Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #32 - October 28th 1982 - Come To The Sabbat, Simon's There

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: why didn't Top Of The Pops do a Bonfire Night special instead, the traitorous, British-way-of-life-hating bastards? Yeah yeah, we know: another early Eighties one. But if you thought we were going to wait another year before we got stuck into this particular episode, you don't know Chart Music. The Pops is entombed in its rah-rah-rah flags-and-balloons Zoo-wanker phase and has pulled out all the stops (i.e., gone through the BBC props cupboard) decided to do a Halloween special, even though Halloween means next to arse all in the UK in pre-ET 1982. And who else to guide us through this realm of piss-poor joke-shop terror than the Dark Lord Simon Bates? Musicwise, it's a pic n' mix of razor blade-tainted apples and cat shit in shiny wrappers, with a diamond or two lurking at the bottom. The tang of Pebble Mill is strong in this one: Dionne Warwick glares at us in a Margo Leadbetter rig-out. Barry Manilow is DTF. The Beatles arise from the grave. Blue Zoo demonstrate why they're not going to be the next Duran Duran. Raw Silk pointedly ignore that they're performing to a room full of simpletons with net curtains over their heads and waving a cat on a stick. Eddy Grant gets round his horrible missus. Boy George has balloons thrown at him in an aggressive manner. Simon Bates rides a broomstick dressed as Ali Bongo. The Zoo Wankerage is jacked up to the absolute maximum. Meanwhile, in Newcastle, the crew of The Tube are rubbing their hands together with glee. Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham to suckle upon the throat early-Eighties Pop Mankiness, veering off on such tangents as the rubbishness of a British Halloween, being barred out of pubs in Nottingham for looking like Jimmy Savile, the truth about George Martin and the Mopfabs, Rambo Pumpkins, Cilla Back ramming chocolate into people's gobs, BBC4 butchering the only programme they run that anyone's interested in, having 40 Romantic Moments in one week, why we people never talk about Post-Disco, and an astonishing appearance on 3-2-1 by two Chart Music favourites. Penny for the Guy! Video Playlist |  Subscribe  |  Facebook  |  Twitter Subscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.     Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. 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 that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, but it's not important for you to know my name, nor I to know yours. What is important are the people who are with me today. Those people are Taylor Parks.

Afternoon. And Neil Kulkarni hello there lovely to be back oh so nice to have you back Neil sorry pop craze youngsters that it's been a while since the last one but we're here now so let's get on with it so chaps anything pop and interesting happening to you of late um no and it's been a missed opportunity really because at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry for the past two weeks a musical based on the music of the enemy no oh yes has been on oh for fuck's sake has been on stage called I think it's called we live and die in these towns telling the story of RG that's his name a local musician trying to make it big and not a single

newspaper or magazine or website has got me tickets to go and see this thing which is just a massively missed opportunity I think, the angle would be of course, I mean I could get beaten up going to see that show and also I might even appear on stage

who knows, there might be a character based on me but no like a pantomime villain oh these kids go Neil's behind you but no I mean I know it's germane upon freelancers to not sit on their arse

and get on the phone to editors but I did sit on my arse in the last couple of weeks waiting for the phone to ring and it hasn't so an opportunity missed I'd feel. It's now half term, thank fuck. I'm currently sort of deciding if I plan it right and only choose the chattiest, shittiest shops, I could potentially stay in my pyjamas for a week. So that's what I'm looking forward to. Good lad. Good lad. Taylor, how you been?

I got four inches of standing water in my kitchen sink. Oh no! And a block pipe, yeah. There you go. Oh, and last week I ordered a DVD Seinfeld season box set for 30p from one of those used and new merchants on the internet. Well done. Bargain. Yeah, and what eventually arrived was a CD called Timeless Love Songs, 20 Romantic Moments. And I thought, yeah, this is not right, is it? So I rang them up and I complained and I said,

what are you going to do? Come on, what are you going to do about it? They said I could keep it, but they would refund me the money. And they said reorder. So I reordered. And then yesterday, got up, there was a parcel, tore it open, expecting to see the grinning faces of Jerry, George, Elaine, and lovable old Kramer

arranged in an awkward early 90s publicity shot. And there was another copy of Timeless Love Songs, 20 Romantic Moments. No. Yeah. How bizarre. I suggest that the next Pop Craze Youngster who pledges us $5 on the Patreon

should receive my spare copy. Because obviously I'm going to keep one. What's on it? It's all right, actually. You've got Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, all the cheap greats. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Not Krista Berg? No, no, no, no. It's all old stuff. It's got Peggy Lee in that. It's all this stuff that's, you know, cost buttons to license. Yeah, yeah. In the, you know, true romantic spirit.

Oh, man. Meanwhile, there's some couple somewhere that keep getting fucking Seinfeld DVDs. Yeah. Who are these American cunts? There's some guy who's got a bottle of white wine and a candle's going. And they're sort of like, what is it with airline food?

Evening's not going the way I thought it would. If you're giving one away for free, you're going to sign it, aren't you, Taylor? With a loving message. Yes. You know. Yes. Right. The first Pop Craze Youngster to dob in $5.

Either as a new Patreon subscriber or someone who wants to bump theirs up from whatever it is to $5, they will get the romantic message of their choice, handwritten with love by Taylor Parks. Well, you know, I don't really agree with autographs because I like to try and keep my feet on the ground. No, Taylor, go with it. Go with it.

For just this once, yeah. But I tell you what, Taylor, 40 romantic moments in one week, you old dog, you. Well, there you go. And before we do anything else, some big Patreon-related news, because next week we shall be recording the first of what we hope will be a torrent

of bonus podcasts accessible to the good people who have stuffed money into our G-strings. We asked the Pop Craze patrons to chuck questions at Taylor and Simon and they responded big style. Taylor, you looking forward

to this? Yeah, I've never looked forward to anything more in my life. Anyway, more and more people are realising that if you're listening to chart music and not dobbing in your subs, you're practically spitting in the face of pop music herself. And the latest people who

have joined our gang are Stuart Brown, Andrew Dick, Emma Murray, John Bruin, Paul Margach and Matthew Halls welcome into the club you lovely lovely pub crazed youngsters

God bless you everyone yes yes and if you want to join them all you got to do is get them little fingers going at www.patreon.com slash chart music I love the way that you still do

the www dot. Yeah. Go to http colon forward slash forward slash. All one word. I'm sorry, man. I'm a pioneer. I was doing this shit back in 95, 96. Fucking web pages in raw HTML.

You tell kids today they won't believe you. I remember screaming with frustration when I couldn't fit a picture of Anna Kournikova on a floppy disk. Too big. So anyway, next order of business, Pulp Craze youngsters. It's time to look at this episode's top ten. Hit the music. A re-entry at number ten for Dadda's Faction. Up one place to number nine, it's The Hadley Fist.

Last week's number nine, this week's number eight, Fuzzy Bear Motherfucker. New entry at number 7, The Crescent of Crisps. Holding fast at number 6 is B.A. Conterson. Down four places to number 5, Bomber Dog. This week's highest new entry, straight in at number four, the Sikh lad out at show Wadi Wadi. Into the top three, and it's up two places, for here comes Jizzum.

Last week's number seven, this week's number two, Seven Days Jankers, which means... Britain's number one. Up from number two, this week's number one up from number two this week's number one David Van Day's Public Enemy he's made it he has

unbelievable but the summer of bummer dog is over I guess we've always got our memories but I suppose it had to come to an end

but it was a good run it was a good run Crescent of Crisps What kind of music are they? It would be pleasing I know that, that's all I know I don't know what it sounds like but pleasant Yeah

We haven't worked out what Here Comes Jism are all about I mean I've always had them pegged as a bit of a man to man featuring man parish proposition. Yeah, but with a Cockney edge. Sort of like Cockney Boys Town. So, this week's episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to October the 28th, 1982. And yes, I know we only did 1983 last episode and we've gone in hard on the early 80s stuff of

late but i just cannot keep away from this era it fascinates me partly because of the music mainly because we're seeing a show in transition and you're not ready for that transition even though it wants to do it it's like the anti-village people, isn't it? Not ready for the 80s. The 1981 relaunch is properly bedded in now, and we're kind of seeing the presentation of the show moving away from bands playing in front of awkward-looking kids to a more event-driven experience, which I suppose is the nice way to put it.

Well, it is a nice way to put it. I mean, event- driven and kind of conceptually based if you like but the concepts yeah they haven't progressed beyond the scrawling of on a beer mat of the concept and and they're not fleshed out properly so what you're seeing is kind of high ambition and piss poor execution really they've clearly decided that having pop music on a pop show isn't good enough they're looking at the charts and going oh this is a bit this is a bit young persons now whereas top of the pops of the 70s were always seen as a bit more of a you know there was something for the moms and dads and and the little kids and everything and now you know pop music's changed

and i feel the early 80s top of the Pops is an attempt to try and hold on to as big an audience as possible yeah it's an attempt to make it a variety show in a sense so even though the charts are actually in 82 fantastic and you know there's so much great stuff going on

they still manage to pluck the variety style records out of it to keep it have it having that more general kind of age base um all those moments that really as a kid when you're watching it massively pissed you off yeah yeah i mean we've seen them do a kind of a bit of a football special in a previous episode of chart music and uh you know we're about a month removed from the Radio 1 15th anniversary show, which I sent you a clip of the other day. I wish you hadn't.

For no other reason but to say, fucking hell, look at this. Yeah, I mean, the shot of the scene of all the Radio 1 DJs dancing. What song is it again that they're dancing to? It's Friend or Foe by Adam and... It's just, that will haunt my nightmares until Christmas. It's like teacher's disco, isn't it? And we're just 18 months away from the absolute nadir

of the event-based Top of the Pops which is my favourite Top of the Pops ever where it's all based around that British Rail trade that's been named Top of the Pops and is currently speeding from London to Bristol Temple Meads where Simon Bates is conducting an interview with a signalman. It's one day we will get there.

One day, one day. But it has to be said that while this is going on, the Pop Crazy youngsters are not impressed. In the latest smash hits which came out on this very day, there was a letter from Louise of Slough and it goes like this.

Last Wednesday, I went to see Top of the Pops being recorded. Lucky devil, I hear you say. Well, that's only a matter of opinion because I had a really lousy time and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. For a start, any ideas about being able to wave to mum etc were very short-lived because as soon as the groups came on, God knows how many cheerleaders began to push their way to

the front saying they had positions there. The audience had to be content to watch from the back. As most of these cheerleaders are on every week, I don't think it would hurt them much to move out of the way just once and let the people who actually buy the records get a look in. After all, what's the point in having a studio audience if the only people you get to see are cheerleaders? Another thing that annoyed me was the rudeness of the cameramen. They gave no warnings when they decided to move, so when we finally did manage to get to the stage and start bopping about, we suddenly found ten-ton cameras up our backside

with their operators yelling obscenities at us. Like everyone else, I assumed I'd be able to get autographs once I was there. Fat chance. All the DJs were there that day, meaning that must have been the 15th anniversary show we were talking about earlier, and only about two of them agreed to

sign, some being very impolite. It made me wonder why they wanted to be famous in the first place. On the ticket, it said prize for the best costume, and I could tell that most of the audience had really made an effort to dress up for the occasion, some outfits being very original. What a surprise then, when Tick and Tock appeared to claim said prize, and then disappeared just as quickly.

It was just an unfair publicity stunt. When it was all over, we were just told to leave. Not so much as a goodbye or a thanks for coming. Of course there will be those who genuinely enjoyed themselves despite being treated like fools, but no matter how many party hats and streamers were given to me to create a party atmosphere I couldn't pretend to be happy when I wasn't

I waited a year for my ticket and I came a long way to be there I'd never do it again poor Louise awful who do you think the two DJs were that did sign autographs

it's got to be Skinner I think because what else is he going to do and Vance as well because of all yeah I think Tommy Vance

I don't know remember how Tommy Vance treated that poor commissionaire on the gate at television centre that's true

what about Peter Powell I bet you Peter Powell just couldn't sign enough autographs. But when he was sat at home with his feet up, practising his autograph over and over again. And he probably

slipped her a sachet of Nescafe as well. Yes. Kid Jensen possibly. Yeah, he always seemed like a nice guy. But would Peele not? Annie Nightingale was there. I would have expected Annie to as well. We're going to have to do this episode soon, aren't we?

Definitely. In the news this week. Well, Labour are about to win the Birmingham Northfield and Peckham by-elections. Northern Ireland decriminalises homosexuality for adults over 21. 66 people have been crushed to death during a UEFA Cup match between Spartak Moscow and HFC Harlem. The Queen is carried through the streets of Funafuti to Valu in a gold canoe. is carried through the streets of Funafuti to Valu in a gold canoe. Joe Bugner begins his comeback with a third-round knockout of Winston Allen in London.

China's population officially passes one billion. Lionel Jeffery has been pulled out of a sinking Vauxhall Viva by Ian Ogilvay during the filming of the sitcom Tom, Dick and Harriet. I remember this. But the big news this week is that the jam are splitting up. Oh, fucking hell, man. How were you, Al? I bet you were inconsolable. Did you ring the telephone helpline? There wasn't one. On the cover of the NME this week, Elvis Costello.

On the cover of Smash Hits, Bauhaus. The number one LP in the UK is Love Over Gold by Dire Straits. Over in America, the number one single is Jack and Diane by John Cougar. And the number one LP is American Fool, also by John Cougar. Oh, the fucking John Cougar mad over there, aren't they? So, me boys, what were we doing in October of 1982?

Well, in 82, at this time, I was moving house. I was moving from a working class neighbourhood, really, to the middle class area

that I, well, to this house that I'm now sat in, actually. So, I was starting to encounter a different kind of,

not to get instantly too heavy, but a different kind of not to get instantly too heavy but a different kind of prejudice whereas in a working class neighbourhood any racism that I encountered was at street level direct and kind of you had to deal with it as it happened when I moved to this very middle class neighbourhood I noticed first of all there were no kids on the street so there was nobody to play Kirby with or anything like that

and yeah there was just kids on the street so there was nobody to play kirby with or anything like that and kirby and and yeah there was just nobody on the street you know i mean it's just a street full of old people in a sense and us two kids me and my sister so there was there was nobody to play with but beyond that i started noticing that the prejudice that i did encounter was not direct it was more slippery than that and it was more about kind of glass ceilings of accessible accessibility to a certain extent at school you could get so far wouldn't let you in the golf this is it no but you know what i mean it was a totally different kind of prejudice and i started nurturing my even though i'm part of them my ferocious and fierce hatred of the middle class at this stage because working class prejudice I

could deal with on a sort of day-to-day basis middle class prejudice it was this nebulous kind of airy fairy thing that was definitely there but it was difficult to get to grips with in a sense so I think rather than being a gobby shite and being confrontational at this time I was learning how to keep things indoors and starting to write do you know what I mean so that so that was kind of what was happening to me at this time. Music-wise, what were you into, Neil? 82. Well, I was only 10.

So I was still very much a singles-based listener, if you like. I was listening to the pop charts an awful lot. And my awakening wouldn't happen, I think, to old music anyway. Wouldn't start happening until well actually this year because as we'll discuss later um you know old music start I mean we were still sort of happy in 82 to a certain extent with what was current I don't think we'd yet got into that stage where you know when we were talking about an 85 episode and just the present was horrible so everyone's listening to the past a lot I don't think we were quite there yet um so i was still

just very much a pop listener a dialer disc dialer um a taper of the charts and that was that was my fun i i don't think i was buying singles that much that was something my sister did but i was very yeah very much all about the tapes the tape player the condenser mic and the charts for sunday night the tapes, the tape player, the condenser mic, and the charts for Sunday night. Taylor. I was a Beatles obsessive in 1982. I went in the opposite direction.

I didn't really get modern until 83, 84. I was still listening almost exclusively to old music at this point because my dad had just got promoted and he bought uh a music center which was like a sort of a lovely like a really shit record player with a taped a really shit tape deck built in uh and a radio and this was like uh you know quite a thing to have at the time especially for my dad he was was not gadget minded he didn't like to buy new stuff just for the sake of it so things we did hardly had any records so we had to borrow record but all the family would come around lending their old albums to us right to tape

um so that they could listen to it on their portable tape players, you see. Right. So our house was suddenly full of like... Killing music, in other words. We were killing music. And in the course of killing music, it awakened a lifelong love of music in me. So suddenly we had all the Beatles albums in the house and all the albums by Sky. But I didn't really take to that.

I think that was my dad's mate from work. So, yeah, so just listening exclusively to Beatles records, but with early 80s Dolby on it. So it was like if the Beatles were in a swimming pool. Yes. Tapes were so important at this stage. I would say in 81, 80, having a tape player, I'm not saying it was an esoteric kind of exotic product,

but not that many people had them. Whereas by 82, I think most people either had a music centre or a tape-to-tape machine or some sort of tape player. It was all about the tape-to-tape, wasn't it? Yeah, oh man, having a tape-to-tape machine or some sort of tape player. It was all about the tape-to-tape, wasn't it? Oh man, having a tape-to-tape changed everything. Suddenly you just did not need the record industry, you just needed a library and you'd be alright.

So yeah, tapes were massively important in 82. I was absolutely heartbroken about the jam splitting up. Because, you know, they were my band and it's one of the few occasions where a band splits up and it really means something

because more often than not you kind of like go off that band and they go oh well we might as well split up then yeah absolutely heartbroken and yeah everyone at school knew it and everyone at school kind of enjoyed it what was the timing of that Al because I remember it being announced And yeah, everyone at school knew it. And everyone at school kind of enjoyed it.

