandau Ballet and Fight For Ourselves. Everybody, we've got to fight for ourselves. Everybody, we've got to fight for ourselves. Everybody, we've got to fight for ourselves As the opening credits kick in and dissolves into a vortex,

we can hear the disembodied voice of Mike Reed as he introduces Fight For Ourselves by Spandau Ballet. Formed in London as The Cut in 1976, and then The Makers a few months later, and then The Gentry in 1978, Spandau Ballet finally settled on a name where their mate Robert Elms saw some graffiti on the wall of a nightclub bog in Berlin. After becoming early adopters of the Blitzkid stroke new romantic scene, they changed from being 60s R&B copyists to having a go on them since everyone was going on about, and got involved in a multi-label bidding war and eventually released their debut

single to cut a long story short, which soared up to number 5 in December of 1980. By the end of 1984, they'd racked up 8 top 10 hits, including True, which spent four weeks at number one in the spring of 1983 which caused chrysalis to release a greatest hits lp against the band's wishes in late 1985 this led to them suing the label leaving the label and spending 18 months not releasing anything and forcing some of the band to pursue alternative careers, which we'll get onto in a moment. In 1986, they signed with CBS and this is their comeback single, the follow-up to Round and Round, which got to number 18 in January of 1985. And it's jumped 15 places this week.

But before we go any further, some of the more observant pop crazy youngsters may have noticed that I have a slight Nottingham accent. So, Sarah. Hello. Come and sit under the learning tree and let me teach you the Nottingham version of The Rain in Spain. Oh. Right. Who's singing this song? Tony Hadley. And what band is he in? Spandau Ballet. So you mean Tony Adler, Art of Spandau Ballet. Tony Adler, Art of Spandau Ballet. Not bad.

Taylor? See, to West Midlanders, you people sound like Yorkshire anyway. Art of Spandau, ballet. Tony Adler, arter, spandau, ballet. No, no, spandau. It's wrong, isn't it? Spandau. Yeah.

I can't. Ballet. I've been told this. My mates have been to drama school, right? And their voice teachers have said, don't try doing a Nottingham accent in anything because you'll always fuck it up. Because it's a mixture of North and South, you see.

You know, we say up, book and cub like Northerners, but we also say art and downtown, a bit like Southerners do. It's a very complicated accent. But then you mix in the Leicester R. Because it's not Leicester, it's Leicester. The phrase for that is Tanya and her non-R

went on Trish R for a lie detector. So anyway, Spandau Ballet. It's always the way, isn't it? You know, when we do chant music, you get one band with a long career and you're just gagging to get stuck into them. And the first time you catch them

is always at the tail end of their career. Because this is kind of like the beginning of the slow descent for Spandau Ballet, isn't it? Yeah, this is the point where, by rights, they should have lost two original members, one of whom died. Sarah, Spandau Ballet, what did they mean to you? Very little, actually.

I mean, I wasn't, you know, obviously being that young, I hadn't really developed a lot of allegiances at this point. You know, you're still quite, you just sort of hoover up everything at that age. But, you know, I like Duran Duran. You know, they were definitely, if I was going to, if you'd asked me, you know, if for some weird reason you'd stuck a microphone in my face at that point

and forced me to chip, I would have gone, i like joanne joanne i don't really know i don't really know who spant our ballet are um yeah i i always felt um i probably even at the time i always felt even though you know all adults are kind of you know you you sort of have a basic level of respect for all of them just for getting so big and being able to like you know being able to go to bed whenever they want and stuff they're all gods to you but he was such a boob poor old poor Tony is such a boob

I had to spend our ballet he was a bit of a fan anyway um no I kind of now I sort of there's a certain vulnerability about you know because they fired him a couple years ago didn't they and it was like oh mate what's he gonna do now I sort of there's a certain vulnerability about, you know, because they fired him a couple of years ago, didn't they? And it was like, oh, mate, what's he going to what's he going to do now? I mean, he's been, you know, but the sort of the this incredible he's a sort of walking edifice of hubris.

And, you know, he's always has been. And also I've realized in watching this performance is that I think you can, you know, what's Tony Hadley's legacy going to be? And I guess at least part of it is going to be the Hadley fist, which is, you know, when you, obviously there's a lot of this about in the 80s, but just the kind of the heartfelt kind of clench. And of course, it's a song about fighting as well. So that's like gives it extra oomph. But, you know, this predates like the Henman fist of sports ball. But I do, you feel, I have a certain respect for him

just because he was so arrogant over kind of so, you know, so little. Although, you know, he could, it's not like he couldn't sing. He just kind of, you know, did it in such a way that made it impossible for you to like him. Yeah, I think his voice suited the kind of like early 80s new romantic phase of their career. And he's being asked to be a bit more soulful here. And he kind of carried it off with true,

it's got to be said, and gold. But with this one, not so much. That whole Robert Elms white soul and dignity bit never really appealed to me. And I can recognise it as a kind of genuine working class, lower middle class London movement. Yeah. Sort of like mod with a less appealing aesthetic. But ultimately, yeah, any way of living which could have Tony Hadley as a figurehead must be a right load of shit.

Yeah, just oozing that city boy wine bar machismo. You know what I mean? Like a second division footballer. I used to see him out jogging, right, when I used to live up by Crouch End. What, all of them? No, just Tony Hadley. Yeah, he used to jog on the old railway line around Crouch End.

Did he? Yeah, yeah. Hadley yeah he used to jog on the old railway line around Crouch End and yeah yeah I'm pretty sure it was him because even sweating in a tracksuit next to some hawthorn trees he was instantly dislikable present and all his worst traits are right here the it's yeah that the clenched fist by the shoulder which he would then bring down as though flushing an old-fashioned lavatory um and that was his one stage move that and the pseudo-dramatic turns of the head um and that horrible overbearing voice like coming through those massive flared horse nostrils just like puffed up and history stinks he's unlovable in every conceivable way uh and also i feel for steve norman as well being such

a plonker and playing an instrument that only comes in occasionally so the rest of the time he just has to stand there contemplating the injustice of his wealth and success which i imagine is what he was probably doing um and i sort of feel for gary kemp who always seemed like quite a nice bloke and he's not a completely useless songwriter no i'm not a fan of the spandau sound um it's a bit too sort of post live aid changed up here um and i wasn't wasn't really into the neuromatic stuff either but he could always write a tune like somebody else who's coming up later whatever else was going wrong he could always force out a nice melody problem here being that it runs out before the end of the verse. So there's nothing left for the chorus, which is just a sort of grunt at this message.

Everybody, we've got to fight for ourselves. As though in 1986, people were taking life tips from Spandau Ballet. He's right. There's a lot of this going on, isn't there? Because we got into this with Johnny H hates jazz last time i was i was on where there's a lot of a lot of blokes very uh very bravely kind of going on about scrapping when they've clearly you know they they've never thrown a punch in their entire lives like it's it's you know you can imagine them getting slightly leery after a few too many gin and tonics you know and then just running away.

I don't think the Kemp brothers were. They were the craze, remember? Oh, yeah. No, I'm not talking about the Kemp brothers. But, I mean, Tony would be no use at all. He would start something and then leave you to deal with it. I don't know. He's a big bloke.

Yeah. I mean, he's a lot bigger than the Kemp. A lot bigger than Gary Kemp, who in this clip is wearing a big sloppy red hat like a Tetley T-man. But bright red, like a Tetley T-man who's just strolled through an abattoir. I might as well just point out now that Gary Kemp is a friend of chart music. Hi, Gary. Yeah. Yeah.

Or at least he was until two minutes ago. Oh, when he laughed at his hat? Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or at least he was until two minutes ago. Oh, and he laughed at his hat. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine if you got Gary Kemp in here now and showed him this clip, I imagine he would laugh at his hat.

Yeah. I think I did quite well there without knowing that Gary Kemp might be listening to this. I did quite well at walking the line between honesty and decency. Yeah, the thing, this song doesn't actually have a chorus, but to be fair, there are so many songs that don't actually have a chorus. It's just a kind of something happens and you go, oh, this is, you know,

and your brain goes, that is the chorus. Another part of your brain goes, yes, it is. And then another part of your brain goes, that is the chorus. Another part of your brain goes, yes, it is. And then another part of your brain goes, hang on. I don't feel the kind of satisfaction that I should feel at this point. And then it's over and you're on to something else. But they've got some very good, the one thing that elevates this slightly is really excellent female backing singers, like proper.

They've got fucking PVC dresses on, so they're going to be quite uncomfortable but they look amazing um they sound great they're actually there's some good harmonies going on that's the best i can say about this but of course the thing is spandau ballet there must be looking around the pop wasteland of 1986 as being you know they've been kind of like one of the big for want of a better word, boy bands of the time. And they must be looking around at Johnny Hates Jazz and Curiosity Killed the Cat and all these new ones

and thinking, oh, we can have these fuckers. They're no threat to us. You know, in the pre-Bross times, of course. I mean, nobody could have predicted that Bross would come along and lay waste to, you you know lay about them and hear the charts driven before them and hear the lamentations of their women and all that shit oh yeah also there's a there's we haven't mentioned the the massive saxophone solo i mean when was the last time i wonder if this is one of the last ones because the saxophone solo was

endangered at this point i think yes do you do you think and this is like and now it's a saxophone solo and yeah that's a good point isn't it i would like to see some data on this it's kind of moving out for out of the cocktail bar and into the warehouse isn't it also just to ingratiate myself with our audience so i've only found out yesterday you know what gary kemp's doing now he's joined a band with pink floyd drummer nick mason oh really yeah who were playing um and guy pratt the session bassist who was in pink floyd for a bit after roger waters left um and they're going out playing the early pink floyd stuff like the crazy crazy sort of druggie improv stuff.

Shit's an hour. Now, of all the rock guitarists, you would not have put money on to do that. Gary is right up there. And I do have to salute that. I'm enjoying this. I wonder if this is like a new era of sort of band, you know, musical chairs, because, of course, we've got him from Crowded House is now in Fleetwood Mac, which, you know, musical chairs, because of course we've got him from Crowded House is now in Fleetwood Mac, which, you know.

Right. I'll be interested, there'll be, I'm sure there'll be an entertaining Guardian bit about this written by someone who isn't me. But, you know, it's quite exciting, really. And Luke Goss joined White House. No, no, no, he didn't really. I mean, Spandau, they are back after a long layoff,

but, you know, a bit like Duran Duran was, but instead of, you know, splintering into groups or, you know, poncing about on yachts or underneath yachts, as in the case of Simon Le Bon. You know, they've done something really constructive, haven't they, or at least two of them. Taylor? Yeah.

Yeah. something really constructive aren't they or at least two of them taylor yeah so around 1985 um melchester rovers had a new chairman yeah um which was jeff boycott yes a cricketer yeah who you would expect to be if nothing else uh a steady hand on the tiller yeah he stood aside as that insufferable prig roy race suddenly lost his mind and adopted a transfer policy which could politely be described as unconventional so first he signed bob wilson ex of arsenal and scotland as his new goalkeeper, persuading him to revive his career at the age of 44, some 11 years after he'd retired. And younger than us. Yes.

