Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #25: June 22nd 1973 - Peppa Pig Versus The IRA Pub Bombers

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: Top Of The Pops? On a Friday? Arseholes to that! This episode of The Pops has been hand-picked by the Pop-Crazed Youngsters on our Patreon account, and they did us proud with this one: a episode from the Most Seventies Year Ever hosted by none other than Kenny Everett. He only did six of these, and there's only one left in the BBC archives, but the one we're pulling apart is one that has been yanked from someone else's private collection. So how does the mad scientist of the twin Grundig reel-to-reel come off when he's not doing his own show and is being told what to do by an exasperated floor manager? Open your tabs to our sexy, sexy Pop-blather and find out for yourselves. Musicwise, it's not the Glam-binge we were hoping for, but it's a very sugary Pic n' Mix of Pop confectionery. Brian Johnson - the Andy Capp of Metal - pitches up with Geordie. Barry White in full rut is coupled with Svankmajeresque stop-motion mentalness. Peters and Lee pop up again. Mr You-Can-Do-It-Right-Now-Please helps Roger Moore get his leg over Solitaire. Slade deliver the Great Missing #1 of the era, just before it all goes tragically wrong, Dave Edmunds lives the karaoke singer's worst nightmare, and some white herberts in Arthur Mullard flares burst out of the Trojan horse. And Pans People pull on stockings and suspenders and still manage to not be particularly sexy about it. Al Needham, David Stubbs and Simon Price huddle around the flickering candle of 1973, veering off on tangents such as saying the wrong thing at Dad funerals, Leeds United-hating, hearing about death while watching people shagging on a podium, accepting an award for a Pop star and not bothering to give it to them, and what Noel Edmond's super-power would be. Oh, and two words: Bummerdog Update. As always, there's loads of swearing, but it's all done in the best paahsable taste.   Download  |  Video Playlist soon come |  Subscribe  |  Facebook  |  Twitter Subscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.   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. Chart music. 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 on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, I'll need them, but so fucking what? As always, it's about the two people with me and this time they are David Stubbs and Simon Price. Hello, and can I just congratulate you on one of your very best A-up pop craze youngsters that time. That was someone else. Thank you.

As time goes on, you build and build and build. But the problem is, you know, how far can it go? It could go wrong one time. And in fact, it already has. has i i uh lost last uh last episode i lost my voice for about uh three minutes okay during a really um a really uh sabbath like uh aw pop crazy youngsters so gotta watch that so anyway anything pop and interesting happening in your lives chaps well i've just uh not long ago come back um of holiday in uh in new orleans and uh which um a city which is is as luck would have it going to come up once or twice in this episode

yes so yeah yeah yeah I'll say no more for now well you went to Motown as well didn't you you bastard I did yeah stopped off for a couple of days in Detroit went to actual Motown stood there on the spot where the Temptations sang their vocal harmonies and yeah it was as close to a sort of holy pilgrimage for a

pop crazed oldster like me as you can get really yeah yeah yeah i'm very jealous very jealous of you did you did you ever sing yeah they do this thing where they stand you all in a line you know there'll be about sort of 15 or 20 of you on the tour and they get you to sort of slide from side to side doing hand claps and singing my girl by the tempt, which sounds cheesy as fuck. Sounds well-buckling. Yes, but when you're there in the actual room, you just forget all your self-consciousness and just go with it and belt it out

and just top of your voice, just really going for it. Yeah, it was just something I'll never forget. David! Yeah? It's nearly book time, isn't it? Well, yeah. August 2nd, Mars by 1980. There's tremendous excitement.

Is there a URL or anything you want to throw at the publication? No, what I'm doing is every day I'm sort of tweeting some sort of, you know, history of electronic music type related thing on Twitter. So, you know, if you're looking at my Twitter account, it's pretty much exclusively dedicated to that now. I've swept all frippery aside, you know, and just getting straight down to the business of huckststering and uh flogging and all that kind of stuff is that your send victorious twitter account he says helpfully it is the one send victorious yeah yeah yeah i was

gonna say you didn't you weren't you weren't doing it that well david if you weren't shoving the fucking twitter account of people's arses right from the start. I've come to learn that, you see. I'm shit at that. But anyway, before we go any further, we have a letter I'd like to read to you. We don't get many letters, mainly because we don't give out any addresses. A letter?

An actual letter that somebody put a stamp on an envelope? No, no, no. Well, I'm saying a letter because it's been printed out on a bit of paper. But anyway, it goes like this. No, no, no. Well, I'm saying a letter because it's been printed out on a bit of paper. But anyway, it goes like this. Dear Chart Music and all pop-crazed youngsters, as a long-time listener, I took particular interest in something Al said in a recent episode and would like to concur wholeheartedly with what he said.

and would like to concur wholeheartedly with what he said. I should know, for I was there at West Glade Junior School in the late 70s and witnessed, first hand, the reign of terror of Bummer Dog. There were many incidents involving Bummer Dog having his way with an unfortunate child, but one in particular springs to mind during a vital playtime football clash between Mr. Dakin's class and Mr. Walker's class. Halfway through, the entire playground stopped as one, at the sound of the words, BUMMER DOG! BUMMER DOG!

which would fill the air as soon as he lumbered into view, tongue lolling, with a glint in his eye that meant only one thing. Someone was going to get thrusted. The thing about Bomberdog you need to realise, he had an almost civilian indiscrimination towards his prey. We knew that everyone on that playground was fair game, so we scattered like legs and co when Dave Lee Travis enters their dressing room. Suddenly, Bummer Dog took off and made a beeline for one lad in particular, Tracy Unwin. Maybe he was attracted to the shininess of his mock leather jacket, which he always had zipped up to his throat.

Maybe he was beguiled by the blonde, Gordon McQueen-like hair. Maybe it was because he had the same name as half the girls in our school. For whatever reason, Tracy took flight and started to climb the ten-foot-high mesh fence that surrounded our school. Bummer Dog responded to this by soaring upward like Steve Austin did when he needed to get to the top of a very high block of flats,

wrapped himself around Tracy's leg, dragged him down, and proceeded to sate his lust. The rest of us looked on with a mixture of pity and relief, which was drowned out by our screams of laughter and over-exaggerated pointing. Eventually, Bomber Dog was shooed off by a teacher who accidentally on purpose seemed to take ages to relieve the poor lad, trudging across our playing field like a footballer who has been subbed in injury time, trying to run down the clock. I can still hear Tracy's screams today.

Regards, Gareth Murden. P.S. The other dog that had gone out to like a pair of Pineapples in a stocking was just known As bollock dog As far as I can recall Well thank you Gareth for justifying what I said And correcting me on one thing Really appreciate that

I'm gone When I heard when i heard the previous podcast that had bummer dog on it i totally fucking lost it and i've been laughing about it ever since and just when we were getting ready to do this podcast today i was thinking please don't mention bummer dog you absolute fucking bastard oh sorry about that i reckon every school in britain in the 70s had a bummer dog i think it's a real 1970s thing yeah they must have done it it's almost like this sort of folk memory that it tapped into in me that i'm sure we had a similar thing in our school

i mean just dogs in general being on the loose in the playground is such a 1970s thing it is isn't it i mean because everyone seemed be moving out. Everything seemed to be pulled down and people were moving into blocks of flats or onto new estates. And a lot of dogs got left behind. They weren't like Greyfriars Bobby though, were they? They'd sit there and wait for the master to return. They just thought, oh well, fuck it, I might as well shag some kids' legs.

It's awful, isn't it, man? In America they have all these um fences and security procedures to stop menclis shooting loads of kids and we have the same thing just to just for bummer dog well this is it i mean if there was if a menace of bummer dog raised its ugly head in the states you know donald trump and the nra would be sure to say, if only one teacher had a gun, they could have put a stop to bummer dogs. Or an even randier dog to have sex with bummer dogs.

That's the logic, isn't it? Get a fucking St. Bernard dosed up on Viagra and send it out there. Yes. Brilliant. Of course, we need to thank the latest batch of people who put some work in for the set and laid the money down in the name of chart music. And those people are Stephen Eastwood,

Sophie Hall, Hugh Rees, Bev Hislop, Lara Lean, Gareth Price, Andy Healing, and the Yarborough and People's Glove Puppets. They all heard the call. They all stepped up to the mark,

and they all said, yes, chart music, we don't want you to end up living on cat food and having to play the EastEnders theme on a penny whistle underneath a cash point. Take this money and give us more of that fucking podcast. Thank you, everyone. And if you want to join them,

don't forget www.patreon.com slash chart music. This week's episode was personally selected by the Pop Craze Youngsters on our Patreon account, and they chose well. Thanks to them, we're going all the way back to June the 22nd, 1973, with an episode hosted by none other than Kenny Everett. But if you think it's the one where he's dressed up as a yokel, which is the only episode in the BBC archive, you are wrong, sir or madam, because this is an earlier one. It's an off-air taping, and it came right out of the collection of someone I don't know

purloined in a manner that I cannot remember. Oh, the BBC and their lack of attention to early episodes, eh? Still enrages me. I was going to say that what's great about this is that it's in black and white. Yes. And of course, this is what, therefore,

I would have watched this in black and white. I mean, we didn't get colour telly until 1974 in our house. But it really feels like it's got the glow of colour. It's a bit like when I watched the 1970 World Cup. I mean, even though, you know, obviously, again, it was in black and white. I watched it at the Golden Sands Chalet Park in Widdensee, you know, with the full tournament. And it, but, you know, there was something about that kind of satellite broadcast and the players had a kind of sort of glow and a sort of grain about them or whatever that

kind of exuded the sort of, you know, the classic sort of, you know, lemons and limes or whatever, like in the Brazilian kit. Yeah. So this actually possibly,

even though I don't actually quite remember seeing this episode, it probably set off a few more kind of little kind of, you know, Prussian whiffs and what have you. Because yeah, this is actually exactly, I mean, it was broadcast in colour, I take it, but this is how it would have actually, most of us folks would actually have watched it.

Because, you know, I said earlier, we didn't have one until about 1977 or something. I lied my arse off. Because after that episode, I had a chat with my mum and I said, you know, when did we have Colatelli? We didn't have one in the 70s, did we? And she said, what are you going on about? We had one in 1967.

I went, what? I had no recollection of this at all. And I said, that must have cost an absolute bomb. She says, oh, yeah, we didn't go on holiday for a year or two, you know, scrimped and saved and all that kind of stuff. I said, why did you get a Colatelli? you know, scrimped and saved, and all that kind of stuff.

I said, why did you get a Colatella? And she said, someone told me dad in the pub that Batman in colour was the greatest thing ever. And so we went out and bought a Colatella. That was my dad's psychedelic experience in 1967. But there was a delay, really, wasn't there? Because 1967 is the year that pop culture was supposed to blossom into colour

with Sgt Pepper and Hippodim and all that. But it was still in black and white for most people. The year that life blossomed into colour was about 1974. That's when most people... I mean, there was one that I next saw Neighbours, but the first ever programme I saw on colour TV was in 1971. Sorry about this, Simon. It was the Arsenal-Liverpool FA Cup final, May the 8th of 1971.

And, of course, even then it wasn't really quite colour it was sort of tinted really it was a bit like I don't know if you remember that Coronation Street episode where Eddie Yates comes in and you know

to Stan Hilders and he's got this kind of you know what I forget that frigging colour telly so I've got this great device and it brings in this

kind of sort of plastic screen type thing that's kind of blue at the top and green at the bottom and Stan says ah yes good for racing

and the Latin Hilders says we ah, good for racing and all that. And I always say, we're not having that. But yeah, it was... But another thing about tellies is... Recently, there was the Alan Bennett film, The Lady in the Van. And in that,

you learn that his house is valued at £35,000 in Camden in 1970. That house is now worth £3.5 million, about 100 times that. Meanwhile, he got a scene on a high street with a television for sale for £110. Well, I mean, you can get a telly for £110 now, you know, and it's...

Yeah, it's ridiculous, isn't it? Extraordinary. If only we could live in tellies, eh? Yeah, yeah. I mean, people who know more about TV than us will probably be able to, you know, tell us the exact details of this. But there was that interesting period in the late 60s where the type of black and white that was broadcast changed, didn't it? And it became very sharp.

Yeah. So there was this sort of very brief... Extra lines. Yeah. There was this very brief two or three year period where stuff that was filmed in black and white actually looks really cool and really sharp. It wasn't just like a fuzzy, grainy image such as, you know, one sees of the Queen's coronation. But having a black and white telly in the 70s led to all kinds of misapprehensions. David talks about, you know, he reckons he could kind of perceive the lemons and limes of the Brazil kit.

But I had the opposite thing, that I got things wrong. For example, watching the ITV kids show Rainbow, you had, you know, Zippy, Bungle and George. I didn't know what George was, but I thought just looking at George that it was a cow because I couldn't see the colour that it was. It just looked like a cow shaped thing to me. And it turns out that it's a hippo and it's kind of bright pink.

Not that hippos of pink either for that matter but but you know what i mean so uh there was this thing and i i wonder if people watching this episode or any episode of top of the pops uh we're looking at people's shirts and thinking oh that's a nice shirt but i wonder what color it is you know yeah yeah i mean of course at the time you know there, there'd be pot black on and stuff like that. You know, it was, it was just something you kind of dealt with.

