Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #36: October 11th 1979 - Welcome, Welcome, Welcome Home To Chart Music

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; how would Mike Read get on in the WWF? and how long would it take before someone took his guitar off him and stoved his head in with it? It's been too long, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, but we're back from our spell of R&R at Pontins Camber Sands and are going armpit-deep into the cavity of one of the landmark episodes of Top Of The Pops - the one with the biggest TV audience ever. ITV are on strike, and the only other thing on the telly is carriage driving, of all things, leaving the field clear for Andy Peebles to make his TOTP debut in his ill-fitting suit. Musicwise, it looks as if the BBC have ramped up the fun-for-all-the-family aspect in a desperate grab for as many eyeballs as possible, meaning we get a load of acts who are nowhere near the Top 40 mixed in with the usual fare. The Headboys get lumped into the New Wave thing and are not pleased about it. Jacko and Chic provide a devastating one-two punch. Scabby cowboys - in the shape of Dr Hook and Charlie Daniels - fill the air with the tang of unwashed denim. There's a fearsome soundclash between Errol Dunkley and The Dooleys. Cats UK get ignored by The Kids. Sue of Legs & Co slaps a warning sign on her knee. It's a glorious slab of the Eighventies, and it's picked over with the care and attention you've come to expect from us.    David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a huddle around the candle of late '79, veering off on tangents such as our favourite industrial disputes of the 70s, pestering your Dad to start wearing an eyepatch, the shocking antics of Gary's Mam in Leeds, being confused by questionnaires in Shoot!, getting pissed up with a dog that looked like Marilyn Monroe on Central Weekend, and why the Daily Express are a bunch of thick twats. Get ready for some proper swearing.   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.

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Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up, you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of an episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham. I've just blown my voice out doing a massive A up before, so bear with me while I introduce my very special guests,

David Stubbs. How do you do? And Taylor Parks. Nice to meet you. Let me be the last person, chaps, to wish you a happy new year. Yeah, it's been amazing. I'm going to have it next weekend, I think, when I see family. Oh, lovely.

Up north, as we all say, because that's how you do it, northern accent. So how have we been, chaps? Anything pop and interesting happening in your lives? No, actually, no, let's change that. Let's go straight to Taylor. Pop-crazed youngsters have been fretting about you, Taylor. As your house, is it still the undersea world of Taylor Parks? No, it's dry.

As yet, no further 20,000 gallons uh has been uh projected out of my toilet um i'm just approaching the new year like it was an unexploded bomb and uh that and listening to kishori amonkar in the dark at three o'clock in the morning as usual which funnily enough is precisely how I imagine middle age to be lovely David it's been a while hasn't it oh it has yes yes yeah it's been a lot of things going on in your life yeah yeah well too I mean um in fact um what about the last time um I was up in Nottingham oh yes indeed you were whoring your book round I was yeah it was kind of you came to Oak Nottingham yeah it was a indeed. You were whoring your book round. I was. Yeah, it was kind of a... You came to Nottingham. Yeah, it was a whistle-stop tour

really because the week before I'd done Bristol and that all went very nicely except some geezer who was obviously a bit pissed up and kind of sort of, you know, I could tell from the beginning he was going to be a kind of a pest because he was belching and making gratuitous noises and just midway through he just pipes up.

What about Green Day? i think they're a pretty good group then green day better all this electronic stuff and yeah this is what this is your book about uh this is mars by 1980 isn't it your book about electronic music yes in you know music that's in perhaps in spiritually mechanically is antithetical in every respect to green day so uh god knows what I was expecting. Anyway, he was ushered off the premises. I gave him a bit of a frosty look. He seemed a bit crestfallen, actually.

I think he thought that I was going to be kind of, you know, the one person in the room that's sympathetic to him because, you know, he'd already raised a few complaints. I bet he goes to all the Q&As and asks about Green Day no matter what the book's about. Yeah, some sort of plant, perhaps. Yeah, yeah. Insinuate green day into every cultural context but um anyway a week later there i was in nottingham and my manner

governor absolutely and um so anyway it turned up the venue and it turned out that uh the chap was meant to be kind of doing the kind of q a the host he'd been uh taken very very ill yes he was in intensive care I hope he's back on the mend now which meant that your good self stepped into the breach which was what a good egg I thought

I couldn't let you down David it was not even representing and all that indeed yes it was alright but I was massively upset that neither of us got bummer-dogged. Oh, I know. Nottingham let me down that day. Yeah, yeah.

Well, kind of Nottingham lets me down every day, to be honest, but that day in particular, it was very upsetting. But, you know, fuck it. We carry on. We plough through, don't we, David? We do, yeah. I mean, that would have been the lusty canine cherry on the cake, wouldn't it?

Yes, definitely. In his own fucking hometown as well, man. Looks a bit like a cherry on a cake, doesn't it? No, there's still no statue of Bummer Dog in Nottingham, but waiting outside a school with a big bonk on. Yeah, well, sounds... Wait till I'm Lord Mayor. I'll fucking sort that out.

I basically unfurled the rich tapestry of Nottingham's musical legacy at your feet, didn't I, David? I'll never look at the town in the same way again. No. And then, to cap all that, yeah, I got a meeting with Shappi from Sleaford Mods, you know, to kind of round off the tour. We had a good old chit and a chat

while he had a toddler in his arms and he was just effing and jeffing. Absolutely. He was just in the precinct. I don't know if you arranged him to kind of round off the tour we had a good old chit in a chat while he had a toddler in his arms and he was just effing and jeffing absolutely he was just good i don't know if you arranged him to kind of pop out from behind cnas at an opportune point but no no that was no we were as as you know as nottingham uh power couple sorts you know we just gravitate towards each other i find but yeah you got the you got the full tour man we went for curry, didn't we? And I pointed out the Ice Stadium where Jimmy Savile had his last wrestling match. Absolutely. When he got his bollocks kicked up into him by Adrian Street. Yes, yes.

We went past the place where Brian Harvey got scalped. Yeah, yeah. I showed you where Sheik were formed. Yeah, they had their momentous meeting in the hotel, didn't they? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. We went past the building where Paper Lace's silver disc was. Yeah, they had their momentous meeting in the hotel, didn't they? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, we went past the building where Paper Lace's silver disc was. Yeah, absolutely. It's not for nothing that they're called Nottingham, the cradle of pop.

Yes. But, you know, while you're touting your book about David, are you still doing that, by the way? Is the shilling over? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, obviously not that it went up to Christmas, but I've got a couple of, like, sort of tasty European trips

lined up for this year. I'm going to Oslo at the end of February. Nice. And Madrid a bit later on because there's going to be a Spanish edition. So, yeah, you know,

and also I've been shortlisted, or no, longlisted, I should say, for the Pendren Music Book Prize, which apparently is the Mercury Music Prize of books, except he isn't good at them. But it's some pretty stiff competition there. There have been a lot of good music books this year, actually.

Nah, fuck them. You'll smash it, mate. Sorry, I'm just practising my false modesty, you know, for when the Supreme Accolade is awarded. But while all that was going on, David, you know, one of your old books kind of like rose a hand from the grave, didn't it? It did, yes. It kind of popped up from history.

So it's bizarre. Tell the story, David. So, yeah. So in 2011, I published this book called The Prince Charles Letters. It was around the time that he was in the papers for kind of like painting these kind of furious green inked missives and screes to MPs and what have you. And so I had the kind of slightly Henry Root-inspired idea of this being extended to him, writing to people from all walks of life, you know, various celebrities, you know,

sports people, musicians, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, yeah, so this was the Express Online. Apparently they've got a sort of pseudo-royal correspondent. And what he does is... Shall we name him? Yes, it's Matthew Kirkham, I think. Matthew Kirkham. Matthew Kirkham, that's right.

Hang your head in shame, young man. And now what he does, it's quite a sneaky thing he does. There's obviously loads of books, like, you know, written about the royal family of the years, you know, fairly kind of sort of tidbitty stuff or whatever. Inevitably, they go out of print. So he kind of, like, goes around, you know, he gets all these things aboutty stuff or whatever. Inevitably, they go out of print, so he kind of goes around, he gets all these things about a penny or whatever off Amazon,

flicks through them, finds kind of obscure stories about the world of fun, and then presents them as fresh gossip. And one of the books he actually picked up in this instance was The Prince Charles Letters. Now, I just find it extraordinary. I'm not one of these people that tries to sort of pass off fake news or everything.

You are meant to realise that this is a spoof. The word spoof features very prominently on the cover. And, you know, there's a cartoon image of Prince Charles. I mean, it ought to be fairly obvious to anybody remotely sentient that this is a spoof. But what he did is, and this was happening for several days. I was only alerted to it about the seventh day. They've been running like full stories with headlines and images of these

exclusive all these stories about Prince Charles's correspondence including in particular and this is the one that was alerted there was letters

to Lady Gaga there was John Major saying he had no idea who he was Spice Girls Spice Girls all these kind of people

and then one that he supposedly wrote in 1977 to Johnny Rotten about the time of God Save the Queen. I have the article in front of me. Let me read it.

Right, yeah. Royal plea. Plea in capitals, in big letters. How Prince Charles begged Sex Pistols frontman, don't attack my mother. Prince Charles wanted to take the brickbats for his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Oh, thank god they told

me who she was I'd have never known after the Sex Pistols launch a famous punk song coinciding with the Queen's Jubilee celebrations in 1977 he did a few paragraphs of of drivel and then he got he went straight to the meat in a book titled Prince Charles Letters compiled by David Stubbs, reveals what Charles wrote in the letter. I cannot ask you to suppress your free speech. Might I then suggest that instead of attacking my mother on this her most special occasion, that I place myself in her stead. I realise you're an angry young man.

I get angry myself sometimes, so I know exactly how you feel. Indeed, Charles had other lyrical ideas for the song, which he willfully expressed in the letter. According to Charles, it might run as follows. God bless the prince. Let's make him into mince. He's got stupid stick-out ears. Gets his kicks shooting deers. Printed on the Daily Express website as news. Hurrah for British journalism in 2018-19. It's just extraordinary.

First of all, did they not show the remotest curiosity in how this David Stubbs fellow came by this huge cache? No. It just extraordinary. I mean, first of all, they're not sure the remotest curiosity in how this David Stubbs fellow sort of came by this sort of huge cache at letters. No. And it's extraordinary. No, what did I do? Do I work sort of, you know, undercover in a kind of postal room

at Buckingham Palace and set these missives? I mean, it's, you know, there's no curiosities expressed about that or me at all, you know, which is a little bit bizarre. But secondly, you would have thought that, like, you know, before,

between, like, conception, these things arriving in bizarre. But secondly, you would have thought that, like, you know, before, between, like, conception and these things arriving in print, that these this would have to pass, you know, under sort of two or three sets of eyes. And there isn't anybody apparently at the Express who would just think, are you sure about this? They just shut it out nowadays, don't they? It's glorious, glorious.

You make a lot of connections 30 years ago, writing about Front 242 and ARK. That's a bit aggrieved. Yeah, absolutely. The worst thing about it is it's like a bit of an insult as well because it's like

you do realise that that's a funny book. That's supposed to be a joke. Oh, I didn't laugh. Yeah, I know, exactly. I mean, there was a part of me that's slightly hurt, actually. Well, this is the thing. Yeah, I know, exactly. I mean, there was part of me that slightly heard, actually. Well, this is the thing, isn't it? There's so much shatire floating about on the internet now.

It gets to the point where, well, this can't be satire because it's not funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not talking about this. I'm talking about all the other bollocks. Yeah, yeah. But, let it be known, David, I actually stuck my hand into the shit bucket that is the comment section on the Express website.

And a twat off the internet wrote, nobody, and I mean not one person, can ever say that the royal family don't generate income. If they didn't, trashy writers like the alleged author of the latest attempt to cash in wouldn't be able to make money at the first opportunity they could by writing such a book. Two exclamation marks. That's you put in your box.

It was, that's right. Yes, yes. Most chastised I am, yes. So, new year, first new episode of 2019 first order of business is to thank the pop craze youngsters who have piled onto Patreon and filled our g-strings full of

lovely dollars the latest batch includes Andy Cox Lomax Fairchild Opec Dreams Sylvain Mike Gibbons Andrew Warrington

Bad Aids Mark Savage Joseph Nawaz Matt Hall Paul Flatt Simon fucking Love That's his name, not me being rude. James Noble

Big shout to Dr Greggles who knocked his pledge up. Don't forget, Pulp Crazy Youngsters, you can do that anytime you like. Chris Stanley, James Watson, Happy Birthday Hannah, Paul Anthony Edward Derek Sullivan, James Wharton, James Tink, Callum Forcer. All those people stepped up to the pay window and they dropped some lovely dollar on us. Thank you so fucking much. Come on, thank them, you

ungrateful bastards. Oh, well, yes, thank you indeed. Thanks, thanks for still, yes. And don't forget, all you've got to do is get them little fingers on the keyboard, www. patreon.com slash chart music. And if you're doing that, and if you're in our club,

you can vote on the top 10. Here it is. Hit my fucking music. A new entry at number 10 for the Gummy Woman. A re-entry at number 9. It's the Sikh lad out of Show Waddy Waddy. Number 8 for the third week running for Bomber Dog. Still clinging on at number 7, here comes Jizzum New entry, straight in at number 6, Oasis

Up one place to number 5, it's Granny Wants Your Spunk Down from number 1 to number 4, Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments. This week's highest new entry, straight in at number three, The Alligators With Tits. Up one place to number two, Fred Westlife, which means... Britain's number one! The brand new chart music number one, dark mates wow and they did all that without the support of daytime radio one or the music press yeah your dark mates apparently they've been

confirmed for glastonbury already which is uh it's going to cause problems i think who are sis i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna be impressed by that, are they? Obviously, there is a conspiracy that to get into the chart music top ten these days, one has by law to be your dark mate. Yes. So those new bands, The Gummy Woman, what's The Gummy Woman sound like? Catfish and the Bottle Men.

Good, good. Catfish and the Bottle Men rip-off good. It's the Catfish and the Bottlemen rip-off band. The Alligators with Tits, I see them as an all-female psychobilly band who were built like brick shithouses. Yeah, yeah. Sporting the cramps a couple of times. They'd be fucking brilliant to see, man.

Not another one. What I want to know is, who's still buying Bummer Dog in 2019? He's got a loyal fan base man good to see this the single from show what he wanted not a one-hit wonder so don't forget get on patreon chuck us some dollar no well you know dollars are fine you know but at this moment in time i think tins might be a bit more necessary but you can't you can't send them through patreon yet so we'll accept a proper currency.

By the way, what happened to One Intesting? One Intesting just dropped, man. It's just over for them already. It is, yeah. It is. They need some documentary, I think, where they reunite and run it over Christmas. Reunite?

Now then, Pop Craze youngsters, we covered a lot of landmark episodes in Top of the Pops last year, and we're going to start big style with 2019 because this may well be the most important episode ever. This episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to October the 11th, 1979 because this episode we're going to watch right here was the most watched episode of Top of the Pops ever. Long story short in July of 1979 three broadcasting unions were offered a nine percent pay rise by the companies who made up the ITV network. All three unions

however chucked it back in ITV's faces and told them to fuck off as was the style in the 70s. After weeks of negotiations which saw the deal rising to 15% members of the ACTT, the technicians union, walked out at Thames Television on the 6th of August after their shop steward was suspended. Le leading to all three unions down in tools, going on strike and shutting down almost all of the ITV network for 10 weeks, leaving the field clear for the two BBC channels. Oh, chaps, do you remember this?

Yes, I do, yeah, yeah. I primarily remember the ITV thing because of Coronation Street. Coronation Street in 1979, it was the best. It was the funniest thing that ITV were producing, way funnier than any of its sitcoms. And if it weren't for Coronation Street, I might not even have noticed the strike at all.

Yeah, I think this could be my favourite industrial dispute ever. Because when you're a kid you know all strikes are uh interesting and and a bit fun i remember all the power cuts of 1973 1974 and they were dead exciting weren't they they were oh they were great times but being huddled up in the living room with me uh with my mom and dad you know drinking a soup huddling up uh with a candle and it was was fucking great, that was. It was. It was great.

It was great for families, actually. We too were huddled around a candle. We played parlour games in our actual parlour, like word games and stuff like that. We had a right roll of parlour. Yeah, it was just like Christmas again, wasn't it? It was, actually, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We're kind of missing, really. Yeah, we need a power cut every now and then, don't we? I mean, there was less to be powered, though, back then, obviously. I mean, a power cut nowadays, you're just fucked, aren't you? No internet. Well, that's it. No internet.

You're fucked. Yeah, I mean, the trouble is, you know, you can, even in a... Occasionally, you'll get the old power cut. But, yeah, you've got recourse. You've got any kind of battery on your phone or whatever. You can just sort of huddle around now. I did have a mate called Simon Threadgold, and he lived in middle-class splendour.

He was a cut above the likes of me. And he had a little kind of sort of five-inch portable black-and-white telly, so we were able to kind of par around his place and watch Match of the Day. And, you know, that was luxurious. Taylor, can you remember this story? Yeah, I used to sit and watch that blue screen

that they used to show in place of programmes. Because it was just what was on all day. The blue screen of death. Yeah, it was just a blue screen with white text saying, piss off, no telly, go and watch one man and his dog, you cunt. Words to that effect. Yeah, it might have been the Ane anedian line but it was one or the other um and yeah we felt like kids in the blitz you know playing on bomb sites we were deprived

but we were making our own fun you know yeah and it was there for weeks we were deprived of gideon and uh magpie yeah instead of food yeah we had a girl at my school called gideon um oh no well that was her nickname because she had a really long neck which uh i can't help but feel somewhat missed the point of the program gideon um but yeah what can you do with kids but yeah i mean in our house you know as i've said before we were an itv household and it was absolute crisis, particularly for me, dad, you know, I remember him coming home from work,

getting in the house, turning over from BBC one to YTV, seeing the blue screen of death, swearing at going to the pub earlier. From my point of view, it was fucking brilliant because you know, it meant that I could actually come downstairs and watch top of the pops on a thursday night because what you're gonna do dad gonna watch a blue screen or you're

gonna watch whatever shit's on bbc2 no mate you're in my world now yeah so that so that was great man i got in i got in so much top of the pops watching it in color because they had a portable upstairs but it was black and white and it had a coat hanger stuck in the top of it. So reception wasn't that good, but I got to see Pop in as near to crystal clear clarity as anyone could have in 1979. So, yeah, I love the ITV strike. It's funny we talk about ITV people,

and it was definitely, there was a weird sort of sense of a class marker or whatever. I was conscious because, you know, in the sort of elaborate stratification of the UK, I came from a family that was probably lower middle class as opposed to working class. There was a working class people who lived on the adjacent council estate. And the thing about being low middle class is that you really had to kind of sort of invest so much in being low middle class that you were always kind of on your uppers, really. Whereas the working classes, they seemed to have a bit more disposable income, you know, and it just all kind of signified.

So, yeah. So it seemed to me like, you know, working class. I class envy. I envy the working classes, they seem to have a bit more disposable income, you know, and it just all kind of signifies. So, yeah. So it seemed to be like, you know, working class. I class envy. I envy the working classes. They got to eat fish and chips and watch magpie. For me, it was beans on toast and Blue Peter because, you know, that was my class obligation. And of course, you know, the ITV strike left the field clear for the BBC, although an urban legend sprang up and it was actually commented on by Keith Waterhouse in this day's Daily Mirror, that up to a million people were still watching ITV every night. Yeah, that was me. David, you're Yorkshire Television, weren't you, at the time? Oh, aye, yeah, yeah.

They linked up with the local police, and they were running captioned appeals to find the Yorkshire Ripper. Oh, yes, yes, of yes of course yes because he was still at large um he was yes yeah yeah it's strange really when they eventually caught the yorkshire ripper and you know people just you know people just sort of looking around just think he has this kind of almost like like frank zapper or something like that he has this kind of iconic sort of appearance every bloke in yorkshire looked like the yorkshire ripper at that point my maths teacher looked like the yorkshire ripper or whatever you know so it's like he was that was just standard bloke at that time people forget yeah everyone had a everyone had a tux and a

dickie bow yeah but yeah at all times around about this time there's an amazing photo of peter with um when he was playing at forest and he's he's gone to the local coiffure centre and Mr Raymond or whatever he's called, he's there and he's stalling him and he is the dead spit of the Yorkshire Ripper I'm just surprised he's not fucking behind his back hitting him with a fucking hammer but you know

we're having a good chuckle about no ITV being on and yeah of course you know if that happened nowadays who'd give a fuck you know when it's in a year that there's no international football on. Yeah. But, you know, let's not forget the cultural dowry that was lost due to ITV being on strike. Here's a list of some of the things that either were massively delayed

or cancelled completely. The first series of Cannon and Ball. A whole series of the Dinsdale London sitcom, Pig in the Middle. You know, that one where he's kind of like an illustrator, but he illustrates with a puppet. Oh, that one. He's got his hand up a big puppet's arse

and the pen or whatever's in the puppet's mouth. Right. And, you know, he's debating whether to shag Lisa Goddard or not. Oh. The remake of The Glums with Ian Lavender and Patricia Brake. A new series of The Comedians. Oh, all those new jokes we lost. A Patti Boulay one-hour special.

And last, and probably most importantly, a Cranky's sitcom. Oh, can you imagine what that would be like? Yeah, like the Cranky's electronic comic, but ahead of time. When they were a bit more in their prime. Yeah. I don't know, BBC should should have just taken the piss shouldn't they like all that time that itv were off the air they should have only shown like repeats of on the move and churchill's people and uh and head you like at prime time on the whole network on a saturday night yeah and now on bbc one in a change

from the advertised program albert pierpoint explores the slate quarries of britain this program is in black and white well they could have gone even further than that they could have had nationwide and they could have had bob welling saying well you know we weren't going to go around the regions and do this and do that but I'm going to take my shirt off instead. I'm going to put some BBC canteen trifle on my nipple and I'm going to spend the next three quarters of an hour trying to lick it off. What are you going to do?

