Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #26: August 9th 1984 - John Peel's Yummy Finger

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: that scrap between Reagan and Chernenko - whose coat would you be holding? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees us refraining from fretting about Armageddon for a bit and getting blasted full in the face by non-stop Rah-Rah-Rah American Olympic nonsense instead, revelling in the thrill of being able to watch BBC1 at four in the morning and indulging in golf ball-assisted masturbation while pretending to be Daley Thompson. But if the IOC think that Top Of The Pops is going to be moved from its rightful slot on a Thursday evening, Baron de Coubertain can fuck right off. And there's just been an episode of Monkey on BBC2. Skill. Musicwise, it's full-on Eighties, but not in a necessarily bad way. John Peel and Dickie Skinner pull on some horrific shirts, Tracey Ullman does the Mashed Potato with the ghosts of the Atomic Age, overshadowed by a massive deckchair. Windjammer dance right out of the sportswear section of the Littlewoods catalogue. Hazel Dean pretends to forget about some bloke. Jeffrey Osbourne sweats his tits off in some awful 80 knitwear. Blancmange deliver the aural equivalent of a Vesta packet curry, without the grittiness. And because it's 1984, you know what's No.1. Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni construct a shelter out of back issues of Smash Hits while Al Needham prepares a bin for toilet waste and observe the mushroom cloud of 1984, picking through the fallout and veering off to discuss erotic art in chip shops, the decline of the V-sign, going to the same place every Saturday for six weeks without realising it was a gay bar, Great Crisps of the Eighties, and East Germany's most popular wank mag. We stare, we contrast and compare, and we swear, swear, swear. Download  |  Video Playlist |  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. Hey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that pulls the bra of intelligence out of the dog's arse that is a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host and I'm not even going to give you my name because it doesn't fucking matter before I am worthless in comparison to Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parks. That's the spirit. How are we, Ducks? I'm terrified. You remember I mentioned that big weekend

in Coventry, BBC Music. It's this fucking weekend. So in two days, literally down the road, in audible distance from me, Liam Gallagher is playing which was bad enough but I've had a look at the bill Stereophonics

Nigel fucking Kennedy Oh no! And the crowning turd in this kind of blocked u-bend of a bill is the return of Snow Patrol Oh thank god! I'm just sealing myself off for the weekend that's disgusting it's disgraceful i mean the luftwaffe did enough damage to our city surely we've suffered enough

i mean nigel kennedy must be thinking well i'm not going to be the biggest cunt on this bill i don't know how to feel about that well before him is the strictly come dancing dancers with the bbc orchestra but i don't think i don't think it will feature any of the members who've played pissed up on versions of top of the popsicle scene so that's a shame fucking mint if it was taylor anything popping interesting happening in your life come on uh no think my voice is shot um because i've got uh something wrong in my chest pulled a muscle back it's all just uh you know just the usual um i was back up in the west midlands uh recently um enjoying this beautiful heat wave uh although it's weird seeing places like cradley heath in bright sunshine it's not right everything looks right

it's like seeing um tony iomi in a cow print onesie it's just not how things are meant to be but did manage to get the beautiful chilton line from birmingham moore street to london marlborough through the delightful county of warwickshire through the veil of red horse um and uh so the fact that i'm fucking falling to pieces uh managed to put to the back of my mind. The Vale of Arden, you see. Warwickshire is a beautiful county that Coventry should still be part of. We've been cast out into the West Midlands,

but as far as I'm concerned... Do you not think the amputation of Brum and Cov from Warwickshire is partly what has made it such a beautiful county? Fuck off! There was talk about five years ago of us just becoming a suburb of Birmingham, basically, which I bitterly, bitterly resent. You know, Shakespeare came to Coventry.

Coventry is part of Warwickshire, and it should remain so. He wouldn't come to fucking Coventry this weekend, though, would he? No, he fucking wouldn't. It's a useful magnet for every twat in Coventry to go to the party. Oh, it is, isn't it? I thought it was a kind of free thing,

but it turns out it's actually 30 bloody quid to get into this thing. Jesus. So these fools are going to pay to see this shit fest. What's worse than that is, is that in a club in town called The Empire,

that is kind of lad rock central for Coventry, they've got an after show party with a tribute band to Noel Gallagher's High Flying Bird. Oh shit in hell. Called Noel N-O-A-L

Gallagher's something or other. And they've also got Paul Gallagher as ever doing a DJ set. You know, this shit needs eradicating from commentary, not encouraging. So, yeah,

I'm trying to seal myself off. Once I've recorded this, I'm going to lock all the doors, close all the curtains and just seal myself off on the weekend and try and ignore it. Oh, protect and survive,

Neil. Absolutely. So it's that time when we give a shout out to the people who have laid their money down for chart music of late. And those people are Jack Cavanagh, Hoeman, Andrew Holmes, and no fucker else.

Oh man. We need to think of new ways to squeeze some dollar out of the Pulp Craze youngsters' chops. It's like when an indie record goes in the charts. And everyone goes, Oh, it's gone in at number 17. goes in the charts and everyone goes oh it's gone in at number 17 but no that's everyone who's bought it and is ever going to so this week's episode pop craze youngsters plonks us right in the middle of the 80s as we go back nearly 34 years to August the 9th, 1984. Oh, we've been to 1984, I think this is the second time now, isn't it?

It is, yeah. We did it really early, didn't we, Taylor, your first one? Yeah. Yeah, and we didn't like it then, but this might be a bit different. Yeah, this is a lot better. You do get a sense, though, it is a funny year, and there's these two great watersheds coming up in 85. There's Live Aid, and there's the change from the old two-colour mechanical BBC Globe

to the cow, the computer-originated world. Both of which happened in the early to mid-85, and nothing was ever the same again. No, it wasn't. So in pop, there seems to be this sort of stasis with a new pop aristocracy, like the old dinosaur bands, but sort of self-consciously shallow.

But at the same time, yeah, pop is already breaking up and the pieces are drifting apart. And then, yeah, after Live Aid hits the following summer, there's like a Portcullis comes down or the Berlin Wall goes up. yeah pop is already breaking up and the pieces are drifting apart and then yeah after live aid hits the following summer there's like a portcullis comes down or the berlin wall goes up and everything on this side is popular entertainment and everything this side is cult and the separation is almost absolute and very little communication between the mainstream and the non-mainstream for several years and everyone suffers anything to to add on that, Neil? Oh, God, no.

OK. In the news this week, well, Daley Thompson is currently killing it in the decathlon at the Los Angeles Olympics. Richard Burton has been buried in Switzerland after he died, obviously. Hopefully. Walter Mondale surges in the opinion polls for the forthcoming presidential election. The trial of John DeLorean for drug trafficking begins in Los Angeles.

Melchester Rovers announced that Geoffrey Boycott is about to come their new chairman. But the big news this week is that Tracy Allman has invited Frank Boff to black up and pretend to be a Maori for her next video. He turned that down. Do you have any context for that? No. Because it's ringing a very vague

bell, a very distant bell but I'd love to know the full story I've got a feeling Boff might have blacked up before that you know do you reckon? why can I see it he whited up quite a bit didn't he round about this time

no I'm sure why have I got an image of Frank Boff blacked up in my head I mean unless you because you're a racist Neil

I'm sure I can just see that it must have been on something awful it must have been on like Russ Abbott or something but it's in my head

I can see it okay if any pop craze youngsters out there can recall Frank Boff blacking up for something, anything,

please let us know on Facebook or on Twitter. The cover of the NME this week, Mike Scott of the Waterboys. On the cover of Smash Hits, Simon Le Bon. The number one LP is That's What I Call Music 3. Legend by Bob Marley and the Wellies is at number two. And Diamond Life by Sade is at number three. Over in America, the number one single is When Doves Cry by Prince. And the number one LP is Purple Rain by Prince.

Oh, he's smashing it in America. Even though, you know, he's been slighted by Noel Edmonds, he's still carried on manfully. So, chaps, what were we doing in August of 1984? I was on my bike. I was just on my bike almost constantly. I never got a bike, in a sense. I always inherited

ones that my sister didn't use. Oh, no! Yeah, well, no, they weren't girls' bikes. Once she'd finished with her budgie, I got her budgie, and then she had a striker, so I got the got the striker after that so round about now is when i finally got um her grifter um which was a fantastic bike um you know if that landed on your head which it frequently did if you went arse over to over the over the handlebars it hurt um so now when i when i see you know you know those lads you see these days doing massive wheelies everywhere and just rolling down going down the street doing a wheelie all the way down

the street that's nothing because those bikes are so light doing a wheelie yeah grifter was a big big deal so i just remember it days of the weekend anyway would just'd just go out in the morning on your grifter and you'd just be out all day and practically not all night but till about 7, 8 and all you'd say to your parents, all I'd say to my parents leaving was, I'm off out alright, bye, and that was it

so just yes, a lot of riding around on my bike, going to a shop in Covetown Centre called Inter Shop which called itself the future of shop which was basically it was basically empty it was it was right about the future of language at least yes but it was just a load of basically market stores in a building but um there was a there was an off license in the middle of it um run a sea guy. And he would basically sell booze to... I mean, he'd sell it to a dog if he could have done.

He would sell booze to anybody. So me, 12 going on 13, that was a place we used to go to buy four cans of Yaga Laga or something, take them to the park and be violently sick on. I also started smoking this year. Good Lord. Yeah, it's quite young. thing taken us park and be violently sick on I also started smoking this year good lord yeah it's quite young but I

started by picking up half finished ones off the floor and you could buy singles back then but I seem to recall the first pack of

books a 10 pack of JPS because JPS had the cool black boxes yeah I was sort of pre-teen trying to be a teen

man Raleigh Grifter and John Player Fagsman, they were all from Nottingham. Oh, of course, the Nottingham collection. Yes. And if you ever went to Boots to get some Johnnies to fill with water and throw at your mates in the shopping precinct, again, Nottingham. Nottingham just had it all for the youth, didn't it?

It's quite nice to start smoking by picking up butts off the floor because then it means when you're old you can come full circle Yes, exactly Well you could salvage doghands anyway on top deck of buses underneath the stubber

on the back of every seat you could find enough to keep you going I guess Yeah, if you're chatty as fog I suppose I mean, if you're chatty as fog. I suppose. I mean, before we bring Taylor into this, the question needs to be asked, Neil. What crisps were rocking your world in 1984? Because you did write this amazing article on your blog about the Taylor.

Sorry, I wrote a massive piece about crisps on my blog, which immediately picked up thousands of hits, far more than my paltry music writing does. So clearly, you know, national priorities are towards crisps on my blog which immediately picked up thousands of hits far more than my poultry music writing does so um clearly you know national priorities are towards crisp i think 84 much like there was innovation in the world of soft drinks because i'm fairly sure quattro came out in 84 yeah um i think in 84 we were seeing things like bits of pizza and things like that innovations which i've got to say i resisted my favorite bag of 84 was um nibbets potato wheels mexican flavor um right a bit obscure but a fantastic fantastic

crisp um what is the flavor of mexico well this is it was kind of vaguely paprika-ish i guess but i didn't know that right i like the fact it was called mexican flavor it wasn't called um mexican spice flavor but just mexican flavor which was nice yeah so nibbets mexican potato have you ever met any mexican people i haven't no i haven't what you're about to ask all right i mean if you did would you be tempted to lick them to see if they tasted like these crisps i suspect that i suspect they wouldn't um because it was it was there was something deliciously um what's the word yeah taylor mentions craigley heath earlier they were made on some industrial estate in craigley heath so there was a nice sort of cross-contaminated

chemically vibe to them um excellent which was nice so if a mexican person did taste like that i'd send them immediately to a and e i think think. Well, me, I'd just left school. It was a very poignant time because not so much leaving school, but I was glad to be shot at that fucking dump. But my mates were kind of like starting to drift off into whatever work they could get. I remember one of my mates, Sisson, we were all hanging around on the shopping precinct, as was our want at the time. And he came up pleased

as punch and kind of like giving it the large one because he just got a yts somewhere and he spent all night bragging on about the 25 whole pounds a week he was going to get and what he was going to buy with it and uh my other mate yeah he got a job uh through his dad i believe through his dad at the post office so uh he consequently spunked all his money every week on vinyl which was good because you know he got to tape a lot of shit for me it was really funny though because for people like me the mid 80s because there wasn't much work about it basically meant you got an extended childhood you could spend an extra few years finding other people who were in the same boat as you and just fucking about um so yeah that was great but obviously the the

downside to that was it was kind of like the beginning of i believe it was the beginning of the uh lad culture of the 90s um but the other um the other big thing oh well there was two other big things there was the uh the opening of the food court in the local shopping centre, which was, I think, the most continental thing to ever happen to Nottingham because all of a sudden you could get all this food from all over the world as long as it fitted into a jacket potato. That's quite ahead of its time, actually. Food courts weren't very common back then.

No, no, it really was. It was always ahead of the game, Vicky Centre when did the Murat Food Centre open its doors? oh god yeah, I think that's quite a recent development, if you're not aware of the Murat Food Centre, they made their own advert and put it on YouTube and it is

it's basically the high mat of food store adverts isn't it is it's basically the high mat of uh of a food store adverts isn't it it kind of like goes on for 15 minutes with long pauses and really slow sweep of a crisp aisle with this bloke who bursts in every now and again to say international selection of cakes and biscuits yeah whenever i'm distressed and disorientated by the the fast pace of modern living i'll flip on the murat food center advert and just recalibrate but the other big development in my life at this time is that me and my mates started going out on saturday nights into town not out of my choice we we started going to a disco bar called ziggy's

which used to be across the road from the train station and we'd been going there for about six weeks um my grandpa collared me and took me to one side and he said uh yeah i've heard i've heard from my mates because he lived nearby i heard from my mates that you you go to you go to, that zig is? And I go, yeah, and? You know, it's full of ginger beers, don't you? And I said, no. He says, it is, that's what it is. I said, no, it isn't, grandpa. There's women there, for God's sake.

Yeah, me and my mates have been going to a gay bar trying to pull for six weeks in a row. And it was on the seventh week, my mate's brother tagged along and he said he was going to the toilets and he was in there for quite a while and he kind of like stormed out and said, drink up, we're going. And we were like, why?

He says, oh, I'll tell you later. But basically what happened was that he got debagged in the toilets by these two blokes. And as we were leaving, I kind of like took one look back and they were standing there at the bar, taking it in turns to sniff his pants. Yeah. That was our Saturday nights.

That's 1984, folks. I think every man in the world, every straight man in the world should be made to go to a gay bar at least a few times just to understand what the world is like for women every day. Yeah.

Yeah, because... Well, the thing was, I spent a lot of time ending up in gay bars in London because it was like, you know, I'm going out, I'm going to enjoy myself, the pressure's off was like, you know, I'm going out, I'm going to enjoy myself, the pressure's off and, you know, used to have a really good time

and then, you know, all of a sudden I'd be standing at the bar and I end up chatting to a bloke and he's there and we're getting on, we're talking about football and all this kind of stuff and then all of a sudden he leans over and says, well, why don't you come back in my car and I'll fuck you up the arse and then you go, oh yeah gay bar, I forgot for a minute

fancy that yeah i used to like it because it's tremendously good for the ego yeah at least when you're a young man yes there was a a man bar that opened up in nottingham a few years ago called the hole which i thought was just the fucking most best to the point name for a gay bar ever. And I was just really upset they didn't open a lesbian bar next door called The Gash. Come on, let's drink a beer and we'll go to The Gash for one.

