Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #27 - May 6th 1982: We Form Like Voltron, And KGA Is The Head

Episode Date: June 18, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: has there ever been a Good Bates? The year is 1982, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and the world is waiting for England. Actually, no - what the world is waiting for is for Tomorrow's World to piss off, because this episode of The Pops is a bit special. No less than three football teams have been hitting the BBC bar all afternoon and rubbing a manky-jumpered shoulder with the Pop Elite and partake in an unforgettable half-hour-and-a-bit of flag-waving, scarf-brandishing, dirge-chanting palaver. It's not all footybollocks, though: Junior and Patrice Rushen get danced at by Zoo wankers. Original Junglists Tight Fit pretend to be Abba. Angry-yet-penitent Jim Diamond enters the fray. Bananarama get a leg-up by their mates Fun Boy Three. And Paul McCartney delivers a message to Racism: You Can Do One Right Now Please. And there's an actual war on. And fucking hell, it's Ken Baily! Simon Price and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a snuffle at the gusset of the Union Jack shorts of 1982, breaking off on such tangents as time travel-assisted infanticide, using members of the 1982 Brazil squad to insult girls you don't like, the incredible England 1982 LP, seeing Him Out Of Tight Fit in a Welsh nightclub, and how to make your own bra out of the contents of your pants drawer. This time - more than any other time - the swearing is outstandingly prolific. 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. Taxes 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 which stalks a random episode of Top of the Pops on the playground, pushes it down, grips its thighs with its powerful front legs, and bums it, and bums it, and bums it, until Sir comes along and chews it out the way. I'm your host, Al Needham,

and if I appear to be looming high above you, it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. And this episode, those giants are Taylor Parks. Yeah, hello there. And Simon Price. Hello. Chaps, how are we? Anything pop and interesting happening in your lives?

Nothing at all. Yeah, I've got laryngitis. Yeah. Oh. I've got some sort of uh infection which i'm all i'm all medicated and i've decided the best thing to fix a bad throat is to talk for three hours while drinking coffee excellent simon you've been up to oh um no i'm just very excited that the world cup is actually upon us. I spent about two days searching every WH Smith

in England and Wales, literally, for a copy of when Saturday comes to get the wall chart. But I've now got it blue-tacked to my wall and I'm beside myself with excitement. There's one of me here and one of me sat next to me. That's how beside myself I am. Good Lord. Because I don't give a fuck.

I'm absolutely shocked at how little of a fuck I'm giving about this World Cup. It's really upset me. Why is it? Why do you think that is? Well, I know a lot of people aren't up for it because it's in Russia, but, you know, to be honest, that means very little because my favourite World Cup of all time is Argentina

1978, and, you know, they weren't exactly the nicest people in the world at the time. Well, exactly, yeah. I quite like the retro touch of holding the World Cup in a nasty human rights abusing right-wing autocracy. It takes me back. Yeah, yeah.

I tell you what, though, whatever else can be said about Russia, at least they've come up with a reasonable World Cup mascot, which is apparently beyond most enlightened countries. If Footix, Golio, and the genuinely hideous Nick, Eito, and Kaz from Korea and Japan in 2002 are anything to go by. This year we've got, what's he called, Zabivaka. He's a cuddly wolf in ski goggles.

Nice. Presumably a heterosexual Russian Orthodox Christian wolf. But apparently a heartthrob for the furry community, which is sort of pleasing, I think. They like Zabivaka, and the ones who have a taste for stronger stuff fantasise about Bummer Dog. Bummer Wolf.

No, I mean, Simon, me and the World Cup, you know, it's been a love thing for so long. I mean, on the morning of the opening World Cup game, I always just bolt out of bed and just shout World Cup World Cup World Cup World Cup and I can't I can't imagine myself doing that tomorrow uh because we're recording this the day before the World Cup and um you know I mean New Year's Eve you know every four years the first thing that comes out of my mouth at midnight is to turn around to my mate and just go World Cup yeah and for this one I just can't be arsed I. I think it's less to do with it being in Russia and more to do with just being sick of modern football. It just gets rammed up your arse all the time and it's not special anymore. I mean, you know, with this World Cup, you know, we've seen everyone. You know, if you

wanted to, you could have sat down this last season and seen everything Messi and Ronaldo did. Whereas, you know, back in the day, you saw Johan Cruyff for about 10 seconds on the ball every now and then. Yeah, but I've got no idea who the South Korea players are, particularly, or Saudi Arabia. There's always going to be something

that you just don't know. I mean, I've got a bunch of mates in Brighton and we do a sweepstake draw and I drew out Japan and South Korea 250 to 1 and 500 to 1 I'm pretty fucked off about that but you know I know what you're saying

and we're a kind of overexposed football saturation but there'll always be something absolutely insane that happens in a World Cup and I'm not going to say it's a level playing field because it's by no means immune to the you know financial machinations which affect club football but there there is something a bit more kind of Olympian about it and there is you know you you still do get things like Said Al-Awar and you know that's one that amazing goal for Saudi Arabia yeah there always will be

some some shocks and some upsets and some somebody you absolutely hate will get their face rubbed in the shit. You absolutely know it. And I mean, I'm gutted that Wales aren't there. You must be. Because we did so well in the Euros and I went to the final game of our qualifying campaign where we got turned over at home by Ireland. And Ireland were awful.

And they then went and got knocked out by Denmark in the playoff thing. So if Wales had qualified, would you have gone? I would, but I was secretly or not so secretly relieved that we failed because the idea of going to Russia, I was absolutely shitting it because in France, I was camping. Me and my best mate from school days,

we actually went and camped our way around France in both centres of the word. And it was just so idyllic and so beautiful. But the idea of trying that in fucking Russia, can you imagine? Would you care to explain what you were, how you were attired for these games? Yeah, I did because it was the year that we lost David Bowie and Prince. So I did an Aladdin Sane style lightning flash across my face in red and green for Wales. And I wrote the word... You were Yaki Dardos, weren't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wrote the word Wales in eyeliner on my cheek, a la slave, when Prince did that. So I was honouring them with my uh match day get up um but yeah the idea of doing that in in russia um it was no yeah pretty terrifying to be honest so i'm kind of if we had to miss a tournament i think it's quite a good one to miss yeah but once i got over the disappointment it was like well okay you know wales are hardly ever in the fucking tournament so this is just normality now and And I usually pick someone else to support. I used to love the ex-communist countries

or even the still communist countries. I was always, particularly in the 90s, I love watching Bulgaria, Romania, countries like that. And I've also always got a soft spot for Hispanic countries. So, you know, Colombia and Spain themselves. Can't support Spain this year because of what Sergio Ramos, Sergio Ramos doing his WWE SmackDown shoulder dislocation on Liverpool's Mo Salah. So that's out of the question.

So I think maybe Egypt will be, you know, because of Mo Salah will be the team that I'm cheering for. Yeah. Because being a freelancer, this is the only benefit nowadays to being a freelancer, isn't it? Well, you say that, but it means I'm not the most motivated and ambitious person at the best of times.

This means I'll just get fucking nothing done for a whole month. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. So before we actually talk about fucking pop music music instead of ranting on about football like some fucking twatty blokes in a pub it's time once again to give thanks to the latest pop craze youngsters who got their hands down the back of their own sofas and kicked in some dollar

in the name of chart music and those people are mac mClure, Dominic Ellison, Becca Carroll, Paul Fern, Lorna Easton, and Stephen Kinsella. Thank you. Thank you so much. And don't forget, if you've been listening to Chart Music and you've not lobbed any cash over yet, I want you to get out of your chair. I want you to put your hand on the iPhone or tablet or computer or whatever you're listening to this on. And I want you to pledge your money right now. Stop what you're doing. Go to patreon.com slash chart music and do the right thing. We love our Patreon subscribers, don't we?

Oh, yeah. Best. Try not to sound like Johnny Rotten there on the Bill Grundy show oh yes they really turn us on no but seriously

thank you nah then Pop Crazy Young says at the time of recording we are only one day away from the World Cup

and yeah like I said I'm just not arsed it's like it's like the World Cup has had its haircut and I don't fancy it anymore so oh come on pull yourself together Cup's had its haircut and I don't fancy it anymore.

Oh, come on, pull yourself together. It's going to be brilliant. I know. It's like not being interested sexually in anything anymore. You know, it's just... Is this what getting old's like? I'm longing for that day. I'm quite into it.

I like the fact that no one anywhere in the world can defend at the moment, which might make for an entertaining few weeks until the inevitable grim grind of the knockout stage. So anyway, in an attempt to get me G'd up for the World Cup and in commemoration of what's going to happen over the next month or so, we have lingered over the quality street tin of old episodes of Top of the Pops, rammed our hands down to the bottom, and we've pulled out a very special episode for many reasons. Because this episode of Top of the Pops takes us all the way back to May the 6th, 1982.

First time England have been involved in our lifetimes, pretty much. You know know this is another great reason for being a kid in the 70s you have such low expectations of the England national side and the idea of England being in a World Cup that's as fucked up as a man being allowed

to be Prime Minister wasn't it I've only got the vaguest memories of the 1982 World Cup even though I know I watched some of it, because I became a very casual follower of football for about five or six years when I was a kid, which, as luck would have it, happened to be the five or six worst

and most depressing years in English football history. But I still watch World Cups and FA Cup finals, but they sort of washed over me. I was probably daydreaming about New York in the 1960s or something ridiculous like that. Simon, you were well up for 1982 World Cup, I recall you saying. Yeah, I was.

The first World Cup I actually remember was 1978 in Argentina. And I loved that one, but I was only 10 years old at that point so by so you make you would have missed a lot of games because they're on late night weren't they very late yeah absolutely so a lot of it I've just seen the highlights and stuff like that and you know it's just you know 78 is a very sort of hazy memory of um ticker tape falling down from the top of you know stadiums where previously dissidents would have been dropped and stuff like that. But,

but 82 was the one that it's, it's in vivid full colour in my mind, you know, I absolutely loved it. I was upset. I mean, it was pretty much the height of my obsession with football anyway. It was,

it was the time when my love of pop and football were both at the same peak um i hadn't yet reached that thing where i had to decide it's one or the other um uh would you know eventually because you did at the time didn't you eventually yeah yeah i mean eventually i ditched football for about 10 years starting from about 84 85 onwards but at this point my bedroom walls um there were um basically three walls i could put posters on because there was windows. And I had two walls of music and one wall of football, mostly Liverpool. And, yeah, I was so, so up for this one. Really was.

I know that I watched the final on black and white portable in the chalet in Butlins in Bognor. Oh, man. Nice. I still think 82 was the best World Cup, or at least it's my favourite World Cup. Yeah. Obviously, it's always going to be a personal thing

on your memories of it. You know, probably people will say 1970 is clearly the best World Cup from an objective point of view. But for me, it's 82. I mean, Spain themselves, the Spanish apparently call it El Gran Fracaso, which means the great failure because of how poorly the national team performed. But I think they put on a great World Cup, even down to the artwork, right?

Every city had a poster by a renowned artist. So the poster for the tournament as a whole was by Juan Miro. But there were things, there was this guy called Gerard Titus Carmen, did one for Guihon, which was just some goal net, black against white, and it looks bleak and really industrial. And it's just really cool. There was Jacques Monnery for vigo was almost vortices this player kind of running towards you with a sense of speed and motion is

brilliant and um jean-michel folon for zaragotha um the pitch becomes a person and it reminds me of max ernst's the elephant celeb if you know i mean this kind of this pitch with arms and legs and a head and um oh yeah, all of that. They just put so much into it, the Spanish. No, they're weird like that, the Spanish. It's like when you go there, it's the same way that they have this mad idea that you can mix old and new architecture

without just obliterating the old. They seem to think that art is, like, not just a thing for ponces. Yeah. Weird. And just in terms of the play, I mean, there were two teams that stood out for me, Brazil andzi. Yeah. Weird. And just in terms of the play, I mean, there were two teams that stood out for me, Brazil and France.

Yeah. Yes. Brazil, you had Zico, Eder, Falcao, Socrates, Tonino,

Cerezo. Oh, yes. I actually named my cat after Zico that year. I wanted to call him Kenny after Dalglish, but my mum wouldn't allow it. And then France, France,

you had Didier Cisse, Jean Tiguenat, Marius Trezor, Michel Platini, Dominic Rocheteau, all those players. Just a fantastic team. And then just a few players

for other teams, like Boniek for Poland. Kubias for Peru, although he was better in 78. And people like that. And the Germans being the baddies. That was amazing. The Germans really rose the occasion

to be the sort of... The villains. There wasdies, that was amazing. The Germans really rose the occasion to be the sort of... They didn't let you. The villains. There was the notorious Anschluss match, of course. Yes. The disgrace of Gijon, where Austria colluded with them to eliminate Algeria by letting West Germany score one goal

and then playing out the remaining 80 minutes, just kicking the ball around. And then, of course, Harold Schumacher taking out Patrick Battiston with one of the most shocking, horrendous fouls in football history, almost killing him. Yes.

So, yeah, because they were the... Basically, I wanted France and Brazil, France or Brazil to win. Italy played not unattractive football. It was kind of dramatic, but with a bit of flair. In fact, it was probably the perfect balance

Italy probably were the ideal team they probably did deserve to win but yeah just from the romantic point of view France and Brazil

were just beautiful to watch I was frothing at the gash to see Brazil because this was pretty much the last World Cup where Brazil were proper Brazil they were really Brazil

weren't they yeah yeah I mean even before the World Cup started, if you're having a game of football out in the street, you could just hear kids going, Socrates goal! Yeah. And Foucault, that was another great one.

Because you kind of like say that when some guy you didn't like walked past. But Taylor, I know you're a fan of watching the old World Cups on the official FIFA films. So even if you only have dim memories of it at the time, what are your thoughts about it as a tournament, 82? Yeah, I'm a total historian bore about all of this now, including all the years I missed. Yeah, 82 is brilliant because also it was sort of at that point

where the gradual speeding up of football had just sort of reached the optimum point where you didn't get games that were just a load of people chasing around. You know, it was slow enough to look like old football, but quick enough to not be boring. And, you know, tactical enough to be interesting but not you know depressingly defensive and of course the main thing was the you know the scenario the possible scenario of england meeting argentina in the knockout stage yes which is something that

nobody wanted my fucking ass man i'd have been so up for that and so would the Argentinians man and the whole world would have watched it it's just like oh this is going to be fucking brutal Maradona's head would have exploded at some point yeah it's in the same way as you know this this is not the sort of thing we like to see on a football pitch Radio 1 News So what was in the news this week? Well, news is still coming out about the sinking of the HMS Sheffield, which happened two days previously. Two Harrier jump jets have gone missing over the South Atlantic.

Argentina agreed to the UMP's proposals over the Falklands while the UK does not. Tam Payton, former manager of the Bay City Rollers, is jailed for three years on indecency charges in Edinburgh and the 70s are officially dead. Film of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan is screened at the trial of John Hinckley in Washington. The world middleweight title bout between Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is postponed after Hearns injures his hand in training. But the big news this week is that Adam and the Ants have split up. But the even bigger news this week is that Mark Ormond has agreed to pose nude in a photo shoot and his label have had to shell out two grand to ensure the general public never gets to see them

oh mark what will you do next i didn't know about that why i've just spent months writing um the booklet for soft cells um yes you have box set the career spanning box set and i didn't know that i don't know how that's escaped my attention well they hid it very well then maybe the box set needs to have that sort of that image hidden on one of the discs kind of yeah you know on the cover of the enemy this week is eddie out of iron maiden on the cover of smash hits nick haywood the number one lp in the uk is bar air live in britain by barry manilow complete madness is number two and 1982 by status quo is number three over in the usa the number one single is i love rock and roll by joan jett and the black arts and the number one lp is chariots of fire by vangelis so chaps what were we doing in May of 1982?

Because there was this kind of war thing going on at the time. I was, by this point, I was 14 years old. I was, you know, still at school, Barry Boy's comp in the third year,

I think. And I was very, very politicised. I'd been politicised by pop, really. And I was very Labour and very pacifist and a member of cnd and all of that so i'd be watching the unfolding events in the south atlantic with increasing despair uh and because i could see the way that the mood of the country was going it's not as if

i had any great hopes for michael foote winning the next election anyway but there seemed to be some chance that people were so disenchanted with, you know, mass unemployment and Thatcherism that there might be a way of overturning the Tories. But when, when, when,

when the war happened, it was, it was over, game over. It was the first, the first TV war in Britain, I think really, you know,

the Americans, they'll say Vietnam was their first televised war. I think, you know, for British people, this was the first one where we were following events in real time on telly. You're kind of right, but I've been looking into this and apparently it was 57 days into the war before we saw actual recent footage of the war going on. The Ministry of Defence just absolutely threw the blanket over it in a way that you just couldn't do today. Yeah, I remember there were these really weird press conferences. There was that guy, John Knott, who was...

Was he the Defence Secretary? He was the Defence Secretary, but the bloke you're thinking of is called Ian MacDonald. Right. Who was a bit like a bespectacled funeral director. Yeah, and had a really weird manner announcing... Donald. Right. Who was a bit like a spectacle funeral director. Yeah. And had a really weird manner.

Yes. Announcing. Yeah. Actually, you're right, aren't you? Because there was that thing of the BBC guys saying, I counted them all out and I counted them all back because of the restrictions on it.

But eventually, you know, we started seeing what was going on. Yeah. So this episode was only about three days after the sinking of the Belgrano with the loss of 275 lives and, of course, prompting the sun's vile headline, Gotcha. Yeah. And we now know, and we learned at some point after this,

that the ship was outside the total exclusion zone, which Britain had unilaterally declared around the Falklands. point after this that the ship was outside the total exclusion zone which britain had unilaterally declared around the falklands and not only that but sailing away from the area yeah um thatcher only a few weeks after this episode was taken to task on nationwide by by a viewer and i'm sure you've all seen that amazing footage but um all all of this stuff would have been combining to um fuel both my kind of outrage and absolute despair about, you know, the way the country was going and the hope of anything changing, really.

Still, it was nice to see the fascists kicked off British soil. Yes. That's the other view. I was reporting on it. It was me and Max Hastings in a foot race to Port Stanley, but I tripped over a mole wheel. What did it mean to you, Taylor, being a bit younger? Nothing.

No? No. You know, I was 10. Too young for the draft. Because we were well worried about it at first until we realised that the Falkland Islands were fucking miles away. It was that typical Adrian Mole thing. Were you one of those people who thought it was in Scotland?

Yes, yes. For about an hour. And it was really strange because, you know, I'd been raised on Battlecomic and Commando and all this kind of stuff. And all of a sudden, oh, there's a war

that's in the here and now. And so, you know, it was all a bit weirdly exciting for a time. And then it got really boring because it took them six weeks to get there. And then people started dying. And it's like, oh, this ain't so much fun anymore. Yeah, I mean, I've got family members who were there who were, yeah, yeah. And even though they were never diagnosed with ptsd or anything i think it's pretty clear that that they they did have that um pretty pretty horrific um and um the

thing is you oh you you say it was it was a war in our lifetime um you weren't allowed to call it a war were you at the time it was the conflicts the falcons conference that was the sort of official line on it wasn't it well it was professional soldiers versus conscripts which is always a bit of a turkey shoot i don't think they were very good the argentine army they didn't really want to be there whereas you know at least 75 percent of our boys really really did want to be there at least until they got there um so you know yeah that that always tends to tip the balance so uh i know for a fact that i'd missed this episode of top of the pops when it first came out because i was in germany at the time i was uh on a school exchange in a village called kisp near cologne and uh yeah that was it was a very weird experience uh i was you know i

was pretty immature for 14 for a kick-off. And so I was immediately massively homesick. And I was pretty much intimidated by the realisation that maybe Britain wasn't the greatest country in the world after all because this village was fucking lovely. It was like Heimat. And the first Monday we were there, we went to their school and it was fucking enormous.

