Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #35: December 25th 1976 - The World's Most Erotic Quality Street Tin

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

A special-ish episode of the podcast which asks: why do we always leave the Xmas episodes to the last minute? Another MASSIVE examination of Pop-telly nirvarna sees us tucking in to the annual Xmas day selection box - this time from the year of Nineteen and Seventy-Six. And lucky us: we've been invited to the head table of Radio One, dominated by the bearded gorgons of The Happy Sound themselves - DLT and Noel Edmonds - as they give the nation an opportunity to watch them pretend to like each other, have one massive trifle EACH, fuck about with bread and grip a fork with a Yorkshire pudding on the end of it with sheer uncontained LUST at Legs & Co. Like all Xmas Day episodes, it's a look back at the flare-swingin' Sound of '76 - and as is its wont, the highs are stratospheric and the lows are subterranean. Abba remind us who the Dons of the era were with not one but two hits. Tina Charles cowers up in the lighting rig and wonders about her bloke. The Wurzels keep it rural. JJ Barrie angers every child across the nation once more. Demis Roussos - Fat Jesus himself - puts a tingle in the loins of Bev and Ange. The most unmemorable month-long No.1 in recorded history wafts in and out. Legs & Co slink about in bra and pants, with those ferrets on the last episode. Tony Blackburn is boiled alive, while being danced at by an alligator with tits. Taylor Parkes and Simon Price join Al Needham to sneakily rip open a corner of the wrapping on the presents of 1976 to see what they are, veering off on such vital tangents as Hughie Green's Hard Right talking ballardry, Christmas cracker jokes about the Threat of Punk, the wrongness of England being in World Cup Subbuteo sets of the Seventies, and a heartwarming tale of getting pissed up and bothering Freddy Mercury. Apologies if the edit is rough as arseholes - we had considerable mither putting it together - but may it sustain you until we meet again in 2019.    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 craze youngsters and welcome to a very festive and special-ish episode of Chart Music. I'm your ho-ho host, Al Needham. And with me today are the other two wise men. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Taylor Parks. Morning, across the miles.

And Simon Price. I actually did play a wise man in a school nativity play. Hello. Wow, did you? Yeah, yeah. What were you giving away? Oh, fuck knows. But I had a little gold hat on, that's all I can remember. I've did play a wise man in a school nativity play. Hello. Wow, did you? Yeah, yeah. What were you giving away? Oh, fuck knows. But I had a little gold hat on. That's all I can remember.

I've got photos of it. I never got to play anyone. I was always the narrator. Was you? Yeah. Me too. I had a lovely voice. Did you have a similar kind of cheery tone in those days? Yeah.

Yeah. I was spreading the good news. It was annoying because it held back my acting skill, you know. It meant I don't now get those De Niro roles that I craved. See, you started off as an authority figure, didn't you? Yeah, I was the narrator in the first Nativity I did because I was the only kid in the school that could read at that time. I was the only kid in the school that could read at that time I was four I had a lovely stay press suit that uh that was bought for me I wish I still had it now but

then again wouldn't fit me but did your um end of year school report um know you know your English teacher saying Al is most likely with his English skills to end up working in the pornographic industry yeah so anyway chaps what's been popping interesting in your life I just fucking knackered Al um it's such a it's a stressful time of year isn't it you know um I think maybe a lot of people who have proper kind of nine to five jobs and uh they've had their last day in the office, are just putting their feet up and relaxing. But for me, if anything, as a freelancer, it's kind of worse. I don't know. Because there are so many things you leave undone to the last minute.

And I've got family coming to stay. It's the first time in my life, and this makes me feel very grown up, that I'm actually hosting my mum. She's coming here for Christmas dinner. And also my other half, Janie, her mum is coming along and their respective other halves are coming along. So there'll be the six of us. And our parents have met, but they've never spent a significant amount of time

in each other's company. So you can imagine how terrifying a prospect this is potentially. Are any of them well Brexit? Yeah, actually. I'd say three out of four of them. So it's probably Janie and I are going to have to bite our tongues, if anything. But there we go. Oh, man.

Well, I hope that goes well, Simon. Cheers. Good luck to you. Taylor. Yeah, I had a pre-Christmas flood, as is traditional. Oh, man. Yeah, I woke up last last what was it Wednesday um or I was woken up by this noise going and I was like okay I knew it wasn't good so I leapt out of bed

opened the bathroom door which is where it was coming from and my toilet was uh propelling gallons of water a foot into the air like old faithful um which was gush gush gush all over the floor pouring out into my bedroom down the stairs um and also so was the shower drain oh no you know you get bits of hair stuck in the shower drain and you have to get in a professional to get it out. There was a little bit of hair that was starting to form a blockage, just lying a foot away because the sheer force of the water had propelled it out of the pipe and across the shower. And to make matters even more exciting,

in the water coming out of the toilet, there were these brown, sludgy lumps. Oh, no! And I was like, yeah, this probably isn't great. And this went on for four minutes. Ran downstairs, switched the water off at the mains. It didn't make any difference because it wasn't my water. But could hear it raining indoors,

so it was all coming through the ceiling. I had to move the telly, shunt everything across the room. Eventually it stopped. And, yeah, as it happens, all the stuff, apart from the telly, which I managed to move in time, all the stuff in my flat, which is actually worth anything, of which there isn't much, was all on the other side of the flat, and the flat's on a slight slope. Like Underhill, Barnett's Ground.

Precisely, yes. So it slopes towards the underground car park that's about 15 feet away, which is probably not good news in the long term. But, yeah, so everything that was actually valuable escaped, including the notes I'd scribbled down for this very chart music, which were about... Thank you, Jesus! About a foot and a half away from the water's edge. Good Lord.

It's as if it knew. It's a miracle, I tell you. A Christmas miracle. What's it smelling like in there at the moment? It's a bit like an old shed. Yeah. We had to have a new ceiling, but the landlord arranged this. God bless him.

A new ceiling up because it was going to come down in the hall. But, yeah, the bits that aren't going to be done until the new year. Yeah, yeah. Got that familiar old gang hut smell to them now but the people from thames water came around and stuck a little thing in the water and said uh no it's not sewage uh it's just mains water that that has somehow uh come up out of the toilet and the brown sludgy lumps were sediment off the pipe dislodged by the sheer force of the water like a like a 19 year old's ejaculation um and a new ceiling is in the process of being put up so oh taylor man we've been fucking fretting about your big style

put up so oh taylor man we've been fucking fretting about your big style but just to make absolutely clear to anyone listening out there taylor parks's house does not stink of shit okay ladies right before we go any further uh i just want to say that yes this is another christmas special and uh like the last one uh it's it's been a bit of a fucking last minute rush job uh the editing process is going to be extremely cut and shut because we've left it right up to the last minute so it's essentially the podcast version of a boxer ferreira roche that's been bought at the last minute from the 24 hour garage uh with really bad wrapping paper on it we could have left it this year but you know what the The pop crazy youngsters have been very good this year. So,

you know, we thought they deserve an early Christmas present. So anyway, moving on Christmas, yay, woo, et cetera. Do you like Christmas these days?

I do. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I fucking hate it. No. Yeah. But you hate everything.

You guys, you hate Halloween. You fucking, you hate everything. No, hang halloween you fucking you hate everything no hang on you like we like two-man sound how dare you you like two-man sound and you like bonfire night but apart from that you hate everything two-man sound and shagging but no i don't i don't really like christmas anymore and it's not just me being miserable because i used to love it it's just i don't know i've just reached that point in life where it just highlights all the unfortunate things about my situation without

really providing forced jollity isn't it it's a it's a colder bucklings well yeah it's like all red letter days now it's really it's just a milestone uh shaped like a tombstone with a number on it you know and every year the number gets one lower it's a number which thank god my aging eyes can't quite make out so you know indulge a jubilo and all that but yeah you people have a laugh have a drink i'm gonna hunker down have a drive go out and see what you can find i'm just just going to hunker down for the duration. I'll see you in the terrifyingly named 2019. Yes.

I'll tell you what I do like about Christmas, though. I like Jesus as a baby. He was cute. You know what I mean? He was all right. When you see him as an adult, he's got that really long face. Yeah. He's always got this really long, hollow face, like a dagger,

which used to terrify me as a kid because he looked like a photo-fit picture of a child murderer. Really nasty piece of work. So I feel a lot safer with him in the manger because he can't get out of it by himself. And if he did, he'd be small enough to pick up and drop kick. They dealt with him in the end, though. I mean, famously.

Famously, the Romans sorted it out. They put an end to the threat. You've got to do something before he turns you into a frog or whatever it was he used to do. I can't remember. I mean, Christmas Day, I don't mind at all. You know, it's just basically me and my mum sitting about eating and watching shit on the telly,

more often than not, stuff on YouTube. Yeah, last year, I think we watched on YouTube the All-Star Christmas special on ITV from 1974 or something like that. It was like what the BBC used to do in the 60s. You know, they'd have quick sketches from all their sitcoms. They were short enough to have a good laugh at the shitness of, but not long

enough to get on your tits. And I think the first one was, well, of course the first one was Love Thy Neighbour. Of course it was. There was a bit of banter, followed by all the blokes getting drunk, Eddie Booth forgetting to get a turkey, but luckily being invited next door by Bill and Barbie.

But, oh my God, would you believe the house was full of black people. Yeah. Bloody Nora, we're having a black Christmas. Oh, it's good that, isn't it? Because it's a play on white Christmas. Yes. But then somebody put some steel drum music on and everyone had a bit of a dance. Of course they did.

It was nice, man. It was nice. Did he speculate that their Christmas dinner might be like jerk chicken or something? No, no, no. More in the realm of missionaries. Yeah, I was going to say that's a little bit

too sophisticated in its awareness of other countries. It kind of foreshadows something that's coming up in this show doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'll tell you what else I like about Christmas. It's the song Backdoor Santa by Clarence Carter, which I put on every year.

It's an amazingly earthy and hilarious record, which stands up for the grand old tradition of Christmas being a time for creepy lasciviousness. I wish I'd thought of that last night. I was doing a radio show,

and I was putting on some kind of innuendo-packed Christmas songs. I did put Ella Fitzgerald, Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney, and that would have been a good kind of segue, I think, back to Santa, if I thought of it. Yeah. The one I hate is Jingle Bells. I was just up in Leeds last week and they had,

I walked through the, whatever it's called, I don't know, I don't live there, and the street and I heard four versions of Jingle Bells in the space of a minute. Jesus.

There was a sort of a house version playing in the shopping mall and then there was a band playing it outside and then there was like a jazz version playing in the place where I went to get coffee and then there was I hate it because it uses the phrase a one horse open

sleigh too many times that's what pisses me off about it I've never heard anyone use that phrase except in Jingle Bell no and i've been to the arctic circle nobody said it also it's not even a christmas song it's like it was actually written for thanksgiving um really yeah yeah which is just seems to have been invented by americans as a spoiler for christmas just to make the genocide holiday. Yeah. Well, also,

it makes Christmas seem less exciting, doesn't it? Because you spot a month later, oh yeah, great, there's Turkey again. So anyway, before we get stuck into the episode we've locked out,

we're not going to do Patreon, new Patreon subscribers for the minute because we're doing such a quick turnover. So we're going to give that a rest. But we're going to go straight into the reveal of the chart music Christmas top such a quick turnover. So we're going to give that a rest, but we're going to go straight into

the reveal of the chart music Christmas top ten. Down five places to number ten, Lennon bombing a Rastafarian. A non-mover at number nine, B.A. Conterson. Last week's number eight, this week's number eight, This week's number eight. It's still Bomber Dog.

Stay in there, Bomber Dog. Stay another day. A drop of four places from number three to number seven for Here Comes Jizzum. First new entry this week at number six, Granny Wants Your Spunk. entry this week at number 6 Granny Wants Your Spunk Another new entry at number 5 for Tito Jackson's Bollocks

A leap of 6 places from number 10 to number 4 for 15 lighters for a pound man Into the top 3 and the highest new entry this week Fred Westlife. This week's number two

and it's no change for your dog mates, which means... Britain's number one. It's still there as the Chop Music Christmas number one, Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments. Anything you'd like to say, Taylor? Congratulations, man.

Yeah, well done, man. Very honoured. That's it now. All the compilations, that's what I call Christmas. Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments is going to be in there, man. You'll be wiping your arse on £50 notes

before too long, mate. Yeah, hanging out with Jonah Louis. Also, I see someone reissued Here Comes Jism which I seem to remember was a Christmas record from last year. I just can't believe that one in testing have already dropped out of the top ten man. That's shocked me.

That's showbiz. They must have done something really controversial like I don't know, had their mouth sewn up to each other's arseholes or something. They've got a big fan following who will rush out and buy it in the first week, but it's one of those ones that just drops out after that, you know? Yeah. Yeah, no one saw that coming.

No. In fact, they didn't see much coming either. Yeah, so all the one in testing posters are down in girls' bedrooms, but, you know, replacing them, Fred Westlife. Granny wants your spunk. I mean, that's going to cause problems, isn't it? I don't think Tony Blackburn would want to announce their name, for example. Yeah, I think they'll either call it Granny Wants Your

or just Granny. Granny. Yeah. Or Tony Blackburn might say, a group who choose to call themselves Granny Wants Your Spunk. Like he did with the Dead Kennedys. Yeah, like admonishing the act while announcing them. Yeah, yeah. Granny Wants Your. Granny, what's your spunk?

What will they sound like? I've got a sort of mid or early 90s rave, almost a drum and bass rave thing about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. A bit like, you know, Charlie Says, SL2 on a ragatip, that kind of thing. Tony Blackburn's got a cheek anyway,

considering his name with its sinister echoes of racist immolation. Jesus Christ. So, Pop Craze youngsters, this episode takes us all the way back to December 25th, 1976. And yes, it's another one of those specials where Top of the Pops dominates Christmas afternoon. I used to love these, didn't you?

Yeah, I mean, it was a wishbone of contention, if you will, in my house on Christmas Day because my middle-aged or elderly aunts and uncles really disapproved of having the TV on at all. And maybe my grandad was okay with More know more common wise a bit later on in the in the evening or something um they would insist on having the queen's speech on but yeah but actually um me having top of the pops was and it always seemed to to happen just when my mum was ready to serve up dinner and it's yeah oh and i was sitting there going oh come on can't can't wait i'll come and eat my food later I know

And we didn't have microwaves in those days obviously So I would just have to eat it cold But yeah it was It was always a struggle Was you actually left the table to watch Top of the Pops It was more that I probably refused to come to the table in the first place I'd be sat Simon

I'd be sat really close to the telly on the carpet Just like not wanting to budge you know On a puff or did you Did you lie down on the floor? On the carpet and I'd have to be dragged in the manner of, you know when a dog's trying to wipe its arse on the carpet, it sort of drags it, they'd be almost physically dragging me along the carpet like that.

Oh, man. Yeah, or Gary Lineker. In his second most famous World Cup moment. Exactly. So, Taylor, can you actually remember this episode? in his second most famous World Cup moment. Exactly. So, Taylor, can you actually remember this episode? I can. I don't remember it particularly,

but there's a video in this that's from the previous year, no spoilers, which I could clearly remember seeing on the telly and would probably have been too young to see when it was out. So this sort of might solve a mystery in that respect this may be where i first saw it i must have lost the battle this year because i don't remember seeing it yeah you know in fact there are songs on this which i've only learned of through chart music right well there's there's one song on this which is uh a sort of a creepy blank in the memory of everyone who lived through this period, I've discovered.

Right. A massive number one, which even some of Britain's foremost pop historians who are in their 50s have no memory of whatsoever. Of course, the main thing about this Christmas episode of Top of the Pops is that we're only going to see the first part of it. They've split it up into two separate shows. Ah, right. One on Christmas Day, one on Boxing Day.

So normally this would be the absolute winner's circle, would be nothing but number ones. But there are a lot of tunes here that didn't make it to number one and in certain cases got nowhere near. I was quite shocked that one in particular didn't get anywhere near number one. I wonder if that's what happened with my family then.

They must have fobbed me off and said, oh, you can watch the one tomorrow. But then on Boxing Day, they'd have reneged on that promise and whisked me off to see some relatives or something. That sounds about right. I think this was the year my dad made me a toy fort because we didn't have any money because we just moved house.

And thank God I didn't do that little kid thing of saying, what the fuck is this? Why doesn't it have a brand name on it? I hate you. If I wasn't four and too feeble, I'd smash this over your fucking head. Like a modern kid. Never seen an unboxing video of this. Therefore, fuck this gift and fuck you. Well, it's true, isn't it?

So what's in the news today? Well, the Queen and her mad family go to a church and then she says something on the telly. The Pope says something peace-y. A new volcano has gone off in Zaire. Five members of the Metropolitan Police anti-pawn squad have just been jailed for taking backhanders off smut peddlers in Soho. No way. Yes, yes. A mini budget by Dennis Healy has ordered a severe cutback

on cigarette production until New Year's Eve, leading to a fag famine across the country. Oh, man, that would have been absolute crisis at Christmas round our house. Angela Rippert has been named the best-dressed woman in Britain, but the big news is Santa's been What did you get Simon I'll tell you what I might have got

Is that QPR top that I mentioned before Oh Yeah I was going through my QPR face And the way I can kind of pinpoint this Is that we just moved house I actually asked my mum the other day Because I wanted to get my facts right on this we just moved house uh i i actually asked my mum the other day because i wanted to get my facts right on this we just moved house uh before christmas 76 uh uh we'd

moved we'd left the um the house with the maggots that fell into the ceiling and uh and where i where i thought i saw ghosts and all that that one uh and um and we moved to uh porth kerry road which was where all the cool kids at school lived, so I felt like I'd somehow reached the top table. It was a bit of a nicer place. It had a little garden front and back instead of a yard. The Laurel Canyon of Barrack. Yeah, and it had its own front

door rather than sharing with another flat, so that was nice. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. But I've got photos of me from that time with my friend Suzanne, who lived down the street. And I'm wearing that QPR top with the ridiculously long sleeves that made me look like Johnny Rotten. But I'm also wearing Suzanne's mum's discarded clothes. So I'm basically in drag.

I'm like Stan Bowles or Jerry Francis, but in drag. I've got a woman's wig on and I've got some kind of floral smock dress over it and I've got like red and white stripy stockings and pointy shoes and flared jeans. I look a right state but yeah, that is from that street

and I'm wearing a QPR top so I reckon that's probably my Christmas present. Why? Why are you dressed up like that? Well, because QPR is cool all the time. No, I don't know, because we were bored and we didn't have all these modern computer games that kids these days have. Always looking at their bloody phones, etc.

Yeah, we made our own fun in them days. Yeah, made our own fun, yeah, with wigs and dresses. And that set me up nicely for life, really. I think this was the year I got my first Subutio set. Ah, yeah, yeah. Subutio World Cup Edition. I was a year i got my first sabutio set ah yeah yeah sabutio world cup edition i was a couple years later with sabutio but when i got into it i really got into it yeah yeah well for the first time i didn't really that much simply because i had

absolutely no way to to play it yeah it was a world cup edition i remember it was like on two layers and it had three teams in it, it had West Germany Holland and England, which I didn't understand because it was World Cup what the fuck are England doing in the World Cup? England didn't do World Cups in the 70s and it really pissed me off that it was their England home kit because

it was practically the same as West Germany except the shorts were blue and yeah a lot of it got snapped, it had floodlights and everything and I think everything got broke pretty early on because there was no room to play and I couldn't take it to my non-armed grandpas because it was too big to lay out in any case their copy was really fluffy so it was like Sunday football so in the end I had to get my uh striker uh out yeah is that the one where you push their heads down yes I had to get my striker out.

Is that the one where you push their heads down? Yes. I just pretended that my league was the NASL and they were all playing on AstroTurf on smaller pitches. But the most important story in the tabloids over the past month has been Punk Rock, thanks to the Bill Grundy incident. Do you remember when all that happened? No, I don't. It's something I've only learnt about in retrospect.

I actually teach it. I teach a whole lesson to my students on this, but I've got no memory of it happening because punk didn't hit Wales until about, at least my bit of Wales, until about 1978. Right. To be honest. Because, I mean, it was in the papers and everything,

but only if you were in, you only saw the Grundy incident if you were in London, of course. Yeah, and then it it was in the papers and everything but only if you were in you only saw the Grundy incident if you were in London of course yeah and then it got it got reported in the Daily Mirror so anyone across the country

could have read about it for a couple of days but I was too young to be reading newspapers so no I had no idea about all this the Daily Mirror ran a centre spread

about the menace of punk but they saw the lighter side of it by publishing a series of punk jokes entitled yuck, Yuck. Seems we haven't got any Christmas crackers on us.

I think now's the time to bring these out. So... Go on then. What is Britain's dirtiest railway station? I don't know. St. Punkrus. Oh, okay. I don't know.

St. Punkrus. Name the TV show about the spy who plays it dirty. I don't know. The Man From Punkle. Jesus Christ. What is pink, sickly and has a four-letter word through it? Punk rock. Yes. Yes.

What do you call an ape with a safety pin through it? No. Punky gibbon. Right. That's fucking funny. What's the dirtiest football team in the league? They're going on this dirty tip, aren't they? Yeah, yeah.

Queen's Punk Rangers. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. No. What name do you give someone who fries rotten potatoes? No. A chip punk. What? Oh, for fuck's sake no

which TV characters make children squeal well we know the true answer for that now this is for you Tree punky and perky and finally how should a sex pistol be shot?