So what was on telly this day? Well, BBC One starts the day with Olympic grandstand, then the fifth test between England and the West Indies at the Oval, then News Afternoon, an Olympic report with David Icke, Postman Pat, then more cricket, followed by Play School,

Huckleberry Finn and his friends, John Craven's News Round, then more Olympics, then the evening news, regional news in your area, and the beginning of the final day of the decathlon and Zola Budd's first heat in the 3,000 metres before she makes Mary Decker cry like a big fucking jessie. Oh, wasn't that the most beautiful moment of that Olympics?

It was a great Olympics that year. I remember watching an awful lot of it. It really was. It was the first one that really registered with me. Yeah. Because it was the Olympics of Carl Lewis and people like that, wasn't it? Yes. And Zola Budd was a big deal at the time. Daley Thompson was a massive deal at the time. Yes.

Everyone playing Daley Thompson's decathlon on the ZX. Yes. By the way, if you're playing that out there, people, don't forget, use a golf ball on the Z and X keys to build up your speed. Yeah. I remember spending a lot of my time at that age either furiously masturbating or playing daily thompson's decaflin which was which was the same thing really wasn't it yeah very similar technique

did you use a golf ball the 1984 olympics was so good because it had, you know, decent commentators and not middle-class twats yucking it up and being fucking jollily patriotic. I fucking hate that about the Olympics nowadays. You just want to see the best. You know, you don't give a shit that Cole Lewis

didn't come from fucking Leicester or anything like that it's just like oh fucking hell look how fast he is it's become totally parochial now it's all about the english competitors and really yeah it's not fair even to the english competitors because you know they're individuals they're not necessarily doing it for fucking team gb that's a phrase i never want to hear again no fuck that shit team gb belongs in it's a phrase I never want to hear again. No. Fuck that shit. Team GB belongs in. It's a knockout. Yeah. End of. Yeah. It's pretty embarrassing being in a country that

tries to be patriotic with a phrase that could not be more Americanised. Yes. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's also that kind of Olympics presentation is imported from America as well because they were doing it for years you know

there'd be some guy from Poland you know leaping 40 feet they're just not interested they're just showing some American guy who fell over dusting his knees off you know we're East Germany now aren't we

with that kind of little insular country that uh punches way above its weight in olympics and simply because they plowed loads of money into it but i mean that said right the single moment of national pride that i think i've ever felt and you're gonna you're gonna hate me for this but you know in the 2012 Olympics I'm not on about the opening ceremony I'm on about it was on the opening ceremony

but the moment when team G fucking B came out and I think it was Bowie wasn't it heroes I felt

I've got to admit I felt a small frisson of not could I call it national pride the hair stood up on my arms a little bit

I think that's about sense of place yeah yeah I call it national pride? The hair stood up on my arms a little bit. I think that's about as far as it went. Sense of place. Yeah, I think so. If you can, watch Olympics and stuff like that on Bloomin' Your Sport because they don't do any of that team team shit. It's much better. What I loved the most about the Olympics opening ceremony was that the climax

was the last bit of Dark Side of the Moon. The lines ceremony was that the climax was the last bit of dark side of the moon um yeah the lines uh uh and all that you uh and all the uh and everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the moon the most sensationalistically negative lines ever written in a rock song apocalyptically negative um that was what we were all uh all supposed to stand up and whoop to that gave me a really nice sort of perverted glee bbc2 kicks off with some red hot open university action then half an hour of pages from CFAX then Animal Magic Jackanora Why Don't You Play School

more pages from CFAX half an hour of the cricket then it's over to DFID for the Royal National Steadford of Wales more CFAX more cricket the news and then they pile into a repeat of Monke called Monsters Can Be People Too.

Apparently, monkey's been getting on everyone's tits and he gets sent home in disgrace. Then there's a series about maternity services called Birthright, and they've just started the time of your life where Noel Edmonds recreates September of 1968, which was a very special time for Colonel John

Blashford Schnell I don't remember that show at all you know I saw the little thing before Top of the Pops 4 and I do not remember it at all no you're not missing it it's just a really crappy version of This Is Your Life with a lot less research needed

by the way asterisk, Dovid. Is it Dovid? Yeah. I believe so, yeah. But it's only Wales. Yeah. ITV has screened Good Morning Britain, the movie-length pilot for Ironside,

the Grumbleweeds radio show. That's in the morning, that is. This is supposed to be kids tv time during the summer holidays fuck's sake moon cat the sullivans news at one crown court the shillingbury tales obron war at home for fuck's sake the moomins the kids tomorrow will knock off video and chips then star strider followed by Crossroads, regional news in your area, Treasure Island,

and they're about to run the film version of the David Janssen private eye show, Harry O. Channel 4 has started with Blockbusters, followed by the school's programme Start Here, then a walk-through Lime Regis with an author in Robinson Country, where they might bump into Gary Davis

who is hosting the Radio 1 Roadshow today. Today's history examines the office of President in America and they're currently halfway through Channel 4 News. Before we move on, we must discuss Monkey a bit more because that was the greatest fucking television programme ever at that time, wasn't it? Fantastic show. And just every episode

contained at least one moment that just just blew my mind now i remember an episode where he got eaten and he ended up in a stomach and yes kicking hell out of it to get puked up things like that when you're a kid british television simply didn't provide things like no um so it was an essential essential part of the weak monkey. Yeah. I mean, the first episode of it, he got into deep shit, didn't he? Because he flew for ages on his cloud after going

whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. And he ended up by this pillar and he thought, oh, I'll have a piss up it. It turned out to be one of Buddha's fingers. Buddhism's kind of like seen as the cool religion, particularly amongst pop stars. And this is why,

monk hair. You know, if Christianity or Islam had had their own version of monk hair, I think we'd be more open to them nowadays. You're right. There's no martial arts in Christianity, is there? Yeah,

fucking rubbish. Just banging on about fucking God and stuff. I mean, someone getting, you know, I mean, there's a martial arts in christianity is there yeah fucking rubbish just banging on about fucking god and and stuff i mean someone getting you know i mean there's a lot of violence but it's not good violence is it well it's not the kind of violence you can set to some kind of like frenetic jazz funk yeah and also sorry the visions of hell in christianity and is. Just inferior, I've got to say, to Eastern religions. At the time, 84 probably, I was obsessively reading my parents' nutty old religious books

that they never read. But I was reading them because their visions of hell were unbelievable because you just get these incredible punishments for the slightest thing. Like, as a Hindu, apparently, if you invite somebody to your house, right, and they've come along,

and within an hour you're kind of wondering if they're going to go, and you kind of want them out the door, that means that you will end up, it's like floating on a planet, a liquid planet made of piss, shit, spunk, fingernailsils excrement it's just disgusting

sandwiches made by the stranglers it's not like a lake of bloody fire so what, but a lake of all that horrible shit and you will float there for a billion billion years and that's for looking at somebody like you wish they were leaving the house looking at your watch

that's it that's terrible man it's terrible, man. It is terrible because I am like that. And I was like that in 84, actually. I had friends, don't get me wrong. But I was that weird friend who, if you come round within 20 minutes, I would say something like,

could you go now, please? I'm bored. I want to be on my own. So, you know. Yeah, and look what happened exactly exactly but yeah

I've got that future headed for me yeah I mean look man we're in 2018 man this is a planet of shit and spunk and piss

it was the ludicrous description that struck me it's all ancient Sanskrit translated and it's childish do you know what I mean yeah it's like it's like ancient sanskrit translated and it's it's childish

do you know what i mean yeah it's like it's like when kids tell you like tall stories and they're just making it up and it's whatever yeah strikes their imagination as as exciting and it doesn't matter if it's not plausible you just go yeah that's it yeah you remember when nuclear war was the big uh thing that everyone was obsessed with and I was in the school library and there was a kid looking through a textbook and it had a picture of a nuclear explosion in it. And he pointed out and he said, do you know how hot that is? And I said, no.

And he said, it's as hot as 10 million suns. I went, oh, right. Kids are great. I mean, I don't want to go all that's life there, but I was talking to my niece the other day and we were at the dinner table and she just turned up to me and says I know what the queen's like

and I said go on then I said but where does the queen live she said oh she lives in the bushes and I said what does she eat then and she just went glass and dogs and then I said

what does she do then? What does she do in the day then? And she just went, oh, she goes on the beach and pees in people's drinks when they're not looking. And it's just like, oh, don't grow up. Please don't grow up. Going back to Monka, I mean, you know, we've discussed before particularly simon

about the um the disturbing effect that boy george had on a on a boy's sexuality but i contend that um we'd already had that with trippy tarker a thousand times more confusing to young lads than boy george ever was still confusing me, to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah. It's like, well, you're a boy, but you've got the voice of a woman. And crucially, you looked at the actor's name and you just went, well, that could be out, really. That could be either gender.

Yeah. But, oh, I kind of fancy her. Oh, without a doubt. But then I thought, no, it must be a boy a boy because you know pigsy would have had a go i really want to find somewhere that repeats monkey because it'll be out there somewhere and i don't know no that doesn't count that doesn't count i want to be flicking through channels and find it. Like the other day, right, I was flicking on my Skybox and I

found a channel called Forces TV, right? Yes. Which is for the armed forces, I guess. So it's full of quite Brexity stuff during the day.

But then late at night, they're showing things like Starsky and Hutch. Yeah. And stuff like that. So I want a moment like that.

Yeah, I'll show Sergeant Bilko as well. Yeah, yeah. I want to stumble across Monkey one Hutch. Yeah. And stuff like that. Yeah, I'll show Sgt. Bilko as well. Yeah, yeah. I want to stumble across Monkey one day. Yeah. Just get it on now. Six o'clock BBC Two. All right then, pop craze youngsters.

It's time to go way back to August of 1984. Don't forget, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops. Hello and welcome to another half hour of the hardest street sounds around, like Hazel Dean and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Here we've got street-credible Blamon, jump beach-credible Tracy Ullman. Here's Sunglasses. Sunglasses. I got my swim cap and comb and my paper bag book that I'm almost through. I got my lipstick and mirror and my sun tan lotion and my camera too. Your hosts for this episode are John Peel and Richard Skinner. The latter is on Radio 1 right now and the former comes on afterwards

at 10 o'clock. Before we go into the show, this episode has been salvaged off a torrent site and fucking hell, that BBC ident, it's a bit gorgeous isn't it? Oh, the Olympic one, yeah. Very nice indeed. Yeah, it's essentially the Olympic rings, which they certainly couldn't do

nowadays, and the top middle ring is a bit larger and that's where they've put the rotating globe oh fucking hell man it's probably beautiful out of plywood and someone had it in their garden for like 20 years until the rain washed it away it was such a big thing the olympics and i think down to but you know you mentioned Zola Budd you know partly down to her because it was a political choice whether you supported her or not really. I remember our family

certainly didn't. Yeah definitely. I remember Spike Milligan was interviewed on a running track with massive shorts saying he was training for British citizenship. Skinner in a horrific checkerboard Hawaiian cut shirt

that he's tucked into some white trousers and Peel in a slightly less rank white shirt with diagonal black stripes tucked into his jeans with a sheriff's badge stand at the top of some steps surrounded by zoo chaff. Peel sarcastically invites us to indulge in the hottest street sounds around while Skinner tempts us with street-credible blancmange

and the first act, beat-credible Tracy Ullman with sunglasses. We need to talk first about this particular partnership. They do look like a couple of old dads standing at the side of a kids' football game. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Skinner's shirt because it surely is the most revolting brown shirt since Coff City's infamous 1978 away strip.

It's fucking ghastly. The 80s have kicked in properly here, haven't they? They have, they have. But it's very futuristic as well, man, because it's very reminiscent of the really ranked shirts that were popping up in the late 80s and early 90s. On your Bruno Brooks's and the like. Yeah.

Peel, for me, this episode, I mean, we've discussed before John Peel's kind of piss-takey presence on top of the pop. Yes. And how how you know for grown-ups it was wonderful for for kids it was a bit more irritating for me you know even as a grown-up who now should be amenable to what he's saying he kind of crosses over in this episode into just outright contempt i think for for the music that he's presented and i didn't like it

even as a grown-up i didn't like it and i know that grown-up, I didn't like it. And I know that as a kid watching this, his constant sniping, and it's not actually well-delivered sniping, he does a few fuck-ups as the episode goes on, would have really, really bugged the hell out of me. Just why are you there, man, if you don't like it? You know? Yeah.

Taylor, have you been on a Peel episode yet? No. And it's weird how it's become sort of fashionable, or at least commonplace, to slag Peel off a bit these days. Which probably is largely in response to his canonisation,

which is itself quite sickly and hypocritical. And in a lot of ways, selling short what he really did achieve. But it's weird because I can remember the days when I'd say I wasn't a big fan. Despite everything, I wasn't a big fan of his TV and radio persona, despite appreciating and listening to his show. People would look at me, you know, like I'd just called their dad a hoe.

But I didn't like that sort of chuntering mock grumpy trivially minded amiability I didn't like the harmlessness and matiness of it and the way he'd just ramble on like an old station master talking to his cat you know

and when he tried to be funny he wasn't that funny so when he was snooty about something, it seemed a bit dickish. It never bothered me a lot for the obvious reason that there's never been such a committed, eclectic, receptive and broad-minded DJ on British radio. And he was all you had at the time, the music press and John Peel. And it was not good that there was one man who was the gatekeeper of all non-popular music in Britain. But it was still better than no filter at all. And it is a disgrace the way it's been rewritten since he died,

that he was some sort of patron saint of jangly indie lads, you know, which he was, but it also, people, when I was a kid, were always writing into his show complaining because he didn't play enough of that. And he played so much weird techno and German freak-out music. And, you know, before that, where the hippies would complain because he played punk and reggae records, you know. And he was certainly a man of

his time in the 60s and 70s shall we say in all the bad ways as well as the good ways but it's certainly true that he um is uh not to all tastes as a top of the pops presenter um and part of me thinks yeah he just about gets away with it because he plays the bemused adult at the kids party but at the same time yeah you sort of it does start to grate

I mean I know far be it from me to complain about older men making schneid remarks about sharp pop music over a long period of time but yeah I do know what you mean i mean the thing about peel is is that the people who venerate him now if he was alive today they'd be the same people who would moan at him for playing loads of grime because that's what he

would have done wouldn't he yeah of course he would yeah of course he would and what's more he'd do it bloody mindedly as, not just because he liked that music, but because he hated the closed-mindedness of those people and wanted to piss them off. I mean, there was a true diversity to Peel in terms of his playlist for his own show, because it wasn't just that he was playing, I don't know, hip-hop as well as indie music. He was playing stuff, I mean, nobody else,

as far as I'm concerned, on the radio at that time. He'd play your tracks from Africa, do you know what I mean? Yeah. And he'd play your tracks from around the world, a pop world that you just would have no consciousness of without Peel. I mean, it's sad that it was like that, but I mean, for most of us,

we only got to hear African music, for instance, you know, via Peely. So, yeah, you're right, it should never be undervalued, that. But, I mean, thinking about him as a TOTP presenter, you know, I did kind of like his humour here and there, but it makes you think, what Top of the Pops presenter did you actually unproblematically like back then?