What was the timing of that, Al? Because I remember it being announced. And when did the final tube appearance happen? Was that like quite... It's a week away. Well, yeah, it's a week and a day away. Apparently what was going to happen was Paul Weller decided to split the band up. He told them. And he was going to announce it on the tube

but kind of like news leaked out I believe the NME we've just talked about, that had Jam split up on the cover and in the latest smash hits there were rumours that Jam was splitting up, so yeah it was definitely known about by then

and yeah, I mean I just had the piss ripped out of me at school. And there was one lad, this big fucking skinhead. And for weeks and weeks and weeks, he would just come up to me and just stare me in the face and sing, we're jamming in the style of Bob Marley and the Wailers and then laugh to himself. Endlessly.

And about 20 years ago, I kind of like saw him in a pub and he didn't see me and i noticed he had this massive scar across his face and i just laughed to myself and thought ha good so is you fucking right oh poor you because i mean so much snot and tears on so many parkers and and and this explains why yeah i mean Surrender just went straight to number one, didn't it? I remember that week. Yeah. So, what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One starts the day with schools programmes,

then shuts down for an hour before the news, then Pebble Mill at one, Camberwick Green, You and Me and more schools programmes. After regional news in your area, it's Play School, Mighty Mouse, Gobbolino the Witcher's Cat in Jackanore, Huckleberry Finn and his friends,

John Craven's Newsround, Blue Peter, The Evening News, regional news in your area, and they've just finished, what else, Tomorrow's World. BBC Two kicks off with Play School and then shuts down for three and a half hours before roaring back with three hours of Australia vs Wales

in the State Express World Team Snooker Classic from Reading. Fucking hell, snooker. Then it's the Something Else debates where young adults from Rochdale talk about whether their generation have enough say in the things that affect their lives. Spoiler alert, no. Unemployment. Being able to drink in pubs.

Followed by the final episode of Fighter Pilot, Sport of Kings, where an RAF student jet pilot learns how to drop bombs on folk. They're currently screening the Ox Fraud Incident, a documentary about a recent DHSS operation on social security fraud. ITV has started at 9.30 with schools programs, followed by the Ox Stories, Get Up and Go and the Sullivans, followed by the News at One, Contrasts, A+, the new and

fun care, Afternoon Plus, then the drama series Strangers, the John Junkin quiz show Definition, the cartoon series Aubrey, Vicky the Viking, Father Murphy, then the News at 5.45, Kevin Banks is Angry in Crossroads,

regional news in your area and they're just finishing another episode of Emmerdale Farm where Mr Wilkes has a go at Joe Sugden about his dumping contract Channel 4 starts 5 days from today

were you excited about that chaps? I was, I remember the computer graphics of the first Channel 4. I remember just being astonished by that. Yes. I'd never seen anything like it. Yeah. But yeah, I was intrigued by Channel 4.

And as the decade would progress, even though, you know, I've got a lot of memorable moments from BBC and ITV, obviously. Channel 4 provided a few just really strange moments that are now unfindable, in a way. And it's not just because they've disappeared off YouTube. There are things that I can't remember whether I dreamt them or not. I remember seeing a drama

where a guy trapped a ghost and ate it. And it was 20 minutes long, and I distinctly remember this. And this can't have been put in there by my own imagination. It must have happened. But I can't find hide nor hair of it now. Yeah, we couldn't get the signal on the telly because the aerial

was pointed the wrong way. But we had a black and white portable that I got in my room. And that had rabbit ears on it so you could point it any direction you liked. So I could get a very grainy black and white test card you got all the dark grey

triangle films then yeah a little later but you see I had to watch them all in my room with the sound turned down to basically zero just sort of squinting through the grain but it was like the moon landing to me

another TV channel I'll never forget the big day where I was like the moon landing to me another TV channel I'll never forget the big day where I was like right here it is and it came on and it was like da da da da this is a new era in television and then it was countdown yes

and after that it was some kind of keep fit programme I literally thought it was going to play the jingle and then the next thing that come on would be hardcore pornography. Like featuring Lenin or something. That was the impression that we were going to get. It was basically that it was going to be Lenin bumming a Rastafarian in the close-up.

But nothing was private then. Like Taylor says, he had to watch it with the sound down. I'd say this is a pre-headphones age in a sense. It is, definitely. Headphones did exist, but they were massive.

They were like huge things that were basically the size of your head. Yes. And not many people had them. The Rise of the Walkman, I would say, say still about a year or two off yeah so anything you wanted to watch yeah would have to be public you couldn't really keep things quiet apart from obviously turning the volume down yeah i mean i was frothing at the gash for fucking channel four i really was just like a new tv channel yeah like taylor you, our aerial was pointed the wrong way and I just put my foot down. As soon as I heard

that the jam was going to be on the tube, I put my foot down and said, early Christmas present, new aerial. What a fucking strange thing for a 14-year-old lad to ask for, a new TV aerial. And that night when the first episode of the tube came on, he was like, mum, you're going to the bingo, dad,

you're going to the pub. Our Trey said, just fuck off out. Leave me alone to commune with my gods. And I look back at it now and it is the worst jam gig they probably ever did. It's a really piss poor gig. But it was my only chance to see the jam.

I was never going to see them live. And of course, every single thing on telly at this point, 82, is ever nested. It goes, you get a one shot deal it's shown and that's it I don't think anyone had a video player that I knew anyway or a video recorder one or two people on our street did

but yeah, we certainly didn't so everything you saw on telly it was a one shot deal and you never got a chance to see it again and the other thing about Channel 4, I mean, I watched the whole of the first day and at the end of the night, I remember my dad coming back from the pub to find me sitting in his armchair watching a feminist theatre group

singing songs about smashing the patriarchy or something like that, including Juliet Bravo, she was in it. And my dad just looked at it and looked at me and his doubts started to arise about what kind of person his son was turning into my dad fucking hated channel four yeah yeah my parents weren't very impressed either no i hate channel four now obviously yeah i fucking despise Channel 4 now. It's a hateful station. It's got a cruel, nasty edge to it. Yeah, it's a Daily Mail

for sucky girls. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright then, Pop Craze Youngsters, it's time to plunge into October of 1982. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have.

It's October the 28th, 1982, and Top of the Pops is still persisting with its special episodes. Tonight, we're being treated to a Halloween episode, even though it's three nights away from Halloween, and because it's 1982, Halloween means pretty much fuck all in the general scheme of things. We're in for a night of horror here, aren't we, chaps? Oh, God, yes. Oh, God, yes. I mean, true horror. It's odd because obviously none of it's horrifying in a horror film sense.

No. But in its shitness, it's horrifying. And there were some jarring moments of true disturbance in this episode. Not intended, but all the more disturbing because they're not intended. I mean, you were a bit younger than me, but I remember growing up and Halloween meant fuck all. It was just that little thing that you got through before the real fucking event, which was Bonfire Night.

Yeah, I mean, it night. Yeah. I mean, it did, it didn't mean, I mean, we did go trick or treating, but no costumes. It was just kids dressed in normal clothes, begging for sweets,

basically. Yes. Um, occasionally chucking eggs at windows. Um, you know, that scary cunt in every neighborhood who wouldn't give you your ball back if it went in there, in their lawn.

And of course, and apart from that, maybe it might've meant apple bobbing which is always a lovely chance for family members to imagine what it'd be like to watch you drown but yes apart from that it didn't mean anything this whole thing of costumes this whole thing of pumpkins um i had to fucking buy a pumpkin this week because my kids expect to carve a pumpkin. I was even debating in Morrison's whether to buy a Rambo pumpkin. Have you seen these? No.

What the fuck's that? It's called a Rambo pumpkin. I have no idea why. Is that Rambo the French poet? Yeah, Verlaine pumpkin. No, it's a Rambo pumpkin spelt as in first blood, but it's fucking enormous. You know, it's just like, it's it's huge it's about

20 pumpkins in one pumpkin but i've had to buy a pumpkin this year um which my daughter will expect to carve towards halloween we didn't do any of that back then didn't do pumpkins didn't do decorations i remember um friends from the north telling me that mischief night was quite near um uh halloween and we never didischief Night or anything like that. There was a generally accepted increased level of hooligan-ness on Halloween night, but that's about it. I mean, I was getting into horror, definitely, through the pan-horror story books,

and also, of course, as previously mentioned, Central TV's Let's Fret Together strand. Yes. Not in movies. And I was getting scared by horror, don't get me wrong, but Halloween meant fuck all to me. Yeah, because, I mean, we did that kind of shit, same as you, Neil.

We'd knock on the door and go, trick or treat, money or sweet, and then get told to fuck off. And that was our Halloween. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe your teacher at school would do some silhouette cutouts of witches to put on the windows. And if you were younger still, I mean, Halloween when I was a kid just meant your parents trying to get you to fuck off to bed even earlier than usual so they could get the feet up and watch at the Sweeney or something. I definitely remember a big shift in the supposed importance

or the perceived significance of Halloween round about this time. About 82 or so. Basically, yeah, when it went American. About E.T., isn't it? Yeah. It became another excuse for kids to ask for sweets and swap out English words for American words. Ancient British culture for American culture.

It's not like in our day where we'd just gather quietly in our homes and do some scrying. A bit of mumming and, you know, feast on dried fruits and seeds. Yeah. Take it easy. We'd save the big celebration for sowing. Yeah. Do a bit of waffling then, yeah. Yeah, all this trick or treat.

Trick or treat. It's called guising, you traitorous cunt. Yeah. Get your stretched out, milk-soaked sheep flesh over your face and fuck off out of it. Although, at the age of 10, I should say, I was getting massively interested in the supernatural and that side of things,

mainly through reading really shit-thick Reader's Digest books about the unknown and believing all that shit about Borley Rectory and things like that. Yeah, and it's that bloke's dead mother-in-law in the back of his car and the lady that. Yeah, and it's that bloke's dead mother-in-law in the back of his car and the lady on the stairs. All these terrifying fakes that tormented our child.

Yeah. I mean, I remember being fucking scared by horror movies to the point of, yeah, not being able to sleep because things like The Omen were starting to get shown on telly. Yeah. And Carrie. And I remember a screening of the 1979 version of Dracula

with Frank Langella that just basically meant I didn't sleep for fucking two weeks. So horror was really important. And I can't emphasise enough the power of those pan-horror stories collections from the library. I was obsessed with those. But Halloween, no. I think you mentioned it, Al,

that E.T. does come along later this year to Americanify all our Halloweens. I thought that the modern British Halloween stemmed directly from E.T. But I saw that, you know, we saw this episode and it's a good month before E.T. comes out. But then again, you know, I know lots of mates who had a pirated copy of et

so you know i'm still blaming that little cunt for all this because previously that of course the only horror thing you could have seen do you remember in argos catalogs around about 81 um 80 you could buy movie projectors and one of the films that you could buy was always the devil rides out um you could buy it so that was the only other way you get to see that kind of shit yeah but yeah you're right we halloween no wasn't done see what's weird is that now because i live in london it doesn't really happen again because you don't get a lot of kids out trick-or-treating and stuff like this because you never know so really it's just uh just pissed students staggering around yeah dressed as middle-class zombies yeah well if

they're blokes if they're blokes the girls have to dress up as a sexy something yeah or an like an unfit harley quinn you know and yes and it's just me shut inside with the cat watching video nasties on my own. And fretting that it's my half birthday. So I'm closing in on the next number. So, yeah, authentically scary. I'm at the coalface for this shit because I have to take kids trick-or-treating,

including my grandkids. And, you know, they get all topped up they got all that it's ever so cute but what um disappoints me in a way is how many grown-ups take it seriously as well to the point of you know decorating the houses and answering the door in these amazing costumes you know what I mean do you remember Al I'm sure you do do you remember that episode of Roseanne where it's a Halloween episode and they get so dressed up and i remember watching that just thinking fucking hell that never happened here that is what is happening here now the and it's a big thing and and you know there's deeper things to talk about in terms of basically the infantilization of our culture the rise of the geek it's a big big problem um so so it's not just kids pushing this agenda at

the moment it's fucking grown-ups as well it's very disappointing yes there's a big, big problem. So it's not just kids pushing this agenda at the moment. It's fucking grown-ups as well. It's very disappointing. Yes. There's a whole fucking aisle of your supermarket right now. Fuck Halloween. Yeah! Devoted to Halloween.

Not only in terms of costumes, but everyone feels that they've got to stock up on enough Haribo. Weeks before. Yeah, yeah. If I've got a fucking load of toffees in my arse, there's only one mouth they're going into. Got some fucking snotty nose little fucker down the street

but I mean yeah why, well I was going to say why is Top of the Pops doing this? That's an interesting question, why are they doing this? And why aren't they doing a Bonfire Night special the week after? Because Bonfire Night is more difficult to pitch fundamentally a celebration of religious hatred

so I don't know it's more difficult to pitch. Fundamentally, a celebration of religious hatred. I don't know. It's more difficult to do. But no, it would have been brilliant. Imagine all the audience being given sparklers and fireworks and at the end they put DLT on a fucking pyre and we watch his juices spitting on it. That would be fucking brilliant. I loved Bonfire Night, I must admit, in contrast to Halloween.

Mainly because of one serpentine memory of when we were living at the old people's home. You know, usual firework safety back then. Basically stick a rocket in a bottle and hope for the best. And of course the bottle fell over and the rocket was pointing at all these assembled old folks watching this display. And it just shot off and it genuinely greys this woman's sort of cheek who had been born in the previous century, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I loved Bonfire Night, but Halloween I was less keen on. I did do the trick-or-treating, but just to get sweets,

and I didn't dress up at all. Who the fuck would? Of course you did. And what parent, anyway, would spend... I mean, now, you know, there's kids taking their parents to shops. I want this halloween costume it's like fucking world book day where you've got to dress your kid up as some sort of character it's it's just horrible as a parent at the moment you feel pressured massively into

doing all this shit and it's just prizing shit out your wallet basically and of course you know you could get you could get money uh on bonfire night for penny penny from the guy but that requires effort on the child's own part doesn't it stuffing tights with newspapers and stuff creativity rather than commerce yes fuck Halloween I'm really angry

now hello it's Halloween night on top of the Bop, so we've got a party here, why not join us? Here's three ladies from New York called Raw Silk, and do it to the music. After the obligatory Yellow Pearl slash Smashy Records intro, we are greeted by a crash out of the show logo to the sight of the kids in some piss-poor Halloween rig-out, while a zoo wanker dressed as a minion with pointy sideburns and claws opens up a mummy's tomb to reveal. Simon Bates! Simon Bates who is still holding down the 9-11 slot.

Today, he's given the next seven days horoscopes for Scorpio and Sagittarius before handing over to Dave Lee Travis direct from the motor show in Birmingham. Oh, I bet that was fascinating. Now then, every time we cover an episode that was fascinating. Now then, every time we cover an episode that's hosted by Bates, I always ask one simple

question. Why? And in this case, I say it again. I say it louder. Why? Well, it does seem a weird choice, right? If you're going to do a Halloween spectacular,

or spooktacular, if you will, why choose Simon Bates? Until you consider the alternatives, right? Because, like, okay, obviously Savile would have been too authentically terrifying. His Halloween was all about sliding razor blades into apples and sprinkling rat poison into sherbet dib dabs. And people like Peter Powell and Kid Jensen

you can only imagine as the victims of rampaging ghouls and monsters. And Richard Skinner would only work in that he is the human personification of a thick fog but otherwise But it's a great Halloween name isn't it Richard Skinner of children Yeah, DLT

as you say would make a convincing werewolf but as soon as you connect DLT to the idea of horror, you're more in the area of like hammers werewolf but as soon as you connect DLT to the idea of horror you're more in the area of like hammers discovered in the car boot and

blocked up drains and stuff which is not really the kind of scares that the BBC wants for it's flagship pop rocker so you're left with Bates and why didn't they call him Simon Batts of course he's not an obvious So you're left with Bates and... Why didn't they call him Simon Batts? Of course.

He's not an obvious choice because his facility with wacky comedy links is sort of on a par with Sir Keith Joseph. Yes. But he does have a sort of 1930s Universal Pictures horror air about him, you know, lumbering around, looming over people, you know. And he's also, he's quite reassuring in that he's the one person on earth you can least imagine dabbling in the occult. I think reassuring's a really key word here.

Bates had, I mean, Bates is shit, just like the idea of doing a Halloween special. So he's kind of perfect. He has that ability to just coast things along. He's able to chuckle. Do you know what I mean? And chuckle things along midline. Although, transparently, nothing remotely amusing is going on at all. The only other one i think possibly could

have done it would have been everett but i think everett would have turned it into a three hour um yes you know sort of thing um and that mummy that baits comes out of um by the way where i wonder where that's from because it can't have obviously been made just for top of the pops could be dr who could be rent props department yeah thinking of the Pops. Could be Doctor Who, could be Rent-A-Ghost. You've seen Props Department. Thinking of the timing, it could have been the Iron Maiden from The King's Demons, Doctor Who story with the spokes removed. I don't know, I'll have to check. Could have been, could be Rent-A-Ghost.

I mean, it doesn't actually look like a sarcophagus, that's the thing. What it reminded me of was Der Golem from the 1922 German Expressionist Classic of the same name. And by the way, do they add a sort of creaking noise on it when it opens? Yes, they do, yes.