You're going to talk to each other or go out and have hobbies? No. You're British. It's 1979. Shut the fuck up. Sit down. Watch me lick cream off my nips

because you know what no telly means an enforced game of Scrabble in a kind of a horrible weird silence with just the clock ticking in the background while you sit there stare at the wall Jesus I hated it

I hated it I was from a similarly lower middle class family and the thing in those days that characterized the english lower middle class was this desire for improvement uh without really the cultural wherewithal to so like my dad would say uh to make sure the tv was off for at least a bit every night. Right. But we wouldn't do anything else. We wouldn't sort of, you know, sit and read improving books or anything. We just, you know, it was just boring.

And to make matters worse, he'd point at the TV and say, can we have it off, please? Which, you know, when you're about 10, you don't, that's you know that's a big mistake yeah if your dad to say that no it's all about it's all about the telly isn't it i mean join the join the power cuts when i was about four or five whenever they are one thing i love to do is put a cardboard box on my head and do party political broadcasts and just you know

the rest of my family would just get on with the business of huddling around a candle and i'd just be there just rabbiting on just talking complete bollocks oh he's happy enough but it seems so hilarious now looking back that a third of british tv could just be forced off the air for months because they wouldn't give technicians a 350% pay rise or whatever it was. I mean, I know the rate of inflation was absurdly high at the time, but we're still talking about pay rises well in excess of inflation. And this remove, it's very strange because on the one hand,

it makes your heart swell with pride you know to see the unions taking the piss because especially as ITV could actually afford it as it as it turned out but taking a more pragmatic long-term view you do find yourself thinking yeah thanks lads I'm sure this this blatant provocation will have no comeback whatsoever, certainly nothing which might end up impacting in a negative way on your brothers in the future. I mean, it's sort of wonderful. That's the British race to the bottom mentality, though, isn't it? Yeah, it's sort of wonderful, the insanity of this,

or to look at it another way, the sanity of it. But at the same time, when you look closely at the TV unions in the 70s, you have to be something more than a socialist to think that this was a healthy or sustainable situation. You do have to be a bit of a nut because, let's face it, You do have to be a bit of a nut because let's face it, the rotting edifice of capitalism was not going to be brought down by the transitional demands of the bloke who put the lights up for Metal Mickey. So you do have to consider it to just be piss-taking.

But then again, it's preferable to today when you might go and do some work on TV and not get paid at all. Oh fucking hell yeah. The question is the extent to which this madness helped to facilitate that madness and the extent to which that could have been foreseen.

Yeah but you know those people who do that for nothing they're getting exposure aren't they? They're putting their name about as someone who do stuff for nothing they're getting exposure aren't they they're putting their name about as as someone who do stuff for nothing yeah it's uh it's always a good reputation to yeah because you've done you've had that experience aren't you david oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely the today program you know they asked me to come on not to promote anything you know because to be fair enough if you promote a book or something like that to um to provide content yeah you know but this is yeah i was I was there to provide content.

I was there to talk about the relationship between music and politics on the back of something that I'd written. But it wasn't, yeah, and initially they said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody said, oh, yeah, they do pay, you know, today on Radio 4, 70 quid or something like that. So I approached them about this and then it came back,

the guy that I'd been lazing with says, I'm sorry, I've spoken to my producer and he has told me we do have a policy of not paying contributors. And the way he said it was almost like a moral thing. It's like not paying for sex or something like that. And it's just like, this is absolutely extraordinary. We do, however, send around a taxi. We'll take you there and back.

And it seems the cab has been paid, hasn't it? He's not doing it for exposure in the cab tray. But I'm 52 at the time. It's just like, you know, I'm not the apprentice, you know, I'm an intern. It's still quite a recent thing, isn't it? Because I can remember the turn of the century and I was still in London. And I got a phone call inviting me up to go on Central Weekend. That fantastic bear pit that was on every Friday night.

They basically wanted to appear on a live TV programme and say that tantric sex was a load of bollocks. And I went, yeah, I can do that. They paid me a fee. They sent a chauffeur down in a Mercedes to pick me up outside of my office at six o'clock. They took me to Lenton, which is just on the outskirts of Nottingham.

They chucked me in a green room and tipped loads of beer down me and I'd say tell you central weekend green rooms best piss up I've ever had in my life the other subjects were is satanism all right and people who kind of like spend loads of money on making their dogs look like famous people so i ended up on a table getting absolutely battered with a vicar a rabbi two satanists and a woman who'd made a dog to look like marilyn monroe right i go on for 10 minutes i have this massive argument with a load of people afterwards back in the green room for another couple of hours so I got really fucking K-lined with Claudia Winkleman and then I said to them

look you know I actually come from Nottingham you know I won't need a lift back to London that night you know I'll go and crash around my mum's for the weekend

and they said alright then well how about this when you want to go back which was Sunday afternoon the same chauffeur picked me up outside my mum's house

and took me home that's fantastic that's how it should be i'm talent i'll have you know yeah i have a fee yeah absolutely talent with a capital t less of uh reflecting upon the glory years of me and more about the glory years of top of the pops because this episode pulled in an estimated 19,450,000 people, making it the most watched Top of the Pops episode ever. Take that blue screen. That is almost double its regular audience in 1979.

It's over 4 million more than what Coronation Street and Crossroads was pulling down, and they were the two biggest watched shows on television at the time. And it's 3 million more than the combined viewing figures in the UK at 6pm on September 11th, 2001. Terrestrial audience in any case. Yeah, but Andy Peebles wasn't involved with that. Peebles factor. Yeah.

Well, as far as we know. That was only the 18th most watched programme that week. It was one below Doctor Who, one above International Show Jumping and the top show that week to The Man Aborn was watched by 24 million people. The same amount as the England-Croatia semi-final last year. That was a very popular show

because everyone could identify with that character, you see. Because we've all been cheated out of our manner, essentially, by a spiv. We all want to fuck Peter Bowles, don't we? That as well, yeah. Yeah. We all have a shambling brabinger in our lives somewhere

I never watched it because actually at this time I just pretty much boycotted television actually I was just up in my room listening to records I would take out a record out of its sleeve, put it on the record player sit, listen to it, do nothing else but listen to it, turn it over, play the other side give it my undivided attention

and then do the same thing over and over were you on drugs? listen to it, do nothing else but listen to it, turn it over, play the other side, give it my undivided attention, and then do the same thing over and over. We on drugs. You tell the young people that, and they don't believe you, I can assure you. Yeah. OMG, mind blown. So, in the news this week, Jeremy Thorpe announces his retirement from politics

The Tory party conference in Blackpool has spent the day discussing hanging and flogging young offenders Ed Koch, the mayor of New York, announces a scheme to deter prostitution by broadcasting the names of convicted curb crawlers on local radio Oh, fucking hell, why didn't they do that here? Can you imagine if Tony Blackburn did that every week? The top ten curb crawlers. David Pleat. Anna Ford and Jon Snow announced that they've cancelled their forthcoming wedding.

Nottingham Forest draw 1-1 with Stokes City and Leapfrog Man United at the top of Division 1. Fucking yes. Are you sure that was us? Yeah, Irog Man United at the top of Division 1. Fucking yes. Are you sure that was us? Yeah, I suppose it would have been 1979. Yes, yes. Champions of fucking Europe. Yes, that's right.

Yes, yes, I remember. But the big news this week is that the Stranglers have organised a charity cricket match against a team of writers and broadcasters with the help of Eddiedie grant motorhead and the dams and cheated by having as many as 40 people on the field at the same time oh man did they make the sandwiches as well for tea oh god rubbing a pork pie into their crotch like a cricket ball i was actually once um asked to play in a celebrity team because as you can imagine it was a bit of a kind of porridge film situation diddy david hamilton didn't turn up something so i had to pull up the numbers and um there was just the only actual celebrities who turned up for this

team that i was in we're playing wimbledon at plow lane you know the old wimbledon setup you know so dennis rise vinnie jones whatever you know that kind of stuff and um probably gould as manager yeah and we did that sort of stuff. And Bobby Gould as manager. Yeah, and we did that sort of thing. We had about 30 on our team at one point. It didn't make any difference. They just passed it around among themselves most of the time. The only celebrities that turned up were Eddie Kidd and Richard Jobson.

Wow! None entities like me. And I scored as well. I actually scored. I actually turned a couple of Wimbledon defenders. They were a bit half-hearted. And then I passed Vinnie Jones, who was in goal, and didn't even bother diving for it. And then Bobby Gould, who was manager,

he sort of trotted back and says, well struck, lad, well struck. And that was the happiest moment of my life. Good Lord. On the cover of the NME this week, the clash. On the cover of Smash Hits this week, squeeze. The number one LP is The Pleasure Principle by Gary Newman. And over in America, the US number one is

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough by Michael Jackson. And the number one LP is In Through the Outdoor by Led Zeppelin. So, me boys, what were we doing in October of 1979? Well, I was a very intense young man indeed. I would have just turned, in October, I would have just turned 17. Do you know what I mean? Yep, indeed. And there's a black and white photo of me, I think, around this time

in a kind of sort of school uniform, grey pullover and grey shirt, no tie, you know, sort of ripped that off as the moment I came in the door, staring maniacally underneath a sort of burgeoning Phil Oakey's type fringe into the camera. You know, I was a sort of very eccentric, very sort of slightly monastic young man, slightly crazy. Matt David. Yeah, I was listening to... A black and white photo. I know, listening to... A black and white photo. I know.

Oh, yeah. A black and white photo. Polaroid. It wasn't like the working classes. It was a De Guero type. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I was just,

I was going through all kinds of weird phases. I was into Captain Beefheart, Faust, Sun Ra, Stockhausen. I remember playing Faust. And my dad, it was a song called it's arranged at day sunshine girl and it starts with this primitive rhythm and i was playing out in my room my dad came hurtling up the stairs he was convinced the central eating was on the blink you know and the boy was david in his music um yeah yeah very tense but it was a very sort of i mean

you mentioned you know the yorkshire ripper and i you know, I think David Pease has done a good job in those novels of sort of like capturing a sense of the sheer toxicity of West Yorkshire at that time. You know, I was born in, I was actually born in London and moved up to Leeds. I never really considered myself. You've said, you're not a real Yorkshireman. We know, David. Good, good. Yeah.

And I mean, the toxicity of the place. I don't know, I don't don't even have told this story before but my younger brother he went along to Stagdew, one of his mates, Gary and he was just a sort of friend

but anyway what happened is Gary's immediate mate said alright Gary, we're going to get like a stripper gram but no, okay so no,'s immediate mate says, all right, Gary, we're going to get a stripper gram. So, no, I'm being full and all that, but you're going to have to be blindfolded. That's just the only condition. All right, it's going to be good fun,

but it's going to involve this blindfold. All right, all right. So anyway, you know. I know where this is going. So the stripper gram is kind of, Gary's all blindfolded. They're sitting on top of the table. The music gets going. She starts kind of, she's like, Gary's all blindfolded, they sit him on top of the table, the music gets going,

she starts kind of dancing a bit, kind of rubbing up against him, it's all getting a bit kind of, which point they take off his blindfold, it's his mother. No! I didn't know where that was going at all, fucking hell.

And I mean, that raises so many questions about who broached the subject with whom. You know, did the mother approach his mates? Did his mates approach Gary's mother or whatever? But, you know, it's shocking stuff. And I mean, you know, and I think it's, I don't think even David Peace could have made that up, but there you go.

No. So you haven't been in a pub with David in the last five years. I have heard that story before. But what I've never asked is, was his mum actually a stripper gram or was she just doing it for the day no no no i just pretend to play the role you know for the night i think yeah yeah yeah yeah well i i can't match that because i was seven in 1979 but yeah i remembered recently i had a flash of memory recently, and I remembered saying to my dad, am I really seven?

We were walking down the street in, I think it was in Birmingham. Am I really seven? Because I couldn't quite believe I was that old already. I couldn't believe I'd made it to that grand old age. It was time to put my little legs up on the poof film a pipe and reminisce you know with my little mates do you remember leslie judd what what happened to her yeah no it's amazing how time flies um but really i was just i was just living inside the changing times in a way that we, as old men, are no longer able to do.

Music-wise, though, was music tickling you, whatever, could be sort of legally tickled of a seven-year-old? Yeah, but I wasn't really a record buyer yet. No. In fact, I mean, I'd been bought some records. I'd been bought some records i'd been bought uh the theme from rainbow with the bit on it that you didn't hear on the tv it was the re it was re-recording by the group telltale right yes i've heard that one yeah they kind of rock out don't they

yeah it's there's a sort of like uh acid folk uh feel to it um and I had Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me by the Goodies, which is a bit inappropriate. Did you ever play that song when it wasn't Christmas, though, Taylor? You know, like, oh, it's July. Got a Whack Me Goodies song on. I'm not sure. I can't remember if it was the A side or the B side. That was the B side, Father Christmas.

I did. Because on the other side was uh the in-betweenies yes yeah things i hate bill oddie's music i'm not a big critics fan anyway but i hate bill oddie's music it was it's what puts me off that's oh come on his version of oakley more bartat's fucking amazing yeah it really is was that in the joe cocker style is that yes yeah okay yeah maybe he's a genius after all i just started secondary school already by this point about i don't know three or four weeks in i fucking hated it because i had the worst first day at school that anyone could possibly have even before school had started i'd gone down to the paper shop in my new crisp black blazer

with a burgundy uh badge and tie and uh i ran into a couple of mates from my old class at junior school who'd gone to bigwood which was the new secondary school on the other side of the estate and uh i said hello to them and they just knocked me down and kicked the fuck out of me because i was wearing a different color blazer to them and then I got into school and we're all queuing up. I'm talking to someone and the deputy head, who was this angry little Welshman, just dragged me out and says, I don't know your name yet, but I'm watching you.

And then round about dinner time, I had a couple of mates who were a few years up from me and they dared me to go up to this fifth year girl and chat her up and i did and then i realized that she was actually a very small teacher so yeah great start and then a week later did you get anywhere with her well he's not in a minute when i was at junior school I was pretty advanced

we had maths boxes we had a box of work that would last the whole year and there were four of them but there was a fifth box that was locked up in the headmistress's study that no one had ever opened it still had the cellophane on it and I made it my

life's work to kill box four and get stuck into box five before I left junior school and I did and the morning that box five was opened all the other teachers were there kind of like peeking around the door watching somebody open this mythical fifth box it was like somewhere out of pokemon or something. I don't know what they were expecting. But when I got to secondary school, it's like, oh, your handwriting is not very good and we want to take you down a peg or two.

So we're going to put you in basic skills, which was alongside, you know, some people who couldn't even fucking breathe, nevermind read or write. And I just immediately resented that and i just thought well you know here i am in a fucking class sharing a book um with somebody else who can't read as fast as me and uh yeah fuck this and you know that set me on the path of leaving school with no o-levels yeah yeah me and lady dive were just the same on the upside

we just got a dog called Rex who was fucking brilliant he was the best dog ever and I do have a very good story about him which is up there with Bummer Dog but I'm saving it for the opposite moment keep something in reserve

well it's probably even more grotesque than Bmer dog actually well yeah it is actually so yeah I'm sitting on that until I need it so what else was on telly today well BBC One starts

the day with schools programmes and then there's golf from the Suntory World Match Play Championship then the news Pebble Mill at one. The Flumps and You and Me before more golf. Then Play School. Deputy Dog. The 3,000th episode of Jackanora.

They're doing The Hobbit. The all-new Popeye Show. Blue Peter looks at the Battle of Hastings. Noah and Nelly. Then the news. Nationwide. Trifle off the nipples, regional news in your area, and they've just finished, what else, Tomorrow's World.

BBC Two begins with coverage from the Tory party conference, then Play School, then more swivel-eyed hang'em and flog'em arseholes action, then the golf, then the latest episode of Cunts in Blackpool, then a couple of hours of the Open Universitaire, and they've just finished highlights from the Scone Palace Carriage Driving Tournament. Oh, they don't give a fuck, do they, BBC? ITV is in a coma, but there is one region still broadcasting. Channel. It was basically decided between the management and

the unions that if channel stopped for one moment it would just die on its arse so yeah they were allowed to carry on they've started at 20 past one with the news and then it shut down until 5pm and recommences with puffins birthday greetings woody woodcker, The Lone Ranger and News Report Extra. They're 20 minutes into Emergency which is either a documentary series or an actual real life emergency. I don't

know, I wasn't there. But yeah, Channel Islands if Channel didn't get any advertising they'd just die. Yeah, I mean what is an emergency on the Channel Islands? Yes. If it's too big for Bergerac to handle, then we really are in trouble. Yeah.

You can see why the strike didn't apply there, because it's not Britain, is it? That's the thing. But, I mean, you know, ITV not being on Striking Channel meant those lucky people got more Venice of Millbrook adverts. Nothing was going to deny those traitorous Channel Island cunts their nightly dose of

barked prices of two litre bottles of woodpecker cider. Essentially, if you don't know what bennets of Millbrook adverts are like, you're not using the internet properly. So you can either go online, go on YouTube, bennets of Millbrook, B-E-N-E-S-T-E-S of Millbrook adverts are like you're not using the internet properly so you can either go online go on YouTube Ben A's of Millbrook B-E-N-E-S-T-S of Millbrook

or you can go straight to the fucking source one word chip steaks you will come to regard them as a very special treat chip steaks chip steaks tremendous protein value special treat chipsticks chipsticks

tremendous protein value just saying the things alright then pop crazy young says it's time to go deep on October of 1979 always remember we may coat down your favourite band

or artist but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. Good evening and welcome to another edition of Top of the Pops. And let's straight away have a look at this week's brand new Top 30. The show begins with a black screen with an overlaid oblong in the top right-hand corner to reveal a bloke we've never seen before in a grey suit wishing us a good evening and plunging straight into the top 30. That man is Andy Peebles. Born in London in 1948, Andy Peebles was the son of a head postmaster who trained as a hotel manager in Bournemouth in the 60s before being spotted DJing at a college dance and being offered

a job at a local nightclub. After DJing at the Scotch of St James in London and the Hard Rock in Manchester, he landed his first radio gig at BBC Manchester in 1973. A year later, he defected to Piccadilly Radio, the brand new local independent station in Manchester, as the presenter of Andy Peeble's Soul Train. Oh, Christ. In December of 1978, he made the leap to Radio 1 when that station completely split from Radio 2 and he was gifted the weekday 8 to 10 in the evening slot.

A month before this episode was aired, he replaced Tony Blackburn in the 2-4.30 slot in the week and this is his first ever gig on Top of the Pops. Fucking hell. I mean, it's just extraordinary, isn't it? I'm trying to think of who he actually reminds me of. And actually, now, Al, you'll certainly get this. Do you remember Paul Bearer? Remember The undertakers yes oh yes yes yes he is andy pebbles

is paul bearer yeah paul bearer minus the minus the makeup um i mean poor sod andy pebbles he's just as god made him but um and i think even he knows that you know and i think he's conscious but you know having said that it's it's just really rather startling isn't it that face that looks like it's been turned inside out um yeah it's extraordinary because it's just like how did this guy ascend you know because as we kind of found out he's pretty he's he's he's nondescript i mean it reminds me of that and in all kinds of ways you know he's nondescript. It reminds me of, in all kinds of ways, he reminds me of a supply teacher or something. I remember when, around about this time, we had a reputation out of fifth form of breaking teachers,

especially kind of new world, understanding weakness. And there was one sort of poor sod, and I think we sort of went from life. You know, we'd do this thing, we'd have this disgusting habit of tearing bits out of our exercise book and putting them in our gob and then flicking the kind of sort of, you know, phlegmy sort of pellet that teaches, you know. And this poor sod was one day in which he was just completely broken.

And I just remember, like, you know, I wasn't even in class and just he was being showered with these horrible bits of sort of, you know, goby little exercise book pellets. And I was, and I just, that's, you know, Paul Bearer and also, you know, the supply teacher we used to have. It's extraordinary. He doesn't seem, and yet he's the guy that got John Lennon's last ever interview. My theory is that John Lennon actually paid Mark Chapman to kill him just in case he ever had to meet Andy Peebles ever again. meet Andy Peebles ever again. Here he is. He's currently just over a year away from his life having any meaning or

importance. And just over a year and a month away from it ceasing to have any ever again. Well, that's the one thing we know about Andy Peebles that he gave, he did the last ever interview with John Lennon. And it's absolutely wrong because he didn't. Andy Peebles that he did the last ever interview with John Lennon and it's absolutely wrong

because he didn't. Andy Peebles did interview John Lennon the night before he died but the next day a chap called Dave Sholin from San Francisco's RKO Radio got in there last. In the book The Lives of John Lennon written by

Albert Goldman it says that night John and Yoko gave a long and tedious interview to Andy Peebles of BBC Radio that started at the studio and wound up after midnight at Mr Chow, the Lennons' favourite restaurant. Peebles insisted on dragging John and Yoko through the entire history of their recording career, prompting them from notes

like an oral examiner. I love Albert Goldman. He's a terrible, terrible biographer but he's a camp New York bitch and they always write the best books. The thing about Andy Peebles, right, you're saying he looks like this person and I don't

know who you're talking about. Paul Bearer. Yeah, who is... The World Wrestling Federation or WNBA. See, this is why I've got no idea what you're talking about. He was the manager of The Undertaker and he had his own funeral parlour and he carried around an urn

that gave The Undertaker great powers. But also carried around an urn that he could smash into the back of the opposite wrestler's head which kind of helped even more i feel wouldn't you get disqualified for that referee didn't see it man he was he was sneaky there's no more disempowered figure really than a world wrestling federation referee yeah but also paul bearer shagged the undertaker's mam he's the father of kane who's the Undertaker's brother,

who set fire to the house and was horribly disfigured. Also, he was going out with a cheerleader and the car crashed and she died. And apparently Kane shagged her in the coffin. You're missing out on a lot if you don't watch WWF, mate. Is this part of the legend or is this something that happened behind the scenes this is all true Taylor I mean before you go into Andy Peebles, what other top

of the pops presenters would make great wrestling managers I think DLT would be a bit of an enforcer not so much of a manager but someone who'd just stand there and protect someone like Shawn Michaels. I'd put a slightly more demonic Diddy David Hamilton, possibly.