Yeah. And I'm not entirely sure I did like, you know, any of them, but perhaps, I mean, when Janice Long came along, I liked Janice Long. Annie Nightingale, I don't recall ever presenting Top of the Pops. She was a guest on, I think it was the 600th episode or something like that.

So when I said earlier in a previous chart music that Janice Long was the first woman to present Top of the Pops, you can say Annie Nightingale was on first but she didn't do a whole show and I don't know why maybe she just didn't want to do it I did like it when the presenters of Top of the Pops were the

specialist people like Tommy Vance and Andy Peebles and people like that it was interesting seeing them rather than the kind of omnipresence of people like Noel Edmonds but Peely i'd say would be yeah he'd be up there as one of my favorite presenters at the time but in this episode i just think he gets too much wrong and and he doesn't get the tone quite right but it's a dj exemplary yeah yeah i mean two things nil uh the first thing is is i've always

felt that having a favorite top of the pops always felt that having a favourite Top of the Pops presenter is like having a favourite Top of the Pops cameraman or a favourite Top of the Pops floor manager, you know, they have to be there but that's it you know, and they have to be of a certain standard but that's as far as it goes and secondly

with this episode as we'll find out you know, John Pitt was always at his best on Top of the Pops when he had something to carp at that you could agree with. And as we're going to find in this episode, there's really not a lot of carpable performances or anything like that.

There isn't anyone on there you think, oh yeah, he needs to be tucked down a peg or two. Yeah, I mean, essentially, being a Top of the Pops executive is totally unlike being, say, Jules Holland or muir or gray on the tube yeah and and this is why top of the pops i think is was such a good training in a sense for music journalists because what top of the pops does for you as a pop listener and as a kid watching it it doesn't give you any biographical information about the band it's not there's not interviews with any of them all you have is the sound and the vision do you know i

mean that the song and the way that this band choose to present themselves so yeah in a way of developing a quick way of thinking about pop and an immediate kind of judgment about pop top of the pops is a hell of a lot i mean don't get me wrong as music journalists should train themselves in the sense of Finding out about music and reading about music But in terms of your response to pop Top of the Pops is the best training You could ever have

And so the presenter, yeah you're right Does just have to kind of be Saying very very little indeed And keeping the show going But they're not getting as intrusive As they would on other pop music programs. Any presenter that's co-presented with John Peel is automatically the foil.

And, you know, Kid Jensen and Janice Long are very good at that. How does Richard Skinner compare? Exactly. Well, there isn't really anything to say about Richard Skinner, is there?

Except that he dresses like a sex tourist. And yes, exactly well there isn't really anything to say about richard skinner is there other except that no jesse's like a sex tourist and yes talks in that kind of 80s radio voice that nobody ever used in real life he's not the worst offender but he does do it no it's like yeah when you hear like a wax cylinder of gladstone and you think why is he talking like that i bet people didn't really talk like that and it means you have no connection to it at all you think just why is he talking like that? I bet people didn't really talk like that. And it means you have no connection to it at all. You think, just relax. Just be yourself. What's wrong with, hi, this is William Ewart Gladstone.

It's just coming up to nine minutes to eight. And this is TransX with Living On Video. Also, why did he go out under the name Richard Skinner? Right? Surely Dick Skinner. Yeah. It's hipper and it's got that threatening edge. Dickie Skinner might be a bit better.

I mean, Dick Skinner does sound like a fucking death metal band, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dickie Skinner, though, man. You know, you'd need a revolving bow tie, though, wouldn't it? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does sound like Dickie Skinner though man. You know you'd need a revolving bow tie

though wouldn't you? Which wouldn't look out of place on that shirt so yeah. So Peele sarcastically invites us

to indulge in the hardest street sounds around while Skinner tempts us with street credible blancmange

and the next act beat credible Tracy Ullman with sunglasses. Born in Slough in 1959, Tracy Ullman started her career at the age of six by doing TV shows in her mum's bedroom window to cheer her up after her husband had died and eventually attended the Italia Conti Stage School, which she hated. After leaving there, she became disillusioned by acting and started working as a travel agent until she joined the second generation dance troupe playing summer seasons in Blackpool, a job she lost when she forgot to put her drawers on one night. However, she was cast in the West

End productions of Elvis the Musical and Grease, won the London Critics Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising New Actress and appeared on an advert for Hind Soup wearing a cow's head. She was immediately picked up by the BBC and made a television debut in 1981 in the sketch show Three of a Kind with Lenny Emery and David Copperfield and another sketch show called A Kick Up the 80s with Robbie Coltrane, Miriam Margoyles Roger Sloman Rick Mayall and Richard

Stilgo. Fucking hell Kick Up the 80s had Kevin Turvey That's right, yes, yeah. My dad loved Kevin Turvey so I did watch that show In 1983, while she was having her hair done, she was approached by the wife of Dave Robinson, the head of Stiff Records,

and asked if she'd like to have a recording career. She said yes. And her debut release, a cover of the 1964 Irma Thomas single, Breakaway, got to number four that year. Her next release, a cover of Kirstie McColl's 1979 single They Don't Know got to number 2 for 2 weeks held off the top spot

by Karma Chameleon. This is a follow up to My Guy a cover of the 1979 madness tune My Girl which got to number 23 in March of this year and it's a cover of the 1965 Skeeter Davis single and it's up this week from number 36 to number 26.

I actually quite like this, and I didn't know that Skeeter Davis did the original, because Skeeter Davis is responsible for one of my favourite teen hysteria records, End of the World. Yeah, the definitively titled Weepy. The definitively titled Weepy. There is no Weepy after that that yeah it's apocalyptic

that record but um the original i mean skeeter's original it's kind of light and backwracking vibe and and the sandy posey version is pretty good as well from later on in the 60s tracy ullman she kind of specters it up doesn't she um it has that be my baby beat to it and makes it more hysterical but it's a kind of great simple song so she can't really go wrong i mean what annoyed me really about this performance was that neither tracy nor her bucking vocalists are freaking wearing sunglasses i mean i would have thought that would be an obvious thing to do i remember loving the video for this as well not just because it had edmondson in it and kenny island yeah but it i just liked looking at beach holidays because it blotted out the recurrent nightmare that i

was having at the time about my parents booking me an adventure holiday um oh no i told them like a bloody idiot i said look if you want to make my life hell um book me on one of it because you know adventure holidays, which is starting them, where you go and fucking kayak for a week or something with other kids. And that was my idea. Fuck that.

Yeah, that was my idea of hell on earth. So anything that reminded me of beach holidays was lovely, including this video. I was just well disposed towards Tracy because I love three of a kind. I like to kick up the 80s. I did watch any old shit back then. I used to find Russ Abbott and Bobby Davro funny probably but it was clear that those two shows

were a bit of a cut above and it was down to the performers and the writers, it was also pretty clear that Tracy Allman sort of lived for the video and the top of the pops appearance in terms of her pop career and was never going to really get in the van and go on the road as such. So she moved on.

But as a singer of other people's songs, she was okay. And I think basically I fancied her. She had great legs. She looked nice. And she was hilarious. Yeah, I was going to say that the only mistake Tracy Orman made in 1984

was not to marry me because I was legal then you fucked up Tracy yeah I fancied the arse of Tracy Ullman she just girl next door type and funny yeah completely

it's all I want out of life and she looked great on this performance as well I'm not saying it's a lecturer shot but the but the shot from sort of below when you see just the statuesque beauty of her legs it's a fantastic shot she looks great yeah yeah i mean and i mean the outfit she's wearing it's a kind of like a yellow and black vaguely swimsuit uh mini dress that the two backing singers are wearing, but inversed. So Tracy's like yellow and black and they're black and yellow.

You know, it's not a bikini or anything like that. It's tasteful. It's a retro swimsuit to go with the kind of cutesy nostalgia of the record, the hallmark of a dying culture but not not that objectionable um yeah i mean this song is was written by uh what's his name john d louder milk uh yeah the fantastic yes john d loudermilk who was probably best known for indian reservation by don. Yes. Which is a pro-Native American song, which perhaps nowadays would not be considered quite as pro-Native American.

But it's like a lot of songwriters from that period who were kind of, you know, bright, sophisticated, urbane people. It's a humorously articulate song, which always ends up sounding a bit whimsical and perhaps a bit too cute which is about right for this project but it is weird yeah Tracy Ullman made how many singles maybe eight singles or something and they're not yeah none of them are terrible they're kind of okay no she played it played it very safe by picking old songs that it's hard to dislike or, in the case of They Don't Know,

a modern song that sounded like an old song that's hard to dislike. Yeah. But, you know, if someone comes in, oh, yeah, you remember Three of a Kind? Yeah. Woman Off That made some records. Oh, yeah. But now they're all right. The first time I saw Three of a kind yeah woman off that made some records oh oh yeah but now they're all right i the first

time i saw three of a kind i thought it was the funniest thing i'd ever seen right written by the way uh in large part by kim fuller uh brother of simon fuller and uh author of that bleak parody of 90s britain's spice world World and I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life when I was 8 or 9 because it was on the level of a children's programme and of course if you see it now it's like if

it's like if not the 9 o'clock news hadn't slept for a month and that's the sort of level Well it's more like not John Craven's news round isn't it? Precisely, not John Craven's news round, isn't it? Precisely. Not John Craven's news round. That's brilliant.

But the other thing you notice when you look at it now is that for the time it's quite progressive, purely because it had Lenny Henry in it. In all these sketches where the fact that he's black is not relevant, right? Absolutely. He's playing a bloke in a shop. Or often he's playing tracy oldman's husband

in like a front room and they're watching the telly or something and yeah you don't you're not supposed to think oh it's a it's it's a mixed marriage it's just yeah that's not the point it's yeah and weirdly that was still quite a new an unusual thing in britain at the time but yeah it's it's like copycats or Russ Abbott's Madhouse. Yes. Yes. I mean, there's a thing where she does Jenny Hill

and Lenny Henry plays a waiter who gets his arse pinched all the time. And that was like, oh, you know, that's pretty good. Well, I mean,

how many interracial couples are on telly now? Not many. So, you know. Whereas whenever David Copperfield is in a sketch uh the fact that he's a yorkshireman is always the point yes often the only point of the sketch but i mean yeah generally it's it's about as funny as a fucking as a nursery full of lava i'll tell you something weird as well about three of a Kind. It's the only show I can think of where when they do song parodies,

they use the actual music from the original record and just change the lyrics, which I suppose is a sign of how tame they are because they would have had to ask permission for that. And if it was on the level of most song parodies that people used to do in those days, where basically the lyrics would say, I am shit, you know what I mean?

I always hated that kind of, where you get someone dressed up as a singer, and they kind of go, I am shit. All my songs are so crap. And that was supposed to be the joke. Yeah, well, this isn't like an amazing record but it's listenable and it's not completely charmless which is which is weird yeah i think that's partly because it's done as a playful performance and there's no sort of laughable uh attempt at sincerity and her sort of

like her very natural smile and obvious enjoyment keeps it this side of objectionable, despite the fact that it's like an actor and comedian making a record for their own vanity and fantasy fulfilment, thus taking up space and taking work from actual singers. I mean, you know, that's always what pisses me off about it, but it's all right yes see that the musicians union's been broken into hasn't it by this time but also what's interesting about it is there was different ways through time that producers try to recapture that specterish sound

or even like a shadow yes sound um now this would never be mistaken for the real thing it's audibly a nine sorry it's audibly an 80s record and weaker for it yes but there's an understanding here which is often missing from later attempts to copy that sound which is that it's about excess and being overwhelmed and it doesn't sound neat and precise um and the producer here is a bloke called peter collins who was a sort of old pro journeyman producer who's mostly known for doing fm rock stuff um and i think at this point was not a big name but it's authentically splashy and overloaded in a way that you don't necessarily expect from a mid-80s record, which is sort of helped by the damped-down audio

on this particular file that we're watching, which makes it sound a bit more like medium-wave radio. But it does work, and it does kind of sound like what it's meant to sound like. Yeah. The one thing stopping it in a sense being a perfect kind of simulation of the specter thing is i think the bass the bass is like really prominent it's not like a din in the background right yeah it's like quite a quite a clean 80s bass that you

can hear but still you get the sense that it's so overloaded if you heard this on am radio it'd sound it'd sound fantastic also what is the the with the set? They've got a set, right, which is mostly just a big blue screen with a sun on it to look like the sky, and then a deck chair. And the deck chair is massive. Kind of thing you see in shopping centres nowadays. It's like to suggest that they're on the beach with Andre the Giant or Patricia O'Neill or somebody like this. Just like a – I don't understand.

What is it supposed to signify? They should have had a massive chunk of broken glass and a massive dog turd next to the deck chair as well to get that full seaside effect. I mean, the thing is, though, the studio in this episode, I don't think I've seen the top of the pop studio looking so unimaginably vast.

It just looks fucking enormous. For the 80s, yeah. I's you know in the 90s it started getting really warehouse there but yeah you're right now you're right yeah yeah it's huge never really liked this song at all but i have to say that that her version i feel is better than the original but that might be because i've heard this version so many times that I've only heard the original a couple of times. But yeah, and also the other problem with this version of the song is that a comedian, as we used to call them, is singing it. So at the time you just think, well, she can't be that upset.

She's dead famous and she's funny. Because who ever heard of a comedian being unhappy? Exactly. Exactly. I'm trying to think of something negative to say about Tracey Ullman for a bit of balance. I know that she, when... No.

Fucking hell, this is a new thing. I was thinking, I was going through this going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tracey Ullman, yeah, yeah, yeah. What about Taylor's got something to say about that? Well, this is probably on, yeah, yeah, yeah. What about Taylor's got something to say? This is probably, on balance, without wanting to spoiler it, probably the highest quality Top of the Pops we've ever done because there's nothing on it that's so mind-bogglingly atrocious it drags the average down.

So, you know, trying to play devil's advocate. I know that, you know, The Simpsons play devil's advocate i know that you know the simpsons started on a american show as break bumpers yeah and she never liked those cartoons and then spent the next two decades acting like she'd invented them uh and somehow deserved credit for there you go although it's fair enough because at that point they were horrible and ugly and unfunny yeah um and the only other thing i know about Tracey Ullman is that she's got £80 million in the bank. And I can't remember where I read this.

She's one of the richest comedians in the world. How? I know you make a fortune in American television, but what the fuck has she ever really done? Nobody has ever met a Tracey Ullman fan, right? I can't think of one but we've we've sounded like one for the past fucking 10 minutes 80 million pounds i mean far be it yeah for me to compare myself to the hilarious tracy olman but according to my last bank statement she's richer than me by £80 million, £168.

So, am I being completely unreasonable or some kind of communist to question the fairness of this wealth distribution? Shit, you're richer than me, Taylor. So, the following week, Sunglasses jumped seven places to number 19 and would eventually get to number 18. It would be her last top 40 hit, however,

and after two flop singles, she called it a day, appeared in Paul McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street, and eventually moved to America. I mean, she dropped right off the radar, didn't she? Yeah, completely. When she moved to America, it's, you know, back in those days, if you were on American TV, you know, there was a very good chance that you wouldn't be seen on British TV again.

And that was the case with her. Yeah, considering they used to put, like, Seinfeld on at, like, half past 11 at night. And The Simpsons were opposite the news. And the BBC showed, like, Series one of Curb Your Enthusiasm and then dropped it. It's like, yeah, it's a very weird approach. Sunglasses.