Without compunction. What? And at the bottom it says, send your punk jokes to Punk Daily Mirror EC1 PDQ. The prize for the best jokes will be a Sex Pistols record The worst ones Will win two Sex Pistols records So there you go the punk threat

Already quashed By our great media I'm just amazed to learn that there are Volcanoes in Zaire Never mind the punk thing yeah who knew that no also i'll tell you the thing about the um the the cops getting done for taking back anders in soho yeah that was actually connected to the oz trial in a weird way because um you know the oz trial where you know there's a 60s underground magazine

which yeah schoolboy issue. Yeah, schoolboy issue. Charles Shaw Murray, later of the NME, and a bunch of 19-year-olds ran. They basically took control of that publication, Oz, for one issue. And it included a pornographic Rupert the Bear cartoon. And it was a massive legal, it sort of caused celebra and all that. But apparently, the real reason why the establishment why the cops

made a real spectacle of it, made an example of Oz was this thing that you just mentioned that was that they secretly were taking backhanders from the pornographic industry in Soho and they were under all sorts of pressure to do something about filth, about porn

and all that kind of stuff. So rather than actually clamp down on genuine pornographers, they saw the Oz thing as a sort of easy scapegoat. Yes. Yeah. This is yet more stuff that I know from teaching at BIM. That stuff was all common knowledge in the 70s as well. It's in the first episode of The Sweeney. I think it's the first episode where Carter says to Regan

you're coming down the dirty squad showing some of those porn films from Greek Street. Here comes Jism. Indeed. No secret. Do you think all the detectives sat there with coats over their laps

helmets over their laps and of course you know the media has still got the finger on the pulse when it comes to punk rock as our David discovered recently we won't go into it here but yeah David Stubbs Daily Express do a google

search see what turns up it is amazing he's going to be on the next episode we'll ask him then it is fucking corking on the cover of this week's NME the best albums of the year 1966 showing covers of Revolver

Aftermath Pet Sounds and Otis Blue with a picture of Bob Dylan good lord they've given right up on the mid-70s, haven't they? On the cover of the Radio Times

is an illustration of a stained glass window of good King Wenceslas with a lad holding the pig the wrong way round so he can see its arse. And on the cover of the TV Times, why there's a grid of celebrities dressed as Santa including Tommy Cooper

Jimmy Tarbuck, Pat Phoenix, Huey Green Frankie Howard, Dickie Davis Bob Monkhouse Peter Ustinov, Noel Gordon and Gilbert O'Sullivan Peter Ustinov. I think we can see the difference between BBC and ITV

right there can't we? Jimmy Tarbuck on one one a pig's arse on the other in the UK the number one single at the moment is when a child is born by Johnny Mathis and the number one LP is 20 golden grapes by Glen Campbell arrival by ABBA is number two over in the US the number one single is tonight's the Night, Gonna Be Alright by Rod Stewart, which is at its seventh week at number one. And the number one LP is Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder. It's 11th week at number one.

Well played, America. Yeah. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One starts the day with Ragtime with Fred Harris. Then Sing Noel, 50 Min of carols and that. Then it's Hong Kong Fooé. Then Angela Rippon makes an appeal on behalf of Television for the Deaf. CFAX, basically, I think.

After an hour-long Christmas morning service, Rod Hull and Emu sing a Christmas song with Rolf Harris. Well, you know, Rod Hall does that. Emu doesn't sing. He just attacks. Just opens his mouth and turns his head from side to side. Then it's Four Clowns, the 1970 compilation of films

by Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chase, and they've just finished Holiday on Ice, Ice Pantomime. Out of all that stuff I'd have been the most into Hong Kong Fooey I fucking loved Hong Kong Fooey Also I think the telephonist from Hong Kong

Fooey was along with Madame Cholet the first person I had a crush on. It was basically the telephonist from Hong Kong Fooey Madame Cholet from the Wombles and Agnetha as I probably would have said from ABBA, were my first three crushes.

A real-life human being. Well, yeah, you've got to throw one of them in there. As opposed to the telephonist who is a real dilf, a drawing I'd like to fuck. BBC Two begins with Reflections on Christmas Day, followed by The Mystery of King Arthur and his round table in Horizon play away and they're currently half an hour into Carols from King's College, Cambridge

ITV kicks off with Carols from Durham Cathedral with Roy DeTriest fucking all this Carol shit, what's going on? I wonder then The Legend of the Christmas Messenger featuring the voices of richard chamberlain leo mccurn and david essex followed by another christmas morning service from chichester

now they've got all the religious rubbish out the way for another year they pile over to the harrogate general hospital where jimmy tarbuck spends half an hour bothering the patients then it's the rex film Dr. Doolittle. They're just about to start Christmas Supersonic, a charity performance at Drury Lane, which, according to the TV Times, is an exciting rock bonanza hosted by Russell Hartair

and new Avenger Joanna Lumley, and features John Miles, Guys and Dolls, Linda Lewis, Mark Bolan, and Gary Glitter. I want to see that. With Princess Margaret looking on in the Royal Box. How dare ITV run that up against top of the box? Yeah, I was going to say, when have they scheduled that for in this pre-video era?

It's disgusting, isn't it? They could have just swapped it with some of the fucking carols or something. Fuck ITV. Well, they used to have a truce, didn't they? That BBC wouldn't bother to put anything good up against Coronation Street and so on. You'd think they would have... Come on. They kept that up in the late 90s when they put late 90s Top of the Pops up against Coronation Street.

Yeah. Well, it was always the sign that you were running something in. All right then, pop-crazy youngsters. It's time to go way back to Christmas Day 1976. Don't forget, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. On this Christmas Day, it's welcome to a rather special been on top of the pops more than we have on this christmas day it's welcome to a rather special edition of top of the pops and it's a merry christmas for me

and it's a very merry christmas from me It's ten minutes past two on Saturday, December 25th, 1976, and the nation is greeted by the sight of a massive roast turkey in the foreground and a weird mirror effect of the pop-crazed youngsters standing about in the background. In between are your hosts, Noel Edmonds and Dave Lee Travis. Edmonds is currently at the very top of most of the pop of most doing the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and he's nearly three months into presenting Swap Shop. Travis is currently hosting its DLT OK from half past three in the afternoon to six o'clock during weekdays. But he's already got his eye on Noel's breakfasty throne. Is that It's DLT OK question mark?

No. Or is it just a statement, isn't it? Exclamation mark. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No question about it. It is DLT. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No question about it, it is DLT. Yeah.

Your consent is not required. They hated each other, these two, apparently. Yes, they did. Which makes it kind of fascinating viewing once you know that. You know, especially because they've got to act all kind of jovial with each other and trade bants back and forth. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

It makes it kind of oddly fascinating in a gruesome way. Before we pile in any further on Mr Travers, who we haven't had for quite a while, and it's always a pleasure to see him passing by, isn't it, on chart music. The new thing I want to, the new discovery I want to add is that when you're in Photoshop and you write DLT in lowercase in a certain font,

it actually looks like the word clit. Oh, Christ. Yeah, I found that out the other night. Yeah, it's like my mate Clint when he tried to... Yeah, I remember Clint. Yeah, he tried to graffiti his name on a wall at school in Capitals and put the L a bit too close to the I. Oh, schoolboy error.

I think we can probably guess what happened next. Yes. And it's like the hairdressers in Camden that must have spent a lot of money on their very fancy gold and mirrored sign that said Flickers. Oh! Yeah, yeah.

So, I think the key difference between the two can be seen immediately by their attire for this. Edmonds has made an effort, hasn't he? I can imagine Noel Edmonds being the person who would wear a three-piece Rackham suit to Christmas dinner. Well, this is it, right? And expect everyone else to as well. Because they are both the most 70s men I can imagine. Because people say that 1976 is the most 70s year of the 70s I mean other

people say 1973 was but anyway yes right but if I think of 70s men I literally picture these two and they are sort of two different archetypes because you've got DLT with that wing collared shirt it's open to the sternum obviously yes because that's exactly what I've written that's how he rolls right yes but then you've got Edmonds with an equally big collar, but his collar is done up. It's neatly fastened with a neatly tied kipper tie. Yes. Yeah, he's wearing the same suit that he always wears.

Yes. It's like he's only got one. Or, more likely, he's got a wardrobe with about 40 in that are all exactly the same. Oh, like in Nine and a Half Weeks? I wouldn't know, Al. Or Einstein, apparently. Oh, God, can you imagine Noel Edmonds in Nine and a Half Weeks?

Who would be the Kim Basinger? Mike Smith. Yes. They're in front of a turkey which seems to exist on a different plane. Yes. And I don't know if it's just forced perspective or whether it's, you know, and it's actually in the same room as them, but somebody thought it was a good idea to have it really massive

in the foreground like Saturn with them as orbiting moons or whether it's actually overlaid. In which case, that's quite the technological marvel because... No, it's there. It's there. Is it there? Oh, that's right. Because he touches it.

That's right. Yes, he touches it later, of course. Yes. Yeah. It's a massive... You can imagine Travis wrestling that to the ground. And shouting at Edmunds to take his head off with that axe quickly. Yeah.

While Bates wanks a pig in the background. Yes! Yeah, but you're right, right? Because they're oddly distant from the camera. There must have been a way they could have just pulled the camera back a bit so that, you know, the turkey's in front of them, but it's not so dramatically foregrounded. And, you know, it's almost so dramatically foregrounded uh and you know it's it is it's almost like uh

when you're watching a film and somebody opens a drawer and there's a pistol in it and you know the camera just lingers on it yeah yeah so basically you know they are um backgrounded to what is essentially a turkey murder scene up close you know that the charred carcass of a sentient being looming up at us so and also not just the turkey as well as the turkey there's this unidentified brown slab at the bottom left of the picture probably just some meat capital s capital m yes like not not from any not from any particular animal on the phylogenetic tree, but a coagulated mass of sweepings from the abattoir floor, held together by gelatin of multiple provenance, and heated for an hour at what was then, of course, called Regulo Mark 5.

Yes. Probably in a British gas cookability oven. As I remember you mentioned on a previous episode, advertised by none other than Noel Edmonds himself on those British Cats roadshow ads, the slag. Yeah, but it's filmed as though the BBC were going to put this out in 3D.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only surprise is that DLT... Even down to the red and the green in the visuals. Yeah, yeah. He should have leapt forward and pointed right into the camera are you ready oh travis in 3d round about this time and that would be fucking terrifying oh individual beard hairs extending further than others people have been running into their christmas trees in terror wouldn't they yeah yeah yeah like some of his beard is closer to you than other bits.

But then behind, on a blue screen, they've got the studio feed of the audience, which is a sort of a technological marvel, but it doesn't really do them any favours, as we'll see. No, and at first it's's confusing because it's not immediately apparent that what we're going to see is a compendium of clips rather than an actual show if you know what I mean so you've got

that thing where it's almost like a picture frame around the audience and it's just some audience from some time it turns out they're not there but at first you don't know that so it's all really odd. Yeah time, it turns out. You know, it's not, they're not there. But at first, you don't know that. So it's all really odd. Yeah, you're right.

I mean, it does have the air of the clip show about it, doesn't it? A bit of a parsimonious thing for the BBC to be doing. Because, you know, we've seen them push the boat out a little bit in previous episodes. Yeah, but talking about, like, making an effort, I mean, Travis and Edmonds are the most slapdash and unprofessional and undescripted. I think we've ever seen them.

I mean, yeah, it's only Christmas Day. You know, it's only going to be 25 million viewers, for fuck's sake, you know. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? Yeah, and it's all so... First thing we hear is, cue Dave, from the gallery.

You can hear it coming through someone's earpiece or through something. And I don't know if that's sloppiness on the part of the BBC for repeat, which is what we're watching here, or if it went out at the time like that, you know, on the logic that everyone will be pissed,

as with a technician, probably. Yes, it doesn't matter. But yeah, it's like, people talk about Noel as the supremely professional broadcaster. Exactly, yes. But every time we ever see him, he looks like a rank amateur, you know.

I don't know, I didn't get that from this, but, all right, carry on. Well, at the start of this, they say, and I think they're trying to do the world's most half-arsed and poorly thought out to ronnie's reference right where uh i think travis says you know merry christmas or something and then noel evans says and it's a very merry christmas from me but he kind of stutters and pauses and kind of it sounds like he's just too shit to deliver the line.

He says, stuttering halfway through his own line. But they couldn't be bothered to do a second take, you know. There we are, welcome to the top of the pops. Christmas spectacular. Have a good time. And then it comes back after the contents page, where they tell you who's going to be on. Yeah, the montage of the actson today over, of course,

CCS's version of Whole Lotta Love. Yeah, and DLT is holding up one finger, like, as if to say, wait for it, and looking off camera for his cue, and Noel has his eyes closed and his chin resting on his hand. And you think it's just unprofessional, but it turns out they sort of hold it a bit unprofessional but it turns out they they sort of hold it a bit too long and it turns out it's a bit they're doing a bit right but it's a bit that has no point and no humorous content at all right he's talking about the bit where DLT is staring into

space yes yeah well this bit really creeped me out. So he's kind of pretending to zone out. It's a rare occasion when DLT isn't gurning or mugging. So it's a rare glimpse of what a weird-looking man he is when his face is at rest. Resting Travis face. Yeah, resting cunt face. His stupid slab of a face, right? Basically, if you were in a remote area

and you walked into a rural pub that was frequented only by farmers, like something out of Straw Dogs or American Werewolf in London, and you were stood at the bar and you glanced to your right and you saw that face doing that expression, you would leave instantly.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Half-finished vodka and orange on the bar top yeah but it's the it's that great british delusion that was shared by most of the old time radio one djs that you don't have to write or think of jokes right no you just do something unusual or say something on you and it's automatically will be crazy and funny you know yeah and in fact it's the opposite of wit right and rather than a considered and logical response to the madness around you it's like a toddler's idea of humor right you know if you talk to a toddler you toddler, you go to the swimming pool and they go, no, let's go to the pool swimming.

And they think that's a joke because when humor happens in front of them, all they understand about it conceptually is that there's it's like a disruption in the order of things. So when they try and make a joke, they just disrupt the order of things and think that that will equal humour. That's what these cunts are like in relation to the goon show. Appearance-wise, no point talking about Edmonds. He looks exactly the same as always. Yeah. Travis, though,

I think he's trying to do something with his hair, isn't it? Because it's all a bit... It's the usual it's the usual living nasher badge look but um but it's kind of starting to square off a bit around the back and the sides so he's starting to look like a hairy chess piece isn't it just drenched in cossack to try and try and keep it in check. Because on the cover of the Top of the Pops 1977 annual, which I have in front of me,

pop annuals are usually a good indicator of the pecking order of pop. And of course, because it's the Top of the Pops one, it's little round inset pictures of Edmonds, Blackburn, Savile and Travis. But the one with Travis is, because his hair's so dark and it's on a black background and the print has not come out, it makes him look like his hair is an absolutely perfectly circled afro.

So it makes him look like an angry bird. Like he's just about to be launched into uh noel's house and gonna bring it crashing down there is one pop star on the cover 1977 who do you think it would be a male singer 77 david essex exactly yes get in yeah featuring david essex steve harley rod stewart and david bowie so there i know i've also got the supersonic annual and it just goes to show get in featuring David Essex, Steve Harley, Rod Stewart and David Bowie I've also got the supersonic annual and it just goes to show what a shitty state pop music's in

because on the cover of that again David Essex, the Bay City Rollers who were well past their sell by date by late 1976 Jan out of Kenne and right in the middle Mike Mansfield in a splendid silvery, quiffy

bouffant Is he leaning over the desk and pointing? No, he's looking away as if he can't bear to look at the state of pop in late 1976. Whose fault is that? Yes, exactly yes is that? Yes, exactly yes Yes, a very Merry Christmas to you

you've got a lot of hits coming up in the programme and day day? Slick and forever and ever Thanks Thanks. As it was in the beginning, then so should it end Don't let a love become just a friend Oh no We've already discussed Slick in Chart Music's 18 and 29 and just to remind you, this was a cover of a song written by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter

who penned Remember, Shangalang-Lang, Summer Love Sensation and Saturday Night for the Bay City Rollers. And the song originally appeared on the band Kenny's 1975 LP The Sound of Super K. Originally offered to the Rollers as a follow-up to Give a Little Love, but they knocked it back as they wanted to be a bit more progressive than ever. And Coulter and Martin, part of company with the Rollers, looked for a new band to lob the songs at

and it was Midge and his chums in their baseball gear. Yeah. Slick are probably the first band we've covered in full in chart music because fucking hell, man, this is a bad start to a Christmas top of the pops. Yeah. If you've had your Christmas dinner already, this is going to bring on the food coma pretty early, isn't it? Well, it's quite a kind of downbeat song, isn't it?

Yeah. It's kind of Baroque glam pop, and it was the BCR team trying to have another shot at it under different guise, sort of Gotham City Rollers, really, isn't it? Yes. And what I thought about this song, and I'm starting to change my mind,

is that it's too slow it's actually a good song but I thought it was too slow until I saw this clip at the very end all the audience have got their arms around each other's waist and they're kind of swaying in unison so I thought well maybe they've got it just right here

Midge Ewer is the weird thing about this for me because when Ultravox happened I didn't know I mean I read in Smash Hits that it had been in Slick but like who? because 1976 from the perspective of 1980 or 81 might as well have been 100 years ago if you're a kid at the time

and he's Pop's ultimate kind of chancer Pop's biggest carpet bagger, he's not so much the ze ultimate kind of chancer pop's biggest biggest carpetbagger he's not not so much the zealot of pop as the steve claridge this kind of this kind of this kind of journeyman who can turn up anywhere and do a job for you or maybe in managerial terms the neil warnock or something like that um so you know obviously he did this it's kind of late very late glam pop and then he was in the kind of punk new wave thing with the rich kids and then in the new romantic thing with ultravox and i i don't know if there's a if there's

a comparable figure i mean you've got all this he's now a drill artist now isn't he but i i suppose you've got um those kind of chances from the 60s like you know shane fenton or paul gadds who had another crack at it but yeah it but to do it three times I don't know if anyone else has done that It's quite remarkable and of course this is round about the time well I mean this was a number one in February

which by December would have been a long long time ago forever and ever ago indeed exactly yeah and it's like oh helloers, you liked us once. Yeah, and I suppose, you know, he's trying to look like, he looks, I think I mentioned last time, a sort of pinched, starved James Dean.

And maybe, you know, combined with that basic role as sound, it could almost fool people, you know, sort of young and particularly female audience at the time into thinking he's some kind of heartthrob. But by December, they've seen enough photos of him probably think actually you know maybe not maybe he's not the one yeah taylor do you remember right when we were at melody maker um carol clerk the the news editor playing pranks on mature prank calling him do you remember this oh god that rings a bell no right it was so i don't know why carol

carol's a legend uh for anyone who's listening doesn't know she was this kind of long-serving news editor who'd been there way way before us and was just basically the the sort of spirit the paper the most rock and roll person at the paper but um for some reason and i don't know why but she she hated mid-year and i don't know why well there she hated Mijur. You don't know why? Well, there must... Yeah, all right, fine. But there must have been some kind of personal grudge. She used to ring him up, or sometimes get other people on her behalf

to ring him up and prank call him. And he started answering the phone pretending to be his own PA. So she'd ring up and she'd put him on answer phone and he'd go he's gnawing he'd sound really panicked but of course the added poignancy of this performance is that Midge is standing

up there doing his already dated shtick just thinking I could have said shit on the Today show at Bill Grundy that could have been me. There he is playing his Gibson Marauder. Appropriately enough, the great failure of the Gibson brand. A really terrible late 70s guitar.

Whereas the bassist has the, considering the time period, unfortunately named Gibson Ripper bass which is really good and he never wrote do they know it's Christmas so I'm on his side here he's my favorite and the the poor balding keyboard player trying to look smug as he sinks into history's mire imagine if you're in a band and mid-year was the talented one you know I mean? Yeah. I don't know.

What do they look? Haunted. I mean, they look horrible as well. They're supposed to be like a teen idol band. This is one slick that won't have claimed too many birds. They're so desperate to be pop heroes that they've rolled their dignity into a ball and pissed on it but they have got nothing to offer right and i mean in those days teen idols weren't buffed and tanned and groomed right because nobody was in those days um so you couldn't just train to be a pin-up in the gym and the beauty salon right you had to communicate something

and it had to be either a kind of mystique and otherworldly allure or a sort of like a puppy dog boyishness or whatever it was the base city rollers had you know which is harder to pin down i mean the basic rollers look like unhealthy scott Scottish whelps who lived on frozen beef burgers and iron brew. Yeah, but so does Slick, right? But I guess the rollers look natural and exuded a kind of youthful energy, right, which Slick absolutely do not. And the reason why is because they're caught between their shameless lust for glory and this sort of lingering

serious music fan guilt complex yeah um because they're obviously like proper musicians and you know they sort of want to be on the old grey whistle test and so they've it means they they try to appear a bit classier and a bit more thought out and they've given themselves this unified image like this distant hint of roxy music or whatever you know and it just fucks everything up because it means they're neither one thing nor the other yeah um so like you can get yourself a freak number one by making a record that sounds exactly like the rollers but with a gimmicky twist, in this case, Monk Rock. But you can't build a fan base like that. No. So nobody cared about Slick.

Nobody actually cared about them. There's nothing to care about. And it's not just a formula thing, creating teeny bop idols. It can be hit and miss, but generally there are certain rules that you have to observe. And if you just, but it's not just a formula.