Yes. Might really be good, because you'd just cheer every time he got beaten up. Kid Jensen on steroids might be a possible wrestler. Anyway, Taylor, Andy Peebles. Yeah, I don't know about this Paul Bearer character, if that is his real name, but what Andy Peebles looks like to me, very clearly, is Tony Blair, but the present day ravaged and haunted Tony Blair,

only in larval form it's really terrifying and it's made worse by the fact that he's filmed with so that his head is only half way up the screen yeah it's like they'd set the camera up for DLT or something but then

he cancelled and then they never cranked it back down again when Peebles turned up it's quite cruel really but he deserves no better but then he cancelled and then they never cranked it back down again when Peebles turned up. It's quite cruel really but he deserves no better because he really is a grub, isn't he? He brings nothing and it's actively unpleasant having him around, you know, peeping his little head out of your half-eaten apple. And he's dressed like a sort of satirical cartoon of a chartered accountant or something.

It's his Top of the Pops debut, and he's turned up all in grey, like determined to make an impression, you know. All business. Yeah. No nonsense. It must be a borrowed suit or something, or else he's got a stab vest on underneath,

which is possible because it's not it's not an easy fit it's very bulgy and i don't think that's because he's jacked you know no it's no and he's got the most demonic eyebrows ever hasn't it he's an apparition isn't he it's extraordinary yeah the suit is a curious thing because if you remember in 1979, you had the 40 Towers episode with the guy played by Nicky Henson, you know, who's sort of like wearing this kind of open shirt right down to his navel. And John Cleese makes this quip about, you know, we've got enough bananas in this week, dear.

You know, if you remember that one. And, you know, there's constantly odds with, you know, this kind of sex up geezer at some point. You actually see him reading Melody Maker at one point in the episode. He's trying to sneak his girlfriend in, blah, blah, blah. And if you remember, John Cleese is wearing that kind of grey suit that is meant, you know, in 1979, as far as audiences,

as far as John Cleese is concerned, is meant to sort of mark him out as this absolute sort of little Hitlerian sort of stiff, you know. Which, of course, he looks incredibly, incredibly hip. I mean, he looks like a kind of, you know, he could be playing at Futurama dressed like that, could John Cleese. Whereas, like, the Nicky Henson guy

is just this ridiculous throwback to about 1974, you know, with his medallions and his hairy shirt and his flares and what have you. So it's strange to get this weird timeline. So in a funny kind of way, Andy Peebles, you know, is possibly channeling the spirit of Futurama with that suit, but I don't really think that's the intention

or the outcome in fact. The first thing he does at the very beginning of the show is look upwards above the line of the camera for his cue and then when he gets it he looks back down again and starts talking. The mark of a true

professional. But from here on in, every Radio One Christmas do, he can just chuck this in the face, can't he? I presented the most watched episode of Top of the Pops ever. Oh, yeah. Oh, and I interviewed John Lennon last. Apart from this

bloke from San Francisco. Oh, he'd be fucking waving it in your face, mate. I would. And apart from that very brief interview of, can I have your autograph, please, Mr. Lennon? Yes. Oh, yeah in your face, mate. I would. And apart from that very brief interview of, can I have your autograph, please, Mr. Lennon. Yes. Yeah, that one, yeah. But I know we always do this,

but it has to be said, Andy Peebles in this episode, 30 years old. Fuck. Now, if you see him in this, 30 years old, something's really badly wrong there. He's 58 in today's money, isn't he? Yes. Also, what's a bit upsetting is that his name is so close to the German slang word,

Piedels, which is an old schoolboy term for cocks, appropriately. But he's just nondescript throughout. I mean, at one point he's like doing the thing where he's got the kind of women draped around him, but there's none even that kind of horrible, sleazy sort of DLT or Noel Edmonds type sort of vibe going on. Again, he

looks like a supply teacher. He looks like he's about to be presented with an oversized check by some till girls yeah yeah this is a sheer absence of any kind of sort of frisson or connection anything like that is people's introduces the top 30 and accompanying it is you can do it by al hudson and the partners formeded in Detroit in 1976 and obviously fronted by Al Hudson who had a minor solo hit with Dance Get Down which got to number 57 in September of 1978. This song is the first cut from the LP One Way featuring Al Hudson and what the Pop Craze youngsters don't know or care about is that the band have already changed their name to One Way.

And it's up seven places this week to number 15. We'll talk about the song in a minute. Let's get into the quality of those picks because, oh, they're bad, aren't they, this week? Yeah. Yeah, there's one of Fleetwood Mac where the taller members are disappearing off the top of the frame. The males. Yeah, just so he can get the ladies in shot. Yeah.

Which is something that doesn't happen to Sad Cafe, who I never realised. When you look at the picture, they look like four Gullivers visiting a lily putt with a population of one. Yes. It's a very strange, unbalanced group. That Fleetwood Mac one, though, it was like, oh, they've only got the women there. Oh, shit, let's find some blokes who've got beards and perms

and arrange the image just so we just see a chin or a tuft of hair. It's remarkable. Yes, they couldn't be here. No. And also it's one of those pictures where it's Fleetwood Mac, share a joke, which means that they've all got these horrible expressions, like they're all looking in different directions

and they're a really appalling composition. The drummer out of Dollar has had the top of his head taken clean off, which must have upset him. Errol Dunkler is caught doing what anthropologists would call presenting. Yeah, his visit to the proctologist. Yes. Rainbow is standing by a canal

looking like they've just lobbed a shopping trolley into it and what are you going to do about it, grandad? Why are they so bad? Even now. It's 1979, for fuck's sake. As we'll see, video technology is starting to pick up quite a bit round about this time, and top of the pops are quite happy to fuck about

with lots of effects and everything. But picture-wise, it's still not happened for them, has it? I just don't think it matters, you know. It's just, you know, any old image will do. So yeah, Taylor Disco's still full on, isn't it? Yeah, I have no memory of this record at all from the time. Complete blank in my mind. It's all right, though, isn't it?

Yes, it is. It's fairly run-of-the-mill for what it is, but it's got a really nice sound, and especially considering as it's being played as background music over the charts on top of the pops, whose approach to fidelity of reproduction, as we'll see later in this episode, was sometimes a little free and easy.

Like, a lot of the time they'll put a video on and it's like it's somehow reached the screen sounding like the soundtrack of something that was produced by howl roach cost and crackle yeah and just sort of you know a frequency range of about you know 0.6 uh or the music behind the chart rundown sometimes. It's like they rang up dial-a-disc and held the phone up to a mic. But this sounds really good.

There's a really deep bass and a really nice top end on it, which is really important for this particular record, all 56 seconds of it that we get before that big fake wash of canned applause from the two Ronnies audience comes roaring in. And not for the last time this episode. There's a great deal of faked appreciation

in this episode. Perhaps an uncanny parallel with Andy Peebles' personal life. But anyway, this. This song good. Good bit of disco this is. At a time when people were turning the backs on disco there was still stuff like this where you went oh no fair enough mate

you're alright you can come through yeah it's kind of so the following week you can do it stayed at number 15 it's highest position although they would linger at the bottom of the top 100

on five separate occasions in the 1980s they would never come to top 40 land ever again. You can do it from Al Hudson and the partners, and the Doolies have done it again. This week, they're at number 16 in the top 30 with The Chosen Few. Oh, we, we are the chosen few You chose me and I chose you

We're a chosen few Oh, and we We are the lucky people You got me And I got you with a chosen few As we're treated to some primitive Aventis camera effects, Peebles informs us that the Doolies have done it again with their latest single, The Chosen Few. Formed in Ilford in 1967 as a three-man, three-lady family group, the Doolies started their career playing hotels in Essex, as half the band was still in school and not allowed in pubs. hotels in Essex as half the band was still in school and not allowed in pubs. In 1972 they linked up with guitarist Bob Walsh whose brother ran a booking agency in Manchester who introduced the bands to the delights of the northern club scene which led to the entire band decamping to

Lancashire and supporting Bob Monkhouse, Frankie Howard and Norman Collier they signed to Alaska Records in 1974 and a year later they toured Eastern Europe becoming the first western band to play a gig in Moscow and selling 2 million LPs in the USSR as well as being the first western band to top

the Japanese charts fucking hell this is what they thought we were do they mean us they surely do do you think that's why they were approved to play in russia because it was like no one's gonna get too restless so this is yes well we could defect but you know they first came to national attention in 1975 when they recorded the theme tune to the BBC adult education programme On The Move. And after linking up with Billy Ocean, who they shared a songwriter with, they signed to GTO Records.

They finally broke the UK charts in 1977 when Think I'm Gonna Fall In Love With You got to number 13 in October of that year and this is the follow up to Wanted which got to number 3 in August of this year and was number 1 in Japan for 10 weeks and it's up 14 places from number 30 to number

16 this week. Of course it is. Fucking hell Yeah it's quite extraordinary isn't it what is it about this band that Japanese people are going mencle over I'm just

no I'm I'm flabbergasted yeah maybe this is the musical equivalent of knickers in a tin or something from a

from a vending machine yeah I mean maybe it's just like well you know Norman Wisdom was huge in Albania because it was the he was the only one

let through whatever I mean you see that in Japan. They don't have that excuse. They go, oh, no. Yeah. But of all that, you know, they pick the doolies. Yeah, they always were a bizarre sort of blank.

I mean, I think anybody watching it now or any sort of contemporary pop fan, I think would just be struck by their sort of holiness, you know, their kind of yeah narrowness the way they look and i think that this wasn't much of a premium put on things like appearance or choreography or anything like that or time whatever i think the only thing that matters as far as anyone's concerned is that they're vocally competent you know which they are how they dress whatever how they move oh just jig about or whatever it really doesn't matter you know there's that kind of weird sort of conceptual

laxness you know about them just even on the sort of terms of being a kind of pop group you know it's a bit strange I mean it's yeah they're just

it's cruise ship pop isn't it you know you can imagine sort of like very much so throwing quoits around on stage or something like that

you know as they play it's just and of course it's reggae-tinged, isn't it? Because there's something very enduring about that. It's not reggae like it used to be with Paul Nicholas, but it's reggae nonetheless. Yes.

It's got that kind of little sort of... I think it's just to give it that, like, holiday tinge, you know, because I think, as we see throughout this episode, the idea of, you know, holiday abroad pop is still quite a kind of potent thing, really. But this is like a holiday in Philae instead of Spain. Yeah. I suppose so, yeah. quite a kind of potent thing really and still but this is like a holiday finally instead of yeah i mean the one thing i should just think about that you know talking we'll talk about my book

early on if you're only going to buy two books this year by um alan jones's i can't stand up falling down um one of his you know memoirs of like doing his interviews over the years and it's a wonderful one he does with Def Leppard at one point. And Steve Clark, the singer, Joey Lipp's trying to sort of take the thing seriously. Steve Clark is getting absolutely pissed out of his head on Cheat Lager. And at one point he was trying to sum up

what, you know, the importance of Def Leppard. You know, he says, I'll tell you what we are, Alan. We're the doolies, we're ghoulies. We're the doolies, we're ghoulies, right? And Joey Lipp says, what the fuck are the fucking doolies got're ghoulies right and Joey says what the fuck are the fucking doolies

got to do with how we are we're the doolies we're ghoulies wow every time I see the doolies I always think

we're ghoulies you know but there you go you know I like to see it as reggae as it should never be ever

but the comparison is a fair one because one of the singers actually has a touch of the singers actually has a touch of the Paul Nicholases about him, doesn't he? I was going to say, Roger de Courcy, yeah. That was in my notes as well. Paul Nicholas, yeah, definitely.

And is it Roger de Courcy, whatever the other guy looks like? He's got some... He's got a bit more of a Keith Harris vibe to him. Keith Harris, exactly, not Roger de Courcy. It's Keith Harris, yeah. Yeah, Keith Harris minus the war bull. Finally, we understand why Paul Nicholas always looks so pleased with himself.

These things are relative. Yes. They look like the cast of Copycats. Oh, fuck yes. Do you know what I mean? Yes, exactly. Very much British light entertainment feel to it. ITV might have been on strike,

a British light entertainment feel to it. Like ITV might have been on strike, but everything bad about that channel is concentrated into these three minutes. It's like the old club circuit gave us so many great talents and helped to hone their acts to perfection. But all the time, this shit was seeping out the other end. You know what i mean yes it's like british light entertainment of the 70s and 80s is is much maligned and often unfairly but

there's something so inescapably nightmarish about the worst of it and And people, you know, it's like people of our age react so strongly against it because it's everything we didn't want to be and everything we didn't want to have to see. You know what I mean? So like when David had his headphones on exploring the Teutonic avant-garde and stuff, you know, and Al was delving into American soul and funk and i was burrowing

into the past looking for other possibilities this is what we were trying to get away from like specifically this like sort of nights out and and sundays in with these fucking frizz haired, tabloid-informed, art-hating, cotton-knicker-wearing, super-noodle-eating joy vacuums, you know, where everything is a bit of a giggle, but nothing is actually funny, ever. And, of course, the terrible thing is when you look at the world we actually ended up in, it's far worse than that. And, you know, this now looks cheerful and harmless

but not to us no you know no not to us it's just the epitome of the ugly anti-sexual mistakenly self-confident british scum you know i mean like fucking grooving in pontins and yeah grinning away as the gains of the post-war period are slowly dismantled you know with their with their pink electric blankets and their their waving hand car back window decoration yes you know and it's it's it's nice that they're happy, you know, you've got to say. But as people from the far future, we know where this is going. And it's not good. No. It's Harvester Restaurant, little chef, sort of for a treat type.

Bernie Inn. Yeah. Bernie Inn, yes. Dad Disco, isn't it? Yeah. This is the kind of thing Dad disco, isn't it? Yeah. This is the kind of thing when you would be at Pontins and it comes on and your mum and dad are up and you're just sat there just looking away,

hoping that the girl you fancied doesn't notice that you're with this lot of twats. And your dad comes up to you and sort of shakes his arse about and goes, oh, come come on you miserable cunt you're on your holiday There's an amazing advert on YouTube which you'll have to put on the playlist I can't remember if it's for

I can't remember if it's for pontins or whatever the one below that was Oh yeah There was one below that Ma. Oh, yeah. You know, there was one below that, like fucking whatever, Maplins or something, you know, the lower one. In Canberra Sands.

Yes. It's got Laurie McManamy doing the voiceover. And it's like a little glimpse into the world that everyone who lived through the 70s and 80s didn't want to be in. So you get shots of people dancing in the dance hall to whatever cabaret singer is on, you know, and queuing up to

get fucking food off hot plates that's been there all day, you know, in the canteen. Oh, it's horrible food as well. It's like chickens with like, I don't know, cherries or something studded into them and oh, with mashed potato all around it and everything oh

it's pontins campersands that's right and a vat of baked beans with a skin on yeah and he and he does say hey up it's just like top of the pops that's right and it really is just like top of the pops yeah this particular moment yeah it's like you like Top of the Pops at this particular moment. Yeah. It's like, you look at them, the singers are what first catch your eye as being horrible, but in a way it's the instrumentalists that bother me the most, right? Because there's a nautical bassist,

but unlike the bloke at A Two Man Sound, he doesn't look like a proper sailor. No. He looks like one of those nouveau riche blokes that steers a fucking barge up and down the Shropshire Union Canal, you know. But he buys the hat and the navy blue blazer, and he's got like a tea mug with Skipper written on it. And the guitarist has got that horrible, he's like an overgrown school bully look, you know what I mean?

He's trying to look macho with his jumbo dreadnought 70s music teacher acoustic folk guitar and his big splayed tapping feet. And he looks like a cross between Mike Reed, R-E-A-D, and Mike Reed, R-E-I-D. Really disturbing. read r-e-a-d and might read r-e-i-d uh really disturbing the only one i like is the lady on keyboards because she looks quite cheerful yes pint pulling sort of way and i know someone who's got a dress like that because they still make them and seeing as she was one of the doolies who left the group to go and live in south africa in 1982 yes she's a lovely person

i'm actually looking at this advert now and the wonderful spread uh consists of a massive chicken and it's got slices of orange and halves of uh cherries all over it and the piped mashed potato all over so it looks like it's wearing a frilly shirt. The chicken looks like it's going to the PFA Awards. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. Smashing grub. But it's all captured here.

It's all captured here in the Doolies. Yeah, it really is. You know the Doolies play Ponty's Camber Sands? Oh, almost certainly. Yeah. Yeah, probably still there. I mean, family bands are always creepy anyway. Right, and I've said this before on it.

As soon as you go past the number two, the creepiness of a group increases exponentially with every sibling you add on. Yeah. And there's six of them in this shower, which is why, you know, even the heavy roots rhythm of the backing track can't distract you from the pure horror of the Doolies

and their inverted souls. Comparisons with Liquid Gold, they're pretty unavoidable, aren't they? Right about the same time, both ludicrously overmanned both of them had a mad looking singer with a bit of a gap in the teeth and they both had a wacky drummer but god yeah yeah but liquid gold you have to say we're a bit funkier if you could ever use that word for liquid gold they were a bit funky liquid gold remember being one of those i heart the 70s programs

claiming that they were electronic music pioneers. Are they mentioned in your book, David? They're not. Oh, fucking hell. Outrage upon outrage. Because they felt they were one of the very first people to kind of use that kind of, you know, sort of generated thing.

And, you know, they really paved the way, you know, for your new orders and people like that. And in fairness, Bell and Sebastian are a bit funkier than the doolies so the following week the chosen few leapt six places to number 10 and would spend two weeks at number seven however the follow-up love patrol would only get to number 29 for two weeks in march of 1980 and they never troubled the top 40 again by the early 80s three of the band had emigrated to South Africa

and the ones left behind split up into the Doolies and the New Doolies and both groups had disbanded by 1992 fucking hell man the isms and schisms of the Doolies and unfortunately for gag writers of the Two Ronnies and the

Comedians the Doolies never recorded a song called I've Got You And unfortunately for gag writers of the two Ronnies and the comedians, the Dooley's never recorded a song called I've Got You. The Doooolies and the Chosen Few. Well, it's my debut on Top of the Pops, and it's a debut, too, for an Edinburgh-based band, The Head Boys, with their latest single called The Shape of Things to Come. Caesar's praying for rain Lightning flashes around

The prophet is screaming his head hits the ground you should hear the warning if you read the signs play with your own life but don't play with mine Peebles awkwardly rocking on his heels and getting shadows on his face. Yeah, against the infinite blackness of empty space.

Yeah. That's the weird thing. He's just like in this inky void, which, you know, is probably where he belongs. He informs us that this is his first appearance on Top of the Pops and introduces a band who are making their debut too before gawkingly looking at the floor manager and ducking away before he was supposed to as the camera swings around to reveal the head boys with the shape of things to come. Formed as Badger in Edinburgh in 1977 who released two singles that year which failed to chart,

the Head Boys were almost immediately picked up by Colin Bell, who was the manager of the Tom Robinson band at the time, and they were signed to RSO, the biggest record label in the world by 1978, and reluctantly moulded into a new wave band. This is their debut single as the Head Boys Boys and it's been produced by Peter Kerr fresh off a stint knocking together Airports and Forget About You for the Motors.

It's up this week from number 56 to number 52. Now lots to talk about here. Peebles first and foremost. It is his first appearance on Top of the Pops. He is already awkward as fuck. Why aren't these people being coached

before they let them on Top of the Pops? It's weird. I think, as I say, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of care necessarily in the production. I just think it doesn't really matter. It's pop, it's 39, you know, shut up, you know, just get on with it.

You know, there's just this, yeah, this bizarre sort of, I mean, everything tends to be kind of overproduced and overthought through in terms of every sort of aspect of things. You know, it's a little pop these days, you know, it's a little avail, but, you know, it's kind of, why make the effort? Why bother? It doesn't matter. It's just pop. Well, the one nice thing you can say about Andy Peebles

is that you don't get that impression that he's thinking, at last, I'm in front of the camera. Yeah. You know, i've come out from behind the mic yeah and i've got my mug on the tv which you do with a lot of them and yes it's always a really dislikable trait um the point is he should have stayed behind the microphone obviously it's uh but it's yeah you know at least he has the decency to look embarrassed. But at the same time, the horrible thing is you watch this and you think, ah, that's why Simon Bates got so much work.

That's why DLT was on almost every week. Because it was second nature to them. But the band and the song. I mean, to my mind, this is old wave, isn't it? They're a band that look like they're on the wrong side of 25 and they actually really want to be blue oyster cult or something like that but you know they've signed to a big label and they've gone look here's your wazzy little jackets and here's your skinny ties get on with it yeah well it's i mean it it sort of devolves as it goes on, right? It's like really it's power pop, right? And as so often it's neither especially powerful

nor really pop, you know? Usually that's just bands who don't have the chops to rock out but reach for the grossest and most basic stadium cliches and put them into what's really a sort of tuppany-hapeny bubblegum tune and then try and shake a bit of fizz into it by leaping around and yeah twitching to sort of suggest energy and manly commitment to something unspecified and unseen uh but yeah with this lot it's sort of the the the mask slips as it goes on.

And towards the end, it's basically like an FM rock tune. Yes. And that's the best bit as well, where there's this sort of bed of jangling electric piano, you know. So you've got like the keyboardist is doing this sort of, it's like out of all tomorrow's parties or something, you know, that sort of bed of like ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding. And he's the best one, and yet he's pushed out to the side yeah visually and musically but yeah

and what that proves is if you're making fundamentally tasteless music like this then you have to go big um you have to just do it and own it and uh you know if you're doing pomp and stomp with a sort of spindly cheapo backing like this you know it's worse than useless it's interesting that you made i think callum malcolm i think his name the guy on the keyboard yeah he is the one actually went on to have some sort of a career in music you know pretty up production things like that i think work with people like blue nile or whatever yeah it's funny even he's sort of sitting there he's looking around he's surveying the rest of them he's almost slightly detached

thinking I'm going to bail the fuck out of this outfit when I can you know he's almost got his eye on the top of the moon and Shanti's always like

looking further you know this will do for now with his two keyboards yeah absolutely which is not very punk at all not very punk at all or post punk or any punk yeah yeah yeah

I mean I think this is you know it's Robert Stigman and people like that you know they're an unwise investment basically, I think this is, you know, it's Robert Stigwood and people like that, you know, they're an unwise investment, basically, and based on this assumption that, you know, like basically punk was this kind of explosion and what was going to result in that was this kind of

jerky, sort of codified, skinny tie the new wave, and then this would be sort of like a prime, almost like sort of, you know, manufactured example of that. And, you know, it was a bad bet because very, very shortly indeed stuff like this, as a lot of at the time people in coloured rimmed glasses

and spiky hair and skinny ties and Rodney Trotter-alikes were all going to be swept away and dissolved in a sea of like scar and synth-pop and white funk or whatever that is just sort of like beginning to rumble. And they don't realise that and obviously sort of like, just beginning to sort of rumble. And, you know, they don't realise that.