Sunglasses. Sunglasses. Sunglasses. Tracey Ullman and her sunglasses. And our next guest, a clone from America, just to be with us on Top of the Pops, tossing and turning, two things I do inordinately well, windjammer. APPLAUSE Peel, surrounded by gawky youths who've been lacerated by the 80s stick, gets in a sly masturbation reference as he introduces a band who have come over from America for this, Windjammer, with Tossing and Turning.

Formed in New Orleans in the mid-70s, Windjammer were a jazz-funk band who got their break when guitarist Kevin MacLean sneaked into a local hotel where the Jacksons were staying, accosted Tito in a lift and slipped him a demo tape. Two years later, Tito's dad Joe signed them to a management deal and they were eventually signed to MCA in 1982. This is the lead-off single from their second LP, Windjammer 2. It's been picked up on by Tony Blackburn on Radio London, and it's up this week from number 21 to number 20. So, yeah, the first chance we get to see the youth them.

You say youth them. They're not kids. They all look about 30. And there's two women in blue dresses and matching fake pearls who are clearly, I think, Thatcher lovers. They're kind of trying to look a bit like Margaret Thatcher. And the one that annoyed me the most out of the group of people surrounding John Peel, there's a bloke there,

and I shouldn't object to somebody just because of their physical appearance, but he's got a really, really long head. And what I say to my wife sometimes, just to wind her up, is you've got a big head covered in face. And that's what that bloke has got. Oh, you're too smooth, guy.

His head's too big and his face covers it. It's just not right. These aren't kids, Al. These aren't youths. They look, I don't know. They're in that, not please, sir, but they're kind of in between. I can't tell whether they're in that, not please sir, but they're kind of, they're in between. I can't tell whether they're kids

or just very dubious 30-year-olds. 80s kids, man, we'd had tough paper rounds. Yeah, I think you're right. We'd had grifters. So this band, what do you call this jazz funk? I'd just call it funk. I'd just call it funk soul, I think. Right. And it's dated though

it's dated but in a in a beautiful way i i really like this and i didn't remember it at all um this song no um but um i really like that song i love that late 70s early 80s funk feel where it's slightly touched by electronics but not totally taken over by it so yeah so it's got that it's got the feel of a kind of mid-period cameo album like secret number or cameosis or something like that yeah it's really nice um really nice groove really good song nice sweat bands which seem to be a recurrent thing oh yes um but um again Windjammer actually, I should say the camera swing over to Windjammer again reiterates

the unimaginable vastness of the studio it goes from an enormous stage for Tracey Ullman through two really long sweeping arcs to get to Windjammer, all of them dressed in white, which seems to be a recurrent theme in this episode as well and I think the song's great the band look pretty cool um the only problem you say

that neil but to my mind they look like a living littlewoods catalogue page they're kind of like all in white with black and grey markings in different positions they're all in white but they've been given a little bit of freedom haven't they they've basically been told go to the shops get yourself something in white so they're all choosing white but they've been given a little bit of freedom haven't they they've basically been told go to the shops get yourself something in white so they're all choosing something a little bit different the only problem with the look for me is the singer because although he's got a great voice he's got these weird tiny eyes he reminds me of um that gif of charlie of charles manson that was doing the rounds after after donald trump was elected he's got he's got these really odd kind of looks in his eyes,

sideways glances and slightly damaged looks. But a brilliant song that I had no idea about until watching this episode. Well, I think he's got that look in his face because he's probably caught himself on a monitor and go, what the fuck am I wearing? Or just, what the fuck do I look like? He's very weird.

He looks more like a corporate logo than a real human being do you know what I mean yes the band look totally normal they're just really ordinary looking yeah and then there's him and you hear the song and you expect to see some slinky smoothie you know and instead you get this sort of giant chubby cheek man child with that range of cartoonish facial expressions which is totally inappropriate to the music and this weird shuffling side to side dance with hundreds of others like a cgi bear or when they get some kind of like really old celebrities on mad lizard on on good morning britain and they can only do so much. But, I mean, he's wearing a kind of a button-up cap-sleeve top

that he's much too old for. Well, I don't know, because I suspect this guy is younger than he looks. I mean, he looks simultaneously 5 and 58. And those people normally turn out to be on the on the younger side but yeah and he's got those massive sweatpants um like massive white sweat he looks like judy garland after a suicide attempt it's a bit sort of but it's good because he provides a novel visual focal point which sort of too few soul funk acts could claim but yeah what a sublime record it's just a beautiful translucent summer single you know and i never got on with this stuff as a kid and i think

i've said this before no me neither but by this stuff i mean anything which prioritised rhythm and feel over melody and power. I was a wholly cerebral child, not at home in my own body. You were German, not French. Precisely. And I would not have been able to sense the difference between this and Shack Attack. You know what I mean? Yeah.

All of them the same to me. This especially I'd imagine. Nowadays you're kind of like swiss though but this especially i'd have had problems with because of the associations because it's music for casuals isn't it yes all i'd have heard would have been the slightly chintzy undercurrent and the frictionless surface on it yeah in fact it's quite weird because yeah as neil says it's sort of caught between it's got like a that sort of mid-80s sound coming through but it's still got the old disco strings on it uh or you know mock strings which and now i listen

to it and i just feel it you know in a way that i was never able to when i was young it's just as an experience as like three minutes of texture and perfume it seems to me yeah self-evidently pleasurable it's like when i meet people who don't like reggae right and i always want them to listen to uh say to no love by the twin roots like the long mix with the version at the end, or, you know, something off Heart of the Congos, and say, even if this doesn't interest you as music or as an expression of emotion, do you not feel it? As soon as this record comes on, do you not just feel like you're getting into a warm bath

on a rainy night, you know, or just sliding gently into a duck you know balls deep it's just this is not quite at that level but the same thing applies it's an inescapably uplifting uh record and just a beautiful sort of sensory experience and i like how they're a vision in arctic white as well except what lets it down for me is that they got all the white instruments as well except the bass guitar which lets the side down um and the drum kit yes got one of those drum kits like the gold runoff blockbusters you know of course yes and it's bright red and there's a great shot near the start

of the drummer doing a fill with this weird expression of appalled disbelief did you notice this he looks

yeah he can sort of smell shit you know what I mean it's like he looks like he thought he was joining the UK subs

or you know and then he's like what the fuck is this crap you know oh or or he just saw that giant deck chair and go who the fuck is going to sit into that something's happened with the sets of top of the pops here because behind uh windjammer whilst doing this all dressed in white it looks like the fucking national grid's on fire behind them the

light yes is is massive. It's weird, really, because in the late 70s episodes of Top of the Pops, there's no real analogue for the studio set-up. There's two stages, no seats, and there's no other show like it, really. Now, in 84, I think you're right. Top of the Pops is trying to look like a massive club, replete with the stairs and the platforms and everything like that. So I was hoping that with this song, with the Allman song,

it's not really a problem not seeing the crowd because I wanted to look at Tracy, to be honest with you. And you can't really dance to that record. You can just granny clap to it. With this song, it would have been great to have got the lights on the crowd and maybe, you know, something that never happens in Top of the Pots, unfortunately, have them dancing with each other in a soul train way but all were allowed all were allowed there's a brief

weird aerial shot from the perspective of a blokes nipple on the stairs and that's about it which is a shame but it just seems huge it can't just be me thinking that watching this the studio just seems massive I'd have felt the same way about Taylor,

about this song back then. But to me, this was Southern music. Right. It was for people in London and Essex. Because I used to go down to London on my twice yearly excursions to buy shit. And I'd go into record shops, obviously. And I'd immediately go to the

black music section i'd be flicking through and it's like maze who are they uh london liston smith who the fuck is he you know this kind of stuff there's all these bands and you could just tell by the covers that you know this was not uh kent or motown or something like that and you know, this was not Kent or Motown or something like that. And, you know, the name Windjammer could not be more jazz funk. And the fact that they named their album, their second album, Windjammer 2, it's just like, oh, right, okay, step away from this. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You don't own an escort, step away. Windjammer is a giant early Victorian sailing ship.

is a giant early Victorian sailing ship. To me, that's one of the least predictable names imaginable for a band like this. It sounds to me like the name of a Bob James tune. Or of a Billy Cobham jazz fusion album from the mid-70s. Yeah, it just reeks of that. I would agree that the word sounds like that. But when you actually think about what it means it's like if they'd been called crinoline

or you know bod kick or something it's like I didn't hear it it's astrolabe I don't know clay pipe I didn't know what a windjammer was at the time you see so I just thought it was

the muskets I would have probably thought it was windsurfing or something like that yeah but instantaneously in the look the textures and everything about this record it is townie music essentially and yeah yeah definitely leo frick and the sackbutt definitely but good but you know even those even those twats you know they they weren't always wrong about everything but if you want a real example of how in the 80s soul music was moving away from the tougher Northern Soul style sounds that you enjoyed, a much bigger culprit is coming up soon. Oh, yes.

So hold your fire. Oh, yes. So the following week, Tossing and Turning nudged up two places to number 18, its highest position. The follow-up, Live Without Your Love, only got to number 91 in October of this year and Windjammer eventually split up in 1988. Kevin MacLean went on to become Michael Jackson's PR manager in the mid-90s until his death, which must have kept him tossing and turning and wiggling in his sleep for a good

many years. Fucking hell, that's a job and a half, isn't it? If only Michael Jackson had done a bit more. Yeah. Fucking hell. Yeah, Michael, babies, balconies. No. I need your love, I still want your love I need your love, I still want your love I find the night Skinner bangs on about the fact that they're American again as he stands next to some more girls and introduces Whatever I Do by Hazel Dean.

Born in Chelmsford in 1952, Hazel Poole was a club singer in the mid-70s who signed a deal with Decca and came 8th in the 1976 Song for Europe contest. In 1981, she released a limited edition LP of Bacharach and David covers which was only made available to radio stations which they could use to pad out their playlists without forking out as much on royalties and the double A side Medway you're the one

Medway that's where I want to be for that particular part of Kent in 1982 in 1983 she switched from pop soul and had a bang on that high energy thing everyone was going on about with the single Searching I Gotta Find A Man which was a huge hit in gay clubs but only got to number 76 in July of 1983. She did slightly better with Evergreen which got to number 63 in February of this year and then had another go at Song for Europe finishing 7th out of 8th

she started a residency at the London Gay Club Heaven which led to Searching, I Gotta Find A Man being re-released and it went all the way up to number 6 in April of this year this is the follow up and it's up this week from number 13 to number 8 the first thing I've got to point out, my first reaction with this was, fucking hell, she is the dead spirit of Claire Boulding.

My dad fucking hated Claire Boulding. Every time she'd come on and I was there watching the telly with him, his face would fucking just screw up as if she'd just had a shit on the floor and he'd go oh fucking hell here she is fucking bunty he used to

call her bunty balding this is fucking great and if you don't think so you must be some kind of pervert it's like saying you don't think so you must be some kind of pervert um it's like saying you don't like jumping on a trampoline you know what the fuck is wrong with you i mean for me um because it's a stock aiken and waterman record right an early stock right waterman record

and for me this is part of their holy quartet, along with You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive, Respectable by Mel and Kim, and I'd Rather Jack by the Reynolds Girls. I knew he was going to say that! I know a lot of people disagree with me on that, but I think it's an amazing band. I know! I had those four as well. And much as I hated that sort of lazy smirking attitude

to Stock Aitken and Waterman, if anyone tries to take the revisionist line that there really was some worth to those endless Soapstar records and sort of rickety, like medium NRG singles with Big Fun and Sonia, and tries to tell me it was like Motown or something, no, you have to listen to those four records and then you understand just what contempt they really had for their audience and for their own abilities because that's what they were capable of right four completely

different records uh with different moods and different levels of seriousness, but all with a distinct producer's identity and a trademark sound, all of which highlight the unbelievable laziness and sloppiness and lack of life that's in most of their work. And when you think about how good I Should Be So Lucky or Too Many Broken Arts could actually have been

if they'd spent the whole afternoon on them. You know, like here, all they've got to work with is this high energy singer who sounds like Bonnie Tyler after five bowls of Sago. And, you know, looks like Claire Boulding or looks like your mum's friend Jan. Yeah, your mum's friend Jan, who's just split with her husband and doesn't seem that upset about it for some reason. And they build this fantastic record from the ground up. I love it. Have you heard the 12-inch of this, by the way?

Because it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. And it reveals that kind of, the weird closeness of that high energy pop to almost like industrial music or something. I remember reading Pete Waterman's interview where he's saying that the bass on You Spin Me Round isn't a real bass at all.

And it's a sound that Matt Aitken made up from steel girders being hit with a hammer. I'm not saying Aitken and Wartman were Einstein, Zenday, Neubarten or anything but you can Or the special effects men in Star Wars But you can hear the influence of things like Blue Monday almost on this. There's a juddering kind of kick drum

You can hear the fairly direct influence of Blue Monday in that bass line as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah drum um and you can you can hear the fairly direct influence of blue monday in uh that bass line as well yeah yeah yeah i know you can also hear it on their first ever single the first single the um what was it uh the upstroke by angels aren't aeroplanes which was a kind of a relaxed rip-off from the previous year you could but this is a great record you can see why straight after hearing it pete burns sort of asked staken and Waterman to make Speedy Round sound kind of just like it. And I love...

The bit I really like about it, actually, is what they've done with the backing vocals because they've not allowed any of the backing singers in. So they've got her to do her own backing vocals. That's what it sounds like anyway. And it makes it both a kind of externally big song, but also a kind of real sort of inward looking echo chamber of the singer's desperation,

really. It's a great fucking record. Melodically, it's in that sort of I Will Survive school of songs that are sung at. Yes, definitely. It's a song to be sung at people. But it's fantastic.

I mean, it's just that knowing what was to come, as Taylor says, with Staken and Waterman, there's a kind of po what was to come, as Taylor says with Sturdy Can Warm Them, there's a kind of poignancy to this. Because, you know, Hazel Dean doesn't know at this point that she's going to be cast aside and discarded, as Sturdy Can Warm Them always do. Yeah.

You know, the way they sort of cast aside Mel and Kim and things like that, in preference for all these neighbours people was a real shame there's care and attention in this record that they didn't have later on yeah if Hazel Dean had been in Albion Markets you might have got a few more singles out of them yeah there's an incredibly positive

simplicity to this but it's like a sort of euphoric simplicity which in a way can't be repeated too often without blunting itself, which may well be what happened with them. They just wore out their plastic hammer, but it did some lovely banging while it lasted.

Yeah. I mean, Neil, you're totally right about the I will survive-ness of it, but those kinds of songs have always... I always think, well, Neil, you're totally right about the I Will Survive-ness of it, but those kinds of songs have always... You know, I always think, well, OK, if we're finished and you're over there, why have you sat down and written a song... It's cathartic, I guess.