It was like the breakfast club. And they all started at 8 o'clock. And they all had subjects like technique and stuff like that. And, you know, we're in the kind of like auditorium. And it's absolutely fucking massive. And it's like, oh, shit, these people are a bit advanced. And we went to, you know, we got tours of factories and stuff, which was pretty boring.

But looking back on it, it's like, oh, fucking hell, what the fuck are we going to show know we got tours of factories and stuff which was pretty boring but looking back on it it's like oh fucking hell what the fuck are we going to show them when they come here because we ain't got no factories anymore and everyone was really nice and the problem was my partner um he was in hospital at the time um and so i just spent a lot of time on my own and uh i was just spent a lot of time in my own and I just spent a lot of time in his room going through his record collection and the three albums I played to death in those two weeks were Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants,

which I hadn't heard all the way through and I loved that. I think it was October by U2, which I wasn't massively keen on, but he had this album by a German band called Extra Bright, which was called, oh, what was it called? Yeah, he had this album called

Welkein Land was für Männer by Extra Bright, which was fucking mint. It was Das Präsident ist tot. That's a fucking great song. And so, yeah, so I spent a lot of time listening to them and going through his back copies of Bravo, which I've mentioned before,

which had lots of pictures of kind of semi-naked teenage girls in it, which was all right at the time, you know, because I was one, a boy, obviously. The weird thing was we were finding out news about the Falklands war like hours before I would have done if I was in Britain I remember his parents knocking on the door and saying sitting me down and saying uh you know we've just heard that the the HMS Sheffield has been sunk and I just went sche Oh, the other thing about Germany which did my head in was I'd just turned 14 the Saturday before

and I was allowed to go in pubs all of a sudden. Wow. So I did a lot of that, but you had to be 18 to go into amusement arcades, which was a bit wrong in my mind because I was dead good at Donkey Kong and wanted to show off to my new German friends. No, they got their priorities right.

Yeah. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And of course, when, you know, afterwards I just thought, oh, fucking hell, what are we going to show them when they come to our school?

And the look on their faces when they got to our comprehensive school, it was like, what the fuck are these people like? And, you know, we just ended up taking them to Alton Towers. So what else was on telly this day well BBC One starts the day with schools programmes followed by Pebble Mill at One

Chock-a-Block You and Me more schools programmes than Play School The Drack Pack The Littlest Hobo Blue Peter BBC News Regional News in Your Area

and then nationwide. At the moment, Tomorrow's World is showing us how to bring a golf course into your living room. Yeah, hang on a minute, hang on a minute. You gloss over these schools' programmes. I had a look at the TV listings for this day. Oh, sorry. And at 7.30am, there was an open university programme called Aluminium in Linemouth, set in the glittering world of smelting

in a factory near Berwick-upon-Tweed. I think we should do a podcast about that. Yeah, the golden age of television. Three and a half hours. Leave them screaming for more. BBC Two was run Play school and then shut down for an hour and a half and then it goes over to sheffield for the world snooker championships then there's racing at chester berlin ziedlungen an open university documentary about german pre-war

housing estates then buck rogers the great egg race sorry mate i didn't see you an educational Then Buck Rogers, The Great Egg Race, Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, an educational series for young motorcyclists. More snooker and is currently running the drama series County Hall. About a county hall. ITV has transmitted schools programs, Crown Court, Afternoon Plus, The Cuckoo Waltz, Jangles, Sport Bel-Air, University Challenge, The News at 5.45, Regional News in Your Area, Crossroads, and is currently running Emmerdale Farm.

Just listening to the names of those afternoon TV programmes just makes me want to close the curtains and start masturbating. All right, then, Pop Craze youngsters. It's time to go way back to May of 1982. Don't forget, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on top of the pops more than we have. It's the evening of May the 6th, 1982,

and Top of the Pops is two years into a revamp instigator by michael hull which has seen legs and co replaced by zoo audible audience sounds flags and balloons and in this episode we're going to see the final new element because from may of 1981 and on an occasional basis top of the pops returns to its roots and goes live. The main reason for this is because after a bank holiday, the release of the new chart back then was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday, meaning that the recording on Wednesday involved massive amounts of guesswork as to what was going to go up and down. It also gave Top of the Pops the opportunity to try out a few special episodes, which we'll be covering in due course, but it mainly gave Top of the Pops the opportunity to try out a few special episodes, which we'll be covering in due course. But it mainly gave Top of the Pops the opportunity to bang on relentlessly

about how live and vital and wow they were. Chaps, did the live shows do anything for you? Were you that bothered? No. I think that, you know, I would only have perceived it as songs I like sounding a bit worse than they ought to, rather than, oh wow, this is crackling and fizzing with electricity right before my eyes. Do you know what I mean?

Exactly, yeah. People always go on about authenticity in music. And at that time, and indeed now, to my mind, authenticity means whatever you're doing sounds the same as the record. That's what I like, that's what I want i want to hear yeah it even used to upset me the first few gigs i went to that um that there were um kind of cables everywhere going from microphones and coming out of guitars and just the stage was strewn with just stuff um yeah whereas you know to me um performance footage usually involves people with nothing plugged in at all playing on a kind of clean white surface, you know, because that's what videos used to look like.

So, yeah, the whole kind of fetishization of live and of things being a bit dirty and cable strewn everywhere just didn't do it for me, I have to say. and cable strewn everywhere just didn't didn't do it for me i have to say yeah i wanted top of the pops to be top of the pops and basically be a visual jukebox of what's in the top 40 or top 30 so your host for this week is simon bates who is as always in the 9 to 11 30 slot on on Radio 1 this week before Dave Lee Travis and after a week-long breakfast show series called Three Men in a Boat where Mike Reid, Paul Gambaccina and Noel Edmonds spend a week sailing up the Thames in a narrowboat

from Hampton Court to Oxford. Where are the Argentinian exocets when you need them? Do you know what I mean? Has there ever been a good bait? i was thinking about this the other day there's simon ken uh norman uh blaster blaster yes uh mick i mean yeah i suppose there's nick rhodes there was our school geography teacher mr baits umates, who turned up round about this time, in fact, and we gave him absolute hell, as you can imagine. And I'm pretty sure the poor guy must have had a nervous breakdown. Yeah, you think if you were working at the depot office in those days, it's like the phones just never stopped ringing. Oh, it's another teacher called Bates.

I can actually, I can even hear his voice in my head right now going um simon price i might have known um you know something something wrong had happened in the in the room i was always wrongly getting the blame but quite often correctly getting the blame as well i've been reading uh margrave of the marchers the uh the john peel biography of late. And, you know, I was quite interested to learn that there's many a mention of Simon, of Symes, if you will, in there. There's a quote from his wife that says, on the 8th of February, 1972, John had written in his diary that Simon was a nice man.

A decade later, John was plotting with Kid Jensen to beat up Simon in the BBC car park which is something that we've already discussed but it goes on to say that one of John Peel and Andy Kershaw's most mischievous adventures was our special journey to catch Simon Bates in pantomime

in High Wycombe where he was performing in Aladdin alongside some minor cast member from The Bell and George Zippy and Bungle from Rainbow what an experience it was to see Aladdin holding a knife to Simon Bates's throat and to feel everyone in the theater baying most authentically for blood finally Andy could stand the suspense no longer and shouted oh for, for God's sake, just do it. Simon Bates and Rainbow Man,

that's a combination. Yeah, I don't know though. I think I'd rather be locked in a lift with Bates than Kershaw for that. You know, if we're going to talk about that. The hardest man on the island. Christ. I just find Simon Bates

an aggressively mainstream figure around this time. I find his presence on top of the pops is a kind of incursion into our world. It's like if you're playing with your mates in the playground and a teacher comes around the corner, just sort of like lurking, they're not saying anything, just sort of like making their presence known, you know, like don't have too much fun because I'm here. And that's, that's, that's how Bates is to me.

Don't know about you. Yeah. But possibly they might think, well, look, it's a live show and, you know, we're broadcasting under wartime conditions.

And at any moment, you know, they might have to cut the show and have Ian McDonald on again. Let's have someone who looks a bit like him to just ease the audience in. Let's have someone with the air of a desk sergeant that never got promotion. At first, you know, of course, we're live. We've got soccer stars and we've got rock stars.

Kevin Keegan, Frank Gray. Kevin, first of all, how are you? Fine, thank you. Well, back's well. The back's well? And you're going to sing for us later? As long says long. Don't sing too. I should be all right Okay, good luck. We've also got some great stars like this gentleman with his newish single. It's junior We are greeted with the sight of Bates wearing an England scarf, a Tartan scarf and a Tottenham Hotspur scarf at the same time.

If this show was made today, Bates will be wearing a third, third and third scarf, but he isn't because football wasn't so cuntish then. Beside him is Frank Gray of Leeds United in Scotland and the welcome return of Keggy Kegel to top of the pops. Oh, Keggy like he used to be, if you will. The great thing about this is that Keegan only has one little bit of chat. He just has one little gag he's got to do and he muffs it in an eerie foreshadowing of his eventual contribution to England's 1982 World Cup campaign. Yeah.

This episode of Top of the Pops is actually longer than Kevin Keegan's contribution to England at the World Cup. Yeah. By nine minutes. He gets this joke out and, of course, it gets the response it would have got if he'd told it at the World Cup. By nine minutes. So he gets this joke out and of course it gets the response it would have got if he'd told it at a seance.

Bates asks Keggy about the most important issue affecting our country at the moment, the condition of his back, which he injured while he was in the bath a few weeks previously. Kegel replies,

fine, thank you, a lot, well, the back's well. Don't give up the day job. And Bates completely ignores Frank Gray, who, let us remember, has won one more European Cup than Kegel. There's also that bit where Keegan goes, as long as I don't sing too high, I'll be all right. And, yeah, I feel really bad for Frank Gray,

who's just, you know, he just sort of smiles there, doesn't get a word in. Maybe this was the seed that led to the Scottish nationalist movement wanting a referendum. Because, yeah, it's a bit outrageous, really. But at least he doesn't have to talk to Simon Bates, who does all these links with the same kind of cheery distance that he presumably learnt when wanking off pigs for money

i'm pretty certain he doesn't like football i get the feeling simon bates is a man he doesn't hate football either it's just it's not on his radar he just doesn't know anything about it yeah um he's just totally there doing a job with scarves draped around his neck at the last minute yeah and i mean, he actually, you know, he fluffs a few of the introductions to the football songs. Yes, he does. Yeah. So, yeah, I just get the impression that it's a total other world.

It's irrelevant to him. Football's not part of his world at all. Did you get that impression? Yes, definitely, yeah. One or two definite clues. Finally, Bates introduces the first act of the night. Mama used to say, by Junior. Born in Clapham in 1957, Norman Washington Giscombe was a backing singer for Lynx

when he signed as a solo artist to Mercury Records in 1981. His debut single, Get Up and Dance, failed to chart. And by the time this single came out in december of 1981 he changed his name to junior but again it flopped however it was remixed in america and it sold like a bastard getting to number two in the us r&b chart and number 30 on the billboard chart resulting in him becoming the second British act and the first British black singer to appear on Soul Train. We know who the first British singer was, don't we?

David Bowie. Of course. I like joking, of course. Right, I quit. I quit, I resign. It was... None of this Bowie nonsense. It was subsequently re-released in the UK,

and it's a new entry in the top 40 this week, up from number 41 to number 31. Well, chaps, this is going out live on a week when the country is in crisis. So please explain to the pop-crazed youngsters how top of the pops have reacted to this. It's the same old flags and balloons shit, isn't it? Yeah.

Don't they know there's a war on? Yeah, and Zoo are in full effect. Oh, yes, they are, yes. I found myself really interested in one particular dancer who I later realised with a chill is downtown Julie Brown. Yes. Who's wearing a shiny Rara skirt, frilly knickers, and hook-and-eye boots with a giant sort of sweet wrapper bow in her hair.

Yes. It's looking like the courtesan of a Victorian sugar magnate. Yeah, I mean, she looks pretty good i think but yeah the uh the thing you do notice about zoo is the horrific faux enthusiasm um yeah sort of what is there like twirling and whooping like they're on five second animation loops like there's no connection yes there's no connection between their antics and the record. So you think at 8 o'clock the studio empties and they're still there just twisting in empty space.

Just waiting for the key to run down. And also it's quite hard to distinguish the exact dividing line between the Zoom members and just kind of general 80s people in in in raroskis i think there's a three tier system in operation here because zoo the named members of zoo um are recognizable um you can find their pictures on the internet and put names to faces then there's a load of people who are clearly just members of the general public but there's a sort of intermediate section but who will who will turn up later and we can talk about them but um they're not quite zoo but they're not quite you they're kind of do you think they're kind of like hand-picked london clubbers

like trendy types scene stars if you will yeah in the way that in the 60s um they used to send scouts to you know um swinging london clubs to get people in in the audience for ready steady go and stuff like that one of whom was gary glitter right yeah yeah yeah but um yeah i i do buy into taylor's three-tier system there um i think maybe the the bottom feeders are the ones who are wearing dunce hats and great paper fezzes in this footage yes yes but um also there's there's something about 1982 which in some ways i think is the most 80s year of the 80s i think we've talked about 1973 being the most 70s year of the 70s um by 82 um pretty much any um lingering uh post-punk abrasiveness uh had been smoothed out and even color wise uh it's it's very much kind of um bright yellows and bright greens and um i think of it as kind of

one long saturday that's what 1982 is to me uh despite all the war and all that kind of stuff it was it was an enjoyable year but that that kind but that kind of edge of 81 and 80 had gone. It was basically, it was the past the Dutch year. That's the iconic song of 82. It's past the Dutchie. That's the year it is. It's a kind of fairly bland, but enjoyable ketchup on your chips kind of experience, 1982.

And I think you can see that in in the audience here and the way it's filmed you you can't help but um take notice of the audience because um it's it's a while before you even can focus in on on on junior yeah he's he's i mean there's no band for starters he's on he's on a stage that's the shape of the logo of the Italian sportswear firm Aerea. Yes, very good. Yeah. And there's this massive kind of big yellow Top of the Pops flag being waved behind. And a red one as well.

Yeah, it looks vaguely kind of fascistic. Yeah, well, to me, it looked like there was just about to storm the Reichstag. Yeah. And I noticed that the dancers are mouthing the words. And I don't know if that's because they've been rehearsing all day or has the song been around a while and it's now at the point where it's ingrained in the fabric of British life for a few weeks.

I think that's who being cunts, to be honest with you. Okay, right. They're trying to grab a bit of the spotlight for themselves. Yeah, because to my mind, they carry on like a Smarties advert. Yeah. Like grown-ups. Or the mini pops. Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting you mentioned a brand of chocolate because they do look like quality street rappers. Yes. You know, the way they're dressed. Yeah, there's some fucking awful outfits. But we'll touch on those later on. This is probably a controversial view but i don't love this song i don't yeah i'm sorry it's i don't know i mean for a start this performance doesn't

do any favors because as you say it is live and his voice does sound quite kind of reedy and flimsy in this performance um but the i think the sort of ounce of enjoyment that me and my mates used to squeeze out of this record was just doing an impression of the growly bit that I used to say and all that kind of stuff in the playground just take the piss out of that but it's not much of a growl is it he sounds like an irritated pug

I fucking love this song I loved it then and I love it now. Well, go on, tell us. Tell us why. Well, because, I mean, right from the opening, the opening bars of the song to me sound like the sun piercing through a fucking black cloud. It just reminds me of being young and being 14 and it's the summer holidays or the summer holidays are about to happen and everything's

fucking wonderful and it's it's it's a fucking brilliant song to my mind and that's it in a way i saw i sort of know i know you're right but i don't know why i don't love it yeah it ought to be the sort of thing i love but yeah i think it would be weird to dislike this record because there's nothing to dislike but with a lot of records and people where there's nothing to dislike I find it hard to feel anything at all about it it's sort of fluid and rubbery in a fairly appealing way and although it is very South London it doesn't sound too chintzy or or slimy it just sort of uh it just washes over me like air really it also it's the sort of like south of england r&b or quasi brit funk that doesn't bring anything unique

to the american template it's like you listen to something like southern freeze and it's distinctively british and unusual and you don't think oh this would be better if it was an american record but that's precisely what i think about this one right i mean i can see why the americans went for it when you when you put it like that taylor because um it is it is so obviously the the elephant in the room is stevie wonder it's trying to be stevie wonder record and i i think it's a sort of record that American audiences maybe wished Stevie Wonder was still making, as opposed to what he was still making,

without wanting to spoiler anything for the end of the episode. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah, basically it's like, I don't know, when maybe Beatles fans in the 70s had the methadone of ELO, and I love ELO, but maybe there's a better comparison you can make. But you know what I'm saying? It's basically methadone for when Stevie Wonder was any good. Yeah, and he doesn't sell it.

His voice isn't great. I was watching this, I thought, if this is Junior, I'd hate to hear Senior. But I have to say that because it's in keeping with the World Cup theme because this was the one funny thing that Ron Atkinson

ever said in the 1998 World Cup when the Brazilian defender Junior Baiano came on the screen he was a

hulking man mounted and Ron Atkinson said if that's Junior Baiano I'd hate to see senior Baiano and so now every time I hear of anyone who has Junior in their name, I can't resist it.

But I was watching this clip. His hair has got the same frosted sparkle as people's clothes in Camberwick Green. Do you know what I mean? It's like marzipan. And he's got that look which was briefly popular with British black guys. It's like an old-fashioned cycling helmet hair with big glasses on the end of the nose. Very similar to David Grant at the time. Yeah, David Grant, a couple of musical youths, a couple of other people.