I thought so. Yeah. But also, I think you've got to give credit to the bloke who opens the sarcophagus. You can hardly see, but he's playing his part to the hilt. He grimaces evilly as he pulls the door open although that might be the natural response to the reveal of simon bates with a hand mic um and also when simon bates then introduces the first act he claps his monster hands in a sort of slow and monsterish

way yeah like as if he's having trouble you know having trouble. You know, you've got to admire it. You've got to admire it. Yeah. What you said about Savile earlier, I've got to chuck in the year that Savile died and all the shit came out. The pubs in Nottingham

put out a joint statement to the local media saying anyone who turned up at any pubs on Halloween night dressed like Jimmy Savile was automatically barred out. The problem is fucking every other middle aged bloke in Nottingham dresses

like Jimmy Savile just fucking tracksuits and lank hair After emerging from the tomb dressed in his usual maths teacher on a school trip outfit he wrongly informs us that it's Halloween night and Top of

the Pops is having a party. For a change, he then introduces us to three ladies from New York, Raw Silk, with their song Do It To The Music. Formed in New York in 1979, Raw Silk were a female dance trio comprising of Valerie Pettiford and Tanita Jordan, who appeared in The Wiz, and Broadway singer and Earth, Wind & Fire backing singer Jessica Cleaves, who was in the 60s vocal group Friends of Distinction and has just finished session work for George Clinton's Computer Games LP. They were put together by Ron Dean Miller and Burt Reid, who were in the Crown Heights affair, and they're signed to West End

Records, who are currently pumping out a torrent of what would soon be known as New York Garage releases. This is their first single release in the UK. It was a new entry last week at number 38, and it's gone up five places to number 33. And

immediately you feel very, very sorry for them, don't you? These cool young ladies from the five boroughs pitched into this fucking hell. Yeah, this rather piss-poor Halloween. Yeah. This rather piss-poor Halloween where kids are draped in sheets. Yes. And crucially, I mean, I know we're going to come on

to talk about Zoo repeatedly probably during this episode but seriously fuck Zoo I mean there's a particular trio of absolute wank snaps that I'm on a really short fuse with with Zoo and I was trying to identify what it is

about Zoo that pissed me off and it's here in this performance by Raw Soon I mean I can see, it's not just dance moves because you know I can see similar dance moves on say the Hot Shoe Show or something and not be annoyed but I think the problem here is

Zoo's dominance of the TOTP space. Way more intrusive than Legs and Co or Pants People ever were and at the beginning of this performance by Raw Silk there's a couple who fuck me off to be honest with you throughout the whole episode. I know exactly who they are. The moon faced guy with fucking stockings

on and the shit pirate girl at the front. So rude. What are they doing at the front? They're not stars and yet we're meant to watch their hilarious kind of shit and then later on he pretends to strangle her and it's just oh god fucking hell it's it's not just the audience letting down raw silk here it's it's zoo as well

because because throughout this episode you don't as laura's letter reverted earlier um to smash it you don't get to see the punters you get to see zoo who seem to be multiplying there just seem to be fucking hundreds of them um yeah so yeah getting to the song and who seem to be multiplying. There just seem to be fucking hundreds of them. So, yeah, getting to the song and being able to talk about it is difficult because there's so much Zoo wankery to get through first. I mean, we instantly get a rear view of the kids right at the beginning because the camera swoops over them to get to the stage. And we get to see the costumes that I believe have been given to them. And, yeah, not very good, are they?

Well, Zoo are all in full costume, of course. Of course. As Frankensteins and skeletons and stuff. There's that skeleton that keeps doing backflips. Oh, God fucking God. I think he shows enviable quad strength, all things considered. Yeah. But the kids.

It would have been great if he'd done a backflip and just collapsed into a pile of bones but the kids yeah they've just they look shit don't they they've got a joke shop frankenstein mask or they've got a sheet over their head because they want to sing

they've got a net curtain over their head I think they're supposed to be ghosts which is the absolute lowest level. If you go to a Halloween party and you just can't be fucked with it, you just go, oh, give me that fucking sheet, that'll do. And then you wear it for about five minutes,

you go, right, enough of this bollocks. Let's get pissed up and leer at some girls. But what's even worse is that because they're in the top of the pop studio and they want to see, they've pulled the sheet back over their face. Yeah.

So they don't look like ghosts. They haven't even got eye holes in the sheets. No. That's just rule number one if you've been a ghost in a sheet, isn't it? So they don't look like ghosts. They look like Saudi Arabian princes. Yes. Or some of them have got hats on and they put them behind the hats. They look like Saudi Arabian princes.

Or if some of them have got hats on and they put them behind the hats, they look like beekeepers. Yeah. And you have to respect raw silk for their professionalism. Because they just keep doing their usual sort of would-be slinky act. It to the music.

Yeah. Talk about true moments of horror. There is one here, which is, I mean, not the annoying zoo wankers, but you know somebody's got a cat on a stick or something. It's like a really strangely detailed

picture of a black cat, and it's on a stick, it's like a banner, and suddenly it flares up, right, totally blurred and out of focus in front of the screen that made me jump out of my skin man yeah but but the guy the skull and bones who's doing black backflips he was the other irritating zoo person for me because when he does the backflip he does this zany head waggle um that just created instant homicidal urges in me i wanted to travel back in time and just put his knackers in a George Foreman grill.

I hated him. There's also that bloke in the audience who's just wearing pure late two-tone sort of Mickey Pierce get-up. Like fancy dress, he's been nothing. And a pork pie hat is above him. And that's just the way it's gonna be yeah i mean the zoo wankers i noticed there was one black lad in a long grass skirt

and a hat which was obviously a piss poor attempt to look like baron sam day and but the other one was the bloke in the two-tone jester costume. Did you see him? Oh, God, yeah! The outfit makes him look like he's into Meridian and the specials, and he just can't decide which one to go for. And hardcore bondage as well, because there's kind of chains going over him. Yeah, he's like a really, really shit Jed

with Howard Jones. He's essentially Jed Jabsco, isn't he? But the Ponzi Dracula man, he is the smuggest person ever. He reappears repeatedly. Yes, he does. Just one of them punchable faces. I mean, Louisa Slough,

you know, she was totally right to say that it was bad enough that they were acing out the audience. But here we see that they actually look as if they're trying to be part of the band. Yeah, completely. And it's a testament to raw silk to not just lamp someone or piss themselves laughing.

What must they have thought? They're Americans. Yeah. And they're seeing... They're seeing charming backward people. Yes. Doing whatever they have to do. I mean, God bless them because they totally rise above.

They don't make reference or even acknowledge anything that's going on really they do a performance that could almost have been delivered anywhere the thing about raw silk though who incidentally should actually have been called noil um is that it's they look so straight. Like they're in the middle of this shit show of crazy costumes and they look dead straight. It's that period where like black dance records were being performed by people who look like they work in a publisher's office or something. You know what I mean? So they got that look sort of like Lydia from Fame,

you know, like a really sensible, mature look, but maybe like a leather skirt or long fingernails, like a faint suggestion of wildness, you know. But the fundamental straightness of the image sort of reflects the sound, really. When I say straightness, I mean, this is really a gay dance record, isn't it? this i mean this is this is really a gay dance record isn't it this is a yes this is like uh it's not what you'd associate with uh with an 80s new york gay dance record but it's this is this was the big thing in the very early 80s where it's uh very low-key and classy and it's just about dancing rather than putting on any kind of show but that's kind of what's wrong with this record it could do with a bit more flamboyance

it just it and it considering the people involved with this behind the scenes and stuff like people crown knights affair and that you would expect a little bit more oomph and a bit more energy but it just finds this groove and then just grows old in it really quickly yeah yeah it's still i mean their personas are not really strong enough in a sense i mean i have to try when preparing for this podcast to not just think about how much i might love a record now but try and figure out why i might have disliked it then um this song i don't think it's a great song i know it now because i've heard it enough but really because of the baseline those details you notice as a kid but I think what lodges a song in your head first so that you start noticing and remembering things like the bass line and the drums is a sung hook that you can remember a chorus

so this wouldn't have really lingered with me I encounter the same problem with the Melbourne record um yeah that came on later um yeah so not a great not a great tune but i mean hats off to them for just rising above the shit show that's going on in front of them um because their performance is is as spot on as it can get really the song itself is okay yeah but it's not condensed enough to really be strong enough in the hooks i was sort of checking out remixes of it because i suspected that once persona was removed from this record and it did just become an almost totally electronic dance record it would be better so the dub version of this is fucking amazing i mean it needs to be eight minutes longer and you need to be on fast drugs to enjoy it but the dub version where their vocals are completely

depersonal personalized in a way and just treat it as texture really works but this this song i'll give it a pass yeah i mean as far as the song goes it is your bog standard opening song to top of the pops yeah it just eases you in but i think the thing that struck me was a nice bit of um cross-pollination going on because the do it do it do it bits are a nick of do it to me baby by the miracles and then the actual part of the chorus was clearly nicked by delight for groovies in the heart yeah yeah i didn't think of that didn't think yeah but it is a record about dancing and that's probably why it wouldn't have appealed to me at that time and precisely why records about

deliberately not dancing did appeal to me at this time as we'll see later on and of course at the end we see that one of the kids in the front ripping the neck curtain off, throwing it down and then turning around to the camera to give a meaty thumbs up. He's already had enough of this shit. So the following week, Do It To The Music jumped seven places to number 27, where it stayed for two weeks before leaping up to number 18, its highest position. The follow-up, just in time, only got to number 49 in September of 1983 and they were never heard of again. There's nothing like an Halloween stew, is there?

Hang on, I've just put a snake in. See how... Hmm, tastes quite nice. We'll have that after the show, but first of all, a bit of music. Here's the Beatles. Oh, hello, darling. Someone I know, and it's the Beatles. APPLAUSE Love, love me do You know I love you I'll always be true So please

Love me do Face, surrounded by pumpkins Please, love me don't. Face, surrounded by pumpkins, a saucy pre-goth sort, and two of the shrouded kids, is leaning on a massive bubbling cauldron and throwing rubber snakes into it, claiming that one is someone he knows. He says, there's nothing like a Halloween stew, is there? No, there's nothing like a Halloween stew is there no there is

nothing like a Halloween stew I've never heard of such a thing it's amazing watching Bates do comedy is incredible it's like I think it's an ad lib when the the PVC bat flutters into his face and he kisses it

I think it's an ad lib partly because it wrecks the flow of the link. Yes. And he can't recover. And also because it's almost the same joke he uses later when he says, oh, it's someone I know. He does almost the same joke later on, and that one's obviously scripted. So it's like he can't invent anything.

He can't think on his feet. His mind just snatches at the nearest idea in his brain that's labeled comedy yeah and he says that it's like he's panicking but because he's simon bates it's like a really stolid panic yeah barely moving he's got no expression but it's like he's in his brain he's hopelessly thrashing around and he's half empty brain something to say something funny like madly madly digging for jewels and you just hear the spade hitting concrete every time that's it i mean as soon as he said there's nothing like halloween shit he's right because there really isn't anything like halloween shit

no nobody's ever heard of a fucking Halloween shit in fact those words have never been put together and when he says mmm

the snakes taste quite nice and you know he has to put up the taste of rubber in his mouth probably not for the first time

what a trooper but I don't know he kisses it he says it's someone I know even in a tiny shit gag he manages to

squeeze in some sort of bitterness and rancour it is under appreciation and you kind of get that throughout this episode with these quote unquote his shit gag, he manages to squeeze in some sort of bitterness and rancour that is under appreciation. You kind of get that throughout this episode with these quote-unquote comedy

bits. Do you think he volunteered to present this one, or do you think he was pushed into it? Because whoever's going to present this is going to look like a total bellend, aren't they? I can't imagine him volunteering for it. I can imagine other DJs, perhaps perhaps who would volunteer for

it but not him not him no no no he then kisses one of the rubber bats that are dangling above the cauldron before introducing us to love me do by the beagles formed in liverpool in 1957 as the Quarrymen, the Beakles are the fucking Beakles. This, of course, is their debut single, which originally got to number 17 in January of 1963, and it was re-released by EMI earlier this month on the recently reactivated Parlophone label as part of their It Was 20 Years Ago series, where each Beakles single was to be put out on its 20th anniversary. It's the follow-up, of sorts, to the Beatles movie medley, which got to number 10 in July of this year,

and we're treated to a video of the mop fabs having a bit of a sing and a piss about, while loads of people go absolutely fucking mencle at them. And it's up this week from number five to number four. 20 years. 20 years, right? And it's like looking at film of the war, like even in 1982. The First World War.

Yeah, and it's presented that way, you know, as ancient history. Like Simon Bates, who incredibly still isn't 40 at this point. He would have been 16 when this record was first in the charts, right? He was older than most of the kids you see in this video. And here he is now, still in his 30s, like a young man, despite appearances, a young man wearing white shoes and presenting pop music and the sheer

speed at which culture and society had moved in that 20-year period uh where everything else stayed the same like technology and like the structure of everyday life had hardly hardly changed at all um and it's weird because now the exact opposite applies. Culture has slowed down almost to a crawl and technology is moving faster than anyone can follow as are the basics of how we live and how we operate within political structures. And the planet's progressed towards catastrophe.

So we look at pop music of 20 years ago, and it's like, what, The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica, and, you know, Three Lions 98 by Badil and Skidder with the lightning seeds. And it seems like a different era in terms of music technology and that sort of weird sense of living in untroubled times that you get with a lot of 90s music. But it never seems like mysterious cave paintings,

the way Love Me Do seemed in 1982. Do you know what I mean? To us, that could have been the day before yesterday. And it's partly because we now understand the music of 1998 better than people did in 1998 because we still live in that world but we we have more perspective on it because time has passed whereas people from 1962 got this record in a way that people of 1982 never quite could do you know what i mean yeah because you hear love me do after the fact and it's possible to appreciate that when it came out it sounded like a a cold clear breeze blowing in from the north you know scattering the the fog the orchestrated fog of uh british

pop music of the period but well i, that's an oversimplification because, you know, you had things like Shakin' All Over and various Joe Meek records or whatever. But you have to stretch a bit because, I mean, this is the Beatles at their tamest. You know, they're still nervous in the studio. They've toned down the sort of Hamburg aggression, but they're not really confident or skilled enough

yet to write and perform at the level of of she loves you or I want to hold your hand which is when they start to sound genuinely cataclysmic because that's when you hear the real abandon and iconoclasm and and sexual energy like propelled into the dead centre of British popular culture. You know, at this point, it's just, it's like the sort of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly, but sort of relocated to the Liverpool docks and smashed around their head until they've forgotten half of what they know, you know.

But so, yeah, in 1982, this is like, yeah, it's like looking at something beamed in from another age. And also, this is the version that doesn't even have Ringo on it, right? Ringo had just joined before they made this record. And at their EMI test recording, they still had Pete Best on drums.

And he was so shit, like despite that urban legend that Pete Best was a much better drummer and they sacked him because he was good looking or something. Complete shit. When you hear the recordings with Pete Best, he's awful. And George Martin said, we can't record anything without drummer, I'm going to get a session drummer in.

So they booted him out. They came back with Ringo but George Martin had already booked the session drummer so they recorded it once with the session drummer with Ringo on tambourine and once with Ringo on the drums version with Ringo on drums went out as a single the version with the session drummer

with Ringo on tambourine went on the album but they used the album version for this reissue I think because the master tape of the ringo version was destroyed in 1963 so every reissue of that since has been a needle drop like you know when you get those obscure northern soul records and garage punk records and they they have to do it off an old vinyl. That's what the first Beatles single is now

whenever you hear it. So instead we get, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Beatles by listening to the other guy on the drums. But I seem to recall this only being a part of that celebration in a sense. In that I recall I know it's an

old cliche, best Beatles album best of the Beatles but um you know that 20 greatest hits album um Beatles you remember the sleeve of it that I think was majorly majorly responsible for getting the Beatles back into I'm not saying the Beatles had ever disappeared from the public consciousness but I think previous to that the Beatles were a load of solo artists that i knew about and i only really knew about them more really because of john lennon's shooting um than i did anything else that 20 greatest hits album that came pretty soon after this singles reissue um that was the thing that introduced me to the beatles and and yeah and

introduced me in a big way to the kind of yeah the fundamentals of pop and then beyond that of course it was getting into the blue album and then the red album and then of course then of course the albums followed um I said earlier that I wasn't really listening to old stuff I would say that that started happening the following year with the issue of that 20 greatest hits album um with the issue of an album that everyone's forgotten but that had such a massive formative influence on me called formula 30 which was a double kind of rock compilation it was just you know shit tap probably just put out to put a load of hits together but i remember i had four rolling stones tunes on it and a few roxy music tunes on it and that that blew my mind and

also the biggest thing that propelled me towards old music in the 80s and i think it was the same for a lot of people was the rock and roll years which absolutely changed everything about my attitude towards old music um but at this time in 82 honestly the beatles weren't really a big not the golden oldie picture show well the golden oldie picture i my memories foggy about when that started happening. And I've got to admit, I didn't watch it that often. I loved the rock and roll years. And still now, say if I hear

Life on Mars by David Bowie, I still see footage of Concord crashing, you know, as I'm watching it because the tying together of imagery and sound in that show is really, really important, I think.