..and then made it, yeah? Yeah, why's that? I know what you mean, but the thing is... Why didn't you just scratch me car up or something or throw me pants out the window onto the street? But I can i can see although those polaroids you took me why didn't you photocopy them and stick them up in the subway this is a record though it's the use of it al it will be used by i don't know i can just see people at parties that i've been at and and nightclubs that i've been in at the edge of a

dance floor dancing to this and singing this at somebody who has sat down yes and and and it's that kind of use that vengeance kind of aspect of the record that makes it that makes it really powerful and the production of it is is just fantastic i do honestly hugely recommend seeking out the 12 inch of it It's about eight minutes long, and it actually seems a little drier than the single version, but it builds, it just coalesces. It's just a wonderful, wonderful 12-inch. Also, the important thing here is that the bridge section before the chorus is a straight rip-off of the theme

from Juliet Bravo. Yes! Very distinctive chord progression, which makes it probably the second most outrageous steal of a BBC theme tune for a top 40 hit after Forget About You by The Motors.

The dismal follow-up to General Mills. It's the theme from Grandstand. the dismal follow up to January what does that steal from as soon as you hear it it becomes obvious the steal here works well enough but it does mean that it's impossible to hear it without seeing that hat

and folded leather gloves and that sort of grim indeterminate time period rural northern location which sort of detracts a bit from the sort of remorseless lube free thrust of this record although i'm sure it was a smash in uh the gay clubs of Hartley until Sergeant Beck and Sergeant Parrish kicked the doors in and started booting people in the face. I mean, personally, I was totally oblivious

to the kind of gayness of this. Yeah, me too. Which is strange now, looking at the two dancers she's got with her and the moves they're making I'm not saying they're doing anything

particularly suggestive but it's highly it's straight out of a gay club performance yeah but you wouldn't have thought that at the time you'd have gone

right there's a woman and oh she's got two black men dancing with her black men aren't gay yeah you see those two dancers and think, well, something for the ladies there.

Yeah. No, and they're borrowed Windjammer sweatbands. Actually, now you come to think of it, this song got played quite a lot as Ziggy's. I know. Fuck. Incidentally, speaking of the decline of Stock Aitken and Waterman, I should point out, in a show with a lot of cover versions in it

and with a lot of sort of weird interlocking uh network of cover versions this was later covered by someone who turns up later in this episode um also produced by stock aiken and waterman and while her version is superficially classier and a lot more expensive sounding, it doesn't have the guts of this version. It doesn't have that sort of popper's edge to it. Yeah. And I was quite disappointed because I expected better. And the only other thing I want to chuck in here is the backdrop.

It looks like they're performing in front of a massive guitar fret like in Guitar Hero. Imagine though, high energy Hazel Dean Guitar Hero. It just wouldn't work, would it? So the following week, whatever I do, jumped four places

to number four, its highest position. However, the follow-up, back in my arms again, would only get to number 41, as did the follow-up to in my arms again would only get to number 41 as did the follow-up to that and she never troubled the top 40 again And to you, whatever you do, wherever you go I'm gonna get over you, over you Whatever I do That's a stop, eh? Hazel Dean with a little high-energy music on top of the pops.

It's dancing to records like that that enable me to keep my yummy finger. This is Geoffrey Osbourne and this is On The Wings Of Love. On The Wings of Love. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.

Bill points out that dancing to artists like Hazel Dean has helped him keep his yummy finger obviously he means figure doesn't he I can't slag him for that I make mistakes like that all the fucking time on chart music there's that moment where he's got that crestfallen look in his eye when he knows he's fucked up

but he has to move on you say obviously but I didn't know that was what he meant until you just said it then I spent the whole week going yummy finger You say obviously, but I didn't know that that was what he meant until you just said it then. Oh. I spent the whole week going, yummy finger. But, you know, bear in mind that at the time he was doing the voiceover for the amazing fucking trio adverts. Oh, yeah.

So that company could have made John Peel's yummy fingers. Yeah. That company could have made John Peel's yummy fingers. So Peel introduces a pre-record of On the Wings of Love by Geoffrey Osbourne. Born in Rhode Island in 1948, Geoffrey Osbourne was the son of the jazz trumpeter Clarence Leggs Osbourne, who played with Count Basie and Duke Ellington. In 1970, he joined the soul funk band Love Men Limited as their drummer and they had moderate success on the American charts

and he became their lead singer in 1976 by which time they changed their name to LTD. After the band split up in 1980, he went solo and he first appeared in the UK charts in September of 1983 when Don't You Get So Mad got to number 53. But his next single, Stay With Me Tonight, put him over the top and got him to number 18 in May of this year. This is the follow-up and it's up this week from number 20 to number 15.

Again, more whiteness in the outfit. He's got a white jumper on and PVC trousers and fuck me, I bet he's really glad that it's not a fast dance song because it would be too long before he'd be sweating

like Gary Glitter in PC World. I think he looks ridiculous. It's the kind of jumper Captain Bird's eye used to wear. It's like a sexy dazzle boot he looks fucking yeah them trousers man they're not leg hugging no pvc trousers they're a bit they're a bit loose and a bit too shiny they're yeah not good very foster brothers yes i'll tell you what i will say for him though the opening shot of him looking meaningfully

into the camera if America had had a black president in the 1820s Geoffrey Osborne is what he would have looked like if you swap that horrible pullover for a frock coat and a high starch collar and there he is

he's got his mutton chops and his chin beard and his unfflutterable gaze no mustache no connection between uh the upper lip and the yeah um looking like he's got the hand of destiny on his shoulder you know you can imagine him sepia tinted in a stovepipe hat yeah um snipping the ribbon on a new railroad. Well, it's very weird because the background as well, the backdrop for this performance, it looks like a vivisection laboratory or something.

Yes. It looks like... Did you notice there's cages on the floor? And I kept expecting to see, I don't know, the movements of some poor tormented rodent who's been given too much insignia aftershave it's a really, really weird backdrop, which was the only

distraction for me from a deeply tedious song I have I mean, it's one of those am I right to talk about the song? Yes, yeah, why not chuck it in Neil we can talk about songs every now and then it's one of those adult

songs that I hated back then because it's just all about love which is so boring and I would have sat there yeah a boring love without doing it well this is it and I would have sat there with my thumb just firmly pointed downwards for its entire duration including the

dreadful circus style music bridge and including the most horrible telegraph predictable key change, that kind of Elton John Disney key change that happens to us This does sound like a Disney song doesn't it? It does and it's fucking boring, it sounds like it was written

by somebody really rich on a very big white piano looking out over the Pacificific ocean and and and it would have it would have driven me from the room i suspect in that 1984 watching it um yeah you can imagine some cartoon mice having a bit of a snog on a on a massive stalk as it swoops over the cityscape to this i was i was also kind of annoyed that he does, he repeatedly does the two fingers to illustrate

the lyrics, but he never in a touching act of American British cultural misunderstanding does the V's and does it the wrong way. Yeah. Which is a shame. I mean, it's a deeper shame in general that the V's are disappearing from this country.

Oh, tell me about that. Can I just say, my stepson, right, is a wrestler. I might have mentioned this before. He fights in a cov pro wrestling, right, which goes on here. And his name is Jake Casanova. He's a great wrestler. But he tracks lots of kids kiddie fans like little

really little kids 8, 9, 10 and you'd expect you know with the heels coming out Jake's a blue eye by the way

but when the heels come out you'd expect you know some V's being flicked but it's all middle fingers now

the V's are completely you know they're gone and I remember some of the great V's doesn't's are completely you know they're gone and I remember some of the great V's doesn't he get on the stick

and reprimand these kids for pissing on their flag no he doesn't no he doesn't well he fucking well should he should stick two fingers up and go this

see this here heritage values pride this this American thing here it sort of looks like a cock fuck that

it's so odd that Taylor was on about a train up to Birmingham because I remember getting a train up to Birmingham this is years ago decades ago and in the distance there was a set of swings on some waste ground or something and two kids kind of disconsolately swinging on them and as soon as they saw the train

you could actually see them leap off the swings and run towards the train sticking both V's up for no reason whatsoever bless them that's what makes me proud to be British yeah

that I'm afraid it's a vanishing sight I mean yes yes the two fingers in the gesture thing the upsetting thing is that he does that but then

he just forgoes the most obvious thing which is to at the end of the song, just turn around and just flap his arms like the Beakles did when they were getting on that plane to go to India. That would just bring the majesty of the song together,

wouldn't it? Or he should come out in a big bird outfit, like, you know. Yeah, definitely, yeah. With the legs, with the sort of yellow tights going into the claw boots. There's so many missed opportunities there. I mean, it is a terrible record.

And no offence to any white listeners, if we have any, but this is a weirdly white-sounding record. It's the moment that soul music met Andrew Lloyd Webber and didn't just say, lol, WTF. It's a, I mean, it is quite a neatly written and arranged record and it's got a nice delicate baseline on it. But at the end of the day, it's to every loser wins by nick berry than it is yeah which is not a positive step um i mean i remember when i was a kid right i i remember my absolute

shock when cherish by cool and the gang came out and it was partly shock that this band i vaguely remembered being sort of funky had squeezed out this blob of gloop but mainly shocked that all the hard lads at my school went out and bought it right oh for fuck's sake yeah strengthen my adolescent contempt for those people immensely because i can remember thinking either be a wimp and listen to wimpy music and actually be sensitive in your everyday life or be hard and at least match that with an uh unsentimental bracing approach to life and culture you know be fucking multifaceted cunts. Yeah, being a macho twat and listening to syrupy, insincere ballads really struck me as the worst of both worlds. It was when soul music, and specifically casual-type soul music,

was really going for this phony sentimentalism. Soft lad, yeah. Yeah, like coagulated valentine's residue um i think that's the insincerity is the worst thing about it because it seems to follow a very old-fashioned unnatural idea of what it means to be romantic right because no human is really that uncomplicatedly mawkish. So it can only sound false and trite, and it's worse for that veneer of sophistication, because you listen to it, you feel like you're being played.

It's like it's a snow job, you know what I mean? Especially at our age as well, you know, when you're 14 to 16, you don't want the wings of love, you want the beak of sex. Pex by the beak of sex. But the thing is, even if it weren't insincere,

who would need this kind of sincerity in their life, right? Imagine having a lover who was like this, like the terrible pressure and embarrassment and the sort of self-righteous kindness you know and it's yeah and also yeah like al like you were saying soul music always used to have that toughness to it even at the sweetest um so this is like extra painful and it's what put a whole lot of people my age off soul music in the 80s even the good stuff yeah because it had this atmosphere of a sort of soft focus candlelit dinner with gary davis right wait it's crossover isn't it yeah they're all trying

to cross over also yeah at the start of this song he says i'm sure that you're an angel in disguise oh fuck as soon as i heard that line it's just i can feel my hackles rising because it's like it's it's the end of that street vernacular um and straight into the sort of clinton's cards lexicon of schmaltz and like bad chat up lines and the language of a cola advert and it's like what you get in pop lyrics now it's come back all those horrible songs it's like what you get in pop lyrics now. It's come back. All those horrible songs. It's about chasing our dreams and shining a light. And, you know, our love will survive. And all these horrible cliches and sort of lazy lines,

which if you actually said that to someone would be hugely insulting, hugely embarrassing, as well as providing sort of instant and overwhelming douche chills. So sorry, Mr. President, but you're worse than William Taft. Because even he got stuck in a bath because he was so fat. What have you ever done? Yeah. Also, that C&A jumper only goes with leather trousers

if you're a member of the Pastels. And you, sir, are not a member of the Pastels. Imagine meeting somebody and getting on with them and copping off with them and, you know, they say, can I do you a tape? And this was on it. Can you fucking imagine? You'd want to scrub your genitals with bleach, wouldn't you?

The danger is, as Taylor's intimated, this stuff is being sort of rehabilitated. So if you wrote a soft kind of ballad or a power ballad in the 80s, these things are now called classics. So we're now kind of meant to say or just accept with a slight dose of irony These things are now called classics. So we're now kind of meant to say, or just accept, with a slight dose of irony,

that things like foreigner and fucking Mr. Mr. and all of this... Oh, fucking Africa. A classic. Sick of seeing that on fucking Facebook. No, but this is it. And it's a kind of wry smile. But also, this hardens a consensus about these things, that they're classics. No, they were shit then then and they're shit now.

And that cannot be reiterated often enough. Testify, brother. The only other thing I've got to say about this song is that I am absolutely convinced that whoever wrote it had that picture, that 1972 painting, Wings by stephen pearson which depicts a nudie woman sitting on some concrete slabs by the sea as a massive swan delivers a bloke in the nip to her it is isn't it yeah it is and of course as we all know that featured in bev's bedroom in abigail's party which caused laurence to have a heart. But it was also turned into an enormous mural in Saddam Hussein's swimming pool.

Yeah, did you not know that? Amazing. So he'd be there looking at that while sipping his Johnny Walker Black Label breakfast. Eating a bounty. That was his favourite chocolate bar, wasn't it? Bounty? Which was quite apt as he had a massive one on his head

at the end of his life. I love bounties. They're my favourites too. There's another thing you've got in common with Sadam Hussein. Yeah, but most importantly, that picture was a main feature of Pete's chipper in Top Valley from the mid-70s until round about this time, actually. I love watching that picture.

I was I was too young to be aroused by it at the time. So even now, looking at it, I get really uncomfortable. I thought of putting my bare ass down on some concrete slabs. And, you know, I remember being in the queue on one Friday night with me mate and we were both looking at this picture as fucking eight year olds and him leaning over and going that swan's

really looking at that blokes knob isn't he while we were waiting for a pea mix it's enough to put you off your battered sausage so the following week, on the wings of love, flapped four places to number 11,

its highest position. The follow-up, Don't Stop, only got to number 61 in October of this year, and he never made the top 40 again, although he had his biggest American hits with You Should Be Mine, which got to number 16 there in 1986, and hiset with dion warwick love power which got to number 12 the following year Here's Jeffrey Osborne with a song that's really taking off. OK, car folks, let's mosey on down and have a look at the charts.

At 40, a flock of seagulls. The more you live, the more you love. At number 39, the Jacksons with a state of shock. At 38, it's Bronski beating the small town boy. SOS band at number 37, just the way you like it. And Whammer at number 36, wake me up before you go-go. 35, it's Nervous Shakedown, that's ACDC. And Lionel Richies at number 34, stuck on you. You entry at 33, Howard Jones, like to get to know you well. At 32, Breaking, there's no stopping us from Ollie and Jerry. 31, Seven Seas, There's No Stopping Us from Olly and Jerry.

31, Seven Seas, The Ice Caps Are Melting, Echo and the Bunnymen. Band of Gold are at 30, Love Songs Are Back Again. 29, The Acceptable Face of Modern Music, The Mikey Warr Come Back. 28, Thompson Twins by the Sisters of Mercy. At 27, Nick Kershaw and I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. Tracy Ullman's at number 26 with Sunglasses. Modest Rod Stewart at 25, Some Guys Have All The Luck. At 24 is Jump For Your Love, The Pointer Sisters.