And obviously, I mean, it's weird. I mean, it got to number 45. It's not one hit wonders. They're one miss wonders, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah, because I was shocked that this song didn't get into the charts because they made a lot of TV appearances round about this time. I remember seeing them on Cracker Jack,

that cauldron of Pop, Fire and Fiora. It's the grease millions. Exactly, yeah. Being put to bad use. A lot was riding on them, yeah, they would have ridden the fuck out of them. But, you know, what an ironic title, The Shape of Things to Come. Yes.

This is also, yeah, an example of something you do see a bit around this time which is this sense of punk having closed doors as well as open them yeah uh you know and it's like now looking back there's obviously very much a net benefit there but the effect of punk does mean that records which once might once have been enjoyably grotesque sort of get shaved down to this yeah and it sounds like a like an ant puffing its chest out you know what i mean it's just no use to anybody yeah and also what these remind me of when i was a kid like around this time sort of event is this was like the default setting of a band yes like so if you were doing an advert

for a shit ice lolly or something or you know milk has got a lot of bottle or something yes in the 60s you'd have groovy guys in beads and red polo necks yeah and in the 70s they had sequins and platforms. Then by the 80s, it's this, like sort of skinny zilches with skinny ties and seafront souvenir shop glasses and, you know, a little bit older than they let on. Like gurning and leaping around, you know, all sort of pumped up and serious but about nothing. What this is, this is the type of music that brian tilsley listens to in 1979 before ivy tells him to turn that racket down yeah and he starts going to discos yeah i mean yeah you're right i mean there is i mean they are wearing the skinny ties but they've tucked them into the top of the shirts like sergeant bilko yeah probably because the ties get in the

way of all the fretwork but also because they don't they don't look like a young rock band you know what i mean no and it's like no okay if you if you just don't have the right face or the right kind of air about you then that's fine but if that's the case don't then try to look and act as much like rock musicians as you possibly can with your your dark glasses and your heroic poses you know because you'll only make everyone feel awkward it's like watching desperate imposters you know which is what you are watching really but it just makes it so obvious and and inescapable and they're like they're like brown sauce without the sharp satirical wit. You know what I mean?

It's like a Bruce Foxton solo record or something like that. Like if he had some stupid half-assed idea about breaking America, despite the fact this lot couldn't break Sealand. The thing that seals the deal for me is during the instrumental break where the lead singer's doing some very

unconvincing hopping from foot to foot and shaking his fist he's trying to say oh punk rock

power pop it looks like the farmer who's really angry at Joan Petunia for leaving the gate open

the Dick Van Dyke of Yorkshire accents that one. Hang on, pick two, me. There's two things I did like about this clip. One is the bearded roadie, or whatever he is,

who's standing behind the keyboard player with his big arms folded. It's like everyone was too scared to ask him to get out of shot. He's like that. He's just standing here. And I also like the big tiled mosaic things that are hanging up around the stage,

mostly because they appear to have been transported there straight from the subway under the ring road in Kidderminster, the walls of which looked pretty much exactly like that in 1979, except with cocks and balls drawn all over them, and gluey crisp bags stuck around the bottom. But to me, that suggested the urban grit and alienation which the band so badly failed to put into the record. So the following week, The Shape of Things to Come

jumped seven places to number 45, its highest position. The follow-up, Stepping Stones, got absolutely nowhere near the charts, and after they knocked back a tour of the USA in order to doss about in the countryside and work up a new LP, which was rejected by RSO, they split up in 1980. However, keyboard player Callum Malcolm went on to create the Castle Sound Studios in Edinburgh and produced practically every band in the young Sound of Scotland scene of the early 80s as well as Prefab Sprout, Mock Knopfler, Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet. And wet, wet, wet.

The debut single from the Head Boys, The Shape Of Things To Come. At number four on the chart this week, Michael Jackson, and Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. And here to dance to it, Legs N' Curl. We've already covered Michael Jackson in myriad chart musics, and this is the first cut from the LP Off The Wall. His first solo LP in four years, and the first where he had creative control. The second song that Jackson ever wrote, after Blues Away in 1976, is technically the follow-up to Ben, the rat-bothering ballad which got to number 7 in December of 1972 and it came with a state of the art video with three chroma key jackos

cavorting over some geometric shapes but we're getting legs and co instead and it's up this week from number 7 to number 4 well many things to discuss here this is his first official solo single at the age of 21 can can you believe

that they're waiting for this long to pull the trigger on jacko solo that's extraordinary and of course there's still this overlap he's still actually touring with the jacksons yes um which you know it does seem a little strange because you know this is yeah i think you do kind of forget that i think just because this is such a towering achievement this is a towering achievement of the 20th century, basically. One of them. I mean, you know, Picasso's Demoiselle d'Avignon, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you know, it's Louis Armstrong's heebie-jeebies.

Michael Jackson, don't stop till you get enough. You know, it's an absolutely glorious piece, an absolutely guaranteed floor filler, of course. And what's really strange is you get this kind of bizarre equalising effect of top of the pops. There's no, it's just, you you know and here's some more pop and um there'll be some more pop to come after this it's just you know it's as if it's just all part of the kind of same it belongs in the same sort of band bandwidth as you know the doolies or whatever it's it's it's um that that's i find that extraordinary really um remember when michael jack Michael Jackson did Blame It on the Boogie.

And there was, you know, the Jackson version. And then there was this other version by the bloke that actually wrote it. It was also called Mick Jackson. Mick Jackson, yeah. Mick Jackson, he's from Manchester. And I remember having this sort of similar sort of effect then. You know, the Jacksons, Michael Jackson, weren't these kind of sort of towering artists. But, you know, they were a pretty kind of thing.

In some ways, it's like a modest proposition, you know, moving from number seven to number four or whatever. Well, they're disco, aren't they? So they're not important. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's just a bit of froth. Singles act. You know how it is when somebody big dies and you just go,

oh, I want to hear one of them songs. And it's always interesting to see which song you go for first. I mean, with Boa, it was John, I'm Only Dancing for me. And when Michael Jackson died, it was this because this is his best song, isn't it? Yes, it is. I mean, it's one of the best songs. I mean, it's just an absolute sort of fountain of sheer joy.

Yes. And it hasn't diminished at all. I mean, you know, it's completely undiminished by time. Possibly because it gets played all the time, you know, rightly so. Because, like I say, you know, it's absolutely guaranteed flawful in any occasion, in any space. You know, the arrangement hasn't dated. No.

It's still, you know, it's just retained every sort of last kind of you know fluid ounce of its uh original um intensity yes when he died i was at my mum's so i didn't get a chance to make that choice because i didn't have my record collection with me or whatever but the next day i was going i got a minicab to the station to go home and of course all the radio stations were playing michael jackson and this came on and the cabbie leans over he goes oh bloody hell turns it and then there's another michael jackson song on another channel oh bloody hell he turns it again finally settles on some uh some gammony sludge and goes uh oh there there you go, a bit Kasabian. That's more like it.

That's less like it. What is strange, of course, here is that rather than have the actual video, you know, they go for a Legs & Co. performance. And the video was mind-blowing. Yeah, the video was absolutely mind-blowing.

And I mean, it's pretty kind of invidious, really, for Legs & Co. really to have to sort of do this. I mean, you know, with other stuff in the 70s, I mean, if they're dancing to something like Gilbert O'Sullivan, then they're kind of providing something that Gilbert O'Sullivan couldn't provide himself, i.e. the ability to sort of dance, you know, in a kind of sort of way.

Here, I mean, they do this kind of rather sort of pallid impersonation. You know, everyone's familiar with Michael Jackson's moves at this point and they sort of rather tamely reference them at some points in this bizarre, coy, slightly kind of sapphic performance. You can't outdance Michael Jackson. No, no. Even in, you know, not even in 1979. Well, certainly not in 1979.

And the irony is, in a way, it's probably one of their better choreographed efforts actually in some ways. You know, they would say that like, every single time they would say, you know, whether it's Pants, People, Legs and Co, they always talk about you know they would say that like every single time i would say you know whether it's pants people legs and kai always talk about you know sexless sexism and you know the fact that they're kind of you know although there's a sort of purience matter that their moves don't really you know they're more like kind of gymnastic type moves or whatever there's something kind of bbc chased about them but um but no they they push it a little bit here but

you know nonetheless it's just falls so far short, choreographically, of what Jackson does himself, which we're all familiar with. Yeah, but I mean, in fairness, other than sublimating into vapour in front of the camera lens, there's not really any way you can do justice to this if you're not Michael Jackson. No.

We've just come off an episode where Legs & Co were sexist and damn sexy, if you will yeah three years down the line has there been much of a change um i mean what they're wearing here they've got uh they've got black dresses that are kind of like split up the side to the appendix and they've got different colored what would you call them like comma buns or something yeah comma buns yeah yeah and they're on a stark white background which is none more um aventures yeah well it's very kenny everett exactly yeah you're on that low definition tv and with that glaring brightly lit videotape when you put the white void behind it means that bits of people's heads and arms just disappear.

Yeah. Swallowed up by the nuclear brightness of the background, which looks a bit disturbing. Like they're coming towards you out of the sun. Yeah. And they're kind of like just basically strutting on and strutting off and there's lots of perspective shots. So we see a few in the background and one right at the front. And Sue has got the international international warning symbol by road onto her

kneecap like an exclamation mark in the triangle yeah yes uh which to me does look very much like a threat to encroaching dads yes i think they assume that it means don't stop but according to the highway code that actually means warning danger ahead yeah so yeah that could be going into someone's groin that's that's a bit threatening what it should be i've worked out is that don't stop would be a yellow oblong with a black border with a no waiting sign in the top right hand corner and the words while we still haven't got enough underneath that's a lot to get onto it it's conditioned though isn't it it's don't stop until you to get onto a net. It's conditional though, isn't it? It's don't stop until you get enough.

So I think perhaps it's implying you can stop now because you've had quite enough. You've had two minutes of legs and coat and that's quite enough for you, Dad. But they're happy because for once they're not dressed up as hammerhead sharks or big game hunters. So they're digging it, you know.

And I don't, you know, I sort of, I always want to put a bit of a limit on this thing of saying, oh, it's sexist. I mean, the way they're presented is often sexist, but they are dancers and this is what they do. It's their self-expression and they like to, you know, to put on a display. That's kind of what dancing is.

So, you know, I cut them a bit of slack and grant them a bit more agency usually. Yeah, to quote James Brown, they're using what they've got to get what they want. And what they've got is years of dance experience and what they want is, you know, their wages. Yeah. Their wages and, you know, the odd supermarket opening.

Yeah. But, I it's it's far easier to take that view when they're wearing slinky black dresses than than you know when they've got coconuts on their tits you know yes grass skirts and all that sort of stuff but the song it is really weird to say but this is his debut solo single and it's his best i don't know what what are you saying i don't know. What are you saying? Is it better than Billie Jean? Yeah. What do you think?

Billie Jean's fucking amazing, but this is better. I mean, that's the split, isn't it? It's going to be one of those two. Yeah. There's nobody going, but what about Liberian Girl? Yeah. Earth song.

I mean, it's a slow downhill from here, his whole career anyway, really, isn't it? The trend is downwards, it's a slow downhill from here his whole career anyway really isn't it on the trend is downwards is off the wall then thriller then bad then dangerous then history and then it's into the canal you know i mean it's uh the interesting thing about this and one reason why i sympathize with legs and co here it's like a lot of great dance records that in that it's very easy to move to this but it's quite hard to dance well to it because there's a lot going i mean listen you know as if i know anything about dancing but i do know that because there's a lot going on in this record it's not a stomp and it's not a shuffle it's quite

intricate yeah you know and also it's a new yeah laurie mcmenemy would come off the dance floor when this came on but at this point a lot of dance records are either sort of gritty and soulful and organic and dirty or they're very precise and mechanical and smooth. And this is sort of both and neither. There's like a looseness to it in the break, especially with the vocal ad-libs and all this stuff. But at the same time, it really gets its propulsion from the busyness of the backing track,

which is like a hundred tiny musicians all working simultaneously in separate lit-up boxes, you know, like a giant clockwork groove machine. And there's no sense of sweat to it or toil. But equally, it's not really space age or robotic. It just sounds human. Ironically enough, considering it's a Michael Jackson record, it sounds extremely human.

Yeah. But not live. It's so unmistakably a great studio creation. It's like a Black Pet Sounds, you know, like a million moving parts all contained and synchronised. You're right about it being hard to dance to because I tried to work out a dance routine in front of the mirror to it. With a view to impressing girls at the Top Valley Youth Club.

And my sister kind of like coached me a little bit. And it essentially involved me putting on a fawn corduroy jacket with big lapels. And having a bit of open shirt. I wasn't a mod just yet. And kind of like moving my fists from left to right while kind of like waggling my arse which essentially made me look like a fat auntie trying to get out of a little armchair and at certain points i would pick up uh rex who was still a puppy then because you know everything i did then involved the dog dog had to be everywhere with me didn't really work out for me, but, you know,

I had a go and that's all that matters at the end of the day. No, it isn't. As probably as Laurie McMenemy would have said. See, what I always associate this record with, in about the year 2000, there was a big postal strike in London and I didn't get my gyro. These were the days where you'd get your gyro in the post and have to go and cash it so as ever when there's a good old day yeah so as ever when there's a

strike that you absolutely support but which suddenly affects your own life in a really negative way your solidarity starts to wobble just slightly so I'm sat there going no no no but this is it's right it's right um nothing to eat you know in the dark listening to uh off the wall and it seemed to me that on the chorus of this song michael jackson was singing keep on with the postal strike don't stop till you get enough from the past he was sending a message of support to the post office workers in their struggle against management. And I thought, well, if it's good enough for this dubious freak, it's good enough for me. So I've never been able to hear it as anything else since.

I don't even know what the real words are, and I don't want to. As far as I'm concerned... Oh, I'm not going to tell you that. No, no, no, no, no. This is Michael versus Consignia, as far as I'm concerned. Always will be. Bit of a black mark for Top of the Pops for bypassing the intro,

which is one of the greatest intros to a song ever, I feel. They should have got Andy Peebles to do it as they failed at it. So the following week, Don't Stop Till You Get Enough nudged up one place to number three, its highest position. The follow-up, Off the Wall,

got to number seven in December of this year. And he'd have two more top ten hits from that album with Rock With You, which is brilliant, and She's Out Of My Life, which is the kind of gloopy shit that kind of marked him out for the rest of his career. Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that's, unfortunately, basically Off The Wall is only good when it's fast and shit when it's slow we can argue all day about whether don't stop till you get enough is better or billy jean is better but there's a part of me that thinks no michael jackson's greatest moment was when he went on the mtv awards in 2002 just as a guest and to

everyone's surprise announced that he was receiving an award as artist of the millennium yes uh in fact it was his birthday and they were just trying to be nice so they'd given him a cake or a like a darts trophy or so i can't remember um but in the introduction britney spears said i've always've always considered Michael Jackson to be the artist of the millennium. So then he comes on, he picks up this thing and says, well, you know, since I was a child growing up in Gary, Indiana, I never dreamed that one day I'd be here receiving this award as artist of the millennium.

And everyone thought this was him getting it wrong, right? Like a really embarrassing scene but then it came out later that in fact mtv had been begging him to make an appearance but his people had said he'd only appear if he was introduced as artist of the millennium and i mean if you're going to be a dick you might as well take that to stratospheric heights you know don't just demand that you be hailed as artist of the millennium by a pvc clad britney spears but then go on to pretend that you've just been given an award proving that you are indeed the artist of the millennium when you haven't and just dare anyone to say a word you know what i mean? Like part enigmatic genius and part giant baby.

Like all the most entertaining pop star idiots. And the camera cuts to Leonardo da Vinci sat there in a tux, grinning through his teeth and saying, that fucking cunt's done me again. Michael Jackson and the song that's on top of the American charts this week called Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. If you like great disco music, then here's a track for you from the latest album by Chic.

The album's called Risque. This is My Forbidden Lover. Peebles, now surrounded by girls with massive Trisha Yates hairdos, tells us that if we like great disco music, here's a track from the latest LP by Chic, It's My Forbidden Lover. Formed in New York in 1976 by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who were in a rock band in the early 70s called The Boys, and then backup band members of New York City,

who had a number 20 hit in August of 1973 with I'm Doing Fine Now, Sheik immediately set about the UK charts when their debut single Dance, Dance, Dance, Yowza, Yowza, Yowza got to number six they went on a run of four more top 10 singles on the bounce from 1978 to mid-1979 and this single the second cut from the LP Risque is the follow-up to Good Times which got to number five in July of this year and it's just entered the charts at number 51 yeah just going back a little bit the chic Nottingham connection apparently the story goes that Nile Rodgers

and Bernard Edwards were part of New York City and they played their final gig at Heart of the Midlands which is now known as Rock City so anyway they're in the Bentinck Hotel which is just across the road from the train station on their last night of the tour and they had a chit chat and said when we get back to New York we're going to form a band went out on the piss when they got back Nile Rodgers had had everything nicked including his passport

so Bernard Edwards went back to America Nile Rodgers went down to London and tried to join a rock band but the London Rock fraternity were not having it because of his skin tone, apparently. Yeah, that Jimi Hendrix, what did he ever do? That's me claiming chic for Nottingham,

and by fuck I'm sticking to it. But oh, this band, how I love them. Yeah, this episode has risen to quite a high peak around this point from which its descent will be rapid and undignified. I mean, this is it. I mean, you know, this, in a sense, is bog-standard chic. But, you know, it's absolutely... I mean, they're shitting gold at this point.

Yes, they are. You know, they just switch their arms like, you know, a donkey switches its tail. And it's just absolute genius beyond the reach of anybody else. I mean, I suppose what's more generally interesting is disco tends to involve, like, you know, a kind of strong kind of strings component. Yes. And

it's on the eve of, like, you know, Synthesizer about to kind of go and put all these people on the breadline or whatever, you know. But there is this kind of loveliness about, you know, it kind of, like, preserves tracks like this in a way, you know, that's you know, that particular kind of period thing. I mean, what's sad, though, about Sheik is the fact

that they were kind of slightly intimidated. There was that horrible movement, the Disco Sucks movement, wasn't there? No, no, no. Two or three years down the line. Yeah, exactly. They'd all be like, you know, Trump's opposed to, you know, a man and a woman or whatever, no doubt later on.

Just man. Yeah, yeah. Just man. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. You know, manifestly racist, you know, nonsense or whatever, Just man. Yeah, absolutely. Manifestly racist nonsense, burning disco records and stuff like that. And what's sad in a way is that Sheep were sufficiently intimidated by that.

They felt this was a kind of big shift in the marketplace. They effectively retired almost. They took a kind of a... Obviously it was great for Nile Rodgers or whatever, you know, in terms of the kind of production work or whatever, but it's sad that something as obnoxious as that should have brought a halt to Sheep, really.

I mean, it worked the way that, like, it's so sad that, you know, Trump supplants Obama, you know. Well, it's only in an official sense, because really they just carried on, but with rotating singers such as diana ross yeah yeah sister sledge so it was all right i just it just i just remember seeing the interview with lyle rogers where he just talked about how affected being that and effectively intimidating

i thought yeah bastards yeah it is weird because over in this country we didn't give a fuck apparently you know evidently we didn't give a fuck all this stuff's still charting all the criticisms you could make of disco that it wasn't really real music by real musicians and everything you can just point a shit and go what the fuck are you talking about you stupid cunt change your fucking kiss t-shirt and wash it because you stink speaking of that there's a curious similarity between the presentation of chic here and that of the doolies earlier yeah um the way they're set up and the way they're filmed um and you see that and you hear it and you think it's isn't it weird that white supremacists have ever existed yes yes to be completely fair to uh racists and fascists this is maybe not uh a fair comparison but yeah it's it's amazing how cool chic appear here without even having to bust out one of their

better songs i mean it's 1979 which was not a sartorial high point for any group of people on earth um and they still managed to convey this amazing not just this amazing sense of style but deep style right like the this is an aspect of chic that gets overlooked a lot i think probably because they weren't you know an art band or whatever but that sort of roxy-like image control and unified look and the way that worked alongside the sound to create this world of suggestion and this identity of semi-ironic elegance, it works so beautifully.

And this isn't mine or, I suspect, anyone's favourite Sheik track. No, but it's still fucking mint. Yeah, it's true to an extent that with Sheik, the great tracks really stand out and the rest is a huge expanse of sameness. But it's a huge expanse of sameness in the same way as the sea or the sky. And you could just get lost in it for hours

and not feel like you'd wasted any time. Definitely. I mean, I counted 12 people on stage. So, you know, that's even more than the Doolies. And proof that by late 1979, the National Union of Disco Performers is very strong. You know, some severe overmanning going on there. But, you know, everybody's there for a reason. Yeah.

The only one that worries me a little bit is the um keyboardist there's two one of the keyboardists and he's he seems to have to kind of he seems very happy about it it's almost like he's asked for that but he seems he's like an avalanche being forced to play schroeder's piano in like the charlie brown cartoons or whatever he seems to be really having to kind of stupid it's just set very low as the keyboard and i mean this is four years ago now i'll bet that geezer is a martyr to his back problems now. It's like Len Tucky, isn't it, in Suzy Cuatro's band. What can you do when you've got a keyboard?

We've seen examples of people with keyboards and trying to break out of their just standing there and plinking and plonking. There's not a lot you can do, but it's just like, look, you're in chic, just standing there and plinking and plonking. You know, like, there's not a lot you can do. But it's just like, look, you're in chic. Just stand there and look cool as fuck. That's all you need to do. What does kind of slightly gall me as well is the audience.