It seemed totally bizarre to me that you could be a young black dude into music, supposedly a bit hip, and choose to make yourself look like a black Professor Yaffle. It really baffled me. Although it's not so bad here because he is surrounded by people from the 21st century dressed ironically for an 80s night yes so he looks he looks quite cool by comparison yes he does and i think the thing that appealed to me as well was the lyrical content which was essentially don't grow up it's shit which was

something i was quite open to at the time because i was in no I was in no rush to grow up yeah well my mama used to say take your coat off or you won't feel the benefit yes and this is my house and for as long as you live here you you follow my rules which is far less useful than Junior's mama or Smokey Robinson's my mum used to say if you don't do this that the other it'll be the rock you perish on that's that's a that's that's a weird poetic phrase I don't do this that the other it'll be the rock you perish on that's that's a that's that's a weird poetic phrase i don't know where she picked it up from but she used to say that a lot yeah but my mama used to say you've shit the nest with me now but you know talking about families this is one song that i really need to uh i need to play or sing at my niece

because she's going through this thing now and she needs to take her time and not rush to get old because uh the other week she told her mom uh she wanted a bra and she's six and uh my sister said why and he says oh well because all my mates want a bra because of barbie and her mom said, you're not having that. So she basically went upstairs and made her own bra. She went in her bedroom and she got a pair of drawers and she cut a hole in the gusset,

put her head through it, put her arms through the leg holes and my sister just caught her going out the door with this pants bra on and her heels. Which sounds like one of the outfits that Zoo were wearing, to be fair. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, another thing, going back to previous episodes, there we go, ladies. You know, if you do soil a bra, just keep some nail scissors with you. There we go. That's the kind of British ingenuity we'll need in a post-Brexit world. So, the following week week Mama used to say soared 13 places to number 18 and would eventually get to number 7 for two weeks in June of this year. The follow-up, too late, got to number 20 in August of this year and he went on to be presented with the Billboard Best

Newcomer of 1982 by James Brown. he contributed to the beverly hills cop soundtrack he was a member of the council collective with jimmy ruffin and paul weller for the single soul deep which got to number 24 in december of 1984 he teamed up with kim wilde and got another step closer to you to number six in may of 1987 and he wrote songs for the lighthouse family and philip baylor he also allowed his nephew richard blackwood to desecrate his finest three minutes when mama who da man got to number three and he made his last appearance on the charts with flip and phil when irish blue got to number 20 in 2004 he also sang move on up at the Labour Party rally in Sheffield in 1992.

All right. It's his fault. That's Junior singing live with Mama Used To Say. If you laugh New Line Up. Bates, proudly wearing his England scarf featuring Bulldog Bobbe, the England 1982 World Cup mascot that was roundly criticised for being well Brexit at a time when the National Front were openly selling their youth magazine Bulldog outside football grounds, is surrounded by zoo wankers as he invites us to check out a beautiful new song by a band who he claims is just outside the charts. The band Depeche Mode. The song The Meaning of Love.

We've already discussed Depeche Mode in chart music number 8 when they did Just Can't Get Enough. But since then they've had to deal with the departure of main songwriter Vince Clark in November of 1981 when he was dissatisfied with touring, dissatisfied with the direction the band was taking and, according to Dave Garn, dissatisfied with the amount of letters he was receiving from fans asking him what his favourite colour of socks were. While he went off to form Yazoo with Alison Moye and their debut single Only You is currently up to number 14 this week, the band regrouped, drafted in Alan Wilder and released their first single not written by Clark, See You, which got to number 6 in March of this year, their highest ever chart position. follow-up and it's a new entry this week at number 34 even though Bates claims it's just outside the charts obviously he's referring to the top 30 which Top of the Pops is currently adhering to yes weird that isn't it I noticed that so in Top of the Pops world it hasn't charted unless it's

in the 30 so there's this weird dissonance between the TV and the radio branches of the BBC when BBC Radio 1 it was all about the top 40. It's a really odd thing to say. That struck me. Yeah, it wouldn't be for another few years before they got into the top 40. I think it was around about 85 or something. So yeah, Dave Garn, all this recent band upheaval is really taking it out of him

because now, you know, he looks 13 as opposed to the 12 he looked the last time we saw him. Yeah, but doesn't Alan Wilder, who's just joined, look so happy? He looks delighted to be there in his brown leather collarless trouser suit with the short sleeve jacket. Does this little cheeky bit of mugging and frugging for the delectation of the camera. They do look very weird. his mom bless him gore's got a a brown leather jerking like a like a black yes

thought they all look like this they look like escapees from uh blitz hill museum or somewhere like that like this down there from nine to five greeting visitors good day kind sir like trying to hide their watch you know it's a it's a poor look it is a poor look you're supposed to think yeah i guess you're supposed to think look at the the futuristic artisans toiling at their corks you know but really you just think you know take your glowing tongs and fuck off back to Colbert though but I like this I like this the best thing for me about this record is that it's so dated um I'm not really that interested in the song not massively impressed by much about it except that amazingly thin and uncool arrangement with the synths that sound like toys and the sort of pitiful amateurish backing vocals.

I love that stuff because it's a great example of people using electronics to sound more human. And there's something really fragile and homemade and intimate about this sound that really appeals to me. And I love the ending as well. They do an early Beatles-style hard ending. Yes, the augmented sixth, isn't it? Yeah, it's like you just add your little finger to the chord.

Yeah, George Harrison called it the naughty chord. Yeah, it's not what you expect on a record like this at all, which is great. And I always rag on Martin Gore's excruciating lyrics but i have to say uh this song has one of the best opening lines of 1982 which is i've read more than a hundred books it's fantastic so yeah actually i've read 109 books if you include the the highway code and the operator's manual for the roland sh1 but depeche mode i was never asked about them and not many people in my school were to be honest a few girls were and i i do remember there was a period where some lads i knew were thinking of turning

futurist as we called them and they'd have those uh black or gray shirts with the buttons down the side but i remember i do remember a lot of them um in the playground saying that they weren't futurists anymore after they heard the rumor about mark holman i'm not a futurist anymore it's all in the past yes i think by the by 1982 the idea of a synth band it to my mind, it seemed dated. You think? Well, yeah, to my 14-year-old comprehensive school mind, it was all so passe. But what did you think that we were moving on to?

What was the next thing in your mind? Musical youth, basically. Okay. I mean, they've still got the tape machine, which would have been massively daring, you know, a couple of years ago. But by this time, it's like, well, we know you're miming, so it's not like the drum pattern's massively complicated. Why can't you just bang on some of it?

No, I mean, you're right. The reel-to-reel tape machine was a well-worn act of provocation by this point because I think omd and the human league and various other people had had already done it probably depeche themselves um but they've gone that one step further with it haven't they because um to rub it in they've got a duracell bunny on top of theirs playing the drums which is you know just making a joke out the fact that everything's electronic did i see uh an atomcraft nine dank sticker on the bass drum of that bunny? Yeah, it looked yellow. And, you know, to my mind, any yellow sticker before 1984 was Atomcraft 9 Dank.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's just a painted pink heart. Oh. Sorry to disappoint. Because after 1984, of course, it would have been, you know, Colnock Doll. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah big big era for yellow stickers i do see the um reel-to-reel tape machine and the provocation implied by that as similar in a way to that beatles sixth chord that they they end the song with um because in a way that that kind of emphasizes the classicism of their songwriting as contrasted with the you know futurism of of the technology that they're using to make it

i think that's why that chord is there it's almost a little joke and i think you know the the real tape machine is of a piece with that but i i agree with you Al that this is one of their lesser singles it's you know one of their most got nothing-y forgettable singles they they haven't by this point they haven't yet found their way in the post Vince Clark era um yeah I mean obviously CU was great but they were very hit and miss for a while for a few years and for once I think democracy works I think the public got it right with Depeche Mode for quite a few years because after Vince left for the first few years, the ones that made the top 10 were bangers.

So we're talking about CU, everything counts, people are people, master and servant, right? Yeah. And the ones that missed the top 10 were forgettable. So that's meaning of love, leave in silence, get the balance right, Christ, and love in itself and so on and that that theory lasts for quite a while it only really breaks down in the late 80s when you've got really good singles like a question of time and never let me down again and

personal jesus which missed the top 10 but you know but were obviously amazing um it's weird they had about 43 chart singles never got to the top three ever is that right? yeah that's mental isn't it? I think in a way that highlights something about Depeche Mode the theory I had about them was that

nobody absolutely loved them but everybody kind of quite liked them so people took Depeche Mode records on a case by case basis you wouldn't rush out with the kind of loyalty of an Adam and the Ants fan or a jam fan

and buy a single on Trust because it was them. You'd wait and see, you'd give it a listen, you'd hear it on the radio a few times and think, actually, this one's quite good, and you'd go and buy it. So I think Depeche Mode was sort of like everybody's 11th favourite band or something like that, if you know what I mean. Now, clearly these days I'm wrong about that

because I know people are absolutely fucking obsessed with Depeche Mode. Interestingly, they tend to be from continental Europe rather than from the UK, these rabid Depeche fans. Yeah, and America. Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

I liked Dave Garn's hair around this time. He was my hairspiration for quite a bit, that kind of very well-t tended flat top that he had, but not his clothes. Taylor's pointed out the horrific crimes against fashion of Martin Gore's clothes. But with Dave Garn, it's a shirt and tie under a leather jacket. That's never, never, never a good look.

Apart from on Dr. Bronowski. The thing is, all the people now who are obsessed with Depeche Mode like those ridiculous later albums, which I've never understood why they were taken seriously. You know, not just as slightly gothy, slightly industrial pop records, but with really embarrassingly poor lyrics, but as timeless classics.

And it's as if that's the serious work and these records are just sort of juvenile, you know, when they're so obviously the best thing they ever did, all this stuff. It's so full of novelty in the good sense and free of all that ghastly, heroin-induced self-absorption and boring gloom i always really hated the the sort of false gravitas of that later stuff it was like uh

it was like a massive cardboard weight with 1000 tons written on the front you know it was still this sort of spindly, nerdy music underneath, but with all the charm drained away, along with the tunes. You know what, though? I mean, we've mentioned Mark Almond already a couple of times in this episode. I can't wait to cover him on chart music.

And I mentioned that I've been working on the Soft Cell box set on the booklet for that. And in order to do that, I had to interview, I've interviewed Mark, I've interviewed Dave Ball, and various producers and other people associated with the band. Any sex dwarves? Well, you know, they're just looking around my house at any given time. So that's a given. But every single person I spoke to has a real bee in their bonnet

about depeche mode because the way they see it is the moment the soft cell um sort of disintegrated in about 84 um depeche mode suddenly changed direction and become this kind of dark yeah seedy gothic um synth band which is what soft cell had been up to that point and then depeche mode take that thing and run with it and become stadium sized you know yeah and i think soft sell well i know soft sell a little bit bitter about that funny that you mentioned all the kind of like the gothing because i do recall now that all all the people i know at school who stopped being futurists about 90 of them ended up being goths so they just carried on listening to depeche mode anyway

well there was a very logical migration from the Blitz Club to the Batcave Club. And, you know, in all the parts of the country that didn't have those establishments, just spiritually to move from one mindset to that, to the other one. Yeah, it was a natural move, really. So the following week, the meaning of love soared 22 places to number 12, its highest position the general public liked it the follow-up leave in silence got to number 18 in september of this year Tell me the meaning of love Tell me the meaning of love Tell me

The next mode of course and the meaning of love. Now then, this gentleman over here is Ken Bailey and he is the guy who deprived you of that vision that you might have seen on BBC One if you hadn't covered Erica Rose. Erica Rose! And the reason that he's here and all these ladies from British Airways are here is we've got the England World Cup squad and their new hit single, which is terrific. This time, we'll fly the flag.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Fates, accompanied by British Airways stewardesses and a zoo wanker in an orange rig out and a tash draws our attention to a 71 year old man dressed like a brexit circus ringmaster brandishing a massive england shield as if he was about to play the way round the deck of a ship over and over on his way to America to present a petition to President Roosevelt asking him to get on our side in World War II

when the Nazis kicked off, which he ignored, the bastard. And he's best known for being the figurehead of the England Supporters Club. And, as Bates pointed out, he covered up Erica Rose's tits when she lobbed them out at Twickenham in January of this year. Fucking cock blocker. He then introduces something called This Time We'll Fly the Flag,

when it's actually England Will Fly the flag by the England World Cup squad. Formed in London in 1870, England had to wait 100 years before landing a record deal with Pi Records and releasing Back Home, which got to number one for three weeks in May of 1970. They were considered as one-hit wonders throughout the rest of the 70s after a disastrous tour of Poland in 1973 and an ill-informed change of managers. But after they recruited the singer Kevin Keegan, who'd got to number 31 in June of 1979 with Head Over Heels in Love, they were inspired by the success of the Buzzcocks and formed their own label, England Records. the Buzzcocks and formed their own label, England Records. Linking up with Chris Norman and Pete Spencer of Smoker, who wrote Head Over Heels in love for Keg Air, they recorded This Time,

We'll Get It Right, but they released it as a double A-side with this song, a cover version of the 1975 British Airways jingle, We'll Take More Care Of You you which was written by jake holmes who wrote dazed and confused in 1967 and went on to write be all you can be for the u.s army in the 1980s the lyrics have been rewritten by mickey most and the song's producer adrian gervitz and it's gone up this week from number four to number two well adrian gervervitz, he was going to write a classic, but he wrote this instead. Where the fuck do we start on this? Yeah, let's start with Ken Bailey, that fucking ghoul.

Tory councillor from Bournemouth and revolting self-appointed patriot-in-chief making all international sporting events creepy with that hideous blank grin like a reanimated corpse and his his his silent he was always had a terrible lisp so he never said anything um his silent personification of all the worst aspects of British jingoism. Like ugly, stupid, exploding with national pride, but devoid of individual pride. Tattie and sort of looking a bit like a nonce. And what's weird is that everyone in Britain

past a certain age has a shared memory of Ken Bailey being a nonce. And yet you research it and there's no record of this at all. Just people telling stories of how when they were kids, their parents banned them from going to children's sporting events in Bournemouth because Bailey would be there. But the thing is, you look at him and his place in old school British culture,

and it just seems really weird for him to be clean. Whereas in fact, it looks like he was clean. In fact, too clean, as we know, because he covered up Erica Rose's tits with his Union Jack when she streaked at Twickenham. And really, is there any more perfect illustration of Britain than a creepy old man covering up a naked young woman with a Union Jack?

The only way it could have been more perfect is if he was groping her undercover of that Union Jack. He's probably the only person to ever pair on top of the pops who's had a Sabutier figurine done though, which is a damn shame. Wouldn't it be great if you could have had an Alvin Stardust on the touchline of your Sabutier pitch just pointing at things did you you had quite an extensive subutio collection didn't you simon did you have a ken bailey no i did not have him um i do still have most of my

subutio in um in a suitcase in the basement it's probably bashed up to fuck, but no, I never had him. I don't really have anything to add to Taylor's magnificent diatribe against Ken Bailey. I endorse it all. Endorse it, not intended. And yeah, I mean, obviously, if he was around now, he'd be the cheerleader for Brexit, wouldn't he? There's no question about that. Definitely, yeah. Erica Rowe, one of the few famous people from my old

university. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Along with Reef and one of the Libertines. Sorry about that, everyone. No, but Ken Bailey just gave me the absolute creeps, this kind of leering, monstrous visage, like

something out of a nightmare um just hovering and in this episode is it's just sort of uh unchanging expression it's kind of just um fixed grin banco's ghost yeah just at the feast it's just really unsettling and for reasons which i probably couldn't have articulated at the time, but I think Taylor's done very well indeed. But, yeah, I mean, do you know what? I was in New Orleans recently on holiday, and on the final day, and New Orleans, you know, for people who don't know, is very much an island

of liberal bohemian values among the conservatism of the Deep South. On the final day I was there, just before we were going to head back to the airport, there was this guy who had this kind of stall, this trolley that he'd set out on the edge of the French market. And he was dressed up head to toe in kind of American flag trousers and jacket and a big top hat. And he called himself Badass Uncle Sam. And he had these cardboard cutouts of Hillary Clinton

in orange prison clothing. In Hillary Clinton's crotch area, this guy had painted Grab Here. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, you can see where I'm going with this. This guy, Badass Uncle Sam, is very much the American equivalent of what Ken Bailey was in 80s,

well, 80s going back to the 40s, by the sound of his longevity, you know, in British culture of that time. And I'm just, I mean, do we have anyone like that now? I like to think we haven't got quite as hideous a sort of patriotic cipher doing the rounds. He'd have gone out to Russia, wouldn't he, Ken? Yeah, might not have made it.

Wouldn't have vended well. Yeah, it might not have made it. Wouldn't have ended well. Yeah, it might not have come back. I hate the England football team. I'm one of those. And I didn't always. It actually used to be that it was like being from a shit town with a horrible football team, but that was high enough in the football pyramid

that there was no excuse for not supporting them. Like Luton or something like that. It's just tough like you have to make the best of it um but that changed around the turn of the millennium i think partly from getting older and more realistic partly as a result of the then phenomenally dislikable clutch of of toss pots representing the country on the international stage partly in defiance of the sort of sick, low IQ patriotism of the English sports media, for which outweighs any patriotic impulses I may ever have felt. And although the current England squad

is sort of the least despicable for a while, and the media have become a bit more realistic and a bit less obnoxious about them, this hasn't changed shortly before the last euros i was out of the country and i got back feeling a little bit guilty and a little bit old-fashioned for hating england so much because i've been out of england right uh the first thing i saw when i got off the plane at heathrow the day before the euros was a copy of the evening standard that shining symbol of English non-inclusiveness.

The cover was Prince William cheering in an aggressive way with his hideous face twisted with meaningless emotion, like oozing everything that football's not about. And the headline was, Come on, England. And I thought, no, they're filth. They're scum. And as things stand, you would be cheering for this.

And so, yeah, my God, how I enjoyed seeing them getting humped by Iceland. Oh, that was beautiful, wasn't it? I think my feelings towards England, if anything, drifted in the opposite direction. Because for most of my teenage and indeed adult life, I felt fairly sort of warmly disposed towards England. I wouldn't say I ever supported them, but, you know, I live here. Most of my friends are English. And I just sort of, of you know I wish them well

I thought you know good for you have a good time and you know I'd sit and watch their matches and usually I'd be sort of vaguely rooting for them to win but I think for me everything changed when Wales qualified

for the Euros in 2016 it's like well actually finally we're on this stage and going over there and experiencing the difference between the fan culture of of the Welsh fans and of the English fans just really brought it home to me um you were sitting in chairs as opposed to throwing them exactly um and the French absolutely loved us over there and so did you know uh all of the all the other nations that we ran into were just, you know, really sort of positive towards us and cheering us as we walked down the street and all of that.

Whereas if we weren't wearing our Wales attire and we walked in somewhere and we're talking English, people would immediately be on edge because they think that we are English. And it's amazing how quickly you could just put them at ease by saying no no we're Welsh it's fine and this is against the backdrop of footage on the French news of you know people in Marseille throwing garden furniture at each other

and all of that business so there's that and the fact that I suppose as a Liverpool supporter, when I was watching international tournaments, at least I knew who the England players were. And there'd probably be about three or four Liverpool players in there at any given time. But, you know, now even that's kind of faded with the sort of internationalism of club football

and the fact that there's a couple in there. There's Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jordan Henderson. Yeah. But yeah, so even that connection's gone now. And to me, it's just like England, Hotspur, that's who they are now. And I just couldn't give less of a fuck. And just the whole unpleasantness surrounding England now, everything from the team to the fans to the

kind of sense of entitlement which I think is still there in the media it's declined a little yeah um just just turns me off and I just love seeing them get beaten when they got knocked out of the last last tournament by Iceland I was absolutely pissing myself laughing in much in much the same way there's that footage of the Wales players just roaring with laughter watching it on the screen. And that was absolutely how I felt. I mean, before we go any further, we must say that if any of the Pulcrays youngsters do want to read something about the World Cup,

there's no better book than Send Them Victorious by our very own David Stubbs. Yeah. Which completely nails the, the cuntishness of supporting England. It's brilliant. You know, it's just a series of match reports by the wing commander and it's, oh, it's just amazing.