But at this time, the Beatles weren't really a thing in my life obviously lennon getting shot was a brilliant career move for the beatles to a certain extent in introducing you know him and um the beatles to so many of us but up until this point maybe 82 when that compilation came out the beatles to me were yeah john lennon oh he got shot and paul mccartney um out of wings and wings yeah it wasn't it wasn't that i sat around listening to the beatles much until that 20 greatest hits album came out and because that 20 greatest hits album was ruthlessly compiled from a commercial sense really it was about sales figures and it was the 20 biggest selling

singles that they did um it introduced me to everything that i love about the beatles but also everything that i'd grow to not like about the beatles as well um so that was a really important record for me love me do i didn't know any of that about the drummer um about who who drummed on it because the drums were what absolutely suckered me for this song i loved the drums on this song um at a young age it's just got a real propulsion to it. But at the time, I was not yet diving into the past. I still had a belief in the present.

And kind of, this did seem, of course, with all the black and white footage, it just seemed from another total of the time. I mean, it was, but a genuinely kind of prehistoric time almost. Andrew White. Yeah, Andy. That was the drummer. Andy White. One thing I wanted

to ask was, what did the Beatles mean to you before Lennon was shot and you were growing up? Because to me, they meant extremely little. I mean, we were an Elvis household. My mum liked the Beatles, but she never bought records, she never played records.

And you know, in 1979, if you'd have asked me who was the bigger band, I would have said the Monkees, because they were on telly all the time. You never saw the Beatles films. You knew Paul McCartney through Wings. Lennon was a recluse. George Harrison and Ringo didn't mean anything at all. And, you know, I'm trying to look back now and think there must have meant something. I mean, I can recall being four years old and singing Beatles songs on a bingo blower.

Yeah, yeah. My mum used to work in a bingo hall when I was four and five. And the nursery school was too far away for me to go to. So I used to go with my mum and you know while she was cleaning up I'd get on the microphone and sing I want to hold your hand I remember one time I think it was

paperback right it was on the radio and my grandpa saying turn that ramble off it's a load of balsam and I just turned around to him and said grandpa that's the Beacons they're the greatest band ever and he just looked at me as if to say where the fuck did he get that from but i knew very few beatles songs and it wasn't until john lennon was shot that the importance of the beatles was revealed to me yeah but the crucial thing is how you did know some beatles

songs they did feel they did feel that they were part of the national songbook yes they were so so you would have sung those songs sometimes at school I remember singing those songs at school being led by a teacher singing those songs yeah you know I also remember perhaps not owning you know the white album or anything in the 70s but certainly owning records like um Jeff Love his Tijuana Brass, playing the hits of Lennon and McCartney. They were just kind of accepted as part of the national book of melodies, if you like.

But they weren't rammed up your arse as much in the 70s as they were in the 80s. No, they weren't. But I think Lennon's death gave that movement to make them important against some impetus. Well, I remember when I got into the Beatles and I was astonished to find out that

Yellow Submarine was their song do you know what I mean? Yes It was like as if you'd just got a Kinks album and oh look they did the ink is black the page is white together we learned to read them all I'd never heard of

John Lennon when he got shot. I didn't know who he was. I'd heard of the Beatles. The only ones I knew was Paul McCartney and Ringo because he had a funny name. Meant nothing. Meant nothing to me. I went into school and everyone was talking about

how their mum had been crying all morning. You know, I didn't even know who he was. We've had 18 months of bad Lennon, if you want. The 70s Lennon. And all of a sudden, here he is, you know, a lot younger and a lot more agreeable to people our age, I think. Yeah, apart from... Because he's a cheeky fuck.

Apart from the fact that every time there's a camera on him, he does his hilarious comedy playground, Belm, which hasn't aged very well. No, really hasn't. Also, what I was a bit disappointed in with this video is that in the first part of the video where they're getting off the plane and waving to all the crowds

at the airport, it's not the bit of newsreel footage they normally show for that, where you see a bunch of kids waving banners, like made out of painted bedsheets and most of them say like you know welcome home boys and we love you ringo and stuff and then the one on the end says england get out of ireland one of my favorite uh beatles clips although the best bit in the video is uh where uh john lennon does that thing where he's just picking up a glass of wine to have a swig,

and he notices the camera's on him, puts it down, picks up a cup of tea, drinks that, and does a cheesy comedy smile, saying, hey, kids, we're lovable, really, we would never drink alcohol. And it's a genuinely great bit of physical comedy. Yes. Obviously, the black and whiteness of the footage immediately tells you this is an unrecoverable age. And John Lennon's death obviously meant that the Beatles

could never, ever get back together again. So all these little aspects of it, the fact that when they're walking from backstage to stage to be on the TV show, they've all got almost a pint in their hand and a fag on the go. Endless fags on the TV show, they've all got, sort of, almost a pint in their hand, and a fag on the go, and all of it, endless fags on the go, yeah, all of it,

all of it seems like, massively unrecoverable, black and white, in 82, was as distant, as anything, you know, it just seemed like,

a totally different age, but, you know, I do think, the purpose of this being reissued, they can say it was, for the 20th anniversary, I'm suspecting,

that's also the reason that, yeah, the 20 Greatest Hits album came out. Because I honestly, I'm not being partridge to say that's my favourite Beatles album. But in a sense of unlocking the Beatles for me, it was the most important Beatles record that I ever got to hear. You do feel that the movie medley

was a bit of a trial balloon. And it floated. and so they went right let's go full steam ahead but really what we're seeing here is a first go at the repackaging of the past that the rest of the 80s would would do so this is almost like a trial run for the rock and roll years it's actually for all its faults and there's there's odd bits like the repeated i mean i don't know whether this is a fault or not but you know the way it repeatedly goes to the photographers um every time it goes to the freeze frame it goes to this photographer

kind of loading his camera up it's all total rehearsal for the rock and roll years and it works it's incomparable with anything else in the show because it's a complete time travel time tunnel back to something

and what's weird is the real 60s nostalgia that we got in the 80s hasn't kicked in I mean we've already had back to the 60s by tight fit and stuff like that but the real 60s thing kicked in a bit

later once the 80s was underway because it was a reaction to the feel of the 80s and the mood once the 80s was underway because it was a reaction to the feel of the 80s and the mood of the 80s yeah and if you didn't like that the 60s was like the nearest opposite and it was still so close you can almost touch it you know and so you get like posh kids with flowers in their hair and all that sort of thing you know although it's weird because it didn't occur to many people that a lot of the specific things about the 80s that people were trying to escape from,

like the economic philosophies and the spivviness and the total belief in self-gratification, these were all mutant offspring of what happened in the 60s and the real legacy of what happened in the 60s. I mean, for all the hostility to uh progressive social changes that you got from like thatcher and reagan and their base um really it was the individualism of the 60s is what had enabled this new form of right-wing politics you know that's where the old high toryism ends uh and thatcherism starts to take shape you know

but at the same time you can't blame the beatles you can be really cynical and you can say you know what were the ultimate long-term effects of the beatles well we got you know reefers on the quad and prime ministers in jeans and the union of advertising and the word revolution uh which is all true but if you don't want to be cynical about it you can say no this is still the greatest expression of all the positive changes in post-war britain and the sudden opening of important doors you know um and the beatles didn't that, but they were in the vanguard. And the further they retreat into history and textbooks and the canon of great things

which are no longer seen to be directly relevant, the faster all those doors are closing. And although there's not that much left to learn directly from Beatles records, either musically or in terms of the often naive and outdated ideas that are expressed on some of them, the spirit and the openness and the hunger for knowledge and experience, which you can hear on those records,

is the purest form of the freedom that's being siphoned out of british culture today and i think it's that as much as the musical quality that makes them still important and inspiring but at this point in 82 that importance isn't isn't what's being aimed for because people aren't that horrified by 82. They're horrified politically maybe in lots of ways, but musically, we haven't yet got to a stage where we're horrified by the textures of pop and we're horrified by just the sheer big commercial fact of pop.

In 82, I'm not saying there's hope in the present, but there's still a kind of belief in the present. So this is presented as, here's a little time capsule. Don't bother learning anything from it necessarily presented as here's a little time capsule don't bother learning anything from it necessarily but here's a little time capsule of the funny little way we used to do pop back in the day um that actual investigation of the beatles as a way of making new music i don't think has started yet and about top of the pops i'm very pleased to whack this in for uh for

mum and dad do you think do you think paul mccartney would have been a bit pissed off about this? Seeing as the fact that he's still got a solo career and this might be getting in the way of it. I don't think he'd have been pissed off. I mean, it all works sort of in his favour to a certain extent. If people get back into the Beatles. This song did better than virtually all of his solo output. I mean, he did get to number one this year, but as a duo.

By that, well, look, I mean, with Paul McCartney, I just think, yep, he was totally stoned for like about 30 years and could really kill a monkey. The other thing about this record, which nobody knew at the time, is the story

that passed into Legend is all wrong. And we were told that, you know, George Martin heard something in these lads that nobody else had heard and signed them up. No, what actually happened was, this has only come out recently because Mark Lewisohn did that enormous book that's like the thickest Beatles biography ever

and it only goes up to 1962. And it's got all this amazing detail in it about the early years that nobody ever knew because he went and did like eight years of research and found out the terrible truth, which is that they were signed to EMI because EMI's publishing company heard the songs of Love Me Do and P.S. I Love you that they'd done at the test recording and thought this band is shit but these songs might be hits maybe we can you know get the

publishing on these songs and give them to a proper singer you know uh and give them to yeah so they signed them up uh because they wanted to publish the songs. And George Martin was given the production job of the Beatles as a punishment because he'd had an affair with his secretary. He'd just left his wife or was in the process of leaving his wife because he'd had an affair with his secretary who he later got together with. And this was not the done thing at the time. And his boss at EMI was very disapproving of

this um he couldn't be sacked for it but what they did was lumber him with this bum group the beatles that nobody wanted to do um and he wasn't best pleased um and you know he got over it, but I think the Beatles story works better that way. So the following week, Love Me Do dropped three places to number seven. The follow-up, Please Please Me, got to number 29 in January of 1983, and the third re-release, From Me To You, made it to number 40 in April of that year.

Although EMI stuck it all the way to 1990 with Let It Be, none of the remaining re-releases cracked the top 40. And when Love Me Do was re-released again in October of 1992, any plans for a 30th anniversary campaign were shelved when it only made number 53. And of course, Love Me Do and the B-side P.S. I Love You are the only Beatles songs that Paul McCartney owns, as they were taken by one of EMI's publishing wings that Michael Jackson knew fuck all about. Love me do Oh, love me do Yeah, love me do Now, there's a hit from the vault

from a long way back by the Beatles. I have a few friends calling. I must go to the door. How'd you like to tonic? With blood? Without? It's lozol. This distraction Turns me sideways Out of tune

Stuck halfway there Bates, with his head wedged into a rack of bubbling test tubes And surrounded by a zoo wanker dressed as a witch, the back-flipping skeleton and one of the kids in a waistcoat puts on a mad professor accent as he introduces Cry Boy Cry by Blue Zoo. Formed in London in 1980 under the name Modern Jazz, Blue Zoo were a vaguely synthy band who were picked up by the management duo

Jazz Summers and Simon Napier-Bell and released two singles that failed to make the charts in 1981. This is the follow-up to I'm Your Man. We've got to number 55 in June of this year and it's nipped up this week from number 39 to number 35. Now, before we say anything else else if you've seen this episode

on the bbc4 repeat a year or so ago you won't have seen this song because they cut it to bring the length down to just under 30 minutes why the fuck do they do that in 2018 well because the treatment of the archive remains really shoddy when they're repeating these things yeah it does essentially what that makes the repeat of this is a clip show which spoils the flow completely it reminds me massively

of you know instead of just showing Morecambe and Wise shows now they have to do a best of Morecambe and Wise where they've got fucking David Baddiel looking embarrassed sort of having to watch it laughing whilst watching it and it just destroys the flow of the the build the rhythm of these comedy routines that are so genius so that yeah most people now thinking of say the andre previn sketch uh more common wise would think of just a bit when

the curtain opens and the band's there and everything that happens after that but what about the fucking preamble before it getting rid of this shit just shows how ostensibly they're they care for the form they care for the archive they don't they're they're careless about it um and it really angered me what it reminded me of is a thing that massively annoys me and i think i hope something that chart music Podcast absolutely doesn't do is you know Top of the Pops 2 the kind of captions that come up that kind of

sardonic, mildly misogynistic sometimes and the voiceover as well is always just the wrong side of taking the piss it just displays no love for pop, that kind of thing it shows a real snottiness about it. BBC Four cutting this out,

I know it seems daft, getting upset about them cutting out Cry Boy Cry, but it shows a carelessness for important archive that actually destroys the cumulative impact of the show that really angers me. Yeah, and it's like, what, you can't wait another five minutes before putting on another fucking documentary about new order or or something it's ridiculous

why don't you just lop five minutes off the news i watched the top of the pops thing last night the repeat on bbc4 and the last five minutes of the program before it which was the news was some bullshit about some fucking royal woman getting up the stick it's like who gives a fuck i want blue zoo instead of that yeah too right i mean the thing is every time they cut something out at top of the pops on the bbc4 repeats i always think well what happened there what was so horrible and evil that they've had to expunge it from the memory and i just thought fucking hell has was simon Bates pretending to be the Yorkshire Ripper or something? No, he was pretending to be a mad scientist and saying,

how do you light your tonic with blood without? Which is, not only is it not a joke, it's nothing. It doesn't seem to refer to anything. It's another one of his bafflingly uh nonsensical uh anti-jokes and i was just sat there thinking do you think he wore that get up and talked in that voice when he was wanking hogs for money yes yeah talking about yeah yeah i mean you say mad scientist accent it's just the first in a series of just shit accents um by bates you remember when blackhead has taken the piss out of prince ludwig

and he goes on about that funny croaky one that's no one in particular that's what bates does throughout luckily we've found a shonky version of this performance on YouTube. You know, before we go into the song, I mean, BBC, just leave the shit alone. You know, and if you are going to cut stuff out of the top of the Pulse repeats, leave the iPlayer version as it is, please. You wonder, would they do this with any other

kind of music, apart from pop music? I don't think so. Anyway, Blue Zoo. Seen at the time as the next Duran Duran, I seem to recall. No, there were fellow care was in an interview and smash hits. He said they were going to be the next big band.

Why weren't they? Were this a parody of an eighties band? You would dismiss it as being a bit too on the nose. Yeah. That's what's weird. I was all minded not to like this the high bass line bit in the song if the whole song was that i wouldn't have minded it but it's actually the performance that that puts me off it the high energy of this band is maddening

yes it's a kind of christian energy um you know i i remember i remember my band supporting a band and they were called i I can't remember, it's like Forget Thursday or some shit name. But it rapidly emerged as they were playing their set that they were Christians and they wanted to sing about their faith.

And there was a moment, I'll never forget it, sort of for their last song where they, one by one, started putting their instruments down and coming out in the audience clapping

and trying to get us to join in fucking hell. That's what Blue Zoo remind me of. A pretty awful song with one good bit. I can understand why they would have been predicted as the next Duran though because they had an energetic performance, let's put it that way.

Wherein the lead singer almost takes a tumble at one point. Yes, he does. But yeah, not great not great no i mean and it's all about the lead singer isn't it because all the kens are in black and he's got a red vest over a ripped up white top and beige trousers with lizards printed on him he's he's yet another singer who honestly thinks that slavishly copying David Bowie's act will make him more like David Bowie

instead of making him even less like David Bowie than he was at first because the whole point is that David Bowie's act copped by anyone other than David Bowie is the fastest way to reveal your own fundamental ridiculousness and lack of charisma.

Because the reason it worked for David Bowie is that it looked so ridiculous you couldn't believe it was working, but it was. And as such, it perfectly showcased David Bowie's own remarkable magnetism and natural showmanship. So it's almost like unwittingly he set a trap for plagiarists and imitators

into which young men are still falling. But yeah, Blue Zoo are almost the perfect example of that band who only formed because they wanted to be in a band and proceeded to only do the things they thought you're supposed to do wanted to be in a band and proceeded to only do the things they thought you're supposed to do if you're in a band yeah yeah yeah it's that total lack of any kind of personal touch or individuality that makes them so hilarious and weirdly satisfying because like with all bands like that it's always same. They end up being so of their time that as Nils says,

they look like people from now dressed up for a comedy sketch. Yeah. They have that really distinctive aura of like a local band that got big locally because they were the only group that could play and sort of put on a show. And some A&R man has alighted upon them and pushed them into the light you know convinced that this is their moment when really everyone can see that they're going nowhere because I mean pop is not a meritocracy but there are certain rules there's certain natural laws and balances

which are absolute and Blue Zoo fall foul of all of them if you know anything about pop music you can just look at this clip and this is not going to happen i mean they're proof in a sense a pop is often dismissed as being formulaic but actually it's very rarely purely formulaic and this is pure formula it's you know with no extra added value or anything which is what's essential to make pop happen so so what you've got is yet a drummer who thinks if i do this to drums and a guitarist who thinks if i do this to a guitar the bassist who thinks you know so they all do what they think they ought to do yeah and of course it doesn't ultimately add up to to anything yeah

because they're all sticking so rigidly to those formulas. Yeah. They appear to me as a band that are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they'd have come out in 1981, they could have had a chance. But if they'd have come out in 1985, they would definitely be in with a shout. Yeah, yeah.