23, Trevor Walters, No Relation and Stuck On You. And at number 22, and here in the top of the pop studio, Blamange, The Day Before You Came. Peel and Skinner run down the charts from number 40 to number 22 and introduce The Day Before You Came by Blamonge. Formed in London in 1979, Blamonge were originally a trio and then a synth-like duo who put out an independent EP called Irena Mavis a year later. They first came to prominence when they featured on the Some Bizarre Album compilation alongside Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and The The and were subsequently signed to London Records. Their first two singles on the

new label skulked around the lower reaches of the chart but they hit the jackpot with their third release Living on the Ceiling which got to number seven for three weeks in late 1982. They went on to have three top 40 hits in 1983 including a number 10 with Blind Vision and this single a cover of the ABBA release which only got to number 32 in October of 1982, is the follow-up to Don't Tell Me, which got to number 8 for two weeks in May of this year. Abba fully endorsed this cover version, which is currently stuck at number 2 this week, to the extent that they allowed the group to use clips of their own video

for Blmonja's version, but we're getting an in-studio performance here. So, yeah, before we get into the song we need to discuss the fact that how abba just fell the fuck off in the early 80s can't believe that the original version of this song only got to number 32 in britain yeah i mean the original is one of abba's best um yeah late sort of darkest singles, totally electronic very much a studio confection but lyrically just one of their best songs, so much of it resting on their ability to do

to do boredom and banality so well and the slight sense of mistranslation in the lyrics as well, it's just a wonderful wonderful record I mean, I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but Late Period Ab know if this has been mentioned before, but Late Period Abba, I think, has been best addressed,

not to make anyone blush, by Taylor Parks' essay about Visitors, which, yeah, Taylor's probably going to grin about, but it's a fucking fantastic piece of writing that opened up that album to me. And I think for a lot of people. I love that song. I hate this cover. Yeah.

But this song is the follow-up, the true follow-up to The Winner Takes It All, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's the same character a few years later. Yeah. And I don't think ABBA songs respond that well to being covered in the first place. Partly because the originals are near perfect and partly because that slightly awkward english in the lyrics sounds natural in a swedish accent but sort of false in a british yeah um but the idea of taking their darkest and most grimly

scandinavian song which is this is a song where, you know, the day of the title quite clearly lasts about three hours before it gets dark again. Yes. And just making it jauntier with a very superficial layer of Indian percussion and for no reason, and singing it as though it was some kind of joke.

I don't understand what they thought they were doing but i mean that is a puzzle that applies to blancmange in all sorts of ways because even their decent records are full of very odd artistic decisions right like up the bloody tree um and my guess exactly they were just trying to be a bit different and hoping that that in itself would be enough to make them interesting because they didn't have a coherent vision. Yeah.

Or that this song, they couldn't believe either that this song only scraped the lower reaches of the top 40. It's like, oh, this is a fucking brilliant song. Someone's going to have a massive hit with it. Maybe we should hollow it out and stuff the cavity with wadding and old jumpers and uh and put a horrible droll delivery on it why are they doing why not just go around and yet as house and piss through a letterbox i mean fucking hell and it wouldn't be so bad

if they'd totally changed the arrangement. They've hardly changed the arrangement at all. If you think about all the stuff that you can do with a synth and some Indian instruments, right? The amazing different textures of sound you could create. But they've got the same flute sound. It's all the same dynamics. Just shit it up. I can't see the point of this cover. It's all the same dynamics, just shitted up.

I can't see the point of this cover. And I think the fatal moment, especially in this performance, is a moment towards the end of it where the lead singer of Le Monde, he smirks. And you cannot do that. You cannot do that with this record. The superficial changes they've made

in terms of changing Marilyn French for Barbara Cartland or whatever. record the superficial changes they've made in terms of changing you know marilyn french for barbara cartland or whatever um and and yeah the incorporation of indian musicians is totally superficial which is the way it always was as an asian kid watching top of the pops waiting for a bloody asian to turn up or at least somebody who'd admit they were asian um what we frequently got was bands who in order to lend their music some vague sense of exoticism would rope in a tabla player or rope in somebody playing something indian usually in a big indian shirt looking all mystical um never actually sort of allowing eastern music into the structure of

their songwriting or into the into the way their music is actually put across just sort of superficially sprinkling it. Like, I don't know, yeah, a sprinkling of garam masala on a Yorkshire pudding or something. It's not really in any sense changing. Or the curry sauce you get at Chippies. Which is lovely, don't get me wrong. But in this case, it's fatal that he smirks.

He smirks through it. And I'm not saying he has to be as kind of like deadly serious or mournful as I necessarily are with this song. But you cannot smirk. As soon as you smirk singing this song, you break it apart. You break apart the whole purpose of doing it. And it becomes, like you said, Al, just basically a craven kind of this was a great song, we could have a big hit with it.

Yeah. As opposed to doing kind of anything interesting with it at all. Yeah, and the other thing about the video is it's interspersed with the clips of Agnetha, as if Neil Arthur's saying, yeah, I'm that bloke, copping off her out of ABBA. Oh, great. I'm not entirely surprised that AB approved of this you would yes as

a band that have made shit loads of incredibly successful music you would kind of lend your tacit approval to a young band trying it but um yeah their version pisses on this from an enormous i was really pissed off as well by that little lyric change from yeah from Marilyn French to Barbara Cartland because why and I looked this up I tried to research this um in the course of researching it I found a quote on the internet about this song that purports to be from me which I never actually said unless I've been severely paraphrased um but also i found a quote from neil arthur saying he'd been asked why they changed marilyn french to barbara cartland and he said the fact that anyone would even have to ask why is hilarious would that we were all so easily

amused now i think that cover versions should have some small lyrical amendment or change just to personalize them you know but this is a weird one partly because you're taking an odd unusual choice of author and replacing it with a dumb and obvious one and partly because that no bloke would

read partly because it yeah yeah he should have changed it to I don't know Sven Hassel or something like that you know, Sven Hassel or something like that. James Herbert. Or something in that style. Or Whip Clough by Taylor. But also because it doesn't scan, right?

Now, Marilyn French didn't quite scan, but Barbara Cartland really doesn't scan. And he lapses into an American accent just for those words. And also, the elephant in the room here is that bindi. He's got a crap bindi on him, which is obviously just, you know, like a dab of makeup because it's melting in the studio light. Now, you know, I suspect Neil has more to say about this than me, or at least a more worthwhile perspective. But to me, like, first of all, okay,

a lot of crap does get talked about cultural appropriation. And like any white people who don't play country music or put on a mummer's play, you know, will be accused of this. But which, you know, gives reactionaries the opportunity to write off the whole concept as a phantasm but it sort of isn't and you see this daft twat with this like this red dot smirking away you know okay the narrow jacket is cool right i could get with that but yes bindi it's like you know it's, it just looks like he's taking the piss or something. Well, no, this is it. What it reminds me of is, you know,

as an Asian kid in playgrounds in the 80s, there were certain things that were said to you and there were certain gestures and movements that were done to you. One of them was the kind of prayer hands, waggly head thing right yeah and this just seems massively reminiscent of this the you know the reason people felt that they could do this i think was fun i mean you know hinduism was not a religion perhaps that was slapping fatwas on people do you know i mean no it's kind of it's kind of very much

a sort of unorthodox non-doctrinaire religion whereby you don't even have to believe in God to be a Hindu really it's kind of the way you're born into it so consequently nobody was getting irate about this but I remember as a kid no Hindu version of monkey you see that's where they went wrong but I remember as a kid watching

things like this and seeing things I'm not offended necessarily or upset by the fact that that he's got this what we what maharashtrians my family would call a kunk on his forehead but but it but it's it's always in that piecemeal kind of way in a sense what it does it reduces a foreign culture down to these little exotic elements that you can throw in and absolutely doesn't apprehend the kind of

the true kind of the complexity of the culture I'm not expecting Blamange to do that but I'm also in the 80s I'm not only annoyed by this but I was kind of I wasn't sated by things like

you know Monsoon Ever So Lonely or anything like that because it all seemed to be fatally on that kind of turkish delight eastern promise bullshit i'm sure that they they meant well by incorporating kind of like indian percussion and sounds into their work but but when they're dressing up like that the whole the kind of like overall impression they give off is an inversion of dino shafik singing Here We Are Again in between scenes of It Ain't Half Hot.

Yeah, no, absolutely. In fairness, their interest in Indian music and Indian culture was genuine and not that trivial. And they had actually used Eastern music in their previous records in quite a constructive way but yeah this is in a way that wasn't calling the captain or holding my shoe

by Neil which the fact that he changed the lyric from Marilyn French to Barbara Cartland that's one thing but then why did he take the next step and change the lyric, there's not a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see because a lot of men weren't watching

Dallas, you know, if he'd have said, I don't know there's not I think a single episode of Boone that I didn't see that would have made a bit more sense No, you're right you're absolutely right I mean, it's a dangerous business covering

abba they add nothing yeah they that they add nothing and and i come back to his smirk um is just insufferable and and and yeah it just proves that the base motives of doing this i think um let alone the the the kind of incorporation of Asian stuff. It's really at a depth. I know that things like Living on the Ceiling and stuff like that had perhaps a deeper enmeshment of Indian music than this does. But really, we're talking about a prefiguring

of the kind of depth of cultural appropriation of Crispian Mills and Kula Shaker, really. Yes. It's kind of spray on. Go to an Asian Draper's, get yourself one of them big lungies and sort of look like a, you know, it's kind of ridiculous. And then at the end, when that cunt with the Shoreditch Tash comes on to play four seconds of Mariachi Trumpet,

I was almost ready to give him a pass for cramming so many dumb clashing ideas into this record and the presentation of this record but no it just makes it worse i saw that guy i thought i was in bethnal green and then i realized i was in bethnal green and it was doubly shit. So the following week, the day before you came, stayed at number 22 for the third week running and would get no higher. The follow-up, What's Your Problem? I think we've just listed them.

Only got to number 40 and after two flop singles, they split up in 1986. LeMans, you came straight to the studio from their bread round. And now here are the really hot numbers that are cooking up the Hip Parade placings today. At number 21, Love Resurrection, Alison Moyet. Tossing and Turning, Windjammer is number 20. Eyes Without a Face, Billy Idol, that's number 19. At number 18, You Think You're a Man, Divine.

17, Young at Heart, The Blue Bells. Cindy Lauper, Time After Time, at number 16. Up to number 15, On the Wings of Love, Jeffrey Osborne. 14, Down on the Street, from Shack Attack. And up to number 13, here's Laura Branigan and Self Control. Peel remarks that Bermondes have come dressed as bakers, while Skinner launches into the charts from number 21 to number 13, resting upon self-control by Laura Branigan. Born in New York in 1952, Laura Branigan was a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and formed the folk group Meadow in 1972.

After that band split up, Branigan spent the mid-70s as Leonard Cohen's backing singer and in 1979 she was signed to Atlantic Records and moulded into a pop singer. She scored her first hit in the UK with a cover of Gloria, an Italian song from 1979 which got to number six over here for two weeks in February of 1983. This is the follow-up to Solitaire, a second flop single on the bounce, and it's another cover of an Italian song which was originally recorded by Raph and has been released at the same time. In the UK, it's up this week from number 25 to number 13, and we get the video.

That Baker remark, Neil, did that offend? No, that didn't offend. I was more perturbed earlier on when he's doing the rundown and he says that was at number 19, the Thompson twins by Sisters of Mercy. That freaked me out. Yes.

Oh, and also they use that publicity shot of the Thompson twins, which is the only one you ever see. The single most, by the Hollywood sign throwing shapes and it's almost physically painful to look at, they're such twats the only good thing about

seeing the Thompson Twins with their hands in the air like that is you can imagine you're pointing a shotgun at them put down the xylophone mallets nice and slowly and face down on the time so this song uh i'm going to turn now to our italio expert mr pox uh you've heard the original by ralph obviously and i on the one hand i sort of miss the basic charm and directness of that version but unlike

the last song we heard this one does lend itself to being covered and this is a wonderful thing in its own right and it has a fascinating character of its own um that kind of bold but understated melodrama is very mid-80s but as far as american top 40 radio hits go it's really the best of the mid-80s. Yeah, she's a weird figure, Laura Branigan, partly for being an American whose music is relentlessly Europhile. Like, not Anglophile, but Europhile. Yeah, she was pushed heavily towards that, wasn't she?

All her hits are versions of Europop songs. Yeah. Didn't tackle Shut Up or Your up your face though which was a bit unfortunate she'd have made a good stab at that it's a shame isn't it but as as as tracy olman was doing the mashed potato with the ghosts of the atomic age um laura was walking towards the light of the via del corso. And it's not uncommon for American culture to flirt with something British or Latin American, but it's strange to see Americans influenced

by continental Europe, you know, unless you count the mafia. But what happens here... And pizzas. But what happens here is exactly what you'd expect to happen in that scenario in that you lose a little individuality

but you gain a bit of power and polish and it's a reasonable deal yes it's very European isn't it I really like the song and I actually I think I prefer Laura Brannigan's version to Raf's. She's in that weird place between sort of Pat Benatar, European pop,

and a bit of power balladry. So the verse is a beautiful European pop music. The chorus becomes a kind of big sort of power chord thing for the rednecks, I guess. But throughout the song, her voice voice it seems like phased to fuck and sort of scattered around the mix and she's just got a better voice than Raph I think

and that's why I prefer this which is actually helped by the supremely strange video oh yes yes it is a bit mental isn't it her cheery Irish smile in her promo picture on the chart rundown does not reflect the content of this video.

No. No, it really doesn't. It's William Freakin'. It's fucking weirdo. With the streets lined with bin liners and gymnasium crash mats. It's a weird video. It's like it's been cut together from several different failed

videos. So the moment when she suddenly starts actually lip syncing is just bizarre. It's like it's been cut together from several different failed videos. So the moment when she suddenly starts actually lip syncing is just bizarre. It's like a Bollywood moment. Yes. But I liked the obscene moments or the rude bits in a way. There's a dirtier version than we get here. This isn't the full length video of the Pops. What the obscene bit or the rude bit entails really is lots of sort of modern dancers undulating covered in paint like the kind of after party to the shoot of elton

john's i'm still standing yes although everyone says everyone has said this reminds them of kind of kubrick's um eyes wide shut um for me a far more close cinematic analogue to it is the orgy scenes in Howling 2 Sturber Werewolf Bitch which is a great film one of the great lost shit films of the 80s it's so rude at one point that one guy who's not

got someone to get off with looks like he's given a viola a kind of reach round it's a really weird video but a weird video for an absolutely brilliant song i knew this song but i didn't know brannigan had done it um yeah but i i think it's probably the best she did better than gloria i would say i hadn't seen this video for years and i um sort of barely remembered it and i absolutely was not prepared for the blatant kinkiness yeah and sort of dark eroticism of it um i mean this is a time when a lot of videos were trying to push it

further and further you know in terms of naughtiness but most of them tended to be steamy right like if you look at madonna videos or prints it's steamy yeah whereas this is kind of cold and disturbed which is why i like it better but it's remarkable to me this was shown on what was effectively a kids program yeah in the middle of the prudish english 80s um like yeah and there's there's the weirdness of it where she's she's walking down the fake street with the yeah the bin liners on the floor wearing a lilac scarf and a pale brown leather coat which in itself is you know quite strange and then behind her there's a pretend building with a picture window and for no reason while she's standing in front of it this black curtain slowly draws back

by itself to reveal in the window two naked floating shop dummies yeah um just there's no for no reason at all um it's great but it's um yeah the heavy lesbian imagery and uh heavy bdsm imagery and uh eroticized fantasy imagery shall we say and the phantom of the opera yeah exactly with the starring the phantom of the opera um and that astonishing bit where she's being um trying to think of a nice euphemistic word for it uh she's being shall we say taken in her bedroom yeah yeah by this guy in the mask comes in and it's like you sort of think okay well um yeah this uh this is not the kind of imagery i normally associate with top of the pops and then he walks up to her grabs the back of her hair and just yanks her down onto the bed with an amount of force that you weren't really expecting.