Go, go and check it out. It's fucking brilliant. But my opinion on England is because I'm a seventies child, uh, I know that I will die and never see England win a major tournament so I'm quite happy with them just not being cunts and battling and you know being a bit unlucky but you know as time goes on my opinion now is you know England being in a World Cup is

like your aunties being at your 21st birthday do it's really great that they're there but after a very short while you just want them to fuck off so you can start enjoying yourself i mean i'm you know i'm not even obsessively anti-patriotic but what it is they bring the worst out of english people including the actual members of the England squad um it's like day in day out the problem is that in football and in life the English are not able to realistically identify their own strengths and weaknesses and work on them um and they have this unrealistic and sort of hubristic idea of the extent to which they actually rely on outsiders and in those days you know in football it was mostly Irish Scots and Welsh nowadays it's people from all over the world

who compliment the English but you know that's complement they certainly don't compliment the English very often but the way that that works will not be recognized and because of that there's never any preparation for what's going to happen when the English have to go it alone. Just this sort of blithe arrogance. As you can see in the collection of goals shown to accompany this song, which for a start is a collection of scuffs, rebounds, deflections, goalie errors.

Booting up the big man, booting up the big man, knock it down, scuff it in. And they're all from the home internationals that had just been played. So they're all scored against... Particularly the 4-0 battery environment.

Yeah, they're all scored against the other home nations. And so all of whom are watching this programme at home and are just expected to cheer as usual as Big Brother duffs them up. Yeah, you're right. The best one, I think, is a header from Keegan when he gets higher than a small man should and really attacks the ball.

But yeah, you're right. It is England at their most kind of meat and potatoes, isn't it? It's kind of pretty agricultural stuff. Basically, that's the header that Keegan should have done yes in the world cup yes in 1982 yes so the song or the performance let's let's start with the song because fucking hell so it's actually from the advert isn't it it's the old ba advert yes we'll take more care which if i remember rightly was already um a football chant at this time yeah i can't remember what people which club it was or what people would sing to it but it was already being used that way but yeah um yeah i'd

forgotten that this was double a side yeah so um am i right in saying they'd been on the previous week doing the other side they've been on two weeks previously doing this time we'll get it right but the song's fucking catch shit though, isn't it? Oh yeah, it's awful. It's just a billowy fart in a pair of fucking blue satin shorts. Or in a pair of crinkling dad slacks, which is like when you look at this visually, this is perfectly representative of the England team

in that it's an ugly shambles. Yes, it really fucking is, man. It looks like Sergeant Pepper all standing it looks like sergeant pepper's lonely arts club band recreated in a in a no trainers nightclub in older shop it's fucking horrible they got kevin keegan front and center and he's flanked by mick mills who looks like john mage's criminal brother-in-law and on the other side he's got dave watson dave watson didn't even make the squad and who's been pushed to the front despite looking like the bassist out of a heavy metal band from a quarter of a million years ago yes he's dressed up he's come dressed up as hurricane higgins hasn't he

yes but all of them you think you spend all this time training and eating, right? And then you waste it by wearing these shapeless dad slacks and John Craven jumpers. Oh, those horrible jumpers with the Bulldog Bobby on them again. They're awful. And they're the ones with a really kind of like narrow waistband, which would make fucking Grace Jones look like she's got a bare gut. They look like every single one of them should be called Terry. I don't think any of them were called Terry. They should have been.

The only one who looks a bit hunky is Tony Morley of Aston Villa, who's got a bit of a David Van Day haircut going on. And he seems to be getting on rather well with the British Airways air hostess he's linked arms with yes I mean air hostesses in those days were like nurses you know or showgirls apparently at it all the time with anyone if British male culture at the time is to be believed but it's a disgrace that they're there in the first place because this is a crossover with British Airways right the England squad singing an elongated advertising jingle

for a price-gouging airline. I know they are the flag carrier, and at the time they were a nationalised company, so that sort of makes it less bad. But even so, it feels cheap and shoddy and lacking in class, you know, like everything to do with the England teams of this era, you know, in their world of free Ford escorts from the local garage and ladder-pulling working-class Tories.

They should do a tie-in now with EasyJet. Yes. Or German wings. Yeah. Oh, God. I was trying to figure out the morality of this whole tie-in with British Airways because, as Taylor says, yeah, they were a nationalised industry at the time. So, yeah, I suppose it was the BBC giving a free advert

to another nationalised industry. But it's the fact that they are a British company choosing to hook up with the England World Cup squad. So it's English Airways now, is it? Is that what they are a British company choosing to hook up with the England World Cup squad. So it's English Airways now, is it? Is that what they are? They're basically saying British Airways is for England, for the English. You know? So, yeah, I

thought that was a bit weird. But as we'll see later on, the Scots have countered this. Yes, that is a fair point. We will see that. Yeah, and halfway through the song, we cut back to Kege, and he's got one of the stewardesses' hats on, and he looks so fucking hip-hop. LL Cool K is hard as hell.

Also, it's interesting that the Union Jack was a lot more prevalent among England fans in those days than it subsequently became. Because certainly by the time of Euro 96, it was all Cross of St. George everywhere, wasn't it? There was a real Cross of St. George revival in the 90s. And I think that kind of continues now. But at one point...

Because it was easier to paint across the base, wasn't it? Yeah, pretty much. But certainly at this time, the Union Jack was basically... It was synonymous with England and all the other home nations just, well, let them have it. They can have it. It's theirs. Fine. Fine. And I think that's probably still the way it is. So watching this performance, I found myself trying to name all the players in my mind without cheating.

And I was quite impressed that I could get most of them. And some of the ones who stood out, Peter Wythe, looking like one of the demons, the D-A-E-M-O-N-S from Doctor Who. The footballer who looks most like one of the Doctor Who demons, I think. Him and Socrates, possibly. Yes. Don't say anything, Taylor. Yes. And then, so you've got... Don't say anything, Taylor.

You've got Joe Corrigan, Paul Mariner, who looks... In the same way people say that Pete Townsend looks like anybody looks in the back of a spoon. That's what Paul Mariner looks like. You've got... There's a lot of don't knows. I think I spotted people like Kenny Sansom and Gary Bailey, was it? And Trevor Francis. Joe Corrigan.

Steve Foster. Brighton Hove Albion Steve Foster with that kind of bubble perm hairdo. Most familiar. Yeah, but he's not wearing it, is he? His trademark headband. But I think he sparked... He looked naked.

He did. He sparked a craze, a brief craze for headbands after appearing in the FA Cup final wearing one. So, yeah, it's weird how these things come flooding back to you when you were that immersed in football at the time. Yeah, the overall impression we're getting here is the last night of the proms, if it had been franchised out to the producers of Bullseye.

They're all wearing the bulldog bobby jumpers there's some board stewardesses and there's members of the general public at the back with ken bailey gurning away at the side yeah and they found a black woman just one yes just one and put her right at the side yes sort of kind of hanging off the edge like the doll in the welcome the rolling stones jumper yeah and the lyrics it's like the lyrics it's yes the lyrical content it's it's 1982 the world is waiting for england no it's fucking not is it well well well depends i mean i think waiting in the sense of all will fucking tear these fuckers assholes off or waiting in the sense of like hiding under a table yeah they actually don't

talk about what they're going to do they just you know they're saying england bring it home bring it home you know we we're going to bring it back and everything but they don't say the world cup and i think is that a trademark thing or are they talking about bringing back a novelty sombrero or a stuffed donkey? Capital punishment. A lot of duty freeze. Or a bottle of sangria in a wicker basket or something. I mean, basically the subtext of the song is, look, we know we've been shit and we lost to Norway,

but, you know, we'll sort ourselves out. Don't worry. Yeah, I've heard that before and since. Yes. Yeah. We've got to talk about the actual record, haven'll sort ourselves out. Don't worry. Yeah, I've heard that before and since. Yes. Yeah. We've got to talk about the actual record, haven't we? Yes.

I mean, in football terms, you can tell a bit about an era by the kind of music which is associated with football. Yeah. Right? Like 20 years prior to this, it was sort of stomping umpah music

with someone blowing a whistle. Yes. And then 10 years prior, it was sort of stomping umpah music with someone blowing a whistle and then 10 years 10 years prior it was buttling schlager yes and here it's like a sort of mulleted 30 something and a soft brown leather jackets idea of streamlined pop and on the other side on this time there's a touch of mike oldfield misery. Although still with that ensemble singing, like three old ladies locked in the lavatory, which is really dubious because it's always very mysterious as to how much of that singing is actually done by the footballers. Yeah.

Because there's usually one clear lead voice which doesn't belong to a footballer. But yeah, and then 10 years after this, the football music would be like incidental music indie. You know what I mean? It always reflects what's seen as the respectable end of the football audience, right? Which is why you didn't get the early 70s England team

singing Blue Beat, you know, which is what the real fans like. And 70s england team singing blue beat you know which is what the real fans like yeah um and why in the new millennium it fell apart and you got like ant and deck and weird mismatched combos of various spice girls and tv personalities because now the respectable football audience was identified simply as consumers, you know, with no coherent identity. It's like a war, this stuff. You know what I mean?

Like when you're fascinated by all this stuff, you look at the bottom end of pop culture, you know, the way it goes backwards and forwards. People sometimes refer to the sort of stuff we do on here as nostalgia, right, which is completely the wrong word. It's not nostalgia at all. It's more like being a military historian. So England haven't even bothered doing a song this year, have they? No, they haven't, no.

And I don't know if they have the last couple, two or three tournaments. Not since 2010. Is that right? Right. In a way, I suppose that makes them a bit more likeable, that they've dropped all this bullshit. And, you know, I think Gareth Southgate is slightly more likeable than previous managers, and he's sort of bringing in younger players,

and, you know, maybe we should, you know, be a bit more positive towards him for that. Well, there's no fucking John Terry in it, so there we go. Instantly more likeable. Yeah, well, exactly. But the fact that you know expectations have slid to the point where they don't even bother bringing out a jingoistic song anymore

is an interesting trend in itself like you know Taylor's talking about that kind of military history aspect because at this point 1982 they didn't just have a song come on we've got to talk about it they had a fucking album oh yeah this time the album shall I go through the track listing yes please it's a lot like one of those 60s albums where you just front load the album with the hits and then it tails off because on the a side we

start with this time we'll get it right track two england will fly the flag track three head over heels by keggy kegel track number four we are the champions sung by glenn hoddle and it's not and it's not the theme tune to the kids show we are the champions it's the queen cover version and it's not bad it really does sound like it's him singing amazing yeah and you can't listen to it without getting the moving picture of glenn in a white vest and skin-tight jeans like pirouetting with a cut-off mic stand and and uh and waving a suggestive fist track five this is where it starts to tail off bulldog bobby by mike reed r-e-i-D, and the Mini Pops. Fucking hell spells.

You can imagine, can't you? Track six, they draft in the Leyland Vehicles Brass Band to perform the theme to Grandstand. And then the side rounds off with the England squad doing a medley of Land of Hope and Glory and Abide With Me. The B-side. This is where it gets interesting. Track one, The Road to Spain by Ray Clements,

which is a spoken word slam poetry piece. Oh my God. That you listen to and you just want to set it to some really doomy music, like Godspeed, You black emperor or something. Track two, Back Home by the 1970 England squad. See, they're already relying on the fucking old shit. Track three, You'll Never Walk Alone,

performed by Trevor Francis and Viv Anderson. Track four, Can't Get a a ticket for the world cup by wesley mcgougan yeah later covered without success by uh

scum-faced east ender pete beal really yeah in 1986 yeah wesley mcgougan joined

the beat around around this time actually 1982 yes around this time for special beat service yeah yeah bloody hell and you know what he did before that what he did the sax solo on will you by around this time actually, 1982. Yes, around this time, yeah. For Special Beat Service. Yeah. Bloody hell.

And do you know what he did before that? What? He did the sax solo on Will You by Hazel O'Connor. Wow. Yeah. Track five, we move back to the Leyland Vehicles Brass Band for the theme tune to Match of the Day, then the theme tune to World of Sport,

and then track seven, the National anthem sung by the England squad. Oh! And finishes off with the instrumental version of This Time by the Leyland Vehicles Brass Band. What an album! This time, version. Yes! Version.

Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean. So the following week, This Time We'll Get It Right slash England Will Fly the Flag version. Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean. So the following week, this time we'll get it right slash England will fly the flag dropped six places to number eight. The follow-up a version of the 1978 Nottingham Forest single called

We've Got The Whole World At Our Feet would only get to number 66 in 1986, followed by a doomed collaboration with Stock Aitken and Waterman in 1988 with All The Way, which only made it to number 64, but they changed their name to England New Order in 1990 and roared back to number one with World In Motion. Sadly, that was the last World Cup song featuring the England squad, and the job was farmed out to a sort of bans until the practice was discontinued in 2010.

Possibly because of this performance, when Saatchi and Saatchi were given the British Airways advertising account as a treat for helping the Conservative Party lie their arse off in the 1979 general election, the first thing they did was drop We'll Take More Care of You in favour of some opera bollocks and while england are not getting involved in the world cup record thing this year the gauntlet has been picked up by none other than chris needham who has released the single take the world a message from the man himself i think you'll love Take the World. That's the unofficial England supporting anthem for Russia 18.

And tell me it doesn't need to be played in a big stadium with 60,000 people chanting along. When I say anthem, I mean anthem. Poor Chris. He's got on the panel this week is a Welshman, an England hater and someone who doesn't give a shit anymore. Yes. I'm a fan I'm a fan It won't let you down, and it's lovely. APPLAUSE Bates, towering over a girl with manky spikes in her hair, introduces I Won't Let You Down by Ph.D.

Really the best thing about this clip is when Bates does the intro. There's that girl with the Carnaby Street punk hair in front of him. And at one point she turns her head and one of the prongs gets caught on his butt. It's brilliant. And so she turns her head a bit more and it goes like a comedy. And you can imagine how cross Simon Bates would be about this. Oh, yes. It's amazing.

I love it. How cross Simon Bates would be about this. Oh, yes. It's amazing. I love it. Formed in London in 1981, PhD were Tony Hymas and Simon Phillips, two former members of the Jeff Beck Band, and lead singer Jim Diamond,

a former protege of Alexis Corner, who formed the rock group Bandit in 1976 with the future husband of Kate Bush. Their debut single, Little Susie's on the Up, failed to chart, but the follow-up, I Won't Let You Down, was picked up on by Peter Powell, and it's up this week from number 13 to number 3. Wow, finally, Jim Diamond enters the fray on chart music. I mean, this song, this could easily have been

the England World Cup song of 1982. It's the same sentiment, isn't it? Yeah, it is. He's a funny little man, isn't he, Jim Diamond? Shifty eyes, balding, comb-forward hair, and this kind of... He looks extremely Aventus in this one, I have to say. Are you trying to provoke me now? And this kind of hunched, almost apologetic stance,

sort of hands in his pockets, rocking from side to side, like, oh, I didn't mean to, sort of thing. Yeah. He looks to me like an informer on The Professionals. Yeah, yeah. You know, the one that Bodhi has to intimidate in front of his mates in a dingy pub and then takes into the back room

and then pretends to beat him up over a few crates of Britvic whilst getting information about Greek terrorists or the Keep Africa White movement. You can tell also because he's really short, which most of those people were, so they'd be shorter than Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw. He's got that face like david moyes right like older than his years you know i mean like a bad air bad diet face like you

know how moyes had been a professional athlete and at the peak of physical fitness all his life but he looks like a woman from the gorbals who smoked 80 Super Kings a day for the last 60 years. And Jim Diamond, he's only small, but he's got that kind of bacon fat hardened face, you know, with the hollow cheeks and the sunken eyes of a man whose archery is crying out for mercy. Yeah. But I mean, he looks apologetic,

but also a bit fearsome which is to the detriment of the song because you look at him singing this song and you think well what did you do to let her down Jim? The most unsettling part of the lyrics though is when he goes take me and chain me if you please

woman it's like a plea for S&M rough stuff that makes me shudder in a bad way I might add I mean it's a good song It's like a plea for S&M rough stuff that makes me shudder in a bad way, I might add. I mean, it's a good song, you know, good in inverted commas, isn't it? But it's very much aimed at the mums and dads. That's how I felt about it at the time. And also, it's a little bit prog.

Maybe prog's the wrong word. It's muso. It's definitely muso. As you mentioned, they're ex-members of the jeff beck group and even though they're playing what is essentially a fairly straightforward little ditty there's this feeling that if they wanted to they could really break loose and show you their chops do you know what i'm saying yes yeah yeah i really like this record at the time i I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, around this time,

I thought the coolest thing in the world was this transit van I used to see driving around Kidderminster with an airbrushed mural on the side of an eagle flying over the Grand Canyon. Something written on it in neon pink handwriting font in the corner. Some old band of Joy Roadie sat in there,

digging the seed in the horse fur. I don't dislike this record much now, but there is something uncomfortable and unsavoury about it. It's one of those records where you're not quite sure what their game is. The verse is sort of structured like a reggae record. Like if it was reggae that was like bleached out under a Glasgow sky, then it goes into the chorus.

Kind of reggae that Germans would like. Yeah, yeah. Then it goes into the chorus with these descending chords, like a Motown chorus, but there's no power to it because there's no contrast between the two sections. It's the same feeble backing, no shift in uh momentum or

dynamics so on those motown records it gets to the chorus and they'd have eight blokes going ah or something so you know it's the chorus you know because this just continues and it's like a yeah it's like a cross between john and van gelis and street cafe by. You know, it's like the former more musically and the latter more spiritually. It's like it only really makes sense to people of a certain age who are very much in the rock world. Like it's not really for Radio 2 dad types. It's for rockers, but who are no longer interested

in zippy, poppy music, you know. But they didn't have a conscious awareness of that they of what they were giving up when they made that move you know and it's a tiny niche there's a few records like this it's a tiny niche that doesn't really exist anymore in the same way which might be why these records sort of seem quite mysterious and confusing yeah you know i didn't like this song then don't like it now the one thing i really don't like is the second line where jim diamond does one of those forced half laughs when he sings want me to shout it like like that used to do on central when they

used to say and now it's russ abbott's madhouse he's got an unusual voice, Jim Diamond, because it's high-pitched but not falsetto. I think that's his natural range because you know when people sing falsetto, they've got that kind of breathy, angelic timbre to it, but this is his natural voice, I think. I don't think he's doing that thing. It's not a soul falsetto. It's just a man who happens to have a very high voice singing um yeah i tell you what's a shame though i mean uh here he is in the top of the pop

studio doing it but it's a shame they're not showing the video have you seen the video well yes we've got to talk about the video it's extraordinary yes he's following um a sexy lady in um uh she's a statuesque blonde she she's got um a black leather mini skirt and a leopard print top and he's following her down the street um through various parks in in london and pubs and so on pleading with her and she's just basically mugging him off and ignoring him um and meanwhile there's some other character possibly another member member of PhD, in a long brown coat, following them along, hiding behind trees and trying to throw daggers and plant bombs and stuff to kill Jim Diamond. It's one of the oddest pop videos. And I urge anyone listening to chart music, obviously, we want you to watch the actual TOTP clips that we're talking about.

But do go and watch I Won't Let You Down the video it's amazing they'll all be on the video playlist which is fucking enormous now we're going to reach 100 videos in a video playlist before too long possibly in this one and this is something that I know Taylor's

particularly into the video for I Won't Let You Down is just full of great footage of old britain old london yes kind of unvarnished it's not a film set it's just the streets as they were at that time which is great to see i think it's quite funny that uh there's been any speculation on why jim diamond looks so aggressive when he's uh a scotsman from the late 70s, early 80s, who's about five foot five and he's got a high voice. He's like Billy Bremner, you know what I mean? Yes.