They are that kind of band, you could see them in success coats. You know what I mean? But that's what's odd. It's a parody, but it already feels like a parody is something that's already gone, in a sense. But yeah, you're right. In two, three years in the Kajagoogoo age,

I think they'd have been all right. I don't know. There's too much about them that just reeks of this will not happen. You know the lead singer is called andy o and this is because his real name is andrew overall um but he didn't have the guts to just change his name and be you know cha-cha moon dragon or something he had to leave it hanging and so but it's it sounds like he started to say his real name

and then drifted off halfway through because he's embarrassed. Like, what's your name? Andy O... It doesn't... You know, everything about him is almost too perfect to be believable, right? Because I look this up.

First of all, he's from brain tree which is absolutely the sort of town that bands like this would come from um and best of all he's obsessed with mushrooms and toadstools um yes he started a club um for people who are fascinated by mushrooms and toadstools. And a website which he actually called Fun Guy to Be With. It's just perfect.

It's just perfect. Of course that's what he'd call it. Because he has no imagination. And he's still around. He's got a Twitter account which is still very active. And every single tweet is about fungi. But 982 followers. So, you know, we can't scoff.

More than us. Fungi, I mean, is a fascinating part of the Thor and Fauna. But you know what they come across like? You know the band that Rodney's in, in Only Fools and Horses, that then gets somewhere when Rodney's been kicked out? I imagine... A bunch of wallies.

Yeah. Them getting signed and tarted up and cleaned up. This is what they'd have ended up like, like Blue Zoo, sorry. Yeah. I noticed that the cat on the stick makes a reappearance. Yeah, and I wanted to burn it there's something scary about that

did they not think if you give people things to wave about they're going to wave them about idiots but it now holds the same residual horror not to get too Derek Okora about it it holds the same residual horror for me

as Memories of Hammer House of Horror and that African statue that's in one of those episodes that really scared the shit out of me. So every time I see it cropping up on this episode I get a little frizz on of fear. I mean, Louise of Slough was going on quite rightly about the brusque

mannerisms of the camera crew. The camera crew and the floor managers must have fucking hated doing this episode. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just so much shit to move about. And so much... This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's.

It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The shit that people have got on their heads. Can you imagine them in the pub afterwards just fucking hating the world?

So the following week, Cry Boy Cry only moved up one place to number 34 but then he jumped up to number 21 stayed there for two weeks and would get as high as number 13. Fucking hell. However the follow up

Loved Ones and Angel would only get to number 76 in February of 1983. They never troubled the top 40 again, and after their second LP was only released in Yugoslavia, they split up in 1985. That's when you know, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?

Yeah, that's when you know there's not mush room in the charts for Blue Zoo. Hello, I was just having a sip of someone I'm quite fond of. How would you like to have a real heartbreaker? Ha-ha! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE I get to say it and it's hard for me You'd have me crying like I thought I would never be The camera pans in on a coffin surrounded by the kids and assorted zoo wankers with a hand emerging from it. The lid is opened to...

What am I doing this suspense shit for? Simon Bates, isn't it? If it had been DLT or something, that would have been genuinely terrifying. Yeah, yeah. Or, I don't know, Michael Rod. Someone like that. Yeah, yeah. because they know what a shoddy thing is going on here. And it's what he says as well. Sip on someone. That's an unpleasant turn of phrase that brings things to mind, a lot of unpleasant images.

And with the zoo wankers kind of with their hands clawing for him. And then he breaks to announce the next record, of course. What looks like a massive heart-shaped piece of shortbread. What the fuck is going on? Yes. So, you know, genuine horror creeping through because of the shitness yet again. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about Zoo for a minute longer

because pop shows throughout the ages have always had scenesters in it. But, you know, if you talk about the people who are in Ready, Steady, Go and things like that, they serve two very important purposes. Number one, here's what clothes you wear. And number two, here's the dance moves that's going on nowadays. And Zoo do neither of that. Because I was sat to term in Nottingham as a 14-year-old watching this, looking at Zoo, and, you know, if I had that mindset, I'd go,

okay then, so I've got to spend stupid amounts of money to look like a cunt, and I've got to do the same motion over and over again to every song. That's it. Beyond anything else, they're not good dancers. And fundamentally, they're pushy. This is the 80s. They are pushy about themselves. You never got that feeling with Legs and Co. and definitely not with Pants People. Pants People and Legs legs and coat felt confident and secure

amongst themselves and in themselves to just try and do their best by the music zoo have a different agenda and that's where you get these cunts pushing themselves to the front and and with their mind presumably being on some better career or some better show that they could be on. Like the What No Meat advert. That arrogance that can only come from a lack of confidence is what makes me hate them so much, I think. But let's not ignore another amazing Bates anti-joke. I mean, he's dressed as a vampire, so you think he's going to do a vampire-related joke. And instead...

We're really wrong fangs. Those fangs are just too big and... He looks like a baby walrus, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. They're too close together. Yeah. If you'd have got those fangs in Crazy Comic or something, you'd feel ripped off, wouldn't you?

Totally. He snaps this heart-shaped biscuit in heart and it's massive it's about it's the size of his head isn't it yeah yeah where did they get that biscuit from yeah you couldn't get those then no someone's gone to the trouble to make a massive heart-shaped biscuit yeah which he then snaps with one powerful front paw. Yeah. And he says... With the hand that gripped a pig's cock. And he says,

how would you like to have a real heartbreaker? That doesn't mean anything. No. There's something almost sort of zen about the meaninglessness of these. They're like dummy jokes you know like there's no actual joke in it it's just the for the the the shell of a joke and just the broken logical connections um it's like outsider art or something yeah it's an experimental joke where

the joke has wandered into a kind of non-laughing zone yeah yeah but why you may ask is he breaking a massive heart-shaped biscuit because he's introducing the next video which is heartbreaker by dion warwick born in new jersey in 1940 marie warwick's mom was the manager of the Drinkard Singers, a local gospel group who did a bit of session work on the side. Whilst attending the Hart College of Music, she got stuck into session work herself and was spotted by Burt Bacharach in 1962 when she was backing the Drifters on the song Mexican Divorce. After dropping out of school and signing to SEPTA Records soon afterwards,

she immediately established herself as the Afro-American Cilla Black. But over in the UK, she only had one top 10 hit in the 60s, Walk On By, which got to number 9 in May of 1964. In 1971, she signed the most lucrative record deal for a female singer at the time with Warner Brothers and added an E onto her surname on the advice of an astrologer. But she only scored one top 40 hit in the UK in the 70s when she teamed up with the Detroit Spinners and got Then Came You to number 29 in November of 1974. In 1979, she signed a deal with Arista Records and her career took off once again in America,

leading to her becoming the original host of Solid Gold, an American go at Top of the Pops. This year, she's collaborated with the Bee Gees, who have written all but one song on her latest LP, Heartbreaker, and this is the lead-off single with the group backing her up. And it's a new entry this week at number 29. I can't believe Walk On By only got to number nine. Fucking stupid British cunts.

They deserve Brexit. There's a worse fact than that when we start to delve into the Dionne Warwick British chart history, but we'll come to that later. This was the first Dionne Warwick record I ever heard. Yeah. Because she did a lot of TV to promote this. And at the time, I only remember registering two things. First was, here was a pop singer with grey hair, which seemed outrageous, right?

Far more outrageous than green or orange or blue. Although she has black hair on the picture they use on the chart rundown, just saying. And it just... Slightly anti-Toya, isn't she? Precisely. It seemed far more unsettling and threatening. And secondly, the forced way

in which she was always introduced as Dionne Warwick. Maybe make a point of pronouncing it like that. Someone must have said actually, this is Dionne Warwick, make sure you say it like that. Which nobody ever called her.

I've never met anyone who calls her that. Well, the original name is Warwick. W-A-W-R-I-C-K. It's W-A-R-W-I-C-K. Yeah. Warwick. W-A-R-I-C-K. No, it's spelt Warwick, but you say Warwick.

Yeah, but... You call it Warwick. You don't call it Warwick. She was... Let's settle this. Hang on. A given name, a real name, is Warwick, spelt W-A-R-R-I-C-K.

So there's no ambiguity about this at all. But, yeah, so here's Dionne Warwick. And, yeah, as someone who would regularly visit Warwick Castle, which I was fairly sure had bagged that word first, it seemed like typical American colonising of the language, which I was really weirdly annoyed about at the age of 10. I mean, I loved Dionne Warwick, and the recent death of Aretha Franklin,

it reminded me that in the mid to late 80s when I was full on into soul music and buying up old shit I had far more Dion Warwick and zero Aretha Franklin which is really weird and I look back now and go why was I like that

and I think it was because if you were a white lad into soul music it was the law that you had to revere Aretha Franklin yeah and I thought oh no no no I'm not going to go that way I'm going to go with this and I you know I still now if you talk about 60s output Dionne Warwick over Aretha Franklin for me well I mean because of the song she sang because of the background David connection i mean the thing is with dion was was she was never really like any other black female singers in

as much as yes she had a gospel past but it never made its way into a recorded output she was not a gospel singer she was not she never oversold no she was never a soul belter or anything like that she was a pop singer she was absolutely a pop pop singer. And that kind of, and because of that, because of that absolute high standard of songs that she sang, she'd only lend a voice to these amazing songs by Bacharach and David. She has, I think, throughout her career, which makes it quite interesting to me, is that kind of frosty presence in a sense.

Even in this, she doesn't really like this song. I don't think she liked the song. And you can tell in the performance of it. It's clear when watching this that the bands that are around her, they never played on it. The drummer, the bassist, the guitar player, they're all getting it wrong in a sense. Do you know what I mean?

They're not even getting the miming right. Only the backing vocalists are kind of getting it right. But even Dion, the black Blanche Devereaux, if you like, seems really disconnected with it. And you can almost, I mean, perhaps I'm reading into it, but I see a faint distaste in her having to sing it. Slightly annoyed almost that this has become her first big hit in a long time.

Well, to be fair, she did always look like that. Yeah, yeah, maybe so. That's one of the cool things about her. Absolutely, absolutely. She was absolutely just a pop singer. And really, I never got the feel with Dion always looked like that yeah yeah that's one of the cool things about her absolutely absolutely she was absolutely just a pop singer and and really i never got the feel with dion that she was you know in the back of the van touring much she did she lent her voice to these incredible pop records now with 80s bg stuff i i have arguments with people because um i love chain reaction say the the one that they did with diana ross even if it does make you picture the gibb brothers having sex not with each other of

course but um yeah you know that they were kind of laughed at a lot in the 80s the bgs massive chew sets and all of that um and i have arguments people about you win again i can't remember if that's an 80s or a 90s song but i fucking it's 80s it's i can't stand that song whereas other people absolutely love it but on this Heartbreaker, I hear this a lot on Free Radio 80s it's played a lot and for me it's settled into a nice warm kind of world alongside

Dolly and Kenny's Islands in the Stream, it's that kind of song, which I suspect Dion was not I mean yeah, she didn't like this song did she no she didn't she didn't and and neither do i really it is so pebble mill at one it is but the bg smartly do throw in enough baccarat ish moments um melodically and just in the flow of the song to make people perhaps remember those old classics

but also accept this as a kind of new Dion, you know. Yeah, but I listen to this song now and I just think, why the fuck didn't the Bee Gees do this themselves? They would have done this far better than she had. But, you know, this is 1982. The Bee Gees are just... Yeah, no one cares.

Yeah. The thing about the Bee Gees is that they were amazing songwriters, but they're actually not that versatile. And whatever they do always sounds like a Bee Gees tune. It's like with this, you can tell it's a Bee Gees tune without even looking it up. You can hear it a mile off, you know. Yeah.

And it doesn't suit her. Isn't Woman in Love by Barbra Streisand? Yeah. Again, another Bee Gees tune. I was going to ask, by the way, is it Bloke out of the Bee Gees playing the bass or does it just look like him? I think it looks like him.

Yeah, I can't see that he'd have just done that for a laugh. No. I thought that was David Cronenberg, actually. It's definitely Gordon Banks on on piano yeah right also i was gonna say um my love is stronger than the universe which is how this goes such an awesome meaningless line it's almost perfectly meaningful. It's hard to imagine a line that means less, you know. And it's not really what you want to hear Dion singing, is it? You know, like what she does best is to sing lines which pierce right to the protected, hidden centre of your heart.

You know, not cosmic bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Like similes that are so vague they sound like empty air, you know, and you want some genuine drama in the arrangement to bring out the peculiar subtleties and shading of her voice well this is a very smooth

plot, so that coupled with the fact that she wasn't keen on it, it's no surprise that her singing is a bit functional on this record and i mean her voice still sounds great but it doesn't really get to do anything um and in a way the most interesting bit is halfway through where like a wash of ambient studio audience noise comes up very quietly, even though she's obviously not in the top of the pop studio at the same time as the audience.

No, there's no cats on a stick here, is there? God, she wouldn't have put up with that. She would have stormed off. She would not have been on that episode at all. Sounds like somebody's dozed off and lent on a fader.

Yeah. been on that episode at all no sounds like somebody's dozed off and lent on a fader yeah yeah yeah but i mean in in the bg's attempt to write a baccarat song and their failure in doing so it just reveals how amazing those old baccarat david numbs are because there's there's that that just isn't the economy in this song that there is in a baccarat song that like taylor says just pierces your heart um so you can see it in Dion's face. When she has to deal with these slightly long lines with lots of words in them, there's a faint wrinkle of the nose and a distaste for doing it because Bacharach and David would have got there easier and simpler

and, crucially, made it sound natural as opposed to forced, which this record slightly sounds like. Yeah, and also simple and natural, but at the same time much more musically advanced because most of those songs have got like 14 key changes in yeah stuff you know i mean like really weird chord progressions and you have to be a good singer to do it um whereas yeah this is uh sounds much more pedestrian. And the fact that they've put in a couple of little vocal runs that sort of vaguely echo 60s Bacharach stuff.

Yeah. It's still just got that plodding chord progression. Yeah. And the Bacharach songs that she did, you know, they could have been slow and mournful, but they were still pepped up musically. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and they're just a pure injection of sunshine into you,

listening to you. This hasn't really got that. It's got that Mancunian rain in it. Yeah, this record is missing an orchestra. You definitely, definitely. Not some session blokes in dinner jackets. But she's got a nice outfit on. It's kind of like an ornate fuchsia,

kind of like Margot Ledbetter, draped coat. Yeah, it's very Golden Girls, isn't it? Gold leaves and black fringing. And also, there's that little instrumental section where for five seconds, the song sounds like an ABBA song. There's a little tiny bit that I really like.

But yeah, it's easily digestible, I guess. And it was comforting to people, but not one of Dion's best. No, no. But it was the early 80s, so it didn't matter really, did it? This is what people wanted. Yeah.

Do you think the main reason she always looked a little bit sour is because she had to spend most of the 60s being followed around by Cilla Black like professionally speaking you know like the sheer indignity of it I mean you know the two of them recorded a lot of the same songs and Cilla Black's version in this country not in America in this country Cilla Black's versions generally did better which is yeah the fact that Cilla Black's version of Anyone Who Had a Heart went to number one

and Dionne Warwick's version didn't. It's like you've got one of the most complex and expressive voices of the period just constantly being blotted out by one of the least complex and least expressive and ugliest to the ear. If you listen to Dionne Warwick singing Anyone Who Had A Heart, it's like the play of sunlight on water.

And you listen to Cilla Black sing it, it's like staring into a bare light bulb. Brick is the fucking canal. And that's even before you get to, it's even before you add in the awareness of Cilla Black's ghastly personality, you know. Remember Cilla Black used to do that dairy milk advert in the 70s where she'd

be on the street or at the train station and just walk up to people and shove a square of dairy milk into their mouth and whenever that advert came on my nan always used to say before I was walking down the street and she stuck a bit of chocolate in my mouth.

I thought, bloody smack her one. Which, if only that had happened, because as far as I'm concerned, that would have stood alongside my grandad's service in World War II. So the following week, Heartbreaker soared 24 places to number 5 fucking hell and spent 2 weeks at number 2 sorry to interrupt man

that's the power of Top of the Pops you see that with so many of these records this week the way they shoot up straight after appearing on Top of the Pops is amazing still got the power the follow up All The Love In The World would get to number 10 in January of 1983, but she'd have to wait until November of 1985

for her next and final top 10 hit, when That's What Friends Are For got to number 16. And my heart has passed me by Heartbreaker and Dionne Warwick, and this is Halloween Night on Top of the Pops. And when you work on Halloween Night on Top of the Pops, you get to travel first class on a broomstick, yeah? But here are two FFAs for you. APPLAUSE All around me are familiar faces, old now places, older faces. We are assailed with the sight of Bates, festooned in a long red cape and pointy green and pink hat, on a broomstick, I can't believe I'm saying these words,

on a broomstick accompanied by the cat-faced zoo wanker, as they soar across a background of a black paper cityscape with glittery infant school stars plastered over it. He reminds us once again that it's Halloween night when it clearly isn't and introduces the next act.

Look, the thing is, this is the best moment of the whole episode. Yes it is. Because Simon Bates, it's astonishing, Simon Bates in an Ali Bongo hat yes not even a witch and a red voluminous cape flying over a cardboard cityscape

on a broomstick with a sexy cat girl is the best Simon Bates that there could ever be and he should have done every link like this, even when it wasn't Halloween. He should have just worn it to do his radio show. Taking the cat girl in.

He should have done it on the front of the videos. You know what? Making some sexual swear words. Yes. He should have done his show with the cat girl at his feet in that suit drinking out of a saucer of milk.

It would have made him less sinister. Yes. Why is it he dressed up as a witch? I don't know.

Did the BBC think that was a bit too gay for 1982? Well I was initially confused because of his costume.