And if you just follow what you think is the formula, you've got less chance of hitting the jackpot than if you just go nuts, you know, and just put together a group with Kenneth Kendall in it and Prince Monolulu you know who knows you might just get lucky but yeah if you're as calculated as this and

your heart's not in it people can tell kids can tell yeah because Midge is coming off here as the well he wants to be the really moody lad who you see through the windows of the coffee bar so absorbed in his thoughts that he's not distracted by the pinball machine

that's right up to his head wishing he could afford a motorbike to kill himself on Yeah but the thing is he isn't that and that's the thing, what these people don't understand is the weird interplay between artifice and being natural

and you have to get that balance right if you're going to be a teen idol and it's not as simple as it looks, it really isn't and you've got to feel sorry for them here because they're obviously thinking oh right we're back on top of the pops again for the

first time in months, people will remember us and oh yeah you're on because you've got to do that song that was number one ages ago that nobody particularly cares about now yeah you know the one that sounds like if the cast of the horror bags adverts had a wedding do this would be the first song they danced to you know if captain peacock got married to a rubber bat yeah and i mean there's a half-and-half biscuit song from a couple of years ago that ends with a string of non-secretors their last one of which is mid-year looks like a milk thief and not only does he but spiritually that's kind of what he is you know and the only positive thing i can say about this i make sure i watch all of these top of what he is, you know. And the only positive thing I can say about this,

I make sure I watch all of these Top of the Popsies once, just once, when I'm completely out of my head and see what they sound like in that state. See, look at the commitment, Pop Craze youngsters. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard work. And incredibly, this one actually sounded great when ripped to the tit.

Chunky as all fuck, but it's great to be straight. Yeah. I do think it's a good song, but ultimately, you know, it's negligible in terms of its impact. And as Taylor says, you know, lost in the mire of history,

even by December of this year. But yeah, Midge, you could have been the lead singer of the Sex Pistols, and if so, I believe we'd still be wearing flares today. With our hair down to our fucking ankles. So, Forever and Ever got to number one for one week in February of this year, knocking Mamma Mia off the top spot, and it was usurped by December 63 by the Four Seasons. The follow-up, Requiem, only got to number 24 in May of this year,

and they were done, and they split up in 1977. Every day, every hour we share What a way to start off a Christmas top of the pop, snick and a big number one sign. Talking of number one, Elton John made his very first number one in 1976, together with the lovely Kiki D. Will you pay attention, please? What is the matter with you? I'm doing my Christmas flower arrangements.

This is flower arrangements? That's rubbish! This is a work of art, this is the matter with you? I'm doing my Christmas flower arrangements. This is flower arrangements? This is rubbish. This is a work of art, this is. Work of art? Here, here. Don't go breaking my heart. Don't go breaking my heart I couldn't if I tried Travis finally wakes up and while Edmunds fucks about with a Christmas wreath for some reason

Well Noel's messing around with these sprigs of holly in his wreath and DLT gets cross and grabs at it and the whole thing turns out to just be a tortured setup for Noel to say, don't go breaking my art. Yeah. He says, this is a work of art, this is. And Travis snaps a bit off and he says, don't go breaking my art.

And while this is happening, on the screen in the background, you see Slick sort of ambling offstage. Yes. And the crowd going quiet. Yes. And it's weirdly deflating. They can't help but fuck about with bits of wood. Give them something to play with and break.

That'll do. Yeah. The song they introduce is Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki D. We've already covered Reg Dwight in Chart Music number 13 and by 1976 he's established himself as one of the highest earners in pop land with four number one LPs and 16 top 40 hits, eight of which made the top 10. However when the year began he was still searching for a number one single over here. The nearest he got was when Daniel was held off the top spot by Metal Guru in May of 1972.

This song was written as a tribute to Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell and was originally slated as a duet between Elton John and Dusty Springfield. When the latter pulled out due to illness, they turned to one of her old backing singers, good old Pauline Matthews, who was born in Bradford in 1947 and was better known as Kiki D, who we last met in Chop Music No. 3,

Rainfall From Another Planet. Here comes Chisholm. Released as a follow-up to his version of Pinball Wizard from the film Tommy, which got to No seven in april of 1976 it spent six weeks at number one from late july right through to the end of august and here's another chance to see the promo video well you know this is pretty much the anthem for the for the hottest summer ever isn't it this cane twirling cunt i mean I could go into the reasons why I hate him

do you know I actually wrote a live I wrote a live review of Elton John once for the Independent on Sunday which actually caused me no end of trouble oh really? he has some powerful friends oh does he now? in the music business and the media let's just say that

yeah I'll go no further with that but it caused me a certain amount of trouble i would have thought you would have taken criticism calmly and maturely would you yeah well in that review i tried to break it down because i thought my knee-jerk reaction of basically hating him needs to be based on something yes i thought it's not good enough just to just say oh hey i thought i've got to right come on let's let's try and analyze this in a sober way so i looked at all the possible reasons and i was sort of discounting them one by one and some of them were just things that were bullshit like there was that story in one of the tabloids that he had rottweilers guarding his grounds and he'd

had their voice oh yeah yeah it's absolutely absolutely bollocks yes yeah yeah it's absolutely bollocks so i was sort of crossing these things off one by one, you know, as legitimate reasons to dislike him. But what it came down to in the end was just the accent he sings in. The fact that he sings in that horrible mid-Atlantic, you know, pseudo-American... It's the vowel sounds.

It's like, goodbye, England's rolls, and all that kind of stuff. I hate it. And, right, mostly it's like goodbye england's rules and all that kind of stuff i hate it um and right mostly it's a good thing that these days the old rules the punk rules have melted away you know yeah um people used to talk of such and such being okay to like and you know that there were fairly strict rules on that yeah and that you people were either one side of the line or the other and it's good it's a positive thing that is gone it's a positive thing that people's view

of let's say Sting or Phil Collins are a bit more nuanced than just fucking horrible old dinosaurs but in this case I'm sorry I wish that wall was still standing kind of wall of China

tall I really do because fucking hell this whole thing about him being kind of canonised as a national I was going to say oh at least we don't see him on TV so much anymore have you put on I was watching some crap on channel 4 the other day

it was I don't know first dates or something and the ad break comes on and he was in no fewer than 3 ad, first dates or something, and the ad break comes on, and he was in no fewer than three adverts. First of all, he's in the John Lewis ad. Then he's advertising Snickers, right? No. And then, yeah, and then he's advertising

Nespresso machines. Why? Which I think might have been a sort of sub-thread of the John Lewis campaign. Right. And it's like, Jesus Christ, you know, have we not had enough of this guy? Well, he's got a film coming out next year, isn't he? I mean...

And he's doing his retirement tour. Yeah, true enough, which is going on for three years or so. This song, yeah, you're right, it was everywhere in the summer of 76. I even owned 30 seconds of it, right? Yeah.

Thanks to Noel Edmonds. Because I mentioned this on a previous show, actually. There was True Text 14. Yes. There was a flexi disc given away with jeans, True Text jeans, which had Noel Edmonds introducing snippets of pop hits of the day, and this was one of them. I've got to say, it's a good song.

I'm not a complete psychopath. This is a good song. And I do like some... I mean, I like Song for Guy a lot, for example. But this, yeah, it's a sort of free and easy pastiche of American soul, sort of Philly soul, I guess. I've no reason to believe that it isn't done with love he's a weird pop star when you look at

him now though, you watch this clip I don't think I noticed at the time that he was bald it's either that or I didn't think there was anything weird about there being a bald pop star, maybe it's because he had so much else going on visually with the big glasses and the, you know, stack heels

and the flared suit that it's just, you know, a minor detail. But you just sort of took it as a fait accompli. And in a way, Kiki Dee looks a less likely pop star. Yes. She's got the sensible bobbed hair of a new mum. Yes. And the pink dungarees of a play school presenter. Yes.

She basically, she looks like if Bill Oddie had a shave. Fucking hell. She's not a bad singer and she's done some all right stuff. Do you know the song Amoureuse? Yes. By her. I only discovered it recently. Actually, a friend of mine, Alexis Petridis from The Guardian,

does a club night in Brighton called Late Night Minicab FM. And the concept of that is that they play sort of gloopy ballads and stuff that you would normally completely discount. But when it's about 3 a.m. and you're pissed and you're coming home in a taxi and it comes on the radio, it just hits you with just the biggest wump of emotion possible and um and amaroos is a song that he played at that and i uh yeah i thought this is brilliant it's like a sort of wait we did didn't we discuss yes we did i can't help it mate i can't help it because you were on that one i don't care yes i'm talking about for fuck's sake this is this might have to be edited out I

can't have no I don't mind I'm I'm 51 I'm shameless about this yeah maybe I'm losing my mind a little bit but you know I'm it's inevitably I'm going to repeat myself you know unless unless I have some kind of massive document that's about 80 pages long of all my notes and I just sort of like you know do sort of control F on the word Kiki but there we go but this DJ night you talk about do the DJs actually talk over the songs and be a bit Brexit?

no not at all if I've DJed it myself I think I'm doing the February one well you need to have that vibe going to it maybe get to the really best bits of the song and just boom oh this used to be a nice area this did change done it you get no you need another you dj and you need another bloke sat next to you in a car seat dressed like driver 67 yes and uh give him a mic yeah yes now kiki d is is a really

good singer and is a better singer than Elton John. And what's more, this song is written in her range rather than his. And I think that's quite gallant. It means Elton is squawking horribly all the way through this because it's slightly too high for him, where she sounds fine. But I can't really have an opinion on this song.

In the same way, I can't have an opinion on Kevlar. It's just beyond me. You know what I mean? It's competent and it's effective, but it's like it's happening in a dimension that I don't understand or care about or feel connected to in any way. There's not really anything objectionable about it

apart from the presence of Elton John. And you can hear that it's neatly put together and it's extremely commercial. But it's like watching juggling or something. Do you know what I mean? Or a model train going round and round on a train set. The only pleasure or satisfaction to be had is from the smooth running of a totally predictable system and eventually you start to long for some sort of

fuck up just to make it more exciting or some kind of uh you know howl of feedback or something and it's never gonna happen the only thing that really gets through to me is the way the strings move through the empty space, which is good and the promise, the instantly betrayed promise of a bit of deeper feeling when you get to that chord change where it says oh, nobody knows it.

But then the song just flops straight back onto the track again and starts going round and round. And I hate their bits of business in the video larking about. Elton John looks well Reg Holdsworth in this doesn't he he does yeah. It's like the better

visor I have in a 70s night and his wigs come off and he's just styling it out. But this is the only visual interest in this video really is Elton John's crazy discomfort in his own piglet skin right he hates it

he hates being Elton John or at least he hates looking like Elton John he's at that stage of boldness where nowadays every man in the world would shave his head right because you haven't got a patch or a recedence no the game's up you don't have hair anymore you've just got a patch or a recedence. No, the game's up. You don't have hair anymore.

Yeah. You've just got a bit of fluff. Yeah. But he's got it there. But remember, there's only two bold men in the world in 1976. Yeah. Sex symbols. So your brain is still hanging about and Tully Savalas.

Right. Both sex symbols. Yeah, who gets mentioned in a song that's coming up in a roundabout way. But the thing is, he's got this terrible storm in his brain. He's got this complex self-image where he's obsessively vain, but

he also makes a point of wearing horrendously tasteless clothes. Like above and beyond the standards of 1976. And making himself look really foolish um and that's always a worrying combination like a bit of a red flag he's not just trying to look weird he's actively trying to make himself look stupid while at the same time being very self-regarding and very fussy and something isn't right there you know anyone anyone would think he was hiding something

um yeah and i remember this video being on all the time when i was young and i didn't like it then because to me it seemed then that pop music took place either in a distant universe of flashing lights and man-made fibers and it it sounded glossy and unearthly. Or it happened in grey utilitarian, old grey whistle test rooms, which looked like the execution chamber at Sing Sing, like this. In which case it would sound heavy and grown-up and nonsensical. But here you've got this couple of daft twats arsing about, but they're in this dreary old studio.

It's a bit like Gladys Pugh's studio in Heidi High, isn't it? Yeah, and it has all the raw excitement of that too. It just seemed like a confusing worst of both worlds. Now, come on, I want to say something here, which is, first of all, I've just been thinking, and I've realised that I'm probably in no position to have a go at anyone else for handling baldness in a weird way using distraction tactics right that's the first thing to say yeah right in Elton John's defence and also I think rather than even sounding like I'm grudgingly admitting that it's a good record, I think you've kind of got to say it's a brilliant record.

Yeah, it is. It's just, it's insanely catchy. We've all heard it a million times, but I would venture that if we'd heard it for the first time this morning, it would be stuck in our heads all day and all week. And it's just, the people doing it are the only off-putting thing. If it was by Billy Preston and Sy Rita, it would just, I'd be playing it all the time.

Do you know what I mean? Something like that. Or, I don't know, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell or whoever, you know, any other duet. And yet, when you haven't heard it for a bit, you never think about it because there's not really anything to it, right? But this is why I maintain that Elton John

was some kind of evil genius. Because last time he turned up on this podcast, I was on it, and it was some song that no one even remembers now, right? And I watched it, and I thought, yeah, whatever. Old time love, yeah. And it was in my head for about a week, despite having hardly any melody to speak of. So here we are with one of his greatest hits, right?

And I don't see any particular interest or value in it and it's been in my head for days and that takes a real wanker you know like a real a really talented bore like if you can write a song that all it does is block out people's other thoughts or or block out other more enjoyable songs, which could have been in their head. You know, it just... Do you like your other thoughts though, Taylor? No, but I like them more than Elton John's presence in my brain.

I mean, this song just lies in your head like musical sandbags just getting in the way. Do you know what I mean? But what a life that is the all that undeniable talent which elton john had and all you build with it is like polystyrene cubes to just stack up in somebody else's path you know uh i like rocket man though no but this this song to me it's you know it's mine in a vein that's being chipped at round about this time of British people having a go at the soul funk thing.

And the old sailor himself, he'd have success with it. But this really pulls it off for me. I mean, particularly as an eight-year-old, I would know no difference. I wasn't old enough to be a snob about it just yet. That would be about nine, I suppose. me you know i mean there's one song that we're going to cover in a bit and people see that as the definitive single of 1976 for many good reasons but yeah for me it's this one i mean fucking hell man if you put this song on and chucked a load of

ladybirds at my face for three minutes, I would be right in the middle of 1976, I'm telling you. I sort of agree, and I think in some ways it's because they present an aspirational view of adulthood because they come across as... They are the popular people, they're the fun people, they're the people having a good time. Exactly, yeah.

Right, in this song. And, yeah, you sort of think, well, I'd rather be that guy than, well, certainly the mid-year in fucking Forever and Ever by Slick. You know what I mean? I just think it's a shame that Kiki D never took her first manager's advice and went out as Kinky D. Really? Yeah, that was his suggestion of what her stage name should be.

But she rather prudishly said no. Oh, man, she would be wearing pink dungarees then on this if she was Kinky D. Yeah, that doesn't bear thinking about. She'd have nipped down to sex and got the... had the T-shirt with the two cowboys with the cocks out. So Don't Go Breaking My Heart ended the year as the second highest selling single of 1976

behind Bohemian Rhapsody save all your kisses for me bloody hell which is not going to be on this episode so don't worry the follow up a belated UK release of Benny and the Jets on his old label

would only get to number 37 in October but his official follow-up, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, would get as high as number 11 this month, and it's currently at number 17. And it will be another 14 years before he got his next number one with Sacrifice. If you're going to say anything about this song,

it's his one non-shit number one in the UK, isn't it? Yeah. That's Elton John and Kiki D, and don't go breaking my heart. And for the next announcement, it's over to you, Dave. Oh, no, you're not going to leave me to do it, are you? Control yourself, man. I wouldn't mind them on the top of my Christmas tree. It's legs and coals! We've already discussed Abra on numerous occasions and this song, the follow-up to Fernando

which got to number one in May of this month, was recorded in the late summer of 1975 under the working title Boogaloo. Three weeks after it was released, it knocked Elton John and Kiki D off the top of the charts in early September and it stayed there for six weeks. And here is the first appearance of the afternoon for the still reasonably brand new Legs & Co. I mean, first things first, you know, there's so much to talk about here.

But, you know, we've got to get this out of the way. Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Day. Oh, yeah. There's one being brandished on the end of a fork by DLT, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Are you against it? I don't know, man.

I mean, honestly, man, you you know I respect other people's religions and stuff like that but Yorkshire putting on Christmas Day that ain't right to me I wouldn't be sure I can't remember ever having Yorkshire putting on Christmas Day now you mention it

yeah I think you're probably right I don't know yeah but I think we need to unpack what Dave Lee Travis actually says here please do at the prospect of seeing Legs of Hope. Get the Stanley knife out.

Because he says, you're not going to ask me to control myself, are you? Which is a sentence that would be later heard backstage at various theatres where pantomimes were taking place. And then he adds, I wouldn't mind them on the top of my tree. And, I mean, that kind of gurgling sexism I suppose was standard for Top of the Pops and standard for the 70s but there is nevertheless something

stomach turningly bleak about it when it's witnessed from this era coming from the pube enccrusted mouth of Travis. But having said that, have a look at the Boxing Day edition, when Jimmy Savile introduces Legs & Co. Dancing to December 63. Holy moly. Yeah,

that's all I'm going to say. Okay. Having said that, you can see where he's coming from. Because this looks like if there was a porno version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Oh, yes. It's like Christmas obviously triggered something in Flick Colby. Because this rivals their performance of Sir Duke the following Christmas

as the most authentically erotic Legs & Co dance routine. Yes. Not so much because of anything that they're doing. I mean, in Sir Duke, they're dressed as sexy reindeer on the reins of a black Santa. And the overtones are pretty obvious, even before anyone had heard of pony girls or cared about the trope of black man as sex object.

But this sort of catches you off guard because it's just a scantily clad legs and coat, as usual. But there's something about the combination, and I don't think it's just me, there's something about the combination of the tiny silver bikinis, big fluffy white Cossack hats and gloves yeah um and all that stuff dangling from their wrists and hips well it's it's the it's the ferrets from the last episode exactly yeah yeah probably the same dead rodents that they would later use to pay emotional tribute

to john lennon yes but i i know i know what taylor means about the kind of pornographic aspect of it it's part of the camera angle they're shot from below most of the time at a very steep angle it's basically upskirt except they're not wearing skirts yes at first I wondered if it was just me

but no and you can see this from the fact that they're on a little podium in the middle of the studio and the audience is gathered round. And nobody's dancing. It's just loads of blokes just stock still staring. Some with their hands in their pockets. Yes.

And usually you watch Legs & Co. And any kind of actual sexual aspect is completely neutralised. Either by the atmosphere of sort of silly good humour you know like they're messing around in the attic with a dressing up box or by that air of classiness and very

careful propriety you know and neither of those things applies here so even with those fixed smiles which were plastered on all dancers and lingerie models and stuff in those days to try and keep it light, you know, and diffuse any awkward feelings. This is a performance which will make any viewer who is sexually attracted to women feel something unavoidably carnal.

And probably even a few who aren't normally sexually attracted to women feel something unavoidably carnal. And probably even a few who aren't normally sexually attracted to women. Of course, being eight-year-olds at the time, I would have just sat there and gone, they've got their knickers and bras on. I just would have looked at it blankly. Oh, yeah. If they had pinafores on,

Simon, you'd be well off. Shut up. That little doily on their head held on by an elastic band. Or if they were two-dimensional. By this time, they're two months into their stint, their five-year stint on top of the Pops. And, you know, we've had the Ruby Flipper, Farago, which I'm sure we'll discuss at some point we

still haven't done one with ruby flipper that's wrong but yeah they are all about peak satisfaction isn't it oh yeah but it's it's almost disturbing because even making it look so cheap and british by plonking them in that on that thing in the middle of the studio you can see all like stage hands walking around and cameras and stuff around the edge. It's not presented very well. But that, you can't escape it. That slight ironic detachment

with which we normally view Legs & Co. is banished. And you have to actually think about your own response for once. Yes. And it's almost a bit uncomfortable. I mean, in in 1976 the response seemed obvious and natural right unless you were an especially devout earlier doctor of feminism you dropped your satsuma and said for i'd love to give them one you know like davely dravis and of course nowadays yeah to say that

would be correctly considered quite vulgar and almost threatening um so nobody says it but obviously that's still what everyone's thinking just hopefully not in those terms yes it's a hard thing to even talk about because as soon as you mention it people think you're one of those jordan peterson kooks or something you know what I mean and also I'm well aware that in the hit parade of societal problems this is at best a top 40 breaker but

yeah I don't think we found a satisfactory middle ground between being a sexist pig and denying our own impulses as though they were sinful and wholly dark and destructive and I don't think that as a society we'll grow up until we find a way to do that but until then for a yeah what I'm saying is like fucking hell get a load of that essentially what you're saying

is what's wrong with being sexy yes yes, indeed. What's wrong with being sexy? Because they do look like the world's most erotic quality street tin on this, don't they? Oh, I don't like to unwrap them. Good song, though. Yeah, it's alright. Didn't really notice it. I think Taylor actually

wrote one of my favourite observations about Dancing Queen, which is that there's something kind of tragic about it. I think you said that the fact that somebody's singing, that they're having the time of their life at the age of 17 and that implicitly things are only going to go downhill from then on.