Then followed that up with a swoop for Emlyn Hughes, team captain on A Question of Sport. And in case the fans were worried about how the team was going to fare with middle-aged men in key positions, Roy sought to reassure them by making two further signings. Martin Kemp and Steve Norman of Spandau Ballet,

who he'd seen playing in a celebrity game. Against a load of DJs. Was it? I've forgotten the detail of that. Yeah, sadly they were generic DJs. It wasn't like Steve Norman was clogging Dave Lee Travis or something like that, which would have been fucking so sweet. He's basically seen them playing this charity,

well, this charity match against the DJs. And he leaves about 10 minutes before the end of the game or something. And he hangs around the dressing room and he sees them and he says, Steve, Martin, can I have a quick word, lads? And Steve Norman says, hey, it's old Ray, sir. And Roy says, not so much of the old. What a cheeky guy. And Martin Kemp says, come along for a bit of talent spotting, eh, Roy?

And Roy says, true. You two lads could be worth your weight in gold. Fucking brilliant. And then he could have said, look, to cut a long story short, why don't you come and play for us? But he didn't. So Kemp went straight into the side, while Norman, who was a flashy right winger

had to undergo some intensive fitness training before he could Like his lead singer? Yeah, before he could replace Rob Richards in the first team but it did happen It did cause problems though didn't it? I mean, you know it did lead to lots of

screaming girls going to Mel Park Yeah, referred to in the strip as rock fans. Yes. Which tells you something about the cultural awareness of the golf-sweated beards at King's Reach Day. And they had massive banners as well, didn't they? I mean, really massive, sort of like Aussie rules football banners

that just said Spandau Ballet. It's practically a TIFO, just says Martin. Yeah. But in the end, Roy's hunch paid off because this preposterous circus team actually went on to win the League Cup in the 1985-86 season, which nobody could have predicted. In a million years. At point bob emlin martin and

steve were rewarded by not having their contracts renewed for the following season which seems a bit harsh all things considered but it turned out for the best because it allowed the spandau boys to rejoin their bandmates in time for the release of Fight For Ourselves, the chorus of which may well have been influenced by some of what they'd heard from the terraces at Mel Park. Yeah. And it also meant they didn't go on Melchester Rover's summer tour of fictional Middle Eastern countries.

Oh, thank God for that. During which they were kidnapped rescued by the sas and then on the way to the airport um collided with a terrorist uh in a in a hurry to get to his detonation whose car bomb exploded killing eight members of the squad. Oh, man. Considering that happened little more than a month before this Top of the Pops appearance, I think Steve and Martin's cheery smiles seem a bit disrespectful. Yeah. Well, their young teammates like Jimmy Slade,

Kenny Logan and Vic Superbrat Guthr guthrie oh not the super brat yeah barely cold barely cold pop stars all of them are cunts but the funny thing is this all happened during the period when there was no football on english tv because of the dispute between the clubs and the broadcaster yeah so even if it actually happened there'd be no visual record of it so it would be as mythical as the early English career of Frank McAvedy or

that time when Peter Davenport came in a hyena's face in stoppage time against Derby at the old baseball ground So the following week Fight For Ourselves stayed at number 15 and got no higher. The follow-up, Through the Barricades, got to number 6 in November of this year,

but they would never trouble the top 30 again, and they split up for the first time in 1990. They reformed in 2010, but last year, Tony Adler announced that for reasons beyond his control, he was no longer a member of Spandau Ballet. We've got to fight for ourselves. Everybody, fight for ourselves. Everybody, we've got to fight for ourselves. We gotta fight for ourselves number one but it is my pleasure to introduce that Jesus amazing

Janice long in a hoopie blue and pink jumper dress with pockets, is described as a rugby wing-hoff by Mike Reid, who claims to look like a Picasso painting. Fucking hell, not even the horrors of the Spanish Civil War could depict Mike Reid. He actually looks like Colin Hunt at the office Hawaiian night at the local bowling alley. After some spoiler alerts, janice is delighted to introduce a video of the next band the jesus and mary chain and some candy talking formed in his kilt bride in 1983 as the poppy seeds and then death of joe the jesus and mary chamber essentially the brothers reed jim and william whose dad bought them a Porter studio with his redundancy money.

After relocating to London in 1984, they eventually signed to Creation Records and immediately became a fixture on the indie charts, developing a reputation of playing gigs where people went mental and lobbed shit about. They signed to Blanco y Negro Records earlier this year and started knocking on the door of the top 40 and this single about bloody drugs has put them over the top. It's a follow-up to Just Like Honey which got to number 45 in November of 1985 and it's up this week from number 20 to number 13. Oh Taylor I bet you were shaking your little fist with glee

seeing this on top of the portal. Yeah, it seemed important. I mean, I loved them. Somehow I thought they were more than a pretty good Velvet Underground-type indie band with an admirably bold approach to record production. To my adolescent self, this was the sound of sex and drugs

and other stuff I'd not experienced. And a kind of purity about pop music, like a weird kind of puritanism about pop music, which now strikes me as very restrictive and a little bit boring. I mean, even now i could sort of listen to the jesus and mary chain all day even though i never do because i do you know i quite like them and because they're very undemanding listening but they're sort of responsible for starting that

pure retro alternative record collection rock orthodoxy, which in the end is what indie music became. Like not musically responsible because the sound you hear here with the crushing layers of treated electric guitar mostly went on to influence quite good stuff like My Bloody Valentine. And it also provided indirectly the main appeal

of the early Oasis records. But more responsible in terms of attitude. Like prior to this, it was seen as a bit embarrassing if you were an indie type group and you weren't doing anything original or you seemed in hock to the past, you know. Then over time, that became pretty much the defining feature of the genre and this is

where that began um it's just that on the early records like you trip me up um which is a phenomenal record the jesus and mary jane's direct influences included you know i heard her call my name and heroin the song and the drug and when you let that kind of thing into your music it creates enough sonic interest in itself to cancel out the heritage thing um but this is the first single without fee but they were they really wanted a hit so they started making music without feedback on it and hey presto they got a hit um which bizarrely this has already come up twice for discussion on this podcast hasn't it once because because Mike Smith worked out what it was about. Like, not that they were trying to hide it, considering the video looks like a fucking heroin screws you up advert.

Yes. And once because the chorus is stolen almost note for note from Living Next Door to Alice by Smokey. Yes, it is. Jesus. I mean, they were a bit leery at the time, weren't they? I've been watching a few of their interviews and they're even slagging off Joy Division,

which is a bit, you know, a bit sacrilegious. Yeah, it's weird because they're actually sort of, you know, quite introspective and meek. I mean, I interviewed them once and it was, you know, you had to turn the recording volume up to 10, you know what I mean? It was like that. I think had to turn the recording volume up to 10. You know what I mean? It was like that. I think their early image as hooligans was a little bit contrived,

to say the least. Yeah, he's just, I've seen Jim Reid in a few, and he's like, I'm just, I'm incredibly shy. And then it's like, there's that thing, isn't there? There's that kind of combustible thing when someone who is that shy and reserved drinks a lot and then it's just like, and then, you know, and then bad stuff happens, you know?

Because, yeah, you just kind of go through a sort of wormhole into a completely different character. And I think that's probably what, you know, that's what all this kind of nihilistic fuck everyone thing was about. It's just a kind of, you know, it's a this kind of nihilistic fuck everyone thing was about it's just a kind of you know it's a sort of chemical imbalance really i mean but by this time they were playing like 20 minute long gigs and a lot of the violence didn't come from them it came from

the audience who were fucked off that is this band who have been hyped to the fucking skies and they're only on for a bit and they're turning the back on the audience and they're fucking off and so let's throw loads of shit about on a certain level that's reasonable I suppose you want to get your money's worth and if you don't then you're going to throw a thing

we've all done it they were one of the first bands to be called the New Sex Pistols. What an odd thing. What a strange category to end up in. And what a strange thing to want as well. But I suppose we're that far away removed by this time that, you know,

if you're not into chart music, you do want something that's just going to, you know, go mental. And it never happens it can you it can never be the same you can't go home again you know i mean this is the thing i i i do remember being vaguely aware of that it's weird because i you know i would watch top of the pops at this age but there were definitely uh there was almost like the dark charts which was the stuff that i just didn't have the processing power for yet and they would fall into that kind of shadow um you know i just wouldn't be able even

though you know listening to it now it's like well it's a sort of it's like a shangri-la's song with a lot of with this really delicious sort of dissonance between this kind of very light sweet pop and this kind of slight contained menace of of the guitar sound and it's like that's perfectly accessible but there are just some things i wasn't ready for yet and this is definitely one of them slight contained menace of the guitar sound. And it's like, that's perfectly accessible, but there are just some things I wasn't ready for yet. And this is definitely one of them. Also, I do remember thinking that the name was a bit naughty. I mean, I only went to, you know,

I went to like a C of E school. So it wasn't like, you know, you shouldn't be saying this. But there was, I don't know where I got this idea, but I was like, that seems controversial. I remember hearing so much about because i was still you know reading the music press and uh there i saw them on whistle test a few months previous to this i think and they were just standing there with a big joff head air cuts

and uh at the end one of them knocks a mic stand over and it just thuds and it's like oh that's it then is it and because the other band who was supposed to be the new Sex Pistols in this year were Zig Zig Sputnik but they were always a good laugh I thought. Yeah well the Mary Chain had that sort of Noel Gallagher

type conviction that they were genius songwriters when really all their songs are the same four notes arranged around the same four chords with a choice of two drum beats now there's nothing wrong with that because it takes a certain talent to keep coming up with new songs within

such extreme limits and there's nothing wrong with writing an album of songs that all go you know with the tune of three blind mice over it and a bit that goes he he he he i mean it can be really fantastic and their first album is pretty fantastic but just you know don't then come on like you've just written the hissing of summer lords and followed it up with hegera you know it's not it's not a question of which is superior it's just you know don't make yourself look too much of a tit um and i don't you know i sound like

i'm moaning really because i heaven forbid but i mean it's just looking back the blankness of the aesthetic means you get very little back like all those videos and photos that are just them moping standing around moping um the camera shaking to show that they're on drugs you know and once you've outgrown your bedroom posing there's not a lot to connect with yeah you know i mean obviously top of the pops isn't going to risk having them in the studio so uh you know we get to see the video which is basically them in in a blue wash with the occasional orange flash and i noticed particular emphasis on the band actually playing their instruments like a proper group

and also having girlfriends like a proper group. Yeah, at the end, it's an unusual kind of happy ending because suddenly there's sunlight. I really like this. It's a nice video, actually. Yeah, there is the kind of juddering. And yeah, what is now called in some corners of the internet bisexual lighting which is like blue on one

side pink on the other this is apparently bisexual lighting which is hilarious but yeah and then suddenly there's kind of all the moodiness and then there's some sunlight and they're in a field with girls and having a nice time and it's like oh look they're having a day out it's lovely yeah it is funny to think that at the time

there was this perception that you know the tv was scared of the jesus of marys or it was yeah there was something threatening about this music whereas really to the people who do top of the pops that this would have been indistinguishable from she sells sanctuary you know or something by the cure you know it's like student bands in it it's a bunch of geezers in black looking miserable you know um and quite right too because you know jesus mary shane just a bunch of nice lads who could do all their washing in one load they were possibly the first kind of like

band of their type who wanted to be massive yeah which was not the not the done thing at the time was it and I listen I

you know I actually gave them a bit of a listen which is something I've never done before and I in some of the songs I do detect

the stone roses I was going to say that actually I was just thinking I was lamenting I was having a say that, actually. I was just thinking, I was lamenting, I was having a little lament to myself that the Stone Roses have ended up being like the kind of emotional emetic for blokes who can't otherwise feel feelings band. And, you know, I think in the universe

where the Jesus and Mary Chain are that band, I think things are slightly better. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So soon know what I mean? Yeah. So, soon after this episode, Mike Smith, who was currently the Radio 1 Breakfast DJ,

realised that the band weren't singing about toughies and convinced his bosses to ban it. The following week, some candy talking dropped down to number 20 and was out of the charts two weeks later. You don't fuck with Mike Smith, do you?