No. And it's a real... Not even in EastEnders a year later. Precisely, yeah. No. And then there's five seconds of POV porn basically after it. It's weird. But it's vastly more interesting and provocative in its sexuality than any

madonna video partly because laura brannigan does not have a super sexy image exactly yeah it's like the dark thoughts of a real person yeah of a librarian yeah rather than a sort of self-conscious promotional thing. And also, it adds intrigue and depth to the record, but really it brings out the intrigue and reveals the depth of the record. It doesn't just sort of bolt onto the back of the song like a conservatory, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Her Saturday nights were certainly more interesting than mine. Oh, yeah. Shouldn't it end up with someone sniffing her pants at a bar while Hazel Dean was on and Agadou, they used to play Hazel Dean and Agadou all the fucking time at that place now think about it Jesus

so the following week Self Control jumped up to number 6 and would spend 2 weeks at number 5 while Raph's version got nowhere near the uk charts it battled with laura branigan's cover all across europe raf's version got to number one in italy branigan's version did likewise in germany finland sweden austria and in switzerland branigan was knocked off number one by raf who was then usurped by the branigan version again.

Fucking hell, Switzerland. Did you know that Laura Branigan could have been an Olympic standard swimmer? As bad as that, eh? Time now for the top 12, the all-important top 12. Let's do it. At number 12, the Cane Gang are the closest thing to heaven. At number 11, everybody's laughing. Phil Fearon and Galaxy.

At 10, Grandmaster and Mel Mel, White Lines, Don't Do It. It's a Hard Life, Queen at number 9. Hazel Dean's at number 8, Whatever I Do, Wherever I Go. And at number 7, Hole in My Shoe from Neil. At 6, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Relax on the way down for the second time. Number 5, When Doves Fry. That's Prince. And number four, Black Lace, Murderer's Styling, Agadoo. Number three, What's Love Got to Do With It?

Tina Turner. And number two, Careless Whisper by George Michael. And would you believe, after nine weeks, they're still at number one? Yes, is this going to be this year's big Christmas hit? Frankie Goes to Hollywood. This is the song. This is the sound. When you hear the air attack warning, you and your family must take cover. Skinner dropped some Laura Branigan trivia, which peeled bats away as they run down the rest of the chart.

Another huge peel mistake here. Mel Mel. Out of all the Radio 1 DJs, you'd think I'd get that right. Anyway, we lead to the number one djs yeah you'd think i'd get that right anyway we lead to the number one single which is because it's 1980 fucking four frankie goes to hollywood and two tribes we've already discussed frankie goes to hollywood in chant music too and this is the follow-up to relax which got to number one for five weeks at the beginning of the year and is still at number six this week after spending three weeks in a row at number three. First heard on Radio 1 in November 1982 as part of a John Peel session,

Two Tribes saw the band switching its attention from bumhole love to nuclear war at a time when CND had its largest ever membership and we were all going to die not only did they enlist the services of Trevor Horn again they also got in Chris Barry to reprise the Ronald Reagan impersonation he deployed on Spitting Image for one of many 12-inch remixes and got in Patrick Allen the voice of the and Survive public information films made in 1980 that were to be used when the government felt that we were 72 hours away from a nuclear attack. After a prolonged advertising campaign, which included targeted adverts across the music press, including the slogan,

Take cover, you wimps, two tribes will blast the nose off a charging heavy mecha list at 400 paces for sounds. And a table which broke down the biological effects of a 5,000 megaton nuclear war for smash hits. The video, directed by Kevin Godley and Lol Cream, was premiered at midnight on Channel 4 and featured Ronald Reagan and Konstantin Shonenko beating the shit out of each other while being egged on by assorted national stereotypes and was dead good. Of course, it went straight into number one in June

and this is its ninth week at number one and because Top of the Pops aren't showing the video, the band are in the studio again. They spent a lot of time in the Top of the Pops studio't showing the video. The band are in the studio again. They spent a lot of time in the Top of the Pops studio in the summer of 84. And indeed in the BBC bar, by the look of it. Yes, definitely. Well, fucking hell, where do we begin with this?

I mean, the first thing to say is that, you know, to get to number one in 1984, you had to shift a fuckload of records. But to do it for nine weeks fucking hell as far as I was concerned at the time they could have stayed at number one forever because when I was 12 and 13 the most

exciting band in the world to me was Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the album that opened my ears to what an album could do was Welcome to the Pleasure Dome even now after the passage of time watching this clip, you know, the hairs on my head were standing on end. That same thrill

and that same excitement. And to be honest, Frankie might just be the last moment I felt connected with pop, with something that was popular. So ubiquitous that year, but still just totally thrilling because there's such a weird mix of things

i was discussing this with taylor last year and he mentioned that they're kind of that you know what's going on there you've got gay club music you've got art rock you've got prog you've got some but it's weird that it all worked but it did and two tribes as a single for me is their absolute zenith it's yes when what i like looking back on this clip in particular is precisely that moment when holly johnson goes into the crowd and this music is out amongst the people if you like because the artiness of frankie morley's involvement is never front and center it was always about extremely catchy songs and a confidence bordering on arrogance um yeah but crucially the reason this record works in a way for me that is better than say man at cna by the specials or nina's 99

red balloons is because it actually sums up and it did for me at the time how exciting a nuclear war could be it's a weird thing that year i mean we were we were uh you know like a lot of families sort of slightly terrified of the whole thing we had atomcraft nine dank stickers in our car and we had cnd posters up my sister had that you know that thatcher reagan gone with the wind poster yes um you know pre-threads this was the kind of height of my paranoia but also my slight fascination with nuclear war yeah and and and you know seeing mushroom cloud pictures was always a thrill remains a thrill and perhaps perhaps built that year in particular 1984 because in february that year in coventry um the form that you know the

four minute warning siren was set off accidentally um it was it was actually set off in nuniton a place we call treacle town because everyone's so slow and thick there but um it was it was set off by a copper who was showing somebody else how the system worked and he set it off really early in the morning now i was only a little kid but i remember lying in my bed hearing it and knowing what it was and thinking sort of really palpably two thoughts one that i'd had a good innings i was 12 but two that i hoped that before i was incinerated i i got to see the cloud it was simultaneously something both sort of terrifying and intriguing for a lot of us little juvenile kids we were both sort of horrified by nuclear war, but strangely curious to see what it had looked like. And, you know, Two Tribes is thrilling.

It's not a hectoring, preachy kind of... I know it's an anti-war song, but it takes a sort of thrill in the nuclear age as well that's really, really crucial to the way it works. I mean, my memory of these times, I think it was the year before, there was a park near to me now, on Grom Park,

and on one Sunday, they had a CND demo there. Right. The two things I remember were, there was this kind of like, diorama, in a domed glass case, and it was like a village,

kind of setting, you know, there was a bit of a town over here, and there was fields, and there was sheep, and all this kind of stuff, stuff and right in the middle it was like an arcade thing there was a red button and if you press the red button the whole diorama turned around and in the middle was a massive papier-mâché mushroom cloud and then there was all these models of sheep that had been like chopped up and there's red paint coming off them and everything

was ruined and everything it's like oh yeah this is what happens and it's like oh fucking hell and the other thing i remember is uh there was a there was a kind of like a uh a jumble sale kind of element to it i bought hey jude by the beacles simply because uh i was looking at it and some bloke uh some hippie bloke just pointed it and go oh revolution that's a fucking brilliant song buy it and i did it he was right yeah sometimes trust a hippie i say i bet that diorama opened the eyes of those people who thought that a nuclear war would sort of be all right yeah definitely yeah i'd love to know where that is now. That should be in the British Museum. But yeah, I mean, you probably felt the same way as me. A nuclear war was nailed on going to happen.

You see all the newspaper articles now about millennials worried about not being able to buy their own house. It's like, oh, fuck off. We were worried about pissing down our legs in the fucking high street. Yeah. And having to have sex with people for a rat to eat. Yeah, and we must point out that this episode of Top of the Bops is three months before Threads.

So, you know, and we were already shitting it about it. I mean, to be honest with you, I can't remember being that upset or frightened about Threads. I was more watching it and going, yeah, that's what's going to happen because I'd watched all the documentaries and stuff. Like everyone else, I was grimly fascinated by it. Yeah, it's like when I was at school, they took us into the TV room to watch that QED documentary.

Yes, on the eighth day. Yeah, A Guide to Armageddon and it was basically yes it was sort of not really the school's business to do that because

it's not no really educational because it's just saying yeah well you know you're fucked

because there's no education a good life lesson though yeah but you might as well have taught kids that you know what happens if a nuclear

bomb goes off is you know like a you know a load of kangaroos fly up in the air and uh everything turns into custard because it makes no difference you know you're still yeah what you can do just kind of sit there um did learn that unfortunately if you see see the cloud, you're not going to get off lightly, because if you're still around by the time that thing's gone up, you haven't been vaporised, and thus it is rat munch in time. Yes. And also that what it looks like is, yeah, piss coming out of a lady's trouser bottom

and a bloke in a bike up a tree all charred yes yeah but i think i think fred's did change my i'm not saying i was excited by nuclear war and i wanted it to happen but it made it a hell of a lot grimmer in a way um than it had been before and but you know frankie had made it sound exciting because two tribes is is a succession of just thrilling moments uh relax relax is a club track you know and it's constructed around one really important moment the jizz moment if you like um yeah but this is more isn't everything but this is more this is more like rock and roll it's constructed around a kind of series of moments and you know honestly al this was only like two days ago that i was watching

this but those five chords that end this you know the five sort of stabs it's just one of the most thrilling endings to it to a to a pop record ever and, it just seems astonishing that a band like that occupied that centrality to thing. They were kind of the people's band. And there was that summer where the Frankie Says t-shirts were just everywhere. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh was not covered by copyright. So if you got them off the market, it would, so there were actually more Frankie Says than Frankie Say. Yeah, but that still fucking annoys me, man.

Sorry. Trivial Pursuit, Wendy Richard, Mary Hopkin, Chris Eubank, et cetera. Should also put a plug there for the new Half Man Off biscuit album, seeing as it was them who uh alerted me to this rogue s that wankers put on everything yeah but no i mean the amount of bootleg t-shirts that were is proof that just what an odd phenomenon frank frankie were i mean from

here on in the people's pop if you like the stuff that would be getting to the top of the charge would either be sort of balls achingly earnest or sort of lairily legendary you know yeah the sort of the sort of people's bands if you like oasis and the light i mean frankie even though they were everywhere they never got tiresome for me in 84 and 85 and seeing them on telly seeing them on telly was always a total thrill they couldn't keep up the peaks that's the thing they were at in 84 and 85 afterwards but my god when you compare what came after with them that mass the way it seems strange to say it about something that sold so much but i think frankie one of the the most majorly underrated bands in british pop history yeah they're not you know i can sort of clutch at straws and say

the next band who were kind of, I don't know working class, had that centrality to life and were part of you know, mainstream pop culture would be, I don't know, something like Happy Mondays but I'm clutching at straws that Frankie were the bomb and they blew my mind in 84 and 85

This is how big Frankie Goes to Hollywood were in 1984, there were two adverts that ended up in the latest pages of smash hits uh the first one was a picture of a girl in a white t-shirt which says frankie says uh go and get your hair done at so and so and so and so and i'll and gerrard and gerrard yeah that's how terrible my or how perfect my terrible photographic memory for old smashes really is there was also an advert in the property section of a local newspaper which goes like this two tribes could easily fit into this spacious home frankly Frankie Lee, the best.

Don't relax, ring sole agents on whatever telephone number it is. That's how massive they were. Yeah. Live in this house when you want to come. Yes. But I agree with everything Neil said about Frankie. And yeah, we were the same age and I was equally into Frankie Goes to Hollywood at the time. Like they were kind of the first current band

that I was really obsessed with. Prior to that, I'd only been in old groups. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, they were a modern group that sounded completely modern. And yeah, this is obviously the pinnacle of not just them but of that particular kind of record production uh as well as proof that to make a great record and a great number one you don't need a great song in fact you don't even need a song because this isn't even a song it's as neil says it's a sequence of sound events uh

strung along a baseline which is partly why it seems so original at the time i mean above and beyond trevor orne's production i mean there were plenty of funk records before this which were equally sort of uh disjointed and kind of anti-craftsman like in terms of the song but yeah they weren't number one and it's an achievement in itself to cook up this broth of half-formed ideas and not only make it brilliant but make it irresistibly commercial in a way that you know no tune smith could ever hope to match uh yeah it's fantastic and this performance is great as well um aside from at the start where he rips up a copy of this son which might seem like a very clever statement but somebody's mom he's gonna have to sweep it up right I heartily approved

of that even then but it's so obvious that it's because they can't show the video so they've tried to make this look and feel as much like the video as possible they got the sort of tannoy speakers slash air raid siren

and the handheld newsreel camera on holly johnson yeah and the kids with flags yeah support supporting america or russia it's like it's winking at something that everyone knew which is the video yeah but it's like when they bleep a swear word but everyone hears it in their head anyway and that's what this is it's like the two tribes video uh bleeped uh but it works brilliantly um like most of the times when top of the pops tried to make an effort right most of the time you see a group on top of the pops and the clip is so basic and filmed in such a slapdash way you know that when they did a big production number it does stand out and it does have that sense of occasion um yeah and this really works well and it's in a way it's a shame that the band have all swapped instruments for a pissed giggle which kind of shows after nine

weeks they don't really give a toss anymore uh no but you've still got holly plugging away and giving the big performance like the old pro that he is you know he's fantastic he's such a good front man everything he does in this performance yes from the beginning through the bits with the audience well i love the kind of guy who looks like a phd maths lecturer kind of grimacing as the camera goes past him and there's a genuine sense that it's close to chaos when he's out in the audience it's kind of almost like a trap I also love the bit towards the end when he hooks his

walking stick on the lighting rig and I know these seem like little things but I think he's such a fantastic front man Holly Johnson yeah and also just that leering expression on his face the whole time. He just constantly looks like he's out of his head

on some weird chemical that straight people aren't taking yet. You know, just walking through an orgy, looking around and deciding what he wants to do next, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the great images of this video is one of the zoo wankers, some girl just gurning away whilst waving the hammer and sickle.

Yeah, yeah. It's just amazingly subversive since it's 1984. And the only time we'll see the hammer and sickle on television tonight because they're not in the Olympics. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, obviously obviously we can't really touch too much on the video because we don't see it here, but come on. Whose side were you on in that fight? I hated Reagan, so I was on Shenandoah's side. I mean, it's terrible really, isn't it? It's because he was less familiar.