I mean, I had, I, you know, when I watched telly, most of it was in black and white cause it was on a portable telly in my bedroom. So,

but still this episode, um, if I'd have seen it when it came out, I would have seen it in black and white because my dad was watching fucking Emmerdale Farm or something. He wouldn't, you know, as I've said before, he wouldn't let me watch Top of the Pops. So it'd be around Tony Bones' house if I was a lad that night. If I'd been a good lad.

So what was in the news this week? Well, at least 13 people and probably a lot more are massacred at an airport in Buenos Aires during the return of Juan Perón after 18 years of exile in Spain. Nixon and Brezhnev signed the first SALT treaty in Camp David. Two British soldiers are killed by two separate booby-trap bombs in Northern Ireland. 81 male tennis players announce a boycott of Wimbledon a week before the tournament due to a row over the banning of a player. The Race Relations Board proposes a banning of colour bars

in sports club and working men's clubs. The Rocky Horror Show has its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, but the big news this week is that Gilbert O'Sullivan's drummer's wife has just won £140,000 on the football pools. On the cover of the NME this week, Wings. On the cover of the TV Times, Gerald Harper in Hadley. The number one LP in the UK is Pure Gold an EMI compilation LP and straight in at number two this week

Touch Me by Gary Glitter over in America the number one single is My Love by Paul McCartney and Wings and the number one LP is Living in the Material World by George Harrison so me boys what were we doing in the summer of

73? Summer of 73. I was still kind of probably celebrating Sunderland having been Leeds United in the FA Cup. And in fact, I was temporarily a Sunderland fan. I was so pleased about it. I had this real detestation of Leeds

at the time, Leeds United. I think partly because I was born in London and only moved up to Leeds at the time, Leeds United. I think partly because I was born in London and only moved up to Leeds when I was about six weeks old. And I think I always felt in exile from the smoke, you know, the big smoke and all that. We used to go down there a lot more, but then my grandma and granddad, old seven days jankers,

moved up to Leeds to be nearer to us. So I, you know, we never got to go down there. We used to go to Wembley and stuff like that. I really kind of, you know, felt this kind of, you know, we never got to go down there. We used to go to Wembley and stuff like that. I really kind of, you know, felt this kind of, you know, sort of deeply nostalgic English thing for London, the swing 60s, like Uncle Martin, you know, sort of like, you know, Beatles type shoes and stuff like that. And I had a little dance set record player and all that.

And I just felt in exile from all of that. And I took it out of Leeds United for some reason, because they just represented all that was kind of down and dirty about Leeds and Yorkshire and all that. So, yeah, I was absolutely made up when Sunderland beat them. And I watched it in black and white. In fact, it was the last FA Cup final I watched in black and white, as it happens. So I think I was still revelling in that.

I think I kind of supported Leeds United in the way that a small child can support anyone, you know, because they were the only football team I'd heard of and they had that smiley badge. Right. But anyway, yeah, I was five years old and I was living with my grandparents. My mum and dad had just split up and I can remember them shouting insults at each other as my mum led me away from the house.

So we moved in with my mum's parents for a while. My granddad was a printer by trade and he'd been a Morse code man in Egypt during the war and when the war ended, he came to Barry and set up his own print shop and he bought a nice big house in a nice part of town. For anyone who knows, believe it or not,

Barry does have a nice part of town. For anyone who knows Barry, that's the nap I'm talking about um and and my room was the tiny spare room which whenever i think of it now i imagine uh vincent van hoff's um bedroom in arle uh it had this these kind of uh blue green curtains which were patterned in these sort of glassy swirls like the bottom of an old wine bottle and it's funny how these these things just stay stay with you just these tiny little images stay in your mind um i know i remember there was there were some woods around the back of the house which i loved exploring and

there was a boating lake with swans down the bottom of the street and um this would have been the school summer holidays of course so i would have been spending a lot of time at the beach nearby so i was probably having quite a nice life on on a day-to-day basis but with you know divorce trauma in the recent past and a bit of uncertainty about what what the future might hold um pop music barely existed in my life yet um my grandparents were into classical in a light sort of way but um only a month after this episode of Top of the Pops, I would own my first ever single, which, as we've previously established,

was I'm the Leader of the Gang I Am by Gary Glitter. So there was absolutely no chance you'd have seen this episode? None whatsoever. No. Actually, it occurs to me there's another thing that was happening to me at this time. On Saturday nights, as true, I was allowed to stay up late. And so that meant I was the way in the match of the day um so you have to watch parkinson and by god you know i mean it's a bit like you know if you think like waiting in tomorrow's

world you know waiting for that to end so top of the pops comes on it was um like waiting for parkinson to end because it was just every week it has the same bloody turd you think you get some old hollywood grandee like first one week, it'd be Cary Grant. There's a long, windy antidote. Anyway, this lovely lady came up to me and said, oh, my gosh, I'm such a big fan of yours, and I have your autograph. And so I gave her my autograph and said,

oh, thank you, Mr. Stewart, you know, the ordinary gales of laughter. Next week, Jimmy Stewart will come on. And anyway this this this lady came up this wonderful lady said oh i'm such a big fan of yours i've seen all your films can i have your autograph so i gave my autograph and they just said oh thank you mr grant you know gales oh fuck it now come on and it's about half an hour to go um golden age of television. Indeed, yeah. So, what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One has started the day with schools and colleges programmes,

followed by the second test at Lords between England and New Zealand, then Chigley, the news, then more cricket and racing from Royal Ascot, then they pile into Deputy Dog, Jackanora, Daktara, the Wombles, The News, Nationwide and they've just finished Disney Carnival. BBC Two begins the morning with Play School, then shuts down for four and a half hours

before coming back with a repeat of Play School, then it's more cricket, followed by the Open University. then it's more cricket followed by the Open University. ITV has broadcast schools programmes, the Galloping Gourmet where Graham Kerr shows your mum how to prepare and serve packets of chicken and cocky leaky soup. Then it's a drama series, Dr Simon Locke, then David, the proto-Jeffrey, shows Bungle some rabbits and tortoises in rainbow, followed by Appias, the inverse What's My Line quiz show,

Cuckoo in the Nest, Crown Court, General Hospital, About Women, then Racing from Redcar, The Romper Room, Liftoff with A. Shea with Slade, The Partridge Family,

ITN News, Regional News in your area, The Harvest prepare for their camping holiday in and crossroads and they're about to start the Huey Green quiz show The Sky's The Limit fucking hell a lot of shit going on on ITV of course in those days you had the TV

you'd have a little kind of click thing on the side and BBC 1 was number 2 and ITV was number 10 remember that man which seemed to imply in the forthcoming years there'd be several editions there'd be several additions you know there would be a channel 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9

none of which really well obviously BBC 2 materialised but then it was ages before channel 4 yeah it was about 18 years between

BBC 2 and channel 4 wasn't it yeah yeah alright then pop craze youngsters it's time to get down to 73

don't forget 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. It's 6.55 on Thursday, June 21st, 1973, and the BBC is about to run the musical event of the evening, the 1962 Elvis film Girls, Girls, Girls. So where the fuck is Top of the Pops, you may ask? Well, it's been moved to Fridays since April,

until falling ratings forced the BBC to put it back in its rightful slot, a lesson they didn't heed when they moved it back to Fridays in 1996. What the fuck's that all about?

Yeah, terrible. Terrible decision. It's not right, is it? I mean, Thursday night was kind of ideal, really, but it really would have thrown my rhythm, you know,

coming on on a Friday. And of course, there'd be other competing interests, you know, you'd have to kind of ideal really but it's so you know it really would have thrown my rhythm you know um it coming on on a friday and of course the other competing interests you know you'd have to sort of i mean you know there's obviously kind of demand sort of you know see whatever is on you know at a certain time and and maybe you know like just after tomorrow's world the field is clear on friday night you've got all kinds of things competing and uh yeah and it would be dark to get a look in apart from anything else i mean the question we always ask at the end of this uh podcast what what are we talking about in school the next day you're not talking about anything at school next day there is no school so i mean seriously it would it would genuinely affect the power of the program because

you wouldn't have you know what the americans call water cooler moments or you know yeah we would call kettle moments um or in the sense of the playground, the getting away from bomber dog moments. Those brief moments of respite when you're not being pursued by a lusty Great Dane. Yeah. Sorry, you shouldn't mention the bomber dog. I'm sorry, man.

I'll stay away from it from now on. Go on. Thursday night is absolutely perfect, isn't it? You know, Friday night is for Dossin Aram's school when there's no school to go to or the shopping precincts or, you know, the youth club or actually going out into town.

The thing about Top of the Pops on Thursday is you do feel you're getting a bit of a jump on the weekend. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. This is it. It's a hint. You know, there's not long now. Yeah, you're already thinking about the two hours of swap shop stroke tis was that's uh awaiting you

around the corner exactly born in seaforth merseyside in 1944 morris cole was an apprentice baker in liverpool who spent his wages on two grundig reel-to-reel tape recorders and sent a demo to Tape Recording Magazine in 1963. The editors were so impressed that they wrote, When you've finished signing up guitar-bashing, hollering teenagers with about as much talent as a mentally retarded orangutan, take time out to pay a visit to young Morris Cole. Take him back to the recording studio, provide him with a tape recorder, a record transcription deck, a pile of records of his own choice and an editing block. Then leave him to it. Don't try to direct, produce or stage manage

him. Just leave him alone to get on with it. You'll have quite a pleasant surprise. Are you taking this down BBC? After the tape was passed on to the BBC he was invited down to Bush House to be interviewed on air and have his demo played. He was then given an audition and offered a presenting job on the light program but he had already joined the pirate station Radio London and changed his name to Kenny Everett. He immediately formed a partnership with Dave Cash who played his straight man but he was sacked in 1965 for taking the piss out of the station's main sponsor, Garner Ted Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God. So he moved on to Radio Luxembourg for a year. In early 1967, he was finally picked up by the BBC, becoming one of the original DJs on the brand new Radio 1,

where he stayed until he was sacked in 1970 for a Melody Maker interview where he slagged off the Musicians' Union and his inference on air that the Minister of Transport's wife had passed her driving test after slipping her instructor a fiver. However, he remained a BBC employee, recording shows for local radio from his home studio until he was welcomed back to Radio 1 in this year, 1973, and given an hour every Sunday at 1pm

between Dave Lee Travis and Savile's Travels. What a sandwich that is. Not only that, but he's also been anointed with a presenting job on Top of the Pops, and this is one of the six episodes that he got to present. But what we don't know is that he's already accepted a job at the soon-to-be-launched Capital Radio and is on his way out. You know, I don't think I was even aware of him until the 80s, by which point, you know, when he's on TV,

and I think I appreciated him then as a kind of anarchic presence on a Saturday night, until he endorsed the Tories, of course. Yeah, let's address this straight away. He was apparently invited to appear at the Young Conservative rally in the run-up to the 83 general election. And he said he did it because he'd been egged on by Michael Winner and they asked him first. Do you want to know who else was at that rally?

Well, it was presented by Bob Monkhouse and Jimmy Tarbuck. And it featured Freddie Truman, Sharon Davis, Lindsay DePaul and Mick McManus. Oh, Christ. Fucking Mick McManus. I mean, barrel scrapings, a lot of them. But the thing, I mean, you expect that lot to be Tories. But Kenny Everett, somehow, you know,

there's this idea he's one of us or he was like our guy. So to see him there with these big foam hands going let's bomb russia let's kick michael foot stick away it was it was a real disappointment and for that he was he was dead to me for that moment i was just like oh fuck you you know but you know up until that point i you know i i used to watch his show on tv um i had no idea he was a dj because i didn't live in London, didn't hear Capitol, all of that. So, yeah, I mean, it's only in retrospect, really, that I've learned anything about his radio career. And it seems that he was actually quite an innovator from what I can gather.

Maybe he was. I mean, quite often, you know, the term genius is sort of bandied about with him, you know, the way it is with Chris Evans, but without any particular kind of backup, you know, that is the is with, like, Chris Evans, but without any particular kind of backup, you know, that is the vague things that he innovated. Now, possibly he did innovate certain things. Perhaps before him, you know, that kind of zany sort of coloured room spectacles type humour, you know, was something completely novel and unknown, you know, to the British Isles or to any other part of the sort of globe.

But, I mean, it's depressing. First of all, there's an element, and you find it, apart from, I mean, he doesn't, he's a bit like Jimmy Savile. You get the impression that he's somebody who's kind of riding the kind of, you know, crest of like the 60s and 70s in pop without really knowing anything at all about music or having any kind of sensibility. And I think, you know, the fact that he did do that sort of Tory party conference just shows how utterly oblivious he was to the sort of the way that things were drifting at that time and what kind of heinous thing that was to have done, you know, even if he wasn't actually particularly a Tory,

just somebody that's kind of oblivious to all of that. But, yeah, so, I mean, he knows who, you know, well, you know, I think he probably knows who the Beatles are, but that's about it, really. Oh, yeah, he was well in with the Beatles, wasn't he, by the late 60s? He did their Christmas tapes. Yeah, he did. He did the interview with them for the White Album.

I mean, no, he really did. The only people that seem to have known anything about music are John Peel and actually Tony Blackburn, who genuinely knew his soul. But another thing, I suppose a lot of the kind of humor you get it throughout the show from Kenny Everett it's going into sort of multiple voices silly voices a bit Robin Williams

like every voice but your own as if you can't bear to kind of almost as if it's some sort of manic depressive thing you can't bear to be yourself and maybe it's also to do with I mean obviously Kenny Everett was gay. I mean, as far as we're concerned, homosexuality was invented in 1975 with the naked civil servant. You know, there's absolutely no understanding whatsoever about camp and things like that.