The follow-up, April Skies, got to number 8 in May of 1987, which led to a series of diminishing returns for the rest of the 80s. They scored a number 10 hit in February of 1992 with reverence, however, and had four more top 40 hits before splitting up in 1998 Excellent, Jesus and Mary Chain and some candy talking, I'm a great fan of theirs I'm glad that they've actually made it to the top

40 at last, a band who always seem made it to the top 40 at last. A band who always seem to be in the top 40, they never seem to go away. Here's Five Star, up to number 10 this week, and find the time. Janice is surrounded by loads of women who look massively grateful that Jimmy Savile and DLT don't do this sort of thing anymore. Why isn't she surrounded by loads of young lads and, like, copping a handful of them, eh, Sarah?

That's not right, is it? Yeah, that's a good question. That's what true equality actually means, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Especially as there's a sort of 13-year-old girl there who's actually dressed as Ginger Lynn, which, you you know that's fine it was the style at the time but you're just

so grateful that it's Janice Long standing there you know what I mean just makes it seem just so much healthier and she points out the following group are on top of the pops all the time fucking hell that's as near as a diss

as you're going to get off Janice Long, isn't it? She then follows that up by saying, they never seem to go away, which is, you know, possibly closer to a diss. Possibly what, I'm not sure if that would qualify as shade, but I think that might be shade. The band are five star and the song is Find The Time.

Spawned in London and Romford by Buster and Dolores Pearson in the 60s, Five Star were a two-brother, three-sister group who formed in 1983 and were managed by their dad, who was a touring guitarist for Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Jimmy Cliff and Desmond Decker. They immediately landed a record deal, which wasn't too hard because it was on their dad's label, Tent, and although their debut single flopped, they were spotted by RCA and signed up. They first entered the charts in the spring of 1985 with All Fall Down, which got to number 15 in May of that year, and they finished 1985 with

three top 40 singles this is the follow up to can't wait another minute which got to number seven in may of this year is the second single from the lp silk and steel has been produced by richard burgess of landscape and it's up this week from number 25 to number 10 oh and they're also in the latest edition of Smash Hits where they arse about in the family house. And Doris has made a five-star outfit for her new cat. Isn't that nice? How lovely. Why can't the Jesus and Mary chain do that

instead of messing about with drugs? So, five-star. This is right in your wheelhouse, isn't it, Sarah? Yes, it is. Silk and Steel was actually the first album I ever owned. I got it for I got it for Christmas this year

I don't know if I still have it I need to, it'll be at my mum's somewhere if it is but What was it about Five Star? It was really brilliant pop songs really, it was really kind of laser cut you know, silken, gorgeous hooks. And, you know,

yeah, that was, you know, that always, that always floats my boat. And I will, you know, I'll, I feel like I say this every time I come on here, but I'll still listen, I'll still listen to this now. I've got a five star playlist, which is quite near the top of my, you know, I don't have to scroll down too far on my spotify to find it you know because the thing is that you can see the kind of cynicism in in what they were going for and what they're what they're um um kind of out of central casting domineering manager dad was going for and they obviously weren't quite up to it in the way that you know they weren't up to you can see like how tired they are this is a really really lackluster performance i'm afraid so the costumes are

really well the outfits they're wearing they're essentially white sequiny uh jerkins with red trim uh a red five on one tit a red star on the other tit uh five stars on the back and one black glove wonder where they got that yeah it's all very that's the thing is it's like do not you know you cannot possibly expect i'm sure i mean i don't know how much of a tyrant he was but i'm sure he was nowhere near the tyrant that joe jackson was um you know and it's like that's not something that you really want to aim for and you you know i think they didn't they weren't really allowed to find their own thing they were just put into this it was this very sort of i don't know you know like you get wicks and squarespace and stuff they were like the wicks kind of website in a box version of of you know the jacksons um but that doesn't mean

that they didn't that they weren't really great they had really great songs you can see like how tired they are there's this kind of glorified aerobic aerobics choreography and there's a kind of kicky leg spin around a bit clenchy fist hadley fist um you know a frog hop repeat you know it's not very good but she is but so denise basically did you know did everything she was like that she was really the beyonce of five star and sadly wasn't it a real shame. I wonder what she could have done if they just let her go solo. Because none of the others needed to be, it was just kind of a, sorry, sorry the others. But I think they were, you know, especially you can see that the blokes are, the blokes aren't very good. So they put them right at the back.

And, you know, and the other girls are, you know, they're all right. But it's like she was, she, she carried the whole thing. And she's got really good, you know, she's got the sort of Janetson wrinkly nose thing going on and the sort of she's got the most amazing teeth she's got like properly pearlescent like american teeth that obviously cost a lot of money um but yeah she this is you know this isn't i don't think this is their best song but they've got there's like they had like 15 top 10 hits or something they had you know their. Something like that. And they're all really, really good. And they all still stand up now. So yeah, I would have been dead excited by this,

except just possibly a bit disappointed by the listless dancing. Like when you see a routine like that, you've got to believe that someone's going to do themselves an injury just through shit. They're going to be set on fire or something. You know, like the snappiness. You've got to snap every elbow, you you know and you've got to believe that

someone's going to dislocate something at some point because they really mean it you know of course Taylor me and you were a different age group so I've only got two words down here shaking Shalimar at the time they were my least

favourite group them and Dire Straits they were the two acts I was convinced were perpetrating a con on the public that they were objectively worthless and preemptively counter-revolutionary and somehow they had to be stopped before everything was ruined. And of course now it's impossible to see what I was so bothered about because at worst this is a bland Michael Jackson take-off and at best it's a quite impressive bit of Robo-pop which is sort of arresting and vaporous and quite futuristic in a conservative way. I mean, like Janice doesn't like it

because it says nothing to her about her life. You know, for indie fans, that's all that matters on earth. But there is a lot of, or there are a lot of good things about this track, even though it's not that memorable and maybe it's not really a single and it sounds a bit wheezy and British. But I really like the way the chorus sounds like total silence memorable and it maybe it's not really a single and it sounds a bit wheezy and british but i really

like the way the chorus sounds like total silence and uh yeah there's something a bit unnerving about it but not enough that it's a terrible shame that a little more of the desperate strangeness of this group didn't come across in the actual music like any group with more than two members of the same family in it is intrinsically creepy but they are horrific they're the sheer darkness and uncanny other worldliness about these poor kids like used as an experiment by their dad like a human ant farm so when this is a five-star all i can hear is the sound of muffled tears behind a wedge shut bedroom door but you know and when i'm just surprised that when one of them got arrested in a public toilet uh lab brooks didn't go bust because i would have put a lot of money on that and of course in 1986 I would have considered all this

to be a negative whereas now I think it's very much a positive yeah you know despite the fact of how silly they look I mean the because the costumes were designed by poor Stedman weren't they and it's it is sort of hilarious

the creepy way they keep it in the family like any other chart act would have got in a designer. Whereas Five Star have to keep to this insular plan like Stedman. You have an interesting clothes design. You can do the costumes. Which means they look like this. They look like some kids dressed up as Five Star for a primary school concert.

But they made the costumes out of toilet rolls and felt off cuts yeah I mean of course the black music that was dominating the charts in this year was proper soft lad music isn't it it's the kind of thing the Huxtable kids would be into

you know their 1986 tour was sponsored by Crunch crunchy the chocolate bar oh god and then their 1987 tour was sponsored by ultra bright toothpaste yeah which is quite pointed it's quite grimly symbolic it's like their 1988 tour should have been sponsored by sterile or boop yeah that that's the circle of life right there surely we can't leave five star without at least referencing their greatest moment i know it's tired from the clip shows and you know we've all seen it a thousand times but the best thing about the clip and i don't think there's a single person listening to this who uh will not

know what i'm talking about um you see matt bianco in their similar predicament and they clearly think it's fucking hilarious like any normal person would right like try to stifle the laughter um you watch five star stedman is fuming he's not just personally insulted he's being driven to a boiling rage by the reality of a disrespectful world and it's not that it's cruel it's that it's disrespectful um there's something extremely strange and creepy about his face when he's uh has to confront what most kids are actually like and they never answered the question either did they no no but the thing is like this was in i mean imagine how terrifying that sorry just just like experience empathy for for a tiny moment

like because you can't imagine you imagine what it's like because you don't have any media training like you know i i don't know when this when this first became a thing but christ if i was going into that situation i would certainly want to have learned how to put my face if something like that happened because what are you going to do in that situation you can't swear back can you

and you can't write what are you going to do I think a lot of people would just go I don't know having received enough letters and latterly electronic messages telling me basically the same thing as that lad told 5 Star

I'd never cease to find it hilarious I think you should go into media training then this could actually be your calling, it's like look people are going to tell you that you're fucking crap and it's going to be hilarious. Yeah, I mean, if I was Stedman, I would have just got my cock out and said, why does your dad want this?

It's a shame you weren't in Five Star. I know, I know. Five Star and Al. And do you think that political party in Italy named themselves after this band? Wouldn't you, if you were a political correspondent, wouldn't you want to go to a press conference and just say, yeah, five star, why are you so fucking crap?

I think they've got a similar approach to financial planning. Yeah. So the following week, Find the Time jumped three places to number seven, its highest position. The follow-up, Rain or Shine, got to number two for two weeks in October of this year, held off the top spot by Don't Leave Me This Way by the Communards and True Blue by Madonna. They'd have five more top 20 singles before Diminishing Returns set in, but by the end of the 80s they had to sell the

mansion they bought in 1987 in order to avoid bankruptcy and Stedman Pearson was arrested for indecency in a public toilet in New Malden. After moving to America and hanging it out for a few more years for want of a better word they split up in 1994. Ten years or so ago, their dad wanted to kind of do a reunion thing and none of them were up for it. So he replaced them with lookalikes. So, well, I've tried to... What, did he adopt or something? Did he have to sign papers and shit?

Oh, my God. I don't know, but that's just just too perfect isn't it to to verify but um i think they did also there was like and that's for having a reunion isn't that every fucking christmas well maybe maybe not i don't know um but he's um yeah so there was like a butlin show where there were three but it was three it wasn't even five lookalikes it was three lookalikes miming to a backing track i I mean, like, this is, you know, I wonder if anyone has the film rights to this, because, like...

Fucking hell. Yeah. I'm out of time. Oh, you. I'm out of time. Oh, you. I'm out of time. I was really confused with the opposition,

but they're all writing the same number there. Now, come with us, won't you, to Shark Land. Down to number 40, it's Spirit in the Sky from Doctor and the Medics. Addicted to Love at number 39 for Robert Palmer. Hunting High and Low from A-Ha down to 38. Buck Smith at 37 with New Beginning, Mamma Sera. And it's a chart entry

at number 36, Calling All The Heroes, It Bites. Making headlines at number 35, Midnight Star. I Can't Wait, New Shoes down to 34.

And Janice's song, Brilliant Mind from Furniture at number 33. Thank you. At 32, it's Horrible Being In Love from Claire and Friends. Up one place to 31 for Press from Paul McCartney. Cock Robin with A Promise You Made, down to 30. The Art of Noise with Max Headroom, Paranoidia at number 29.