Why was Billy Bremner so aggressive on the pitch? Yeah, I wonder. So the following week, I won't let you down, stayed at number three and then stayed at number three again before slipping down the chart. The follow-up, there's no answer to it, failed to chart, and after two more flop singles in 1983, they split up when Jim Diamond contracted hepatitis and the band were unable to tour. Oh, he let them down, big style. However, Diamond would score a number one hit in December of 1984

with I Should Have Known Better and then reach number five in March of 1986 with Hi Ho Silver, the theme tune to Boone. That's PhD. again At PhD these two gentlemen are Ray Clements and Glenn Hardall

They've got interesting little badges with Latin inscriptions on them one of which doesn't say Tottenham Hotspur Can I ask you does your wife know where you are sir? Oh, yes, does she? You know what you are going to do later on That's right. You're singing on two singles. It's not the first time ever on top of the pops Oh, yes. Does she? Does she know what you are going to do later on? Yes, sing for Tottenham Hotspur. That's right, cos you're singing on two singles. It's about the first time ever on Top Of The Pops we've had two guys singing on two separate singles. Here's Fantasy Island.

It's Julie, Denise and Steve, and it's tight fit, and, fellas, get over there as quickly as you can, cos you're on next. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE I had a dream There was a rainbow Over the mountains Over the sea Just you and me We'll go walking together

Watching the sun rise Over the trees Bates conducts an in-depth interview. just five bucks with a small coffee all day long taxes extra at participating wendy's until may 5th terms and conditions apply you with glenn hoddle and ray clements and he's fascinated by the badge on their club jumpers which says or dear est for sere to dare is to do and then ask glenn hoddle if his missus knows where he is tonight i think think he's confused him for Peter Shilton there, don't you? And then introduce us Fantasy Island by Tight Fit. Formed in London in 1981 by the producer Ken Gold, who had worked with The Real Thing in the mid-70s,

Tight Fit were originally a collective of session singers who jumped on the stars on 45 Bandwagon with a single called Back to the 60s which got to number four in August of 1981. The follow-up Back to the 60s Part 2 only got to number 33 in October of that year and Gold stepped away from the project. However another producer Tim Freeze Green who was working with Blue Zoo and Thomas Dolby at the time, recorded a cover version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight with Roy Ward, the former lead singer of City Boy, who had a number 8 hit with 5705 in 1978.

He reactivated the tight fit name for some reason and drafted in a West End singer and male model called Steve Grant and the singers Denise Gingell and Julie Harris to mime to it on Top of the Pops. And the single knocked a town called Malice by the jam off the number one spot in February of this year and stayed there for three weeks, keeping Mickey by Tony Basil off the number one spot. The bastards. After it came out in the tabloids that tight fit were ringers on their own number one and freeze green was satisfied that his group could actually sing he brought out this follow-up a cover of the single by the dutch band the millionaires who had only come out a few months

previous and came second in the dutch song for europe and it's up this week from number 56 to number 32. So Simon Bates claims that Glenn Hoddle and Ray Clements are the first people to appear on Top of the Pops twice with separate acts. Yes. And I wasn't sure about that. I thought, is that true? Well, there's a guy called Tony Burrows who claims that he was on Top of the Pops three times in the same episode. Yeah. With Edison Lighthouse, White Plains and Pipkins, I think was the other one. Yes.

But there's been some doubt poured upon this and it turns out that they were all around the same time, but they weren't on the same episode. No. But he did appear twice on two separate occasions with them. Right, so he does hold that record then. So basically Bates is wrong. Okay, cool. I just want to clear that up.

I think he says it's the first time two blokes have appeared, which is one of those pointless stats because it means nothing. I mean, if it was one, it wouldn't really mean anything. But two, that's just really stretching it. Who cares? you know? I was slightly distracted, though, in that intro because of Ken Bailey's hideous visage. Just hovering, just looming like a screaming skull.

Just in the background. And I love how Simon Bates introduces tight fit. He says, it's Julie, Denise and Steve. It's like they're a group with strong individual personalities. Yeah. Like as if in playgrounds across the land,

people say, who's your favourite fitty? Oh, it's not Steve. Yes. Of course, Steve Archibald, also on the same episode,

appears twice. True. Yes. Just got to bring that up. I think Fantasy Island is is genius it's a great great record um i looked into this the dutch band you mentioned the millionaires um so their song was written by martin deuser and pete sewer my dutch pronunciation is pretty awful but um pete sewer wrote a hit called i'm the grand pretender I love that, that kind of slight English

as a second language thing of calling it I'm the Grand Pretender. And which of course does to the Great Pretender what this record does to ABBA. Yes, absolutely and he also worked with Mouth and McNeill, an actor whose name always fascinated me but obviously

it's very, very ABBA-esque and I think it's maybe the only really good ABBA impression I've heard. Because, I mean, what else have you got? You've got Erasure literally doing ABBA. You've got people like Steps kind of, you know, I don't know, channeling it in some sort of way. But this absolutely nails it. Have I told my tight fit Barry Islandry island story by the way in a

previous episode no you haven't okay um i i've actually seen tight fit live or i've seen steve from tight fit live um he must have been down on his luck it was uh this would have been about 1986 by this point um he turned up at feathers my local disco at barry island which is now a snooker hall um to do a live pa in his uh uh leopard print loincloth thing and uh he didn't have um uh any backing band or dancers around him it was just him he didn't even have a stage he was in the corner of the dance floor and oh no yeah and the dj stuck on you know the record of the lion sleeps tonight and steve gyrates and mimes to it and it was so pitiful we were just standing there openly laughing at him and i felt

bad for the guy oh and it's like david van day in the uh in the officer's mess in the falklands yeah yeah and i i think he just sort of did that, maybe one other song, and then just went back out, got in his car, and drove down the coast to Porthcawl to do it all again half an hour later. Oh, mate. I felt so bad for him. But it's such a weird setup type fit, isn't it? Because you've told the whole thing about how they were originally

this kind of franchise for doing those 60s medleys, which, by the way, if you listen to those 60s medleys, Stars on 45 and the tight fit ones now, they're deeply weird because they're not feats of turntablism. You know, it's not Adventures on the Wheels of Steel by Grandmaster Flash. No, it certainly isn't. Nor are they sort of naughty style Richard X or freelance Hellraiser mashups. They're just straightforward cut and shut medleys. Yes.

Which I suppose the nearest thing in pop culture later on was Jive Bunny. Yes. I mean, we're going to be talking about these a lot whenever we cover another 1981 episode. Yeah, they are really weird. But what's weirder is the idea that you can then just take the name and transplant it onto a totally different entity, which Ken Gold and Tim Fries-Green did. And by the way, the involvement of Tim Fries-Green is really odd here

because he's the great- great grandson of the photography pioneer, William Fries-Green. But more importantly, from a music point of view, he went on to become essentially a member of Talk Talk and produced the albums It's My Life, The Colour of Spring and The Spirit of Eden. So there's a direct connection between this tight fit record and some of the most acclaimed art rock of of the 80s what what a weird thing yeah and he didn't and he and he was horrified when the lion sleeps the night got to number one because it's like oh shit i'm stuck with this now what is it's like his great grandfather uh and his grandfather were both photography pioneers like his great-grandfather's grave is in Highgate Cemetery. You don't even have to go in.

It's visible through the fence when you walk down Swains Lane. Yeah, he made those very early films of Britain and was one of the pioneers of colour film. And then his son, Tim's granddad, continued the tradition. And yeah, it must have looked at one point as though Tim was just, you know, really, really not going to do them proud. But then, you know, when you listen to those late period Talk Talk albums, I would say just as beautiful

a record of Britain. But what do you think of the record, Taylor? Because I absolutely love it. What, this? Yeah. Yeah, I like this it's um i was disappointed though to hear their origin story at the beginning because there's something about tight fit they're so weird you can't imagine how they could possibly have met i didn't want to know it was like jul Julie, Denise and Steve were mauled by a radioactive lion,

which they thought was asleep, giving them uncanny powers which might one day be detected. Stan Lee presents the tantalising tight fit. I prefer to take them as they are, as a spontaneously occurring pop curiosity and not know any of this stuff i don't know no i'm sorry i like it though i do like it um it's it's weird you look at the the girls in tight fit it's a very early 80s british idea of glamour it's uh yes it's a bit page three

it's a bit very a bit new town shopping parade hair and beauty salon um as a bit page three. It's a bit Newtown shopping parade, hair and beauty salon. And it's a bit Marks and Sparks lingerie section. It's sort of pleasant, but not too sexual, like nothing too carnal. It's always that fixed smile to make it suitable for children. Yeah, as they drape themselves around Steve, who I hated. I hated Steve Grant at the time because, number one,

you know, he was obviously miming, which was wrong. Number two, he was an absolute catalogue man. Number three, he was obviously knocking off those two women because they were just all over him all the time. That anchored me. I think as an adult, you sort of raise an

eyebrow at that possibility. I mean taylor's right by the page three element clearly the other life that was waiting for these two women had they not joined tight fit was page three girls or you know used to get big d nuts and they'd be on this cardboard backing and like every time you you you bought a packet in us it would expose a little bit more of of a sexy lady maybe standing in a sort of jungle setting with one hand on a tree

or something and you know maybe she's got her feet in some kind of pond and there are beads of sweat running down her face. And you used to fucking hate it when the landlord would deliberately go around the areas you wanted to see.

Yeah. So that's what they remind me of. Denise Gingell. Denise Gingell is actually Welsh. She's from the Rwanda Valley. And she was a child actress. And she was, fittingly, she was a Hills Angel before she was in Tight Fit. And she later married Pete Waterman.

I don't know anything about Julie Harris, but, you know, you'd imagine she had a similar kind of life. Steve Grant, though, he's one of the few people in those days who had really gleaming white teeth. He's got that kind of Roberto Firmino look going on with his teeth. You just didn't see that. These days it's ten a penny, you know. Any sort of minor member of Love island has probably got that but um yes my other favorite tight fit fact is that they had a member called silvio gigante gigante which is an amazing name there we go see i like steve because

i get the impression that he just doesn't give a fuck you know he knows he looks like a prize prick but he's doing a job of work, albeit not that well. And, you know, the two women, they sort of look like footballers' wives, 1982 style as well. They should be in a shoot magazine standing outside a detached five-bedroom house,

with their arm around Dennis Mortimer in a Pringle. They're all right. If you went and got your hair cut by them, it'd be perfectly pleasant. Yes. Although they would do it like David Van Daze, regardless of what you asked for. Things I like about this record,

first of all, in stealing from ABBA so shamelessly and so completely, it makes itself better than it should be because it's just sort of picked up a bit of that sort of complex and wistful melodic sense yeah uh and secondly uh it's fantasy island it's about a dream of something and there's stupid plastic cut up palm trees in the background all imaginary which is preferable to those pop videos you always get now. Have you seen these?

Well, it's basically a moving Instagram feed of very posh young millennials on unimaginably expensive holidays. Whenever I'm in the gym, they've got the music videos. There's so many of these. Like an idiot posh bloke in horrible calf-length trousers and no socks, right? And a sort of brainless, horsey, blonde, posh girl in a bikini, like taking selfies while pulling a grotesque face and throwing a peace sign, you know? Just these upper-middle-class scum defiling a tropical paradise with their oblivious narcissism and learning nothing and understanding nothing just

communicating their um their empty unearned smug pleasure and that's the video right it's about as far from an artistic statement as you can get so give me these brian rogersion rejects any day with their non-existent holiday on a non-existent island, mugging like children's entertainers and miming in front of a couple of mock palm trees where the trunk isn't even connected to the fronds any day. Yeah, it is about dreams and it makes me dream. I think it's dreams of Europe. That's what I think it is um about dreams and um it it makes me dream it's i think it's dreams of europe that's what i think it is yeah because even though they have this profoundly british backstory they as a

kind of visual phenomenon and you know where everything about their backstory they could not be more british it's british light and entertainment to the bone but the record well it's literally european yes by by dutch people and you know know, it's channeling ABBA big time. And the fact that it's singing about sort of, you know, tropical settings is neither here nor there. It makes me think of Northern Europe and of, you know, chill winds and frost and snow in a good way. It's got a bit of that kind of um abba's

ironically titled summer night city which is going to one of the least summery records ever um so it's it's it's a it's one of those fascinating one-offs in pop where um a band who've never done anything good before never do anything good afterwards just suddenly out of nowhere um make an astonishing record yeah the thing that lets this down for me is the fucking song's called Fantasy Island and Steve Grant looks like a new romantic Robinson Crusoe when he really should have been Mr. Rourke

and those two women should have been Tattoo. Not the Russian Tattoo, Herb Villachez or whatever he's called. Missed opportunity there. So the following week, Fantasy Island soared 17 places to number 15 and would eventually get to number five for two weeks. The follow-up, Secret Heart,

stalled at number 41 in August of this year and after their debut LP only got to number 87, Denise and Julie left the group, claiming they weren't getting any royalties and were on a mingy wage two new female singers were drafted in but after their next single i'm undecided failed to chart they packed it in freeze green ended up working with talk talk steve grant went back to musical theater and julie harris changed her name to chopper Harris. And the latter two reunited briefly to perform on a charity single, which we will talk about later on.

The group reformed in 2010 and trademarked the name Typefit, so you can fuck off, David Van Day. And they're still active on the 80s revival circuit, but Steve Harris still has to deny the rum rumor that he died in the mid-80s because so many people still confusing with jimmy mcshane of baltimore yeah so this charity single simon yeah this must be one of the ropeiest um charity singles ever made i know that in a previous chart music we talked about the uh the bradford fire charity song and that was a very odd lineup uh but this i think outdoes it um what it is it's um called doctor in distress by who cares um and it's an

it's an ian levine production and it's aimed at saving doctor who from cancellation by the bbc and also raising some money for cancer research on the side. And it was considered so awful that BBC wouldn't even play it. I mean, obviously there are reasons why they wouldn't play it because it's effectively an attack on them. But I've got the list here of the people who are on it. And barrel scrapings doesn't do it justice. Here we go.

No, hang on. Not even Faith Brown first. The first is Erlene Bentley. Nope. No idea. Faith Brown, comedian. Oh. Mikkel...

Or is it Michael Brown, the high energy singer? Right. Warren Kan from Ultravox. Hmm. Hazeldine. Yeah. Floyd Pierce from Hot Gossip. Oh.

Bobby G from Bucks Fizz. Oh. Jonah Louis. Oh. Ph Hot Gossip. Oh. Bobby G from Bucks Fizz. Oh. Jonah Louis. Phyllis Nelson. Fuck. Richie Pitts from the cast of the stage musical Starlight Express. Oh. John Rocker from Free E.E.'s.

Sally Thompson, actress. No. Oh, yeah. Near the front in the video, you'd be surprised. Yes, I bet. Wait for it, wait for it. David Van Day from Dollar. Of course david van day from dollar and members of matt bianco that's basher and danny um members of the moody blues justin hayward and john lodge who would have thought john lodge would get

mentioned twice on a chart music um members of tight fit of course steve grant and julie harris and right taylor will enjoy this members of time uk rick buckler ronnie bull jimmy richards ray simone nick smith and fletcher christian there was a member of time uk rick buckler's post jam band called fletcher christian and that is it that is your charity single line up there that is incredible I had no idea that Rick Buckler was on that record none at all well come on man yeah sending his love down the well the best thing about that record is that you know they have to have the Bono bit you know when he does yeah tonight thank Thank God it's there. Faith Brown gets the Bono bit on that record where she gets to go,

no, no, no, no, no, do a bit of vocal styling. All the lyrics are about the glorious history of Doctor Who. It goes, there was the something, something, and the master and a canine computer. Each screaming girl just hoped that a yeti wouldn't shoot her. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Holding us together, the stars are up and singing You can tell it's live, it's taken three and a half minutes for Glenn and Ray to get over there. They're with Chas and Dave with Tottenham Hotspur's single, which is called Tottenham, Tottenham! Come on, Newspur! Come on, Newspur! Come on, Newspur! Come on, you Spurs! Come on, you Spurs! Tottenham, Tottenham, now I can stop them. We're going to do it like we did last year.

Bates, with some real-life women, not stewardesses or zoo wankers, bangs on about how live everything is before introducing Tottenham, Tottenham by Chas and Dave with Tottenham Hotspur. Formed in London in 1975, Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock were two session musicians who had worked with Joe Meek, Jerry Lee Lewis, Albert Lee, Richie Blackmore and it goes without saying, Labby Siffre, whose song I Got There was sampled by Eminem on My Name Is. After teaming up with drummer Mick Burt they were championed by the DJs Charlie Gillett and John Peel and were encouraged to delve into their London roots so they invented

the genre known as Rockne eventually making the top 40 in June of 1979 with Gertrude. After two more top 40 hits, they took a group who'd been going since 1882 but had failed to register a chart hit, Tottenham Hotspur, and brought them under their wing and wrote and co-performed Ozzy's Dream, which got to number five for two weeks in May of 1981. This is the follow-up and it's up this week from number 43 to number 30. Before we pile into it chaps just want to clear a couple of things up. If you think that Tottenham Hotspur had a chart hit before that you're thinking of Nice One Cyril by the Cockrell Chorus which had nothing to do with the club. Tottenham Hotspur did try an official song called Hotspur's boogie but it failed to chart first of all you're not meant to notice that these supposed Cockney or

if you will Rockney heroes from the old East End are fans of a team that's supported only in the far north of London and much of Hertfordshire. So if you do come from the East End, you support West Ham, or if you're not white, Arsenal. Or if you're in the very easternmost tip, you might support Leighton Orient. This is about as simple as the London football map gets, right? There's not a lot of crossover in these. One or two Millwall, not much else.

I can't believe they're welcoming their local glowing smoke filled gin palace ever again after turning up on TV singing Tottenham Tottenham

two years in a row as well I know I was shocked I was shocked to discover Chas and Dave didn't support West Ham yeah

but it's because they're not from the East where they're from from Edmonton yeah one's from Edmonton and the other's from Enfield which is absolutely Spurs country.

Nobody supports anything but Spurs there. But it's absolutely not Cockney. Although, ironically, looking at them, they both look very much at home around modern day Bethnal Green, Hackney, Shoreditch, where that look is popular all over again.

Yes. Also as a kind of costume for the comfortably odd. Yeah, but this song, I mean, Ozzy's Dream was, it was a decent enough football song. I mean, we know, as we know, it's hard to judge football songs because, you know, number one, they're usually done by teams that we don't support. And number two, they're cat shit usually.

But I think Ozzy's dream caught a moment and and did it well even though it obliged osvaldo ardiles who was doing his best to learn english pronunciation to do a kind of racist impression of himself and pronounce tottenham as tottingham even though he was perfectly capable of saying it yes yes that's that's very true and of course you know it's turned into Ozzy's nightmare, isn't it? Because of the Falklands War, he's had to piss off to Paris Saint-Germain. And they show Ricky Villa's goal in the clip here as well. Of course they do, yes.