But, I mean, clearly, you look a lot the way that you kind of coerce him around, you know, his camp at Christmas. And again, you know, I want to sort of be in disguise, you know, taking drag, you know, and spoof, you know, taking other voices, you know, rather than admit

or say what you actually are because you can't. I mean, in his defence, Kenny Everett was one of many radio DJs who wanted to be on telly

and wasn't interested in music but he was the only one that was totally up front about that. I mean, there's that interview of him in the 1917 Man Alive documentary called The Disc Jockeys. And yeah, he's absolutely painfully shy.

He wants to get off the embarrassing subject of him. He doesn't feel that he, Kenny Everett, the person, is important. But he feels the facade that he puts up is. And he goes to great lengths to show you how much effort goes in to creating a tiny bit of radio where everyone else is just piling into the studio and bellowing. But it does look like he puts an incredible amount of work in, in that documentary,

which the documentary describes him as the Enfant Terrible and the spike milligan of radio one which is perhaps over egging it a bit but yeah we do see him in the studio using sound effects carts on some kind of silly skit but then we see him at home don't we where yeah he lives with his dog his parrot and the biggest surprise of all his wife audrey and i was the biggest shock because um who'd previously been with billy fury that's right yeah um but i i thought that and you know apparently his his friends advised him against getting married but he you know he thought it might turn him straight somehow

it was a weird kind of weird weird thing that he almost tried to force himself to normalise like that. But I thought an interesting thing that he says in the BBC Man Alive documentary, he says that he doesn't think pop records are important enough to be included in the culture bracket, and he thinks they're trite. Now, this, in a weird way, tallies with something I read in Tony Blackburn's Poptastic book, because they were good friends. They had nicknames for each other he called Tony Blackburn Bessie and Tony Blackburn called him Edith

but in that book it turns out that Kenny Everett had trained as a Catholic priest but he gave it up when he remembered he didn't believe in God and I thought it was a similar thing in a way. You know, he's a DJ. He doesn't believe in pop.

And, you know, this whole kind of, you know, he just sort of moved from one kind of fraudulent facade to another to another in a way. Yeah, you're right about the pop music thing because, you know, I've listened to a lot of his old shows and he will always wang in a big chunk of classical music and, you know, basically music and you know basically say you know right you've listened we've listened

to the frivolity and all the nonsense now here's some real music this idea of shame and guilt and guilt you know what it is you know because you know I mean it wasn't you know the whole sector wasn't legalised in 1967 and I mean you know people almost define like Kenneth Williams and maybe

Kenny Everidge agree are almost defined by how tortured they are with guilt and self-loathing about just what they are. And both Taurus. And Barry Cryer reckons he was taking the piss out of the Nuremberg rally vibe of this

whole event. Yeah, I mean I've got friends who are massive fans of Kenny Everett and that's pretty much the line that they adhere to yeah on that um and yeah i mean i i can kind of just about see that as a get out um i i don't think he was really a political creature to be honest despite that he said he wasn't a full tourer but he hated arthur scargill yes he thought arthur scargill was hitler That's right, yes. And like all DJs of that era, they're kind of like, they're honour bound

to hate Labour for stopping the pirates. Yeah, there was that stopping the pirates. And also DJs are sort of inherently these sort of freelance characters who believe that they're self-made men and any idea that they're somehow beholden to...

The social contract is anathema to them. David mentioned the whole idea of whether or not Kenny Everett was a genius, and I agree that that is an exaggeration. But when you look at it, he was genuinely talented. I think it's fair to say he was highly talented, particularly at mucking around with reel-to-reel tape, so that the Beatles indeed did ask him to put together those fan club records every Christmas,

which apparently became increasingly bizarre as a result of that. And when you look after him came people like Adrian Just, who did the same thing but with far less far less charm um and also also on on the shyness thing um from tony blackburn's poptastic uh blackburn describes him as wildly extrovert in front of an audience and yet painfully shy alienated and alone off air and then i i wonder if that somehow um explains that kind of uh manic thing of constantly changing voices and all of that. For example, in this episode, we see him. I mean, he looks exactly, I'd say exactly like Abraham Lincoln, doesn't he?

Which is really weird. Yeah. Once you get that into your head, it's basically Abraham Lincoln presenting Top of the Pops. But for someone who's generally thought of, or certainly by a lot of people, as a comedy genius, a lot of his presenting style involves frantic kind of mugging facially and talking in a comedy northern accent. And there's a certain strain of british light entertainment which holds that saying anything in a northern accent immediately makes it funny

um and and he falls back on that quite a lot in this episode which which i think tells you something about his general kind of nervousness and uncertainty about himself it was like you know it's the 70s northertherners and Germans were inherently amusing. Yes. And the enemy. Yeah, yeah. I think the Kenny Edward video show, I remember watching that in the late 70s.

I did think it was bad, actually. It was pretty brutal. I loved it. Yeah. I think that wasn't bad, to be honest, in fairness. I'm sure it's dated a bit now, but it actually wasn't that bad. Well, he's one of the few people

who actually crossed over from BBC to ITV and was better. Probably the only one, actually. And when he crossed back to the BBC, he got reined in again. I think the BBC was, you know, obviously the biggest kind of outlet at the time, as it probably still is today. But, you know, he seems very restricted by it and he and as we'll see in this episode we see him kind of like kick against that a little bit but our itv barry crier perfect

hi and welcome to Top of the Pops! Do it like you did last night. And you do it when you do it. Do it like you did last night. Everett, in white trousers and shirt under a denim jacket, makes a great show of reading from a script as he introduces a top 30 rundown, accompanied by the sound of Can You Do It by Jordi. Formed in Newcastle in 1970 from members of the local nightclub cabaret group the Jasper Heart Band, USA were a rock band who signed up to Regal Xonophone in 1972 and changed their name to Jordi. Their first single Don't Do That got to number 32 in December of 1972, leading

them to be picked up by EMI. This is their first single and the follow-up to All Because of You which got to number 6 in April of this year and it's gone up 11 places from number 31 to number 20. Now before we get into Jorday and anything

else, that introduction by Everett, it does seem that he's giving him a talking to about not fucking about and getting on with it. I actually think, oddly enough, I actually think that was quite ingenious, actually. The fact that he just reads four or five words off a sheet like that. It's deeply, deeply sarcastic. And I thought that was the funniest thing he does in the show. One thing I noticed about this, actually, is that loads of Kenny Everett's links appear to be filmed separately. I noticed about this actually is that loads of Kenny Everett's links appear to be filmed

separately so that for a long time I was wondering is anyone actually in the studio with him band wise and it's for ages until the fourth song there's not one clip where there's evidence of him being in the studio with a band there's not one

kind of panning shot from him to the band it's all fades and it's all voiceovers I wondered why that was did he keep screwing them up or did he get told off for doing doing them wrong i don't know it's very odd i mean because he's done television before he's got he's already had about three series of uh shows under his belt there was nice time for granada in 1968 and then there was the kenny ever explosion for the bbc in 1970 and then he went straight on to doing a show called ev and then he did a show for uh bbc 2 called up sunday so that's actually four series under his belt so he's a lot more experienced as a tv presenter than pretty much

anyone else on the top of the pops presenting roster i guess so yeah the other thing is of course is that you know to my mind he makes the mistake that most djs do when it comes the top of the pops presenting roster. I guess so. Yeah. The other thing is, of course, is that, you know, to my mind, he makes the mistake that most DJs do when it comes to top of the pops. They don't seem to realise that no one's ever knelt down in front of a telly with their fingers crossed as tomorrow's world's finishing going,

Oh, please be Dave Lee, Travis, please be Dave Lee, Travis. You know, you don't care who the presenter is. It's all about the, It's all about the act.

Yeah, absolutely. I was making note of that in this particular thing. So, Jordy, where do we start? I mean, this is all right. And old Andy Capp there, he's got a good rock voice. Brian Johnston, of course, not Brian Johnston, the cricket commentator. And even at this point, yeah, you can hear he's got a good rock voice and obviously he ended up in acdc um but listening to geordie is actually a valuable exercise in proving just why acdc were necessary

i think because um acdc brought a new discipline and a focus and a minimalism and an aggression to to hard rock and and in comparison I just think bands like Geordie sound sloppy and kind of sprawling and um I think he was perfect actually um uh Brian Johnson as a replacement for Bon Scott but if he hadn't joined ACDC I don't think anybody would be remembering Geordie Yeah it was extraordinary I remember at the time and I was a bit of a pot picker for sure and I

sort of saw them as essentially one hit wonders and it was extraordinary later on for Brian Johnson to be sort of disinterred from the early 70s and placed up front in ACDC I mean groups like Geordie and Naz were at the time, I just felt that, you know, obviously everything was, it was a straight, I mean, glam was a little bit strange, really, because you didn't necessarily think that these people were actually

kind of making a great blow for anti-homophobia. I think there was probably a lot of homophobia within glam people themselves. I mean, like Adrian Street, that wrestler. I think, you know, he was a bit sort of wary about, you know, about the gay boys and stuff. But I think that nonetheless, it was all really effeminate. And I think that probably sort of bricky bands like, you know, Geordie and I suppose Nazareth to a degree were considered, you know, a sort of necessary antidote by some people. And, you know, to be a band playing that kind of music from

that area automatically means that oh fucking hell they must be absolutely fucking rock yeah yeah yeah that's why they call themselves somerset isn't it yeah yeah that's right yeah so as the music's playing we get the top 30 rundown good quality of pictures in this era isn't it yeah i'm really interested by the kind of visual aesthetic of this episode um because in the studio in the background there's a a picture you keep seeing of a figure on a motorbike that's like um yeah it's like a cross between tom of finland and um and george dunning who did yellow submarine and um and i think that kind of yellow submarine aesthetic crossed with terry gilliam's monty python animations are yeah what uh they're what informs the look of top of the pops around this time it's kind of pitched halfway between psychedelia and glam so you've

got that you know crazy looking number 27 26 25 and so on and um and and I take it as an attempt by the BBC to kind of create something that's of youth culture rather than paternalistically making it a showcase for youth culture, do you know what I mean? Also it might be a magpie as well one for Sarah, two for George those kind of graphics that they have

We see a lot of audience members dancing we see girls dancing I was just going to say, that's really quite striking in this episode. You know, it seems to be mostly young women. I mean, normally, you know, you look at any Top of the Pops episode from any particular era up to about the early 80s

when there's all that compulsory enthusiasm, when they just look like they're dancing in a very sullen, sort of resentful way as if they're being kind of, you know, told to dance inappropriate awake or something like that. It's what your auntie Lucy would have wanted you know they're kind of doing it under some sort of protest but you know

there's some real goers here and you know they're much more sort of yeah they really are quite into it but like I say there's one bloke in the middle of it all kind of sort of leering sort of incredulously but mostly it's almost like some sort of giant hen party has descended on the place.

Yes. Yeah, and it's a mixture of Bieber models and the office typing pool, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. A dolly mixture, if you will. Indeed. Oh, fuck. Oh, hey.

Well done. Just slapped the back of my neck there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With your foot. Yes. Is there anything else to say about this song? No. It's just your bog standard chart intro song, isn't it?

It just wafts in and wafts out again. It's like, it'll do. Nobody will mind that it didn't get a proper airing, you know. Yeah. So the following week, Can You Do It nipped up two places to number 18 and would eventually get to number 13. The follow-up, Electric Lady, would only get to number 13 the follow-up electric lady would only get to number 32 in september of this year the last time they sprayed their musk upon the charts

the band split up in 1976 and lead singer brian johnson went solo for a while before forming geordie 2 in the late 70s but when when he was offered the recently deceased Bon Scott spot in ACDC, they were dissolved, but not before Johnson sang on an advert for the Hoover High Power Compact Vacuum Cleaner. Have you heard that? No. Oh, he really goes

for it. He really goes for it. Straight away when this finishes, I'm going on YouTube. Yeah, on the highway to Henry. And we all know why ACDC wanted Brian Johnson, don't we?

According to Angus Young, Bon Scott saw Geordie live. He said, fucking hell, this gig was amazing. There's this guy there screaming at the top of his lungs and then the next thing you know he hits the deck and he's on the floor rolling around and screaming uh i thought it was great and then to top it off you couldn't get a better encore they came in and wheeled the guy off so they got him in for an

audition and he passed it and then later on angus young told brian johnson about this and johnson said oh yeah i remember that that was the night I ended up in hospital with appendicitis. Come on, come on, come on, come on, keep moving. Hi, and welcome to It's Hard to Depart.