Wham! It's the Edge of Heaven, down to 28. Chart Entry 27, The Sexy I Want to Wake Up With You from Boris Gardner. 29. Wham! It's the edge of heaven, down to 28. Chart entry at 27, the sexy I want to wake up with you from Boris Gardner. Lulu with Shaft at 26. And Amazulu at number 25 this week with Too Good To Be Forgotten.

Colonel Rich Ears dancing on the ceiling at 24. Katrina and the Waves living down on Sun Street at 23 this week. Bang, Zoom, let's go-go the real Roxanne at 22. And Status Quo powering up to number 21 with Red Sky. Happy Hour from the House Martins down to 20. Number 19, Higher Love from Stevie Wynwood. And the highest new entry this week, in at 18, Panic! The Smiths.

Gwen Guthrie at 17, with Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent. Venus at 16, Bananarama. And up 15 places, 215, Fight For Ourselves from Spandau Ballet. Audrey Hall goes up with Smile to 14.

Jesus and Mary Chained at 13 with some candy talking. Owen Paul, my favorite waste of time. 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 for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. And Haywood's Rose is growing up to number 11.

Oh, wasn't that fun, Gag? So exciting. The new stuff now. Yep, top 40 Breakers. Well, we have some underground press from Paul McCartney. This one's courtesy of The Tube. After Reid grabs Janice's hand and does a rubbish Iris accent, they run down the charts from number 40 to 11.

Usually in the 70s ones and the early 80s ones, we do get a lot of mileage out of these, but these are just crap, aren't they? They're just so fucking professional. It's not that terrible a chart though for the era like hunting high and low by aha is in it uh real roxanne uh yes brilliant recording of uh bang zoom let's go go made on a tape recorder that year with me on guitar and casio keyboard at once and my mental mate rapping and hitting a sweet jar with a drumstick. I suspect if I had it now it wouldn't match up to the original, but you never know.

I'm glad that it existed, at least at some point. There's also, when Mike Reid reads out, Gwen Guthrie ain't nothing going on but the rest. He does the second worst comedy black voice he'd ever do. Yes. Yeah. Fucking hell, yeah. I think the only one I noticed was a photo of Boris Gardner

who's in a number 27 with a one-awaker with you, like as if he's in some kind of old-style prison, hitting a rock with a big hammer. Yeah. And there's also Cock Robin, who nobody else really remembers, but they always stick in my head because this summer we got signed up

for some sort of exchange programme with my dad's work, where one year we were going to go over to Germany to stay with his family. Then the following summer they'd come and stay with us us which was hilarious because this bloke was supposed to be at more or less the same level in his company which was a nuclear energy company as my dad was in his which was a carpet tile manufacturing company and even allowing for the difference in wages between those two industries the gulf between their standard of living and

ours was comical like everyone used to talk about how much richer europeans were you know i've been on a french exchange with the school um which was funny because the this my exchange partner's dad was a fireman and they lived in a five-bedroom house but this was ridiculous this family lived in uh bblis which is a really boring nothingy small town in southwest germany so in between darmstadt and manheim it's that really crap bit of germany um and they had a giant house with a table tennis room and a sauna and i stayed there and my mum and dad stayed in my mum and dad stayed in their summer house in the black forest and it was really embarrassing because the following year they were supposed to come up to us but our house was too small to put them up so we could only have their son to stay

which was bad news because their son was like a parody of a horrible german kid right you know you know there's two germans same as there's two Englands and two Americas. Like, all the good stuff that comes from these places is so sharp and refined because everybody else is a cunt, and it's the same in Germany. So the cool people in Germany are really cool because everybody else is like this kid,

and he had spiky brush hair and a load of spots and piss-catcher shoes. You know those shoes like cornish pasties and you could see his vest through his imitation white fred perry and he got off on the right foot by saying to my mum the day after he arrived i do not like this house it is too small yeah he insisted on playing my dad at chess and And when he lost, he got up without another word and stormed off to bed. And the next morning, my mum went in to clean his room and there were 13 chocolate bar wrappers in the bin.

And he'd only been there for five days. And he drove around budging. How big were the chocolate bar wrappers, though? Oh, I don't know. It was like, you know. If they were penguins, that's forgivable, isn't it? Yeah, no, I think it was a five-pack of Mars bars, you know, that stuff. And he drove my mum round Budgins looking for Nutella

because he needed it for his breakfast. Oh, for f***'s sake, no. Yeah, he's like, I must have Nutella. And this was like... In the 80s? Yeah, it was 80s Britain. It was like an obscure luxury item. F***ing good luck with that.

Yeah, yeah, I don't think he ever found it. And my mum who's never had a bad word to say about anyone the morning he left uh brought out a bottle of champagne from somewhere anyway he thought i had terrible taste in music because he was into scorpions and their turton hosen and he thought that all the stuff i liked was very soft so when he showed up, it's a German tradition to bring a present for your hosts. So he gave me an album and he said,

I think you will like it. It is very soft. And it was After Here Through Midland, the second LP by Cop Robin, which is the one that doesn't even contain the promise you made, their only British hit. So much for European Union. So they go into the breakers section,

starting with Press by Paul McCartney. Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney is Paul McFucking Cartney. After releasing the LP McCartney 2 in 1980 and splitting up wings a year later, Mr. You Can Do It Right Now Please went on a tier of 8 top 10 hits in the first half of the 80s, including number ones with Stevie Wonder and some frogs. This is the first single from the forthcoming LP, Press To Play, and it's the follow-up to Spies Like Us, the theme tune to

the Dan Aykroyd film which got to number 13 in January of this year, and it's the follow-up to spies like us the theme tune to the dan akroyd film which got to number 13 in january of this year and it's up this week from number 32 to number 31 that that's not a fucking breaker that's a that's a tapper at least are they uh what actually is the definition of breaker at this stage in the game i mean what you know is it just something that they're using now as a kind of catch-all term? Well, because it's American, isn't it? And it's supposed to be like something that zoomed up the charts and smashed

the charts, if you will. Making waves in the charts, yeah. But there's not a lot of big chart activity this week, I have to say. It's a bit sluggish. Sarah, what did Paul McCartney mean to you as a young slip of a gal um i've heard of him i suppose but i mean i've i had so little there's uh i can't

you see i can't even form a sentence to talk about how little paul mccartney meant to me when i was eight you know when this came up it's like well i don't remember this at all and also then i just spent the whole time trying to figure out what line he was on um this video really displays the the classic the one true london underground maquette which is the sort of orange and brown uh rectangles which you know sounds horrible if you haven't seen it but you know i would i would quite gladly upholster you know most of my furniture in that um yeah and it turns out he gets off at swiss cottage so i just managed to you can just see there's an s and a w which is like is it swiss cottage which i think makes it the bakerloo line um anyway taylor say some things about paul mccartney

really well yeah i mean that i mean that the premise of the video is that paul mccartney's doing his man of the people thing and just arsing around on the tube which at the time to me was still exciting you know I used to go down to London about twice a year to spend my Christmas and birthday money and you know being on the tube was like oh my god I'm in that London massive city oh fucking great and then you get sick of it really quickly to the point where now whenever I do go back to London you know the train pulls in at st pancras it's like yes back on my old fucking stamping ground in the big city and everything and then as soon as i get on the tube i go oh fuck this place i want to i'm going home yeah no i definitely had had that kind of slightly swooning thing about

the tube it really does make the you know the the noise of it and the smell of it and everything really makes you go it's like a direct shot of london to your brain because i didn't um i grew up in um i was born in london i grew up in west yorkshire i visited london when i was probably i was four i think one time um and so there was definitely like a kind of sense memory thing there going oh my god it's the you know it's the tube. But yeah, so, and that, even though now I avoid the tube as much as possible now that I live in London and have done for many years, I'm very, very tired of, you know, cramming myself in among this kind of very, very, very weary, tense mass of humanity. But still there's that, you know, there's still a part of my mind that finds it romantic but that's the other thing as well you see he kind of

takes most of the romance out of it a by making it about himself which to be fair is his video so you know but it's like it's so it's so it's so bright it's like the the white brightness of it is is very um you know i it was giving me a headache yeah and you can imagine people being really fucked off that oh fucking hell there's a camera crew that's him out the B-close

it's like I want to go home it would have been big cameras as well it would have been big hefty cameras like cramming and big lights

and all that but everyone looks quite everyone looks quite cheery I'd like to see you know the bits where everyone was just ignoring him you know

like people and he's there going come on everyone sing along to this hit that isn't out yet you know and the great thing is that the black people that are sitting nearby

or next to him, they just couldn't give a fuck could they? It's just like, oh I'm being filmed and I'm sitting next to a beetle and yeah, whatever This video is the classic example of Paul McCartney's desperate need in the 1980s to pretend to be completely normal.

But of course, first of all, the very act of making a big deal of this being Paul McCartney on a tube train is itself a display of difference and distance. And also, by placing him in such everyday surroundings, it only highlights how hugely unnatural and abnormal he is. He's always mugging. He's insanely self-conscious. And I don't even know how you can be that arrogantly cocksure

and that self-conscious in public. And how you can be so PR conscious and so very bad at pr um it just so he helps an asian lad and he gives a really giant thumbs up to an old jamaican lady and there you go it's a totally accurate record of paul mccartney's daily commute casually doing whatever he can for people it's like one of those paintings paintings of Stalin with his hand on the head of a small child. Something really creepy about it. But look, this is 1986 for Paul McCartney. He's coming off the back of Give My Regards to Broad Street,

a film which is, aside from being terrible in a way which defies even detached appreciation i watched it a few years back with a friend of mine who's also a beatles nut and a connoisseur of shit um when it finished we just stared at each other and all we could say was imagine if you had to watch that again now it's it was just flattening. But as well as that, it was the point where he tried to come to terms with the past and he redid some of his old Beatles songs and funnily enough, they sounded much worse.

The whole thing was a catastrophe and an embarrassment. And if you want a clue as to why it didn't work, by the way, and what was going wrong more generally for Macca at this point. He originally commissioned Willie Russell to write the script. Didn't like the first draft. Chucked it out. Commissioned Tom Stoppard to write it. Didn't like that.

So these guys have got no idea what they're doing. So he's just going to have to write his own script, which he did. And, of course, that was the one he liked. And, of course, it came out exactly as you'd expect from a slightly embarrassing dad who's never written a script in his life. So after this calamity, he tries to come back with this 1986 album, Press to Play,

of which this is the lead single. And he decides he has to get contemporary, which in his mind means hiring the producer Hugh Padgham, who'd been producing Phil Collins and Sting and is generally regarded as the inventor of the 80s drum sound. So thanks for that, Hugh. You fuck up. And he expected a similar level of success to Phil Collins and Sting

without really having to try. I mean, he was still having number one singles a couple of years previously but the sessions were a bit awkward because pageant felt that it was the producer's job to make constructively critical comments about the material uh paul felt differently um then when the album came out and it bombed and it wasn't being played on the radio stations paul got very angry with his promotional people and decided that was their fault so you see a pattern developing here and then the following year he was persuaded to team up with elvis costello uh like elvis costello in 1987 was going to put some bite back into paul mccartney's music but unfortunately elvis costello felt that being half of a songwriting partnership meant being constructively critical of the material,

while Paul felt differently. So that fell apart, at which point he finally gives in, tours the world playing Beatles songs and becomes a heritage act. So the pressure's off. But these final years of Paul McCartney thinking he was a contemporary pop star and expecting number one singles are a bit upsetting and a bit depressing. And Press to Play got one good review in the whole world, which was in the NME. Really? Transparently a condition of them getting the big interview he did with them to promote it trying to reconnect

with the youngsters absolutely shameless but the funny thing is he could still write a tune even when it wasn't a great one it would still be there and it would be fluent and effortless because that's just what he does and in the same way that a boxer doesn't lose his punch he loses everything else first and or a footballer can still do keepy-ups and backheels for decades after he's finished as a player. So Paul McCartney could always write a tune and still can. But that's not all there is to it. But you've got to admire the brass balls to put out a single

with a hook that goes, just tell me to press right there, that's it, yes. Exactly, yeah. And what is this? What is the song about? Because I was looking at the lyrics. He's like, is he talking about Linda McCartney's clitoris here or something? What, Oklahoma was never like this, never like this, never like this.