They do look a bit sullen, don't they? As if they're being made to endure Lena Martell or something like that. The way they're kind of swaying slightly resentfully and, you know, sort of practically looking at their watches. It's, you know, you're in front of chic. You're feet feet away from she there's two girls who were kind of like doing that thing where you look at the camera and try and look at the monitor that's at a different angle at the same time and try and get your face on and try and see your own face and and failing dismally you know like you did at the supermarket it's like look chic's on stop that see the amazing thing with chic

being a guitar player i'm always listening to nar rogers but of course the strange thing about the guitar on chic records is that it's almost invisible and you don't really hear it unless you're listening for it you just feel it uh and yet he's busier on these records than anyone else except bernard you know he's playing more and working harder and playing a more complicated part than any of the other musicians and if he wasn't there the track wouldn't move it wouldn't move in the same way but it all happens in the background like these uh quiet fireworks just under the surface. And everything else is really just a bed. All the strings, it's just like a pad that's really just there to allow the guitar and the bass

to do what they do. And it's a really individual approach to rhythm and to arrangement. And the way the arrangement on these records work is what makes them sound unique. But it's also a bit counterproductive for a disco record because, you know, instead of dancing to it, you just want to listen to it and hear what's going on

and just wallow in it. Yeah, but I think there's a way that you can listen through your feet. You know what I mean? Oh, that's where I've been going wrong. So the following week, My Forbidden Lover soared 28 places to number 23, but would only get to its highest position of number 15 two weeks later, breaking their five song streak of top tens.

The follow up, My Feet Keep Dancing would only get to number 21 the last time they ever bothered the top 40 until October of 1987 when the remix Jack LaFrie got to 19, if you want to count that, which I certainly don't. Thank you. Forbidden lover I don't want no other

It's Chic and My Forbidden Lover from their album Risque. And now a record which, believe it or not, has been around for six months and it's only just become a hit. For Dr Hook, it's called When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman. Peebles, with his arm around the shoulder of a girl with frizzy black hair who looks a bit like Carla out of Cheers, and a girl with a blonde Lego haircut draped on his shoulder, tells us that the next song has been hanging around for six months, When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman by Dr Hook.

You see, the nice thing about Peebles is it's not often you get to see a Top of the Pops presenter with his arm around a young girl and he looks more uncomfortable than she does. No. Having said that, Peebles pretty much always looks like the most uncomfortable person on screen at any given time. New Jersey in 1968, Dr. Hook and the Madison Show were a blue-eyed soul band named after Ray Sawyer, who left their previous band, The Chocolate Papers, to become a lumberjack, but lost his eye in a car accident on the way to his new job in Oregon and decided to stay in the music business. After shortening their name to Dr. Hook in 1972, their first UK hit single Sylvia's Mother went all the way to number two in July that year

held off the top spot by Donny Osmond's Puppy Love but they'd have to wait four years for the next UK hit a little bit more which got to number two for five weeks in the summer of 1976 denied its place at the top by Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki D. This is the follow up to More Like The Movies which got to number 14 for two weeks

in April of 1978 and it soared from number 40 to number 26 this week. Oh, Doctor Hook. I hate them then and it just reminds me now it's that kind of feeling of militancy and the desire to kind of get out of, like Lou Reed had to get out of a small town

that you get with Doctor Hook. You get the same feeling with the Doolies, with Doctor Hook. I mean, it's ostensibly blue-eyed soul. You can see that kind of commonality it has with Doolie Brothers. But with respect to the guy in the patch, it's dead-eyed soul.

You're saying they're the Doolie Brothers. Sorry, I could say the Doolie Brothers, but, you know, with respect to the guy in the patch, you know, it's dead-eyed soul, you know. You're saying they're the Dooley Brothers? Sorry, I could say the Dooley Brothers, yes, yes, definitely. They've emerged, haven't they, into one sort of melding of mediocrity. But, you know, the Dooley Brothers, you know, they always talk about them, they've always got those guilty pleasures compilations. I mean, you know, this isn't, I mean, this isn't,

if there's an opposite to guilty pleasure, this is an innocent pain or whatever, I don't know. But, you know, it's just, I just, you know, I hate it. Like a wank with a cheese grater. Yes, yes. Yes, pretty much. Yes, yes. And, you know, and I just remember at the time, you know,

just sort of developing this kind of burgeoning consciousness and directly linking kind of people's mass appreciation for stuff like this, you know, with the fact that we'll probably going to die soon in a nuclear war, we're never going to see the year 1983, this jelly-bland, soft shite pop. That's the reason we have Thatcher, because our brains have been addled by this sort of utter kind of anti-thinking shite.

That was my 17-year-old, 16-year-old, that's the way heyear-old, 16-year-old sort of talk, that's the way he used to sort of talk about things. But I can't, you know, and it's not, occasionally there were things that I sort of disliked at the time that with age and maturity I've come to appreciate. But, you know, this is like a, it's not so much a fine wine, it's just like a crap vinegar, you know, that's got worse with age.

I think they're all right. I mean, of the two most famous records by white artists to pattern themselves after Rock Your Baby by George McRae, this is the more faithful and in its way the funkier, but Dancing Queen is by some distance the best. Yes. Having said that, I do think there's a place for Dr. Hook, and I don't mean like an oubliette knee-deep in raw sewage.

They probably feel quite at home there, hide the smell of their jeans. But they did some great stuff, like Sylvia's Mother, which is a fantastic record in the hot chocolate tragic short story vein yeah and they are sort of remarkable for being this earthy sort of all American country rock band who were completely open to influences not just from soul but also from disco and I don't know how much of that is to do with them being based out east in new jersey rather than you know down in the southern rock belt uh maybe it made them a bit

less insular or maybe they were just sellouts man but either way it meant that they made some quite good records and certainly more uh than they would have done if they had just been like Poco or someone you know. Yeah. This is sort of a pair with if I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me you know it's got that sort of slight sneaky snigger in the

lyrics at least that's the way we always interpreted it when you're in love with a beautiful woman it's hard for no but obviously really it's a lyric about paranoia and I'm always in favour of any lyric about paranoia

even a cheap and stupid one because it's up there with lust and rage as one of the definitive pop emotions and I like the way the band in this clip act out the lyric by constantly glancing around at each other suspiciously as if no woman can be trusted not to stray

around the fragrant Romeos of the medicine show. I mean, this is one group of blokes that I would feel completely comfortable about leaving any girlfriend of mine with not provided she had a sense of smell um i think the kind of bitterness the bitterness that i feel about it's probably i i regard them as like good old boys even though that's possibly not all fair on them and certainly not in terms of influences at the time and i kind of detest them you know for that projection onto them um what you just said i mean about george mccray you know uh you know is is actually yeah i mean it's it's it's stark staring obvious now that you say it um yeah but

then you know yeah so that's probably why i feel slightly slightly warmer you know like sort of just the wrong side of lukewarm to this than it would most of their other stuff is perhaps that it's that classic thing that like johnson said you know that i of just the wrong side of Lukewarm to this than it would most of their other stuff is perhaps that, it's that classic thing that like Johnson said you know, probably think about this thing to somebody who sent him a manuscript he said, Sir your manuscript is both good and original, however the part that is good is not original and the part that is original

is not good and that's kind of how I feel about perhaps this one. The thing about this song is I remember it being on all the time a very Radio 2 song a very Wogan friendly song this is and also the arguments at school over whether the bloke in an eyepatch

Ray Sawyer really didn't have an eye or it was just a cod to get onto top of the pops as if wearing an eyepatch should get you on top of the pops it's weird isn't it it's that kind of strange thing like you know the Giza in Franco's

Hollywood or Bears and Happy Mondays you know the guy that does the least and yet somehow the most important member yeah he is and he's got four maracas on the go here which makes him he's like the world's strongest pirate cowboy Bears

yeah even Davy Jones never managed four as far as I remember but he's only Pirate cowboy bears. Yeah, even Davy Jones never managed four, as far as I remember. But he's my favourite member of Doctor Hook, the same as he's everybody's favourite member of Doctor Hook. Yeah, because he's the only one that anyone remembers. Sure, but my second favourite is the nerd, is the weird sort of elderly nerd. You only see him for a few seconds in this video,

but he's great what he looks like he's sort of got like this frizzy hair and glasses and he looks like in a film where you have like an elderly inventor and shopkeeper and the bad guys come in and menace him and start breaking up the shop and he says i don't know what you boys want from me. That's why it's not the kind of character you associate with rugged gentleman's music like this. But, I mean, there's not enough people in pop with eye patches. I think Slick Rick. Gabrielle.

Boots out of Animal Quackers. You see, because I always wanted my dad to wear an eye patch. He had a glass eye from an accident as a kid. Sorry, I'm laughing. That's very sad. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was terrible, man. But every time Dr. Rook came on, I'd look at my dad and go,

Dad, you know, him, Mushy Diane. Why not? Why don't you have an eye patch? And he'd just go, fuck off. Yeah. And, I mean, in a way way i'm very glad they didn't because uh just before he died yeah he actually gave me his glass eye and i now have it on my uh on my keychain oh wow yeah my god yeah wow yeah he gave it to me says put that on your keychain

so i'll always keep an eye on your money oh oh that's brilliant and I said you sure it's not me crotch dad and he said fuck off I also like the fact that they did a record called sexy eyes because it's such an artless title it's like they might as well have called it sexy legs which come to think of it is what legs

and co should have been called would have been more dignified yes it's like Eggs and Kosher would have been called. Yes. Would have been more dignified. Yes. It's like, do you know that record Sexy Girl by Glenn Frey? It's from the 80s. And when you hear that, you understand that Dr Hook are actually quite good in the jaw-dropping, stupid title world. Yeah.

And they don't sound like a freezing cold bathroom like that record does if you've ever heard Sexy Girl by Glenn Frey it's like the peak of old man 80s stupidity yeah and just the warmth and humanity

of Doctor Hook worrying about their faithless beautiful girlfriend in this song I say good for them and of course it's another example of dad of Doctor Hook worrying about their faithless, beautiful girlfriend in this song. I say good for them. And of course, it's another example of dad disco, isn't it? It is, yeah. This would have been a floor filler up Ponting's Campersand.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, Lorian McManamy would be up there when he's straight away. Barbican in each hand. Yes, yes. But as you say, I mean, it was quite a simple matter, and I'm channelling a lot of the rage from my late teens, you know, in the war against, you know, parents and kids, you know. You know, these were sort of, you know, the arch enemies, you know, the Herman Goorings, basically.

So, you know, Radio 2, I mean, that sums it up. At your cousin's wedding, your mum would be up going, oh, come on, doing that mum thing with the arms. You know, just basically put your arms out like you're a Dalek and just sort of wobble them about a bit oh come on rl this is this is your sort of music isn't it pop music no no leave me alone so the following week when you're in love with a beautiful woman soared 15 places to number nine went on a three-week crawl up the top 10 and five weeks after this episode it knocked one day at a time Time by Lena Martell off the top spot,

and spent three weeks at number one, keeping Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen at bay for two weeks, eventually being usurped by Walking on the Moon by the police. The follow-up, Better Love Next Time, got to number eight in January of 1980, and they'd have one last top 40 hit in April of that year when sexy eyes, sexy eyes, got to number four.

Of course, Ray Sawyer, we lost him, didn't we recently? Yeah, poor chap. As is often the case, he came across as, I sort of took a dislike to him, as I say, when I was a kid, but he came across as a very engaging chap in a dislike to him, as I say, when I was a kid, but he came across as a very engaging chap in the obituaries.

I felt a bit sad and a bit guilty as well. His eye was the advance party, so the afterlife. I commemorated him by watching the video to Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk, which is... Oh, yes. Yes, and those blue jeans say, get the fuck away from me, you dirty bastard. Yeah, it's a bit disturbing, isn't it? Yeah.

Although not as disturbing as the cover of their LP, Sloppy Seconds. Yes. Fucking hell, yes. Yeah. It's essentially them trying to recreate the cover of With the Beatles. But it essentially looks like a hydra that's been dry bummed, isn't it? Yeah. It's a very unsavoury LP cover, that one.

But yes, R.I.P. Ray. Yeah. Everybody tempts her. Everybody tells her. She's the most beautiful woman they know The beautiful woman they know And then again for Treaty No Fares in 1967. In 1979, here's a brand new version from Miss Viola Wills. After a bit of video trickery, which would have been dead impressive in 1979, we go straight to Gonna Get Along Without You Now by Viola Wills.

Born in Watts in 1939, Viola Mae Wilkerson was married with six kids when she was discovered by Barry White in 1965 and signed to Bronco Records, his personal label. in 1965 and signed to Bronco Records, his personal label. By the mid-70s, she relocated to London as one of Joe Cocker's backing singers and released her debut LP, Soft Centres. This single, a cover of the 1951 country song originally recorded by Roy Hogshead and turned into a number 22 hit in the UK by the teenage girl duo Patience and Prudence in 1956, is the follow-up to Let's Love Now, which failed to chart in 1977. And it's up this week from number 64 to number 47. Now, you may notice Pop Craze Youngsters, there's a lot of tunes that have been on top of the Pops tonight

which are nowhere near the top 40 at the moment. What is that all about? No idea. No. It's weird, isn't it? Perhaps it was just a sort of change of policy to try and feed Chino, but a little bit more of the up-and-coming rather than the up-there-already. I don't know.

Either that or makes the money sign. Oh, well, yes, yes. Well, my feeling is that the BBC have gone, oh, fucking hell, no ITV on, we've got the whole field to ourselves. Let's try and boost programmes like Top of the Pops by making it more of a variety thing. Because, you know, we're in 1979 now,

we're all supposed to be, you know, new wave robots in the charts and everything. And this Top of the Pops seems to be fun for all the family, isn't it? Yeah, and I think that was still very interesting feeling at the time. There were people sitting watching the Top of the Pops who were born in 1909.

And there would be an expectation that they'd be catered to. My grandma, wife of old Seven seven days jankers granddad you know she would have watched top of the pops you know she was the one that got me into pop music you know go around to her place have some bourbon biscuits listen to all these good goodies by the beatles every week on the radiogram and that's the foundation of my music experience because my parents didn't really own it well they had two records they had russ conway's greatest hits and holst the planet and no record player you know so it was you know they weren't

exactly a road map but um my grandma she'd been a flapper in the 20s and you know she collected buddy holly and stuff like that and i know it wasn't just beatles it was buddy holly the searches all that kind of stuff you know and um but yeah you know obviously her you know probably her taste and ultimately would run to the conservative a bit. But yeah, there was, I think definitely, you know, that variety thing is still clearly at this point in the 70s, less so in the 80s. Yeah, it was felt that it was a show for all the family,

which I deeply resented. And I deeply resented like the radio tourism and stuff like that. Because can you not just give us one half hour a week? You know, we get this shy all week, shy all week for the rest of the time. An exclusive half hour that is a bit more pizzazz and usefulness about it rather than Lena fucking Martel.

I think Lena Martel was number one because of the ITV strike and Top of the Pops getting it on. Then again, Viola Wills is middle-aged here. And she's got more energy than anyone else on this whole programme. Yes, she has. Performing in a most extroverted fashion.

It's funny. Yeah, she's having a great time. I mean, that's probably sort of, you know, a little sun and that. That's really cool. She's getting along very nicely with that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, she's 14, hasn't she? Doesn't give a fuck.

She does look literally like a recent divorcee who's out on the piss and very much looking, which is a little bit frightening because she's doing that sort of stiff, twitching, crazy, broken puppet dance and these very emphatic facial expressions uh which is a little bit much for the small screen really um there's a bit halfway through where she opens her mouth incredibly wide and it's just like whoa like to take a step back she looks like one of those bins you used to

get at theme parks which is like a shape like a clown with his mouth open like he just didn't get a mini milk wrapper in there or a or a slam dunked apple core um but it's although it's a bit frightening it's really endearing because um yes you know i mean this isn't the best record she was ever involved in um and it does feel as cheap as uh as my christmas but it's it's just what it's trying to be and it's over very fast and i'd rather have this sort of you know been at the sherry trifle enthusiasm any day over some of the powders and poses we get on here you know and god bless them too but as we all get older and you know the the brick wall at the end of the street rears up um thank heavens for for old

loonies like this grinning insanely in the face of the inevitable you know and and yes just because if she swayed over to where i was sitting and beckoned me onto the floor, I might pretend I had a broken ankle. But that's my problem. You know, that's why I'm where I am in life. And I say more power to the silly old fool. I mean, you know, yeah, she seems nice. I mean, she's probably one of the nicest people backstage. It's never necessarily the hippies or the smarts.

I remember with Frankie Goes Solid, Holly Johnson talking about being on top of the pops and who he'd met backstage and who he'd liked. And he said, well, Bonnie Tyler was by far the nicest person. So it's not necessarily about hipness or musical affinity. It's something about niceness sometimes. I mean, this is a specimen of, again, pre-80s whatever where someone like this,

just go and sing. There's no, again, I'm not going to do this, there's no particular emphasis or worry about, where, you know, someone like this, you know, disco singer, there's no, again, there's no particular emphasis or worry about the way that you appear, you know, the choreography and everything like that. Singing is essentially the main thing, and then after that, just dress quite smartly and have a nice time, you know. Well, she's made a bit of an effort.

Yeah, absolutely. It's an impressive outfit, isn't it? It's a silver top with, like, noddy holder-style top-out buttons buttons and lengths of silver chain for sleeves and really shimmery blue harem pants but it's not kind of it's not it's a good look post grace jones it's not a hip-hop ases it's not like high conceptual over you know anything like that you know it's just she's dressed a bit like a fighting fantasy character isn't she i suppose so yeah yeah yeah yeah'd like that, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, what's sad, of course, you know, she's dead, and, you know, we're now living in this sad era, sometimes it's like living in an era where astronauts and disco stars are dying of old age, you know. We're into that era now, you know. One thing I do notice on this is actually someone in the audience is finally getting animated. There's a lad with any perm and a black and white

satin jacket with an eagle on the back and he's getting on down he's trucking yeah although next to him there's two girls with flick back hair and they're they've turned their backs on viola to look at the monitor and try and find themselves yeah but there's also a bloke in a red v-neck jumper right in front of the stage he's standing there totally motionless with his arms folded, just looking off in the other direction. It's really insulting. O-R-X, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's who I most identify with here, and I hate it. I think my life would be a lot more fun if that was not the case. But alas, to drink my way out of that state means drinking my way into a state where there's nothing i could do about it anyway because i'd no longer be able to control my movements but you know the world don't move to the beat of just one drum what might be right for you may not be right for some actually what i do like about this record is the the weird playground lyrics to it you know and it says uh yeah gonna find somebody who's twice as cute because i didn't like you anyhow yeah yeah 12 years and six kids didn't didn't like you anyhow and it's yeah yeah

okay it's easy to think you're gonna find somebody twice as cute when you become single in your 40s but uh you step out in that chilly old world again you may find things have changed yeah it's really funny though because this this song uh it's a cover version but the lyrics actually mash up the two different cover versions oh yeah yeah so you know i didn't like you anyhow all that kind of stuff's from the country and western version. Yeah. Which ends up with a bloke singing words to the effect of, oh, I'm going to see you in a wooden box.

And yeah, Viola chose not to use those lyrics. No, no. And also Viola, a few flicked Vs would have been good as well, I think. With a massive smile. Yeah, and enjoy it while it lasts and then have fun on Match.com. Yes. I love to travel, but I'm also happy with a good movie and a bottle of wine.

I-N-T-J. Not interested in hookups, so stop bothering me. So the following week, going to get along with that, you you now soared 20 places to number 27 and would eventually get to number eight the follow-up a cover of gordon light flops if you could read my mind failed to chart and her and the shots got along without each other for the next half decade after spending the 80s as an in-demand performer on the London Gay Club

circuit, she scored one more top 40 hit when her high-energy cover of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now got to number 35 in March of 1986. And after living in Brighton for a few years, she went back to America and died at the age of 69 in Phoenix in 2009. I'm gonna get along without you now. I'm gonna get along without you now. I'm gonna get along without you now. Barlow Wills and Gonna Get Along Without You Now. And now for something completely different. It's the Charlie Daniels Band and a bit of country rock called The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

The devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for a soul to steal. He was in a bag as he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal. to steal. He was in her bags, he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal. Peebles is now surrounded by bored looking females with appalling perms and lank hair, looking like the opening

shot of the video for Bohemian Rhapsody if everybody pretended to be Brian May. As he introduces an in concert clip of the devil went down to Georgia by the Charlie Daniels band. Oh, what a shot that is of Peebles and co.

Oh, it's awful. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously an attempt to get that kind of slightly sleazy rapport that he had with, like, DLT and No Low. Yeah. Like, ladies. But it just looks... Again, he looks like a kind of schoolteacher

who's about to introduce a kind of fifth-form choir assembly or something like that. He just exudes sort of zero charisma of any kind, sleazy or otherwise. It's, you know, it's really quite startling, you know. So, born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1936, Charlie Daniels spent the 60s as a country session musician and played bass on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline

and Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room and Love and Hate. He went solo in the early 70s and scored a number nine hit in the US in 1973 with the single Uneasy Rider about a hippie whose car breaks down outside a regnet bar and he has to talk his way out of a lynching and a possible bumming. This song, about a fiddle-off between the dev and a lad called johnny is the first cut off his new lp million mile reflections has already got to number three in america is accompanied by a video of a live performance and it's up this week from number 38 to number 27 this song you're either massively pro or massively against where do we stand? It's a strange one, this one.

I kind of, I hadn't really listened to it at the time, and it was, I think I found it sort of curious, to say the least. I mean, it's almost some sort of boatloadation of like Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, the thing, you know, it's a sort of tale done in sort of, you know, country southern rock manner. I think what always intrigued me, most of all,

was that it's supposed to be a kind of fiddle-off between Johnny and the Devil, but the Devil's solo is way, way better than his. Yes. The middle section, I wouldn't admit it,

unless he's going to really sort of stutter by having to go, you know, like give him an absolutely shite solo, but you can't ruin the mental of the record, so it's got a pretty decent solo.

And he overdoes it. It's a much better solo than Johnny's winning one at the end I think what we're supposed to take from this is that the Devil's version is a bit disco-y so it's wrong and he's trying to take the fiddle to new horizons

and that's not to be approved of yeah because he has a bit of an accompaniment as well that slightly funky guitar or whatever, and a bit of keyboard bass with the chap with his arm in a sling on the keyboard. Yes. Yeah, yeah. What's interesting, I remember when it was played at the time, there were a lot of versions where, at the very last line,

they changed son of a bitch to son of a gun. Yeah, the radio version is son of a gun. That's right, but here they've managed to get the bitch through. What I like about this is country and country rock is one genre where you can have novelty hits and no one cares. So it doesn't ruin your credibility or cheapen you in any way. You can be Johnny fucking Cash and do a boy named Sue and it's fine. It's fine.