And we've got fun and frolics and a load of excitement and thrills as we present to you number 15 in this week's Fab 40 or whatever it is. It's Junior Campbell and Sweet Illusion. After doing a bit of comedy dancing, Everett welcomes us to Top of the Pops again and introduces Sweet Illusion by Junior Campbell. Born in Glasgow in 1947, William Campbell Jr. formed Dean Ford and the Gaylords at the age of 14. After being signed to Columbia Records after auditioning for Norrie Paramore in 1964 they became successful across the Scottish gig circuit but all four singles they released failed to make the UK charts. After supporting the Tremolos in 1966 however they were encouraged to

change their management, their label to CBS and then their name to Marmalade. After their first four singles on CBS flopped, they made it all the way to number six with Loving Things in July of 1968. And when John Lennon refused to let the Beatles release Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da as a single, describing it as Paul's granny music shit, Marmalade were offered it by Dick James before the White Album was released, and they recorded it unaware that it was a Lennon-McCartney song, taking it to number one in January of 1969. After four more top ten singles, Junior Campbell left the band in 1971, went solo, and reached number 10 with his second single,

Hallelujah Freedom, in November of 1972. This is the follow-up and it's up this week from number 20 to number 15. Everett's dancing at the beginning, it's just, there's no need for it, is there? No, I mean, you know, it's it, it's just like something, you know, just, oh, that's what you do to pop music, isn't it? You dance around like a baboon. That's what they do, the kids. Yeah. So this song, Junior Campbell.

I didn't know that he was the lead singer of Marmalade. Yeah, I've got a weird connection with this guy, actually, because his previous band, Marmalade, once lived in my old house in Holloway in London. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although presumably they had the whole place, not the silverfish-infested, damp-ridden basement that was my lair.

But yeah, I heard about it from the landlord when I moved in. And apparently around the same time, the Beatles also lived in the street for a few days, sleeping in their tour van, which was parked outside the house of their publisher just down the street. So Junior Campbell, he looks like a tough-tackling, no-nonsense centre-back for St Mirren or Motherwell. The kind that you'd see on a Panini sticker and flinch, imagining how hard life must be up in Scotland if it breeds beasts like that. That you've already got four of when you want Kevin Keegan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The song doesn't do much for me, but there's a nice bit of kind of Rod Stewart gravel to his voice, I think. It's got a blue-eyed Northern soul, isn't it? Very much. It's definitely very much a Northern soul thing, isn't it? I mean, it's strange because I don't know, you know, unseen,

you think Sweet Illusion, Junior Candles, the camera pans around and you see these two sort of, you know, sort of black backing vocalists or whatever and then it pins around

to this lorry driver. Yes. It's a little bit odd. It's a little bit of a kind of, you know, dissonance there but yeah,

it's not a bit of sort of white, sort of neo-northern soul. You know, it's okay. Yeah, as Simon says, graphic. It's got a kind of pleasantly convivial feel to it, the song. I've got this whole theory about convivial music of the 70s I've already talked about before, but including things like Lindisfarne and Wizard and Thin Lizzy, just the idea of people

in the pub on a friday night with their arms around each other's shoulders you know it's got that kind of vibe to it i think i mean not much to say about this clip really but the backing singers i i thought from the end credits that they're the ladybirds who were um or certainly you know some kind of incarnation of the ladybirds who were of course regulars on the benny hill show and and they they'd recorded with john ed twistle and Mark Bolan and loads of others. I noticed there's a bassist in the band who looks exactly like Dave Lee Travis, which is really upsetting. It was really disconcerting because I thought,

that is, that is. I had to watch it about five times before I realised that it might not be dave lee travis simply because he wasn't massive um my my favorite bit though in the clip is where campbell suddenly realizes he's been directing his meaningful gaze at the wrong camera all along and he just turns and corrects himself it's so funny yeah i mean after i got over my that is not dave lee travis because the thing was i was looking to see how he was playing the bass and it was really badly.

And he was looking at the arse of the black backing singer. So that led me to think that was Travis. But then I thought this would have been known about. This would have been just as well known about as John Peel with Rod Stewart. But then the other thing was, one of the backing singers, but then the other thing was one of the backing singers um the white one has got a she's she looks a bit ronald mcdonald like and then i looked at it again and i just went is that grot bags because because the woman who played grot bags was a singer at the time but to me if this was an instrumental it would be absolutely perfect local radio um sports special introduction music oh yeah you know it'd be the kind of thing you'd

hear in the chip shop when you've come out of the game listening for uh listening for the results in your division yeah i think i thought northern soul immediately um when i heard this and actually for a long time I genuinely did think that Northern Soul was soul produced in the north of England you know

there's probably Wigan and Dewsbury and Pontic Fract and places like that and you know I was actually disabused of that but in a way it was probably things like this

that would have sort of implanted that in me it was geezers like this making this kind of music and of course actually there was a lot of Northern Soul I mean what's his name Rod Temperton he came from Grimsby.

You know, you don't get more sort of deep soul than that. So, you know, it's understandable, really. So the following week, Sweet Illusion dropped four places to number 19. After releasing eight more singles, all of which failed to chart, he went on to study composition at the Royal College of Music, became an arranger and producer, and co-wrote the music for Thomas the Tank Engine. And our friends Peters and Lee provide our sit back and save a spot

with a divine song that's left this week to number five, Welcome Home. I'm so alone, my love, without you You're a part of everything I do. The camera pans down from a monitor showing the end of Sweet Illusion and goes to the back of the heads of the next act, Peters and Lee with Welcome Home. We've already discussed Lady Peters and Diane Lee and this song in Chart Music 17, so we'll just say that it's their debut single.

It was released in the wake of their seven-week run as champions on Opportunity Knocks. And it's up this week from number 18 to number 5. Simon, me and David have kicked this one about. It's your turn. Yeah, I mean, they were a low-rent British carpenters, the crappenters. I'm sure I'm i'm not alone the carpet

fitters the carpet fitters um i i'm sure i'm not alone when i say that i thought the bloke's first name was peters and the woman's first name was lee um i i that yes as a child um so she's singing welcome home your home once more into his royal bison ray bands but of course for all he knows she's lying he could be anywhere and and indeed he is he's in white city um what what i think about this um this i think was the heart and blood beating through 70s britain um or at least anyone over the age of 25 um this was real mum and dad's music uh in fact I remember someone's mum had it when I was a kid. I had records by them. And, you know, it's working men's club music.

It's not country and western as such, nor is it continental European. So it's not schlager. It's a very specific British thing. It's schpaleil. It's stout. Schmild. It's schmild, stout, schpaleil it's it's it's stout schmiled it's schmiled stout shpale ale indeed yeah um of course

um due to the walkers crisps advert we we now associate it with with gary lineker um arriving back from barcelona and in a way that sums it up um coming home from continental sophistication and flair to to this you know, we often, like these days, people often say things like, after Brexit, all pop will be like this, or after Brexit, all food will taste like this, as a damning indictment of any kind of crap culture. Well, Britain joined the common market

on the 1st of January, 1973. But if it hadn't, this is what British pop would have continued to sound like forever without the civilising influence of Europe. That's what I'm saying. Do you think so, though? I mean, surely Baccarat would have punctured the wall that we'd put around ourselves.

I'm not sure. I just think, well, no, I mean, foreign holidays. We're still interested in Europe. I mean, it's a genuine point that, you know, it sounds like a flipping thing, but joining the Common Market and all that kind of stuff made it easier for people to travel abroad

and made it easier for people to encounter European music and European disco. Obviously, there was always going to be the influence of Black American music coming to this country, but yeah, I really think this is very Britain, this is very Britain

this is very sort of little England and it's possibly the most British thing I can imagine. I think it's definitely true that yeah Baccarat and Silver Convention came on you know from Europe to drive out you know to like to Peters and Lee and it does feel like you know the kind of thing where

you've just endured a fortnight's holiday in Fylia something like that and it's been 13 degrees throughout August and it does feel like you know the kind of thing where you've just endured a fortnight's holiday in um five years some of that it's been 13 degrees throughout in august and this is the kind of you know back to this is like you slug about home and it's just only marginally more miserable back home in your kind of miserable hobble but um it is it's i mean i think about you know like i mean it is it's extreme extreme M.O.R. It's Taliban M.O.R. It's just like absolutely modern sort of, you know, it's almost like offensively inoffensive. And of course, you know, calling them offensive.

I mean, I did reiterate before the story about Lenny Peters and his dim view he took of black cab drivers, not drivers of black cabs, but cab drivers who were black. And he insisted on a white cab driver. I just thought I'd reiterate that one, which is a bit ironic considering his condition. I always think it's really, I mean, you know,

in, it's a strange juxtaposition, you know, on his Wikipedia entry that he was an uncle of Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts. Yes. And he was blind in one eye due in an akaris when he was five years old. A thrown brick,

a thrown brick blinded his other eye when he was 16. At which point, you must be thinking, hey, you are fucking kidding, aren't you? Yeah, it's horrible.

But just imagine the poor stuff, you know, like, you know, later years, say he's in his 20s or 30s. Then Huey Green came along. Yes, yes, absolutely.

But, you know, maybe just for 10 years time and like, you know, and it's just like little Charlie's along yes but you know they've been doing this for 10 years time and it's just like little Charlie he's about 12 you know he goes round to Uncle Lenny's and you know perhaps with his little mates Mick and Keith and he goes Uncle Lenny tell us how you got blinded in both eyes take off your sunglasses

let's have a look at your eyes the sockets the flicking V signs at him you know as he's telling the story and sniggering and whatever by the way Huey Green this is just a bit of an aside but Well, the flicking V signs at him, you know, as he's telling the story and sniggering and whatever. Oh, those Robin Steens. By the way, Huey Green, this is just a bit of an aside, but if anyone hasn't read Danny Baker's, the third volume of Danny Baker's autobiography,

Oh My Word, the stuff about Huey Green, and all I say is swearing and train set. Oh my, yeah. I'm fucking ripping your balls the thing is about this song though is that I can't hate it anymore because I was watching the Christmas 73 special on Christmas Eve around me mams and I'm dying

to tell her the story about Lenny Peters and the cab driver story and she just turned around to me and said oh this was me and your dad's favourite song we used to sing this in the pub all the time and i was like oh fuck because you know i'd never cried about my dad before you know and he died five years ago and we just ended up with our arms around each other and we're singing along

and i just start roaring and it you know it really was the first time i've cried about my dad's death because at the time i'd started a course of antidepressants and they just kicked in when he died so i went fucking doolally and my head's focused on sorting my mom out sorting his grandkids out and all this kind of stuff and uh i remember at the funeral we're in the car behind the earth on the way to the on the way to the funeral and before i could stop me saying, I just found myself saying, fucking hell, my dad's been in a fridge for three weeks. If it had been a yoghurt, they'd have fucking lobbed him.

And yeah, so it was just bizarre that this song just brought it all out in me. And so, you know, I've got to thank Peters and Lee for that I feel like a right heel now in the circumstances I think you were the bigger man for keeping the racism thing to yourself and biting your tongue I think you did the right thing there I did yeah but there's

always those songs no matter how shit that I mean fucking hell we put the boots into Lady in Red the last episode but I mean that song means something to someone. Yeah. But, you know, fuck them. Should have picked a better song, the cunts.

Yeah. So the following week, Welcome Home nudged up one place to number four and then spent two weeks at number two before it knocked next week's number one off the top spot. Fucking hell. That's stalking, isn't it? That's bummer dog-like levels of stalking.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You take your time. When you're ready, Alpha can take you off the top of the charts. Yeah. It stayed there for one week before being usurped by I'm the Leader of the Gang by Gary Glitter.

And it ended up selling 800,000 copies and was the third best selling single of 1973 Jesus the follow-up by your side only got to number 39 in November of this year but they'd have a number three hit in May of 1974 with don't stay away too long after two more top 20 hits they split up in 1980 and Diane Lee went on to marry Rick Price, the bassist of Wizard, and played the title role in Cinderella with an S, the adaptation of The Pantomime by Jim Cunt-Cunt Davidson. Your home once more Absolutely divine. Well, it says here in my script,

Barry White and I'm gonna love you just a little more baby at number 23, so I guess that must be right. Do you reckon? Feels so good. You're lying here next to me. Oh, whatever. Everett, in front of a swirling tinfoil backdrop, sulkily reads from the script again and then sticks it on the wall

as he introduces a BBC made film of I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More Baby by Barry White. Born Barry Carter in Galveston, Texas in 1944, Barry White was moved to South Central Los Angeles as a child

and became a badden. At the age of 14 his balls dropped causing the largest crater to pit the earth since the Tunguska meteor incident of 1908. Two years later he ended up on lockdown for nicking 30 grand worth of Cadillac tyres. While in prison however he became obsessed with It's Now or Never by Elvis and decided there and then to pursue a musical career. After joining the upfronts on his release, he became an A&R man, songwriter, session musician and arranger throughout the 60s. And he co-wrote I Feel Love Coming On by Felice Taylor and Doing the Banana Split for the Banana Splits. Lee's Taylor and doing the banana split for the banana splits.

In 1972, he demoed some tracks for an unknown male artist, but was advised to record them himself. One of them, this song was released as his debut single, which got to number three in the American charts. And he's up this week from number 30 to number 23. First things first, Kenny's got a right fucking monk on,

hasn't he? Yeah, this whole thing where he does a northern accent for no apparent reason and then makes a weak joke about what it says on his script in front of this psychedelic swirling screen. It seems quite different from most of the other Top of the Pops we've seen, as if he's existing in this kind of

slightly separate pod, a separate world from it all. And what's doubly sad, right? He's about to introduce the of slightly separate pod, a separate world from it all. And what's doubly sad, right? He's about to introduce the world. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Barry fucking White. And there's all this drivel. And yeah, you mentioned the point earlier on about the kind of sheer up their arseners about DJs

who imagine that we're actually just sort of sitting through the songs like The Tomorrow's World or something like that, eagerly awaiting their little humorous links. It's just... Yeah, this song and this film, I mean, fucking hell, where do we start with this? Two things we can just fucking rattle on about for ages.