I thought he was on a magic carpet or something. Yeah. Because he looks like Ali fucking Bada, not a witch. So, yeah. Yet more shitness

that proves to be truly horrifying because of its shitness. I feel we're letting the side down here by only talking about it that quickly. It's something that needs to be seen. If you've not seen it, Pulp Grey's Youngsters, it's five seconds of Top of the Pop's I was going to say gold. Top of the Pop seen it, Pulp Graze Youngsters, it's five seconds of Top of the Pops

I was going to say gold. Top of the Pops lead. The thing is though, I know it's 82, right? It was a long time ago, but surely they could have done better than that. Yeah. The kind of thing you'd see at the end of Midlands today where someone's just gone, oh, you know, let's just do this

and it'll take five seconds to do and it's done. I don't think the production values on any other show are as bad as this. Or John Craven's news. I can see John Craven doing this. John Craven, by the way, just by the by, was confusing me at the time because this was round about the time when Imran Khan become

quite famous as a Pakistani cricketer. You've never seen him in the same room together, admit it. So that used to freak me the fuck out and meanwhile the production crew of the tube are just sitting there rubbing their hands together thinking we can take these bastards

finally he introduces the next act which he calls Tear for Fears with Mad World we've already discussed Tears for Fears twice and this is their third single from the two Tears for Fears with Mad World. We've already discussed Tears for Fears twice, and this is their third single from the two former members of the plastic mod band Graduate

who only released one single, Elvis Should Play Scar. That's Costello, not Presley. It was written by Roland Orsabal in 1980 and was originally slated as the B-side of their previous single, Pale Shelter, which failed to chart. But phonogram records persuaded them to save it as a future A-side. And bugger me gently, it's put them in the charts up this week from number 16 to number 6.

Written in 1980, this could have been a ska song. And it does sound a bit, when you've got that in your head you hear the you can see lots of bouncing up and down to that this got a ton of radio players I think I've said before, I won't say much about this because I've spoken about Tears of Fear several times on

Sharp Music, but this was the one that I yeah absolutely, this was the one that I loved I loved this, and then I saw the video and just wished I hadn't and wished that they didn't look like that yes it's a good record I'm sorry

it's got no no no nice needling guitar I like the sort of falling piano and when you're young this kind of manageable moody darkness is cathartic to hear

to a certain extent it's just whining about school and being a lonely git but yeah that fucking dancing Orzabelle does, though, in this video, really, really reminds me of David Schneider in The Day to Day when he's dancing to the theme tune. Very, very similar.

Not got a lot to say about this. I would say Tears for Fears' best moment, though. Taylor, not spoken about Tears for Fears yet, have you? Come on in. Join the circle. Well, that moment where roland orzabal starts dancing on the jetty i would say is the exact moment the event is end because after this there can be no more thoughts of the past nothing remains like we're in a new world of stupidity and a completely different kind of pomposity

and the world is changed utterly and then he does it again later silhouetted against the sky I mean we get the video which primarily consists of Kurt Smith having a monk on by the kitchen window in a

massive country house and Roland is outside skulking about at first and then he goes into some full on interpretive dance I would say there's a sense in which this is a good record and another sense in which it isn't

and it gets a bit complicated I mean it's a nice enough tune and the synth sounds are quite nice but there's other things about it that are kind of horrible and off-putting. Like, I mean, part of the problem with Tears For Fears is that they're such a pair of lemon-sucking cunts. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever seen a couple of faces that fucking sour

on two blokes that young, right? They look like a couple of daily express readers out on their doorstep silently watching a muslim family moving in next door it's that expression but forever like it never leaves the faces and it's a bit cheeky i think to go for this sort of tortured sensitive intellectual image when your music is so empty and you have literally nothing to say about anything. It gives them this very phony air, which they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Yeah. I remember them doing interviews talking about psychology and stuff, you know. And they had no idea what they were on about. It's like they were into that fraud Arthur Janoff where they got their name from of course which is incidentally one of the most exquisitely shit

band names ever you don't really hear it anymore because you take it for granted but yeah Tears for Fears is really bad like the Beatles like the Beatles exactly and the horrible title Tears for Fears is really bad. Like The Beatles. Like The Beatles, exactly. And the horrible title of their horrible album,

Songs from the Big Chair, it comes from that bullshit film, Sybil, which is very entertaining to watch, but it's based entirely on a really dubious case history by a highly dubious psychoanalyst. They seem to just have this really crappy pop-psych understanding of it all, which is reflected in their songs

and the level on which they operate. Like the B-side of this record is called Ideas as Opiates. I mean, that's just fucking awful, you know? Yeah. And it's needless because they were perfectly capable of making, you know, listenable music. I mean, I think their great record is Pale Shelter.

That's the one I like because it seems to have all the good points of this record, but it's a bit less forced and it has a bit of momentum of its own. And also the video to that is a proper early 80s pretentious music video and genuinely good, I think. Very much in the hypnosis style. But I think it's really, really entertaining.

And it doesn't have that terrible primal nincompoop. Yeah. and it doesn't have that terrible primal nincompoop. Yeah. This kind of music is a definite progression from the sort of cheapo synthiness of your original, you know, Depeche Mode and stuff like that, but also progressive in the wrong sense of the word. It's got ideas as opiates. It's erring in a direction that would end up in Howard Jones, I guess.

Yes. And that mix of synths and misery was perfected really by Soft Cell, who I loved at that age. Yeah, but it's a good misery, Soft Cell. Yeah. It's a universal misery. Absolutely. And it's a kind of outward-looking misery,

whereas this is just adolescently whiny and just annoying but i was i was soft cells misery is because the world shit this is misery because they're miserable people yeah absolutely spot on um but i was a miserable cunt at the time i mean i always have been but um perhaps i was a miserable cunt at the time i liked this record this is why the that cover version that was a bigot recently was much worse. Because the saving grace of this record is it sounds nice. Whereas that sounded so sincere. And instead of the focus being on the sound and the mood, it's on the sort of silly, like the literal message that it's a

mad world yeah it's like bourgeois angst right it's all the it's got the aching self-absorption of the piano ballad and piano ballads only work when they're intimate and personal and vulnerable and not when they're passing off sort of vague, like pampered adolescent platitudes as heavy emotional wisdom, you know? Like, hey, have you ever thought about that? It's a mad world. The video is essentially two housemates and one of them's really pissed off at the other one

because he does nothing. He just dances all the time in the front garden there's that one bit where roland picks up a ball and does a throw in and then goes and does his pieces again and he's just like why hasn't anybody done that at the world cup or something wouldn't that be amazing if someone did a Tears for Fears reference in a football game. And then at the end, they do a bit of video trickery where Kurt's looking out the window and there's a shadow of Roland dancing. And he just looks totally at the end of his tether. You can hear him muttering under his bed.

He does fuck all cleaning up. He's not paid his half of the fucking lecky bill. He just fucking dances in the garden and everyone is looking at him the cunt. At some point he's going to have to enquire about his welfare and that's he's not just

going to say now I'm alright. No. So the following week Mad Will nipped up three places to number three where it stayed for three weeks. The follow-up, Change, got to number four for two weeks in February of 1983, and there'd be a regular chart fixture throughout the mid-80s. And, of course, Mad World was re-recorded by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules in 2002,

and became the Christmas number one in 2003 because this century stinks of unwashed cock. Cheers for Fierce, and that's Mad World. Now on top of the pops this week, let's be serious and take a look at the charts and see what's happening in the top 30. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE A new entry at number 30, Be Proud, Be Loud, Be Heard from Toyah. New in is Dionne Warwick at 29 with Heartbreaker.

At 28, Friend Or Foe from Adam Ant. Zambezi at 27 for The Piranhas featuring Boring Bob Grover. Carly Simons at 26 with Why. At 25, Never Gonna Give You Up from Sharon Red. The Pretenders are back on the chain gang at 24. 23, Just What I Always Wanted, Mari Wilson. And Imagination at 22, In The Heat Of The Night. And here on Top Of The Pops at 21,

Love's Coming At Ya from Melba Moore. APPLAUSE Bates puts the Halloween shit to one side before launching into the charts from 30 to 21, eventually resting on the number 21 song, Love's Coming At Ya by Melba Moore. Born Beatrice Hill in New York in 1945, Melba Moore was the daughter of an R&B singer and a jazz pianist who began her recording a Broadway role when she took over from Diane Keaton and won a Tony Award in 1970 when she appeared in the musical Pearly. Two years later she co-hosted a TV variety show with her then partner Clifton Davis and then in 1976 she finally made the UK charts when This Is It got to number 9 in June of that year. This is her first performance in the top 40 since then,

and it's up this week from number 26 to number 21. And you can tell this is a repeat clip from a previous week because it's a bit of a giveaway that no one in the crowd is dressed as a Dracula. Yeah. It sort of deflates the pumpkin a bit it does yeah Melba's

kind of like alone on stage in front of a bank of lights and she's got this really nasty early 80s puffed out white blouse with pointy shoulders and a wazzy bow tie do you know she looks like this was bothering me this is the only thing I've got to say about this song which is alright I like the song but she is the black cath day night in cath and kim she really fucking i have to

re-watch it yeah it's like she's dressed up for a night out with cal the local purveyors of quality meat dinner dance you know in a casino somewhere yeah totally. She's got that croupier look, hasn't she? Yes. And also I perceive, I mean, I see it a lot in black pop in general in the early 80s. Just the massive influence of Michael Jackson. Not only in her look, but also in the song. I mean, if you're talking post-disco as we were, as you could do about Raw Silk as well. Well, yeah, well, let's talk about that. Because, you know, everyone goes on about post-punk

but surely there must be a genre called post-disco and this kind of stuff would be why don't we talk about this is it because it's black people and their history doesn't matter as much I think perhaps post-punk

sums up an awful lot of different diverse music, post-disco is, it's a bit i don't know it's quite a woolly term really it because because it could include all kinds of things i think fundamentally what we're talking about is a greater interpolation of electronic elements into black dance music fundamentally and the reintroduction of funk yeah but also we're talking about the disappearance of the chorus to a certain extent and and just just songs like this one i mean it's it's not a bad song but really the entire performance for me

is about that bass line which is good yeah and the lights the lights are fucking great that light that bank of lights i think they're fantastic they're one of the best things sort of like a chevron isn't it yeah and she looks great in front of it. She looks absolutely great in front of it. But fundamentally, yeah, I guess post-disco is about reducing the kind of amount of people who play on records fundamentally down to the producer. You could see Moroda was a kind of pioneer of post-disco to a certain extent because there's no sense of a band playing on this.

It feels completely electronic. And because of that, the light show really suits it i'd say as a performance it does its best for this slightly mediocre song i'd say um but the influence of mj is just all over it in her croupier look and also the sound of the record yeah it also continues the theme of this episode of there's a lot of older people appearing on this because like she's almost 40 at this point yeah and there's an awful i mean considering the presentation of this episode is so childish um it's weird how much of the music is so adult oriented um and yeah i don't know it also in outfit, doing that dancing at that age,

it doesn't quite work. It's like, it looks a little bit awkward. To me, the awkwardness of her movements and the stiffness of that outfit, she looks like a robot waiter that's gone haywire. And it's like she should have been spilling soup on the audience and cramming bread rolls in there. Just repeating, like, still or sparkling, still or sparkling.

Bashing people's faces in with a tin tray. Until a tongue comes out on a spring. Yeah, it's a horrible vision of the future. And yeah, it's true. All this record is is a decent groove but it's and she just sort of caws over the top because she's got quite a piercing voice and the song doesn't give her anything to do with it um yeah and it's yeah that liquid bass and and with the electric piano was a very contemporary sound but we've already heard it done with a lot more subtlety and grace on

records like forget me nots by patrice russian right and yes and this is very straight ahead and unengaging by comparison i think the best thing you can say about melbourne more is that she did the decent thing and she did put out an album called peach melbourne you have to in the same way that... There's no escape from that, is there? In the same way that Bobby Gentry did put out an album called Landed Gentry. Gary Moore did put out an album called

We Want More. It's the honourable thing to do. Oh, and Peebo Bryson never did put out an album called Mushy Peebo. Which he obviously should have done, like full of those soupy ballads and it just

it never happened and I've never forgiven never forgiven that but yeah I mean at the time this song would have just washed over me, it was funky belt music yeah, still does so the following week loves coming at you jumped six places to number 15

it's highest position the follow up mind up tonight got to number 22 in January of 1983 her last whiff of the top 40 there you go Melba was toast fucking hell

I'm so shit today excuse my spinning bow tie. That was worthy of Richard Dygent's tale. You should be proud. I'm not just a boy, I'm not just a girl. I'm not just a girl. And it's not me. Melba Moore and a bit of skullduggery on top of the box.

It's nice to have our producer back with us. Here's the charts. At 20, Evelyn King, Love Come Down. Number 19, Jake and Stevens, I'll Be Satisfied. The AA side for The Clash is at number 18. Jackie Wilson said, next is Midnight Runners at 17. Kool and the Gang at 16 with Ooh La La. At 15, Bauhaus and Ziggy Stardust. An opening for the Animals at 14, House of the Rising Sun.

13, Read the Wild Wind by Ultravox. At 12, The Pinkies and Danger Games. And here's Eddie Grant, Don't Wanna Dance at number 11. APPLAUSE And here's Eddie Grant, Don't Wanna Dance, at number 11. Bates, holding a shrunken head, which he then seems to lob into the crowd like Brian Jones throwing a tambourine that he's sharpened the edges off, runs down the chart from number 20 to number 11. Clearly the Halloween themes run out of steam by now, hasn't it? If only it had said school fuckery.

Yes. He eventually pitches into the video for I Don't Wanna Dance by Eddie Grant. Born in Place on Skiana in 1948, Eddie Grant moved to London at the age of 12 and after seeing a Chuck Berry gig was inspired to have a go at a musical career. was inspired to have a go at a musical career. In 1965, he and some schoolmates formed The Equals, a multiracial beat combo who scored six top 40 hits in the late 60s, including Baby Come Back, which got to number one in July of 1968.

In September of 1969, however, the band were involved in a motorway accident during a tour of Germany, leading to Grant suffering from health problems, which eventually led to a heart attack and collapsed lung, and the band split up in 1971. After returning to Guyana to recuperate, Grant came back to London a year later, set up his own studio in 1972, and formed his own label, Ice Records, in 1974. A year later, he began his own solo career and he scored his first chart hit in June of 1979 when Living on the Frontline got to number 11, followed up with Do You Feel My Love, which got to number 8 in December of 1980.

By 1982, he's relocated to Barbados and released this single, the follow-up to I Love You, Yes I Love You, which got to number 37 in August of 1981, and it's the first cut from his new LP, Killer on the Rampage. And it's soared up the charts this week from number 30 to number 11, and is accompanied by a video set on the shores of his new manor yeah quite the video isn't it

this I mean the video is essentially him on his floating muso platform with two stools and a guitar and he's just minding his own business while his missus stands on the shore doing that hands on the hips and stampy foot thing.

It's a simplistic video for a simplistic song, really. It's a very simplistic song, isn't it? Very simplistic song. I mean, we're sort of in the thick of three reggae number ones in a row, isn't it, now? Because we've got Musical Youth, Culture Club, obviously, and then Eddie Grant. And, of course, you see the power of Top of the Pops on the charts,

the way that Grant and Dionne Warwick and Te top of the pops on the charts the way that Grant and Dion Warwick and Tears of Fear shoot up the charts after this episode they're in the top four really until 82 reasserts itself

a bit more with Human League and the Jam coming back in the record buying public as you said earlier Al they're an unpredictable bunch of cunts

aren't they about Dion well the word there about Dion they can always be depended upon to lift someone's worth worth shit

to the top yeah so the clumpy ugliness of this almost seems like deliberately simplistic given the sophistication of a lot of Grant's music

the songs you've mentioned and Give Me Hope Joanna and things like that and Electric Avenue are great and even back in the Equals of course

Baby Come Back and you know that song Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys the Equals did fantastic but you know he he's very much a pioneer isn't he oh absolutely possibly doesn't get his full due but this song i mean the clumpy ugliness of it yeah well he doesn't want to dance i don't fucking want i don't think anyone would want to dance to this who could because you just have to clump and stomp in a really tiring way but i think yeah what a shame what a shame he wasn't there in the studio with a couple of

frankenstein it would have been perfect wouldn't it i think the sing-along ability of this really yeah not just by grown-up adult pop fans but by kids in playgrounds and stuff um and and just in general the gloominess of it was always going to make it a hit in britain a song about not wanting to dance because you feel so bad and and the thing is obviously i i mean he did better records but this is the one actually that i think really ingrained him into the public consciousness in a big way so within a matter of you know weeks i guess you've got lenny henry Eddie Grunt on Free of a Kind his parody of it

and I think also another crucial thing to this record's success was probably the amount of radio play it got in as much as Radio 1 DJs love tracks they can interrupt and I remember hearing this and of course with the line I love your personality

Steve fucking Riot or whoever felt like being funny that day would chip in with oh thank you so in a few weeks time this gets to number one with Dion at number two and Human League's Mirror Man at number three but

possibly my least favourite Eddie Grant song but it's sing-alongability is just irrefutable you just need to read the title and it's in your head I mean Living on the Frontlines is a fucking brilliant song oh it's fantastic Gimme Hope Joanna's a great song as well and he was forging the rock

reggae thing really well and when this came along it was like but it's almost as if he thought right I did all that really amazing complex stuff and it didn't become a big hit I'm just going to give them this song that is so like it's not even thuggishly

simplistic it's just it's almost like a two year old could have written this but I suppose it takes a bit of genius to write something so simple and immediate but not a song I kind of really want to hear again, do you know what I mean? But I doubtless will hear it again loads of times.