The previous year's FA Cup final. Yeah. So, you know, even though he's an argy, they... Yeah, he's a good one. Yeah, he's all right, yeah. He's still good one. Yeah, he's all right. He's still on the books at Tottenham, but he's not in the studio. Just in case Ken Bailey bites his neck or something.

To be honest, he was never a regular in that Tottenham side anyway. He didn't settle quite as well as Ozzy Ardiles, who was quite ingratiating, actually. There's a questionnaire with him from Shoot magazine shortly after he arrived in Britain. And it says, who would you most like to meet? And his answer is, Her Majesty the Queen. Yeah, I think Ricky Villa was almost brought along

to keep Ardiles company in the way that... I think it's quite commonplace these days that clubs do that. If they buy a massive star player from another country who doesn't speak English very well. I think Man United might have done it with Cristiano Ronaldo. They might have brought some other hapless youth player in who was never going to make the grade, but they were his mate.

Yeah. They spoke Portuguese. What a fucking waste of money when they could have just bought a big mirror um around this time 1982 i think there was a sense that spurs were everyone's second team because um they played with a lot of flair and excitement and and they were only ever going to win the odd cup they were never going to be a threat to think they're not going to be a threat to the States. If you supported one of the big clubs, you didn't have to look over your shoulder at Spurs.

They were never going to do anything. But they were quite fun to watch. I'm saying that. There's probably people, including our own David Stubbs, who are absolutely cursing at the speakers when I'm saying that. There was a period in the late 80s, late 80s, early 90s, where I hated Spurs, particularly for fucking up

Brian Clough's retirement plans. But to me, they've always been seen as shaking Arsenal. No offence to any Tottenham supporter listening to this, but that's what you've been for such a long time. I don't know, man.

Around this time, I think they played with a certain kind of swashbuckling style. Yes. Which Arsenal never did. Arsenal were very much... You know they say the Church of England is the Conservative Party at prayer. I think Arsenal have always been the Conservative Party at play. Ooh.

Thank God David isn't on. Hi, David. Yeah, but I think Spurs, they sort of played sexy football, rock and roll football, whatever, around that time. So it's people like Hoddle and Steve Archibald, we've seen Garth Crooks.

Mark Falco was he in the team around that time? Yes. And yeah, I think there's something quite likeable about them. But having said that, the FA Cup final that this is building up to, I wanted QPR to win. I had a soft spot for QPR already from a few years earlier when they were amazing, you know, from the mid-70s.

Stan Bowles era, yes. Stan Bowles, Jerry Francis and all of that. But also, I think I really warmed to them around this time because, you know, in Shoot Magazine, on the back page,

they had Focus On and it was a questionnaire with a player. They had one with, they had one of these questionnaires with QPR's goalkeeper, Peter Hooker. And one of the questions they ask everyone is what is your nickname? And he just put unprintable.

Yeah. Crack me up. Peter Hooker. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I can see where that's going. This song though,

how does it compare with Ozzy's dream? Not as good. No. And I said that I was in the pub last night um having already watched this episode and uh i was uh i'm talking to a friend of mine who's a tottenham fan and i mentioned this and i started singing the chorus and it's been stuck in my head ever since yeah it is it's a bit of an earworm to be fair it's vastly superior to this time because it is it's just a fucking song you sing when you're pissed up. You can imagine the club singing this in the coach

with a few crates of long life stowed in the aisles. Chas and Dave know what they're doing. Yes. I mean, they're already in the charts with Ain't No Pleasing You, which is a brilliant song. Got To Number Two was held off number one by My Camera Never Lies by Bucks Fizz. Yeah, they're sort of like an English Sly and Robbie. Do you know what I mean?

Yes. They're different instruments, but the same sort of thing. You know what you're getting if you book Chas and Dave. Although there's a quick shot of the drummer, N, in the middle of this. And he's a deeply sinister man he really he killed his own kind but you know yes and it also it's impossible to look at chas hodges without imagining his pubic hair um because just because of the visual cue i I don't know. I find it perfectly possible, actually. He's got a visual cue all over his face and swarming out the top of his open-neck shirt.

It's not pleasant. I've actually seen Chas and Dave live a couple of times, and they are really great. They're just such good friends. Yeah, I can believe it. You can imagine you sort of go in there knowing exactly what you're going to get, and people are just standing on tables shouting along it's just absolutely fantastic

they were um it's funny that you mentioned kind of hipster types adopting that look they were adopted uh chas and dave by that kind of libertines crowd for a bit weren't they do you remember that it was uh in the in the early noughties um they ended up supporting the libertines several times and um i actually had to go and see the libertines on their comeback at alexandra palace for for work and if you know the layout of alexandra palace there's a massive bar area massive sort of atrium um and chas hodges was just plonked in the middle of that with a piano no no dave just chas and um so he didn't even have a stage he's just in the middle of this huge bar.

And people were gathered around him. And it was just, I mean, obviously better than the Libertines. And even though I was meant to be reviewing the Libertines gig, I snuck out several times and just stood and watched him. He's fantastic. But Tottenham Hotspur, they've done the right thing here, haven't they? Get people who know what the fucking going on about in. Yeah, although there's always been a definite mismatch

between the footballing culture of Tottenham Hotspur and the reality of most of their fans, as far as I can tell. I mean, yeah, like Simon was saying, they're a club, even in the dark days of English football, you know, they rarely played ugly. I mean, they were like most London clubs. They were flashy, but fragile when it mattered.

Whenever you meet their fans, they're quite often seem to be sort of slightly disagreeable, you know. And there's always been that weird spivviness about the club as well with people like Irving Scholar and Terry Venables, you know, Alan Shug. I mean, they pretty much invented the modern model of a football club as a business long before, you know, Man United and everyone went down that road um but the thing is nothing none of nothing popularly associated with the club

is really reflected in this record right because whether you love or hate spurs a cheap and tatty good-natured knees up doesn't seem like a very Spurs-y thing. If you wanted to really reflect Tottenham Hotspur, you'd want kind of a sweet, silky smooth pop classic, which just as it gets to the last chorus goes and just falls apart. I've got to say that the quality of the jumpers on the Spurs team are a lot superior, massively superior to the England ones, aren't they? If we're going to talk about who's on stage and what they're wearing

we've got to get into this they're accompanied by female dancers, I mean I'm assuming these are not the Tottenham Hotspur ladies team they're female dancers in a yellow Spurs away kit with sexy white suspenders and stockings underneath

which is the sort of thing that Loaded used to run as a photo spread. And it's also, this is what Sepp Blatter wanted women's football to be like. Who are those women anyway? Because they're not zoo. No. I mean, they look like they might just be locals that they've persuaded to dress like sort of Tottenham stripper grounds. I mean, they definitely seem like London girls,

like in all the good ways and the bad ways. You know, they're quite brassy, possibly over-brassy, but there'd be a laugh. Some have got shorts on and some have elected to disregard the shorts. Yeah, yeah. No, they're good.

I somehow noticed. They look like there'd be a laugh, but they wouldn't take any shit. You know, like they're brothers in prison. You know what I mean? The real London girls. Yeah. And the fact that two of them are draped over Garth Crooks

would have, you know, confused and angered many a dad. My favourite thing about this clip is Garth Crooks singing with the same dogged sincerity with which he did and does everything else fantastic oh and the other best thing about this is when Bates does the intro he does a sort of condescending London voice do you know yes Tottenham Tottenham, Tottenham as if he's backing away from them in a pub the thing about Gareth Crookes though is that

because of his puffy eyes and his pouty mouth you can just see him in a powdered wig at some French court or in the Johnson crew. Anything else to say about this? No.

No. The following week, Tottenham, Tottenham jumped 11 places to number 19, its highest position. I think you'll note that QPR didn't do a single of their own unless, of course, you know better. They went on to win the FA Cup that year after a replay and the follow-up hot shot Tottenham got to number 18 in May of 1987 and this cypher would have another go when the year ends in one in 1991 but it's only got to number 44. 16 minutes to eight. Have a look at what position it is in this week's UK top 20. Tottenham Hotspur, Australian at number 30 with Tottenham Tottenham.

Cat People and Bowie at 29. At number 28, more than this, at Roxy Music. A new entry, Patrice Russian with Forget Me Nots at 27. And at 26, My Camera Never Lies, Bucks Fitz. In Comes Queen, Body Language at number 25. Nightbirds and Shack Attack at 24. And at 23, a new entry, Stay, Barry Manilow. Jazz and Dave, Ain't No Pleasing You at 22.

And in at 21, Shout Shout from Rocky Sharp and the Replays. I wondered where these girls had gone to. Now they're back to 27 years. Patrice Rushden, beautiful song. It's called Forget Me Not, so she's just below your line of vision. Hit me lots. Help me to remember. After doing a time check, Bates runs down the top 30 from number 30 to number 21. And of course, with every single episode of Chart Music,

we have to step away and discuss various things regarding the chart rundown. Anybody? Yeah, first of all, the extraordinarily convoluted and incoherent introduction from Bates, who's supposed to be a professional broadcaster. Yes. And he's got all those... It just time checks all the fucking time. I know, well, it's because it's live, isn't it?

He thinks it makes it seem exciting and live. It's like, you should do this. It's like, no, it's just coming up to quarter to five. He might as well have held up a copy of that day's evening standard, like, you know, kidnap victims do. And it makes him fuck up the start of the actual chart countdown, doesn't it? Because he stumbles over, say, 16 minutes to eight in various different ways. And then he fucks up the first quarter.

And he's got all those zoo zeros around him. And what's weird is they're all pulling random facial expressions at weird times to make it look as if they're listening to him. When in fact, they look sort of like android prototypes, you know, which for 10 years time would look hilariously primitive. Yeah. Like really bad reaction things in a school play. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Downtown Julie Brown does exactly that. She does a sort of a, ooh, thing, but in response to nothing. Yes. Yeah. And in the chart rundown, you get to see Chas and Dave proving that nothing says class like white jackets with black shirts and piano keyboard ties oh yes the best thing about that picture is that N has gone the extra mile and he's also got a pair of mirrored shades and a trilby for the complete look

so a very very specific look which can be summed up in two words still rocking yes yeah n is very much the ken from bros of chas and dave isn't it or yes or the one from right said fred who had hair yes yeah and the one is easy top who didn't have a beard but was called beard yeah in the the england world cup squad the picture is the illustration from the front cover of the album, which is like one of those 70s film posters, where it's probably done by an Italian artist going on the style. And it's a collage of England players' disembodied heads and shoulders arranged around a giant Keegan with arms aloft.

And it's all arranged symmetrically so it looks like some kind of hideous cockroach butterfly with kevin keegan's massive head as the head and the players as the wings keegan's neck as the thorax and then the world cup as a hardened golden abdomen we form like voltron and kegger is the head yeah and you know like insects have those markings that are meant to scare off predators and that you know um phil thompson is there for that purpose so eventually bates introduces forget me Nots by Patrice Russian. Born in Los Angeles in 1954, Patrice Russian was a session singer and jazz pianist who was enrolled into music classes at the University of Southern California at the age of three

and put her first LP out in 1973. After changing labels in the late 70s, she moved from jazz to disco and spent the next five years chasing down a hit. She nearly managed it in the UK in 1980 and 1981, but never managed to crack the top 60. Then, in 1982, she offered up this song from her seventh LP as a potential single, but it was knocked back by her label Elektra. However she put her foot down and it became her first US hit. In the meantime it's gone up over here this week from number 37 to number 27 and before we get into the song I think we need to discuss something that happens that just absolutely crystallizes the zoo relationship with the general public because

that blonde zoo wanker who i discovered later went on to portray sharon in the what no meat advert for british beef leaves baits aside and barges a chunky woman in a raw raw skirt and gold crown who is going absolutely batty at her own reflection in the monitors in order to join her cuntish friends for another smarties party did you see that no yeah that's the second most disgusting thing that happens during that intro after ken bailey putting his hand on a young woman's shoulder yes rep. The repulsive fucking zombie. Zoo are basically acting as crazy mates, aren't they, in this?

Yeah. Well, Zoo are off in one corner on a little podium and Patrice is surrounded by that sort of middle tier. Yes. Whoever the hell they are. Yeah. There's like John Aldridge dressed as a bowl of custard. Yeah. Oh, he's terrible he is yeah the attack of the 50 foot woman in the pink spangly dress yeah oh god yeah

but there's also a tall black lad at the back in a suit and a red bow tie and he he looks like he's a member of the nation of islam yeah and mr lemon and lime in the yellow and green like ground oh yeah yeah there is a lot of yellow and green, like ground trapping. Yeah, there is a lot of yellow and green, like I was saying earlier, and there's a lot of quality street rappers going on. Yeah, it's peak 80s, peak early 80s, I think. It is that whole thing that I was saying about 82 being forever Saturday. It's a very Saturday look going on with that crowd.

But Patrice Russian, she's kind of like wearing white culottes and she appears to have half the Franklin Mint in her hair. Yeah. It's the era. We're still in that Floella Benjamin era, but it's moved from the beads to just crazy shit. Yeah, she'd have a hard time these days getting through airport security, both for metallic reasons and weight reasons. Yeah, she'd have a hard time these days getting through airport security, both for metallic reasons and weight reasons.

Yeah. And, you know, obstacle courses. You know, going underneath M-Nets should be fucked. But don't you think she has possibly the most instantly likeable presence of any performer I've ever seen? I mean, it's an amazing record. Who could fail to feel an instant warmth towards her as soon as you see her charming demeanor and despite the fact she's wearing a white dress with gray tights which is

a courageous fashion choice she looks like someone you could never dislike or stay angry with yeah which is as good as anything i mean it's... Particularly when contrasted with zoo wankers. Oh, yeah. Yeah, those zoo animals. Yes. Yeah, she's a... Seems like a really nicely brought up young woman. Yeah. Proof that, yes, indeed, the Russians love their children too.

Oh, very good. I'm currently appearing in Summer Season at the Royal London Hospital Whitechapel. Appearing in summer season at the Royal London Hospital Whitechapel. But her dancing and her general performance is really vague. And I think that might be because she's really a pianist. Yes. And a keyboard player. And whenever you see them, when they come out from behind something,

they never know quite what to do with themselves. Yeah. The song, though. It's fucking mint, isn't it? Yes. No. No? I know. I'm sorry.

I feel the same way about this. That I feel about Mama Used to Say. Very similar feeling it gives me, actually. It felt cold. I didn't know we'd got Morrissey on chart music this week. Pricey, see? No, I had this thing, and I still do, I suppose, about cold and warm music, and this felt cold to me. and I still do, I suppose, about cold and warm music.

And this felt cold to me. I just, yeah, I can see that there's almost nothing wrong with it, just as I can with Mamma Used to Say. I think maybe I was slightly put off by the way she doesn't enunciate all the words. So I can never figure out what she's singing it's like what what are you singing um yeah i don't know it's like ken bailey talks come on let's face it simon she's in color so you're obviously against it from the off aren't you yeah i can see where you're going with this yeah yeah basically the idea that uh as a um a sort of indie snob or i wasn't even

one yet but i was probably going to become one uh i preferred i preferred black music if it was done uh before uh color photography came in um yeah that's probably a fair accusation although i'm sure i could come up with loads of uh examples of black music of that era that i absolutely loved but just it so happens that this... Just a bit too sophisticated. I think there might be something in that. Is that it? Yeah, there was a certain kind of idea

that the world of the people who were into this was unreachable to me, and I didn't really want to reach it either. As Taylor said about Junior Giscom, it's very South of England, even though it's made by somebody from America. The sort of people who it would appeal to over here, it was very much a South of England thing.

And yeah, I suppose in retrospect, it's been made even worse by the Will Smith sampling, Men in Black. Yeah. Well, this is one of those songs like She's Fine, She's Mine by Bo Diddley or Rapper's Delight, where there's like a whole tree of other songs

growing out the top of it. You know what I mean? It's like a mother load. A lot of her stuff's been sampled and you can see why. Oh, George Michael, didn't he? Yeah, George Michael did it too. You can see why she was a popular target for sampling

because a lot of her other stuff is quite plain and smooth. It's like a plain, smooth background against which you can do your own thing. A lot of her other records are a bit too smooth for me. But this is the one that really leaps out. I mean, in fairness, in 1982, this would have sounded like room noise to me. But now it's like sonic ambrosia.

You know, there's zero negative aspects. It's just like an instant cleansing breeze through the soul. It's one of those records, it just does one thing and it tints the air and makes everything beautiful. And it's got that bass by Freddie Washington, which is, the whole song is really just a cradle for that bass line, which is the real lead part on this record.

And the song is just a groove, but that's all it has to be. And in fact, the 12-inch is better because it's just this, but longer, which feels completely natural because it's like an endless uh edgeless groove if you had the 12 inch of this just playing forever just there your life would improve immeasurably i've changed my mind i like it now oh there you go yeah no you've

convinced me i think you're right yeah okay because simon i would have i would have dismissed this as funky belt music uh back the day as well, you know. So, yeah, good. Well done, everyone. Who says this podcast doesn't achieve anything? The following week, Forget Me Not's rocketed up 16 places to number 11 and would eventually get to number 8. The follow-up, I Was Tired Of Being Alone,

got to number 39 in July of this year and that was her last brush with a top 40 but Forget Me Nots would be covered, stroked, fucked with by George Michael for Fast Love and Will Smith for Men In Black and Patrice Rushen went on to become the musical director for the Grammys and a soundtrack composer. For these Russian and more guests on Pop of the Pops, here's Steve Archibald.

Steve? Hello, Simon. Isn't it about time you sang? Yes, well, let me ask you. In that case, here is a Scottish thing to put round your head. Get off with yourself and come back after the chance from number 20. It's Dollar at number 20 with Give Me Back My Heart. Elton John's Blue Eyes at number 19.

Five of eight places for Hot Chocolate and Girl Crazy to 18. At 17, up five places, Bandow Ballet and Instinction. Kim Wilde's View from a Bridge is at number 16. And Simple Minds, up four places with Promised You a Miracle to 15. Yazoo, Straight In with Only You at 14. The Scottish Cup Squad

at number 13 with We Have a Dream. Monsoon, Ever So Lonely at 12. And at number 11, it's Shaken Stevens and Shirley. It's getting to be chaos in this place. Ladies and gentlemen, they said it couldn't be done live, but it is being done live. John Gordon Sinclair with the Scotland World Cup. And I have a dream.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE a dream. Applause Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music

Music Music Music Music Bates has a fucking excruciating interview session with Steve Archibald and drapes a tartan scarf around his airy neck before running the chart down from number 20 to number 11, describing the next act as the Scottish Cup squad before introducing them proper as the Scotland World Cup. It's actually the Scotland World Cup squad and we have a dream.

There's two things about this. First of all, Steve Archibald responds to Simon Bates greeting as if he knows that Bates has been fucking his wife. But he also knows that Bates doesn't know that he knows. Right. He's like not looking at him. Biding his time, you know. And the other thing is that Simon Bates forgets the word scarf.

He drapes a scarf around his neck and says here's a scottish thing to put around your neck yes and he has a scottish thing it's a blank but very tense face like the word scarf is just drifting away out of reach it's like uh flowers for algernon there's a horror film called ponty pool um a canadian indie horror film where where basically that happens where this kind of virus by which people just lose words. It just sort of starts dropping out of their minds. And it's as if Simon Bates is showing the first signs of being a sufferer from that.