I don't think I've told my Barry White story before, have I? No, go on. My Barry White story doesn't involve actual Barry White, but it involves his music. Basically, and this this is a story that that people always reminded me of and comes back to haunt me ever since i went public with it but uh basically in in the late 90s um i became quite uh obsessed with barry white and his music i i uh came to hold a view which i still hold that that you know he's he's a genius on on a

par with anybody kate i mention like isaac hayes curtis mayfield in terms of just the way he sculpted soul music just the arrangements of his music and i went through this this phase of just listening to his greatest hits over and over um and it was kind of my safe place that music it was just this calming thing that i would just always listen to it and and i was aware that people think he's cheesy and that you know people think of it as you know um uh Abigail's party kind of seduction music that that kind of thing but um I I just try to put all of that out of my mind and just enjoy it purely as as music and and forget all all the kind of you know medallion man um Lothario uh you know connotations that connotations that go with Barry White's music.

So this is where I was at at the time. Now, I'd just written my book about the Manic Street Preachers, and we had a launch party upstairs from a pub in London. And when that finished, a bunch of us went on to a nightclub. And during the party, somebody had slipped me an ecstasy pill um i i'm not going to name any names but it wouldn't be far from the mark to to say that it was somebody who uh it was it was somebody who'd worked with me at melody maker in the past that's all i'm going to say okay and i i'd never taken ecstasy in my life before but but I graciously said thank you and put it in my pocket and we went off to a

club when we got to the club um there was there was this girl there that that I really fancied and she's sort of a friend of various friends she was part of my kind of social circle um and I thought I I need to say something I need to go make my move and, you know, move in there. And I needed a bit of Dutch courage. And I thought, well, you know, alcohol's not enough. And then I remembered I've got this pill in my pocket. Oh, no. And, yeah, and I didn't know really what the effects of ecstasy were.

I just thought, well, just, you know, give it a go, you know. So I popped the pill. By the way, all of it, I found out later, you know, I popped the pill um by the way all of it I found out later you know probably certainly on your first go probably best having half or a quarter but yeah I just I necked the thing and I marched over said hello and um and and we got talking and it was all going really well we got on well we we sat down in the corner having a good old chat and uh but after about quarter of an hour or so, I started feeling really quite unwell.

And I just had to kind of confide to her. I said, look, I've done a really stupid thing here. And I... Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's it's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th terms and conditions apply I told I said look right I'm really sorry but I took this pill and I've never done before and suddenly I you know and I was feeling I dehydrated uh I you know she went over and got me some water. And then I was thinking,

oh, I mustn't drink too much of it. Don't want to do a Leah Betts. Yes. So, and then she takes me outside for some fresh air, which, you know, and it was, she was great. She snapped into action, did all the right things. And, you know, we went outside and I kind of eventually sort of,

I came down sufficiently that I didn't think I was going to die anymore because uh you know there was that I can vividly remember and it turns out this is a real this is a false memory that there were posters of Jill Dando on on the wall opposite police station um it turns out Jill Dando actually was still alive at that point right it must have been a subsequent visit to that club but um anyway to cut a very long story short we went back to my place um uh you know as you do and uh um the first thing i did when we got through the door and i'm still a bit like you know freaked out from taking the pill it's like the right i know god put some music on and i put the barry white album on oh you know not not not to put too fine a point on it we were still together the next

morning and indeed we stayed together for several months um you know oh good old barrett yeah yeah um you know and um nothing was ever said about the barry white thing for a long time um you know she she was great actually you know right girl wrong time and all of that possibly but um quite a while later she she sort of reminisced with me she's going um do you remember that time you took me back to your place and you put on the barry white music and you know and she was convinced i'd done it in a kind of sexy way oh yeah because it is a statement isn't it when you put it is yeah but and i was mortified i was absolutely all this time you've had the thought in your head that I was doing that thing

oh my god shit yeah I just and I I was so glad that I at least managed to clear it up so that

she hasn't spent the subsequent nearly 20 years laughing at me about the time I took her back and played a Barry White record

oh I can just imagine you've thrown yourself about like Bev at the beginning of our big elves party to it as well, Simon. That's how I dance anyway at the best of times.

Offering her a nibble. Yeah. So, to this day, even though my love for Barry White is undimmed, I still kind of flinch a little bit

when I hear his wonderful music. I mean, I must admit that for a very, very long time I saw Barry White as Shakin' Isaac. And I think it was because of my age and, you know,

the environment I grew up. It was that cheesy music. But then it wasn't until the 90s when Lisa Stansfield did a version of I'm Never Gonna Give You Up. And I was watching it on MTV with my girlfriend at the time. And she said, oh, this is really good. And I said, what, you think this is good? Have you not heard the original?

She says, what, this is a cover version? I said, yeah. You've not heard the Barry White version of this? She went, no. Had it on a Greatest Hits compilation CD. Whacked it on. And of course, the first thing that happens is Barry White going, ooh.

And it's just like oh my god you know what this is actually quite fucking brilliant and you know removed from it's 70s environment and placed into the 90s it's like oh fucking hell this stands up really fucking well and I love him now

I think it's absolutely on a par with Isaac Hayes I completely agree with Simon on that one, definitely. In terms of music that conveys all the nuance and undulations of sex and sexuality, it's just absolutely perfect. I've not heard this track in ages, especially at the intro. It's just absolutely wonderful. Sorry, kids, but you can keep your turbocharged pneumatic techno.

This is sex music But the film that goes with it It's very Jan Svankmajer Isn't it? It's that stop motion Eastern European kind of thing That is exaggerated I think, by the fact that it's in black and white I don't know if it would have the same effect

If it was in colour, it's fucking brilliant Yeah, it's a bit Svankmajer It's a bit Jean Roland, it's a bit René Mag brilliant yeah it's a bit spank meyer it's a bit jean roland it's a bit renny magritte um it's a bit german expressionist it's all that kind of stuff going on there and i i really got the idea that some hairspray ad as well oh well oh yeah well there's that whole thing with a with the uh the woodland nymph looking woman and the jesus looking guy which kind of is a bit jarring but yeah it starts it starts par for the course doesn't it with the standard girl walking around the woods or a garden uh and a bloke walking around with her but then then it goes off on one yeah you've got all that symbolic stuff haven't you bowler

hats chairs cellos it's essentially two clockwork orange golfs fucking about in the kitchen with stop motion yeah yeah yeah yeah with a cat and loads of pots and pans and bottles and everything a couple of art students fucking about with a camera for an afternoon well i i really thought someone here is plumping up their show reel a little bit you know using the bbc budget and clearly they didn't give a fuck which song this was going to go with there's no relation to the song at at all. No, it's like, we're going to make this film and we don't really care what song they put it with. I actually played a little game with myself of thinking,

if I saw this video on mute, who would I think, you know, the song was by? And apart from the very 70s looking people at the beginning, I would have said a Bauhaushaus video or a cure video from 10 years later um i i looked up the guy the guy's called tom taylor that's right yeah and i i looked on imdb uh and there's not really anything that could be the same guy but there are two um tom taylors who were working at around that time um one of them made a documentary called dali in new york um and another made um one called mondo nude which is about behind the scenes at the nude

miss world competition so it could have been one of those two tom taylors i don't know or maybe he just kind of vanished i don't know but clearly he was thinking oh bbc money carte blanche let's do something clever here. Yeah. I mean, notwithstanding the intrinsic merits of the piece, whatever it was. I mean, yeah, and it could have been agadu by Black Lace, you know, so it was a little too bad.

Or jump up and down with your knickers in the air or something. There is that slightly unfortunate thing, possibly of the time, whereby, you know, there's an aversion. It's a bit like when you had those Otis Redding covers that featured white people on the cover and you know this is a bit of an italian you know white people or whatever and and the black musician is there as a kind of discrete supplier of like um dance floor entertainment or whatever um i mean that's you know the aspect is a little bit unfortunate it may be that like obviously barry white is not a known he's not an own icon he's not sort of a known at this point and the prop proper side a quick look at one of his press shots

and think not because of his blackness but because of his kind of sort of walrus like you know whatever and I thought no best go with this but I mean yeah this is this is like the beginning of a big and a beautiful thing in the 70s isn't it? Absolutely

and I think not only his own work but the work he did with Love Unlimited Orchestra and Love Unlimited the girl group just you know just a stunning body of work really

and I think it's a shame that to this day he's still viewed in some quarters as a bit of a joke figure because I think he deserves a lot better

than that. So the following week I'm going to love you just a little bit more, baby. Dropped two places to number 25. Fucking Britain! And it stayed there for two weeks. The follow-up, never, never going to give you up, got to number 14 for three weeks in the spring of 1974,

and it'd go on to have five top ten hits throughout the mid-70s, including a number one with You're the First, My Last, My Everything. After scraping the bottom end of the top 40 in the mid-80s and mid-90s, Barry White passed on in 2003 at the age of 58. Oh, man, gone too soon. I'm three years away from that.

Have I told you my Barry White story? Oh, go on. I'd gone on a weekend to Amsterdam with a few people from work, and because they'd never been before, and I'd been loads of times, you have to do that thing where, okay, I've got to take you to the banana bar, and I've got to take you to the Casa Rosso, which was where they'd do the live sex shows. So I'm sat there watching a couple on a sort of

revolving podium having a shag and this song comes on while they're having it off and immediately all the british people and you know that's a stupid thing to say because everyone in there was british only british people go to this sort of shit everyone behind me going oh oh into a shame and i turned around and go what not no not barry and they just went yeah and i just went oh man barry white's died and right at the end where the where the bloke had shot his bolt he looked up to the sky and pointed up at barry which i thought i thought he'd appreciate that. And now, at number seven this week, we have Snoopy versus the Red Baron.

There's a hot chance. After the turn of the century In the clear blue skies of the journey Came a roaring and a thunder and I never heard Like the screaming sound of a big warbird 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more Frank got better down on the floor kissed her once

and he kissed her twice pulled down her knickers and said, oh nice another hit there from the Scottham Junior School playground. Everett, finally surrounded by the kids and wearing a Bismarck helmet that could have been the same one donned by Steve Priest in the blockbuster performance for the Christmas show,

adopts a comedy German accent as he introduces Snoopy versus the Red Baron by the Hot Shots. Formed in 1967, the Cimarons were the first ever UK reggae band comprising of expatriate Jamaican session musicians who supported a welter of touring reggae singers whenever they were in the UK. By 1973, they were the house band of Trojan Records and recorded this single with producer Clive Crawley on vocals a cover of the royal guardsman single about baron von rich tovin being killed by a cartoon dog on a flying kennel which led to them being sued by charles schultz and all publishing revenues going to him which got to

number eight over here in march of 1968 for reasons unknown possibly due to experienced reggae musicians Not wanting to be seen dead Performing this song on the telly It was given to a band called Wild Country Who changed their name for this song To Hot Shots And it's up this week from number 12 To number 7

Can I just clarify From that very sort of Labyrinthine story there So the musicians we're actually hearing on the record, are they the former Cimarons or are they this other band?

It's the Cimarons, did it? Did the music. And the producer sang it. It's an Alvin Stardust job, isn't it? Right, so the people actually on top of the Pops had nothing to do with the record whatsoever. Apparently so. There's very little to be winkled out on the internet about this band, I'm afraid. It's interesting.

It's unprovable whether my reaction to this clip was based just by what they look like. But I was really surprised to hear that these were sort of accomplished reggae musicians because to me having watched it that and i haven't heard it this is the kind of reggae that is so white that it becomes umpah yes you know yes exactly yes uh and by the way the older because that 10 20 30 40 50 or more yeah i remember the chant, but it's one of those things I never knew where the chant came from until hearing this song just now. It's baffling to me. Sometimes the past is in English and we can read it easily.

Sometimes the past is in cuneiform and there's no Rosetta Stone to help us with it. And I'm looking at this from the distance of uh what are we 45 years and and honestly i i cannot for the life of me figure out why well first of all why anybody wanted to do a song about a cartoon dog defeating the red baron in the first place and then to do a reggae cover of it about 10 years later, or seven years later. And then have all the people miming it.

Yeah, yeah. The whole thing is a head fuck, and it's one of those times, it might as well be 145 years ago, it is that baffling to me. One thing that I did think was kind of notable notable about it that they got the word bloody into um on top of the pops and primetime bbc the bloody red baron of germany yes

and and just the kind of the the jollity of singing of the horrors of war 80 men died in this song yes it's ridiculous isn't it in this song but but then again it must be okay to sing a song about mass death if it was like 40, 50 years ago or something. A modern day version of, I don't know, Peppa Pig versus the IRA pub bombers or something. I mean, this is

based in... If you're familiar with the Peanuts cartoons, this isn't just sort of randomly taking Snoopy out and then pitting him against Red Baron. For ages there was this running joke about him kind of being this kind of World War I flying ace going up against the Red Baron.