Yeah. And singing that line over the most sort of heart-rending chords in the whole song. Yes. I mean, I don't think there's sort of heart-rending chords in the whole song. Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's much doubt that this is the greatest hit of 1976 in terms of quality.

And every second of it gives off this weird snowy light, which is, at the same time, is joyful and unbearably poignant. And I think musically this is the absolute high point of ABBA as a pop group, writing and producing songs which are intriguing and sophisticated and immediately irresistible.

But also it's a fascinating song because just like this Legs & Co performance, it's really about the intersection of female self-expression and the male gaze, but in a subtler and more interesting way than if it had been made explicit. Because it's being sung by female vocalists, it's implicitly the female gaze,

and that adds another dimension to it. It's almost these sort of older women abba who i don't know how old they were maybe in their late 20s at this point uh you know no older were they and singing they were old yeah singing about um a girl you know they're observing from the edge of the dance floor essentially this this 17 year old is really beautiful and dancing everyone's eyes are on her and it's almost implicit in you know being sung by two women who are that much older that uh you know okay okay honey you know um you know you're you're enjoy your time while it lasts because it will pass i think that's kind of uh implicit in this because uh benny and bjorn knew what they were doing when when they were writing songs

when they were putting words in the mouth in the mouths of um frida and anieta um they they knew everything that um they they knew how to kind of weaponize that if you know what i mean like i mean the most famous example being winner takes it all but but even in this song I think rather than if it was one of Bjorn's rare lead vocals like Does Your Mother Know it would have a completely different flavour it would be quite creepy this song if it's being sung by Bjorn

do you know what I'm saying? Yeah I suppose, well it depends on how you delivered it I think, if you delivered it with a sort of poignancy and helplessness you'd get away with it um whereas if you if you if you growled it uh into your shirt collar maybe not but yeah i precisely either way it's a it's a really deep complex emotional record and the fact that it's also a camp disco extravaganza yeah is just

a measure of its achievement yeah absolutely and um in some ways um it's both the cause of abba being seen as um cheesy and it's one of the single strongest arguments against that at the same time um yeah you know you can hold up plenty of other songs as uh examples of uh abba's kind of serious claim to songwriting prowess um you know something like name of the game would probably be the first that would come to mind but but this one's got both it's it has got that joyous carefree um uh unironic abandon that it is um a pop song it's a it's a ridiculously euphoric pop song as well as you know being kind of heartbreaking with with the descending chords and all of that yeah but it yeah it's it's also quite quite complex for the reasons we've given and it's

it's all there so in some ways it you know it's almost the ultimate ABBA song it's got both sides of them and a friend of mine the DJ Errol Alcan actually thinks this is the greatest record ever made by anyone, well he did think that he's now changed his mind, this is the guy who's the cousin of Roland Browning this is the guy who's the cousin of Roland Browning from Grange Hill by the way

but he's changed his mind to Blue Monday but I think he got it right first time dancing queen certainly one of the songs, there's probably about 10 songs like this for me, that while you're hearing it, for those three minutes, it is the greatest song ever. And you will not take any argument that there's another song.

And I think maybe five or six of those songs are written by Nile Rodgers, funnily enough. But this is as good as any kind of white European european act have got to to that to that i would say yeah i mean to me it's just weddings 1976 and i know that you know when dancing queen comes on it's just you know whatever's happening everybody's just up off the tables sausage rolls untouched everyone's on the fucking dance floor yeah and it And it's an incredibly girly song that men like, or at least grudgingly respect. I wouldn't trust anyone who doesn't. You'd have to wonder if

they'd ever really listened to it. Yeah. I know. And of course this marks the main event in Top of the Pops land in 1976. Pants People Are Dead, Long Live Legs & Co.

Ruby Flipper, we barely knew ya. And there's going to be a very interesting compare and contrast later on in this episode. But for now, it's safe to say that Legs & Co. are being pitched as the sex people. And they're kind of living up to it, aren't they? For now. Yeah.

That's not a terrible sexist remark about, like, you know. What I mean is, later in the show, they come back with a somewhat less erotically charged performance. Well, yes. It depends what you're into, but yeah. So Dancing Queen would eventually be usurped by a tune that we'll be hearing later on and the follow-up Money, Money, Money is currently sitting in its highest position in this week's chart, number three. Yes, indeed.

That was the magnificent troupe of ladies known as Legs & Co. dancing to a big ABBA No. 1, and they will be on again later in the programme. I don't think my heart can stand it. And now, for a late newsflash, it's over to you, Reginald. Thank you very much, Andrew. And we've just heard from the Crimean War that the Light Brigade are not going to go ahead.

Oh, what? No charge? No charge. Oh. Now our little boy came up to his mum in the kitchen this evening while she was fixing supper. And he handed her a piece of paper he'd been writing on. And after wiping her hands on her apron, she read it. Travis and Edmunds pretend to be Reginald Bozenke and Andrew Gardner as they do a shit news-related joke about the Light Brigade

as they introduce No Charge by J.J. Barrie. Born Barrie authors in Ontario, Canada in 1933, J.J. Barrie was the manager of Blue Mink, the Six Funts British band who had number three hits with Melting Pot and The Banner Man and Ocean, the Canadian rock gospel group who had a US number two with Put Your Hand

in the Hand. After a spell as a stand-up comedian, he tried his hand as a songwriter, but it was this cover of the 1974 Melba Montgomery song No Charge that got him into the charts. The song, about a lad trying to get some money off his man for the chores he's done,

only to be told by her that she practically ruined her fanny for him, became a surprise hit in the middle of 1976, knocking Fernando by ABBA off number one. Fucking hell, I hated this song. It's a bit of a comedown after writing Peter Pan, isn't it? Yes. Well done. And a bit of a comedown after what we've just seen beforehand.

You know, we've had something for the dads, and now it's man time, isn't it? And DLT, of course, in his... I thought it was more like Alvar Liddell or John Snagg or something like that, that kind of old school BBC presenter voice he's got that voice on but they refer to each other as Reginald and Andy

but yeah he goes I don't think my heart can stand it so he's still like you know leering after Legs and Co have finished it's weird actually because out of these two and I know it's like would you rather eat shit or eat a shit sandwich, but there's something...

I find myself sort of preferring Edmonds to Travis. I mean, all right, we know literally what DLT's crimes are. They're actual crimes. With Edmonds, we all know what the charge sheet is. We've already mentioned in Chart Music's past his rant on Sky, on his Sky chat show about planning permission for Weald and Council and all that kind of stuff.

We've mentioned his kind of... Well, he opposes the licence fee. He wanted to buy the BBC. Fuck knows how he was going to do that. He opposes wind farms. You know, basically, he's awful. I think he's gone... Michael Lush.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Also, he's into the secret. So he thinks that if you open your heart to the universe and tell it what you want, the universe will answer your desires. And I know this is bollocks, just from the fact that no one has yet hogtied Noel Edmonds and thrown him

into a slurry pit. Whatever he might say, it's definitely not because I didn't want it enough. Oh Christ, yeah, that thing that he said to somebody on Twitter about, you know, basically it was their negative thinking that caused their cancer.

Yeah, he's in all that stuff he's a sinister man that stupid little fucking metal box that he advocates that sends out magnetic fields that supposedly prevents you from having cancer in the first place all that bollocks right so he's gone full-on mental in in the last few years um there's oh but he's been on i'm a celebrity so he's all right yeah well it's a national treasure once again. The thing is, he's actually... Did anybody watch I'm a Celebrity? No, I didn't. No, because I got...

I attended to for chart music. I've got a fucking life. But I watched like five minutes of it, and I just thought, you know what? I turned 50 this year. My days on this planet are numbered. I ain't going to waste on watching this cunt on this shit show. All I know is that he turned up dressed as a Roman emperor

with Harry Redknapp as his slave and he didn't last very long because this is actually sweet vindication I think for Tony Blackburn because Blackburn hates Edmunds. Edmunds is his nemesis isn't it? And Blackburn won I'm a Celebrity way back. Was it the first series even? He won

it and he must have been so happy. I just enjoyed when I saw the new story that Edmonds had been booted out I just thought Blackburn's going to be loving this I felt a sort of warm glow for Blackburn when that happened but another thing that makes Edmonds very much

a man of his time now is his views on immigration right because I looked into this I found this story on Reuters and what he said about immigration not long ago, he said I'm very straightforward on immigration, the bus is full we haven't got enough energy

we haven't got enough electricity and we haven't got enough of a health service and right, this is the bit I loved it's all British people running the national health service exactly, exactly right but this is the bit I loved he must think it's still got fucking Kenneth Williams and Charles Hortry running it.

Yeah, yeah. And Robin Nedwell. The Reuters story, right, described him, and this is such a brilliantly subtle put-down, described him as one of the country's most widely watched entertainers. One of England's loudest bands. Yeah, widely watched that's beautiful

not widely admired not widely loved just widely watched yeah but yeah so they fucking do their you know back and forth bit into this song and JJ Barry what a cunt or whoever

wrote it in the first place for a start he's a terrifying presence his nose is like some kind JJ Barry, what a cunt. Or whoever wrote it in the first place. For a start, he's a terrifying presence. His nose is like some kind of industrial vacuum cleaner. Yeah. Right? But this song, I absolutely despise it. Yeah. Because the kid just wants to buy some Top Trumps or Pocketeers.

Exactly, yeah. Or go down a swimming pool. Yeah, that one with the racing cars most likely where you have to turn it round and round and round and round and then after about 10 minutes you realise that the same thing happens every time this is a swizz

before this goes a bit too remember Spangles the song the child did not ask to be born when we're born we're thrown into an absurd universe which doesn't care that we're here. Yeah. So when the woman, the woman's doing that,

because, you know, J.J. Barry reads out the letter that the child writes, and all he wants is his fucking pocket money. Yeah. It's not even pocket money like most of us get, which is just given to you. Yeah. It's money that's given to him for doing

For actual household chores He's mowed the yard And because it's America that yard could be fucking massive It could be massive He's made his own bed in a time when quilts were Just a fantasy world He's gone down to the shop To get her fags and tampax

He's had to put up With his cunt of a little brother yeah he's taken out the trash he's worked hard at school and he's raked that fucking massive yard that he's mowed that's a solid fucking graft and yeah 14.75 what would that be eight nine pounds something like that in 1976 i'm not sure probably a bit more than that because you know we had a healthy pound then yeah he wasn't sitting about playing sabuto was he he was doing something and this and this is how he gets treated and what she offers in reply is for the nine months i carried you growing you inside me no charge yeah

right and it's kind of uh this histrionic delivery of of the female backing singer doing that yes who is vicky brown who is joe brown's wife is that right yes okay she's but that that deal is like those squeegee people who would step out in front of your car and start washing the windscreen and you didn't want them to and then they tried to get money out of you for it. It's the same logic. Yeah, and she basically lists things like looking after him when he was ill. Yeah.

Basically, she lists a load of things that if she didn't do them, the social services would have to be involved. Yes. Right? Yeah. She didn't mention for laying under your fat, horrible dad. Thrusted away no charge

and you know she talks about buying toys, food, clothes putting him through college which she hasn't done yet in the future and advising him and worrying about him alright well that's what mums do and I don't want to get all Jeremy Kyle about this

but if you don't want a kid put something on the end of it and then the kid at the end of it. Yes. Fuck's sake. Yes. And then a kid at the end, there's a twist, isn't there? The kid goes, paid in full. Yeah.

Like he's fucking Eric B. and Rakim or something. When I finished reading, he had big tears in his eyes, and he looked up at his mother and he said, Mama, I sure do love you. It's like, no, not in Brittany, man. Yeah, that's the worst thing about this. A kid would go, oh, God! Yeah, yeah, that's what I hate the most about this. The idea that any young lad

would respond to that with tears and a declaration of love. Like, yeah, rather than just by acting like he hadn't heard any of it and just repeating, yeah, but please. It's bullshit.

Kids are like cats. You can't reason with them. And they have near infinite patience and persistence when they want something, right? Yeah. It's like the same as I hate it in films where people are having an argument and someone delivers a cutting line,

laying down a hard truth, you know, about the other character. And the other character goes silent and looks ashamed and bows their head, which has never happened in any argument ever. All people do is double down. It's bullshit, man. What this song is,

it's a family-sized version of David Cameron's Big Society or George Bush Sr.'s Thousand Points of Light. The idea that we're meant to do stuff to help out just on a purely voluntary basis. And what it is, it's basically prepping us for Thatcherism. It's prepping us for the driving down of wages. You know, it's basically, it's setting us up for zero hours contracts and all that stuff. And it's, yeah, and it's meant to make us think.

It's meant to make us think, well, it fucking did make me think. It just didn't make me think what they wanted me to think. Yeah. It's as creepy in its way as that Red red sovine teddy bear when we did an episode also the inescapable sleaziness of jj barry's face clashes really badly with the content of this song right i know in those days it was hard to find a bloke over 40 who didn't look pickled with scotch and dark thoughts. So maybe that couldn't be helped but he's got

the smirk of a faith healer with wandering hands. Tax exempt. It's cultural content like this that adds your 1970s radicals talking about the destruction of the family unit

and were it not for the fact that the only other arrangements on offer seemed to be a recipe for even greater maladjustment you'd be you would be right there with them after one listen I mean the key memory that this song evokes is

the beginning of our summer holiday to, I think it was Chapel St. Leonard's again. And being in the car on the back seat, already fighting with my sister and my mum and dad arguing and they both got fags on and everything. And this song comes on the radio.

My mum's fucked off with the pair of us. And she turns around and says, you want to fucking listen to this um one of our teachers read it out in assembly at school oh no yeah no uh-huh did a female teacher sing along in the background they really should have done we had this teacher look this female teacher looked like joan baez she'd have loved doing that. Oh, man. Yeah. But, yeah, I just remember even as a kid thinking, oh, come on. Yeah.

You know, I mean, we just want to buy some sweets or something. Yeah. For God's sake. God. Yeah. God. Musically, though. Musically, though, this sort of comes towards the end of a long line of these talking records, right? Which often would be by non-singers,

like radio DJs or TV personalities, just holding forth about something, usually a stridently right-wing opinion. Yeah, we know who we're thinking of here, don't we? Yeah, there's been a few. Over a sort of stirring pop orchestra backing. There's loads of American ones from around the time of the Vietnam War where you get like a pro-war monologue.

There's a great one called An Open Letter to My Teenage Son by Victor Lundberg, which starts off quite reasonable then becomes nightmarish. There's one called The Americans, which was a patriotic speech given on the radio by a bloke called Gordon Sinclair and set to a backing of America the Beautiful. Then there's an answer record to that

called An American's Answer to Gordon Sinclair by Charles Ashburn, which takes a view of recent American history, which, to put it politely, is a completely deluded, self-serving fantasy. And all of this, by the way, parodied beautifully in The Simpsons when Homer's record collection is revealed

to contain an LP called These Things I Believe by Johnny Calhoun. Yes. A spoken word album of his right-wing political views. Johnny Calhoun, presumably named in tribute to John Calhoun, the 19th century vice president, champion of slavery, a la Stonewall Jackson, who the singer who did that song the minute men are

turning in their graves which is another pro vietnam war song sorry this stuff goes on and on it's a bit of an obsession of mine can i just applaud you for going on possibly the longest rabbit hole that chart music has ever sent anyone on that's extraordinary that's deep that's deep research yeah no i just it's all there it's all there unfortunately if only someone had done an answer record to no charge but i don't know someone like pauline quirk or someone like that yeah yeah oh and um and of course in country music the the talking ballad is a huge thing anyway like except that that's usually, that's more this tradition because it's usually really sentimental, right? Like, you know, Old Tighe by Jim Reeves.

It's one of the most inadvertently funny records ever, you know. But, so I mean, compared to the political stuff, it's like a breath of fresh air. But in any other context, this is like musical berry berry you know it's it's secular christian music is what it is which is a waste of everybody's time um al i sense that you're itching to discuss uh a british or shall we say anglo-canadian example of the talking yes yes huey green isn't it yeah i don't know this yeah stand up and be counted yes yeah it's his prescription for the ills of britain in the uh late 1970s and he meant it most sincerely

is he calling for national service stops slightly short of that but only just yeah if you've not heard it i'm sure it'll be on the video playlist oh it will be yes it will be but yeah this song fucking I mean country and westerns kind of like resurged hasn't it by the mid 70s in the UK but it's

it's not the country and western that that was any good it's country and western that's what it is yeah and someone should tell him orange buckskin doesn't go with that shade of blue. But he doesn't care, he's a family man. So No Charge stayed at number one for one week and it was toppled by a single that we'll be seeing very soon.

The follow-up Where's The Reason flopped and he never troubled the charts again even when he teamed troubled the charts again, even when he teamed up with God himself, Brian Clough, for the double-A side. You can't win them all. It's only a game. Oh, my God.

Yes. I never knew that. What a shame Cloughy didn't do a version of No Charge, responding to a transfer request from Trevor Francis. For getting you the fuck out of Birmingham, no charge for helping you score the winning goal in the European Cup final there's no charge young man

and he looked up at her standing there and said mum I sure do love you and then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote paid in full And Lord knows when you add it all up

The cost of real love is no charge When you add it all up The full cost of green left no charge No charge. J.J. Barrie, and that's No Charge. Oh, very smooth, very smooth. Go on, Annie, flash. tell us who's on next. You read the script, use your love.

All right. Next we got Laura Lardy and the Trial of the Lonesome Pine. On a mountain in Virginia Stands a lonesome pine Just below is the cabin home I can't help but notice that now on the table next to the massive turkey, there are two massive trifles. As it looks like that nobody's coming to Noel and DLT's party, and I can't imagine why,

you've only got to assume that they've actually demanded and got one massive trifle each. No Sherry. There's no way Nolan have a bit of trifle out of where DLT's been. There'd be beard hairs

in both of them, wouldn't there? Rightly so. But no, what a damn shame they're not sitting there later on just fucking pouring the trifle down the front in a binge pushing each other's faces in Travis makes a loaf of bread actually talk

as he introduces the trail of the lonesome pine by Laurel and Hardy with the Avalon Boys featuring Chill Wills. That was awful, wasn't it? That bread thing. That's the kind of thing your fucking uncle or you don't like would do. Yeah.

Make it spew out an argument for Brexit or something. What do you think, Mr. Loaf? We should go with WTO rules. Yes. Born in Ulverston, Lancashire in 1890 and Harlem, Georgia in 1892 respectively, Arthur Jefferson and Navelle Hardy were silent movie actors who teamed up in 1927 and made 107 Way Out West which featured this song which was written by Harry Carroll and Ballard MacDonald in 1913 and was based on the 1908 John Fox Jr. novel with the assistance of Theodore Chill Wills and Rosina Lawrence. Over a decade after both of them had died and their films were still being broadcast in the UK

particularly during the school holidays an executive at Warner Brothers in the UK, particularly during the school holidays, an executive at Warner Brothers in the UK put together a compilation of soundtrack dialogue and music from the films for his personal use, but it was immediately picked up on by the label, which put out the LP The Golden Age of Hollywood Comedy, which got to number 55 in December of 1975. However, this song, which was on the album, was played regularly by John Peel, which helped get it into the charts,

and to the astonishment of the label, it became the Christmas number two of 1975. Now, it's one thing having last year's Christmas number one on this year's Top of the Pops, but last year's number two? Because it did hang around at the top end of the charts throughout January, so it's got a shout to be in there, but it's like having last year's Beano book, isn't it?

Rewrapped for you. A little bit, yeah. I had no idea about that John Peel thing, by the way. I was wondering how did this become a hit? You very succinctly told us. Thank you. Yeah, you know, of all the things that John Peel might sort of claim, oh yeah, you know, I got Sex that john peel might might sort of claim oh yeah

you know i got sex pistols to number one or just something like that yeah who knew that it was actually laurel and hardy was you know who did the biggest favor for yeah but never mind john peel surely michael rod has got some part in this yeah because this was a screen test perennial yes wasn't it it was on the whole time yeah it's probably why this print looks so washed out it's the same bit of film they've shown a hundred times, stored under Michael Rodd's bed yeah, it was on all the time

you know how in Germany they're known as Dick und Doff and in Italy they're Crick and Croc and apparently in Romania they're known as Stan and Bran and in Ecuador they're known as stan and bran and in ecuador they're known as and on on screen test they were known as laurel the thin one and hardy the fat one as in you know what did laurel the

thin one say when hardy the fat one hit him in the face with a length of metal piping so i was about to say nobody under 45 would have a clue what I'm on about, but I mean, nobody under 45 is listening, so it doesn't really matter. But oh, if only David was there, he's quite the aficionado of L&H, isn't he? Yeah. Mr Stubbs has got the box set, I believe. He's really into them.

Hey, I got the box set. Have you? I'll have you know. Oh, yes. Alright. Well, go on, then talk. Tell us about Low and Arty. Well I love them. First of all everyone should have that box set of the films from the Hal Roach period because you can get it for almost nothing now

and you just watch it and discover the sheer simple joy of comedy pared down to its fundamentals and perfected through long, painful years of pratfalls and matinee performances. So you've just got these two doofuses

who can walk into a plank and fall on their arse, and you're sitting there with tears rolling down your face. It's like having neat pharmaceutical-grade comedy injected into a vein, you know, and it makes you laugh, as surely as a general anaesthetic will make you fall asleep. You don't have any control over it. You can't explain it, and you don't have to think about it.