Maybe it's actually about the tube you know maybe it's uh you know london uh transport for london kind of missed missed a trick there um although the thing is though this is this is obviously a misnomer i was getting i was getting quite annoyed at this by the end so i was like don't encourage people to press the button the buttons don't do anything no if you know if they don't like they light up around the edge and then the doors open and close at their own accord

they're just there to give you some illusion of control just don't don't do it so the Londoners can spot the tourists yeah

basically it's like a feel smugly superior because I always press the button oh well oh you've

oh rookie error no well now now you know you can just stand back you can fold your arms Because I always press the button. Oh, Al. Mate. Rookie error. No, well, now you know. You can just stand back to my... You fold your arms and lean back and have a little smirk to yourself, watching everyone else going, it's not doing anything. So the following week, press jumped five places to number 26

and would get to number 25 a week later, its highest position. and would get to number 25 a week later, its highest position. The follow-up, Pretty Little Head, would only get to number 76 in November of this year and he'd have to wait until December of 1987 for his next substantial hit, Once Upon a Long Ago, which got to number 10. Oh Paul, mind the gap between your hit singles And it's good news, get it, for Wee Smiths fans They've got the highest new entry in the charts this week at 18 With Panning, well done lad it for we smiths fans they've got the highest new entry in the chart this week at 18 with panning well done lad

i've already covered the smiths in chart music number two so we'll just say that this is the first new smiths recording since the queen is dead and according to johnny marr was written in response to steve wright playing i'm your man by wham immediately after a news report about the chernobyl disaster in april what was he supposed to play well exactly yeah put on some somber you know threnody for the victims of no no And apparently it's a load of bullshit because I'm Your Man had been out of the Radio 1 playlist for months. So, I don't know. Anyway, it's this week's Ice New Entry at number 18.

It's codswallop, this record. I'm not a revisionist particularly when it comes to the Smiths because I do think they made some astonishing records and at one point were certainly one of the best groups in the world. But when you're objective and critical and realistic, their lows are as low as their highs are high. And this is not the lowest. I mean, this is okay.

It's not shed seven, you know, but it's low-ish. And, yeah, you sort of don't want to go on too much because the Smiths are the most over-discussed group on earth. But this is, you know, if you want to know why, in the end, they weren't quite as good as they could and should have been, this is a good place to start. I mean, for a start, this is Johnny good place to start uh and start this is johnny mars boozy period uh so the music is a bit lazy and swollen up and lethargic and obviously it's just metal guru

ripped off but with a fizz gone out of it and the lyrics are embarrassing um and do the lyrics do what crap comedians do and substitute crap local references for any kind of imagination or wit. And then there's that toe-curling bit about hanging the DJ, which is like Jasper Carrot pretending to get worked up about Sunreaders and Reliant Robbins. It's a pointless and unimaginative gripe about something unimportant. I mean, if you're going to criticise DJs, as we know very well, it takes a bit of work to do it in a way that it doesn't just sound like a bore in tartan slippers, you know. And it's music biz griping as well.

It's just outrage that his records weren't being played on radio one in the daytime which is hardly surprising when you've been putting out singles like shakespeare's sister and that joke isn't funny anymore you know it's just graceless whining from a massive twat with no self-awareness and a grotesque ego which would be fine because lots of great pop music is exactly that. But, you know, just if he wasn't so bloody self-righteous about it. I mean, the hang of the DJ line and the whole tone of the song. I mean, when I heard it, I didn't think it was racist at all. I just thought, oh, right, he's going on about Steve Wright and that sort.

And, you know, if he's talking about a nightclub DJ, he's talking about meat markets. And it's like, you know, I was dead against them. But, you know, by this time, I'd started going out clubbing and everything. And because of what my mates were into, I was dragged to endless fucking student discos. And it's just like, I'm just surrounded by people with shit hair and shit T-shirts listening to shit music.

And it's like, yeah, Morrissey, if you don't like what that DJ's playing, surrounded by people with shit hair and shit T-shirts, listening to shit music. And it's like, yeah, Morrissey, if you don't like what that DJ's playing, go to one of the fucking dozens of other places in town that are playing your fucking songs. Yeah, he was actually being very disco sucks about it, wasn't he? Yeah, exactly, yeah. You don't necessarily pick it up at the time. And now, if you look at what he's like now and trace it back,

and obviously the way that he's showing his ass now and there's you know it's it's diminished you know the numbers of people who were actually at all startled or or kind of wrong-footed by this are diminishing to not i mean imagine being one of the people who is like but but i thought you know or someone who's that deep in denial that they now can't see it and it's like and then you trace it back and you look at the old interviews you go yeah no he's actually always he's actually always been like this hiding in plain sight kind of but there's a sort of emboldening and also a sort of wizening there's this kind of you know and and the sort of atrophying of anything that was that was um kind of keeping that in in balance or was was pushing back against that in himself, you know.

And it's just, you just don't want anything to do with him now. Yeah. I thought exactly this. I thought, no, he's talking about Steve Wright and he's talking about Gary Davis. But, of course... Yeah, if it had said, kill Steve Wright, if that had been the chorus, it'd be fucking brilliant.

I'd have bought it. But it was the... Fucking hate Steve Wright. Because I think the interview to promote this, it might have been a bit later, chorus it'd been fucking brilliant i'd have bought it but it was the fucking hate steve because i think the interview to promote this it might have been a bit later where he was challenged on this and started saying well there's actually a a conspiracy to keep white groups off top of the pops um yeah well well yeah yeah as if fucking barry gordy and russell simmons and jam and lewis and quincy Jones

were all meeting up in a fucking castle going, oh, God, the Wooden Tops have got a new record out soon, we must suppress it. Yeah, with Michael Hurl. Yeah. He actually used the expression in that interview, black supremacy as well, which I'm loath to even... About reggae, yeah.

But, you know, it's, you know, well done, Morrissey. Have you actually invented reverse racism there? Yeah. Probably's the kind of, you know, it's, you know, well done, Morrissey. Have you actually invented reverse racism there? Yeah. Probably not even, but, you know, if you want to believe that, then I'll throw you that bone. Yeah, what was it about musical youth and Boris Gardner and UB40 that Morrissey saw that we didn't? I may have said this before on this podcast about Morrissey,

I can't remember, but he's like Fidel Castro in that you can understand how when he first appeared, people felt very optimistic. But with hindsight, it's painfully obvious that it was always going to end up the way it did. I mean, he had plenty of good stuff to sing, but he never really had anything worthwhile to say. When you look at old...

I was watching some old Smith stuff on YouTube the other week and found a clip from Whistle Test, which is them in the studio making meat. Well, it's them in the studio, obviously having finished making Meat Is Murder, but pretending they're still recording it in some hilariously fake studio footage. But Morris is there talking about himself and his band.

And you think, what spell did he cast over people at the time? Because you look at him now, and if some bloke, if you met some bloke who talked like that, who was that affected and that embarrassing and that absurdly soody, you'd laugh in his face. It's incredible to watch now. What a burk. What an idiot.

And he never says anything particularly insightful or intelligent or even witty. Well, I think there was a certain magnificence about his twattery for a time, which would, that's the thing that would get you because there wasn't anyone else um kind of twirling around in that kind of weirdly there's a weirdly sort of subsumed aggression to it you know there's this kind of like there's it's very sort of fuck you um flailing about um which you know had its own had its own charm and you know but yeah the thing is that people have you know, had its own charm. And, you know, but yeah, the thing is that people have,

you know, people have different channels. And I know that people, everybody still furrows their brow over the great conundrum of kind of, you know, oh, how can this beautiful work come from such an arsehole? But it's not really, once you understand that, like, you know, the ego of Morrissey and the universe expressing itself through the vessel of morrissey are two completely separate things um that means you can still enjoy because people are going god

i don't know if i can still enjoy this yeah of course you can yeah it's just it just takes a bit of a you just have to put basically i don't let people people being assholes will not ruin their work for me it's like fuck you i'm not going to have you ruin your good works for me like that's the way that i'm not i'm not you know i'm not going to buy any more smith's records but um i'm not going to uh put you know it's not like right i delete all of this and i throw all of this out of the window um you know i can still enjoy it because it's separate enough from morrissey yeah um as as as an asshole arsehole that I'm still able to do that. And it just takes a little bit of...

It's just kind of a mental muscle that you have to develop, really. And of course, it varies. Every single case is different. There are other people who it's like, I'm probably not really... Probably if I'm given the choice to watch a Roman Polanski film, another one, I'll probably watch the other one. But, you know, it's... The Woody Allen one. I really disagree with that bit.

I don't think it's... I think it's very dangerous as soon as you start doing that. The only consideration is giving your money to people. I think, yeah, I mean... Most of Roman Polansky's films, after a certain point, are terrible anyway, so it doesn't matter. But, you know, you can't pretend that his early films aren't good.

I mean, also, there'll be plenty of... That's not what I'm saying, though, at all. But carry on. If they are good, there's no reason to not watch them. No, I'm talking about my... No, I'm talking about my... No, I'm talking about my... You know, these are sort of personal decisions. Sometimes, like, somebody's shit will loom so large over their work,

it's going to cast such a shadow over it that it actually... that it taints the work for me. In the case of... You know, in Morrissey's case, it's like... I didn't get into the smiths until I was at university because it you know which seemed appropriate um so that you know it's that that work has gone into my brain at a particular point in my life where it's not I kind of can't disentangle it but also I think that it's good enough there's I mean there's no

it's not it's not maths you know it's just it's a it's a matter of like um i can't possibly quantify how much of an arsehole morrissey is now i'm not sure that the instruments exist to do this but um yeah i don't know i don't know why i brought rome polanski into this you know i'm not i'm not comparing morrissey i'm not comparing you to rome polanski all right sit down but yeah i will still listen to The Smiths but maybe not as much as I did. This is very similar to the conversation we've had about Gary Glitter you don't necessarily, your intellect isn't necessarily going to get in the way and go now look here

you can't, you know, you're not allowed to enjoy, you can't feel these feelings anymore your feelings are going to be there, it's just like you might need to put them in a slightly you know, you might need to put them in a slightly different context or not, like I'm not sure how much it matters if it's just a matter of who's watching. But anyway, in conclusion... Morrissey's a cunt.

Morrissey's a cunt, yeah. But I guarantee you that there will be plenty of people scattered through pop history who are much bigger cunts than Morrissey. But you don't know because they weren't so fond of the sound of their own voice. Yeah. That's true. Yes. Good point.