So that's obviously why you have that. But I heard this a lot at the time and I would have probably sung along and I would have probably sort of improvised X-related lyrics to it as well, with my school chums and what have you it never occurred to me

at the time or subsequently that there's this kind of Trojan element to it I kind of thought of it as kind of sort of bumptious Bavarian brass

really and it's only now I've been listening to it after many years that I realise yes it's a sort of classic slather

of like Trojan dance or reggae as well you know yeah it is quite surreal it's quite unfathomable why all of these particular kind of forces, why it went through

all of these kind of permutations and then all for it to end up in the kind of vast coffers of Charles Schultz as well yes that's what Trojan were doing at the time they were taking a lot of jamaican records and then adding strings to them and sweetening them up um and so that they obviously must have thought well fucking hell we can do this ourselves can't we yeah and you know

this is the era of johnny reggae and you know all those other Yeah. It's not as weird as you think. I mean, reggae was a definite thing by the early 70s and a definite thing by white people as well. If you were in the know, you knew about reggae. But it's a bit like homosexuality not being invented until 1975. I wasn't aware that reggae was invented until 1976 by Bob Marley. Paul Nicholas. Paul Nicholas, come on, get it right. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Paul Nicholas, obviously, yeah, got in there first. The two things that stand out from this performance are, you know, we get... There's a load of the kids in the background dancing, and it is proper fucking Ange dancing, isn't it? But they're loving it. They're going nuts. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Sort of jumping from side to side kind of thing. Yeah. It's got a proper school disco vibe to it, hasn't it? Well, I mean, they're probably due a dance because probably Barry White can't really kind of, you know, they've had Welcome Home before that. Yeah. And they haven't really had a chance for a kind of, yeah, a good sort of chug until now.

A bit of a jig. And, of course, the other thing about the band, who just look a right load of herberts they always look to me like the bloke in the Cossack advert where a bus has gone by and his hair is all over the shop because he didn't use the product and the one thing I did notice was quite possibly the first sighting on Top of the Pops

and British television of really bad dad flares. Oh, you know, just a really shapeless fucking awful ones that you, you know, you'd see Lee Trevino in them in the British open. And particularly you'd see Arthur Mullard wearing them in the opening credits of yes,

my dear. It's like, Oh, these are the fashion all that. Okay. I'll just sling them on. I mean, flares in the past they tapered in at the top and accentuated the bottom of the leg but these

ones are just they're just fucking awful these these are the ones that gave flares such a bad name i think yeah is this the top of the pops orchestra by the way i thought it was at the beginning but then i realised that they were actually playing in time so it couldn't have been because they oh man

they made some right balls ups with reggae I think I advise the Pop Crazy Youngsters to go on YouTube and check out

their version of Sideshow by Barry Biggs it's fucking awful it's like Terry do you remember Terry and the Idiots on the punk film DOA. They had a go at playing reggae and they just gave up

halfway through. It's just like that. So the following week Snoopy vs the Red Baron nipped up one place to number six, stayed there for another week and eventually got as high as number four. Hot shots immediately sank without

trace but later on that year the Cimarons were featured on the not as high as number four. Hot Shots immediately sank without trace, but later on that year, the Cimarons were featured on the Old Grey Whistle Test as the backing band for the Edinburgh Festival Reggae Extravaganza, which was presented by Judge Dredd. Have you ever seen that? It's amazing. No. All the fucking greats, man, on there.

They come on, they do a song, and they fuck off again. Cool. And the Royal Guardsman, who's to blame for all this, went on to record Snoopy's Christmas in 1967, Snoopy for President in 1968, and reformed in 2006 to record Snooper versus Osama. Oh, my God. Versus a psalmer. What? And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have Pansing About on their pins,

or their plates, Pans People to Paul Simon's Divine Take Me to the Mardi Gras. Come on, take me to the Mardi Gras Where the people sing and play As the kids look on with awe at Everett, he announces the official opening of Dad Time as he introduces Pants People dancing to Take Me to the Mardi Gras by Paul Simon.

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1941, Paul Simon met Art Garfunkel at the age of 11 and formed the duo Tom and Jerry, who had a number 49 hit in America with Hey School Girl in 1957. In 1963, the duo changed their name to Kane and Gar and went a bit folker and were immediately picked up by Columbia Records when they were spotted performing at a Greenwich Village cafe. In 1964 and by now using their proper names they released the LP Wednesday Morning 3am which only sold 3,000 copies leading Simon to piss to Britain, where he made a living as a solo performer and had one of his songs picked up by Val Dunican. While he was out there, one of the tracks on the LP, The Sound of Silence, was picked up on by American radio stations and he returned home to reunite with Garfunkel.

They went on to have seven chart singles in the UK including Bridge Over Troubled Water which got to number one for three weeks in the spring of 1970 but they split up in 1971. Simon immediately relaunched his solo career with his debut single Mother and Child Reunion getting to number five in the UK. This is the follow-up to me and julio down by the schoolyard which got to number 15 in may of 1972 it's up this week from number 36 to number 24 and it's being emoted to by pans people so simon is this bringing back lovely memories of your holiday well yeah i mean this is the weird thing because we've got pansans people there wearing flamenco skirts. Is that because Mardi Gras is like a bit foreign,

but it's the wrong kind of foreign? Or are they meant to be can-can skirts because the words Mardi Gras themselves are French? But anyway, yeah, it's a love letter to New Orleans from Paul Simon. It's a bit of a slight song, isn't it, really? Yeah. Yeah, it's got bit of a slight song, isn't it, really? Yeah. Yeah, it's got lines like, you can mingle in the street,

you can jingle to the beat of Jelly Roll. Now, obviously, that's a tribute to Jelly Roll Morton, the New Orleans jazz pianist, so named because he started out working in a brothel, and Jelly Roll was a crude term for a lady's fanny there's no getting around it so yeah yeah so that's what you're jingling to the beat of there uh really um yeah it's i mean it's it's a fantastic city but of all the all the kind of songs to pay tribute to it it he doesn't really capture the sort of vibrant wild spirit of of uh of nola for

me yeah jambalaya by the carpenters is a bit more raucous than this isn't it it is and i look i yeah you know about my obsession with jambalaya by the carpenters but that's not even now yeah well yeah yeah yeah yeah because yeah i i sort of gave myself a bit of a crash course in new orleans music before going on holiday there um and also i wondered what what kind of um food i i could be uh looking forward to hearing when i got sorry eating when i got there and uh obviously one of the things that came up is is jambalaya and that got that song by the carpenter stuck in my head which I I had uh when when I was a child um it's on on the b side of some you know Carpenters EP and I was at that age where you've only got a few records and even if you don't particularly like them you play them all anyway and I I hated the

kind of sort of cringy jollity of of of of the Carpenters version of Hank Williams' Jambalaya. And yet I played it kind of to make myself laugh before the holiday. And I actually found myself really getting into it and it kind of stuck in my head. And I started feeling my elbows moving up and down in a jaunty way. And I went from kind of taking the piss out of Jambalaya by the Carpenters to actually loving it. And when I got there, we went to see various of these really cool went from kind of taking the piss out of jambalaya by the carpenters to actually loving it and um when i got there we we went to see various of these really cool um sort of uh trad jazz bands

who play on street corners and stuff like that um and uh one of them actually played jambalaya and i was absolutely in heaven and then then we went to uh this um it was the french quarter festival and there was a a zydeco band uh who led by the son of the legendary Rockin' Dopsy, who did an accordion version of Jambalaya, so I heard it twice in the same holiday. And both of those, as cheesy as they may be, captured the spirit of, you know, New Orleans and Louisiana

far better than Paul Simon, I'm afraid to say. And similarly, Pans people they have a go at recreating New Orleans but it's not really come off has it I mean the one thing we've got to put up front right now this is

one of the few times that we see Pans people or a dance troupe in stockings and suspenders which would be you know total satisfaction uh but but it manages to to have all that and still not be sexy yeah they're not allowed to be sexy they've got to they can't bump and grind you know it's weird they can sort of do all kinds of you know they can have sexist costumes they can be a kind of sexist but they can't be they can be sexist but they can't be sexy i think is the um you know distinction and so you look at you know there's a i mean this is what

actually with kenny everett whatever and hot gossip came along i mean you know there was there was no old you know barb there and that it really kind of showed up exposed that aspect of pan's people they just have to make these kind of sort of slightly gymnastic movements but they're all kind of slightly prim and it sort of falls short of sexy yeah i agree that there are some bits in this performance where the camera zooms in on their faces and they do these weird kind of they sort of tap the ends of their noses with their fingers and and do do some weird kind of gestures and it's all a bit like like like play away you know like like when the song and dance routines on play yeah it's it's absolutely asexual. It doesn't help that the song's a load of arse, does it?

I think Paul Simon, he's going through what was quite a long phase in his career where he is desperate to achieve some sort of blackness by osmosis and you've got the Reverend Claude Jeter on here and you've got me and Julio down by the schoolyard. I think he's just become in the 70s and then obviously into the 80s with Graceland and things like that. He seems to become obsessed with ethnicity and the ethnicities that he doesn't himself possess, but in some quite deep wishes that he had.

Kind of makes a bit of an embarrassment of himself, really. You know, obviously, I mean, people are very happy to sort of play along with him. You know, he's a huge star, but it's almost like for years, you know, in those later years, he was looking at Art Garfunkel and saying, why aren't you black and a foot shorter? And you get things like this really, but in a sense you can't possibly achieve that and all he really emphasises in forms like

this is how un-black he is. So the following week, Take Me to the Mardi Gras jumped seven places to number 17 and would eventually get to number seven. The follow-up, Loves Me Like a Rock, would only get to number 39 and he'd have to wait 13 years before he returned to the top ten with You Can Call Me Ow,

which got to number four in October of 1986. Did that song make your life a misery, by the way? The bane of my fucking life when I was 18. Fucking little cunt. Ooh, the tension's mounting here at Studio 6 at Telecentre. Ooh, it gets you right. All over, actually.

As we introduce to you Don, Dave, Jimmy and Nod with their new record, Slay! Slay! It's new release time and Everett works himself up to a suitable pitch for the next song, Squeeze Me, Please Me, by Slade. We've already discussed Slade in every other fucking episode of Chart Music, so we'll just say that this is the follow-up to Come On, Feel The Noise, which got to number one for four weeks in March of this year and was the first single to go straight in at number one since Get Back by the Beatles in 1969. It was recorded during their tour of America and released the day before this very episode came out. The band are in the studio to perform the song but for some bizarre

reason the performance on the recording we've got has been wiped after one second. I think we see just a quick flash of Dave Hill's outfit. And then it immediately cuts into the recording of the audience dancing to this song a couple of weeks later in a show presented by Noel Edmonds. I do not know why. Don't even fucking ask me. Yes. Yes, and I think it's nice that rather than Slay Themselves or Pans People or indeed an arty film, we've got the audience having a party. It's like a very white Anglo-Saxon version of Soul Train, you know, the American show.

And just looking at the way they look and the way they're moving, I thought unusually for Top of the Pops, people aren't pulling in a different direction on the timeline. They aren't dragging their heels from the past, nor are they eager to dive into the future. They're loving being in the 70s. They're loving being in what they think will be an eternal 1973. Except for a very bored-looking pair of women near the end who look like air hostesses at the end of a long shift. Yes. But, yeah, I guess you notice the two women in Super Noel T-shirts. Yes.

This cartoon Noel Edmonds as a superhero T-shirt. Had this actually been in the episode that Kenny Everett presented, it would have pissed him off, I'm sure. It would have pissed Tony Blackburn off a whole lot more. Yeah, definitely. presented would have pissed him off I'm sure, it would have pissed Tony Blackburn off a whole lot more so definitely, and Noel Edmonds himself is wearing the Super Noel t-shirt we see him in the middle of the throng having a dance, and what would his

special power be? answers on an email but just the thing with him having the t-shirt on himself and some of the girls also wearing Noel Edmonds t-shirts, did he put them up to it? Did he go into his local Pronto print

or the 70s equivalent and pay to have t-shirts made with a cartoon of himself as a superhero and give them out? And I hope the bloke said, I thought he was gay. Exactly. I think Noel's superpower

would be the ability to swap things. You know, or I'm being attacked by a load of people and I will swap this pen in my hand for a big fucking sword. Or a Nazi flag. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Or I'm in

a cage. I'm going to swap it for a nice helicopter which I can shoot elephants from. Yeah. Or I'm in a cage. I'm going to swap it for a nice helicopter, which I can shoot elephants from. Yeah. It's got legs, that. Super gnarly. But this song, it's pretty much the lost Slade number one, isn't it?

I think at this stage, it's almost like peak Slade, really. Yeah. I mean, obviously they had Merry Christmas, everybody, and that, but yeah, it's kind of generic, really. Yeah. I mean, obviously they had Merry Christmas, everybody, and that. But, yeah, it's kind of generic, really. I think people were just in the habit of, like, just going out and buying Slade records. But they could have put out Get Down and Get With It, probably,

and it would still have, like, you know, ascended high. It's just sort of generic, really. I mean, they're probably a band that's just at the point of running out of ideas, really, you know, despite having a kind of glorious Christmas hurrah. I mean, it's not long after this you get into the kind of My Friend Stan era, and they kind of glorious Christmas hurrah. I mean, it's not long after this you get into the kind of My Friend Stan era and they kind of get all downbeat again.