It's just completely natural. And that's not true of all the film comedies from that era, like the silent in the sound era there's plenty of films where other people fall on their arses and it's just a massive bore you know but this is genius and i know a lot of people find it alienating because it's so old and they leave gaps for the laughter of the cinema audience yeah which makes the pacing really strange and in that silence you hear this massive hiss on the soundtrack like

the solar wind you know and to some people that's a bit distancing but you just have to let yourself go and really see what's on the screen and take it for what it really is and it's just the purest and most perfectly delivered comedy of all time

having said that the longer their films were, the less good they are. Because in the shorts, it's just bang, bang, bang. But when you introduce a full plot and other characters that you're meant to care about, you're really just diluting the essence. So the film that this comes from, Way Out West, is supposed to be one of their classics,

but I'm only mildly fond of it myself. It's got some very funny moments, but this isn't really one of them. Yeah, I mean, there's basically one joke in this, isn't there? There's one pratfall. It's when, you know, Ollie is getting a bit fed up with Stan showboating with his deep voice. And he gets the barman to hand him a mallet and he knocks him on the head. And suddenly Stan's singing with a lovely high voice of a Florence Foster Jenkins style singer

which is actually fairly funny but how that was enough for repeated viewing and listening to get it to number one I really don't Well they were always on 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. They were in the school holidays, weren't they, Laurel and Arda? Yeah, and that's my kind of knowledge of them. I think at the time, I wouldn't have even known if they were alive or dead still. I wouldn't have known.

I knew they were from the past, but I didn't know how far into the past. And also, I think there was a cartoon series of them around the same time, which confused matters further. I just thought they were sort of like this ongoing act. And when they turned up in the charts, that would

have compounded that, I suppose. Yeah. Very much the Edmonds and Travis of their day. Yeah. I do like the idea that if a large man hits a smaller man on the cranium with a mallet, it will cause him to sing

in a woman's voice. That seems a little bit bolderised. I think that, I'm sure there'd be warnings to the youth about that. Don't you think? But it's like it was meant to be a kick in the black and white bollocks. Yes. You know what I mean? But in a way that would have been less funny.

In the same way that, like when Rick Mayall and Adrian Edmondson do Laura Linardi's moves years later, they're less funny despite having more realistic violence and freedom to use profanities. It's almost like that polite 1930s distance makes it all seem much funnier, like with Hitler. Fuck it. So I was doing my research,

and I chanced across a copy of the Coventry Telegraph. And it had an advert for a night spot without the G. And it says, introducing the new tequila film and disco restaurants for that complete night out. and disco restaurants for that complete night out. Disco music every night featuring old movies and pop films including Laurel and Hardy singing their chart-topping smash hit.

That was actually a selling point. I mean, how many times a night? Is it like once an hour on the hour or something like that? Probably, yeah. Yeah, fucking insane. It is amazing. You know, the idea of the pop video

is still, you know, it's still an extraordinarily new thing.. It is amazing. You know, the idea of the pop video is still, you know, it's still an extraordinarily new thing. And this is it. This is essentially a pop video. Having said that, though, about sort of eight years later, my local disco in Barrie, Tramps, had a similar thing when the Michael Jackson video for Thriller came out. They showed it on a big screen and everyone just stopped.

Like, you know, everyone just gathered round and watched for about 15 minutes or however long it is. And that was enough to get people through the door that they had that video. So I don't know if Lauren Hardy had the same effect in the 70s. Got to take your ass off to them, but you don't want to because they might fill them with shaving foam or something like that.

Because I didn't know why it became a hit. I just thought it was one of those mad things that happens in the chart sometimes like um i remember in the late 80s um new york new york by frank sinatra suddenly became big and that was a hit again i again i didn't know why but me my mates were all fully on board with it it was it just it just made a change to hear something kind of old timey you know yes and authentically old timey as well I don't know maybe that's what people in 1975-76 got from this

well maybe it's indicating that you know pop music's really fucking on it's arse and yes because there are a lot of re-releases in the charts this year you know but well there's another one coming up yeah I mean the reason this song came about was because of a fanboy in high places yeah and we're going to see another example of that very soon right so the single was

never followed up they never darkened the charts again and they are not to be confused with the british reggae duo laurel and hardy which got to number 65 in march of 1983 with clunk click belt up dub a commentary on road safety which features the lyric if you were listening for in March of 1983 with Clunk Click, Belt Up Dub, a commentary on road safety which features the lyric, if you were listening for Jimmy Savala, you would not broke your left ankle. Like the pine, I am lonesome for you.

In the blue ridgerich mountains of Virginia On the trail of the lonesome pine That's Laurel and Hardy on the trail of the lonesome pipe What are you doing? I'm trying to clear up my dandruff That's shocking, isn't it? Yeah, I know Here's Tina Charles

Christmas Oh, I don't know. Yeah, it's the crumbs from his food that he brushes off and says, I'm just getting my dandruff off. Yes, that or the flecks of dead skin from his diseased cock, which he's been mauling. And they introduce I Love to Love by Tina Charles. Born in Whitechapel in 1954, Tina Hoskins was a backing singer

who began her solo career in 1969 with a flop single which featured a then-unknown Elton John on the piano. After a stint singing covers on the first series of the two Ronnies, she went back to session work, including backing Steve Hawley and Cockney Rebel on Make Me Smile, Come Up And See Me, and singing lead on the 5,000-volt single I'm On Fire. During this time, she hooked up with producer Bido Apaya, who created Kung Fu Fighting for Cole Douglas the year before, for the single You Set My Heart On Fire, which failed to chart.

However, this song, the follow-up, entered the top 40 in February of this year, then soared 20 places to number three, eventually knocking December 63 by the Four Seasons off the number one spot on Leap Day. And here she is, back, or sort of above, the top of the pop studio. This is a bit weird, isn't it? What they're trying to do here

well she's basically up here amongst the lighting rig isn't she yeah because David Stubbs when he's on this show is always talking about what's going on the darkness up in the corners of the screen and the lighting rigs and all that kind of stuff well here we're actually up in the lighting rig this is really odd up in the gantry where there's sort of TV

monitors and you know it's a health and safety nightmare you wouldn't get a pop star you'll get pop stars allowed up there now no but yeah it's she's the phantom of the top of the hopper it's a it's it's a rare view behind the scenes on top of the pop i quite like it actually as a gimmick as a one-off and you can even see a band waiting patiently below in sort of pastel jumpsuits i'm not sure who it is but presumably somebody who then turns up on the boxing day show yeah yeah it's what she's she's stuck up on this gantry like john motson all like wrapped up she's got a christmas jumper yes and a scarf it's a very rainbow we kind of like stripy one it's it's a very swap shop rig yeah well my first that was

dr who tom baker i thought she's, channelling that a little bit. But she's wearing all this cold weather gear despite being even closer to the studio lights than normal. Yes. And, yeah, it's an empty studio. I mean, my guess is that she had to record this earlier and then shoot off to do promotion in Luxembourg or something. But it does look very strange, especially there's a bit where the cameraman's shadow

suddenly looms over her. It's quite scary, like his hands are suddenly going to edge into shot and push her off, like house of cards. Thankfully, it doesn't happen. I've got to say, and I hope this doesn't make me as bad as David Travis, but I think she's lovely. I think she's really attractive.

Yeah. So there we go. That think she's really attractive. Yeah. So there we go. That's the beginning and end of that. I'm not going to make any weird noises or any more jokes about it. But yeah, I think we talked about Mum Disco in the previous episode with relation to the Nolans.

And this is Mum Disco, but it's a superior calibre of Mum Disco. It reminds me of uh a song that came i think that you after you're after this was love is in the air by john paul young it's got that kind of it's very light it's lighter than air and often i criticize um uh white english um faux disco records for having no bottom end but i think it's a strength on this record that has no bottom end because it does seem to just float and fly and i i like that about it um i've actually got a couple of bidu albums um bidu being a producer of this of course and and um they're really good but she

really brings something to it uh and and um it as well as him it comes from a good stable in terms of the song right and it's written by Jack Robinson and David Christie, who also did Strut Your Funky Stuff by Fran Teak a few years later, which is a brilliant tune. And even though he doesn't play on this record, Trevor Horne was the bassist in her live band. Oh, really? Yeah, and he was actually her boyfriend for a while.

And Jeff Down from The Buggles was also in Tina Charles' band. But yeah, like I say, he doesn't play on this record. But I think it's a very good record. It's routinely wheeled out as an example of terrible, cheesy, white English disco. Those people can fuck off. This is all right. I think it's a wonderful record. Thank God for white, cheesy British disco. Because it produced some of the best hits of the year. Yeah, this is great. it's i think it's a wonderful record yeah thank god for white cheesy british disco because it you know it produced some of the best hits of the year this is great i love this

record i mean it is a bit sort of tacky but it manages something really lovely it starts off as a sort of shift from foot to foot song right like a bit lumbering like a you know disco dancing dinosaur but the feeling slowly builds as it goes on and the song opens out and about halfway through it's become this beautiful swirl of rapturous frustration. And that's largely down to Tina Charles' performance.

It's a nice arrangement and a good sound but she brings it to life because she sounds like she's genuinely invested in this ridiculous and obviously made-up scenario right like if it had been i love to love but my baby just loves to drink that would be believable but it's okay look let's address the elephant in the room here right first things first i love to love but my baby just loves to dance i love to love but there's no time for our romance i love to love but he can't give our love a chance we'll dance until

we drop but if i had my way sundown instead of going downtown we'd stay at home and get down tina he's gay yeah he's gay yes next time he unaccountably refuses to bang you because he has to strut his funky stuff on the disco floor ask him what he thinks of tom selick it's it's like i put on i put on all my best victoria's clobber. I've been sending him dirty notes at work. But he just saunters off in his glitter shorts and roller skates. Just doesn't seem interested. No. No, but it's funny because usually in old songs, dance is a euphemism for fuck.

And in this one, along with We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes off by jermaine stewart it's one of the few where that's definitely not the case although i guess it could be a euphemism for bum but yeah um it's good but but she she sells this you know she's got such a trustworthy face. Yeah. You really believe her. Yeah. Poor love. Oh, and I'll tell you what else. Right, the great light entertainment historian Louis Barthes was taking issue with us, Al, on Facebook recently, if you remember. Oh, yeah.

You remember, he was complaining that people slag off the Top of the Pops Orchestra because, in fact, they had some very good musicians in. Maybe we just got unlucky because this is the top of the Pops Orchestra with a live vocal and it sounds fine. It sounds great. To the point where I actually had to A-B it with the record to check

that it's not the backing track, which it isn't. So in this season of goodwill let's all raise a glass to the merry men of the top of the Pops Orchestra. It's what they would have wanted. Yeah, before they snatch it out of our hands and neck it themselves. No, you are right.

And this is the problem that the BBC Orchestra have. They're at their best when you don't notice them. Yeah, yeah. True enough. And you only do notice them when they're at their most catch it. Also, you could almost say that this is better because one of the best things about the original record is the weird

spot echo on particular words in the bridge section oh stop and top but because they haven't got the right box to do it on this they have to do this weird like really weird spot echo that I think is done

manually while she's singing um and i can't impersonate it but if you see this clip you'll see exactly what i mean it's this very strange sort of immediate dead echo on it which uh is is yeah it's like dub it's not's not really psychedelic. But she's really belting it out. She's committing to it. She's quite a singer, actually. She is, yeah. No, she's great.

Every time you see her on telly, she always does a really good job and she always just seems like someone you would trust, you know, with a secret. Yes. She seems really nice. She's like the mum disco Donna Summer, Donna Mummer. I think the overall takeaway from this is that they've put her in the right fucking spot here and she's styled her way out of it.

Yeah, good for her. Yeah, one of the triumphs of this episode, I feel. You just want to sort of put your arm around her in a friendly way and say, look, Tina, I know you think that he's less randy than Thora Heard on a Sunday, but just go into the utility room, look behind the tumble dryer, see that hold all full of lube.

What do you think that's for? It wouldn't be lube in 1976 it'd be spry crisp and dry wouldn't it or something so I Love To Love stayed at number one for three weeks until Save Your Kisses For Me began its foul reign over Chartland

the follow up I Can't Dance To That Music You're Playing failed to chart but she'd have two more top ten hits in 76 with Dance Little Lady Dance and Dr. Love, which is currently number eight in the charts. But my baby just comes to me and just needs love of our BBC crossword puzzle. They keep moving the clues around all the time. I know, I know. It's terrible. Knock, knock. Who's there? Wurzel.

Wurzel who? Just down the corridor. It's just on the right past the... I drove my tractor through your haystack last night. Oh, I, oh, I. I threw my pets far. Get your dog to keep quiet. Oh, I, oh, I.

There's a crap knock-knock joke between Travis and Edmunds before that. But before that, just for a second, I noticed, and it's quite intrusive once you do notice it, that the fade between clips is quite futuristic for 1976. Yes, it's like a Commodore 64 loading screen. It is, or a bit like the Gold Run on Blockbusters where it goes all hexagonal sometimes. Kind of blocky, one-bit graphics, which I thought was kind of interesting. At the time, it probably would have been mind-blowing.

Oh, the future? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Why, it's just like January 1977. This record, though, very much not the future. Formed in Nailsea, Somerset in 1966 by the singer-songwriter Aj Cutler, who doubled up as Ackerbilk's road manager and a cider mill worker, the Wurzels were originally a conduit

for Cutler's scrumpy and western songs, including unofficial Somerset anthem Drink Up Thy Cider, which got to number 45 in February of 1967. When Cutler died when his MG sports car crashed into a roundabout in Chepstow in 1974

the band decided to carry on but without their songwriter they tried their hand at redoing popular songs of the moment and almost immediately hit the jackpot with this interpretation of Brand New Key which Melanie took to number four in January of 1972. This is the song that ended the reign of No Charge and it got to number one in June of this year. Oh, the Wurzels, this is an eight-year-old I approved wholeheartedly. Yeah, me too. I've been to Adge Cutler's grave. Really? Yeah, I used to go out with a girl from Nailsey for a couple of years

and there's pretty much nothing to see in Nailsie apart from Adge Cutler's grave in the churchyard. And also, there's a bronze statue of him outside a pub in Nailsie. Nice. That's how proud they are of him and the Wurzels. Yeah, right, you're so... Adge Cutler was... Did you pour out half a can of scrumpy jack?

I'd never go anywhere without a woodpecker or a strongbow, you know me. Adge Cutler was... I mean, some people would say he's the Brian Wilson of the Wurzels, but in a sense, he's more like the Dennis Wilson, right? Because Cutler literally worked in a cider mill, so he was the real deal, like Dennis Wilson was the only beach boy who could surf. Yes. But, of course, he was dead by the time this came out. Yeah.

Yeah, and a very unworthless death yeah i'll say he should have been trampled by cows yes so there are three pieces now aren't they and um his replacement as lead singer pete budd is this fucking they're like the supremes aren't they of of the west country yeah he is the cindy bird song somerset he's this fred west looking mother yeah he's eyebrows but a song of Somerset he's this Fred West looking motherfucker with his eyebrows a really nice friendly Fred West but he haunts my dreams I'm afraid

he's fucking frightening you might actually get into that car this is the danger yeah I think I found this fairly jolly at the time I think I quite liked it. And at that age, well, a lot of things would have passed me by. The fact that it was a sort of cover or a parody of the Melanie from the UK,

that would have passed me by. Yeah, it was just a real proper song about real issues. Yeah, I did. And also the Combine Harvester penis metaphor would have, you know, I drove my tractor through your haystack last night. That would have completely... Which is almost the same as the opening line of Sex Farm by Spinal Tap. Funny you should say, talk about dreams and veer towards the sexual nature side,

because the other thing that springs to mind about the Wurzels, whenever I see this, was the letter in Viz where someone wrote that they had an erotic dream that they're in their living room naked and masturbating well the members of the Wurzels looked on and said ooh ah in a sultry manner as he brought himself to

issue you know what though in a weird way like lots of the records that we've talked about from the 70s are things which uh uh made me imagine what it's like to be a grown-up like what grown-up life is like in a way i thought maybe being a grown-up was a bit like this that yeah you know you just have a jolly time drinking cider yeah and just just seem you know seem like you're having a right good laugh yes and i i think yeah i think I quite liked it at the time yeah this was their big year

of course because they had that what was the other one I am a cider drinker which is like Una Paloma Blanca this year yeah

but and you could it's so of its time as well this one because it's got a Kojak reference in where Pete Budd goes who loves me baby yes

and they're they're gamely fighting off the balloons like there's too many balloons really i mean it's all very well it's like boy george all over again isn't it yeah it is that that's maybe the only comparison that will ever be made but although i can imagine the having to go at karma chameleon that's kind of within their remit but um the uh the other thing i know about um the wurzels how they kind of re-entered my life for a little while, and this is the second time in two episodes that I'm going to mention British Sea Power.

The Wurzels have a weird relationship with British Sea Power. The Wurzels recorded British Sea Power's song Remember Me, and in return, British Sea Power recorded this song, and they gigged together at the Forum. And I don't know how it came about. It's one of those weird hook-ups like Schwoddy Woddy with Ernst & Zender Neubauten or something like that.

Yeah. Really improbable hookups. But that happened. They're like a slightly more credible mum for these sons. Or Britain's answer to the band. Yes. But, I mean, they really are because that mixture of yokelism and vaudeville

does tap into genuine British traditions, including musical traditions. Yes. And it's not really the worzel's fault that those traditions are generally worthless and nauseating um but i actually lived in the country when this came out um this is uh i've told this story before we my dad bought his mates falling down old cottage for about 15p and had to move in and put stairs in and all this sort of stuff and we moved into it right it was in the country right next to a farm

and I discovered that I sort of hate farms it's cool that at the age of about five or six I got to roam alone through the woods and by the river and through the farm in a real 70s public information film style you know like a a one boy remake of apaches just escaping by the skin of my teeth every time um and i do like how it means that all my memories of that age are so strange and rural and folk horror-ish yeah before i was pitched back

into the crimpling suburbs in about 1979 but yeah what i learned is that farms are shit. They're full of shit. They smell of shit. You have to work like a freak all year round just to survive. Up at 4 a.m. in sub-zero weather, shoveling dead lambs into a plastic sack. And worst of all, they're the real countryside. This is not the lush, carefully sculpted landscape that we urban folks see out of the car window. It's not like the poet's sun-dappled idyll.

This is the real thing. This is how we'd all have to live if the solar flares knocked out all our power and all our knowledge and data was suddenly and permanently irretrievable. it's a place that's all about killing and toil and shit yeah right lots and lots of shit all over your boots down in your fingernails in your lungs and horrible machinery grinding silhouetted against the light and electric wires to keep the pigs in place and you know even in the even in the shady orchard where the farmer got all the local kids which

is basically me and a load of uh gypsy kids from the caravan site to pick apples and cherries for free um everything's seething with parasites and worms or deformed and diseased because nature's a cunt you know and in in this respect the Wurzels are the most authentic British country band that we've ever had because they've got all those nose hairs and ears hairs and you know and they're bent faces and and you know shitty boots yeah and they're non-idyllic vibe yeah and that's why i hate them because they're too real and i i hope one day he's plowing his field and he turns up a cursed amulet he picks it up who are what what be this and that's the last you ever hear of him you know what, in a way

I link this together with the JJ Barry record because in the same way that in my mind, country and western music and I still call it country and western in my mind, it's just like I still think of metal as heavy metal it's kind of represented in my mind by things like i still think of metal as heavy metal um uh it was it's kind of um represented

in my mind by things like no charge and by other very cheesy um uh country western songs of the 70s folk music right my my dad loved folk music and and i instinctively flinched away from it because for me probably the three records that uh represented folk to me were this and uh day trip to banga by fiddler's dram right and all around my hat by steel and span right that was what folk music was i i hadn't heard you know i wasn't listening to fairport convention or bertie and sure anything like that you know i'm saying so so this is just what it was to me that's you know when my dad said oh yeah i'm going to a folk, one day you should come with me. It's like, in my mind,

there's people sat on tractors. Wellies on. Probably was, actually. And the thing is, I remember watching one of those kind of I love the 70s type shows and Stuart McConey, I think he was talking about

Harvey Smith, and he said that the 70s were a very Yorkshire decade. Well, for me that the 70s were a very Yorkshire decade. Well, for me, the 70s were a very Somerset decade. Right. And the words were part of the reason. It was for me anyway, right, because our TV aerial pointed to the West Country.

Right. It's also due to the topography of South Wales. And you were HTV, weren't you? Holic. Well, HTV for ITV, but HTV West, not HTV Wales. This is the crucial thing. So we had HTV West and we had BBC West. So the local news programme was Points West.

So just because of the hills and valleys of Wales, if we point in our TV area and try to pick up Welsh TV, we just get nothing. So instead, I knew everything that was going on in Trowbridge and Stroud and Froome and Yeovil, I knew everything that was going on in those places but nothing about what was going on

in Splott or Cowbridge or places just around the corner that was like me that was like me 1976 it's still ATV which is the whole Midlands but you've got nothing but west propaganda so all the local news would be about coventry and birmingham and yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like

being in east germany and you could only pick up you know deutsche rundfunk or something yeah we were sending those signals over the wall yeah so that you would understand there was a better life on this side and i'd'd also mention Pam Ayres. Even though everyone thinks of her as a West Country poet, she's actually from Oxfordshire. But she's from that bit of rural Oxfordshire where people do talk in a very West Country accent. So, you know, people just lump her in with the Wurzels and all of that.