You sort of knew that Reagan was a cunt because he was on telly every day being a cunt. Yeah, yeah. There's this guy you think, well, you know, maybe he just wants to re-nationalise his own name. Yeah. And it's like, no, no, it's like you will have electrodes on your bollocks if you say about this man

what you say every day about Ronald Reagan. But yeah, I was screwing him as well. I was fully on Chinenko's side in that fight because at the beginning he gives Reagan the two fingers like a proper British person. Yeah, yeah. He's one of us, really. But I do like this stupid and sensationalistic

and sort of comical approach to political pop music, right? Because to be honest, the older I get, the more I think that earnest attempts to mix pop and politics should be discouraged, right? I don't mean people singing about their personal experiences or their personal resentment of, you know, aspects of society. I mean pseudo-authoritative political broadsides of the, you know know walls come tumbling

down variety not just because most of them are worthless and you know excruciating but because when they're good i think they may be bad for people right and bad for the political climate and the general discourse because you can only fit so much actual information into a pop song, whereas you can fit an awful lot of emotion in there and that will always dominate. So the problem a lot of the time, including today with politics, is there's more emotion than information. So a pop song is only ever going to reach the level of you know smash the tories

right but with 50 tons of highly persuasive emotion behind it now it's not that i don't want to smash the tories but it's that what this does is politicize people to a certain point and then leave them high and dry right i'm freestyling here it might be boring but you leave people feeling a lot without necessarily knowing much and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing you know and you look around now and there's so much political discussion happening on a on that pop level right and all you get is either smash the tories or the reverse right and then you look at well what is supposed to be well people complain that there's not enough political stuff in music nowadays

yeah but you've got a generation now who grew up with it yeah you know who are now political journalists and you look at people like Owen Jones and Brendan O'Neill and you know left and right and you just think like this is kids stuff you know, left and right. And you just think, like, this is kid stuff.

This is not an expert. Well, this is what it boils down to nowadays, isn't it? The political journalism or political commentary in journalism is either you either have to say something so fucking obvious so people can agree with you and share it on Facebook or essentially be grotbags and, you know, make you angry. But I mean, that video, that recent video, This Is America by Shaking Outcast or whatever it's called,

the reaction to that of people trying to work out what he was saying, I mean, that's the only political sort of stuff that makes it nowadays. Something that's so oblique. It wasn't even the lyrical content people were talking about. It was about the video. For me, the political pop music that I've loved, including Two Tribes, it does two things.

It doesn't tell me what to think necessarily. What it does, it gives me a thrill. First and foremost, it gives me a thrill. And secondly, it's confusing. You know, Public Enemy, those first three pe albums that that they don't necessarily although although they're kind of portrayed as kind of hectoring almost they don't give you a serpentine message to take away with you they're a kind of inferno of ideas and and and and you come out of it just kind of you know trembling trembling with thrilling excitement. That's what's so amazing about Two Tribes.

At no point really in Two Tribes, I know a point is all that you can score, there's no real condemnation going on. And there's a faint excitement of all that missile technology, all that glistening hydraulics. Yes. So it has that confusing thing in there

and i think that's why a bit of honest political confusion for me is is usually more thrilling than a kind of you know rather dull kind of this is my political opinion isn't it completely something that you cannot disagree with yeah what this record does is take geopolitics and drag it down to the level of pop music and you know i would say that it works because this kind of sparkling contempt and sparkling cynicism is something that pop music can teach you very well as opposed to something as complex and dry as politics. So maybe this is healthier than the alternative. I'm not saying that I want a society where everybody thinks of politics as boring

and somebody else's business and is apathetic and doesn't get involved on any level. But maybe that's healthier than the alternative no it probably isn't but i mean basically the the overriding message from this song is we're fucked yeah so let's have a bum first is like this is the subtext and i remember when i was 12 riding my bike around 12 11 whatever i was when i think it was the russians shot down a korean passenger yes and you know this was i know now looking back this was never going to result in a third world war but at the time you thought maybe it would um yeah and i remember riding my bike out uh out in the

street and a plane went over and i was looking up in the sky going oh is that a plane or is that a missile you know as if maybe world war three has started and yeah the trouble is about being 12 it's a funny age because you're just sort of you know early puberty or at least on the cusp of it and yeah what you're thinking is i don't want to die a virgin yeah that's what i was thinking yeah but i was the adrian mole situation it's like you know where's michael jackson i don't know what are you gonna do you you're kind of screwed there there's unfortunately there's not a solution to that problem. Yeah. And there was just great art created by everyone being shit up by nuclear war. You know, we've got threads, countdown to looking glass, special bulletin, one of my particular favourites. You know, it was going to happen for us.

And then, you know, bloody East Germany ruined it for everyone by wanting to be free and get into the Scorpions. Don't worry. In the same way that I tell myself in middle age about a lot of things, it may not be too late. Yeah. Yeah. There's that amazing photograph, isn't there, of the day the Berlin Wall,

well, the day after the Berlin Wall went down, of all these East Germans in a newsagent buying wank mags. Liberation. Yeah. What was the most popular wank mag in East Germany? Reedy Dior's wives. So the following week, Two Tribes was finally knocked off the top by Careless Whisper by George Michael.

But it became the longest running number one of the 1980s, selling over one and a half million copies. During its time at number one, it kept I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me by Nick Kershaw, Relax Again and Hole in My Shoe by Neil off the number one spot. Frankie did an unofficial Frankie Say t-shirt that said, Frankie Say We Fucked The Hippie, by the way. The follow-up, The Power Of Love, made it to number one in December of this year, making Frankie the second band after Jerry and the Pacemakers to have their first three singles get to number one.

But their only release of 1985, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, was kept off number one by Easy Lover by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins. Diminishing returns set in and they split up in 1987. If only they'd have died at the end of 1984, it would have been perfect. The trouble is, Al, you know, with Frankie, sorry, I know we want to move on,

but they have, it seems they've had no palpable influence onwards on British pop. And that's heartbreaking, really, you know. An awful lot of shitty bands have had quite a big effect but Frankie the spirit of them

the oddity of them the thrill of them just seems to have disappeared it's disappeared because essentially you know you could call this lad rock it's lad making music do you know what I mean but now what lad rock means is plugging in vintage equipment having a vintage haircut and trying to sound like it's Lad Rock making music but now what Lad Rock means is plugging in vintage equipment

having a vintage haircut and trying to sound like it's 1973 whereas the possibilities that Frankie held up as to what could be done haven't been followed up perhaps precisely because you can't follow them up because they're so unique and completely

unfollowable because it was just unique to that band in that time. And if you thought this conversation was deep and detailed, just wait till we get to the war song by Culture Club. I'm too tired to walk I'm too tired to walk I'm too tired to walk and we can just have that wallet back, OK? He's leaving me to tell you that next week it's the Batman and Robin of Radio 1. That's Andy Peebles and Steve Wright on Top of the Pops. We'll leave you with Rod Stewart, Some Guys, Have All the Luck. Good night.

We've already covered Rod Stewart in chart music number 13, so we'll just say that this is his 28th top 40 hit. It's the follow-up to Infatuation. We've got to number 27 in June of this year. And there's a cover of the 1973 single by The Persuaders that had been heavily reinterpreted by Robert Palmer in 1980. And it's up this week from number 32 to number 25. There's a bit of a calm down, isn't there?

Oh, God, just a bit, yeah. Rod Stewart, or as I call him, or we call him around here anyway, Rod, I think Enoch is the man. This country is overcrowded. The immigrants should be sent home, Stewart. Did he say that? He did in 1970. So he's managed to

brush that one under the carpet in a way that Eric Clapton never did. In a way that Clapton didn't. I mean, it's a long time ago, I guess. But there you go. The Persuaders version of this, by the way, is so good. I love that version. It's brilliant, isn't it? As you'd expect.

Same people who did It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Thin Line is just one of the greatest records ever. I mean, the only good thing about this version is that in the sort of pantheon of shite that Rod did in the 80s, this is not Every Beat of My Heart, which is one of the worst songs ever, but it's still pretty grim.

I mean, he'd just gone through a phase where he was looking like Simon Le Bon's dad arsing about on a ship with a fucking headband and it's like the Kenny Everett inflating arse yes but this can't be that terrible because

it's a good song and he's still got a good voice so that's why it seems less shit than some of his other records. Yeah. It's still a disgrace because like, you know, yeah, the original is a lovely sort of soulful R&B record, although not one you would expect to be disinterred twice in the next 10 years.

But, you know, a good record of the type of which there seems to be an unlimited supply in the early 70s and then robert palmer's version is like 94 pure cocaine yes it's like it's amazing isn't it yeah it's like a an 80sified version of the lindsey buckingham songs on tusk yeah like really sort of hyped up and weird. And bright and brittle. Yeah, it's exactly that. Yeah.

But it's one of those weird little choices that Robert Palmer periodically would make in an otherwise flat career. Yeah. You know, like when he did that yodelling song. Yes. Just sort of out of the blue. But then Rod comes along and he smooths it back out.

Yeah. And he puts an iron on it and by the time he's finished you can see right through it like a 10 year old hospital gown you know yeah and most of the charm has gone so this isn't like a really bad record like unless you're allergic to this kind of top 40 aor yeah but it just shouldn't be here yeah or anywhere yeah you know yeah particularly after after the previous song we've had it's such a comedown and and what makes it worse is that the the zoo wankerage is at fucking maximum isn't it there's a lot of zoo wankers out but unlike previous it's calmed down a bit hasn't it has calmed down a bit but the camera can't help but catch an awful lot of just normal people, which is nice.

The zoo people do push themselves forward a little bit, but it does catch quite a lot of just normal punters, which is actually pretty rare for an 80s... There's that couple who have got their arms around each other's waist, and they're doing that synchronised side-to-side arse-wiggling, which is just so fucking Brian Rogers' connection. But the thing that fucks me off about this song is Rod Stewart, of all people, moaning about other people getting lucky.

Yeah. It's like your arse has probably just stopped going up and down by about this point. How much fucking shagging have you had, mate? And now you're moaning that, oh, some other people are having sex and not me for a change. This is like the incel Rod Stewart.

Yeah. I mean, one day we'll have a peak period Rod Stewart record here. And I'll save my kind words for then. Yes, yes, yes. At this point, he's a stuffed panther on a plinth and the trouble is from now on it's like in the same way that he only fancied one very specific type of woman he only made one very specific type of record you know like pleasant enough but very bland the thing is

what you said out there should be nothing after no there shouldn't be anything because the trouble is this awful record's playing and all the audience have still got their russia yes yes they won't shop with it immediately yeah and but but the whole i'm not saying the significance of it is neutered but just the thrill of all of that just evaporates immediately. And it almost starts to taint what has come before. Exactly, yeah. The whole episode, you know, I've said it before,

but those last five stabs of two tribes, that should have been the moment where the BBC logo comes up and it fades into whatever's coming next. Well, if they'd have been able to run the video, that's probably exactly what they would have done. Yeah. Particularly as the world blows up. They could have done something with the BBC logo,

like the goodies did. But I mean, it's still very jarring to see people in 1984 on one of the biggest TV programmes waving the hammer and sickle about. It would be like people waving an ISIS flag on Friday night or something, wouldn't it? The thing I have to remind myself with Rod because there's so much 80s material

and the 80s singles, because unfortunately my child won't let me listen to anything other than free Radio 80s in the car all I hear is Rod 80s stuff, I do have to remind myself yeah, I mean I do have to remind myself yeah I mean I do have to remind myself just what amazing beautiful records things like Maggie Mae and you know

you wear it well yeah and you wear it well yeah of course so the following week some guys have all the luck jumped 5 places to number 20 and eventually got to number 15 the follow up Trouble only got to number 95 in December of this year.

And he'd have to wait until July of 1986 for his next big hit. Every beat of my heart. Fucking record. I'm alone in the dark. It's that bit in that fucking record. He shouts, I'm lost and alone in the dark. He stops singing, shouts it. I want to fucking punch the radio every time I hear it.

Yeah, well, the jarring thing about that record is when he goes on about Babylon. The rod of correction. So, what's on the telly afterwards? Well, BBC One piles straight into the episode of Heidi High where Maplins is infested with

chads until Ted Bovis lies his arse off about Fred Quilley's war record over the tannoy and gets everyone to clean them up. Fucking classic episode. I love Heidi High. What no laughs. Followed by the documentary series The Paras, the 9 o'clock news, then it's back to Olympic grandstand for the synchronised swimming, then the Carla Lane sitcom solo.

And then back to Los Angeles to see Daley Thompson smashing it in the decathlon. BBC2 is running Hearty Goes to Hollywood. See? See what they did there? Where Russell Harty catches up with the fit, the fanatical and the freaky. Then the Tony Lobianco film the last tenant highlights from the cricket the final installment of apocalypse where billy graham bangs on about the four horsemen for 10 minutes then news night and then finishes off with the john belushi film

old boyfriends itv gets round to the female sitcom Poor Little Rich Girls, the documentary Cuba, 25 Years of Revolution, then the news at 10 and the Jane Fonda and John Voight post-Vietnam romance film Coming Home. Channel 4 is broadcasting looks familiar with Dennis Norton, Anna Neagle and Larry Grayson, followed by Soap, the Irish RM, and finishes with a disabled documentary series, When the World Changed. Fucking hell, it's a bit heavy manners on the telly tonight, isn't it? So, me boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Frankie. Frankie, all morning.

I mean, what a thrilling performance. And I'll probably also be talking about the Laura Branigan video. Yeah, I think the outrageously incongruous imagery of the Laura Branigan video may have washed over me at the time. But yeah, Frankie, even after all these weeks.

And what are we buying on Saturday? Because there's bound to be another Frankie 12-inch remix out. Well, I'd get that. I'd probably get the Laura Branigan actually if I mean if yeah and and also Windjammer

mustn't forget Windjammer that's a great record yeah nowadays Windjammer, Laura Branigan, Hazel Dean probably would already have bought Frankie although with that whenever a hit has that sort of lifespan, I know they padded it out with

12 inches and stuff, but there's other records that have done that too. You do wonder who buys it in the ninth week at number one. I've been umming and ahhing about this record. But I think I quite like it. Yeah.

And what does this episode tell us about the summer of 84? Well, you know, in a pop sense, I think we've previously traced a kind of deterioration from 83 onwards. Yes. And, you know, towards Live Aid. But actually, I was really pleasantly surprised by this episode. There's an interesting little moment being charted here where American singers are being influenced by europe where underground kind of dance cultures

like high energy are getting straight right you know near the top of the charts and and you know where frankie are happening fundamentally perhaps perhaps the last interesting massive thing to happen in british pop music of the 80s. Yeah, I mean, I was there. And not only do I not remember seeing this particular Top of the Pops, may have been on summer holidays or something, where you wouldn't have a telly. But it seems quite different from the way I remember Top of the Pops in 1984. A lot more effort gone into the sets and the presentation yeah sense of a bigger budget

slightly less of an american obsession uh yeah and a lot more enjoyable but i think the lack of coherence tells us something about the instability of pop music at this point but uh it's yeah for the better i think so that brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music all that remains now is for me to give out the usual flange which is there's our website www.chart-music.co.uk

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Thank you very much Neil Kulkarni Good on you Taylor Parks My name is Al Needham And mine is the last Voice you will ever hear On this podcast. Apart from Chris Needham.

And whoever else I bung on at the end. Shush, Taylor, I'm the last voice you'll ever hear. Shark music. When you take cover in your inner refuge, you must not go outside until it is absolutely safe. And if the fallout is heavy, you may be in your refuge for quite a long time. Although the danger from fallout will get less and less as time goes by, you will never be able to judge for yourself how bad it is. Advice will be given to you on the radio, so keep listening.

And stand by for blasting Judas Priest goes straight in at number 31. This advice over the radio and other instructions and news will be very important to you while you're cut off from the people living around you. Yeah, and that remains at number 20. Not a good week for Roxy Music. Down eight places too. Number 19! So make sure your radio is in good working order. And if you have a spare radio, keep it in your fallout room. At six this week, Gary Newman. I die, you die.