Good luck to you. It's an admirable thing, I think. If indie music took that approach, might have had fewer songs about sullen thickos ex-girlfriends from Ryga. I mean, if radio had done my ding-a-ling, it would have capsized them somewhat. Yes.

But if you can't make a record that's truly remarkable, you can make one that tells a story or yes there's something unusual or is diverting in some way you know apart from some nice fiddle playing there's not a lot to this record but no you know you follow it through and you get something out of it so it makes it instantly better than most records that have ever been made i mean this song will come on the radio when you'd be like oh I fucking hate I mean I hated country music at this time

simply because it was cowboy music and I fucking hated the cowboy films that my dad and my grandpa would make me watch yeah and there's always that sort of racial thing you know when you're talking about cowboy stuff you know implicit sometimes explicit racism when I think about Doctor Hook is that you know it when you're talking about cowboy stuff, there's, you know, implicit, sometimes explicit racism.

When I think about Dr. Hook is that, you know, it's hard to guess what their politics were. I suspect they might have been quite progressive, but you don't have to guess what Charles Daniels' politics are. The longer it goes on, I mean, he started off actually being kind of somebody with a sort of democratic kind of leaning or whatever, an uneasy rider that you mentioned. Yeah.

You know, this is the hippies, but then by the early 80s, you know, then he does things like, you know, the South's going to do it again in America and all these kind of things, I'm sure. What this world needs is a few more rednecks. Do you know that one? Yes. Fucking great.

It's great. He says, I love them Rambo movies. I think they make a lot of sense. And it's a shame old John Wayne didn't live to run for president oh and and I don't care what nobody says I don't trust old Gorbachev I don't know who turned him on but it's time to turn him off but also also the the prescient line you intellectuals may not like it but there's nothing you can do. Because there's a whole lot more of us common folk

than there's ever going to be of you. Yeah, no, the whole thing is sort of very proto-Trumpian, there's no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's a complete nut now. I mean, even here, you look at that Stetson, and that's the kind of Stetson that only quite extreme right-wingers ever could or would wear.

This is not a Willie Nelson, Asheville, North Carolina, accessorised with a hemp shirt Stetson. You know what I mean? That's pure states' rights, that is. That's a root-in-toot-in, belly hanging over the wide belt, love it or leave it, millinery. You walk in the shop to buy one of those, it's harder to buy a gun than one of those in America. You go in and the hatter gives you a list of words you have to say out loud, and if you hesitate, you get rejected.

No, no, no. Can't do it, boy. if you hesitate, you get rejected. No, no, no. Can't do it, boy. No, he's very, and he's got that frightening presence as well, Charlie Daniels.

He's like one of those kind of boss hog guys where he looks obviously completely unfit, but you really wouldn't fancy your chances with him. It's like you can always hear him breathing and wheezing the whole time. But then when he gets angry it becomes much louder and his face goes purple and you know it's time to leave

the area before your ass is peppered with buckshot pinko blunderbuss but the thing about this song is even though you listen to it and you know you're hating it it's telling a story and it's like oh gotta, got to find out what happens at the end. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, the devil losing in a fiddle-off. Fucking games rigged, yo. Johnny has a go. Automatically playing to the home crowd, playing the hometown favourites. And it's just, oh, it's just fiddling. This is, yeah, this is boring and annoying but what fucks me off is the devil just gives up

and it's like no mate, you were better and you're the fucking devil demand a recount, look into Russian interference because something is wrong with this verdict yeah, definitely or use some of the special powers you presumably have yeah

I tell you what's great about this though when they show his band Or use some of the special powers you presumably have. Yeah. Yes. Well, I tell you what's great about this, though, is when they show his band, the keyboard player's got one arm in a sling. Yes. I wonder what happened there. It's like Gary Lineker at the 1986 World Cup. Yes.

But it's true grit because as he rang up Charlie, he says, oh, you know, we've got these gigs coming up. Yeah. Sure do. Well, I've broken my arm yeah you're still expected to turn up if you're any kind of a man

it has to be pointed out that these are even scabbier cowboys than Doctor Hook terrible man and Charlie's made that really big mistake that fat blokes do by wearing really tight high waisted jeans so that the gut swells out, under the belt,

so it's just got a pendulous gock. Yeah, it's like the sort of trousers, that they advertise, in the back pages of the Sunday Express. Yes, yes. You've probably got it from a shop,

called Big and Tall. The following week, the devil went down to Georgia, jumped seven places to number 20, and would eventually get as high as number 14. Despite playing at Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977, his next single, In America, was a big mardy-arse whinge about the Iranian hostage crisis,

and he ended up supporting George Bush Jr's rubbish war in Iraq and stating that in the future Darwinism will be looked down upon as we look down upon the flat earth theory. And there was that great follow up record to this about the violent battle between Brown and Board of Education education. Charlie Daniels band and The Devil Went Down To Georgia

and from country rock to a bit of reggae from Errol Dunkley and OK Fred. Oh, yeah OK Fred Now you're a yaga yaga Okay, friend, bully for you Okay, friend, now you're a yaga yaga I wanna be one too Born in Kingston in 1956, Errol Dunkley recorded his first single at the age of 14

and spent the latter half of the 60s recording for Prince Buster, Joe Gibbs and Cox and Dodd. In 1972, he recorded his first LP on the Gay Feet label before forming the African Museum label with Gregory Isaacs. This is his first UK single to enter the charts and it's up this week from number 34 to number 23. Oh, what a palate cleanser this is. Oh, yes. Reggae, late 70s. Poppy as fuck, wasn't it?

There's so much of it. Actually, from the sort of 60s onwards, there was a strong sort of, you know, presence, and it was a strong sort of black presence in the charts, and it was persistent all the way through to the kind of mid to late 80s, you know. And then there comes a point where reggae becomes extinct, almost, or it's kind of, you know,

obviously drum and bass and stuff like that, it's children, you know, become the thing. It's bizarre, really. I remember discussing this with a press officer one time. He dealt with a lot of, like, reggae artists. And I said, why do you think this is? He just says, because they never turn up to interviews on time, that's why.

Which I think is really an entirely inadequate explanation, really. Well, I think by the mid-'80s, there was no need for all these reggae acts because it had already achieved perfection, and we only needed one group, which was UB40. Yeah, of course. Regular top ten hits, and what else do you want? Yeah.

But, you know, barbecues and stuff like that and really only bring on the reggae records for the granddads and people like that, really. Yeah. It's odd. It was just such a central genre in the charts and then overnight it just... Well, not quite overnight, it just fizzled out.

And, you know, where is reggae now? It seems like you could turn on Top of the Pops any week and some one-hit wonder would pop up with this brilliant song. And this week, it's Errol. Yeah. And the Doolies, of course. Yes, of course, yes. And this is not even one of the 20 best reggae hits

from the British charts in the 70s. And it's amazing it's completely irresistible and yeah you have to seriously wonder about anyone who could possibly dislike it you know i mean you do meet these people and oh i don't like reggae it strikes me it's really weird because it's uh yeah it's like how do you have your mind shut tight on reggae you know surely you can shut your mind as tight as you like, but it will still creep in under the door like the smell of weed. I mean, if you don't like rhythm and you don't like feel

and you don't like a nice simple tune, what is your thing? Bad Fish or Monday Mornings. But this is great. I mean, the John Holt version is really a rougher and in some ways a better recording because it's got that really brutal Cox and Dodd production on it where it's like, you know, blows your speakers out with the bass.

But it works brilliantly for Errol Dunkley and his cheeky persona, you know what I mean? His cheeky sticking his arse cheeky persona you know what i mean is she's sticking his ass out and and he's the whole band in fact they've got that great jamaican style of the time you know like errol's wearing one of those cardigans that you used to see on old fellas in lab brooks you know and all the controller in the minicab office like a a fawn-coloured cardigan with, like, ribbed woolly jumper trim with a gold necklace. It's like someone who was played by Glyn Edwards

or Michael Robbins would wear. And he's got trousers and shoes in almost exactly the same shade of light brown. Fucking brilliant. Yeah. And the bassist has got a hat with ear flaps and a shiny track suit with red, gold and green trim. And he's doing like chicken moves

with this massive Gibson Thunderbird face. And you don't see much of his feet, but I'd put money on Dunlop green flash. Yeah, definitely. And the trumpet player in a white golf sweater and a pith helmet with his white jeans tucked into wellies. Oh my God.

The thing is that they look brilliant in a way that is, it's not just like white guy resistant. I think, I don't think you'd have got away with that as a British black guy. It's like you have to be Jamaican. only jamaicans can can somehow get away with these incredible like mad outfits this is around the time that um rockers came out yeah the greatest music films ever and the fucking outfits them lads are wearing jesus back then in jama Jamaica the style appeared to be getting a tank top

that Granville used to wear on Open All Hours and wearing it over a tracksuit top amazing but also the massive tam I mean there's one I think the keyboard player he's got

essentially got a Rasta Guinness hat on with a Star of David on it and that did my head in you know round about this time, the concept of the 12 tribes of Israel was coming into vogue in Jamaica, which essentially said that it was them lot who were the actual, the true Israelis.

Yeah, it's often best not to probe too deeply into... Further complicate matters. Yeah, it's like Rastafarianism. It was sort of... I remember when it was very trendy to sort of vaguely assume that Rastafarianism was some sort of great enlightened philosophy. Really, it's like hardcore Protestantism,

but with a sort of African twist on it. It's not really... Can you imagine a Rastafarian Ian Paisley? Well, the thing is he'd make great records. Yeah. Save all stuff from Sodom and Gomorrah.

No, but it's I mean, yeah, it's very good record this, but it's good. I mean, I do remember I have distinct memories of watching it, not necessarily on this episode, watching this song, because I remember, you know,

in the company of my, you know, parents and grandparents or whatever. And while, you know, you know, black people have been on top of the pop's recently, you'd have thought that people had kind of got used to it. You know, there was still a sense of like, it being kind of inherently a matter of common if anybody of, you know, the darker skin, you know, Hugh came on.

You know, it was still the days of Marnie language and the tales of love that I knew and stuff like that. And I do remember, you know, I happened to feel kind of defensive, you know, and my grandma going, you know, a few sort of remarks or whatever, which I shan't repeat. But then, you know, I was kind of interrogated as to, you know, what Yaga Yaga was, you know. Yeah. What you don't repeat. But then I was kind of interrogated as to what a Yaga Yaga was. Yeah.

What you don't know. Oh, oh. Well, what is it then, David? What's a Yaga Yaga? Well, it's perfectly obvious if you're out on the street, what a Yaga Yaga is. I didn't know any of the fucking street. I didn't have a clue.

I think it means an accomplished coxswain, I seem to gather. Well, apparently, well, in actual fact, according to Dunkley himself in an interview earlier this decade, a yaga-yaga is a man who doesn't dress to impress society. Obviously, it's obviously demonstrated by this performance. Mission accomplished there, yeah. And it's a term used by Jamaican parents when the kids come back from school with their shirts hanging out. Ah, there, yeah. And it's a term used by Jamaican parents when the kids come back from school with their shirts hanging out.

Ah, okay, yeah. So basically the lyrics are, Okay, Fred, now you're a chatty bastard. Okay, I thought it was, Okay, Fred, now you've kind of achieved the level of, I don't know, sort of brown belt in sexual prowess or something. Okay, so is that as well? It could be, well, there you are.

It's just as well I didn't. He's singing from the viewpoint of a society girl who fancies the look of Fred and likes the idea that he doesn't give a fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, she wants to be one too. She wants to get with him. So, yeah, it's very...

It's essentially Lady Chatterley's lover, isn't it? Yes, I suppose it is. In reg't it? Yes, I suppose it is. In reggae style. Yes, I suppose it is. And, of course, at the end, you know, now I'm a yaga-yaga, what do I do? I wish I could go back in time and explain that to my grandma. I feel I've actually sort of perhaps impugned or cut aspersions

on, you know, my sort of family's attitudes towards race and what have you. My grandad actually was a curious case. He used to work as a bus conductor in Wembley. He's a Seven Days Jankers grandad and obviously there was quite a large black population there and he'd just go up on the top deck with an all on board and he'd say like

come on all you sooties, let's have your fairs then, which apparently no one minded, you know, being the bloody 60s hotel. But then once, when my dad was a kid he remembers making you know making some sort of disparaging remark about black person and granddad was down on him like a ton of bricks said no you don't use that language you know it's not right it's offensive like well you

know so it's curious you know a mixed picture i suppose but there you go yeah i'll tell you what though if you're ever in search of great opening lines you can always turn to reggae always you can't I mean yes okay Fred now you're a yagger yagger okay Fred bully for you yes you can't top it I love bully for you

the term bully for you is not used enough in pop songs is it because it reminds me of the closing credits of Bullseye you say so I get to listen to it when I hear this song I get to listen to a really decent tune and I get reminded of my favourite television programme God will he, yes

Made in Nottingham you see, civic pride wells up in there of course, yeah and Bully for you sounds like it should be proceeding from Joyce Grenfell in a St Trinian's film doesn't it yes I'll tell you what really stands out here though Bully for you sounds like it should be proceeding from Joyce Grenfell in a St Trinian's film, doesn't it? Yes. I'll tell you what really stands out here, though, as well,

is that the audience have got no idea how to dance to this record at all. No. Despite, as you're saying, reggae records having been in the British charts regularly for more than 10 years at this point. And there's a couple of mods down the front, like mod revivalists, just shifting from foot to foot in desultory fashion. Not at all in their element. And you think, hang on a minute. And this is another example of what we were saying before, the crushingly negative effect of punk, right?

Where flattening and gelding white music forevermore. So these lads think they like mod music. What are you into? I like mod music. But what they mean is they like the rhythm section of Foxton and Buckler. So just as punk sort of wiped out the art of the arrangement and the art of the rhythm guitarist

and all this sort of stuff, and the art of the rhythm guitarist and all this sort of stuff. It also wiped out any kind of funkiness in white music for a really long time. And it's a shame because it's not like this is a difficult record to dance to or anything. You know, it's far from it. But yeah, they're just standing there like idiots. But you were talking about things like the pop group

and a certain ratio are kind of coming in at this point but yeah i think the punk reggae sort of you know bobby marley bob marley talks about the punky reggae party thing you know there was a sort of an affinity but yeah it was they didn't necessarily sort of bleed into each other uh i suppose that much in the way that but the thing is yeah you say you say that the white kids aren't dancing but the problem is look at how Errol Dunkley's dancing to that. No white person could move like that. Well, it's not even that. The only white person I've ever seen dancing like Errol Dunkley does in this song

is Chris Morris when he's taking the piss out of Jarvis Cocker in the band Blouse in Brass Eye. Yeah, or Mr Bean, you know. It just doesn't look cool, does it? So the following week, OK Fred leapt nine places to number 12 and would spend two weeks at number 11.

The follow-up, Sit Down and Cry, only made it to number 52 in February of 1980 and he never troubled the chart again. Number 23 this week, Errol Dunkley and OK Fred, and now for something very silly. It's Cats UK and Newton Airport. MUSIC PLAYS really in the state suitcase in each hand and no transport the taxi should have been there he said

he was on the way i thought if he don't hurry up or miss me holiday people's now sporting a straw boater which makes him look well out and john introduces us to something very silly and he points to his hat band to reveal the name of it lut Luton Airport by Cats UK. Formed in London in 1978, Cats UK were a group put together by the songwriters Paul Curtis and John Worsley, who were perennial contenders in the Song for Europe contest. Curtis was best unknown for being the writer and recorder of the Northern soul single name it you've got it under the name mickey moonshine which had previously been attributed to paul nicholas and alvin stardust recording under assumed names and had written let me be the one for the shadows

britain's 1975 eurovision entry warsley on the other hand was best known for writing what do you want and pull Me for Adam Faith both number ones in the fixties Jack in the Box for Clodagh Rogers in 1971 and I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek in 1964 this song based on the Campari advert of 1977 was originally offered to Lorraine Chase but after she turned it down they placed an advert

in the stage and formed a group of dancers and club singers that originally called the Cats but after discovering there was a Dutch rock band of the same name they had to do a bit of a London suede it's entered the arse end of the charts last week and it's jumped up 15 places to number 54 this week. Well this is what I'm talking about exactly. Number 54, unknown rubbish novelty song why is it on top of the pubs? Because it's a fucking variety show

all of a sudden. Fucking unions! Smash them! Well I hope that Squeeze Suit is a flagrant sort of not even like acknowledge, you know, it's the nick of like Cool for Cats. I guess it just shows that even, you know, at this stage, people are still in that kind of like

carry on abroad mentality of, you know, like trips to Spain being this kind of, you know, sort of crowning sort of novelty and joy of the year, you know, packing off to Elles Bells and all that. Yeah, and the fact that the song is clearly referencing a product that was advertised what's the BBC

playing at this goes this goes against everything they stand for it was a strange thing when he had these links do you remember

when David Dundas I put my jeans on you know and of course in the original it was Brutus what were the jeans was it Brutus

Levi I can't remember yeah but anyway and then it was a very very familiar What were the genes? Was it Brutus? Levi? I can't remember. Yeah. But anyway. And then it was a very, very familiar song. And then he kind of releases a single under his own name. And he has to change the lyrics to, I put my jeans on. I put my old blue jeans on.

It's just like, you know what you're talking about. Yeah. So that's Lord Dundas to you. And of course, there was the version of anytime anyplace anywhere which was changed from that's martini to dancing easy ah yeah yeah for a for a hit record this is really a string of disasters like artistic and practical like first of all you decide you're going to write a song about an advert. And, you know, back in the days of the mass audience when a whole nation could be captivated and amused for months

by Lorraine Chase being asked if she was wafted here from paradise and saying, nah, loot in airport. Which, I mean, that's a line. If you were the script editor of an ITV sitcom, you'd have the red pen hovering over that one. Yes. You know what I mean? And yet it was a sensation.

It was a national sensation. So you write a song about that character with a view to Lorraine Chase singing the novelty record, but she doesn't want to do it. So you get someone else in who looks literally nothing like lorraine chase whatsoever and yet you leave in all those lines like they even think that i'm the girl the one that's on the telly despite the fact that no one on earth would look at this sort of quite brassy, broad-featured blonde woman

and think, oh, it's the willowy, thin-faced brunette Lorraine Chase. Yeah. So it becomes completely meaningless. And they get the line wrong as well. Yeah. Because in the actual advert, Jeremy Clyde, who to me will always be Algernon in the version of The Importance of Being Earnest that was on Channel 4 in the 80s. And Governor Herman Gessler in the ultra-shit Euro production of William Tell

that used to be on Anglia through the night in about 99. He says, were you wafted here from paradise? Whereas here the line is, he says, they look into my eyes and say, darling, are you from paradise which not only is wrong is it is that wrong it kills the joke yeah because she's not from luton airport is she she's come from luton airport so i mean and you know people would have heard that line six thousand times by now in the ad break of three two one you know what i mean so yes to still get it wrong is is unforgivable and then on top of everything else the best band name you can think of is the cats and then it turns out there's already a group called the cats

so you have to be cats uk not even the london cats which you know, would sound quite cool. Or the Dunstable cats in this case. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah. Everything falls apart. The whole thing. It's unbelievable that this actually went on to any success at all. They look like the cast of Widows, don't they? Yeah.

These are not cats you'd want to share a picture of on Facebook. Nice enough women but um yeah a bit hard-faced yeah and and you can tell that that the the main lady is an actress because she only has eyes for the camera and yeah determined to sell this piece of shit whereas an actual singer would have been at least a little bit thrown off her stride by the fact that the audience clearly fucking hate it and yes so deeply unimpressed the first thing you see as the camera pans across to the stage is two people just walking off as it because oh god it's this they They just walk away just to go and stand near a stage where there's nothing happening. And there's one lad doing mad frog dancing.

And literally everyone else is just standing there with these appalled expressions. Yeah. When it gets around to the last chorus, they do a sort of a camera movement around where you can see the front row of the crowd and you've never seen a more openly bored group of youngsters. They've all got their arms folded and soul...

There's one lad even sucking his teeth. It looks like they've been taken out to a county show and made to watch a police dog display. It's just like... God! It must have been soul-crushing. But they don't care because they're just hired showbiz stage people just doing their thing and getting the fuck out to Emmerdale

or wherever she ended up. It's like Rock Follies full on extremely hard times, isn't it? Yeah. One of the Ken cats was a dancer in Rock Follies. Yeah. But you wouldn't be able to tell it from this. It's some very derisory hand-jiving and gum-chewing. Yeah, and you sort of...

I mean, I don't know, because I don't know anything about the background of these people but it's sort of got that air that you think maybe they didn't actually talk like that do you know what I'm saying like perhaps they might sound a little bit more actressy or a little bit more oh darling

if you met them after the show it's a little bit put on I mean it's a joke of the original of the advert is that, you know, amuses or, you know, pretty few people know end is the contrast between, you know, this kind of suave, sophisticated advert and the kind of, the very sort of crude, regional, or in this case, cockney accent that emanates from the glamorous woman's mouth, you know,

and that sort of thing. And that's a joke that reprised later in that Boddington's advert, where it's all about, you know, bye, you look gorgeous tonight, Pet mouth, you know, and that sort of thing. And that's a joke that reprised later in that Boddington's advert, where it's all about, you know, bye, you look gorgeous tonight, Petal. You know, and, you know, which is slightly more effective, in fact. You know, but in this case, that irony, that contrast doesn't even exist because, you know, they actually look like the kind

of people that the first, you know, that as soon as they open their mouth, it'd be Kathy Burke, you know. So, yeah, again, it's conceptually mystifying. The advert was about them being in some really exclusive location and the reveal is that the girls work in class. But the song's about just going to Majorca to get your end away. And also, if your record is such a flagrant rip-off of Call For Cats,

why do you then call the group cats uk is it drawing attention to it isn't it no there's hiding it in plain sight i don't know yeah i'm almost tempted to give this record a pass for the most desperate and pointless key change in music history it's like literally in the last three seconds of the record as it fades out there's a key change so you know yeah god bless you so the following week lutein airport soared 25 places to number 29 and three weeks later it reached its highest position number 22 the success of lutein airport encouraged l Lorraine Chase to change her mind about her pop career and she signed to EMI and rushed out the single It's Nice Here In It which failed to chart. Cats UK's follow-up single Holiday Camp failed to chart and after one more flop single

16 and Looking For Love, Cats UK split up in 1980. By which time, World In Action had broadcast the episode The Chart Busters, which exposed the chart-rigging activities of their label WEA, where a former employee stated that Luton Airport was a perfect example of the label's nefarious activities, which led to a band no one had even heard of having their chart returns fiddled with in order to get them on top of the pops. That World in Action documentary is fucking mint, isn't it? Just the way the charts were fiddled with.