Oh, my God. I wonder who, yeah, but they'll all be winkled out eventually and then we'll have to go through this whole rigmarole again. Yeah. But the video. I've been scouring the internet for this video and I can't find it anywhere. There is an official video for this on YouTube,

but it's not this. Well, this is directed by Derek Jarman. So that might have something to do with it. Copyright. And who's the bloke in it? No idea. Nah. Sorry, I can't help.

But it's a very jarring video for Top of the Pops in 1986, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot more juddering. It's kind of running around London frantically with a juddering camera. So anything else to say about this song? Personally, as a Smiths hater, it's it's it's uh one of their least worst songs oh really for me for me yeah but the problem is is the only thing i can remember about it is uh a few months later uh we were me and my mates from a new college were all

on the bus and uh one of my mates started singing hang the DJ hang the DJ over and over again at intermittent periods and there was another girl who was sat next to him and her dad had hung himself the previous month and I'm just looking at him just looking at him out the corner of my going mate no no no no which encouraged him to do more he didn't know and was told afterwards and was absolutely mortified I don't know if he was a dj or not which would have made it worse but still yeah or his initials were dj yes yeah yeah another thing another thing to hate morrissey for so the following week panic jumped seven places to number 11 where it stayed for two weeks. The follow-up Ask got to number 14

in November of this year. The next month Morrissey did an interview with Frank Owen of Melody Maker where he responded to Green Gart's side of scritty-polity calling the song racist by claiming that reggae was the most racist music in the entire world and said, obviously to get on top of the pops these days one has to be, by law black. I think something political has occurred amongst Michael Hurl and his friends and there's been a hefty pushing of all these black artists

and all this discified nonsense into the top 40 I think as a result that very aware younger groups that speak for now are being gagged. The thing with Morrissey is no one in the history of racism has ever been, no one in the history of saying things has ever been given more chances and more benefit of the doubt, have they? And I know because I used to do this, you know, to my, and I'm not going to say, oh God, I wring my hands.

Oh, why didn't I know immediately from the start? my um and i'm not gonna say oh god i wring my hands oh why didn't i know immediately from the start um because you know i mean maybe maybe i should i probably should actually take a look at myself in that way but it's like so many people and it's it's kind of heartbreaking really so many people have given him have extended such good faith yeah towards him and he is just he's really throwing it back in everyone's face you know he because he is a genuine misanthrope i used to think that it was sort of a that it was opposed because everything about, you know, so much everything about him is opposed. And I thought for a long time that it was sort of a, you know, he was it was not it was a posture. But it actually seems to be who he is really, really deep down, which is, you know, what we just all have to face up to now.

And of course, you know, we can all have to face up to now and of course you know we can always chuck in the review of this song in smash hits um i'm sorry to say but i find them very depressing the lead singer's voice sounds like he's in pain is that morrissey it says in the song hang the dj but where would they be without them? If you don't like DJs, you still like them because they play your records and that's what sells records. I don't think they'd like to hang Janice Long or John Peel, would they? I wouldn't play it though. He can't sing and it gives me a headache.

In all his interviews, he's Mr. Nasty 2 and goes moan, moan, moan. Thus spoke the rapt seer, Samantha Fox, in Smash Hits. Ha ha ha! Right, we have a record coming up now, which is great, in the charts. It's called Camouflage. I've tuned Stan Ridgway's guitar specially for him,

so it should be hunky-dory. APPLAUSE I was a KFC on a search patrol On Charlie Down It was in the jungle wars of 65 Reid, next to some horrible neon Alludes again to the fact that he thinks he's a musician The fucking bellend, as he introduces Camouflage by Stan Ridgeway.

Born in California in 1954, Stan Ridgeway first came to our attention as the lead singer of Wall of Voodoo, who had a number 64 hit in March of 1983 with Mexican Radio, and also as a collaborator with Stuart Copeland of The Police on the single Don't Box Me In as part of the soundtrack to Rumblefish in the same year. This is the first single from his debut solo LP, The Big Heat

and it's become a surprise hit in the UK, nudging up this week from number 7 to number 6. Of course this was the time when America decided that it had actually won the Vietnam War, isn't it? You know, I mean... We got deluged with all that Vietnam shit.

Yeah, but this is better Vietnam nostalgia than Paul Hardcastle, who was terribly negative, I thought. Yeah, yeah. Always looking on the downside, wasn't he? Yeah, put me right off that wall, that did. This performance is really something, because I did a double take when it's like,

ah, it's Stan Ridgeway in camouflage, and the stage has been transformed by some incredibly eager set dresser, possibly whose last day it was. Yeah, they've dragged out the scenery from it. Oh, fuck my mum, though. It's amazing. You know, it'll give you flashbacks.

It's just, you know, there's loads of green lighting and loads of vegetation. And they've, like, wound it around because there's that sort of weird kind of pyramid-y, kind of gantry stuff everywhere, as was the style at the time. And it's all very lovingly festooned. It's amazing.

And then after a second, you realise that they've actually got like a man at sea in a dummy and dressed him as a marine. Yes. And they put him there lurking over Stan Ridgeway's shoulder. It's incredible. The set looks like the overgrown foot of a pylon in a field next to an A-road. If you poke around in there, you'll find a badger skeleton,

a bra and half a copy of Men Only, all soaked in cow piss. A soiled bra sadly there was no room in the studio for the helicopters and the name Pom or anything like that so they've made do, they've made an effort which is very rare at this point

in Top of the Pops' lifespan isn't it? Yeah I mean I don't know if they had budget for this sort of thing because you know you don't see it with anyone else it's like also there's I mean as you'll know from being in studios, they're a lot smaller than they look and everyone's actually quite cramped. But like Five Star hardly had room to kind of, you know, fling their elbows at all.

But yeah, they just kind of went, maybe all of the budget for this episode just kind of, you know, went on that and I applaud them for it. There's also that bit where it's like the cameraman is crawling through the undergrowth and parts the foliage to see ironic country music star stam ridgeway performing um it's good that bit yeah it's all it's very dramatic it's like they've they've really kind of been been very taken by this sudden emergence of of uh you know after all this kind of vague stuff about fighting for ourselves sudden emergence of of uh you know after all this

kind of vague stuff about fighting for ourselves and finding the time and all these very amorphous it's actually a story there's an actual kind of you know weird narrative it's like a kind of um it's like a sort of episode of tales from the dark side or something isn't it it's like one of those slightly kind of also ran ones where, you know, you know, you know exactly what the deal is within about, you know, within a minute of going, here's a straight. He was not. I do remember this being I I think this was a thing at my school, actually, is that people it was like this was an awfully strange marine. Everyone was very tickled by this. Nobody found that kind of, you know, nobody found it creepy or, you know, and I found I was I was very sensitive to this kind of you know nobody found it creepy or um you know and i found i was i was very sensitive to this kind of thing and i would find i find everything creepy and this i just remember finding quite quite amusing but it's probably because i was a i was a callow youth

and i hadn't grown up to understand the horrors of war yet you know you hadn't seen apocalypse no had you no not yet no no there's loads of the loads of the not very good episodes of The Twilight Zone are like this. Because Rod Serling had been in the Second World War, despite being five foot four, and not had a very nice time. So when in doubt, he always harked back to that for ideas. Lots of dead soldiers who weren't really dead, and vice versa. Yeah, it's quite a classic um it's quite a classic trope i suppose isn't it but the one thing that that's kind of niggled me about this listening

because i haven't heard this for years and years and uh no um and you know it's not the kind of thing you dig out and listen to um but yeah it's like i've i've written fiction and stuff and you you have to be especially when you're doing you sci-fi, fantasy or horror or anything like that, stuff that is made up, you have to work extra hard to make it consistent. You know, if you're going to create a world where anything can happen, you can't just go, oh, and then this happens because magic, because that's, you know, that doesn't work for people. People are suspending their disbelief already quite high. So you have to kind of help them to keep it steady yeah i mean and i noticed with with this so um basically the bullets are flying straight through him um and then and then another in another in the next verse he's you know there's a bullet with

with stan ridgeway's name on it which i guess they'd have to carve it quite small maybe you know probably also um ridgeway with no e in it quite small. Maybe, you know, probably also Ridgeway with no E in the, you know. Yes. So probably, you know, I wonder how many bullets he kind of got through first. Oh no, that's no good. I've got no room for the A and the Y. I've got to start again. Anyway, so a bullet

with Stan Ridgeway's name on it flies towards him and camouflage swats it away just like it was a fly. it's like mate you have to okay i've immediately and then he pulls a tree up don't he starts whacking people with it like like captain hurricane and starts laying about him with the with the tree it's like okay is he does this mean that he can achieve solidity at will because maybe otherwise it just sorry these are the things i care about it's like this yeah this doesn't make this don't make a lick of sense you're gonna go back and

sort this out either he's you know he's a sort of a a full torso floating apparition or you know or he's a corporeal he's a you know a zombie, carry on. And meanwhile in the undergrowth, Roy Race looked on and thought, could do with a central defender. This is essentially a 50s death song set in the 60s and performed in the 80s. Yeah, I like the real records that are like this more than I like the postmodern piss takes, call me old fashioned.

I mean, this is completely painless because it follows the pattern almost exactly um and the only things missing are the semi-seriousness of purpose and you know the raw brilliance of the backing track which are the best bits but things if you listen to wall of voodoo um a lot of it has this slightly wacky pastiche antique american music feel but sort of done self-consciously freaky so even though it's not good it does sound like itself so that's sort of critically more defensible but aesthetically this is much better because it's much straighter and more melodic um and there's no point in its existence but at least it sounds quite nice

yeah the other thing that i that i clocked this on this listen as well was um that he's uh he makes reference to charlie's in the um in the uh the plural which which from what I understand from my viewings of Apocalypse Now, I thought Charlie was a sort of collective noun, collective proper noun, if that's the thing. So it's somehow more offensive that, you know. But then I didn't go to Vietnam, so I don't know what they said. You weren't there.

I wasn't there, man. There are a few records around this time that were like this sort of almost novelty records but not quite you know with a sort of wry slightly whimsical feel to them you know like uh driving away from home yeah it's immaterial and stuff and it's not too horrible but it's not really what it's all about if you know what i mean it's like it's not serious enough to be serious or funny enough to be funny so i mean give me zigzag sputnik any day yeah yeah it's true designer violence as opposed to um magical violence uh you know it the bullet with his name on he would only have seen that fleetingly yeah so it's possible it

might have said like made in kazakhstan yeah because it like i think it was a soviet republic at the time so they may well have been supplying the vietcong yeah um yeah just a just a logical explanation it would have been dead good at the end if Mike Reed had popped up from a trap door dressed as a Viet Cong and shot him. Except what actually happens is even better because Mike Reed comes on at the end and tries to be funny. And he says, yeah, I know because I was that Marine. And Janice Long just completely tramples on it. Just doesn't even look at him yeah and just says nice one stan yes yeah my my creed at that point comes as near as i've ever seen him to to any moment of kind of

self-awareness by doing a little sort of shrug and you know that i'm not sure what you call it it's the little grimace that you do it's the kind of eek when you realize that you've been a twat yeah he does a little he i've been a twat. He does a little, eek, I've been a twat face. There's a tiny moment where I was like, I almost feel for him as a human being, but then the moment passed. You remembered UKIP, Kaleb, so. Yeah.

So the following week, Camouflage nipped up two places to number four, its highest position. But it would be his only chart hit in the UK, and he moved into film soundtracking Friends, the story's true, I know, for I was that marine. Nice one, Stan. Top ten, coming up right this second. Go. And up 15 places to number ten, it's Find the Time from Five Star.