In the issue of smash hits that have just come out, he's got a little interview in the bits section and he's making it very clear that he's moved to Barbados so he can have a bit of a crack at the American market. He's moving away from the UK. And when you read that, you think, this song makes a bit more sense now. It's for the Brett Kavanaugh's of the world.

And he's not tarted the song up at all. The production just keeps it down. It just has that, yeah, that simple thump to the end of every line that makes it undanceable, actually. We're over a year removed from the death of Bob Marley. Do you think, oh, I can fill a little spot there? Yeah, absolutely he's thinking that.

But when you think about the reggae song that soar out, 1981, Ghost Town, and then you think about these reggae hits that are in the charts now, Musical Youth Culture Club, Eddie Grant, it is a kind kind of it's not a neutering of reggae but it but it is reggae becoming yeah something that you can use to to transmit something less complex perhaps yeah this video is i think a big part of why this record was such a big hit yeah because i remember at the time it was for some reason it was a real talking point this is one of the videos I remember best

from 1982 I think because it was shot somewhere exotic and people just people liked to see it on the telly you know oh that looks nice I mean yeah because you know it's just a floating little floating dock and a stool and it's just a little floating dock and a stool. And it's essentially a Caribbean shed, isn't it?

He's getting some air roll off the missus. Oh, I'm going to my dock. I think we thought it was funny because he was buried up to his deck on the beach, like in a comic. Of course, yes. And then floating on that big tile out on the water. It's like a Jeux Sans Frontier type water platform. It's like he should be leaping onto it

dressed as a giant foam chef or some horrible Central European humanoid and going arse over tit into the drink. But what's weird about this record is that there's a weird mix on it and I don't know if it's just a mix for the video because I've never heard it without seeing the video at the same time it rolls the bass right off

to the point where you can barely hear it which is a bold choice for a reggae record and it does have the effect of making past the dutchie sound roots by comparison you know neil why was reggae light so popular in 1982 well it is odd because because what we see previous to 82 is the reggae that does get in the charts it's kind of the proper stuff if you like it's it's not uptown top ranking and stuff like that i think fundamentally some things we're talking about a generation of kids now who have grown up i mean by 82 who've grown up with

that music and are now seeing it processed and turned into pure pop music in a sense that it can kind of lose its its jamaican roots to a certain extent and just become another pop song um yeah uh you know absolutely in black uh you know embodied by by culture club being at the top of the charts um so reggae is i'm not saying reggae has become an effect of pop but it's become another type of pop music to do it belongs to the world yeah it's become another type of pop music that you can do and you don't have to feel any kind of uh cultural prohibition about about engaging with that music so so you're gonna see lighter poppier singles start happening as soon as that barrier has been broken down a little bit but also something bad happened to the sound of reggae in the early 80s

like the production of it right like not just the pop stuff like this, but the genre as a whole lost that sort of awesome woody depth and the sort of vicious edge that makes 70s reggae so amazing. And the sound got a little bit dinky and a little bit Pigeon Street, you know what I mean? Yes, very Pigeon Street. Even really good stuff from that period like so yeah but like barrington levy stuff and that it's got a sort of thin perspex feel to it

yeah yeah it was because synths were being introduced yeah partly but i mean the electronic uh sort of things getting into reggae were actually i mean they were leading to some pretty fascinating records in dancehall certainly but perhaps not a reggae but i mean the barrington levy levy thing that taylor's mentioning when you listen to um what is englishman or country my common it's called now but it's a scientist production and it's it's fantastic but that you don't really hear that in musical youth culture club or eddie grant what you hear is a kind of modernity of production, but applied to what would essentially be a Rocksteady All Roots tune sort of five years ago, a pop tune. But yeah, it is odd, this production.

What Taylor says, it's odd to hear the bass driven out so much to the extent where all you can hear is that kind of weedy, cheesy synth line and the drums, and that's it. But it hasn't got that bottom end. You're not going to hear the bottom end much on a Top of the Pops broadcast anyway, but it does seem to have absconded completely. But also, when you listen to what the bass player's doing, he is actually trying to put some movement into it.

There's some quite melodic bass runs on that, but they don't provide that sort of movement and syncopation because it's so low. And so you just get that sort of loping beat. And I mean, I don't think this is even a bad song. I think it grows on me every time I hear it. And it's very catchy. It's just got nothing to it.

It sounds like it should be the song that Ringo sings on a mid-60s Beatles album. Do you know what i mean or uh yeah no actually scrub that it sounds like the song that barry wong would sing on a mid-60s ruttles album it's like uh yeah oh i love your personality although that lyric really confuses me because he says i love your personality but when you look at the video she's actually a bit of a nightmare and she's stomping her foot in the shallows. And it's why don't she get into a fucking boat and have it out with him? Well, she does end up on it, doesn't she?

She does end up on the floating tile at the end. Oh, yeah, he gets around her in the end. He's probably gone to the floating all-night garage and got some Ferrero Roche and some flowers or something that floating tile which looks like it should have six empty plastic barrels lashed to the underside yes and i'm thinking just keep a close eye on the weather forecast you know yeah yeah the weather is very changeable but i mean she also buries him up to his neck on the beach yeah i mean we don't that, but we know she's done that. Yeah, and she sits there stuffing her face with mangoes and then

runs off with some surfers and leaves him there. Yeah, that's a nice personality. What was his last girlfriend like? Nailed his cock to the back of an aeroplane while it was taxiing down the runway. And he's there going, I've got to say, she's a

breath of fresh air. But the shocking thing is, he really does look buried up to his neck. It's. And he's there going, I've got to say, she's a breath of fresh air. But the shocking thing is, he really does look buried up to his neck. It's not like he's lying flat and they've just sort of managed to do it. He does look buried, and he's a big bloke, Eddie Grant. So that must have taken some work.

One thing I know about Eddie Grant is that he proudly never smoked marijuana. That's what he says. But that's entirely his business. But in a way, that's what he says that's entirely his business but in a way that's what this is it's a reggae record by and for people who don't smoke marijuana so it's

a little bit thin and a little bit lacking in mystery but you know I don't know if that makes it a bad record it's just a pop record it's for the kiddies and the old folks that's the thing this record I think it's more for the old folks than the kiddies. I remember this, the feeling is bad,

just getting sung a lot in playgrounds for some reason. And I think it's just, a kid could get this song within about 20 seconds. I think that says more about schools in Coventry than the popularity of Eddie Grant, though, Neil. Maybe so Grant maybe so but it's true at the time that reggae appealed to kids as soon as they

heard it, I mean we all liked this at the time and Electric Avenue just instinctively Electric Avenue is good yeah but it's like knowing and understanding nothing about the form you know we just liked it and it was also around this

time that reggae displaced folk as the officially sanctioned music of childhood you know yeah around the time that ub40 re-recorded the theme tune to you and me right right exactly although that only lasted about five years and then it was superseded by rap because then yes lasted about five years and then it was superseded by rap. Yes. Yes. You could get kids to write a rap about what you did on

the weekend. But in that fertile five years, yeah, things like Pigeon Street absolutely made reggae the sound of childhood. So the following week I Don't Wanna Dance jumped nine places to number two and the week later got to number one where it stayed for three weeks before

being usurped by beat surrender by the jam the follow-up electric avenue got to number two in february of 1983 held off the top spot by men at works down under but he'd have to wait five years for his next and last chart hit give me hope Joanna, which got to number seven in March of 1988. I'm in that party on top of the box and that's Eddie Grant on I Don't Wanna Dance. Let's take a look at the British top tens. See what's happening. And that's Eddie Grant on I Don't Wanna Dance. Let's take a look at the British top tens. Here's what's happening. Barry Manilow's at number 10, I Wanna Do It With You.

At number nine, Chicago, Hard To Say I'm Sorry. Fat Larry's band and Zoom is at number eight. At seven, Lifeline's Bandau Ballet. Mad World by Tears For Fears is at number six. Pass The Duchy, Musical Youth at number five. And Four Love Me Do by The Beatles. And three same as last week, Kids From Fame with Star Maker. Up Goes Kid Creole, Annie I'm Not Your Daddy at number two.

And Culture Club are number one again with Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? Yeah. Bait! Back in the crowd as the show has clearly had enough of all the Halloween bollocks, runs down the top ten, culminating in Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me by Culture Club. We've already discussed Culture Club in Chart Music number 16, and this, their third single, is the follow-up to I'm Afraid of Me, which fell to Chart. Five weeks ago, this single entered the charts

at number 38 to little fanfare, but the night before that week's episode of Top of the Pops was recorded, Shakin' Stevens pulled out of a performance of Give Me Your Heart Tonight due to illness and Culture Club were drafted in at the last minute, leading to debates about gender issues in playgrounds right across the country. The following week, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me soared 23 places to number 15, then to number three, then to number two, and finally to number one, knocking past the Dutchie by Musical Youth off the top spot. This is its second week at number

one, and here they are back in the studio. to the charts was there anything in the top 30 this week you failed to remember very little for me nothing for me actually I remember all of it yeah I think I think I was the same be loud be proud be heard by Toya you must know that one

no I managed to escape that one so anyway Neil we've already established in a previous episode of Chant Music that this is one of the greatest lovers rock songs ever it fucking is man it's great I mean you know for me all the performances

of this are up there you know with Janet Kaye and Susan Cadigan and people like that this is the fourth performance of this song on Top of the Pops. And we're kind of used to Boy George now. So at this point, it's a decision as to whether you actually like him or not, I think.

And I think, you know, fatally, Karma Chameleon put me off checking out Culture Club albums rather foolishly. But I remember loving this. Amazing song, production, stunning vocal. None of that needs saying. I think what it does make you realise watching this particular performance is that being a pop star is tough.

You learn things that you don't learn if you're normal until you're much older, such as balloons are not fun and are actually really annoying. Yeah, I mean loads of orange and black balloons are suddenly descended from nowhere. And it's got to be said that certain sections of the audience

are aggressively lobbing them at George. They are completely, to try and put him off. I mean, the thing is, there's lots of types of performance that we've seen on Top of the Pops doing all these chart music podcasts. And there's the ones who just kind of fuck it off and smirk through it. There's the ones who are instantly confident.

You know, like Frankie, I the ones who were instantly confident, you know, like Frankie, I would say were instantly confident. And then there's those lovely ones. And I'd say that Culture Club is one of these that just get better week by week. And Madness are another good example of that. I would say Madness in general had so many hits. They just got better and better and better at Top of the Pops.

Culture Club, I think get better as time goes on. George, by then, four weeks into pretty much Stardom, he must have felt like a target by then, not just from balloons. So there's a kind of struggle there already, a slight fear

that makes his confidence at getting the song across almost heroic at this point. I mean, they're kind of on the brink to real international stellar stardom so you know i could never get enough of this song and i think the performance you're starting to see the kind of hostility that george would get um yeah and less of the affection to a certain extent although the applause they get at the end is is really big i do think he's become a target by now.

You know, we always say that the first appearance of Culture Club on Top of the Pops is one of the landmark moments of the show. But, you know, it's got to be said that if Culture Club had appeared on Top of the Pops singing something like Cry Boy Cry, who'd have given a fuck? Yeah, yeah.

It would have been just that song with that weird bloke that disappeared but this song is fucking amazing it's it's one of the greatest songs of definitely one of the greatest songs of the 80s it's one of the best am radio songs i know when i hear it still it just moves me massively the vocal the production just everything about it it's just a stunning stunning record yeah see i i know this is an unpopular opinion but i don't really like this record and i don't really like boy george um right i accept that he provided a valuable service at this point in history and he opened up certain areas and made certain things a bit freer and potentially more interesting. And I don't want to wave away those positive effects

of somebody like Boy George becoming a pop megastar at this point, because there were many. But I just think that all of those positives came from just that, someone like Boy George becoming that famous. Very few of them come from Boy George himself. And I can't help wondering what might have happened had his place been taken by someone equally adventurous in their way and androgynous, but a bit more inspiring and creative and interesting.

And, you know, he gets a lot of credit for being a great singer, but I don't hear that either. To me, I don't like that curdled, whispering style. And when he opens up his throat and sings out, I don't like that it sounds nasal and yelpy to me, you know. I mean, I'd rather listen to Simon Le Bon, who is technically much worse and even more nasal and yelpy, but who isn't trying to masquerade as a good singer he's just

yelping and having fun you know and I don't really like any of their records except for Time Clock of the Heart and I'm always wary of the fact that Boy George comes across as one of those people who acts like he's fundamentally superior

to you because he's put some funny clothes on which is a great London tradition. And also, I know it's awkward, but I don't see how, you know, singing Bow Down Mister and saying you prefer a cup of tea to sex really makes up for things like imprisoning and violently assaulting

a young male escort and then swatting off to a career in primetime TV. I just think if Simon Le Bon or Tony Hadley had handcuffed a young female escort to a radiator against her will and beaten her up with a metal chain for no apparent reason and were found guilty in court and did time, I don't think they'd have been allowed to become a national treasure

and get a 300 grand contract as a mentor on The Voice, right? And I don't know what that says about society's attitude to gay men. It's really weird. I think a part of it is people think, oh, that's just the sort of thing they do in their netherworld, in their shadowy demi-monde. Well, you know, even now we still feel that male victims of sexual assault, you know, they could have prevented it.

Yeah, I don't know. There's just a thing in the back of society's collective mind that it's like Leopold and Loeb you know and that's just what it's like you don't want to get involved it's their world you know I mean look I don't believe in wiping people out of history for their misdemeanours and I do believe

in separating the art and the artist and I know some people have done worse and it was a long time ago and he was ill with drugs you know but still this isn't a bloke who got pissed and was a cunt to his wife, you know, or who sleazed over his secretary or something. I mean, it's a kidnapped and violently assaulted a stranger. And it just surprises me that it's still waved aside as if it never happened.

And I'm not being self-righteous because, you know, I've had mental health issues. You always end up being a cunt to somebody, but not usually in the same universe as that, you know. And yet I'm full of guilt and shame and I've never been forgiven by anyone ever. Whereas Boy George just keeps on trucking and nobody seems to care, despite him going that far over the line. And I think that would be more understandable

if he'd contributed some lasting statement or exploration of personal turmoil and internal darkness. Or if he'd completely rewritten the rules of pop or something. You know, people are inclined to let you off. Whereas, in fact, he sang Karma Chameleon and war is stupid and people are stupid. And then got whacked out on smack. Well, you know, OK. But it just doesn't seem like very much to to me you know um i don't hate him i just think you know he just doesn't strike me as a very appealing figure um well i know what you're saying but to be honest

with you i don't listen to many appealing figures i mean i'm i'm you know as a hip-hop fan clearly you know yeah you know i don't listen that the whole separation of art and the artist is obviously you know it's a long long debate i for a long long time i've just had to accept that most of the people who make the music are like a horrible individuals and horrible people so that that incident i'm not saying... When I hear this record, and I must stress this record, when I hear it now, it's a transmission from a heart. It's not really affiliated with a person, if you like. It's just this three minutes. It's that three minutes, and I find them utterly spellbinding.

I know what Taylor's on about, about the voice, and those kind of traits i would possibly dislike in others but there's just something about this record that for me is just just yeah this is this is a pop critic basically saying he can't do his job because i'm talking about magic and something i can't quite put into words but it just it gets me every fucking time it gets me and and yeah it keeps getting me and that has to mean something that means that has to mean that something special is occurring here um you know what he did yeah of course absolutely horrible behavior but god i mean if we had to throw out the records made by horrible people we'd end up with with what what would we end up with um oh yeah, don't get me wrong. I mean, you know, I listen to Charles Manson's music.

It's just, it's a, I wouldn't care about that if I enjoyed the music. And I don't really care about it in terms of the music. It's not connected to that to me. It's just just his status as a sort of a

you know, this lovable national treasure. That's what bothers me really. Yeah, I know, this lovable national treasure, that's what bothers me, really. Yeah, I know what you mean, but I think that lovable national treasure thing has undoubtedly been... I mean, that's why it surprised me when he got that job on The Voice or whatever it was, because I think that had been... I thought that had been tarnished somewhat by his... you know, what he'd done.

But I'm not sure whether he is still a national treasure. Of course, time just makes people forget everything. So doubtless in about five years... And it makes lovers feel that they've got something real. Well, quite. But I just think lyrically, sonically, I love this song. Yeah. Would it be a better song if it had been recorded by a black girl?

I don't think... Would it have been as big a hit possibly not as big a hit it would have been just as lovely a song but there's a there's but for me this is one of those records that is it's a it's a captured moment of just like and and everyone involved is crucial to that moment the egos of everyone involved and the personas and people involved. It cannot be recreated to a certain extent. That's the way it feels to me. That's why when you hear the intro of this, you know, like I say, I listen to a lot of free radio in the cars, free radio 80s,

which is a terrible, terrible station. But when this comes out of the fucking Mr. Mr. Stew that surrounds it, it's a lovely moment and it still lifts my heart. Yeah. I'll tell you what's weird as well when you look at it now. I remember all the discussion at the time. Nobody could tell if it was a boy or a girl, you know. You look at it now, of course it's a bloody bloke.

Yeah. He looks like a rugby player. Yeah, that's what I felt at the time. There's a clue in the name. Yeah, yeah. There's a clue in both the fucking names. I mean, you know, he never made the secret of it, the fact that he was a man.