I mean, the bands that get thrown up. I mean, the Pretenders, Brass in Pocket. That was hyped up. Although, oddly enough about that show, a lot of the things that were getting hyped, things like Earth, Wind & Fire and Fleetwood Mac, you think, well, they shouldn't need hype, you know, something like this.

No. And in terms of the safeguards that they had at Winix, Mantle, the safeguards were, it effectively seemed to be an honesty system. Yeah. In the music business. All the people at the record labels were going to the record shops and saying,

oh, can I just borrow your chart returns book for a bit and put a few ticks in? The bribes, they weren't massively impressive at the time, were they? No, no. They were satin jackets. Yeah, CBS were offering bottles of whisky and satin jackets for extra ticks on Judy Zouk

and Dusty Springfield records. Yeah. You'd walk around in your satin jacket with Judy suit written on the back where'd you get that oh shop

the price you're sold as well yes but you know I was a bit pissed off that you know you always hear about this going on

with journalists in the music business getting bribes and stuff and it didn't happen when I was there and I was a bit shocked because it was

it's like you were expected to lie about these records for free yes you know they get pissed off if you didn't say they were good you know and it's like well you know it's this it clearly isn't if you want me to say it's good give me a fucking bottle of scotch see if anybody's got taylor and judy Taylor and Judy Zoot tour jacket yeah in 1993 Dina Payne one of the Ken cats joined the cast of Emmerdale as Viv Hope and nine years later when Lorraine Chase herself joined the

soap opera quote the first thing I said when I met Lorraine at Emmerdale was I did Lootin' Airport and you didn't why not She said it was because she knew she wouldn't get paid for it and of course she was right. We didn't.

Then we filmed a few scenes together and by the time we were in our shared dressing room we had put the world to right. A happy ending. No. Well I tell them, don't I? No mate! Lootin' Airport Who are mate! Lootin' Airport, hoo-wee-yoo! Lootin' Airport, hoo-wee-yoo!

Lootin' Airport, hoo-wee-yoo! Lootin' Airport, hoo-wee-yoo! That's UK and that's Lootin' Airport. And now at number 18 on the chart this week, it's yet another hit for Dave Edmonds. This time round, a song called The Queen of Hearts. We've already covered Dave Edmonds in Chart Music 25, which was set in the summer of 1973,

and since then he's signed a solo deal with Swan Song, Led Zeppelin's label, and formed the group Rock Pile with Nick Lowe. Although as the two of them signed to separate labels, they're not allowed to record as a band and have made do with guesting on each other's recordings. Of the two, it's been Edmonds who's had the bigger chart success. And this single, written by Hank DeVito, the pedal-steel guitar player in Emmylou Harris' backing band, is the follow-up to Girls Talk, which got to number four for three weeks in July of this year.

And it's up this week from number 20 to number 18. And Nick Lowe's there, isn't he, on the stage? There he is, yeah. Playing a really ridiculous bass, which has got a spike off the end of it like a double bass. That's health and safety. Terrible. This is more dad bait, isn't it?

Something for everyone on top of the pots when ITV's on strike. It's funny. Dave Edmonds people nick lowe they would have got a lot of press coverage you know enemy and melody maker i think probably because you know they were probably considered a good copy or whatever so they had quite a high profile in the music press which probably definitely yeah you know credibility and you know dave edmonds has just come off a massive hit and you know nick lowe is uh I believe,

he's number 12 in the charts at the minute. Cruel to be kind, just slipping down the charts. He's down from number 12 to number 14 this week. And he'd done, like, I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, you know, which is a great single. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's always funny now, again, like reading a lot of Alan Jones at the time,

who was obviously kind of big mates of these people, is that you know that at any point they would have had quite a few drinks either 15 minutes previously to this moment or certainly in 15 minutes' time. You know, they were heroic in knocking it back. I think one thing, I mean, it's a perfectly decent sort of bash-out single. The only thing it made me think about was something that kind of happened again around this time was that, because I remember I wrote a book

about Ace Records and I interviewed them about Chiswick, you know, the label that put out a lot of stuff. And and pub rock was very much kind of you know a little strong overlap between pub rock and punk and everything like that and what we're saying is it for a while it was pretty good you could bash out you could put it out a song for a cost of about 100 pounds and it would chart whatever you could do that because and but when things changed drastically and perhaps the whole pot that's going to it was with the onset of video, when you were obliged to, you know, attach a video to it. And that just changed them completely. That just sort of, like, halted the access for labels.

Like, you know, their success dried up, really, because they weren't able to kind of, you know, sort of do that and match things, you know, budget-wise. So, you know, it's one way in which things, you know, video did make a kind of huge difference in that. And so it just kind of reminds you of that. There was a lot of records like this sort of rattling around the charts in the late 70s.

And it was, you know, it wasn't just the sort of inherent bankruptcy of the medium, you know, that meant that they stopped flowing. I think it was that factor. Yeah, rock and roll still hanging in there by your late 1979, but kind of mutating towards rockabilly, isn't it? The thing is of all the times to get nostalgic 1979

is kind of one of the worst you could have picked you know that slow elongated 50s revival was still in progress but it's like you could hardly look less relevant and less intriguing

playing a sort of mushy, soft-ted shuffle like at any other point in musical history. The air is full of all these possibilities and opportunities and chances to create something adorable without even having to try that hard. That's just what 1979 is. And yet here we are doing the fucking hand jive in a in a bingo hall in glamorgan you know and it doesn't yeah it doesn't

do anything because songs this basic are designed as empty shelves right into which you're meant to pour whatever it is that makes you or your band unique and exciting so this is just so flat and brushed and self-contained you know and it's the sort of flat arrangement that might work on a tricky complex song but it leaves this one just sounding like nothing you know it's just neat and accomplished and totally unremarked it's like it's like the it's like the dead Eddie Cochran, you know, trying his best. And, yeah, it's like I don't have any opinion on Dave Edmonds, you know. It's just old-time music performed flatly with a little bit too much good taste, you know.

There's nothing obnoxious about it and nothing intriguing about it. The Stray Cats are clearly sort of, you know, something that's, you know, that's specifically sort of retro, but probably as far as Dave Edmonds and people like Nick Covington said, they were making kind of music at the moment,

you know, because pub rock was kind of at the moment, even if it is kind of retrograde, you know, isn't quite as far gone as like shawody, whatever. But yeah, it's all about to be kind of swept aside by everything that's kind of retrograde, you know, isn't quite as far gone as like Shawadi Wadi whatever. But yeah, it's all about to be kind of swept aside by everything that's kind of brewing in like Futurama or what have you and the various things that sort of emanate

from that, pop-wise. Although, ironically, after all of that, you still get Shakin' Stevens, you know, in the 80s. Most successful chart act of the 80s, don't forget. Yeah, yeah. Presumably what first attracted all those people to this sort of music is the rawness of it

and the sexiness of it and the sort of punch of it. And of course, that's what you didn't get with any... You know, they revived the TV show, Oh Boy. Yes. Around this time. Yes. And it was all like this. It was like the original rock and roll and rockabilly records,

even the crappy ones, are all worthwhile because no one knew what they were doing. And even if you were just doing a derivative cash grab record, you might still end up doing something remarkable just by accident. It might just come out sounding really loud or really electric or, you know. But by now, it's just a sort of set of compositional cliches and there's like this bland orthodoxy of performance. And all the records are produced, you know.

Like they sound produced. They don't sound like they were recorded in a bucket, you know. So you lose anything that might be good by accident. And you just end up with this like a pill, like astronaut food version of rock and roll, with nothing to savour. So the following week, Queen of Hearts

would jump seven places to number 11, its highest position. The follow-up, Crawling From The Wreckage, would only get to number 59 in december of this year and his only other top 40 hits were a cover of guy mitchell singing the blues which got to number 28 in march of 1980 and the race is on a collaboration with the stray cats which got to number 34 in june of 1981 1981.

Dave Edmonds and the Queen of Hearts are now for a beautiful song from a beautiful lady. Great pleasure to welcome her back to Top of the Pops. It's Donna and I Can't Get Over Getting Over You. I'm getting over you, getting over two people who were so in love. Oh baby, we were so in love. I can't get over getting over you. Peebles, on his own, introduces a beautiful song by a beautiful lady. I Can't Get Over Getting Over You by Dana. Born Rosemary Brown in Islington in 1951, Dana was relocated to Ireland at the age of five because the lack of clean air in London was making a bad laugh. After performing in various concerts as a trio with two of her sisters, she went solo in 1965 and was signed to Decca in 1967 where she

adopted her stage name. In 1969 she entered Ireland's Song for Europe competition and came second and the following year she was given the song All Kinds of Everything which won and led to her beating Mary Hopkin and Julio Iglesias in Amsterdam, the single becoming number one in Ireland for nine weeks, and getting to number one over here, where it stayed for two weeks. After the follow-up, Who Put The Lights Out got to number 14 in 1971, she dropped off the UK chart radar until 1975, when she scored two top ten hits with Please Tell Him That I Said Hello,

and It's Gonna Be a Cold, Cold Christmas. However, in September of 1976, she lost her voice and had a growth removed from her vocal cords, leading to speculation that she would never sing again. But after she made a complete recovery, she went back into the studio in late 1978 and released the LP The Girl Is Back in April of this year. This is the follow up to Something's Cooking In The Kitchen which got to number 44 in April

and it's not in the charts yet and here, gentlemen, is your To Ronnie's moment. At last, someone drags this kind of music out of the bordello and the speakeasy and drags it into the convent where it belongs. I mean, I know, seriously, there's some people for whom there's nothing more sensual than a complete and deliberate absence of carnality. And they always strike me as a little bit suspicious but presumably they're

the ones who want to hear a smoky jazzy love ballad uh crooned by a church freak and future member of the european parliament rather than a grown-up woman of the world, you know. Well, I don't think that's quite as respectable as they presumably do. But it is weird. The whole Irish middle-of-the-road entertainment industry of the 60s and 70s, which is where Dana really comes from and really belongs. I mean, it's only across the sea, but there's an almost total ignorance of that

on the part of the English. Because we never saw much of it except on, you know, stars on Sunday occasionally and stuff. I mean, even those of us who sort of caught flashes of it from like family members or who later lived in parts of London, which at the time was still full of older Irish immigrants and they'd get a lot of the Irish cabaret acts over

to play in the pubs and ballrooms and stuff. I mean, that still went on 20 years ago, less so now because of changing demographics and because Ireland's changed so much that people who've moved to London now have different cultural interests and are of a different generation. And I suspect possibly that old showbiz world

may well have pretty much died over there too or is about to. But it's really fascinating, the weirdness and occasional creepiness of middle-of-the-road Irish popular culture from the old days. It makes Elaine Page on The Two Ronnies look like Janis Joplin at Monterey.

Yes. And that's what Dana is and she doesn't make a lot of sense outside that world. And the sort of narrow overlap between that and the Radio 2 of 1979, you know. And I don't really feel qualified to hold forth on it because I'm not an expert. I'm just dimly aware of it.

But I think every Irish listener to this will know exactly what I mean. And any one of them could tell you about the creaky father Ted-ishness of the universe where, you know, Dana is a natural phenomenon. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Dana represents, you know, one of these people that, you know, eventually gets into religion purely for the sake of the sanctimony and, you know, whose primary obsessions are things that Jesus himself never even discusses in the New Testament, you know, like homosexuality and abortion, et cetera, et cetera. Just very much, you know, like at the top end of the agenda.

It's strange. Strange old Donna. I remember there was this thing about NME. She took great exception to something that was the NME. When some filth they'd just flung at the pop kids. And talking about how she wouldn't have the NME in the house or whatever. Made a great point in the 70s. Good for her.

Strange thought. Yeah, all right, not NME.com. I don't think she was talking about that. But, you know, the hip young gunslinger NME.com, you know, I don't think she was talking about that. But, you know, the young gunslinger NME. But in 1975, apparently, she was voted, this is a strange thing, the top female singer in Britain by the TV Times and the readers of the NME. Yes. Isn't that strange?

It's just like, not a sort of cast around NME. First of all, isn't she Irish? Isn't that the whole thing why she was sort of cast round find anyway. First of all, she's not, isn't she Irish? You know, isn't that the whole thing why she was sort of set off against Mary Hopkins, which is a bit weird. But I mean, it's strange, you know, she doesn't appear to, I mean, sort of issues about like United Ireland, et cetera, et cetera, don't appear to have, you know, because apparently, you know, she recorded, she helped with the recording of the World Cup final song in 1982, Your Man, for the Northern Ireland squad.

Yes. Yes. Apparently, you know, for the Northern Ireland squad. Yes. Apparently, you know, it turns out no one's really that fussed about all this, you know, sectarian whatever, you know. So, yeah. There was Dana, then a long gap, then Neil Lennon. Yeah, yeah.

This is very Manhattan transfer, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Something for the non-Oz. Yeah, yeah. Says absolutely nothing about real kids' lives isn't it? Yeah. Something for the non-Oz. Yeah, yeah. Says absolutely nothing about real kids' lives, does it? It certainly didn't. Said nothing about my life, I can tell you. Not a jot.

What I always think of when I think of Dana is when I was a kid, I used to get Shoot magazine. Right. And they'd do the questionnaires with the footballers. Yes. And there was some sort of hulking great footballer being asked, you know, like favourite food, steak and chips and all that. And then it said, are you married?

And the response said, yes, to Dana. Now, I didn't realise at the time that was just the boilerplate response for how you answered that question. And everyone else has said yes to Pat or yes to Sue. And I thought he was saying yes to Dana, as if you won't believe this, but yes, I'm banging Dana, the tremulous Irish songbird. And I remember thinking I wouldn't have thought

that a grisly, no-nonsense holding midfielder from Division 2 would have been her type. But then it often is, isn't it? Those quiet, slightly worried-looking women. A lot of the time, they like a bit of rough on the quiet. They want to yaga-yaga, don't they?

Unlike Dana, who I believe married a hotelier from Newry. Yeah, very early on, and I think has remained faithfully, you know, wedded since. Bless her. Lovely girl. Again, this was a record that was well outside the charts,

wasn't it? Yes. Not even in the top 100. I know, and it's kind of an annoying thing, you know, and it's just like, so if you're going to sort of like cast out a bit, you know, let's just not go for the kind of already established. Let's give a punt to something hovering on the outside, that you know of all the people to give a leg up

to you give it to dana i mean well yeah talk to people like on transmission by joy division or something like that you know well you could have had new entries this week outside the top 40 include on my radio by selector and typical girls by the slits yeah Yeah. It's not Dana, though, is it? Come on. No, it's not. It's just some weird dancing in the middle, don't you? Well, it's not so much dancing as just like a really slow walk from one bit of the stage to the other bit. Sort of female Cliff Richard, really, I suppose. Yes.

Clit Richard, if you will. If we will. I don't think we will. So, the following week, and for every week after that, I Can't Get Over Getting Over You failed to make the charts, making this her final appearance on Top of the Pops. She spent the 80s making a series of religious LPs, breaking off in 1982 to record Your Man with the Northern Ireland World

Cup squad and relocated to America in the 90s, only to return to Ireland in 1999 to stand as a presidential candidate and become an MEP in the European Parliament in 1999, even though by then she was an official American citizen. Donna and I Can't get over getting over you. So it's three weeks at the top for Stuart Copeland, Andy Summers and Sting. It's The Police and Message in a Bottle. MUSIC Formed in London in 1977 by Gordon Sumner and Stuart Copeland, who had met in Newcastle when the latter was playing drums for the prog band Curved Air and the former was a schoolteacher with a band on the side,

the Police were originally a trio with the Corsican guitarist Henry Padovane and they released the single Fallout in May of that year. A month later, the bassist Mike Howlett left Gong and invited Sumner and Copeland to play with him in a band called Strontium 90, which also featured the former Zoop Money's big roll band and soft machine guitarist Andy Summers. But after a couple of gigs and a few aborted demos, the project dissolved. However, Summers was offered a spot in the police, which he accepted on the condition that Padovani was knobbed off,

which he was. After the band dyed their hair blonde for an advert for Wrigley Spearmint Gum, which was never aired, Copland's brother Miles financed their first LP for £1,500, which turned out to be At Landos De More, and after hearing the demo version of Roxanne, he used it to land a deal with A&M. Roxanne was put out as their debut single, but it wasn't put on the Radio 1 playlist as it was about a prostitute in the midst of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper and it failed to chart but the

follow-up Can't Stand Losing You was banned outright by the BBC due to its cover which depicted Sting standing on a block of ice in front of an electric heater with a noose around its neck but it still got to number 42. The next single So Lonely failed to chart in November of 1978, but a combination of appearances on BBC shows such as the Old Grey Whistle Test and Roxanne becoming a minor hit in America, led to that single being re-released in April of 1979, where it got to number 12. This single, the first cut from the new LP Regatta de Blanc, is the follow-up to the re-release of can't stand losing you which got to number two in august of this year it was the highest new entry at number eight on

its release it not caused by gary newman off the top spot and it's now at its third week at number one before we get stuck into this song and everything what a top 10 it's the aventures writ large isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. Them heavy people, one day at time, if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? Cause, since you've been gone, whatever you want, don't stop till you get enough dreaming. Video killed

the radio star and this song. What a mixed bag of Aventiness it is. It is, yeah. I suppose the only harbinger in that is Video killed the radio star, for obvious reasons and uh very nice atop of the pops to play this particular record off a wax cylinder yes or it sounds like they got in the producer who did the august man's recording of israel in egypt and for the video the the cinematographer from Fred Ott's sneeze. It really is like watching one of those high-number cable TV

oldies video stations now. Yes. It looks fucking awful. And this is top of the pops, right? Should have been the first call, the first priority for this video. The sheer disrespect of giving them what looks like an eighth generation standards converted you know bootleg of the message in a bottle video why what's going on what's the problem

it's just an issue with a lot of things though at this time in terms of like mystifying decision making that kind is that this is still kind of pre the face and something like that people just don't have the kind of sensibility just to be remotely bothered by that, as long as the audio is okay. No one, you know, even has one necessarily. Yeah, and it isn't. It sounds terrible. Well, I mean, no, obviously the audio, I know it sounds sort of, you know, terrible, but I don't know, as long as it's pop,

as long as it's pop even, you know. Yeah. You know, as long as it's accurate. It's just people just didn't really care about it. You know, people didn't have the kind of sensibility to object to things like that, I suppose. Yeah, all kinds of things, all extraordinary stuff, it just waved through.

It seems mystifying now. That's what the police were like, though. They really did not give a fuck about the videos round about this time. I mean, you know, a year from now, da-do-do-do-da-da-da, that's, oh, we're in the snow, let's fuck about.

Salonle, oh, here we are in Japan, let's get on this train and fuck about. Well, I mean, there was a lot of videos of people just fucking about. But there's something uniquely hateful about the police ones. I mean, partly what I hate about this video is their attempt to appropriate

some of that street energy at the start. Yes. Where they've got a load of like sort of punks smoking fags in the street and that in their studded leather jackets you know being alienated and teenage and the only thing that speaks to those kids man is the the goose stepping pop reggae of the 30 somethingsomething police. It's fucking ridiculous. And as a kid, I always hated police videos because of their wacky movements. You know, in all their videos,

they sort of half dance with their hands hanging straight down by their sides. And it's just like their knees going up and down, like actual policemen saying, hello, hello, hello. Or proto-river dance yeah and it's it's obviously because they don't know what to do they don't know what to do with their hands they don't know how to move um but it comes across as a sort of aimless joviality which clashes really badly

with the supposed intensity uh of the songs and it meant that as a kid I could never really trust them and rightly as it turned out because all that joviality and all that arms around each other shoulders like mugging for the camera stuff was completely fake and they utterly despised each other like as you would

bring the police that's the case of quite a lot of bands I suppose isn't it I mean I suppose obviously the thing We're in the police. But then, you know, that's the case of quite a lot of bands, I suppose, isn't it? I mean, I suppose, obviously, the thing about Sting is that kind of decades of sort of sustained and monumental onanism, you know, have kind of had a retrospective spoiling effect. And, I mean, the fact is, I mean, I hate Sting, love the police. I did love the police at the time. I still think those records are great. You know, this is a great, great record.

And, I mean, you know, because it's more than about just appropriation of reggae I mean it's far more than white reggae it's that kind of like that that sort of chiming that tuning that sense of sort of it's not just the hair that peroxided they've actually sort of found a way of peroxiding pop you know they've got this extraordinary kind of you know lightness of pop being you know I mean and that almost like helium I mean walking on the moon I think being you know the follow-up which comes later you know being the sort of stronger example I mean this was just in its you know in its time this this this was just this is just you know I didn't you know no one really cared what they did I mean this was just you know one of the very best things out there it really was yeah it was I mean that the video is essentially uh them backstage

and the camera's gone out to to check out the kids on the street the overall impression is is oh look we're just sitting around we've got fuck all to do uh oh let's make a pop video for our next single yeah rather than punch each other in the face which is what we really want to do yes but no i agree this would be a decent record if you could somehow fumigate it and remove all traces of sting, you know. And I don't know if that's true of all Police records, but it is true of a fair few. I think last time the Police... He kind of wrote the song, though, didn't he?