Don't really quite do as well and Slade and Flay and everything like that and they never really recover after that. So, yeah, but it is very odd that it, I think, yeah, it's just a bit sort of generic really. It hasn't really caught the future's imagination the way that like Merry Christmas and Come On Feel the Noise

did and even one or two others you know it's just it's just sweet it's yeah it's very much their role with it isn't it yeah yeah definitely yeah this is a this is you know is a song it sounds like us

exactly by it yeah but people and obviously that this clip is from you know a couple of weeks after it's come out, and it's a huge hit by the time they're dancing to it. Yes. Just seeing the joy on people's faces, they absolutely love it. Yeah. And it makes me think that Slade were, more than anyone else,

maybe even more than ABBA, Slade were the band of the 70s, certainly of the British 70s. Yeah. And by this point in the game, they're confident enough to be self referential. There's a line that goes take me back home, you got it all wrong which is name checking a previous number

one. I mean I would have absolutely loved this at the time. And again, you know, it's like this Top of the Pops isn't wall to wall sort of danceable is it? You get these horrible kind of little MR interludes and things. So even within that 30 minutes that you're allowed each week,

you only actually get about 10 or 15 that you can really kind of get off on and get your rocks off on. And this would definitely be part of it. I would have absolutely loved this. I just think from the future point of view, you know, where you look back and, you know, it's probably just been kind of overlooked by the future, really.

But at the time, you time, Simon says it was absolutely sheer essence of 1973 along with the Lightly Lads and Red Rum and Sunderland we see a lot more blokes than before don't we right at the beginning

there's some of them that just look like wandered in from the canteen There's one bloke, he looks like he looks Cro-Magnon, he looks like he looks like the actor, he looks like what's the guy's name who played Jaws in the James Bond films He's got that kind of look about him

Bloody hell, yeah There's another one with a basin haircut and some glasses and he's got a Slade badge on because they were lobbing the badges out. And they're massive 70s badges as well, aren't they? Which I love, yeah. Yeah. And he's put one on his tie and it looks like a lanyard.

And, of course, there's one lad who's not only in a star jumper, but he's in a star tank top, which is absolute peak 1973. Yes, it is. And that was a very Northern Soul thing, of course. That was standard issue, yeah. So the following week, Squeeze Me, Please Me sold 300,000 copies in its first week,

went straight in at number one and stayed there for three weeks before being usurped by Welcome Home by Peters and Lee. A week later Slade played a gig at Earl's Court which was seen as the pinnacle of their career but three days after that Don Powell was involved in a car crash which killed his fiance and left him in a coma. Depending on who you believe slade offered to perform the song on top of the pops as a trio but the bbc refused or slade refused to perform the song without him and as this transmission was immediately wiped by the bbc along with the other ones this song was danced

to by pans people in the audience meaning that there is no surviving footage of the band performing this song on top of the pops and i think that's why it's a forgotten number one simply because it's not appeared in those endless 70s clip shows yeah the follow-up my friend stan got to number two in october of this year held off the top spot by eye level by the simon park orchestra but they already had merry christmas everybody in their pocket which would see them closing out 1973 with their sixth and final number one wasn't that wonderful and now ladies and ladies and gentlemen, exclusive to Top of the Pops, we have a really fantastically effective piece of film. It's off the front of Live and Let Die,

only they've taken the titles off. And here's Paulie to sing behind it. APPLAUSE Everett, still in the crowd and visibly cheered up by now, introduces Live and Let Die by Wings. Formed in 1971 by Paul McCartney after two solo LPs, Wings had had four chart hits, three of which made the top ten in 1972 and early 73. When John Barry announced that he was unavailable to score the next James Bond film, Roger Moore's First, they approached Paul McCartney to write the theme tune. and seeing as they couldn't afford to pay him to score the entire film,

they brought in George Martin, making it the first collaboration between him and a Beagle since that band split up. The song, the follow-up to My Love, which got to number nine in the UK in April of this year, and is the current number one in America, was supposed to be performed by the female singer BJ Arnoux, who was playing the role of a cabaret singer in the film, and Broccoli assumed that the finished tape of the song was merely a demo but McCartney insisted that the song couldn't be used without him and wings on it. It's moved up this week from number 15 to number

14 and as Everett has pointed out it's accompanied by the opening sequence from the film, which has its world premiere next week with the credits removed. Live and Let Die, is this the best James Bond theme tune ever? Yeah, I think it is the most exciting, yeah. Yes. It's danger music, isn't it? It's so exciting. Yeah, it's all going on there. Yes.

I think it might be the most exciting thing that Paul McCartney's been involved in, but, you know, I'm not a huge Beatles fan. It certainly was post-Beatles, and I think it's interesting that George Martin is back in there with him, and he enables him to sort of really kind of maximise his musical visions, you know, and throw in everything but the kitchen sink

and the full brass section, everything like that. I mean, it does sort of meld, you know, Paul McCartney's obviously essential ability as a songwriter and craftsman, you know, with, you know, the kind of facilities that something like a Bond film can put your way, just in terms of the full orchestra, et cetera, et cetera. Because I think prior to that, he had been getting a little bit rustic and small scale and everything like that,

which is fine. But this is almost like getting back to a sort of Sgt Pepper sort of volume and density, really. You know, like really pulling out all the stops. Production values, yeah. And I think it is. It is genuine science. It's by far and away the best thing about Live and Let Die as a film,

which is a pretty awful Bond film. It's just... No! You know, racist at the core. It's terrible. But this, this is excellent. I mean, this is, you know, it this this is excellent i mean this is you know it really is and it's all the people's kind of peter out about this time really about 73 they

all all them simultaneously you know that they're commercially and creatively or whatever by about 74 75 they're all i mean they're still obviously sort of it's all kind of trying to do stuff but 73 is the last year in which you can claim that any of them are doing anything really good, I reckon. I mean, George Harrison's in the charts at the minute with Give Me Love, or whatever it's called, Peace on Earth. And John Lennon, obviously, is still just about around. But they all kind of petered out at about the same time. Yeah, and it's almost like Paul McCartney's anti-60s song.

It's like his version of God, isn't it? Where Leonard says, I don't believe in this, I don't believe in the Beatles and all this kind of stuff. Paul McCartney's saying, yeah, you used to be a hippie, but now you're going around killing folk. And shagging Jane Seymour. Oh, do you know

who was supposed to be in that role? The original person? Who? Diana Ross. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. I can't imagine Diana Ross and Roger Moore.

Can you? I think from now on that's all I can imagine. I've got to disagree strongly with David about the film, Living Let Die. It was the first film I ever saw in cinema on a rainy family holiday in Minehead. My

grandad took me. The second film I saw in the cinema was Mary Poppins on the same holiday, but we both enjoyed Live and Let Die a whole lot more. I mean, Roger Moore jumping a speedboat from one I mean, Roger Moore jumping a speedboat from one lake into another

like it's a motorbike, and running across the heads of alligators like they're stepping stones. What's not to like about that? All of that's good, but there are exciting sequences in Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffiths as well. It's more a matter

of principle, really. It is a really awfully racist film. But that's not to deny that there are some pretty exciting sequences. At the time, when I wasn't perhaps as woke, I would have certainly enjoyed that. You did not say woke.

You did say woke. With heavy inverted colours, don't worry. I even enjoyed C.W. Pepe, the southern white trash sergeant, who they revived again in Man with the Golden Gun. I mean, I did re-watch this film recently because I was going on holiday to New Orleans. Oh, man, your anticipations were rampant in the skies. And I can't really argue with David's assessment

of the racial politics of the film in hindsight. But I do, nevertheless, love the New Orleans sequences in that. And the jazz band marching down the street in the funeral scene where someone gets stabbed, that's a genuine Olympia brass band and they're fantastic they kind of spawned lots of the other bands that still exist to this day but I was

very careful when I saw these bands in real life not to ask anyone whose funeral it was for because you know it's yours so the thing nowadays of course with with uh um a bond theme would the standard practice on top of the pops or for the video would be to have clips of the film edited together with with footage of the band perhaps to make it look as if the band are in the film you know a la Duran Duran view to a kill um

so instead here as you say we we get the opening title sequence without the words on so um this is one as you would say for the dads this is a bit of daddisfaction I think isn't it so we have a black lady in african style tribal costume standing in front of a in flames and stuff and her head explodes and then becomes a skull and and then there's a silhouette of another lady doing a sexy dance in front of some fireworks which and that that's obviously a recurring bond trope but because that because the context of top of the pops is so profoundly british that when i was watching it in this context i was just thinking of Tales of the Unexpected Yes, exactly

By the way, if you watch these opening credits with the words on it says, Assistant Director Derek Cracknell Now Derek Cracknell is the father of Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne who was often hanging around on set as a small child when Bond films were being made probably including this one, so a bit of pop trivia for you there Good lord Cracknell of Saint Etienne who was often hanging around on set as a small child when Bourne films

were being made probably including this one so a bit of pop trivia for you there. Good lord good lord and the one thing that caught my attention was yeah it would have been massively impressive in 1973 to watch Top of the Pops and see these kind of visuals that you'd expect you know

10 years later you know unfortunately it was in black and white for most people. And I actually had to check the actual opening credits of the film because there's a bit where there's some nudie woman laying on a front and these praying hands come in and cover her arse. And I just thought, oh, yeah, I bet the BBC did that. But no, no, no, no, no, no. That's in the film as well.

Even in 1973, in a cinema, you couldn't see a bare arse unless you went to an ex. That's true. Different times. Are we going to talk about the famous grammatical howler? Well, I don't think it is actually. No, it's in this ever-changing world in

which we are living ing not in which we live in in which we are living i think that in fairness which is fine i think i probably was one of the people that put it about that he'd said in which we live in and it's in which we're living yeah although someone did ask mccartney about this in an interview and he said he doesn't even know anymore. No. But yeah, I think benefit the doubt there. So the following week, Live and Let Die jumped five places to number nine, its highest position. The follow-up, Hell and Wheels, got to number 12 in December of this year, which we covered in Chart Music number three.

Live and Let Die remains the most watched film in British television history when 23.5 million people watched its first broadcast on ITV in January of 1980. Fantastic. Live and Let Die by Pauline. And that was the actual front of the film, without the words on. And now this wonderful gentleman called Dave is going to sing his latest record,

Born to Be With You, Fab Sound. Off you go, Dave. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah Cause I was born to be with you Everett, right up on the stage, invades the personal space of the next act. Dave Edmonds, who's about to perform Born To Be With You. Born in Cardiff in 1944, Dave Edmonds formed his first band with his brother at the age of 10

before the two of them joined the Heartbeats in 1957. In 1961, he formed The Raiders, a rockabilly trio which never broke out of the South Wales area before moving to London and joining the Image but he soon left the group and formed the band Human Beans which mutated into Love Sculpture. Their first single flopped but the second, a cover of the classical tune Sabre Dance, got to number five in December of 1968. After Love Sculpture split up in 1970, Edmonds went solo, and when he was producing the first LP

by Shakin' Stevens and the Sunset, he liked their cover of the 1955 Smiley Lewis song I Hear You Knockin' so much that he nicked it for himself and landed the 1970 Christmas number 1 with it. This single, a cover of the cordette song which got to number six in september of 1956 is the follow-up to his cover of baby i love you which got to number eight in march of this year and it's up this week from number 28 to number 29

not too sure about that introduction by Everett there. Yeah, I don't think he's entirely comfortable with it. He says, why am I being subjected to this and not the other geezers? You know, why isn't Boku no Arma though getting this? Because he looks too hard, you know, he might nut you or something. We're all au fait at the time with the concept of miming. And that's all right.

But when someone's actually talking in real time and then the song comes in and poor old dave's got to start miming it's kind of it loses the mystery somewhat doesn't it he's got and also it doesn't it doesn't help that the the song's pitched too high for him yeah i noticed this he's singing way above his range isn't he and then yeah and i i wondered did he get fucked over by the musicians union here you know was it the bbc orchestra pitching it too high for him so i i played the top the pops performance and i played the the recorded version back and forth back and

forth and as far as i can tell it's exactly the same so it is isn't it yeah it's exactly the same that is the record and there is that thing when people sing above their range and they're sort of straining to reach the note that can be a really nice effect it can have this kind of yearning quality and and the listener you know can can really really enjoy that and i guess people must have done because he got to number five in the charts or something yeah um so it worked for him but yeah i just yeah, just watching his lips move, it just looked, oh my God, man. You know, just half an octave lower, you'd be fine.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because I mean, in the song, I mean, the actual single version, he's got this kind of wall of sound thing going on. Yeah, it's a spectre. And it kind of works. But up against this version here, he sounds like a bloke who's had a go on the karaoke

and he realises from the first line that it's out of his range and he's got to fucking gut it out. It's like that Partridge thing, why do birds? It's like that when you realise he's got it wrong. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He's got very wiggy hair, hasn't he, Dave Edmonds?

I was going to say, Dave Edmonds at this point, he looks very much like Nigel Tufnell, actually, in this whole clip, definitely. Yeah. Extremely so. But it's odd with Dave Edmonds, because he starts in 1970, I hear you knocking. That's his kind of big introduction.

And then there's all this weird stuff that I was barely aware of. And then, of course, by the late 70s, he's ensconced with all the geezers in Rockpile. Yeah. People like that, touring Finland and generating anecdotes for Alan Jones. You know,

it was the pub rock thing, but it's strange that you had this kind of sort of IDU knocking, which seemed like a kind of classic 1971 hit. And then this kind of thing, which I completely, completely passed you by. I have no memory of this at all. And,

you know, probably a couple of other things, but, you know, just waiting to sort of, for pub rock to happen and to join Rockpile. The thing is, he's a classicist, isn't he? He's at his best when he's covering something from, you know, 20 or 30 years earlier.