Robert Palmer at nine with I Didn't Mean to Turn You On. UB40 and Sing Our Own Song, this week at number eight. Hollywood Beyond at seven with What's the Colour of Money? Stan the Man Ridgeway, Camouflage, up to number six. Ah, my song, at number five, Sinita and So Macho. Hey, hey, Rod Stewart, Every Beat of My Heart at number four. Sly Fox at three with Let's Go All The Way. And Madonna with Papa Don't Preach, down to number two.

And now a sound that's allegedly ringing round the yacht, which can you hear this week? It's this one. New number one, Christy Bird, Lady in Red. APPLAUSE Fuck off! After running down the top ten, Reid speculates that the worst thing that ever came out of a Queen's Fanny and his Shetland pony of a bride are currently rutting on a big ship to this week's number one, The Lady in Red by Chris de Bourgh. Born Christopher Davidson in Argentina in 1948, Chris de Bourgh was the son of a diplomat who was brought up in a castle in Ireland and took his mam's name when he got into music. After signing a deal with A&M in 1974, de Burgh supported Supertramp on their Crime of the Century tour

and released the LP Far Beyond These Castle Walls, which chartered nowhere in the world apart from Brazil, where it got to number one. which charted nowhere in the world apart from Brazil, where it got to number one. It wasn't until 1982 that he made any kind of dint on the UK singles chart when Don't Pay the Ferryman got to number 48 in October of that year. And his first top 40 hit was this song about his missus bothering to make a bit of an effort for a change and being letched on by loads of blokes at a do after it was revealed that it was the favorite song of lady die who thought it was about her and the recently married sarah ferguson it rocketed up the charts and it's moved up this

week from number two to number one knocking papa don't preachach by Madonna off the top spot. Where to begin with this? This song's always been a bit of an easy target. It is. Because it's so fucking shit, yeah. Fucking cat shit. Yeah, precisely. Is this the worst number one single of the 80s? No.

Let's discount the novelty shit. No, I don't think so. No. Go on. Tell me something worse. Eh. Because people always say, I just called to say I love you.

And, you know, I think, I think that, all right, okay, it's a crap record, but that song, if Stevie Wonder had recorded that in 1969 or in 1974 or in 1977, it would have been all right. Chris DeBerg could have recorded this at any time in the history of the world

and it would still stink of unwashed cock. Yeah, there is nothing that you could do to this song. There's no instruments that's been invented that would make this song good. I don't know what it is. It's just this kind of sludge. It's like what you get behind your taps, isn't it's just this kind of sludge it's like the kind of it's like what you get behind your taps isn't it but in kind of oral yes form yeah you don't know what it is and you're sort of compelled to look it's like oh god what the fuck is it um yeah i was just kind of i sort

of marveled at it you know again something i have not listened to for a long time deliberately it's something that you do as you grow up and you you know you you make sure that you avoid the kinds of places where lady in red might might assail your ears but yeah it's it's so bad i'm trying to think of just to be devil's advocate i'm trying to think of something to say in its defense i mean as middle of the road ballads go it's neatly written and musically coherent uh the trouble is it just yeah it bleeds mawkish sincerity and bland devotion and it just seems to encapsulate something rank and objectionable about our stupid culture right like cheap and soft-headed and creepy and the attempts to make it sound sophisticated

are both loathsome and pitiful. It's like Avalon by Roxy Music if it had been baked by Greggs. It's like someone's gone in Brian Ferry's house and smashed all the objet d'art and replaced them with plates from the Franklin Mint and like sort of mock crystal glasses that are free from the petrol station

with five gallons of four star. It's, yeah. The music of your childhood will kind of send you, you know, it sends you back there. And I was trying to think, what does this, does this put me back in a particular place, a particular mood in my childhood? And I thought it just reminds me of being ill when I was a kid and just like having headaches that wouldn't go away.

And like, you know, or being like in a car at night and it was raining and I had, I felt really car sick and there wasn't anywhere else I could go. Or just like hallucinating with flu. That's the thing. There's this queasiness about it. What it reminds me of is it was like the second phase of weddings. You know, a lot of my mates and sort of cousins and stuff were obviously not listening to Terry Hall

and getting married when they were 18 or 19. And, you know, even though they didn't really particularly want that song on, it got fucking played. And you just have to sit there with a... trying to look for vegetarian alternatives at the buffet, knowing that there was only crisps and fucking bits of carrot. And everyone... And just basically watching your uncles and aunties

fucking copping off with each other again. That's what it reminds me of, this song. Yeah, it takes me back. It takes me back to that weird sort of aspirational lower middle class world that I was in, in the second half of the 80s. Yeah. Sort of reeking of British Isles misery. And everyone who's middle-aged is middle-aged by the old rules, you know.

Yeah. Like there's blokes in sensible cars just driving nowhere, slightly confused eyes wondering what the hell happened, you know. Yeah. And the women in M&S slacks with that sort of Viennese whirl hairdo, which was compulsory after the age of 35 just too tired for life and yeah their horrible resentful kids have been packed off to grandmas and they open a bottle of pomade and retire to the bedroom with the with the shiny formica built-in

wardrobe doors you know and the tv sound leaking in from next door through the new build walls they they put this on their tape player and and and fail to have sex because they don't fancy each other they both fancy young attractive people like everyone else um yeah and at the time that was this was like pure doom to me. This record sounded like creeping death. And the sort of slushy, heavy echo on this record was like the echo of the morgue door slamming shut. God preserve us. I was trying to think of who would actually fucking buy this record,

but it is for people who've heard Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton and thought, oh, that's a bit too ethnic it's a bit edgy yeah and the lyrical content is is fucking horrible it's basically saying everyone at the fucking christmas party wanted to fuck you and it was dead good well done yeah because you you got to go home with a bloke who looks like he should be throwing potatoes at a cow or having boiling oil tipped over him from the battlements yeah it's all the front row of this top of the pops went home with a bubonic plague yes standing next to this guy yeah he's well he's got a sort of he's got a red shirt on is it buttoned all the way up i think red shirt on. Is it buttoned all the way up? I think red shirt buttoned all the way up with no tie

and a sort of giant denim bag of a jacket. White. White, yeah, denim bag and white strides. It's horrible, is it? With the sleeves rolled up. Sleeves are, yeah, there is some forearm on display. But he's just you know he's and padded shoulders there's nothing to preclude if you are if you are an there's nothing to stop

unremarkable looking people from getting into music you don't have to you know there are there are pop stars who look amazing and who look like they're from another planet there are people who look like christopher because you know there's nothing wrong in theory with him being number one but there's everything wrong with it he just looks like he's wandered in from something yeah it doesn't even it's like you know there are people who you feel awkward for them but they don't at least they don't i'm really acutely sensitive to like other people's kind of feelings of awkwardness and going oh god oh god you know but he just looks completely comfortable but still awkward and i think the awkwardness just comes from just comes from you looking at christopher going what's he doing there that jacket is exactly the

kind of thing my mum would buy for my dad before we went on holiday because my dad cut my dad couldn't stand going clothes shopping so So my man bought shit for him. And he's like, oh, we're going on holiday. Oh, it's summer. Oh, is this white jacket that's going to be totally unsuitable for every other time you wear it apart from the first time? It's going to attract every fucking spillage in the pub. And oh, what's he look like again? Oh, how big is that?

Oh, this will do. And my dad would wear it without question. He didn't give a fuck. It is a total panic bite and it probably costs, you know, probably cost a mint. It's probably a really expensive fucking bit of Gucci, you know?

Yeah. But it's designed for someone who's tall. That's the thing. Yeah. Cause it's quite a sort of billowy loose jacket. Well, I guess George, you know,

you could, George Michael could, could pull it off. Yeah. You know, that would work. I was I guess George, you know, you could, George Michael could pull it off. Yeah. You know, that would work. I was going to say there was a, I can report a recent sighting, I think this was last year sometime,

of Christaberg, who is still, you know, out and about town, wearing, sporting, no, you can't wear these, you must sport them, red leather trousers. No! They were leather and red.

Oh, for fuck's sake. And apparently he was with a much younger woman who had, and I quote, his face but long hair. Oh, no! Oh, what was she wearing? Reports are sketchy on this. Blonde hair, blue jeans. I think they were just blinded by the fact that this is Christenberg,

who is how old now? Too old. Too old for them trousers, Dave. Well, when he made this record, he was 38. That's weird because that's younger than any of us. But more than that, it's younger than a lot of other people who've still had some life in them and not seemed rancid and creepy. It's not really natural for someone of 38,

which is an age where you've stopped accelerating but you haven't quite begun to slow down, to walk around looking like this and giving off this kind of vibration it looks like he should be tossing himself off in a shed you know what i mean i'm pinning up newspaper clippings all around saying manhunt underway as two more bodies found you know setting up a camera in the toilet he's like like, if Paul Daniels had never learnt magic, this is how he'd have had to woo the lovely Debbie McGee with creepy, pandering balladry.

It's not right. There's something just not right about it. And the one thing I want to chuck in here, I'm sure we're all conversant with the film The Room. The Tommy Wiseau film, The Room. Oh, yes, yes! Fuck yes! Do you think that Tommy Wiseau

wanted to have the lady in red on the soundtrack? Probably when he's shagging and showing his horrible fucking arse off. Oh my god. Because what colour is Lisa's dress? Ah. It all makes sense doesn't it? And if there is a god

Christopher's final fucking moments on this planet will be him sniffing that red dress and shouting why Lisa why and be shooting himself in the mouth god I hope that's live on telly oh god

doesn't he yeah I've got I've only seen it once. I went to see it at one of the screenings where everybody makes a tremendous racket and throws shit. It's very entertaining. But yeah, he smells the dress and he sort of rubs it onto Arno.

Why have you made me think of this? These are like... What's the axis of The Room and Lady in Red? It's just... I don't think you're supposed to cross those streams. So Lady in Red stayed at number one for three weeks, eventually being usurped by the violent racist I Want to Wake Up With You by Boris Gardner.

The follow-up, Fatal Hesitation, only got to number 44 in September of this year and his attempt to get his 1975 Christmas song A Spaceman Came Travelling stalled at number 40 in september of this year and his attempt to get his 1975 christmas song a spaceman came traveling stalled at number 40 in december although the single missing you got to number three in november of 1988 years later his wife revealed that she hated the song and refused to wear red ever again although chris got his revenge by knobbing their children's nanny while she was recovering in hospital from a broken neck.

Yeah, let that hang in the air. He was last in the news when he told Gloria Hunniford on a BBC TV show that he had healing powers that caused a crippled man in the West Indies to walk and when he passed his hands over the legs of the injured

Liverpool defender Marcus Babel he said he could move his toes more easily, probably because they were curling up in embarrassment as I happened to know what a knob. My Lady Red. The new number one live vocals from Christopher, congratulations. And that is Lady in Red.

Right, next week, Mike Smith's fingerprints will be on this very microphone. We're going to leave you tonight with a great band. This is It Bites. Hope this goes top 10 this is calling all the heroes good night after telling us that Mike Smith will be on next week, meaning we probably won't ever see that episode in our lifetimes, Reid introduces one last video, Calling All The Heroes by It Bite. Formed in Cumbria in 1982, It Bite started out as a covers band before splitting up and going their separate ways in 1983.