So all of this, for a start, Somerset felt like a second home. And also because it's just over the water. We'd be nipping over there to Bristol Zoo all the time and stuff like that but um also because the tv thing so the wurzels having hit records did feel like a bit of a home win but yeah the world's considered a good thing and you know even now i go and see him this comes on it's like i wouldn't travel to see them but if they were playing like you know half a mile away i'd go why not yeah and what a shame they couldn't keep it up you know spoofing popular hits of the day. Well, they're better than the Baron Knights.

Yes. For that kind of thing. Much better. Yeah, all tailored. Yeah, talking of which, we covered your first song you ever bought. Yeah, so I hear. Looking back on that song now,

because we were wondering when we were eviscerating it, we did wonder what your thoughts would be and if you'd defend it nowadays. No, it's terrible. Good. As long as I know. So Combined Harvester managed to stay at number one for two weeks before yielding to You To Me Are Everything by The Real Thing. The follow

up, I Am A Cider Drinker got to number three in September of this year and then have one more chart hit in July of 1977 before going back from whence they came back to the country to get their heads together obviously however they had a resurgence as a student union band throughout the 90s and a re-release of combine harvester got to number 39 in august of 2001 sadly their cover of don't look back iner and a re-recording of I Am A Cider Drinker with Tony Blackburn

failed to chart in 2002. Unbelievably, I've tried to research this because I've had it in my head, but no, they didn't call themselves OUACES. Arr, you're a funny-looking woman, and I can't wait to get my hands on your land. Ha-ha! Woo-hoo! Oh, hey! And I can't wait to get my hands on your land. We are, we are indeed.

The Wurzel's having a raving time over there. We come now to a gentleman who's been over to Scandinavia, he's been to Amsterdam, he's conquered America and Russia, and a big shout from 76 for Cliff Richard, Devil Woman. I've had nothing but bad luck Since the day I saw the cat at my door Edmunds is suddenly eating a banana for... I don't fucking know why. Haven't you always wanted to see Noel Edmunds eat a banana? Like Mario Montes. It's that great traditional Christmas food, the banana.

We've covered Cliff Richard in Chant Music 15 and 1976 has seen a bit of a comeback. After Diminishing Return set in in 1974 he put out the comeback single Honky Tonk Angel, a cover of the Conway Twitty song. After it was released however he was told that the song

wasn't about a lady piano player at all but was southern American slang for a prostitute and refused to promote it on television and eventually got it pulled from the shelves. In late 1975 it was decided that Cliff would reposition himself as more of a contemporary rock artist with his comeback LP I'm Nearly Famous and the first single from it miss you nights took five months to get to number 15 in march of this year while the lp came out to rave reviews in the heavyweight music press eventually getting to number five in the album charts this song was released and it got as high

as number nine in june of this year now two things firstly only number nine that's ridiculous because i had this song everywhere. But also, why is Top of the Pops putting it on their Christmas show if it only got to number nine? That's a bit odd. Very strange. But Cliff was kind of Mr Establishment and Mr BBC. Yes.

What's more, he gets a really big intro from DLT who says, he's conquered America and Russia. Yes. That's what he says about Cliff Richard. Like by shooting laser beams out of his eyes as he stomps across the Pacific Ocean knee deep. He's shooting a beam out of his crotch in this clip though, have you noticed?

Yes. They've got these kind of spotlights that are somewhere behind the audience and he it's filmed in the round and it's angled quite a lot of the time so that when he's standing with his legs just slightly apart this kind of beam of light is coming from his cock at the camera it's quite an extraordinary effect especially from cliff richard of all people yeah and then it's overlaid with this kind of fire that's burning as well because it's his satanic classic. Yes. It's basically about

beware of goth chicks, isn't it? Yeah. He's a goth pioneer. But yeah, he's doing his danger dancing again, isn't he? Oh, yes.

Just to emphasise it. He gets down low. This is the very crucible of danger dancing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing. It's a really good song but the problem is with his danger dancing he looks like someone trying to go to the toilet for a piss at

four o'clock in the morning and can't be bothered to turn the lights on it's a bit like the child catcher or a bit like somebody in a sort of victorian musical doing like telling a scary story you know sort of like and what happened next was you know doing that thing with his hands and all that I really like Miss Unites the ballad that you mentioned that was the first single off the album when I DJ'd at Late Night Minicab FM that was one

of the songs I chose it's a lovely song but this it's one of those ones I think it's he or it has been reappraised enough now that only an idiot wouldn't accept that it's a great record. But were that not the case, I would be saying, oh, well, if so-and-so sung it, and I don't know who that so-and-so would be, you know, but if somebody's slightly cooler, then everybody would just recognise what a great song

it is. It doesn't come from the most promising of songwriting stables because it's christine holmes who was a former crackerjack presenter among other things and terry britain terry britain ended up writing what's love got to do with it you know whatever um he also wrote bang bang for b.a. cunterson oh dear so yeah speaking of whom um this late period Cliff Renaissance, well I say late, it's early mid period Cliff really, when he put out the string of half decent records

over a course of a few years, padded out with a lot of junk. But there's, yeah, there's this, Miss Unites, We Don't Talk Anymore, Carrie.

Yes. But Carrie is B.A. Robertson's one bargaining chip when he finally meets B.A. Robertson's one bargaining chip when he finally meets St. Peter Wired for Sound as well wasn't that him yeah but Wired for Sound something about it suggests that B.A. Robertson's fingerprints on that

had a detrimental effect whereas there's not really anything wrong with Carrie so you have to say this is B.A. knocked it out of the park. Yeah, knocked it off. But then that's it. Because after that, it's straight into daddy's home

and a clear run of shit, you know, all the way to death. Yes. And tennis with Mike Reid and golden showers with Mary Whitehead. Is it time for me to tell my devil woman story yet? I've been waiting for this. Come and sit by the fire everyone.

Right Pop Craze youngsters, plump up your cushions because this is one of my epics. Alright, when I was... And I don't know what's coming so... You don't know what's coming? No. No I do and I still can't hear this record without laughing because I just remember Simon's story.

So this would have been maybe about a year later. And somehow Devil Woman by Cliff Richard had passed me by. This is an important detail of the story. I wasn't familiar with the song, even though it was a number nine hit, as we now know. So I was at barry hang on let me get this right i was at romilly junior school in barry and we had a school outing to cardiff to um sophia gardens where there was a classical concert because the school thought that

would be improving yes to go to a classical concert and uh it was the the Hallé orchestra with the Vienna Boys Choir and um and we were just quite excited to be out of the school and just going to a thing didn't really matter what it was so we're all sat there um in in in the in the seats um waiting for the show to start and the row of seats behind us were taken up by what, in retrospect, I imagine must have been the inhabitants of a care home who were out on a treat, on a jolly, mostly elderly people. And there was this one lady, bless her, directly behind me who probably didn't really know what was going on anymore. She was probably in advanced stages of dementia with hindsight. She had no teeth in. Her limbs were flailing all over the place

and she wasn't really looking at anything. And which is, you know, it's not something I would ever want to make fun of. But the funny bit is how children react to this stuff. Because children are awful. Children are absolutely awful. Yes. Now, and in a way, this is similar to Bummer Dog, is how children react to this stuff. Because children are awful. Children are absolutely awful. Now, and in a way, this is similar to bummer dog,

because the thing that's funny about bummer dog isn't so much a dog bumming kids, it's the way that kids react to that by calling it bummer dog. So it's kind of in that vein. So my mate David Thomas, who was sat next to me, nudged me and indicated this woman behind me with her gummy toothless mouth and all of that. And he started singing to me,

Beware the gummy woman with evil on her mouth. Beware the gummy woman, she's going to get you from behind. And I just laughed. I laughed in that way that you probably only laugh at the age of ten

Where you absolutely Double up And you're in pain And you have a stitch laughing Because nothing else Matters in the world And he passed it along the line And everybody was sort of

Just pissing themselves And laughing At you know This gummy woman song And I didn't even know It was a Cliff Richards song I just thought he'd freestyled it Right

I thought he made it up If anything I thought it was loosely based on Remember you're a womble um so so absolutely you know to this day as taylor says i'm glad that i've spread the kind of earworm to him um when whenever i hear this song i'm i am 10 years old again and laughing very cruel laughter um some elderly lady but really just it's at this distance, I'm more just laughing at what kids are like. Do you know what I mean?

When I was watching this episode for the first time, preparing for this, I paused it and went upstairs. This song was in my head. I found myself singing involuntarily, Beware the gummy worm after all these years and people like her are pretty

much Cliff Richard's audience nowadays isn't it true enough, fucking hell I remember I moved back to Nottingham a few years you know about 15 years ago and so and I went out one winter with my mates and we're outside the Royal Concert Hall and I'm going around going oh fucking i

didn't realize things were so grim in nottingham look at all those old people sleeping out and they've got they've got beds and they've got they're all wrapped up and everything's fucking terrible what's going on and i went up i said you all right what's going on i said oh yeah we're we're queuing up for cliff they were queuing up in the dead of fucking winter all night in the middle of Nottingham, which at the time was pretty fucking Wild West, to get tickets for Cliff Richard at a date that they might not be alive for. Yeah.

Insane. And then you see it every year. And which he might not be alive for. Yeah. Yeah, this is the terrifying thing. People, like, there's all buses going around London now And which he might not be alive for. Yeah. Yeah, this is the terrifying thing. There's all buses going around London now with advertising Fleetwood Mac concerts that are like about 18 months away or something.

And it's like, nothing like confident. Yeah. I'll tell you what, you've got to say though, even though this is a brilliant record, in a silly kind of way. And he's got a good band on it so it sounds good and it it sounds kind of contemporary without being too forced yeah you you still come away from it hating him because it's mainly it's that bit where he goes on about her feminine ways yes right now some of the fact that he pronounces it wrong which is annoying.

By feminine or feminine he seems to mean the occult. Yes. Which is coming from this supposedly sexless Christian nut you know. This is the thing isn't it? He's a fucking damaged lunatic

like all religious people who don't have to be religious. Yeah. If you're 86 and wobbling, or if you've been terribly unfortunate in some way, I can kind of understand it, right? But Cliff was a young, good-looking, successful guy. Yeah. So you know that he's a nut, right? Because it makes him seem so untrustworthy that he found religion in that at that point in

his life you know and so yeah of course here he is now directly equating femininity and the forces of darkness yeah like all his monotheistic mates right he looks between a woman's legs and he just sees a pentagram it's typical mind you a lot of the goth chicks I know, that is... Anyway, that's not very good. But yeah, I pity Sue Barker for having to deal with this fucking psychotic... I bet he used to make her wear devil horns

and ram tennis rackets up his arse. She's just a tennis woman. Yeah, she had to address him as Nazarene. Seriously, if he if he hadn't been able to sing like a nightingale

he'd be lifting weights in prison now yes with his eyes gouged out by a bloke called Mickey the Swan with a government issue

spoon sharpened to a point over a period of seven months yeah fuck Cliff fuck Cliff he's what's wrong Government issue spoon sharpened to a point over a period of seven months. Yeah, fuck Cliff. Fuck Cliff. He's what's wrong.

Anything else to say about this? I mean, at least he didn't put it on straight after erotic quality street. No, he would have liked that, though. I think Cliff would have thought, yeah, he would have appreciated the opportunity to comment on those licentious hussies. Yes. So the follow up, I can't ask for anything more than you, babe, would get to number 17 in September of this year. And he'd have to wait three more years for his next big hit when we don't talk anymore. Got to number one for four weeks in the late summer of 1979. got to number one for four weeks in the late summer of 1979.

And in 2017, this song was featured in the film I, Tonya as the theme music for Tonya Harding's Horrible Mam. Oh, yeah. Which is a brilliant film, by the way. Yeah, I've not seen it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely worth watching. She's just a devil woman with evil on her back Beware the devil woman, she's gonna get you She's just a devil woman Well, what an amazing year it's been for Cliff Richard

and it's also been an incredible year for the Swedish band ABBA. They've had three number ones and here they are with an Italian song. No, wrong, wrong, it's not an Italian song. What do you mean? No, it's Liverpool. Liverpool. It can't be Liverpool. It is, cos when the kids came home from school hungry, they knocked on the door and went, Mamma mia! so DLT takes this next link and basically he uses Edmonds as his straight man

for a terrible, terrible joke where he claims that Abba had a big hit this year. Well, actually, Noel sets him up for it. Noel says Abba had a big hit this year with an Italian song and DLT butts in and corrects him And goes no it's a Scouse song And Evans goes no what do you mean

And he goes It's when kids come home For their dinner in Liverpool And in a Scouse accent go Mamma mia And basically that's it That's the joke By DLT standards that's quite good

It's another excuse for him to crack out His perfect Liverpool accent. Yes. Well, it's something, yeah. I mean, I suppose at least it's a specific, located Northern accent this time. But one thing you notice with Travis and Edmonds and just 70s people in general is that Northern accents are their go-to voice for something. It's almost a substitute for humour.

Yes. If they haven't got a joke, they'll just say something in a silly northern accent. Yeah. Which I think happens later on in the show as well. Can you imagine Travis is quite upset that he didn't get to reprise Laurie Lingo in the dipsticks for either of the Top of the Pops Christmas specials in 1976?

Yeah. Hey, that's a big waggon. Christ. So we've discussed ABBA just now in this podcast, really. And this song, the follow-up to S.O.S., which got to number six for two weeks in October of 1975, was the first new number one of 1976. This was the stud that finally took down Bohemian Rhapsody

on the last day of January. Wow. S. January. Wow. SOS was quite a big hit, but I think this is a song that kind of established ABBA as the coming thing that wasn't going to go away pretty soon. Right. Mostly known in my school in its vulgar playground variant, I have to say,

which is far too childish and lavatorial for me to share on such a prestigious podcast. Go on, force yourself. Go on, it's Christmas. If I just say that it begins Mamma Mia, it's diarrhea. You can probably work out the rest of the lyrics yourself. We were not afraid of using the obvious rhymes, put it that way. Did it rhyme brokenhearted with farted by any chance?

Yeah, yeah. Who'd have thought? The rest writes itself, by any chance? Yeah, yeah. Who'd have thought? The rest writes itself, doesn't it? Yeah, this song. Well, it's a less effective SOS, but it's still incredibly great. Yes. And it's a measure of their brilliance

that a lot of their songs either sound very complex in their arrangement or composition, but are actually really simple., but are actually really simple, and others are actually really simple and sound really complex. Just the delicacy of the light and shade and loud and quiet in the backing track and the precision with which it's put together, it makes all these songs sound like works of great complexity, even when they're actually really simple, like this one.

And if you can get all this stuff precisely right every time, which they could, yeah, you really are extraordinarily talented and you really can be trusted. Yeah, this is one of the key kind of exhibits in the case that ABBA are high camp. But nevertheless, it's a brilliant song. and it's not either or with that there's no reason why you can't be both um it's not as good as Dancing Queen but ABBA spoiled us I mean like the Swedish ambassadors with a plate piled high

with with with musical frero roches they absolutely spoiled us um us because if this was a one hit wonder and this was their song, we would look back on them with absolute affection for this amazing song, but with ABBA it's just another one of their hits, do you know what I mean? So at least we get to see them this time and this

song, I think I'm right in saying was the start of that face to face, backto-back switch around thing that Frida and and Anieta used to do which of course has been like just copied down the years by everyone from Erasure to Lady Tron and uh and of course by actual ABBA impersonators but um I think this was the first time they did it which is a cool little gimmick it works really well on video as well um the the weird thing is this song is more complex than it needs to be because um i can never latch on to the intro

because um he what he does and it kind of pushes the drama of the song along a bit is um he changes um the chord like a beat before he needs to um and a beat before the vocal melody does every time and it adds it adds a sort of edge of suspense and um kind of it means that you can never settle into the song and and uh that you know i that's a really clever trick and he didn't have to do that um i'm talking about um benny the pianist yeah um and um another reason i'm really fond of benny from abba my dad looked like Benny from ABBA as a young man and he really did

and one time my dad was up in London on a record buying expedition and he got mobbed by Japanese tourists who thought it was him and of course he signed autographs for them and posted photos or whatever because you would wouldn't you

you don't want disappointment so yeah I like him because of that I kind of found myself fascinated by the backing band here because you've got these musos I don't know if they're ABBA's kind of regular band who went everywhere with them or if they're just sort of BBC

you know stand-ins no they had a regular band did they? it's just you stopped seeing them after a while BBC stand-ins. No, they had a regular band. Did they? It's just you stopped seeing them after a while. All right, yeah. Well, the drummer looks like Eric Idle. I couldn't get that out of my mind.

The other thing I couldn't stop noticing, and this slightly upset me, is that obviously they're miming and Frida smiles as she sings. So it looks like she's singing Vava Via instead of Mamma Mia. That kind of bugs me a bit. But that's all I've got on this song. See, I'm fascinated by Benny's hair,

which seems to have maintained the same degree of slightly receded thinness for 45 years. And I don't know how that's possible, but it's really impressive. Yes. And the only other person I can think of who's got that is Brett Anderson

who may actually be his less talented lost younger brother who knows they're dressed quite tastefully in this as well they've got blue satin trouser suits it's not really day wear compared to some of their stuff looks a lot better than your description of it put it that way satin trouser suits which you know i mean it's not really day wear but it's you know compared

to some of their stuff it looks a lot better than your description of it put it that way i was reading recently about their tax deductible costumes did you see this this is why they spent this is what they say now anyway well they spent so much on their outfits because in swedish law you could claim the cost of stage costumes against tax. So they spent as much as possible on the gear. But it's weird. As much as I love ABBA, so much of them and so much of what makes them great was actually a reaction against the kind of scandal socialism that we all revere.

And it's quite weird I mean it's that's fine when you're talking about them deliberately going all out commercial and pop because they were so sick of the sort of earnest fishing cap wearing fake

prole censoriousness of the Swedish folk scene right which was apparently very dour and there's a very sort of dour left wing orthodoxy but it's kind of a bit much when it gets to you know I might have to give up a grand to be spent on a hospital

so I'll buy some flares instead to make sure they don't get it which reminds me a lot of the deeply spiritual and god consciousconscious George Harrison, who, aside from writing Taxman, apparently as soon as he knew he was going to die, he did some palaver with his estate

and transferred some into Switzerland so he wouldn't have to pay full death duties in Britain, even after he was dead. And apparently Derek Taylor, the Beatles' old PR man, who was a great friend of George's, but who was like an old lefty, was having a go at him, saying, George, you grew up on a council estate. Where's the money coming from if you don't pay any tax?

To which apparently George Harrison said, I don't know, but they're not getting mine. See, there's my perfect Liverpool accent. But yeah, Harry Krishna to you and all, you cunt. Yes. That's the one thing about ABBA that sort of I don't like, right? Like when I was in Stockholm last, I went in the ABBA museum, but it all seemed so rubbish and expensive

that I didn't actually go into the museum itself. I just looked around the gift shop and winced at their ongoing willingness to sell themselves as camp and silly because that's the easy score yeah i've been in it money is yeah did you go to the actual museum well um what happened was that that exhibition came to london a few years ago in ill's court um before it found a permanent home so yeah i went to that and um they've got it's so shit right because uh it it claims to be the arrival helicopter but it's not even a helicopter it's clearly just a fake helicopter made by their props department and and you sit in it and you've got the backdrop of the arrival cover and you can pretend that you're in it

and all that so it's a bit rubbish, really. But, yeah. I mean, that tackiness and sort of money-hungerness was always a real part of what they did. But I've never really appreciated that thing of selling yourself short because it makes good business sense. But at the same time, that hard-headedness is what drove ABBA towards pop in the first place and we are trying to apply counter-cultural values to pop music like old men you know and abba were ahead in that respect you know so mama mia stayed at number one for two weeks before

being usurped by forever and ever by demis roussos the follow-up fernando hung in at number one for two weeks before being usurped by Forever and Ever by Demis Roussos. The follow-up, Fernando, hung in at number two for three weeks in April before taking down Save All Your Kisses For Me and staying at number one for four weeks, meaning that Abba spent three whole months looking down on everyone else in Chartland in 1976. Quite right. That's a bit of Mamma Mia. Get on with it. We've got Hank Mizell,

and he's got a bit of Jungle Rock, which goes rather nicely with the roll bit of rock and roll i was walking through the jungle just the other night I really heard a big rumble and I thought it was a fight What happens this time is DLT pretends to have some kind of fit, like he's been electrocuted. Yes. And I don't understand.

There's no kind of particular setup to it. That's just it. The visual gag is that he he sat in his chair vibrating for all we know um he's still thinking about legs and co well just as well yeah born in daytona beach florida in 1923 william mazel joined the u.s army during world war ii and relocated to alabama afterwards and changed his name to hank in tribute Hank Williams. This was his first single, which was put out on Echo Records in 1958, where, according to Mizzell in an interview with the Daily Mirror this year, it sold between 20 and 30 copies.

However, it was picked up by King Records a year later and re-released, but it flopped once again. Mizzell packed the music game up in 1962 to become a preacher, but in 1971, an original copy of Jungle Rock was discovered in Nashville by a Dutch collector called Cees Klop, who put it on his bootleg compilation LP, Rock and Roll Vol. 1. That LP was picked up by the British Ted DJ, Roy Williams, who bootlegged it himself and played it out at Rock and Roll Nights leading to such a demand for it that it was put out this year on Charlie Records

where it got to number 3 for 3 weeks in May leading to a search for Hank Mizzell who at the time was 54 and nowhere to be found and here are Legs and Co working their second shift of the afternoon with the assistance of none other than Tony Blackburn, who has been lobbed into a massive cooking pot. Well, chaps, before we go any further, we've got to point out that 1976 was a very bad year for Tony Blackburn.