You say that now. When you watched this on Top of the Pops the first time, did you see that first performance? Because, I mean, maybe I'm an idiot, but I was a bit confused, and there was a debate in the playground the next day. And I remember being confused about it because he looks... Yeah, but in 1982...

Well, I'm older than you. In 82, yeah, I was 10, yeah. Yeah, in 1982, people didn't know anything about anything, did they? That's the thing. Nobody did. It's like nobody understood, you know, the difference between an androgynous dresser, you know, and a transvestite and a trans person. And, like, nobody knew anything about any of that stuff.

It was just, you know, it's like if he... It was just he had make-up on, therefore, oh, is it a woman? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And you look at it now, and he's not even wearing anything you would think of as female clothing. He's got a big black hat and a long black coat

and some hair hanging down so he looks more like a rabbi than a woman yes um it's really strange but yeah back then nobody knew anything about anything i know i've mentioned this before but i've got to chuck it in again the first appearance of culture club on top of the pops and they came out and boy george sang do you really want to hurt me and my dad was over his steak and chips or whatever and he just looked up and said yes yeah that's when i knew it was a bloke and that's when i started liking him because anything that winds up your dad when you're 14 is is all right with you see i remember my great aunt, who was ancient at this point, saying to me, you don't like Georgie, do you, with his curls?

And after establishing that she didn't mean George Gershwid or George V, I think I just assumed that she hated him because he was a, quote, gender bender and pointlessly started trying to defend that you know yeah um at which point she uh like developed my 86 year old great aunt you know at which point she cut across me and she was like i don't care about that i don't like him because he's a bloody paddy considering that considering that almost all of my family also were paddies that makes that one

hard to decipher but then it's it is a peculiar world but i think we forget now that that that the hostility boy got um very very quickly once it was established you know what they were who who it was um was really quite ferocious, I seem to recall. And it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was explicitly a homophobic hatred. His sexuality and who he was singing the song about wouldn't come out for ages. And it never occurred to most of us as listeners that there was a gay thing going on here,

apart from maybe my mum, of course. But the hostility was precisely because of the confusion that he sowed people resented that confusion and consequently the hostility that george would have been facing by now by the time we see this performance would have been you know immense and would have been nationwide in a way that i don't know johnny rotten's the hatred Johnny Rotten got in 77 would have been nothing like, you know, this was a nationwide, playground wide workplace wide loathing

that he was getting from a lot of people and you can sort of sense that in this performance Yeah, and the two things I would say in his favour, first of all I don't really think that it was a cop out that he was

kind of in the closet for a while and was not open about being gay. I don't blame him because it was already a fever pitch but also it was very nice to see that confusion which

would commonly result in violence being turned to someone's advantage and used as pot fodder, you know, once again. So, yeah, I mean, don't don't get me wrong. I'm not I'm not blind to to all of that stuff, which was really good. I mean, the the issue of smash previously, Culture Club were on the cover. At the beginning of the interview, it was made clear that the cover of that issue of Smash Hits was supposed to be Boy George and Kelvin out of Musical Youth. And the Musical Youth's record company put the block on it.

Right. So they said. Wow. So already there was this awkwardness and yeah you're right there was there was great hostility by certain people but a lot more people bought the record i mean the the sad thing about it all in a sense is that from that hostility nothing was won as such to boy didn't get a victory in a sense he was torn apart by both his own habits and the tabloids and and and yeah a really grim story as it plays out but um the hostility by this stage was livid

and real most definitely even though it can only be communicated in this performance via the medium of balloons yes yes and of course it doesn't help that the the rest of the bands are are being given ken status i mean quite literally they're all they're all camouflaged on and they're all they're all being pushed into the background whether they like it or not and it's a shame in a sense i mean mean, one wonders, one wonders whether, you know, open, I mean, of course it would have been absolutely unthinkable in 82 for a gay band to get to the top of the charts or a song about a gay relationship and a sort of, you know,

outwardly known song about a gay relationship to get to the top of the charts. But one wonders that if they were allowed that, whether the turmoil and torment that came after wouldn't have happened and they would have just been okay. So, Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me? would spend one more week at number one before being usurped by I Don't Wanna Dance. It would go on to be the fifth best-selling single in the UK in 1982,

between The Lion Sleeps Tonight and I Don't Wanna Dance. And it got to number two for three weeks in America in March of 1983, held off the top spot by Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. And the follow-up, Time, Clock of the Heart, got to number three in December of that year. Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry? straight away. We'll see you next week. Have a great Halloween night. Meantime, get the headset on. Goodnight! Goodnight! Bates, accompanied by four zoo wankers,

signs off by getting them to bob for apples, plunging smug Dracula cunt's head beneath the water. They all fail dismally to get an apple in their gob. Then they break off to dance to the final song of the night, I Wanna Do It With You by Barry Manilow. Born Barry Pincus in Brooklyn in 1943, Barry Manilow studied at the New York College of Music before working as a jingle writer and singer, appearing on adverts for McDonald's, Band-Aid, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pepsi. In 1969, he was signed to Bell Records by its then-vice president, Tony Orlando, and recorded various tracks under the name Featherbed.

In the first half of the 70s, he had a side job as Bette Midler's pianist during a stint at the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in New York that had its own STI clinic, police warning system and a club which hosted the likes of the New York Dolls, Minnie Ripperton, the Pointer Sisters Cab Calloway, Manhattan

Transfer and Elaine Stritch and would become her on-tour musical director. Oh man the gays of 1970s they had everything He launched a solo career in 1973 to immediate success in the USA, but it wasn't until 1975 that he had his first chart hit in the UK when Mande got to number 11 in March of that year. He only had one more UK top 40 hit in the 70s, Could It Be Magic, which got to number 25,

but by the turn of the decade he was becoming a proper housewife's choice over here, knocking out four top 40 hits on the trot from 1980 to the autumn of 1981 and releasing the LP Barry Live in Britain, which got to number one over here earlier this year. This is the follow-up to Stay, which got to number 23 over here earlier this year. This is the follow-up to Stay, which got to number 23 in May of this year, and it's the second cut from the LP of the same name, which also features his covers of Some Girls by Rayset, and it's up this week from number 13 to number 10.

Yeah, I said earlier that the Halloween shit was over, but clearly not. It's so Blue Peter, that bit, isn't it? Well, it is chilling to imagine having your head pushed underwater by Simon Bates. Yeah. But what's so weird is he does it really briefly and then for a split second looks really confused

and then literally runs away off screen. And there's an uncharacteristically childlike spring to his movements when he does it. What it reminds me of, it's like he's finally gone mad. It's like the sort of awkward energy that you get when really straight people lose their fucking mind. Quite disturbing to look at. I didn't recognise this song at first. And I was, before the chorus came in, I was racking my brain thinking

what is this? Is it shaky? And of course it's not shaky, but it might as well be. Except that even shaky's heterosexual rock and roll was never bold enough to get right to the point like the way Barryry does here much to

the delight of me as a 10 year old right and my chief memory of this being a hit is another episode of top of the pops where peter powell was doing the chart rundown and he came to this and he said at number whatever it was it's barry manilow with i want to do it with you right like like he might have been referring to uh joining a zomba class you know or going conker hunting and i honestly don't know if that was peter powell's stupidity or a sort of prudishness like a censorious prudishness um but to his prudishness but to his credit Simon Bates when he does the chart run down this week avoids that

sort of cop out and he just reads it out in the sort of dry let's not have any sniggering tone of a sex education teacher. Barry Manilow is down to fuck as the youths would say the lyrics of the song clearly mean that he can't stop thinking about

giving someone a scene to. Yeah, but I mean... Shocking! Shocking! This is on Radio 2, for fuck's sake. The reason he gets away with it is because of the suffocating blandness of the record. Because he's Barry Manilow. Yeah, he's Barry Manilow.

Barry Manilow, it's interesting that he did a racy cover on his latest album there. Because he has that aminability to the British audience. Manilow. Barry Manilow, it's interesting that he did a racy cover on his latest album there, because he has that aminability to the British audience and also not that foreboding kind of American-ness where we'd often feel with American artists that we were kind of beneath them and lucky to have them to a certain extent. Barry, you never

got that from Barry at all. But it's... This record, it's kind of it pootles along as it does, but it's one this record it's kind of it's it it pootles along as it does but it annoys me that the producers of top of the pops and i think this comes back to what you were saying out about you know this can't be a kid's show anymore it's got appeal to everybody all age groups and stuff like that they've surveyed the you know the the chart of of this period of 1982 and this is what they've chosen to play out with, it just maddens me

because it's a terribly bland record that the kids, who we finally get to see a few of rather than just Sue Wankers find it sort of difficult and slightly embarrassing to dance to It has to be said we only get about 30 seconds of it That's it, that's it

Even the girl who's going absolutely batshit with the sort of white sheet over her arm, she's going fucking nuts. We only get to see her for like five seconds and it's a really bland kind of ending to the show because it's such a dreary record really. What you can say though,

in the same way that people in the 80s were seemingly blind to like obvious signifiers of homosexuality, for instance. They also, you know, songs about drugs and stuff like that. You listen to it now, it's like, well, it's obvious what this is about. They also seem to take everything at face value and not quite twig when someone was not taking themselves 100% seriously.

Because at least half of Barry Manilow's career was Barry Manilow taking the piss. And he got all this stick from the not-9 o'clock news tendency for being a poser and for having a big nose and for being naff, as people said at the time, and for singing tacky songs, as if he wasn't aware of any of this, you know. You still get it now,

like people sort of like hear the lyrics to Bermuda Triangle and they go, oh, that's terrible. Like as if that song were not a brilliant camp joke right from the start. If you've ever seen the video for this song, it's got Barry sharing the stage with these backing singers it's like two men and two women and the men look like they're only there because they want a competition in like nambla's monthly newsletter it's and he's not even trying to lip sync properly

and no he's just smirking all the way through it like he can't believe that hundreds of thousands of people think he's heterosexual and entirely sincere about what he does you know um i've got yeah i like barry a lot um main reason being that he used to have a show on radio 2 um in the afternoon on sunday a few years ago and in that he demonstrated like you know that list of names you read out new york dolls and the lane streets and all that his grounding in that world is just immense and his knowledge is immense and he knows his shit about music barry manilow he knows his stuff about an awful lot of great artists and that really came across in his radio show but of course back then yeah all you knew was pretty much like what you knew about an awful lot of people rod stewart had a big ass and bgs

had big teeth because kenny everett dominated the narrative of what you knew about these people you know so yeah barry manlo big nose and that was it yeah yeah i bet he's a great laugh even now yeah i bet you imagine imagine the three of us driving down to the south coast with barry blasting out a bit of music you know passing a joint around shooting the shit you imagine the story but he could make your hair curl really yeah yeah so and also you've got to give some sort of credit to this song just as a statement of perfect simplicity not the music but the lyrics it's 90 of pop music just stripped down to its essential message so the following week i want to do it with you nipped up two places to number eight and stayed there for two weeks

the highest position he would ever reach in the UK. Copacabana wasn't actually released as a single when it came out, when he recorded it. That's insane. Really? It wasn't released until, I believe, the mid-90s. Fucking hell. How come we all knew it then? How come we all knew that song? The power

of music. Yeah, I guess so. The power of parody, I guess. The power of Kenny Everett maybe taking the piss out of it or something. Yeah, but we all knew that one. The power of man in love. The follow-up, a cover of the 1935 Fats Waller tune, I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,

would only get to number 36 in the final week of 1982, and bar a number 17 hit in December of 1983 with Read Em and Weep, him and the charts were done. And despite rumours in the late 80s that he was knocking off the woman who played Debbie in

Debbie Does Dallas, it was revealed in 2015 that Barry Manilow was gay, meaning he was singing this song at your dad. So what's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC one follows up with the first episode of the new series of sorry where timothy lumsden gets involved in a treasure hunt for a buried golden rabbit then the episode of only fools and horses where dell rodney and granddad act as professional

mourners for triggers non-are then the nine o'clock news, Tenko, Question Time with Neil Kinnock, Norman Fowler, Marge Proops and a rabbi, and finishes off with Torval and Dean topping the bill at the Sint Ival Gala of World Champions of Ice Dance. BBC Two has got the violinist Ruggero Ricci doing 45 minutes

of Paganini's Caprices, then highlights from the snooker again before piling into half an hour of unique observations of life from Kelly Monteith finally mention Kelly Monteith in chart music yes gotta get Paul Hogan in

eventually definitely yeah 40 minutes covers the closure of a school in Durham then more snooker news night, even more snooker and then stays up until 2am to cover those by-election results ITV is

30 minutes into the Robert de Walfin The Great Santina followed by TVI, News at 10 Hill Street Blues something called Video Sounds and then they stay up until 1am for the by-election so me boys

what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Probably I'll probably be talking about Culture Club, I'll probably be talking about Tears for Fears I'll probably, I think, I don't think although I was easily pleased I think I would be talking about the shitness of the Halloween theme of the episode.

Yeah. And how awful it all was. Yeah. Yeah. Why didn't they have any bangers or anything? And I think, you know, maybe I'll be talking about the Beatles being on it as well. Yeah, everyone would have been laughing at me

for liking the Beatles. I don't doubt. Because they are presented here some way short of the vibrant, blazing best. But yeah, that and Boy George blowing everyone's tiny minds. Unless you live around Stamford Hill, in which case you've seen it all before.

And what were you buying on Saturday? I bought Love Me Do, even though I already had it taped off my auntie. But it felt like I was stepping out and becoming more adult, you know, by buying it myself on picture disc. Yeah, becoming a consumer. Yeah, being an adult,

giving money to a big corporation for something I didn't need. That you already had. Yeah. I'd have probably bought Mad World because as a little horrible cunt it would have spoken to me it's a little whiny annoying person

I probably would have bought Mad World and what does this episode tell us about October of 1982 well where's new pop? Where's new pop? Yeah. Where's it gone? I guess the trick of new pop is now being applied to music like reggae.

So these things are getting into charts of pop. But yeah, I know 82 is often seen as a zenith and a high point. Yeah. Or at least a tailing off of a golden yeah and i think this is tailing off i think that's the key phrase um you know especially with this episode you're getting a reassertion i guess of adulthood of adult pop so you've got dion warwick and you've got barry and and things like that so yeah what it says about 82 in the wider world gordon only knows probably not a lot what it says about pop is that as ever what it says about 82 in the wider world gaud only knows probably not a lot what it

says about pop is that as ever what every episode says it's more of a mixed bag than you think yeah if you if you knew nothing about october 1982 and this was all you had to go on you'd think that it it was terrifying and um and full of people over 35. Yeah, yeah. We can only cover this episode at this time of year. So I was more into that than the actual music. I mean, if I had cast my eye looking for a new episode to cover and settled on the, looked at the track listing for this,

I probably would have given it a miss. But, yeah, I think Simon Bates he pulls this episode out of his arse. And if they'd have done that, I mean they had the video trickery at the time. If they could have done that, that would have been truly terrifying.

So that is the end of this episode of Chart Music. All that remains for me to do now is the usual promotional flange and I'm still going to say www I don't care, I'm setting me ways. Website www.chart-music.co.uk You can get us on Facebook

facebook.com slash chart music and you can reach us on Twitter chartmusic T-O-T-P Thank you ever so much, Taylor Parks. Cheers. Welcome back, Neil Kulkarny. Cheers, my dear. My name's Al Needham. Don't have

nightmares. Chart music. So to our last item, you know, even monsters have to have a night off. And when there's a full moon, what better than to go to a disco? The fun's just about to start, so let's join Boris Saville welcome to top of the chops hello mommy but now let's take a look at the Transylvanian top five. Ah, yes, creeping in at number five. It's Gonzella Black with Anyone Who Had a Heart. At number four, Engelbert Humperdinck with Please Defreeze Me, Let Me Go.

And at three, It's Fangs Ain't What They Used To Be by Count Dracula. Ah, and at number two, after still hanging in for 25 years, it's Rigor Mortis with I'll Dismember You. Woo! Ah, well, that's it, guys and gals. But now it's this week's number one, backing by Boddy Holloway and the Snatchers. It's Top of the Tops. It's Frank Trapp and the snatchers it's top of the tops it's frank trap and the

hairy monster with happy birthday frankenstein happy birthday frankenstein happy birthday frankenstein tonight's the night we've waited for La la la la la la la Happy birthday Frankenstein Tonight's the night We've waited for Because you're not in bits and pieces anymore You've turned into the nastiest monster we have seen

Happy birthday Frankenstein Shoo-fee-doo-woof Raaawrssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sing Happy birthday Frankenstein You are the ones that I adore You make a party swing with lots of blood and gore You build me up with bits left over

from your car Dear werewolf and Dracula Shoot me do a Growl Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss I still remember the bodies they dismembered Now he's made up, he's no longer laid up Look at him now, he's fully assembled What happened to that funny face? Your thanks, your face, your face

I got an entire place We think you're just the top, the worst we've ever seen Happy Birthday, Frank and Steve Here we go! Tra la la la la la la la la, Happy Birthday, Frank and Steve Tra la la la la la la la la, Happy Birthday, Frank and Steve Tra la la la la la la la la la, happy birthday, Black Wednesday. La la la la la la la la. Oh, Steve. Now then.

Now then. Dave Lee, Travis and Mike Reed, come on. I was going to say Rolf Harrison, Cliff Richard but no way do you look like Cliff Richard today