A year later, however, they all met up by chance in the pub, decided to give it another go and moved to London, where they were eventually signed by Virgin. Although their first single flopped, the follow-up, this one, has just entered the top 40 at number 36. One of the more appropriately named groups of the 80s would also accept it sucks and it blows yes i was thinking like what you know because obviously you go through any band goes through a lot of options before they settle on uh you know over

many many months how about this how about this oh know, and it's a very tiresome process. But I do wonder what the meeting was. You know, it's like it chafes, you know, or it kind of tingles, but like not continuously. You know, that sort of thing. It throbs. You see, that would be... Great bunny name.

That would be amazing. I mean, they would look the absolute opposite of it bites and everything about them would be the opposite of it bites. In the universe where the Jesus and Mary chain occupy the position in people's hearts that the Stone Roses do in this universe, that's the universe where it throbs are basically like cameo, but better.

Before we move on, I'm going to give you a quote from their interview in the latest issue of Smash Hits. They say, in the 70s, people had to be able to play their instruments to get anywhere. It seems that nowadays all you have to do is be a pretty face, play synthesizers and backing tapes, and you're made. But I think music's going to have to go back to the 70s

because the public are getting sick and tired of bands who can't play. And then house music came along. Impressant. In the early to mid 80s, it was always possible to tell which of the old pop groups were old punks and which were old proggers. Yeah, we've had this conversation many a time. But now they didn't have to pretend anymore no it's like if somebody said let's take uh the worst and most sterile kind of late 80s record company pop and spice it up a bit with the worst and most sterile kind of british prog it's like it's like ordering someone who's standing up to their waist in piss to touch their toes like you think it's okay well let's try making prog really clean and

zippy and 80s cokie and waxy faced and and winnerish just in just in case you end up with something interesting yeah but if you end up with it bites drown it in the fucking bathtub hundreds of thousands of pounds of major label money behind it you know what i mean yeah it's like it's a bit and also it's so natural that they should be from cumbria as well same way that like meridian were from aylesbury you know i mean these are the places where prog never died you'd always find middle class lads learning the guitar who've decided that this is real serious quality music you know when i was living in the sticks there were loads of kids in the year below me who weren't a yes and

jethro tull there was this lad with really long hair who used to play the flute standing on one leg you know yeah yeah it's perverted it's perverted it's why it also used to flourish in public schools because it's what you get when male sexuality is repressed in a sick society like britain like all that sort of arrogant energy goes down other tubes and for hard lads it comes out as violence and for soft lads it's anal retentive idiot music like this i mean the one takeaway i've got from the video is that the lead singer and the bassist are holding their instruments like cunts. Yeah, really high up.

Really high up over the nipples. Yeah, it's a shame he couldn't have held it about eight inches higher, then we wouldn't have had to look at his stupid children's theatre nasty face. Isn't it? It's like fucking Emu's Pink Windmill Show production of Au Revoir les enfants i mean

how can you how can you actually play your guitar like that and not feel like george formby while you're doing it um they do look and the thing is as well you know i was saying like obviously there's no there's no media training but there was no kind of um you don't get the sort of stage school thing either. So you do get people who just don't look comfortable at all on any, and they don't look like they know what they're doing. It does look like they've just been sort of shoved onto a very cheap set and gone, can you do this? And I can't tell if he's happy or just terrified. And you shouldn't be terrified.

It's understandable. If you're on top of the pops, it's understandable. If you're just going, fuck're on top of the pops it's understandable if you're just going fuck on top of the fucking pops you know with that terror in the eyes but he has that somehow anyway

maybe he just always looked like that but also like there's a it's very telling that I mean his oh the vocal is so strained it was like it's making me cringe

but he's got a decent falsetto I will say that for him but he doesn't close his eyes when he goes falsetto it's like come on screw up your face this is when it's fucking 1986 screw up your face But he's got a decent falsetto, I will say that for him. But he doesn't close his eyes when he goes falsetto. It's like, come on, screw up your face. It's fucking 1986.

Screw up your face and close your eyes. And it's like he dare not do it. It's like he dare not. It's got that very strange vocal melody, which seems to keep landing on notes that aren't there. It's like an anti-tune. It's really horrible. Have you looked at the lyrics to this song it's more fighting

it's lots more fighting by people who you do not want it's a jollier run to the hills by Iron Maiden isn't it yeah yeah basically it is the ballad of the Cumbrian baby faced Nazis it's like his weird

bath time fantasy of annexing north it's like he was standing up on tiptoes to cut someone's head off i hate him i hate he's like the what he's he's like the scrappy do version of the singer from johnny hates jazz yes and the only good thing about this record and this video is the way he grins with this inane joy as he sings the lines, the men return to find their homes destroyed. Yes. Like a little kid who's just kicked the head off a snowman. He's so happy about it. Yeah.

I mean, this is a prime example as to why when people have 80s nights nowadays, they don't have a late 80s night. Yeah. Yeah. Because this is what people perceive the charts to be full of at this time, this shit. Well, you get the feeling as well that Janice or, you know, someone like Janice in the production team had to prod the producers

into including, like, the Jesus and Mary chain. You know, despite them being in the top 20. Because it wasn't, you know, it wasn't really the sort of thing we have on top of it. Whereas this has gone in at number 36 and it's right there closing the show because it reminds those people of their university days, you know, or their heady years at teacher training college learning to be dicks it's just it's i always felt in this you know in my angry uh angry teenage music snob phase um the one thing i think i got right was that the people controlling access to music in you know what those people would now call the msm is uh we're still stuck in this prog, you know, what those people would now call the MSM, is we're still stuck in this prog world, you know.

Yeah. And I think it's true. And I think there's no other explanation for stuff like this being so heavily promoted when, you know, did any kids like this record? I didn't know any who did. There was the, a couple of years later, there was the Equinox documentary called Bang Twang Karang about the electric guitar. And they spent about 10 seconds on Jimi Hendrix.

Charles Murray talks about it in the book Crosstown Traffic. And he goes on about this monumentally dull corporate band who had about 10 minutes spent on them while they were doing their latest tedious album it bites yeah there you go the late 80s in a nutshell for you there yeah so the following week Calling All The Heroes soared 19 places to number 17 and would eventually get to number six however the follow-up Whole New World stalled at number 54 and they never darkened the top 40 again after trying a proggier direction in 1988 and then having a go at hard rock in 1989 they called it a day in 1990 but they reformed in 2006 because that's what you do nowadays so what's on telly afterwards well bbc one sees a blood transfusion van pulling into the latest episode of eastenders then it's the

medical show body matters with graham garden the office office sitcom Sharon and Elsa, the 9 o'clock news and then two more hours of the Commonwealth Games before finishing off with a repeat of Rhoda. BBC2 has just begun a concert by the Byruth Festival Orchestra as part of their List Week celebrations followed by the travel show Moonlighting and then Bob Langley goes boating on the shropshire union canal in making waves then news night and rounds off the evening with an open university program on the history of mongolism itv is running give us a clue

minder the sitcom troubles and strifes where step Stephen Pacey plays a hunky young vicar. Then the factual show Workout interviews the hardcore unemployed. Then it's news at 10, Quincy and the documentary series Burning the Phoenix about the history of the Royal College of Art. And Channel 4 is showing the first ever episode of the science show Equinox. Then Gardner's Calendar, the final part of the price the irish psychological thriller about kidnapping then the documentary film portrait of 60 perfect man about the life and work of billy wilder so me dears what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow god you know i don't know because there's always whenever you say like what we're talking about in the playground there's always what i would be thinking about and then there's what I'd be prepared to bring up

in front of my classmates. So, I don't know. I'd probably just go for five star anyway. Yeah? Surely the Jesus and Mary chain would make a bit of an impression. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I suppose they probably would.

I don't know. I've reached the point where I cannot access my eight-year-old brain anymore because my brain is gone. I'm in my, like, 60-year-old brain right now. I'd have been talking about the Jesus and Mary chain, being on top of the pops, as though this was in some way a significant cultural development. Oh, yeah.

You know, the sight of... Youth culture winning. Yeah, culture winning yeah yeah yeah just people in black shirts singing about heroin might inspire a spoon-fed generation to to stop being modern and having a good time like they're told to and start being old-fashioned and miserable which i suspect i'd have considered a step forward and in some way damaging to the Conservative Party or something. And what are we buying on Saturday? Five star. Well, I can tell you what I did buy.

Jesus of Mary Chain rip-off double-pack 7-inch with acoustic versions on the extra disc punk rock Smith's rip off 12 inch where it's got an extra track that's an instrumental and the vinyl is half run out groove because it's only about 2 minutes long, punk rock

and to be honest I'm not sure it'd be that different now, I mean I like the 5 star record these days but I don't know if I'd pay for it because it's barely there and what does this episode tell us about the summer of 1986 um i think this is where the 80s are kind of start well yeah i'm sure taylor would say the rot is set in way before this i think it's that you get a sense that it's running out of steam maybe this is kind of the the point where you know uh the the titanic has mostly gone down but the the back end of it is still bobbing up and down for for you know 10 minutes so it's

simon lebon's underneath it simon lebon's underneath it yeah so there's still there's uh you know everything looks okay from a certain angle but any second now it's just gonna start gonna start really really going bad i think 86 was sort of the missing year of the 80s almost. Like 1993 was the missing year of the 90s. It's like a whole year sort of caught between moments. But in a way, it's less dislikable for that because there's not much that's really great on this Top of the Pops, but it's less objectionable, far less objectionable

than the one we did from 1987. And it's sort of less unpleasant than a lot from 85. Even though it's not stuffed with gold, there wasn't that much that was really upsetting until the very end. Yeah. I mean, the only harbingers of the future here are the Jesus and Mary chain, aren't they, who were the most backward-looking ones. Yeah. I mean, the only harbingers of the future here are the Jesus and Mary chain, aren't they? Who were the most backward looking ones. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. And on that note, it's time to close the book on another episode of Chart Music. But before I do, got to give you the same old bollocks about where you can find us when we're not doing this shit. You can go to our website which is www.chart-music.co.uk.

You can reach out to us on Facebook, if you dare, on facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast. And you can get amongst us on Twitter, chartmusic, T-O-T-P. And of course, if you want to give us some money, nom, nom, nom,

patreon.com slash chartmusic. Thank you very much, Sarah B. Thank you. Thank you very much, Taylor Parks. Goodbye. My name's Al Needham, and people who want to get rid of chart music should be shot, traitorous scum.

Oh, no! Chart music. Shark music Music and great musicians on stage Now you might not realise this But you are extra famous in Nottinghamshire Am I? Yes. And I'm going to explain why. I'm early for that. You're extra famous in Nottinghamshire because it is widely

said that one of the ways you can tell whether somebody is from Nottingham and has a proper Nottingham accent is when they say the words Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet. Now clearly I've just said it as it should be said but here's somebody else to explain how, if you could do it in proper Nottingham, it would be explained.

Nick says, you're only true not if you can pronounce Tony Hadley out of Spandau Ballet in the correct accent. So there we are. Tony Hadley, I'm going to do it, I'm very bad at this. Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet.

Do you think you could do it like that for me, Tony, just to prove you're Nottinghamshire? at this Tony Adler from Spandau Ballet do you think you could do it like that for me Tony just to prove you're Nottinghamshire ok Tony Adler from Spandau Ballet hey that is good

I tell you maybe you could add a Top Valley on the end as well Valley visit Top Valley yeah I'll be called a few

well pronounced a few things in my style yeah nobody 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.

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