Yeah, but there's so much... I mean, I think they are still much about, you know, Stuart Cuthbert and Andy Summers, really. It's not like Noel Redding in, you know, Mitch Mitch and Jimmy Andrews' experience. I mean, it's not like Noel Redding in, you know, let's say Mitch Mitch and Jimmy Andrews experience. I mean, it's not the Sting experience. I mean, you know, they both make a highly significant contribution, definitely. And without them, I mean, you know, Sting solo, it's just like, dear God, you know.

Yeah, but the trouble is, even on a police record, his presence spreads and creeps across the surface of these records. It's like a spilled urine sample, you know, just dampening and darkening them irreversibly. Like, even before you actually have to look at him, like, doing that thing where he leans forward into the camera and puts his chin down and does that mock serious expression in every video.

It's like sucking in his cheeks. Again, especially retrospectively you can, you know, all of these things. I don't think at the time he realised he was just going to turn out to be the mother of all tossers. I mean, although there should have been signs. I mean, Alan Jones interviewed him a couple of times around, you know, and I

think that, you know, he realised what a kind of rather sort of stuffy and solipsistic man Sting was, you know, in that period of sort of pre-fame and during fame. You know, everybody else is going out kind of, you know, on a sort of roistering for the evening. You know, he kind of goes back to his hotel room with a sort of an improving book and, you know. Knock over a load of candles. Yeah, and it's this wonderful story as well.

Have it off for eight hours. Yeah. This big, huge gig that the police are doing, I think in what was Bombay, I believe it was. And Sting looks around the crowd and he's kind of irked to see that there's not really many locals there. It seems to be mostly kind of liggers,

you know, sort of tourists, headfats, whatever. And he makes this kind of grand announcement to them. You know, he wants to sort of fling the doors open to the venue so that the kind of the ordinary people from outside can surge in. And he kind of makes this kind of like, open doors you know you know the assumption that kind of you know the local populace are going to come surging in and of course nobody does you know it's like one or two curious people standing around outside all of them got better things to do than watch the

police nonetheless it's it's i i do i suppose i i love these records at the time they are they have been kind of tarnished somewhat, I suppose. Yeah. See, I like Walking on the Moon. Yes, it's great. That's the only one that I can really accept. It's all, you know, Bergerac meets Rockers Uptown, as I always think of it.

But I can live with that one because there's so much space in the sound. And by definition, space is a place with no sting in it and this one is it's not a bad record but it sounds quite claustrophobic and so you get it's like he's breathing almond water and dried kale right into your face you know and i mean i appreciate he wasn't quite the same proposition in those days but even so you look at this video their sting in combat trousers and a red dickie bow uh almost as if he was the biggest cunt in the world um and it's yeah the signs were there fair point it's

criminal that he spent so fucking long around a bloke whose dad owned the cia or whatever it was and and came out unscathed you know to pose in yogic fashion with a balalaika and uh yeah single-handedly destroy the amazonian rainforest or whatever it was he like i can't remember what he did. Are we so down on Sting because the police were so good once? In the same way that we quite rightly hate UB40 in their jaw-waddy-waddy phase because

they were so good before that. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, for all UB40, I think it is more down to the content or lack of Sting's character I think is really what it ultimately comes down to. I mean, I love this song.

It's good. It is objectively good. Yeah, and a couple of months later, I would get for Christmas that year, I would get my own tape player and the first two Police albums. I even bought Zenyatta Mondatta

a year later. So yeah, i mean around about this time the police were my favorite band no there was a lot of people definitely so the following week it was knocked off the top spot by video killed the radio star by the buggles the follow-up walking on the moon got to number one for a week in december of this year and they'd have three more uk number ones before splitting up in 1986 again another cheap video they're walking on the moon i mean yeah obviously you know getting on getting on nasa next to a massive fucking space shuttle or whatever it was you know the location might be a bit glamorous but all they do is ask about again it's a bit like the lady doth protest too much me thinks they they arseth about too much.

You know, it's probably because they felt like to kind of like create a really excess sense of bonhomie and esprit de corps and all that kind of stuff. It's a hat trick of weeks at Weeks at the Top for the police, with Message in a Bottle.

Join me if you can on Radio 1 tomorrow afternoon. That's it for this week's Top of the Pops, except to leave you with this one from Fleetwood Mac. Don't ask me what's gone wrong Why don't you ask me, let's talk this through Don't say that you love me Formed in London in 1967, Fleetwood Mac were originally a progressive blues band who scored a number one in 1968 with Albatross and number two hits with Man of the World and Oh Well

before disintegrating in the spring of 1970 when their guitarist Peter Green wanted the band to donate all their money to charity and left the band when he was told to fuck off. After struggling through the early 70s with myriad lineup changes and having to deal with a manager who formed his own group on the side and told them to tour under the name Fleetwood Mac they eventually settled on a permanent line-up in 1975 and became a huge band in America, where the 1977 LP Rumours sold 8 million copies. However, despite the LP getting to number one in the chart over here for a week,

none of the singles from the album made the UK top 20, with Dreams being the highest placed at number 24. top 20, with Dreams being the highest placed at number 24. This tune, the title cut from the new and long-anticipated follow-up LP, which was, at the time, the most expensively produced LP ever, is the follow-up to Rhiannon, which got to number 46 for three weeks in March of this year. And although there's a dead expensive video recorded at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and although there's a dead expensive video recorded at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with the USC marching band and everything, he's being played over,

fucked about with footage of the lighting rig in the top of the pub studio and it's up this week from number 53 to number 30. I must say, as a youth on a council estate in Nottingham, this is probably the first time I'd ever heard of Fleetwood Mac. Hmm. Rumours, did that mean anything to you you your tiny little lives at the time yeah i mean obviously i was a little bit older than you so i was conscious of like you know rumors and it's kind of ubiquity um and um and then obviously the delay and then obviously at this point lindsey

buckingham is kind of like you know he's sort of talking heads and stuff like that and thinking, oh, God, having some of that. And hence, you know, I suppose some of the kind of effects on this particular track, you know, it's an attempt to sort of like, you know, get with the new sort of new pop, new post-punk programme. Rather than knack than Fleetwood Mac. But it means that the weirdest record on the whole show is by the most mainstream act. And it's no secret nowadays that Tusk is a pretty freaky and radical and totally unexpected record.

In that it's basically the epitome of Californian soft rock going post-punk but with coke in place of speed and yes and nothing in place of punk and so when you listen to tusk when you ignore all the sort of ambient christine mcvee ballads it's full of this really strange and confusing music and it's probably the only example of an LA FM band being influenced by the Gang of Four and Wire. But people forget that the weird production on Elm isn't just weird. It's incredibly expensive and lush at the same time. And that's what's so crazy about this track because it's all African drums and stern horns.

And hitting a lump chop with spatulas don't forget right and on an actual post-punk record that would come out as pure aggression and attack whereas here there's all these different layers of sound at like different virtual distances from the listener and all that sort of thing so that posh west coast studio indulgence makes it less commercial than an adam and the ants record because it sounds weirder and it's less immediate you know um but it's it's amazing i once persuaded someone i knew who was djing to play this through a big sound system and it sounded fantastic because at that volume um it doesn't sound like a big roar just a big rumble like the way most records that are mostly drums sound uh

it all opens out and it feels really enveloping and you can hear where all that money went you know uh yeah i love it i was massively intrigued by this record probably for the simple fact that it was on dial-a-disc at the time and I'd just discovered dial-a-disc so it was that time in between discovering dial-a-disc and then your parents discovering the phone bill

so yeah, on a red old school telephone, it still sounded good Whenever I hear a record played on a brilliant brilliant system it's a bit like drinking a sort of 50 quid bottle of wine I think I can't allow myself to get used to this because I'm going to have to listen to it on a bloody tinny old crap machine

at home. The thing about this album is that it I think it possibly suffered in reputation because of people's tendency to sort of see validation coming through commercial success sometimes and the fact that it only sold 4 million or's tendency to sort of see validation coming through commercial success sometimes and the fact that you only sold four million or whatever you know um it's been a people sort of you know so this idea is disseminated with being a kind of a flop and i suppose in

fairness you can understand i mean the record companies i mean this there's quite a few people putting out double albums you know this is this year and with varying kind of success you can imagine the record company quaking the boost a little bit. I mean, all right, you had Pink Boys, The Wall, but you've also got this year Stevie Wonder's Journey from the Secret Life of the Plants, you know, which was rather less successful, you know, and it's people just sort of like, you know, sort of roosting, you know, on some sort of immense success

in the mid-70s, like Stevie Wonder's songs on Key of Life and they're saying, oh, shit, now what are they going to do? And, you know, but... Is it people trying to get out of their deals as well by putting out as many sides as possible um i don't know what you mean a sort of metal machine um yeah i i don't know i don't genuinely don't know about that i'm not sure actually i think that they just said i think it's a genuine an album of um grand ambition you know and metal box as well yes yeah of course all metal box you know but i was thinking perhaps more about the kind of the more sort of you know the olympian sort of

stratum of artists uh yeah what puzzles another thing that puzzles me though right you know we're talking about that program you know the world in action thing i mean you can understand somebody having to sort of hype up you know loot an airport or whatever but then apparently we're kind of like you know haven't given a little bit bunk bunk for this i, you know, Luton Airport or whatever. But then apparently they were kind of like, you know, having to give him a little bit of a bung for this. I mean, you know, what kind of conversation goes on there? So, you know, what's this? Oh, Fleetwood Mac.

You must remember Fleetwood Mac, you know? Rumours? No, no, no. Never heard of him. No. Albatross? Oh, shit. I don't know.

I mean, this sounds weird to me. I don't know if anything is going to fly at all. It's just like, look, mate, there's a satin jacket in here for you. You know, come give it a go. Why do you have to hype Fleetwood Mac? People would do anything for a satin jacket in 1979, wouldn't they? Yeah. See, the thing about Fleetwood Mac is that I think makes them the most interesting.

First of all, there's a fair bit to dislike about them if you just look at the peripheral stuff, right? They were completely indulgent stadium soft rockers and mick fleetwood is a ludicrous character and you know if you're being mean you can say that stevie nick's sort of witchy pretensions and a top hat and chiffon scarves and all that a bit of an embarrassment but none of that stuff really matters because their cosseted millionaire's safety and the resulting uh freedom and self-indulgence actually freed them up from all the commercial concerns which made most of their peers so safe and makes their stuff now sound so unrewarding so instead they have this

bug-eyed lunatic lindsey buckingham going crazy at the mixing desk yeah and uh you know nutty cokie mick fleetwood clapping him on with his massive shovel hands and uh and everyone's shagging everyone else and and stevie nicks is free to indulge all these sort of half-baked musical ideas, which were obviously brilliant, but just needed a sympathetic genius producer and arranger with whom she had a certain degree of friction, which, amazingly enough, was exactly what was there in Lindsay Buckingham with their eternally unresolved yet unworkable love affair.

So just on Tusk, like Stevie Nicks, despite the fact that it's like, really it's Lindsay Buckingham's album because he controlled the crazy sound of it. Really Stevie Nicks is the star of that album because she does Sarah, which is divine, and Storms, which is one of the most quietly intense songs that there is, and Beautiful Child, which is her best song,

and it's one of my all-time favourite songs, and to me, one of the most poignant and intense and beautiful records ever. And that wouldn't have happened if, you know, if they'd been in a studio under the Westway for six days with a hat producer and some Chinese amps, you know. They probably sounded like the head boys, but... Well, no, they sounded like the head boys,

but they certainly wouldn't have weighed in with anything as subtle and insane as this particular single. It's such an odd group, such a sort of hybrid, you know, with these kind of sort of, you know, three or four different axes, you know, at work. And then, as you say, you know, then there's all these shifting romantic alliances, you know, going on at the same time. You know, it's the opposite of that thing.

They always say, like, a camel is a horse designed by committee. But, you know, in a sense, you know, it's like an efficient committee now would design a proper horse or whatever. And then we're like a kind of camel, really, in a funny kind of way, if that makes sense. No. Didn't make sense. Don't worry. You go back to it two or three times,

the crisp lucidity of it will kind of ping you like an epiphany. Just like this album, then. Yeah. So the following week, Tusk jumped 12 places to number 18 and would eventually get to number six, the 70s line-up's highest position to date. The follow-up, Sarah, would get to number 37 for two weeks in January of 1980. And that closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. top of the pops also closes the book on the boom period for top of the pops and the television ratings because 11 days later on monday october the 22nd itv increased their pay offer to 17.5

backdated to the 1st of july and two days later it was welcome welcome welcome home to ITV. It was back. I remember downloading that whole passage where ITV comes back on again. Yes. From the old torrent site, UK Nova, back in the days when this was a rare jewel. Yeah, oh, I miss you, UK Nova. This is back when YouTube just had self-made videos of people skateboarding on it. Yeah.

Talking about 9-11. As opposed to everything that's ever happened in the history of the world. So it was a real treat to get something like this. And you felt like you had something very special. Yeah. Well, what did ITV show that night? Well, the news at 5.45. The Muppet Show with Dudley Moore

Crossroads, a new series of George and Mildred Coronation Street, there you go David, 321 and the first episode of the new mini-series of Quatermass but BBC were ready for them because they countered with the first

ever episode of Terry and June. Long Weekend by John Cain. That's what it is. As you can check for yourself on the Wikipedia page, list of Terry and June episodes, where each of the 65 programs gets an awesomely dry synopsis um in what must surely be some kind of conceptual art prank um because there's nothing quite like reading the events of an episode of

terry and june related in the most starkly prosaic fashion as though someone had erased the laughter track right like eg for for this episode it says hang on a minute i've written this down they arrive at 26 elm tree avenue in pearly surrey to decorate before they move in the weekend gets off to a bad start when they arrive late at the house after traffic problems the following day they start to decorate and the wallpaper peels off. On Sunday, neighbours Brian, Roland Curram and Tina Pillbeam, Anita Graham, arrive to introduce themselves and tell Terry and June about the previous owners, all of whom were odd in different ways. Then they discover a hidden door in the kitchen,

but it leads only to a toilet. Part of the toilet then falls on Terry's head and he ends up in hospital. Oh, man. I think this might be my favourite... Give up ITV. I think this might be my favourite Wikipedia page of all. And sometimes when it's really cold in my flat,

I read through it all while listening to a recording of a distant church bell tolling but yeah itv's back coronation street's back more importantly yeah well that they coronation street viewers were prepped for this because it's one of my clearest memories. After the blue screen for weeks and weeks, finally, like the dove appearing over the flood with a twig in its mouth, they started showing that specially filmed trailer for Coronation Street. It was a short clip of Bette Lynch and Len Faircloth.

This is something, incidentally, which doesn't seem to exist on the internet these days because i'd like to see it again yes bet lynch and len fairclough standing on the coronation street set out in the street and pretending to gossip about what had been going on to keep you up fish wives yeah just to so you know where the storylines were going to recommence uh which i think was len's ill-fated visit to the swimming baths. I might be getting that mixed up with something else. But seeing that really was the crowning jewel of a memorable autumn.

I genuinely had such high regard for Coronation Street. I remember seeing that and I actually felt that my intelligence was being insulted. I just thought this is actually kind of sublime, kind of cleverly wrought, sort of subtly camp comedy or whatever with lots of brilliant sort of interplay and what have you, you know, all inspired by Tony Warren, a creator, etc, etc. You know, to me, it was that instance, you know, like speaking to camera thing. It was as if like Fawlty Towers had come back and basil and sibyl had sort of come hello there hi we're back again with our zany capers it's been a long time since we're on screen but yes we're back and don't worry yes daft old manuel is back too it's just you know i'm just it felt on that level for me i was deeply i was wounded and it's amazing that in those 10

weeks or so absolutely nothing happened in coronation street you think with it with the itv off they'd have found lots of things to do yeah yeah i say david you i was to say you were you were offended by them breaking the fourth wall but uh considering some of the sets they used to use on coronation street it was more like breaking the third wall. Yes, indeed. So what's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One follows up with Blankety Blank with Katie Boyle, Kenny Everett,

Lisa Goddard, Alfred Marks, Ted Mould and Una Stubbs. Then Wolfie Smith and his communish chums get into trouble for giving out three bags of coal in Citizen Smith. After the news, it's the new series of Play For Today with long-distance information about a local rock and roll DJ who finds out that his daughter is emigrating on the night that Elvis dies. That's brilliant, that is.

Then it's Shirley Williams in Conversation, where she has a blather about racism with Andrew Young, America's former ambassador to the UN, and finishes off with a sports night special on the Gulf and the Rotary Watch's Ice International. BBC Two is examining the Tory party's hard-on for monetarism in Newsweek. Then there's an examination of how the Aztecs built their empire in the documentary series of Gods and Men, their empire in the documentary series of gods and men followed by empire road tony bennett sings the posthumous richard beckinsale sitcom that everyone's forgotten about bloomers set in a flower shop then the documentary series circuit 11 miami about the american court system and finishes off with the news channel is running a documentary about the Swiss religious group Friends of Man, the 1971 film Do You Take This Stranger,

the news, then the safari documentary showdown at Governor's Camp, and finishes at 10 past 11 with French news. I don't know if that's the news in French or news about France. Who cares? I couldn't get it. So yeah, Channel, they're just fucking going through the drawers aren't they any old shit chuck it out yeah well what's new

so me boys what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow I mean it's strange because you've got don't stop till you get enough on but they're kind of

sort of in a way you know it's a terrible thing to say but they're kind of thrown away slightly on legs and cat yeah they are you know a message in a bottle

you know quite possibly. They've been number one for three weeks. Yeah, so it's not like, wow, did you see that thing that's been number one for three weeks? I don't think we were talking about... Come on, David, it's Cash UK, isn't it? That's going to set the playground alight tomorrow. Quite possibly. Do you know what?

Actually, we probably would have been talking about that. Fucking hell, did you see that crock of shite? Yes. Or fucking hell, did you see that crock of shite? Because I had more of a northern accent then.

Yeah. I think most likely that, actually, yeah. There's a strange sort of equalising effect. Again, as I was saying earlier on about Top of the Pops, when nothing seems to be

kind of more important than anything else. You know, like, you know, the fact you just bung on Fleetwood Mac right at the end there over the kind of credits, or whatever, it's just, you know, but then sort of cats, you know the fact you just bung on Fleetwood Mac right at the end there over the kind of credits or whatever it's just you know but then sort of cats you know take you catching it takes a you know more sort of pride of place and they're in the studio and and I remember like

being a kid actually sort of not realizing you know which were the uh the important bands you know and you know I would have probably seen Fleetwood Mac as this kind of sort of rather sort of peripheral outfit you know if I'd been a few years younger, you know. Yeah, but because it was whacked over the end credits with the lighting effects and everything, you know, a kid my age might have thought the Flea Bull Mac was just a big eye in the sky, staring down at it as kind of benevolent, but you wouldn't want to piss it off.

I would also have thought, well, this Michael Jackson fella, you know, that they've had to get Pans Peopling because he's really not up to snuff legs and co sorry i will say that again yes sorry about that stop getting pans people wrong um i think what i'd also thought um seeing legs and co performing to don't stop till you get enough of this michael jackson fella wasn't really up to snuff as a dancer you know and you know that much kind of stage presence so they had to kind of cover for him yes i think I think what I'd have been saying in the playground was, I didn't know your mum was in the doolies.

It was a hard environment. And yeah, probably Cats UK, just because the presentation is unorthodox and the song's about a fucking advert, which is somehow more interesting to kids than anything else. Yeah. I mean, we despair now about kids watching glorified adverts all the time, you know, on YouTube. Yeah.

Like the fucking unboxing videos and all that stuff. Yeah. And being branded. Oh, my niece is a fucker for that. Yeah. Corporate minded and all this stuff. But really, that's just a high tech version of us as kids, isn't it? You know, like reciting bird's-eye commercials

when it comes out of the freezer and stuff. And singing jingles. And, like, being basically sparrow brain dupes with pathetic attention spans. And, you know, because I don't know about you, but I would sit there and, oh, great, it's end of part one. You know what I mean? It's just Lendrosa spilling his drink on Joan Collins. And, oh, it's end of part one. You know what I mean? Yes. Landrosse is spilling his drink on Joan Collins.

And, oh, it's the Weetabix. Okay. They got names like the Brighton and Hove Albion back four of 2018. We did it to ourselves. And, you know, meanwhile, while this is going on, organised labour is pointing to its own chin and saying, go on, go on, right there. Just once, just hit me just once, right there.

And the future is forming right here, bleakly. And it's going to be worse than even Andy Peebles could possibly imagine. How did Peebles do in his first Top of the Pops? It was abysmal. I mean, it was... It was like a sort of black hole. One thing you can say for him, at no point did his trousers fall down

and him then trip over them and land on a dog. Yeah. Yeah, there is that. What was the pity? Look on the bright side. And what are we buying on Saturday? If we've not already got it, message in a bottle. Ditto, don't stop till you get enough.

Yeah, Mac, Chic, Dunkley, Jacko, and an option on Hook. And what does this episode tell us about October of 1979? You could get away with anything

in 1979, and that's good and bad. Yeah, but, you know, things are about to change very drastically and fairly quickly. And that, me ducks, is the end of this episode of Chart Music. Utual flange, www.chart-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chartmusic, twitter at TOTP, money down the G-string, patreon.com. Thank you, Taylor Parks. See you.

Ta very much, David Stubbs. And ta to you. My name's Al Needham, and, you know, I was wondering, you know, if you could keep on, because the Force, it's got a lot of power, and it made me feel like uh it made me feel like uh sharp music Welcome to Canberra Sands, Ponton's most popular self-catering holiday centre on the sunny Sussex coast. And you can be sure you'll be getting a really warm welcome.

It's an ideal centre for sightseeing, with plenty of places to visit nearby. It's lovely here self catering is no problem here there's a big holiday shop right on site plenty of choice and it's open every day gets a crock man and you'll please yourself all right it dip in the pool or some fun with the kids we when's the next Olympics now come on and fly a kite and take a look at these famous sands at Canberra. Aren't they just made for family fun? You really could be alongside the Mediterranean. That ham's bigger than a football. Just look at this selection. The entertainment's laid on its style, either in the upstairs ballroom or the club bar lounges.

Cabaret, live music, prize competitions and a laugh a minute. And you can finish off the evening by letting your hair down to some of the best of sounds with our resident groups. Oh, she's forgot her skirt. What a mover. Hmm? It's just like Top of the Pops. 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.

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