Yeah, or he's just returning to his primal state. And now I think about it, it's actually set in a radio station. So it's closer and closer. Yeah, yeah. Really good film. It's more like he's returning to his primal state as a lumbering beast in spectacles. You know, he's losing the power of speech

and soon he'll just be emitting a tortured roar with the hour tune music playing in the background. But he gets close because he also is unable to say the phrase the Scottish World Cup squad because in the chart run down Well, he describes the next act

in the chart run down as the Scottish Cup squad. Yes. But then he introduces them proper as the Scottishottish world cup yes so just those four words scottish world cup squad he's incapable of stringing together it's actually the scotland world cup squad and we have a dream formed in glasgow in 1873 Scotland went 99 years without a hit record until they teamed up with Bill Martin and Phil Coulter who wrote congratulations for Cliff Richard

and Puppet on a String for Sandy Shaw in the late 60s and Saturday Night for the Bay City Rollers in the early 70s and put out Easy Easy which got to number 20 in June of 1974 after four years of inactivity they linked up with rod stewart for ole ola mother brasiliera which means brazilian woman which i don't know what the fuck has to do with an argentinian world cup but it went all the way to number four in june of 1978 but sadly band member willie johnson was forced out a few weeks later due to substance issues this is a belated follow-up written by b.a robertson and fronted by john gordon sinclair who has just starred in the surprise hit football

related film gregory's girl and it's up this week from number 24 to number 13 and again a smart move having a non-footballer handling the main work because Gregory's Girl was fucking everyone loved that didn't they in 1982 yes yeah it's a brilliant film um but you say that you know having a pro fronting it well Simon Bates makes a big deal of saying they said it couldn't be done live but you know here it is. Well, I think John Gordon Sinclair proves that it... Maybe he was talking about his performance. Yeah, exactly.

I think... And it couldn't be done live in Simon Bates' case. Sinclair proves that you can't do that song live because his lip-syncing to his own narration at the start is all over the fucking place, isn't it? Yes, it is yes yeah i could never watch gregory's girl because i found him too annoying to be honest right but to be honest i no longer have room in my heart to hate him or anyone else after watching

this masterclass in backseat country yes like it was bad enough i mean we complain about the england squad selling out to ba well the scotland squad have associated with an even worse ba um and you look at him in this clip and he's trying to hog your attention yes and upstage john gordon sinclair by being as much of a cunt as possible yes in i he's pissed. I don't know. There have been three football teams in this episode at the top of the box. The fucking barbell. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

But you look at him and it's like, B.A., can you not stop being a cunt for just a couple of minutes? But he can't do it. Yeah. Like even just for 20 seconds at the start when Sinclair is doing his bit. Even then um because sinclair's in a spotlight and then uh the players and all the other hangers-on are sort of dimly lit in blue at the back even at that point you can see bae robertson mugging and waving his arms around look at me

look at me yeah there's just no way to yeah adequately the sheer, sheer cuntishness of B.A. Robertson in this clip. It's like his cuntishness is manspreading and obscuring the cuntishness of all the other cunts in this cunt cluster, right? You could have had Ian Brady, Dennis Nilsson, George Gallo, any cunt that's ever been scottish standing in that stack of swaying twats and if you had six bullets you put them all in ba robertson just to make sure it's fucking horrendous the last one in the groin just for kicks i would like to get ba robertson and like his a-team namesake knock him unconscious and put him on a plane, but a plane with Mohammed Atta at the controls. I would like to go back in time to when B.A. Robertson was a baby,

pick him up by his ankles, swing him around and smack his head off a sink. Just do humanity a favour. It's ethics 101. I would have a duty if i found myself in scotland in that time to do just that do you think he had any mates at all apart from noel edmunds seriously this is a great twist on the old conundrum of if you go if you went back in time would you assassinate hitler yeah, I think proof that human race

will never invent time travel. Because if it did, we would not be watching this now. Are we all agreed on the worst bit of B.A. Robertson's bellendery in this performance? All right, well, I think it's the bit where Sinclair talks about the moment where he gets fouled in the box and B.A. Robertson goes,

that's a penalty. And just the face he does at that moment, I want to punch him so hard. Do you think that's a penalty is worse or better than that's brilliant? It's a conundrum, isn't it? It's tough, yeah. We'll step away from B.A. for the moment, discuss the song, because to my mind this is a

far superior song to uh either this time or england will fly the flag simply because the expectations are much lower don't they in 1978 it was oh we're gonna win fucking easy and now it's like oh i'm having a dream that scotland are going to beat New Zealand with a jammy penalty. Yeah. And it's from the fans' point of view, isn't it? Rather than the players saying, we're so amazing. Exactly. Yeah. It's like when Sly and the Family Stone went from stand to there's a riot going on, to my mind. You know, it's more downbeat.

It's less celebratory. And yeah, I'll stop now because i'm not comparing ba robertson to sly and the family stone yeah no i think you are al i think you think they're exactly yeah i was then yeah yeah i know that but yeah i mean the the song is basically him having a dream uh about playing for scotland and he gets a penneau and the great John Robertson, my favourite footballer of all time. I thought we were going to get to this. The way he throws that ball

to John Gordon Sinclair, fucking perfect. What a man. In the tournament, John Robertson goes on to score a beautiful goal against New Zealand. Yes. Do you remember?

Yes. Lovely free kick. And it's here Natalie turned out in a go for goals t-shirt with the, and the O's are no smoking signs with a pair of grey slacks. It's beautiful. Yes. And he probably went off straight afterwards for a fag. He was a,

he was a proper chain. You know, Robbo was. Yeah. Is it John Robinson? Who's a massive fan of ACDC? Or am I getting my thoughts clear? No, that's John McGovern.

John McGovern. John McGovern does, you know, he's worked there. The impression of Brian Clough doing ACDC on the day. Yes, he does, yeah. Robbo was a massive fan of Roxy Music. Oh. Yeah. He's a lovely bloke, he is.

I interviewed him. I've got a photo of me as a 12 year old holding up the european cup in my dad's local in uh top valley and uh i brought it along when i interviewed him and i said look robo this is my favorite photo of me ever and the only reason it happened was because of you so thank you very much for that can i have a photo of you holding this photo and he said yeah of course you can brilliant yeah oh it's beautiful such a such a nice bloke and very kind of meta as well yes but yeah who else is there then do you know who's not there but he's on the record yeah right boxer jim watt jockey willie carson and runner alan wells jesus i didn't know that

randomly three successful Scottish sports people who had nothing to do with the football squad are on the record. But no, I think Scotland have outclassed the English here on this performance, even when encumbered by B.A. Robertson. I'll tell you who else is not there. It's the Liverpool contingent. No Dalglish, no

Souness, no Hanson, as far as I can see. That's right, yeah. I wonder why. I looked into it and, you know, I couldn't see any reason. There'd been no recent kind of cup final or anything else, anything like that in Liverpool we're involved in. Very odd. But Dalglish, of course, got dropped by Jock Steen for the tournament and brought on as a sub a couple of times.

Shocking. I'll tell you who is there. What I think are hostesses from Britishish caledonian airways yes just to keep up with the keep up with the next door neighbors um and it's not nice to talk about women in terms purely in terms of their appearance but on these football records the women are only tell you you've just told us you wanted to smash a baby's head against the sink. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, whatever you say now, just go for it.

Obviously, the women in these football records are only there as visual accessories. And one of the British Caledonian Airways hostesses is stunningly beautiful and gives a genuinely whoa look to camera just before being obscured by BA Cunterson holding up an idiot board with all the lyrics on. Fuck you know

he's like the Ken Bailey of Scotland. Wasn't that Sharon of What No Meat fame again holding up the banner at first? Oh, I don't know. I know it's BA who skewers this beautiful vision. Seriously, couldn't they not have got anyone else

involved in this record? Well, he wrote the song, so, you know. The Ken Bailey of Scotland. See, this is a good idea. Rather than have the Home Internationals or any sort of England, Scotlandotland football sporting fixtures, they should have just locked Ken Bailey and B.A. Robertson in a darkened room.

Like the Two Tribes video. Yeah, yeah. But of course, someone else who is there is... And it was bothering us because we didn't know him. He was a mixed-race bloke in a kilt. And it turns out that he is chris mcclure who was formerly of the fireflies and the chris mcclure section who became a solo singer uh and just changed his name to christian and he's still doing the club

scene you know as we speak which was which is nice But the other facts I gleaned from that is that he appeared, his band appeared on an STV pop show of the early seventies called Stramash, which is the fucking best name for an early seventies pop show. Can you imagine how brilliant Stramash must've been? So that's Scottish for like a bit of a, a fisticuffs. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, if he was Englishisticuffs, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's like if he was English, it would be called kerfuffle. Yes. Although, no, really, it's good that this record was made by actual Scots because otherwise we'd just have got all the usual stupid Scottish cliches of tartan tam-o-chanters and bagpipes and large groups of drunk men.

So I was trying to look at the players and figure out who they all are. And it was fairly easy with the England lot. But I struggled a bit with these. There's John Walker, I recognise. He's kind of unmistakable. I think he's 24 years old, but he looked about 44 at the time. You've got the aforementioned John Robertson. Presumably there are people like Aza Hartford,

pantomime villain Joe Jordan you'd think would be in there. The man with the most Scottish-sounding name ever, Danny McGrane. Maybe David Neri, who scored that amazing toe-pump goal against Brazil. But, yeah, the hapless Alan Ruff is in there. He's the man who spawned a thousand jokes about Scotland's dodgy keepers for years afterwards. But I'm going to talk about Alan Brazil here, right? Because, yeah, Alan fucking Brazil.

Obviously nowadays better known as a radio presenter on Talk Sport. And I once had the job of reviewing his book for When Saturday Comes magazine. It was called, I think it's called There's an Awful Lot of Bubbly in Brazil by Al Brazil and Mike Parry, right? In this book, he reveals that during the 1982 World Cup, he went missing and got drunk with his hero, Rod Stewart, and then went yeah basically

went awol on an amphetamine binge which was apparently accidental he'd somehow managed to take speed accidentally um okay there's uh he he played in the tournament he played uh against the ussr and uh he started trying to undermine and settle the Soviet players, who probably couldn't understand him anyway, by saying, it's back to the salt mines for you tonight, pal. After we've wellied you, you commie tosser. He's not known for his subtle handling of racial or national matters, shall we say.

There's a bit in the book where he was in America and he calls his black limo driver Benson. That's Alan Brazil there. It's funny you should say that. I reviewed another one of his books for When Saturday Comes. It was called Both Barrels from Brazil. Yes, this one, I think he'd already told his life story so most of this one was devoted to uh kind of witless right-wing diatribes and uh his uh nice his suggestion that uh the nhs

should be run by the head of a pharmaceutical company and uh the country should be run by the CEO of Ryanair because what could possibly go wrong? Basically, the only good World Cup records ever have been the non-aligned... There's been Dennis Al Capone World Cup football, which is a fantastic record, despite its suggestion that the only reason Ron Greenwood isn't playing Cyril Regis up front every game is because he's a racist.

Yes. And Pam Pam Cameroon by Maccabee. Of course, of course. A toasted history of Cameroon's adventures in the 1990 World Cup, which reaches a frenzied pitch as they go out to England and Maccabee suddenly starts going

England were lucky, lucky they were lucky, lucky, England were very lucky, lucky Yeah, a genuine highlight in popular music history I think it's quite nice that Scotland can't feel hard done by about 82 because

they're in Brazil's group they knew they were fucked they battered New Zealand they were battered by Brazil and they were held 2-2 by USSR and in the words of Tommy Doherty home before the postcards so basically it showed them their place they know their place

and this reflects in the song doesn't it so yeah but again you know they go on about we'll bring it back for you they can't as fifa slapped down some ruling and they trademark world cup in world cup songs it's an interesting point yeah and of course you know we've got to mention that northern ireland uh also had a World Cup song called Your Man, which didn't make the charts, possibly because they got Dana in. And also because it's only about one and a half million of them. But they could have made an effort. Yeah. So the following week, we have a dream.

Lept eight places to number five, its highest position, and three places higher than this time that week, which would have been, you know, that's a victory, isn't it, for Scotland there. The follow-up, big trip to Mexico, only got to number 81 in April of 1986. They wouldn't bother the Chots for another 10 years before they reunited with Rod Stewart and got purple Purple Heather to number 16 in June showers afterwards. That's the Scotland World Cup squad.

And in just a moment, I want you to meet someone rather special. She's an American lady who's just arrived. But now on top of the Pops, it's back to the top ten of the showers. A fantastic day at number ten for Haircut 100. At number nine, I Can Make You Feel Good by Shalimar. Straight in, Eurovision winner Nicole with a little piece at number 8 Pig Bag, Papa's Got a Brand New Pig Bag at number 7 And at number 6, One Step Further by Bardo

Bananarama and Funboy 3 are at number 5 And Joan Jett and the Blackhearts up 13 to number 4 with I Love Rock and Roll PhD at number 3, I Won't Let You Down And this time, Fly the Flag, the England World Cup squad at number two. Will you meet, ladies and gentlemen, just flown in literally from the States, Joan Jett. Hi, Joan. How are you doing? Are you going to do a session for us later so we can see you in live, so to speak, on Top of the Pops next week?

Yes, next week. And tell me if you're going to tour in this country. Probably late summer. Yeah, we'll do a full-scale, full-scale tour. You've got 24 hours in this country? Probably late summer yeah we'll do a full scale full scale tour. You got 24 hours in this country Joan J at the number one at the moment in the UK. Live together in perfect harmony Side by side on my piano keyboard Oh Lord, why don't we Bates, surrounded by the Spurs crumpetry, runs down the top ten

before having a chat with joan jett who swung by on a promotional binge for i love rock and roll wow what a combination these two are right you see her looking around wondering what kind of diseased anti-rock and roll environment she's been shoved into full of yes you know full of people dressed like East Germans, acting like they're 74. And all these weird, waxy dancers with their facial expressions bear no relation to anything that's happening around them. Just like traffic lights changing on a deserted high street at 5am.

And having to talk to a teacher. Yeah. This is what the 1986 film Something Wild could have been. You either think they're either going to go off in this really fucking screwball relationship or a flick knife's going to be pulled out at any moment. Speaking of teachers, I had a teacher at my middle school who looked like joan jett

but joan jett if she hadn't loved rock and roll um right that's the thing about joan jett i at the time i thought she looked really kind of mumsy because um i i thought she was kind of out of step with the 80s it's like she had 70s hair. And I assumed that because of that, she must have been quite old. And it turns out she was like 23 or something at this point. It's insane. I think she's so cool though. I think she's amazing.

My girlfriend's absolutely obsessed by her, so I get this stuff all the time. So is my niece. Really, yeah. What a goddess Joan Jett is. And she promises a full scale tour full scale it's weird though

you find yourself in a room with Simon Bates and Ken Bailey you start thinking maybe Kim Fowler's a nice guy after all so eventually Bates introduces this week's number one Ebonair and Ivory by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder are Paul McFucking Cartney and Stevie fucking Wonder.

solo as a track for McCartney's forthcoming LP Tug of War was according to George Martin inspired by Spike Milligan telling McCartney that you needed black notes and white notes to create harmony the message is racism you can do one right now please realizing that the song was crying out to be duetted, he cut Stevie Wonder in on the deal and they recorded it in Montserrat with George Martin producing. It knocked My Camera Never Lies by Bucks Fizz off the number one spot and this is its third week there. And we're treated to the video, which, due to the fact that neither of them had a matching window in their diaries,

was recorded separately and put together by magic oh what a cod wow few people kind of like doing something together in separate rooms and never meeting well imagine such a thing took me a second i'll let taylor come in first on this uh in a bit because after all this was the first single he ever bought but to my mind the video uh the bit on the giant keyboard always struck me as really fake anyway because i mean for fuck's sake if you're walking on a massive keyboard the first thing you're going to do is jump up and down on the keys like a bastard aren't you for at least half an hour i like that bit though because it reminds me of uh when mr greedy is on the giant's dinner table and there's a massive sausage and peas.

I guess that must be the piano owned by the owner of Tracy Ullman's deck chair. Yes, and also reminds me of Bernard Cribbins in the Hornby adverts, where he gets stalked by a cat and nearly run over by a train. So Taylor, yeah, the first single you ever bought. This is your end point as a true consumer of pop. Well, I'd owned records before this.

I owned a couple of goodies records and Nevermind the Presence by the Barronites. Of course, yes. But this is the first record that I bought with my own money. And I don't think I particularly liked it. I'm not even sure if I'd heard it when I bought it. I just thought, oh, it's the Beatles. But, alas, whatever this is, it's

most certainly not the Beatles. Incredibly, the album this is from, Tug of War, is actually half decent. And by half decent, I don't mean it's alright. I mean literally half. It's one of those albums where half the tracks by half decent i don't mean it's all right i mean literally half it's one of those albums where half the tracks are quite good and the other half are total rubbish like uh goat's head soup or something yeah fever hate um and maca's problem really or one of them is that he's a naturally bright and sharp bloke who came of age in a period when daily dope smoking and woolly thinking were

sort of de rigueur and feelings were prioritized over facts and when he started talking everyone shut up and listened with the exception of the other Beatles but other than that the entire world so as he got older he kept this idea of himself as a pretty clever and perceptive guy who didn't really need to check with anyone or update his thoughts you know even as things were moving on and his cozy isolation increased so by the age of 40 he thinks comparing human beings to inanimate blocks of hardwood, an elephant tusk, is in some way a useful or profound contribution to the endlessly awkward and complex conversation about racial prejudice. You know, I mean, most rock stars of that generation would just sort of fuck up for our amusement you know uh or they went deeper and deeper into themselves which was usually boring but easily ignored but paul doesn't want to go deeper into himself he never has it's why he was the last beetle to try lsd um it's why he's

always surrounded himself with children animals right To stave off introspection. And when occasionally he would be honest in early middle age, like the song Waterfalls, where the chorus goes, I need love, and he sings it in a tone which suggests this is not just a pop cliche, this is the real Paul McCartney, sort of opening up his soul and discovering the central facts of his being. It's great. But no, here he's just wagging his finger. And it's, yeah, it's disastrous.

Around this time, in terms of racially mixed acts singing songs about racial harmony or the dangers of racial conflict, you had the specials, It Doesn't Make It Alright. You had the beat, Two Swords. Or you had this, which, you know, it's for

a different demographic, let's be honest. It's incredibly syrupy, but it's aimed at getting that message to the sort of people who weren't buying early UB40 records. They couldn't wait to buy late UB40 records, but that's a whole different issue. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, the lyrics are beyond trite.

There is good and bad in everyone. I mean, yeah, there is good and bad in everyone, but it's about the ratios, isn't it? It's about the ratios isn't it it's about the percentages come on um you you you mentioned you you alluded to uh you you can do it right now please i i actually see a bit of a foreshadowing of that in this video actually because that line i just quoted there is good and bad in everyone the first time uh around um it's McCartney who sings that line the second verse it's Stevie Wonder's so Stevie Wonder sings there's good and bad in everyone and Paul McCartney goes in a kind of in a kind of affirmative um you know pseudo african-american way you know he's just he's saying preach brother essentially to Stevie

Wonder uh yes and I I don't know I just saw that and I thought god yeah that's that's you can do You know, he's saying preach, brother, essentially, to Stevie Wonder. Yes. And I don't know, I just saw that and I thought, God, yeah, you can do it right now, please, waiting to happen. Yeah. The silhouette of the two people who appear to be black men doing the... High-fiving each other and stuff. Giving each other some skin and everything. Do you think that might have been McCartney and Linda?