He lost his wife to Richard O'Sullivan, of course. Then he contracted mumps. Then he went down with a case of laryngitis and now look at him here. He's spending his Christmas day being boiled alive by legs and coat and the junglist massive and his bitter nemeses look on, gorging on trifle and laughing at him.

Poor sod. Yeah, having nonetheless managed to locate a supply of hairspray in the jungle. Yes! Thank God. Like in those cannibal movies. Yeah, good preparation for I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Him. Oh yeah. We've got to point out though that he

is hosting the Boxing Day edition of Top of the Pops with Jimmy Savile and that one features the Brotherhood of Man Billy Ocean, Sailor The Real Thing, Doctor Hook, Johnny Mathis Moor Abba, Rod Stewart Legs and Co. Dancing to Let Him In

by Wings and December 1963 by the Four Seasons Chicago, Show Waddy Waddy and Our Kid That's a good line up though. And poignantly while Savile was playing Patience, he introduced his favourite song of the moment, If You Leave Me Now.

Oh. These two episodes are demonstrating there was a bit more to 1976 than people think nowadays. Yeah, in terms of the massive smash hits of the year, it was a strong year. Legs & Co, the Boxing Day one they get their tiny pants on again for December 63

and they do this thing with loads of opening and closing doors for let them in in long dresses so yeah very busy ladies uh this festive season yeah well this is a this is a a corrective after the red hot ice queen routine from earlier this is yeah this is legs and coat being your chums do you know what i mean yeah like they're equally scantily clad but yes suddenly the context has changed and yeah nobody's thinking unholy thoughts because you couldn't. Unless you're a furry, basically. Because

they are dressed as jungle ladies, I suppose. Sort of like the tribe in Carry On Up The Jungle. And they're dancing around the cooking pot with Tony Blackburn in it along with some, and I use the word loosely, some animals.

Yes. Which are just some other dancers wearing animal costumes, which seems to have come out of the BBC pantomime costume cupboard, or, you know, it was whatever was left after the All-Star record breakers had rifled through it. And all of these costumes are hideous and terrifying. It's like that nightmarish representation of animal form that you see on like old 1950s money boxes painted with red paint. You know, with like symbol clapping monkeys, you know.

Yeah. Really grotesque and small-eyed and creepy. And I bet they reeked as well. I bet whoever had to get in that old bear suit, give it a bang and a load of moths and dust fly out. And it smells like a World War II shed. It smells like my bathroom at the moment, all mildew and with a dash of chicory sweat. Nice. I mean, obviously, Tony Blackburn being put in a cooking pot by inverted commas natives is problematic in itself. as well as being politically incorrect, this is actually zoologically incorrect because there are several animals represented

who wouldn't even be in a fucking jungle. No. Like elephants and camels, for starters. Kangaroos. That's Hank's fault because they're all mentioned in the record. True enough. Yeah, they are.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it does go back to him. I mean, to be fair to Hank Mizzell, he'd probably never been to a jungle. No. It's basically, it's not America rock, it does go back to him. I mean, to be fair to Hank Mizzell, he probably never been to a jungle. Um, but it's basically, it's, it's not America rock is what this record is.

Although to his credit, he does recognize that there's a difference between a chimp and a monkey. Yes. Yeah. Well, there is a monkey in, in this who, uh,

has clearly come from Huntington life sciences. Cause it's smoking a fag. Yes. The other thing which is zoologically inaccurate is that the alligator has got tits. Yeah, I didn't want to mention that. Jungles were big in the 70s in general, I think. The 70s childhood was full of jungle stuff.

childhood was you know full of kind of jungle stuff and you know i i just i just think um jungles along with kind of like the wild west and space were places where just kind of fun stuff happened in adventure stories do you know what i mean yes so that was part of the reason why this this would have been a hit i think yeah i can't believe there was never a kids tv show called space jungle yeah but this is a great record, isn't it? It's a fantastic record. It really is. And I love the story that Al told about, you know, the bootleg of a bootleg. It's

wonderful how something can kind of spiral through the culture like that to a point where suddenly it becomes a hit. It's a bit like a rock and roll version of Northern Soul. Exactly like Northern Soul. But this is a beautiful example. There's a whole galaxy of rock and roll and rockabilly and R&B records

from late 50s and very early 60s, which are to the great canon of historically important rock and roll, precisely what Northern Soul is to Motown. And there's millions of these records. And they're all cheap and loud and crude. And thousands of them are terrible, but hundreds of them are amazing. And more of them should have been surprise hits years later.

If you've ever heard Pretty Plaid Skirt by Mel Smith and the Knight Riders, It's like an amazing record. And, of course, Joe Meek handled the British end of this, sometimes literally. Ridiculous records like Sizzling Hot by Jimmy Miller and the Barbecues, which is an incredible record. It's the pure energy and contempt for musicality.

And it's got like a tea chest bass on it, which is not even playing notes. It's just going... on the record. Fantastic. But I think this one got through because it's kind of a novelty record. So it's not

threatening and it's not like an actual lunatic screaming about some 16 year old girl which is what most of them are it is as primal as those other records isn't it? it's three chords it's mostly just one chord

it's got this amazing dirty guitar sound and a great reverb on the vocal and that's it. And that's all it needs. Yeah. And it's brilliant partly because of the same ignorance and stupidity that gives you lines like

a camel was jitterbugging with a kangaroo in a jungle. Because that spills over into the music, which is, as it should be, is magnificently dumb and exciting. and it's all out of whack and everything's slightly out of tune um yeah and it's like a pure hit of everything that was being ironed out of music in the 70s and has now kind of been ironed out altogether. I mean, you get other nice disruptive things now, but they tend to come from people using electronics. Yeah.

It's very rare now that you hear something that sounds, you know, disturbing because it's so raw. Well, if you compare this to Show Waddy Waddy's output in 1976, you know, it's just such a clear difference. Yeah. output in 1976 you know, just such a clear difference. And I can imagine virtually everybody who went to a psychobilly club in the early 80s was jumping up and down to this as a kid when it came out.

Yeah, this has got more in common with Stray Cats, Pole Cats, that kind of end and the Meteors and all that kind of psychobilly stuff than with you know, the sort of Ted I guess Shawoddy Woddy were trying to be more of a kind of do what group they're more of a sort of Dion the Belmonts kind of thing

that they were doing which is fair enough it's probably unfair to you know compare Shawadi Wadi to this unfavourably they weren't even trying to be like this Matchbox were trying to be like this and failing I'll say that this is an absolute rarity because it is, as far as I know,

the only song that was danced to by Pans People and Legs & Co. Yes. We've done 35 episodes of this and we've never asked that question. Pans People or Legs & Co. So let's compare and contrast. So Legs & Co have the skimpiest outfits by far because they're wearing these sort of jungly bikinis, whereas Pants People were dressed up as Lofty Sugden

with blunderbusses. Yeah. Legs & Co have the better set because, you know, fucking hell, they've got Tony Blackburn in a pot. Pants People had to double up as the rubbish animals. So there's a bit of camera trickery, but, you know, they were essentially doubling up.

And yes, this is, you know, this is late era pans people, so there's no Louise. So, you know, what are you saying, chaps? Well, just from an animal cruelty point of view, you know, I don't agree with pans people hunting, for starters. You know, we live in a time where idiots in America go big game hunting in Africa and take photos of themselves

posing in front of the corpses of lions. And I'm sorry, but I cannot condone pants people for encouraging that kind of behaviour. Yeah, that's true. But I'd be interested in what happens if you put the two of them together on the same stage at the same time. So you've got the tooled- up pans people with their massive fucking guns chasing you know the sort of native clad uh legs and co around and

in the middle of it you've got a cooking pot and you've got all these animals getting in the way that's what i want to see yeah well the main difference is that pans people uh in comparison to legs and co look like a troop of valerie singletons they're very sort of they seem really old-fashioned already compared to that sort of sleekness and toughness of legs and co do you know what i mean legs and co are women of the late 70s yeah uh in a way that pan's people are certainly not pan's people look like they're out of the freeman's catalog or something you know and they're just as good um and but yeah it just stylistically there's a suddenly a glaring difference and they changed over at about the right time because sort of i guess early 76 was about the time that the 70s made that move, you know, gearing up for the 80s.

Made that move to a slightly harder, sort of sleeker feel to clothes and to fashions and to just what people look like generally. Legs & Co were a lot more lithe and pants people um not to put a finer point on it they had a bit of meat on them didn't they yeah it's that's it was the way of the early 70s yeah it was uh you know people there were certain uh keep fit and exercise and aerobics things that only came through in the 70s. Yeah. So if your job was something like being a dancer, yeah, you would have looked very different by the end of the 70s compared to what you would have looked like

at the start of the 70s. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have to say, I'm more of a pants people person myself. Yeah, well... Because I just fancied Louise and Cherry Gillespie. So, you know, it boils down to that in the end. Who do you fancy?

But it's horses for courses. It's like, you know, some days you might be in a people mood. Other times it's legs all the way. Hank Mizzell was finally tracked down in April of this year in the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he was on the dole after working at a petrol station and in a shipping office. He was immediately whisked

to Europe where he made the follow up single Kangaroo Rock which fell to charts. I heard that song and it essentially suffers from 70s production. That's all it is. It's jungle rock but more focused in on one animal.

It sounds a bit like a mud song. Yeah. And he died in 1992 at the age of 69. But it's safe to say that the re-release of Jungle Rock earned him more royalties than the 86 cents he earned on it in 1958. Jungle, Jungle Rock. Jungle, Jungle, Jungle, Jungle Rock. Jungle, Jungle, jungle, jungle rock. The jungle, jungle rock. The jungle, jungle rock.

The jungle, jungle rock. That's Hang the Zell and a bit of the jungle rock. Now we've got a pussycat. Oh, you've said the wrong thing. Why? He does not like pussycats. Oh, no, I had problems with a man called Hal. What? Get on with it. Is he trying to say Mississippi and pussycats? And someone played a honky tonk guitar Travis finally shows off something he's been desperate to pull out all episode. An emu puppet.

A smaller version of the type that Rod Hall rammed his fist up, which went on sale this year, was great for annoying parents, and even better for grabbing arses. I mean, that's just copying someone else's act. Yeah. I think Rod Hull and Emu were on the BBC at the time. They were on this very day.

They've just been on, haven't they? Right. Just been on with Rolf Harris. So Travis has got like a toy version, which I had actually. That might have been another thing I got for Christmas this year. I did get a toy Emu. Yeah, one of the must- have toys of the year I think yeah so

Travis just does a shit rod hole for about 30 seconds if only he'd taken that a little bit further and they introduce Mississippi by Pussycat formed in the province of Limburg the Netherlands in 1973 Sweet Reaction were a band who consisted

of tony better and marianne kowalsik three part-time telephone operators who were in the schlager group the singing sisters and three members of the local rock band scum in late 1974 they sent a demo tape to the d label EMI Behever which included Mississippi which was written in 1969 by local songwriter Wernet Theunsen and they were picked up on the strength of that song and changed their name to Pussycat. In 1975 the band made an appearance on the Dutch quiz show Twee Kamp, a version of University Challenge, which used the theme tune to Please Sir to perform this song, which led to it selling like a bastard in the Netherlands

and becoming their Christmas number one. Over here in 1976, it picked up loads of airplay on local radio, particularly in Liverpool, and it got to number one in October of this year when it dethroned Dancing Queen. Now, this might be my second least liked number one. It's just on all the time.

Fucking hated country music. Nobody needs Dutch cowboys, do they? Yeah. Sing about a canal. The thing is, everything you've said so far is superfluous. What we should really have done for this is just have three minutes of silence. Because I don't have anything really to say about it because every time i think back to when i watch this episode there's a three minute blank in my memory like right in the middle like what you would get

if you were a particularly fast-moving serial killer except that i happen to know that this void is not blotting out a bloody screaming mess it's actually an accurate recollection of what happened in those three minutes um and the only remarkable thing about this record is how uninteresting it is uh how unmemorable it is and and you examine it in forensic detail looking for something to say but it's colourless, odourless and tasteless and that fact should be interesting in itself

but somehow even that isn't interesting and even that isn't interesting either so in that sense this record is almost perfect like the number zero um and yeah i have nothing nothing to say about this simon um every time we do a chart music um there's usually one song that i don't remember at all which is kind of to be expected because it's a sort of it's just

your average weekly top of the pops and there are going to be like because it's a sort of it's just your average weekly top of the pops and there are going to be like low charting or even non-charting songs but this is the greatest hits of the year 1976 a year when i was alive and when every other song is imprinted on my memory um this is a complete blank to me i actually discovered its existence um uh prior to this by i was just reading through what was in the charts in 76 and found this i just what what the hell is it and yeah dutch country and western um i do you know it could have been anything from from the title mississippi by pussy cat it could have been some kind of um dirty southern boogie or something like that i've no idea could have been anything um but yeah it's i i suppose uh again like like the j j j barry record it shows you how big

yeah country was at the time um with mums and dads uh because in in the 70s your mums and dads would would go out to nightclubs uh they get a babysitter in and they go out to nightclubs which weren't the ones where people were dancing no disco or having ovens or having ovens like no your mum wants to get away from that don't you for a night exactly yeah yeah yeah uh they were nightclubs where uh i suppose they probably eat some food um i gather that the 70s cliche is chicken in a basket. Although I've never quite understood that. Or scampi.

Scampi. Does it literally come in a basket? Usually either a wicker or a plastic basket with loads of napkins and the like. And is it legs and wings? I don't understand. Do you get with it? No, it's usually legs and wings. And is it in batter or breadcrumbs? Depends where you get with it? No, it's usually legs and wings. And is it in batter or breadcrumbs?

Depends where you go with it. Right, okay. Well, anyway, that's the world that I think Pussycat Mississippi comes from. That's why it was a hit, I think. I've been on the Mississippi where it rolls down to the sea as they sing in this song. And this isn't what it sounded like to me. The sounds of New Orleans, of course, it's Cajun, Zydeco, blues, Louisiana, all that kind of stuff.

This sounds more like Alabama or something, way higher up the country. The performance, there's not a lot to say. There are giant Lego pieces over their heads, which that is the only memorable thing. And two guys randomly wearing sailor tops in the crowd. I don't know if it's because it's about

a river and that means boats or what, but that's it. Yeah. In one ear out the other, to be honest. Yeah, it's essentially a song for your Ted mum and dad who've calmed it down a bit. And they just want a hint of it now. Yeah, well that's enough, isn't it? But yeah, country and western. Let's put them in a sack want a hint of it now. Yeah, well, that's enough, isn't it?

But yeah, country and western. Let's put them in a sack with a brick in it. Sling them into the fucking canal. Sling them in the Mississippi and let the alligators have their way. The dancing alligators. Yeah. With tits. Yes. So Mississippi stayed at number one for four fucking weeks.

Yeah, aided by that promotional video So Mississippi stayed at number one for four fucking weeks. Yeah, aided by that promotional video where they're just on an old paddle steamer performing and nothing happens. Until it was pulled down from the summit by If You Leave Me Now by Chicago. The follow-up, Smile, would get to number 24 in January of 1977, but they were done as a chart act in the UK. However, they go on to have a 10-year run of hits in Holland

and surrounding countries before splitting up in 1985. I like to think they did songs about all the other rivers and that they split up after Trent. Ooze. Yes, ooze. Yes. Every time I hear this song Mississippi rolling on Until the end of time APPLAUSE Here's something really big in Greece. There it is. BBC potatoes. And Demis Brusson. MUSIC PLAYS Ever and ever, forever and ever

You'll be the one That shines in me like the morning sun Travis and Edmund get in the obligatory joke about the state of the BBC canteen as they introduce Forever and Ever by Demis Roussos. Born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1946, Artemios Ventouris Roussos was the son of a Greek classical guitarist who switched careers to become an engineer on the Suez Canal. At the age of 10, the family lost everything after the Suez Crisis

and they moved back to Greece. A teenage Demis worked as a singer in tourist bars until 1967 when he joined the Greek rock band Aphrodite's Child, which featured the keyboardist Evangelos Papathanassiou, otherwise known as Vangelis, who he worked on with side projects such as a score for the 1970 film Sex Power. Aphrodite's child split up in 1972, but by then, Roussos was a year into a solo career, and he quickly notched up a string of hit LPs and singles in Europe, including this song, which was released in 1973. However, Britain wasn't biting at first,

and he restricted his UK appearances to a Eurovision concert in 1972, a guest slot on the Nana Muscuri show in 1974 and an appearance on the Basil Brush show in 1975 where the godlike fox donned a matching kaftan. latter appearance not only helped the single Happy to be on an Island in the Sun to get to number five over here in December 1975 but it also inspired the BBC producer John King to make a documentary about why he was so popular in Europe which went out under the title The Roussos Phenomenon in June of this year. That inspired Phillips Records to rush out an EP under the same name with this song as its main track. And it took four weeks to get to number one in the middle of July, knocking You To Me At Everything by The Real Thing off its perch. And he's a good choice to have on the Christmas episode

because he is basically Santa as a younger man. Yes! I knew things had changed forever when Demis Roussos got trendy again, right? Like people discovered Aphrodite as child. And then, you know, realised that he'd done some quite good AOR acid rock stuff solo. You know, and I find that good that people are throwing away the stupid old rules and getting into strange corners of pop history and seeing what they found there for what it really was.

Although a lot of them found ways to transfer over their snobbiness or their weird possessiveness or whatever anti-pop shit they'd been pulling five years earlier, you know. So it was harder to enjoy it. But, you know, at least it meant that people finally made reference to something other than Abigail's party whenever his name came up, just for a change. But I think he's cool.

He was like a Greek national hero, wasn't he? Yes. Like being Greek was his big selling point for British listeners. And it was a time when Greece really needed a hero. Yes, it did. Like still mostly be represented internationally by the bloke in mind your language who might have been Spanish. But I mean, that's what happens when you're a fascist dictatorship.

It like wears away the goodwill created from, you know, inventing the Olympics and stuff. Indeed. You know, at this point, they'd finally decided that they'd been right the first time with their original idea of democracy. Yes. Yeah, and they needed a cuddly Demis Roussos.

He was like their mascot. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's only a shame Greece had fallen behind in aeronautics or he could have been the first fat man in space. How brilliant would that have been? Just for some reason whenever I see him, I picture him in one of those goldfish bowl helmets

like Mooncat doing a live broadcast to Earth. Like he's in it. I'm sitting in a tin can. How fucking great. It would have been amazing. Speaking of space by the way, I went through Stevenage the other day amazing. Speaking of space, by the way, I went through Stevenage the other day

and there's a sign up by the railway line that says, Stevenage, the heart of the UK space industry. That explains the perceptible crackle of excitement in that town. I think Leicester would have something to say about that. Really? Well, it's the home of the National Space Centre, isn't it?

And fuck knows why. I mean, maybe they knitted a jumper for Neil Armstrong or made some space crisps. Some crisp-flavoured pills. No, no, no, no, Stephen, it takes the credit. Welcome to Fairlands Valley Park. Next stop, Jupiter. Anyway, sorry, back to Demis Roussos.

Demis Roussos, yeah, very popular in the playgrounds at the time, I recall. Every young wag had an impression of him tucked into his snotty sleeve. Yeah, I mean, he was a favourite of TV impressionists because it's quite easy to do. Yes. Do you think, though, because Taylor mentioned Abigail's Party, do you think Alison Stedman or, or i guess mike lee killed him as an act or because this was 1977 when abigail's party came out um or or do you think that you know

too much damage was already done anyway i think the damage was already done to be honest because it was it was essentially barry whiter wasn't it yeah yeah well this is the thing this is what um i found confusing as a prepubescent child, is that Beverly, played by Alison Stedman, does say, he's sexy, isn't he, Ange? It's all right, isn't he? So this idea, and it wasn't just her. There was this idea around that Demis Roussos was sexy.

He's kind of fat Jesus. And I thought how, but it was a time of weird sex symbols because you also had Kojak and you had Barry White. People were branching out. Yeah, it was kind of unconventionally sexy. But whereas Kojak and Barry White had these kind of deep, gravelly bass voices, Fat Jesus here has got this kind of tremulous high falsetto, which kind of implies asexuality or eunuch, kind of eunuch status, if any.

Yes. So, yeah, it's kind of weird that he was considered as such. But it's nice. I'm glad for him that he was. And the fact that he was a big lad who liked his snap. It was a big selling point, wasn't it? You know, this... Yeah.

Well, this is a time before being obese was the style, wasn't it? You know, it was him, Cyril Smith, and the twins on the little motorbikes in the Guinness Book of Records. So, would we care to guess just how heavy Demis Roussos was at the time? What do you know? Oh, I'm run short, Music Mate, Matt. I've got to be thorough.

Right. Oh, God. It's going to be depressing because it'll be lighter than me, probably. I'm going to say 17 stone. At this point, he was 17 and a half stone. Oh, he's slightly heavier than me. Get in. Because I remember about 18 months after this,

when the Elvis CBS special was shown on the telly, and me mum and dad were watching it, and they were absolutely mortified about what a big fat fucker Elvis was. And he was only 16 and a half stone, which is, you know, that's nothing nowadays. You know, I've been 15 and a half stone. Yeah. I haven't done as many drugs, though. I dream of 15 and a half stone. which is, you know, that's nothing nowadays. You know, I've been 15 and a half stone. Yeah. I haven't done as many drugs, though.