Or, indeed, in the case of Girls Talk, you know, somebody else has written Elvis Costello in that case. But, you know, I think he's a sort of likeable figure in rock. Oh, definitely, yeah. He's not an innovator or anything. but you know I think he's a sort of likeable figure in rock he's not an innovator or anything but I do like girls talk and I do like I hear you knocking and he did a version of Singing the Blues which I liked as well

maybe I'm a little bit biased because he's a little bit of a local hero where I come from I think he still lives in Dinners Powis which is the posh village between Barry and Card and cardiff um my dad knew him in fact and uh we we've we've still got um a welsh music award that my dad collected on his behalf once so if if you're listening dave and you ever want it back uh contact me via chart

music did he bother to give it to him or was it just left um no my dad hung on to it and then never never gave it oh i see yeah yeah yeah so basically it's still in the family if dave ever wants it i'm sure he's got other things to be worrying about so the following week born to be with you jumped eight places to number 11 and would go as high as number five but it would be eight more singles and four years before he returned to the charts with I Knew The Bride, which got to number 26 in July of 1977. And now friends, it's serious time From 10cc, Robert Bullitt

Take it away fellas I went to a party at the local county jail All the cops were dancing and the men began to wail We've already discussed 10cc and this song in chart music number 17, so we'll remind you that this is a follow-up to Johnny Don't Do It, their second single which failed to make the charts in December of 1972. It's had restricted airplay on Radio 1 due to the song title and the current situation in Northern Ireland,

i.e. our army were using a shitload of them at the time. But after a five-week slog up the charts, it still managed to jump one place to number one, knocking Can The Can by Suzy Cuatro off the top spot. Me and David have had a go at this in a previous chart music. So, Simon, you're very fond of 10cc, aren't you? Yeah. I mean, I love few things more than clever pop but i hate few things more than pop that's pleased with itself for being clever and it's such a fine line um we we talked about lives of minestrone on another chart music and i hated that for being the wrong side of that line. But I love Rubber Bullets, which gets it exactly right.

Because it works as a storming pop song. It works on that level. But yeah, it's got some incredible lines in it. You know, that bit about down at Precinct 49 having a tear gas of a time. And Kevin Godley in a deep voice going i love to hear those convicts squeal it's a shame those slugs ain't real um yeah yeah and it's weird that this this idea got around that it's about northern ireland um i mean eric stewart says it wasn't and it's

about prison riots in america mind you yeah well it's just an updated jay last rock isn't it eric stewart didn't write it the other three did but yeah if you listen to the lyrics it's blatantly all about prison riot but i guess just the whole subject of rubber bullets was very very touchy at the time for you know the british establishment but um yeah for me it's it's 10 cc at their very best uh you best, being intelligent, slightly subversive, but also an absolutely brilliant pop group. Yeah, I'd agree with all that, definitely. And I mean, it's interesting that it's definitely about radical rights. Definitely, Jailhouse Rock is exactly right

because 1973 is just the point at which pop music is beginning to kind of become conscious of its legacy and its history and also nostalgic as well for its early days. And there's loads of sort of rock and roll revivalism, you know, it's just beginning to start up this year. And this is kind of like, it's got elements of that really, you know, it's got a slightly kind of doo-woppy element.

It's definitely, there's definitely a real sort of postmodern throwback feel to this particular track as well. But of course, it's weird, it's also got that slightly segmented feel, you know, that reminds, pre-reminds as it were of Bohemian Rhapsody it's also got that slightly segmented feel, you know, that pre-reminds, as it were, of Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever, you know, in the middle, you know, going through

phases and what have you. But, yeah, it was ace, and of course, you know, you weren't at school in the 70s if you didn't change the words to Rubber Johnny. Of course, of course. Do you think anybody would even answer, if you weren't in answer for Rubber Johnny now, do you think anybody would understand that? No, that's the thing, isn't it?

Yeah, it's probably gone the same way as She. It's gone the way of having it off. It's having it off and getting your leg over as Rubber Johnny. I don't think anyone knows what you mean anymore. Yeah, I mean, Simon, what you said earlier, I totally agree with. I mean, it is a clever song, but in this case, the cleverness reveals itself later on.

You're hit by the fact that it's a fucking tune first. Yes. And then you listen to it again and go, oh, see what they did there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, yeah, a completely worthy number one. Wonderful stuff, yeah. And some serious competition knocking around at the time as well.

It was pretty decent for a relatively new band to grab themselves a number one in this era. Yeah. So the following week, rubber bullets dropped down one place in the chart, knocked off by squeeze me, please me. The follow up,

the Dean and I got to number 10 in September of this year, and they go on to have two more number ones throughout the seventies. And now, friends, we're going to leave you with the 22 sound, Honokuchi Luchi Boogie Woogie, by Mott the Hoople at 22. And back off to the mountains. Draw. Draw. I was in a bad sweet shame But I had my eyes on you We've already discussed Mott the Hoople in chart music number three, so we'll just say that this is the follow-up to All the Young Dudes, which got to number three in September of 1972.

It features Andy Mackay of Roxy Music on saxophone, and it's up this week from number 38 to number 22. I mean, I'm a lot fonder of Mott the Hoople than their actual songs probably deserve. And I think a lot of people are like that about them because they're sort of a feel-good story of a hard-working but underachieving band from Hereford who eventually made it big with a bit of help

from their mate Bowie adopting them as his pet band. I mean, obviously All The Young Dudes is phenomenal, just one of the greatest records ever made. I've got a real soft spot for Roll Away The Stone as well. Ladies! Honoluchi Boogie, not so much. I mean what is a

Honoluchi anyway? I don't know, I didn't bother to look. I googled it and all that comes up is Mot The Hoople so it's just some stupid word they've made up right and i i think could be funny could be another one of them yeah just like jelly roll yeah um one of the reasons everyone feels very fondly towards motley hoople i think is ian hunter's book um diary of a rock and roll star and um when when i'm uh teaching music journalism at bim in brighton uh we do a week about rock books, and I go into this.

And so, you know, I tell them all about it. And the book, for those who haven't read it, it covers Mott the Hoople's five-week American tour. It's November, December 72. And what it does, it strips away the glamorous facade of rock and roll to show the reality behind it. So even though it more more a glam band in a glam era it's it's an anti-glamour book um so for example it starts off with ian

hunter cleaning cat droppings from the the floor of his flat um and and also the the way it really works it it contrasts the tastes and cultural expectations of a working class football shirt wearing british rock band with the high life of los angeles into which they've suddenly been being pitched um so that even the idea of fresh orange juice blew their minds at the time coming from 1973 britain um if you don't mind i I've got a couple of extracts here I was going to read out. So there's a bit here. He goes, The next time you see your rising idol roaring down the road in his Jensen,

think twice. He's probably got it on HP, he's probably up to his ears in debt, and he probably ain't got the price of a pint in his pocket. So that's early on. That gives you an idea of the angle he's going for on this. I love that. And then he goes,

Also, I'm sunbathing on the roof of the hotel my lily white body is naked but for woolworth's trunks it's just so British and then he goes um my bowels are in a ridiculous state and Trudy his wife braves the smell like a trooper oh good old Trudy yeah a great book yeah everyone it's considered by a lot of people to be certainly the greatest rock autobiography of all time. Everyone should read

that book. Yeah, they should publish it again. Is it not a print? Is it? Yeah. Terrible.

But I mean, you do say football shirt wearing as if that's really common, but in 1973, football shirts weren't a thing for the general population. The only way you'd but in 1973 football shirts weren't a thing for the general population. The only way

you'd have got a football shirt is if a footballer had given it to you or they'd thrown it into the crowd. Yeah, it was scarves, rosettes basically maybe some sort of hat joy and that was a weird shift when you had replica kids and people turning up in the actual shirts

as if they're sort of adults openly kind of vicarious about the idea that they feel they're kind of almost players by osmosis or whatever. So that hadn't occurred to me that maybe Ian Hunter walking around in a Hereford United shirt was actually enlarging it.

He was showing off a bit. Yet I can afford an actual football kit. Which would have meant nothing to the Americans there no amazing because what's the one that Derek Smalls was

it's Shrewsbury isn't it is it yeah that's surely a direct reference yeah yeah David what are you saying about this

do you know what I think I've actually got nothing whatsoever to say I'm sorry I stared blankly on the fact that, yeah, it's obviously kind of, you know,

all the young, will this do? Oh, very good. The thing with Mott is, a lot of it was rock about rock, and rock about the life of being on the road. And if you look at the lyrics to this, it sort of mentions Chuck Berry and all this kind of stuff. And that was kind of their thing that they were they were a touring band who who were already nostalgic by the time they made it big they're singing about do you remember those saturday gigs

do you do you and all that kind of stuff those saturday gigs that we're going to do in a few years time while we're on our ass yeah yeah yeah and and um it it's it's kind of it's that thing i was saying earlier on about convivial music. They do have that human warmth to them that I think appeal to people more sometimes than the quality of the songs themselves. The following week, Honoluchi Booger jumped eight places to number 14 and would eventually get to number 12.

The follow-up, All The Way From Memphis, would get to number 10 in September of this year and they'd round out 1973 with Roll Away the Stone which got to number 8 in December. And that Pop Craze Youngsters is the end of that episode

of Top of the Pops. So, on telly afterwards, BBC 1 pitches straight into a repeat of Star Trek, where Captain Kirk proves to have a powerful antidote to the peculiar potency of a woman's tears. Probably by saying, on my planet, we call this kissing. And then it's Wells vs Porthcawl in a British heat of It's A Knockout. Then the 9 o'clock news, the drama series Spy Trap.

Robin Day interviews General Sir Michael Carver about the army's current mither in Northern Ireland in Talking Today. And then rounds off the night with the Esther Williams film The Bathing Beauty. BBC Two is broadcasting Percy Thrower from Claack's Farm in Worcestershire for Gardener's World, followed by Money at Work, a Russian interpretation of Hamlet and finishes with News Extra. ITV has just started an episode of a Y5O, then the James Beck comedy vehicle Romany Jones, the forerunner to the classic Yes My Dear, then Hadley, the drama series about Yorkshire's most eligible bachelor, followed by News at Ten, Probe, the interview show with a Tory MP,

and then the 1955 thriller The Night Holds Terror, and ends with At the End of the Day. So, what are we talking about in the playground the day after the day after tomorrow? Well, we should have been talking about Barry White, which we've been saying. Fucking hell. That was, you know, the nuances and undulations

represented sexuality in a way that even future modes like techno can't help to achieve. That's what we should have been saying when it was 10 and 11, but we're all singing on to rubber bullets and changing rubber bullets to rubber johnnies, basically. That's what we were talking about. But yeah, we would have been talking about rubber bullets. If I'd been allowed to watch Top of the Pops, I think

the next day I'd be talking about, did you see that funny man who looks like Abraham Lincoln putting on a German helmet and talking in a funny German accent? I mean, how do you think Kenny Everett came over on top of the pubs? I mean, he's massively different from

your standard fare of this time. I feel like his hands were tied. I feel like he's got his shtick and he's happiest when he's in control of his element, when he's in the studio, when he's mucking around with reel-to-reel tapes and carts. But when he's doing something that someone

else's production there are rules, there are ways of going about doing Top of the Pops. I feel he's a little bit restricted and his frustration with that shows and he's not giving the best account of himself. And what are we buying tomorrow?

Well I did buy Rubber Bullets, the the single i think the b-size water which is sort of the laddie um so yeah it's one of the first things they ever actually um purchase actually um with some birthday money i think something like that and slade obviously oh yeah yeah absolutely yeah although i didn't actually buy that at the time for some reason it was um i was eventually presented, I think, with a kind of Slade's Greatest Hits type thing and got it that way.

Sladeist. That came out later on this year, didn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Waited for that. I like to think I would have bought the 10cc single and probably wouldn't have figured out what it meant until 10 years later. And that's fine.

That's how pop works sometimes. And what does this episode tell us about the summer of 73? Yeah, I mean, you're talking about there's not a lot of glam. I mean, it's almost like you are getting slightly past glam into the very, very earliest hints of a sort of near rock and roll or whatever. I mean, it was strange, really, because it's probably everyone's feeling that the genre is kind of wearing on a bit. It always feels any time,

whether it's 1973, 1986 or whatever, or 1999 or whatever, it always feels like it's five minutes to midnight in pop and rock culture. It probably is right now. But, you know, it kind of, you always have these kind of false sense in the past that things are drawn to a close and the twilight

and you're getting into reminiscent nostalgia and post-modern reflection and all that kind of stuff. Maybe the glam thing is just beginning to dim at this particular point. Which is ironic when you've got Merry Christmas Everybody and it says, look to the future now, it's only just begun. But it's almost like that was

their last hurrah as well. I actually think that for all the kind of political strife and just general grimness of Britain in 1973, people were, on some levels, loving being in 1973. And there is quite a lot to love. Yeah. I see the 70s now in Britain as the working-class 60s.

I really do. No, I really do. working class 60s. I really do. No, I really do. All the freedoms that, you know, were supposed to be happening in the 60s, it took a decade or so for them to reach our lot.

Yeah, absolutely right. You know, British culture in the 70s is absolutely, if you take the working class element out of the culture of the 70s, you ain't got much left. And that, Pop Crazy Youngsters, element out of the culture of the 70s, you ain't got much left and that pop crazy youngsters is the end of another episode of Chart Music all I need to do is the usual promotional flange

www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast and you can reach us on twitter at chart music T O T P thank you very much david stubbs and tar to you sir tar ever so simon price thank you my name's al needham and if you want my opinion tracy unwin was fucking asking for it

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