Well, I just wondered why it's two black men surely the point of the message it should be like exactly yes yeah one of them should have been in a bowler hat and with an umbrella a bowler hat yes absolutely well they try and get a sort of 50 50 racial mix because if you look at the video there's uh one stevie wonder uh a load of black people and about 10 paul mccartney's playing all the instruments he's reprised the video for coming up hasn't he coming up yeah the band he always wanted in terms of stevie wonder where does this fit is did he ever make a good record after this yes he did i just called Or is... I Just Called To Say I Love You, was that just around the corner? Or had it already happened?

His next single was Do I Do, which is fucking brilliant. Oh, you've hit a point. That is very good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is like the era of Muse Aquarium, so...

So this was just a bit of a lapse. He's still got it. Just a slight kind of lapse into syrupy ballads. For the sake of Paul. Yeah. Paul McCartney comes knocking, you're not going to say no, really, are you? Well, if he's Stevie Wonder, you could.

I suppose, but, you know. He's a nice guy. He is. And there was a mutual appreciation society between them, too, because I think it was Red Rose Speedway. Paul McCartney had the back of the album picked out in Braille,

and it just said, Stevie, we love you, you baby or something like that. I was going to tell a story about Stevie Wonder's favourite chocolate bar, but I can't remember what it was, so it's going to have to go now. But I was at the Motown Museum recently and we got a bit of a sort of private after tour

because the guy took a liking to us and they showed us this chocolate machine in the studio and said that when they delivered the chocolate, liking to us and they showed us this chocolate machine in the studio and said that when they delivered the chocolate, when the guy came around every few weeks to fill up the chocolate machine they could put whatever

bar they wanted into whatever slot, it didn't really matter except for this one chocolate bar that always had to go in the same column of the chocolate machine and it was Stevie Wonder's favourite chocolate bar because obviously he couldn't see so they couldn't fuck around with it they just had to leave it right there i thought it's kind of sweet literally leaving even leaving aside the sort of terrible lyrics this is just a terrible record um the the worst thing about it is the instrumental break which sounds exactly

like the music from pagesages from CFAX. You can't hear it without expecting to see, you know, multicoloured two-paragraph news reports. Yeah. Reg the octopus. Yeah, and pictures made out of magenta squares and letters of the alphabet. And it's his worst vocal on anything since hold me tight he sounds shit on it you know also this is the emergence of uh uh fab maca wacky thumbs aloft yeah um he sort of emerges

from his cool chrysalis here thumbs aloft and and fingers pointing ordering everyone around sort of simultaneously ingratiating and overbearingly bossy you know and he's gonna be around for a while so get used to him this is one of those songs uh one of those mccartney records which is is a pillar of his record isn't it of having uh had had a number one record solo and then as a duo, as a, how does it work? Solo, duo, trio, quartet and a quintet or something like that.

And also like a super group because he's on the B side of Band Aid. Yes. There's some stat, isn't there? And was he on, he was on a charity single as well, wasn't he? Another one.

Yeah, Feria. Yes, there we go. Yeah. So the following week, Ebony and Ivory was usurped by A Little Peace by Nicole. And it fell to number two. Oh, fucking hell.

Yeah, because the Eurovision Song Contest was the week before. And the German kids were going fucking mancle that they won Eurovision. All us British kids were looking at each other going, fucking hell, what's up with these lot? Swing your pants. Yeah. It was that song. It was followed up in McCartney's case by Take It Away which got to number 15 for two weeks

in August of this year and in Wanda's case by Do I Do which got to number 10 in June. Ebony and Ivorette would spend seven weeks at number one in America the second longest chart topper ever there for Macca and the longest for Wanda. It didn't

fix racism though did it? Seven weeks in the war in the states and it didn't fix racism. In April of this year an article on the USA Today website placed Ebony and Ivory in their listicle 20 politically incorrect songs that would be wildly controversial today. Claiming that McCartney and Wunder meant well with their hyper-literal interpretation of race relations, but their message of people are the same, there's good and bad in everyone, so let's just get along, would be interpreted as hilariously naive by the more woke factions of today's cultural discourse. Fuck this century, I want my old one back. Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder at number one. And will you welcome a megastar. It's Paul McCartney, ladies and gentlemen, on top of the pop. Simon Bates.

Hello. I was trying to work out just a moment ago when they told me you were coming on because you shouldn't really be here. You're on the way home, aren't you? How long is it since you've appeared on top of the pop? About eight years, I think. Eight years ago, which means it must have been, what, Wings? And what was the number you did?

It was Junior's Farm, I think. Amazing. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. You're looking in the pink. What have you been doing? Why are you here? We're on our way home. Been recording? Yeah, been recording.

There's someone special you want to say hello to. Yeah, we'd like to say hello to Heather, who's just bust her leg. You'll get well soon, kid, OK? Now, you've got an amazing situation. You've got a number one in this country, you've got the number one album. Next week, it'll be number one around the world. We extend our congratulations, obviously. How do you follow that? Not easily.

Paul McCartney, thank you very much for coming on Top of the Pops. Fantastic. Wonderful. First time in eight years. Come back next week and the week after that. And we'll go out and wish you good luck and good night from Top of the Pops. See you next week. Here's Funboy 3 and banana rama fucking hell it's paul and linda mccartney who have swung by the top of the pop studio to essentially wave their cocks about over being number one. Fucking hell they're all turning up tonight aren't they? Doesn't he look ill as well? He looks very

puffy. He's got a case of studio tan. Looks a bit boozy. But yeah also him and Linda both seem very boppy and lip chewy. Linda's not on this record, of course. Wings have split up.

So she's just there because she is his wife, basically. And Bates speaks to them the way that Bruce Forsyth used to speak to the contestants on the Generation game. Yes. Like Simon Bates talking to Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney. And he sort of gives Paul a bit of respect. And then he turns to Linda and goes, how are you? You all right?

You okay there? Speak your brain, peasant. And there's also that chilling moment where Paul turns to the camera and says, just want to say hello to Heather, who's just bust her leg. Get well soon, kid. Yeah, that's spooky. soon, kid. Spooky. Oh, man. Yeah, that is freaky, isn't it?

I mean, it's actually Linda's child from a previous marriage to which he was the new dad. But yeah, it hasn't aged well. It's funny how things turn out, right? And eventually Bates signs off with really saying something by Bananarama and the Fun Boy 3. Formed in London in 1980, Bananarama consisted of two childhood friends, Sarah Dallin and Karen Woodward, and Siobhan Farhair, who was studying journalism at the London College of Fashion with Dallin.

Their first single, Aya Muana, a cover of the 1971 Black Blood tune, hung around the independent charts for much of the second half of 1981, which led to them being interviewed in the face, which was read by Terry Hall, who had just left the specials with Linville, Golding and Neville Staple and formed Funboy 3 and have just released their debut single, The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum. They were drafted into back Funboy 3 for their next single, Taint What You Do It's The Way That You Do It, which got in the charts in March of this month. While their latest single, The Telephone Always Rings, has only got to number 64 on its first week of release, Funboy 3 have repaid the favour, backing them on the cover of this 1964 Velvelettes Motown single which has been stuck

at number five for two weeks on the bounce and as the b-side instrumental give us back our cheap fares a critique of the GLC whacking the transport fees up so as the flags and balloons start going mencle all over again let's let's just get Funboy 3 out of the way first because it isn't their song but it's the first time we've had the chance to speak about them. Because for a very long time, I disliked Fun Boy 3 intensely for the simple fact that they weren't the specials anymore. I'm a bit less militant about it than that,

but it's still that little thing sticking in my craw. I mean, you know, 1982, I was still clinging on to Scar, Tito, even though it was pretty much over um you know that's that's I was still dressing like that and even though I was into other bands like Dexys and the Human League and stuff like that mainly mostly what I was listening to was was two-tone Scar and you know these bands who were having uh lower and lower chart positions with their records but I was still quite loyal to them. So when the specials broke up

and these three went off and did their own thing, I was, yeah, I was quite pissed off. I was much more upset that, you mentioned Adam the Ants earlier. Well, fuck that. No, this was the one that really upset me. It's like, come on, come on, guys, sort out your differences.

Yeah, there still are plenty more in the tank, didn't there, the specials? They did, because more specials, the second specials album is a work of genius um apparently terry didn't like it very much but there we go um so uh but once i got over that i you know i i threw myself in the whole fun boy three thing quite quite a lot i thought they were great um the the kind of combination of that kind of quasi African tribal rhythms that they were digging into

with Terry Hall's incredibly downbeat paranoid vocal style I thought it worked really well on stuff like Telephone Always Rings and More I See, Less I Believe. And of course you mentioned Lunatics have taken over the asylum.

So yeah, I was on board. I thought it's a shame that specials don't exist anymore, but I was basically on board with the project out of loyalty. Yeah. And what they were trying to do here, of course, was, if you'll pardon the expression, give Bananarama a leg up. Yes. And they'd already done that because it ain't what you do, it's the way you do it.

It was Fun Boy 3 with Bananarama. Yes. Simon Bates gets it wrong here. Of course. He says it's Fun Boy 3 and Bananarama. No, this one's Bananarama with Fun Boy 3. So he screws that up. Well, at least he didn't say Fun Boy 3 with Scotland World Cup.

It's Fun Boy 3 with Scotland World Cup. It's Fun Boy 3 with the banana. But I was so into Scar and Two-Tone that basically anything that was really tenuously related to it I would buy. There was even a sort of sub Shaq Attack funk-pop

band called Splashdown, whose singles I acquired just because I think it was Linval Golding who produced them um that's how far

my kind of reach went in terms of completism with Two Tone so Bananarama they were totally in my world now that's it

you know they're another one of my groups because they've been officially endorsed by by Funboy 3 and I thought

they were great I thought they were really likeable and obviously as a teenage boy I fancied them because you know um hormones raging by Funboy 3. And I thought they were great. I thought they were really likeable. And obviously, as a teenage boy, I fancied them because, you know, hormones raging. I think to start off with,

I was very much a Siobhan fan. Later on, I switched to Keren. Poor old Sarah was never anyone's favourite. And I did queue up in HMV Records in Cardiff to get a copy of Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye signed by them and was speechless with excitement to meet them. So, yeah, and I thought this, even though I was getting into Motown, I didn't know this song yet. And I thought it's a really likeable version they've done of it it's a little bit kind of almost um abrasive and atonal at times because they they don't match the chords of the original perfectly it's that so it gives it a slight slight edge and um yeah i i thought it was great yeah i was never particularly asked about banana roma i mean

i did fancy them but they were were attractive without being about the sex. That was even better because... Which was always nice because you could, you know, you think, well, I fancy you, but which makes me very different from everyone else because, you know, they're not obvious. When of course they were bleeding obvious. But it's similar to what you guys were saying about Tracey Ullman on a previous podcast because it felt like they were one of us or three of us. They had got the memo that it's the 80s

and we don't do that cheesy, stereotypical Rod Stewart girlfriend sexy stuff anymore. Yes. You know, which just made them even cooler and even more attractive, obviously. I mean, later on, they did a lot of cover versions in their career and they did turn into She-Wod and Woddy a little bit, I think. I'm really surprised to hear you all saying that you fancied Bananarama,

because I always thought kind of what was cool about Bananarama was that people didn't really fancy him. They just thought they looked like they'd be a good laugh. You know what I mean? You just want to hang out with them. But, you know, you can fancy someone and hang out and have a good laugh with them, Taylor, surely. Oh, sure, sure, yeah.

But I've never met anyone who fancied Bernard. Well, you've met two. Well, apart from Dave Stewart. Yes. Yeah, I know. I just thought they were cool because they obviously didn't take any of it seriously. And I admire the enthusiasm of their dancing

despite their complete inability to dance at all. There were essentially three Claire Grogan's with frizzier hair. Yeah. But also, I've never really enjoyed the grey wash of their harmony singing. But on this record, it works because the arrangement is really sullen and the darkness of the sound contrasts really nicely with their voices, you know, with that sort of rumbling undertow. Makes it a lot more arresting than any other Bananarama record. And authentically deep and sonorous sounds, you know, for a British record.

Although I totally agree with what you're saying about, you know, they seem like one of us. Like you look at this clip and Ken Bailey is bopping away. That fucking revenant. And you look at that and then you look at Banana Arm and you think, no, no, no, I'm with these girls. You could also see McCartney bopping away in the background from the moment it starts.

And then pouting and signing autographs and stuff like that. And it's interesting that you mention the B-sides being give us back our cheap fares. And it shows how pop had changed in its kind of expectations of changing the world it had gone from give ireland back to the irish give us back our cheap fairs yes it's kind of like narrow sort of you know damping down your expectations a little bit yeah and i do like the way the fun boy three are just sat there in the background while all this zoo contention is going on just

practically looking at each other going oh fucking hell fucking hell. But that's pretty much what Terry Hall looked like all the time. Yes, yes. Not resting bitch face, resting bored face. Yes, definitely, yeah. What we also get here are the credits. Yes. On which I noticed costume designer Odile Dix-Mirot. Wow.

Who also worked on Doctor Who in the early 80s, which I think explains a lot. Yes. Yeah, the other thing I noticed on the credits were Zoo. Only five members of Zoo were credited, and they are Clive, Jule, Thomas, Tome, and Bunte. Fucking hell, here she is, fucking Bunte. So the following week,

really saying something dropped one place to number six. The follow-up, Shy Boy, got to number four in July of 1982, and they'd go on to have seven more top ten hits until the end of the century, and still hold the record for having the most chart hits in the world for an all-female group. Well, I remember them being interviewed in Smash Hits when they broke that record,

took it from the Supremes, and they were horrified and shamefaced, which I thought was very charming. So what's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One piles into a repeat of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, then Ronnie Corbett in Sorry, followed by the Nine o'clock news, then the espionage series Bird of Prey,

Question Time, the first episode of the documentary series Fame with Trevor Locke, the hero of the Iranian embassy siege, and finishes off with the final episode of So You Want to Stop Smoking. BBC2 is running a short update on the world snooker championship then the documentary series travel is in time about explorers more snooker then call my bluff featuring victoria wood and timbrook taylor the 40 minutes documentary heart transplant

and then the old grey whistle test features performances from Kevin Ayers, Gang of Four and Spandau Ballet. Then Newsnight, more snooker and a Newsnight local election special. ITV is running the police sitcom Spooners Patch. Then Falcon Crest. Then Janet Brown probably does fucking Kate Bush again in Janet and Company. Then an episode of TVI on the Falklands crisis. News at 10 and Hill Street Blues. So me boys,

what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? The sheer wrongness of the England team appearing in inappropriate surroundings. Yeah. And even at that age, what a fucking wanker B.A. Robertson really is. Yeah, he outdoes himself on that performance, doesn't he? I think I genuinely would have been really excited at that point

to see so many footballers on top of the clock. Yes. It would have been both my worlds colliding in a really exciting way. Yeah. But I would have been a bit unnerved by the absence of Dal Gleesh. And what were you buying on Saturday? I did buy Bananarama, Funboy 3. I think I should have bought Tight Fit,

Fancy Island. I've acquired it since. But if I had bought it, it would be one of those ones that I didn't tell my mates. Yeah, off to Boots or WX Smith for that one, eh, Simon? Yeah, when no one's looking.

Yeah, exactly. I was going to say Patrice Russian and perhaps Fun boy three and banana i say this in fact i bought ebony and ivory because i was 10 and i had no idea what i was doing so fuck me stupid kid actually no no i was nine let's get this straight yeah right and what does this episode tell us about may of 1982? I think it tells us that we, as in the ordinary people of Britain, our prospects are as fucked as those of the England and Scotland teams that we've seen before us.

Because all of the flag-waving and all of the Ken Bailey bollocks tells us where the country's going in the next 12 months. Yeah, there is a sense. In the same way that you could still watch Top of the Pops in this period and have no idea what kind of crazy crap was going to come up next. There's a sense of that in the world as well. You know, you think this is mental. Just fucking wait.

It's just strange that there is this massive crisis going on in the country and it's business as usual in the Top of the Pops studio. I'd love to know what the episode of Top of the Pops after Diana died was like, if they changed it in any way. And I'm guessing they did. I'm guessing they did because, you know, after she died, we had sombre music

for fucking days on end on Radio 1 and all the other radio stations. Yeah, it's a fucking disgrace. Yeah. But here, it's just like, yep, we're carrying on. The big yellow and red Top of the Pops flags flown at half mast. Yeah. Black armbands on zoo.

I think this reaction in 1982 is far better than the reaction in 1997 and in all years since. So, yeah, it's a weird one. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, is the end of another episode of Chart Music. All that remains for me to do now is the usual shit. www.chart-music.co.uk www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

www.facebook.com and you can reach us on Twitter www.chartmusic.co.uk Thank you very much Simon Price You're welcome God bless you Taylor Parks My name is Al Needham and Margaret Thatcher is still in hell

being fisted by giant crabs wearing Arthur Scargill wigs. Rejoice at that news! Chart music. Satsang with Mooji Our chances at this time looked pretty slim. Norway had just beaten us 2-1. And so joined Switzerland as proud victors over England, the 66th World Cup winning country.

The magic month of June didn't just seem nine months away, but more like a hundred years. And Spain, just a short two-hour plane journey away, might as well have been on the other side of the moon. Might as well have been on the other side of the moon. It seemed even worse when you considered that we'd already appeared to come back from the dead once, with a terrific 3-1 away win over Hungary that summer. Alas, now this all seems an eternity away. We were staring at this sad but true fact of life. To be sure of qualifying, not only did we need to beat Hungary for a second time, we also had to pray that Switzerland could take at least two points out of four against Romania. against Romania. A team who had already taken three points against us. But, and a very important There are still 90 minutes in every game of football. The cliffhanging climax was one that I don't even think Alfred Hitchcock could have come

up with. Switzerland beat Romania 1-0 in Bucharest, and then followed this by holding them to a draw in the return game. All we had to do now was to hold Hungary, who'd already qualified, to a draw in our last game. The match was at Wembley on the 18th of November and the crowd really got behind us. Paul Mariner scored what was to be the only goal of the game. Paul Mariner scored what was to be the only goal of the game. We were through. For the first time in 12 years England had qualified for the World Cup Finals.

Now, Spain, which just a short while ago seemed so far away, was firmly in our sights. I know that we didn't qualify in the way we would have liked, but hopefully that's in the past. Now, like the other 23 teams who are in the finals, we're looking firmly to the future. And yes, we think that this time we'll get it right. In the In the In the So many times you've been through it

So many times that you blew it It's time to show us your true grit We all know you can do it You've got to You've been born for it See it like a show Time to write your story Time to take the world

Yeah Anger Anger So many times we've been tasting The dream and how we have tasted Now it's time that you face it Time to taste it The dream and how we have chased it Now it's time that you face it This is your chance, don't waste it

You've got to do it for the glory Sing your flag, your song Time to write your story now It's time to take the world Yeah Come on England England

England Come on Rock on! Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd Cynhyrchu'r ffwrdd It's time to take over Yeah Come on

Hang on Hang on Come on Thank you.