I dream of 15 and a half stone. I tell you what, talk to me after Christmas. Jeez. I tell you what, though. Don't you think that people fancying him and Barry White and Telly Savalas, it was like kink for people who weren't kinky but didn't want to feel left out. It's like, I've got to fancy a bold man or a really fat man

you know it's just do something a bit different it was all in the air but this song it's a bit of a still at this time posh holiday music isn't it the second song called Forever and Ever in this episode yes which raises the question

Forever and Ever by Demis Roussos or Forever and Ever by Slick? Oh, this one. This one all day. There's nothing not to like about it. Nothing you can argue with about it, really. And also, Slick standing around looking like slapped arses and he looks weirdly

beatifically happy. Particularly towards the end of this clip. It's not just that he looks cheerful he looks uh satisfied and fulfilled yeah he's like he's just watched his son take a first it's like he's just watched his son complete his first five course meal or like or he just taught his son not to shave he's either genuinely transported or he's just smirking perhaps at the audience because really he's an old hippie freak

and he's thinking fuck I sang a whole double concept album based on the book of revelation for you bastards and nothing and now here I am uh delivering fetter and you're stuffing it in your ruddy saxon faces like the pigs you are maybe i don't know maybe that's what he's thinking he's thinking i'd rather be receiving a birthday cake from islamic jihad you know yes yes we'll come to that later.

This record, right, what it is, it's like a nice smell. It's like, it's not a sound. It's something that kind of wafts into your senses and then just wafts away again. It's like walking past, you know, a garden with some particularly pungent roses or walking past a restaurant

just when it's cooking a really nice meal and you just think for about 30 seconds, oh, that's nice, and then it just goes again. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not at all. Have you heard Aphrodite's Child, by the way? I've got an Aphrodite's Child LP and it's pretty decent.

It's kind of substantial, hard psych. It's good stuff. And I think even if it weren't for the fact that two of its members went on to be famous, it would still, you know, be worthy of, you know, consideration. So the Roussos phenomenon lingered at number one for a mere week, replaced by Don't Go Breaking My Heart. The follow-up, When Forever Has Gone,

got to number two in October of this year, held off the top spot by Mississippi. But after two more singles that only made the high 30s in 1977, the killer blow arrived when Bev out of Abigail's Party whacked this single on when she was pissed off, which eventually killed her husband, and he was done as a chart act in the UK. However, he continued to have hits across Europe during the 70s and 80s and was on TWA flight 847 in June of 1985 which was hijacked by members of Hezbollah

and Islamic Jihad on its way from Athens to Rome but he was released unharmed after 5 days and said that they asked him to sing for them. and yes he thanked them for giving him a birthday cake I read that on Wikipedia and the hand immediately rose to the chin so I did a bit of digging around and according to the June 19th 1985 of the New York Times quote as to confirm reports that he sang for the hijackers Mr Roussos said yes they asked me to sing and I don't see why I shouldn't have sung they even gave me a birthday cake said the singer who celebrated his birthday Saturday while a hostage these people these nice people they were so nice to me I cannot tell you added Mr Roussos. Yeah, because the question is, where did they get cake from?

Exactly. Did they rustle it up from ingredients they found in the galley? Yeah, the great Islamic bake-off. Did the Nipat to Sparta get some eggs and flour? Yeah. I mean, we're talking about Islamic jihad, right? The least imaginatively named of the

Islamic jihad groups. Somehow imaginatively named of the Islamic Jihad groups, somehow they got the wherewithal to bake a fucking cake or maybe they just got one of those complimentary muffins off the trolley so there you go, happy birthday infidel pig. After the Abba kidnapping story in

Chart Music 34 and now this and I guess there's also Brian Ferry being on that hijacked plane. It's quite a hazardous business being a 70s pop star. Yeah, so Islamic Jihad not just there for the nasty things in life unless you're that American

bloke who was shot and lobbed out of the plane but you know, never mind. They do a nice cake. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, it's Queen. In real life, is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, escape from reality. Travis is still pissing about with that fucking puppet as Ian Edmonds sign off with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Formed in London in 1970, Queen of fucking Queen.

Released in late 1975, Bohemian Rhapsody is Bohemian fucking Rhapsody. I mean, what else do you want to know? It's fucking Bohemian Rhapsody, isn't it? Obvious first question, chaps. Have you seen the film? No. Yeah, no.

That went well. Despite having not seen it, I have much to say about it. Well, I did, for reasons I'll go into later. And I never go to the pictures. Right. The main reaction I had from it was that I just could not believe that people nowadays are actually up here to get into a cinema earlier and watch 25 fucking minutes of adverts that they've already seen on the telly over

and over and over again. People are not fucking real. But the film, yeah, it's alright. It's essentially a film for Queen fans who are, as we know, not the most discerning people in the world. You get all the songs and everything.

You don't get to see any bum sex, but you get a few knowing looks at lorry drivers outside uh toilets and stuff like that yeah it's all right it's the kind of thing that will pass the time on a pissing it down with rain bank holiday monday on channel five and it plays fast and loose with a timeline doesn't it famous oh yes the thing about queen is that they became national treasures for all the wrong reasons, right? It's like what was good about them was their commitment to hedonism and silliness and sort of anti-pompous pomp

and deliberate liberating stupidity, right? Like they're remembered now almost exclusively for this and for their mediocre 80s hits you know which like which is a shame because for a while they were quite an interesting band in as much as they were they were like a cross between led zeppelin and sparks um albeit not as good as either of those but that period of their career is almost forgotten now which is really odd like records like sheer heart attack and stuff you know that's really the good stuff and it's almost vanished now culturally um and they've become icons of sort of harmless britishness like and princess die style vicarious

tragedy and that kind of reassurance that it's all just a laugh, really, this rock and rolling, you know, and there's nothing to worry about. And the enduring image is Freddie Mercury meaningless at Live Aid and Brian May playing his guitar, which he made himself out of a fireplace, standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace. And the thing about this film it everything i've read about it says that it seems to suggest that really his downfall was abandoning the quiet happiness of his domestic heterosexual life for for the misery and degradation and inevitable punishment associated with the the loose

homosexual netherworld um which if that is true and i've got no reason to believe it isn't it's obviously a fucking disgrace but in a way it's a tribute to him because it shows that people who think like that can love him regardless because the power of yes charisma the power of his empty but undeniable charisma burns away like the scent of all that bumming you know and sells him to the straight world like in both senses but who needs that right who needs uh a daily male sybarite you know like it because it makes him like some 15th century monarch just you know out outlawing the printing press and then dying from a surfeit of lampreys it's uh i mean god bless him but it it should have been different you know because just the sheer not giving a fuckness of early Queen

is really what was good and important about them. And they should have made more of it. While I agree with a lot of what you say, and I'm going to pick up on a few points of it, I just want to ask what you meant by meaningless at Live Aid. Well, just that it's what today they call an iconic image, right? That people think of it as, it's like the,

if you asked certain people to illustrate rock, right? What does rock look like? You see Freddie Mercury in a white vest with one fist in the air, right? I.e. nothing. It's just, you you know he's just uh larking about you know there's nothing to it there's no suggestion of uh of um sedition or or dirtiness or or anything it's just it's entertainment for for charles and die you know

well not just for Charles and Di and it was extraordinary entertainment surely surely it's one of these cases where just because everybody says something doesn't mean they're wrong what a performance back me up Al come on

you don't agree do you can't we just talk about Brexit please laughing laughing because yeah you're right You don't agree, do you? Can't we just talk about Brexit, please? Because, yeah, you're right. Everything in the film leads up to the full recreation of the Live Aid performance, which is very impressive. It's a perfect recreation.

And if you're a Queen fan, you'd be sitting there in the pictures fucking rubbing your same bandit. But, yeah, the storyline's all bollocks because they're supposed to have split up and reformed for Live Aid when it was blatantly obvious that right from the off, Queen were the only ones to realise

what the prize was at the end of this. Yeah, they were touring earlier that year and they were still putting plenty of records out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is a very good and professional stadium performance. I just wish that... See, what I wish is that Queen had become what they could have been,

which is the kind of band that could have given a performance like that, but possibly wouldn't have been asked to do it at Live Aid. Do you know what I mean? Or maybe they would have been asked, but maybe it would have been a little bit inappropriate in some ways. Because they got absolutely slagged down for doing We're the Champions at Live Aid in the media.

Did they why? Well, because they thought it was a bit much to pitch up at a gig for the starving and being all triumphalist. Yeah, but that's what their music is, isn't it? All their music's like that. Yeah. They can't come on and sort of like, you know, just come on with like fake tears painted on their face, you know. See, that argument I don't have much time for.

But it's just, yeah, I just miss what Queen could have been. I want to pick up on the word pomposity that you use. I'm not criticising you for using it at all. I think you're absolutely correct. But for me, that unlocks the reasons why a lot of rock critics hated queen um i remember this this question i think the question came up when we were doing the uh chart music extra and we didn't use it in the end saved it for this why do critics hate queen or why did they and and i i think i think the reason is that certainly in that era,

critics could take plenty of pomposity as long as it was being done in the name of art, as long as it was being done by people who had albums called things like Tales from Topographic Oceans and that the pomposity was all part of that. But when the pomposity was just basically a layer on top of pop or pop rock which is what queen were making then that was unconscionable to them you know it was basically um you you were allowed to show off about art but you weren't allowed if you're just making pop you

have to be humble and know your place and that and that's something queen never did and people absolutely i mean dann Danny Baker hated Queen for pretty much those reasons, for being too kind of, too much like, you know, a sort of Bourbon monarch. You know, Freddie Mercury toasting the audience at Wembley with a glass of champagne and stuff like that is what Baker hated about them.

The reason why punk happened, according to him. I suppose in some ways, it's what made their music a little bit difficult for me to stomach, because they just have a way of, almost probably without even thinking about it, maybe Freddie and Brian, both almost involuntarily added these flourishes

on the end of every line of a song. It's like... Like that, you know, that kind of melodic thing. And that's kind of not how I wanted my music to be. But the obvious comparison these days is Muse. Muse do exactly that same thing. And, well, half the world goes, oh, you're just a queen rip-off and, you know, you're shit.

And the other half seems to quite enjoy them being like that. Yeah. I quite enjoy it. I've met Brian May, by the way. I've touched his sixpence. Good Lord. Really? I've held a sixpence in my hand.

Yeah, it was a birthday party of Justin Hawkins from The Darkness. It's no surprise that those two were friends. I met his wife as well. Angie Watts? Yeah, Angie Watts. Yeah, yeah, out of EastEnders. Good Lord. Did you hold her toppers?

She asked my phone number, and I wrote it down for her. She stuck it in her bra, but it was the last time I did it. When you handed it to her, did you resist the temptation to go, Merry Christmas, Ang? No, she was perfectly nice, but she was offering to get me tickets for we will rock you which um certain members of my family would have been really pleased if i could take them to that um and she goes oh yeah i'll phone you but um but she never did so i had to buy them

yeah going back to what you're saying though about rock critics in the 70s and 80s the thing about queen when they were great and when they were less great they were dead set against everything that mattered to music journalists in the 70s when you think about it and that yeah they were unserious they were super commercial um they were effeminate um because people forget this rock criticism used to be a very macho thing yes um they were ideology free uh non-countercultural um and not only were they pompous and over the top they were delighted to be that way and they loved their money very visibly and unashamedly and then playing sun city put the lid on it. Yes. And I think nowadays people just have a different perspective that most of those traits are no longer seen as particularly offensive.

And I think people now, critics probably have them in better, they kind of have the right perspective now, right? In that they were entertaining and did a lot of really good undemanding rock music plus a lot of crap and yeah those negative qualities weren't that negative in the grand scheme of things except for playing sun city but that's been quietly kicked under the rug hasn't it yeah you mentioned sun city and yes for me that was a real problem for for a long time um but i had to do a similar thing to what I did with Elton John, where I had to almost take apart my instinctive opposition to a band

and see if it stood up. And the Sun City thing, yeah, it was awful. But when you look at the list of artists who played Sun City, it's Queen who get all the stick for it. But all kinds of people. Dusty Springfield played Sun City. No one gives her a hard time, do you know what I mean Tina Turner, Status Quo

Rod Stewart Laura Branigan, Elton John Little Steven, no no he didn't Yeah so there is that so this record it's such a monolith

it's almost impossible to talk about, it's it's such a monolith of it's almost impossible to talk about it's also well exactly yeah me sarah david have already had a dig at it and it it was like trying to do book review on the bible you know it's just always been there yes i mean for me as an eight-year-old this would have been my introduction to rock you know particularly the end bit oh yeah where it suddenly switches to a live live performance it switches from that kind of weird fly eye strobing camera effect and suddenly it's a boom you're on stage with them yeah yes the wayne's world bit is what we're talking about isn't it yeah exactly yeah the thing that always sort of bothers me about this song is like bits bolted together is like the easy

sort of cheaty way to do uh. Do you know what I mean? It's like rather than trying to expand and develop the actual content, you just expand the form and create one of these franken-songs made out of bits, you know, made out of spare parts. And people love it because they're impressed by the sheer size of the result. And they don't realise that it's actually a really simple trick and in fact none of those individual little bits are really good enough to sustain a normal song by itself

or certainly not a number one Baron Knights did it I'll tell you the other thing that struck me watching this is that Roger Taylor is generally thought of as being a pretty man particularly in the video, I Want to Break Free, where he's dressed as a schoolboy.

A lot of people found it very sexually confusing to see him like that. But in this video, because he's underlit, well, they're all underlit, aren't they? They're all doing that thing, like when you're a kid and you get a torch and you stick it under your chin

to try and be scary, right? He looks like the Ipswich Town defender, Eric Gates. He doesn't look like a pretty man anymore. It's really weird. So anything else to say about this? All you can do is talk around it. You can't look up at it. It's just too big.

You can't talk about it. I will also observe it's the second song to prominently feature the words Mamma Mia in this episode. And I'm imagining... Yeah, using Italian words was quite a thing in 1976, wasn't it? You know, Mamma Mia, Cornetto. And just watching this episode had me imagining a Queen and JJ Barry mash-up where Freddie's going,

Freddie's going, Mamma, I don't want to die. I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all. Yes. And she goes, no charge. Killed a man, $15. Not wanting to die i sometimes wish i'd never been born at all yes no charge killed a man 15 dollars not wanting to die five dollars anyway bohemian rhapsody was number one forever and ever and ever and ever but uh i feel it's now the time for me to drop my heartwarming christ Freddie Mercury story. Well, it's not mine. It's me mate's. So, round about the 90s,

my mate, he was a drama student at Lambda in Earls Court, and their kind of like studio backed onto Freddie Mercury's house. Oh, yeah. So anyway, they have their end of term drink up, and him and his mate are walking back from the pub pissed out of their schools and they walk past freddie mercury's house and they look at each other and they go up to the door and ring the bell and start singing christmas carols and

after they've done that for about 20 seconds his mate starts singing thank god it's christmas and my mate joins in and the next thing they know, they see this really early CCTV camera just swivelling around and focusing on them. And a couple of seconds later, the door opens, and the door's filled by this massive bodyguard. And he sticks his hand in his pockets, and he pulls out two £20 notes, and he gives them a tenner each. And he says

there you go lads, Merry Christmas we'll be saying goodnight now and about a week later Freddie Mercury died so essentially Freddie Mercury was on his deathbed being serenaded by my mate and his mate and 27 years later my mate

is in Bohemian Rhapsody playing Freddie Mercury's dad years later, my mate is in Bohemian Rhapsody playing Freddie Mercury's dad. No! That's fucking insane, isn't it? That is brilliant. Merry Christmas, everyone. Wow.

I'm sorry I gave it such a bad once-removed review there. Yeah. I touched the turkey. I touched it. It's real. Anyway, have a really good Christmas day. Thanks a lot for joining us. We leave you with legs and company and a bit of wings. Have a nice Christmas. Oh, is that what I've only got two seconds left?

Have a nice Christmas, everyone. Ta-ra. DLT and Noel sign off with possibly the worst joke that there's ever been. Because Noel says, yeah, coming up now. he's referring to the turkey this is the joke you see he's coming up now because first of all dlt says i touched the turkey it's real in a silly northern voice because northern equals phone yeah yeah and then noel says uh yeah and now it's uh we've got a bit of legs and company and wings. We'll leave you with some wings.

And I thought he meant it. Yeah, as though he's introducing legs and coat dancing to wings. Yeah, then when the penny drops that's actually some sort of joke. You're just like, oh, right. Because it cuts straight to Whole Lotta Love and the end credits.

And I thought, have they missed a bit out here so the effect is it ends the show on a massive anti-climax yeah a joke that doesn't land and people feeling a bit let down yeah people seeing the end credits when they thought they were going to get another track and as if that wasn't bad enough

DLT provides a little topper by shouting I've only got two seconds left um sadly doesn't mean to live um but but it's and then that's it that's the end and it it really does apply the final toe poke to this program and to Christmas as an institution I mean these fellas right if nothing else they really knew how to murder an already terrible idea and then stomp it into the fucking dirt and then and that will be why they've got country mansions with helicopters parked on the roof while we're all eating moldy rats from behind the stove you know and we're lucky to have a stove and they just,

well, they just keep knocking them out of the park. You've got to, you've got to hand it to them. You've got to hand it to them. And by it, I mean a Christmas present packed with Semtex and rusty drawing pins and cholera. So what's on telly for the rest of the day? Well, BBC One broadcasts the Queen's speech where she brags on about going to Americay for the rest of the day? Well, BBC One broadcasts the Queen's speech where she brags on about going to America and tells the people of Britain to stop having a go at each other and to just calm the fuck down before getting stuck into Billy Smart's Christmas Circus,

Oliver and the evening news with Peter Woods. Then it's a special Christmas generation game followed by that year's Morecambe and Wise Christmas show featuring Elton John, Kate O'Mara, John Thorne and Dennis Waterman, the Nolans and that bit where Angela Rippon got her legs out and everything.

Then it's the film, Airport, followed by the news and they finish off with a Parkinson magic show featuring three of the world's greatest magicians having a blather with the titular professional Yorkshireman. BBC Two runs The Queen, Gassing On, and then puts on the animated version of The Snow Queen, featuring the voices of John Wells, Vivienne Stanshall, Sheila Stiefel and Arthur Mullard.

Then a stage version of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Then Audition, an animated five-minute documentary about a conversation between a choir master and a lad who wants to join the choir, then The News on Two, then Ica the Polar Bear, a documentary about said bear who was born in Berlin Zoo, who was brought up as a pet in Siberia, who was then released into the wild. Then it's 40 Years, a three-hour rummage through the BBC archives, Late News on 2, Survival in Limbo, a documentary about a bloke who's marooned on the edge of the Atlantic for 116 days, Sing All Ye Faithful, which is more fucking carols from Devonshire,

and they finish off with the James Cagney film Yankee Doodle Dandy. ITV gets the Queen bollocks out of the way and piles into the film version of Please Sir, then a special winner's version of the talent show New Faces with Our Kid and Crick's Canine Wonders, then Gordon Honeycomb gets stuck with having to come in to do the news. The evening begins proper with Christmas Sale of the Century, then it's the John Correia spectacular, followed by the 1970 Rod Steiger film Waterloo, then a special Christmas episode of Two's Company with Donald Singdon and Elaine

Stritch. Then it's Celebration, some more singing, this time in the chambers of Castle Cork, near Cardiff with Petula Clark. Oh, for fuck's sake. Castel Cork means the Red Castle. Alright, alright. Sorry, Simon. Let me do that again the Red Castle. All right, all right. Sorry, Simon. Let me do that again.

Carry on. Celebration, more singing, this time in the chambers of the Red Castle near Cardiff with Petula Clark and finishes off with a five-minute show called Christmas Pie where kids of the Hinchley Wood School tell us what presents they would give to the world this year.

So, me boys, what are we talking about over the handlebars of our new rally choppers this afternoon? You know what? Probably the Wurzels, because I was a child and they were fun. I would say Tony Blackburn in a cauldron preparing to be the victim of cannibalism and actually not talking about the strange meditative silence

in which we all watched Legs & Co perform Dancing Queen. And what are we buying with our record tokens on Boxing Day? I wasn't buying records yet, but if I was, I'm going to say Dancing Queen or Jungle Rock, maybe both. Yeah, in fact, ABBA 1 and Abba 2 And Jungle Rock And what does this episode tell us about 1976? Pussycat are the kings of the ruined castle They're the invisible kings and queens of the ruined castle

Yeah, I mean, I know if you watch any end of year Top of the Pops From the golden age of pop You're going to come away thinking oh that was a year for you know huge songs but there's something about the big number one hits of 1976 which a lot of these songs feel like you know these kind of monumental songs the biggest songs of all time it seems like a year in which a lot of the the you know I'm not going to say greatest because that implies my own approval, but the biggest songs of all time seemed to happen in that year. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters,

is the end of another episode of Chart Music, and the last one of 2018. All that needs to be done now is to fling the usual promotional shit at you. www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast twitter chart music t-o-t-p money down the g-string patreon.com slash chart music thank you simon price a burma dog is for life not just for christmas merry christmas everybody and a happy new year. God bless you, Taylor Parks. Happy holidays, Al.

And on behalf of David Stubbs, Sarah B, Neil Kulkarni and Bummer Dog, my name's Al Needham. Beware the gummy woman. Chart music. Radio 1. Have you bought a 1977 calendar yet? Why not buy one with a difference?

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