Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #55: 23.12.1982 – Hygge Pop

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Chart Music #55: 23.12.1982 – Hygge PopThe latest episode of the podcast which asks: why hasn’t London got a Revels World?It’s getting to look a lot like Christmas, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and you know what that means: the Nanas of the Kingdom start fiddling with their purses at the counter of HMV and encrust our beloved charts with the mung of novelty. We can’t lie: this episode of The Pops has been freshly squeezed from the very ringpiece of the cat, and no amount of live weather reports from Kid Jensen or the appearance of a little Mediterranean Santa can distract us from that.Musicwise, oof: Lol Mason fiddles about with the watch pocket of his slacks. David Bowie – the Death Angel of 1977 – has a fiddle on Bing Crosby’s posh English cousin’s piano for an awkward chat about kids, before flouncing off to EMI. Incantation perform the Andean puffalong Knees Up Madre Brown. The Double-Denimed Defender of Heterosexual Rock n’ Roll makes his balcony speech. The Seventies officially die as Abba make their last stand for the benefit of Noel Edmonds. Then the Seventies rip themselves from the grave for this year’s Number One. And there’s Modern Romance. And Orville. And Zoo.Neil Kulkarni and Rock Expert David Stubbs – the Dads of Chart Music - join Al Needham for a grim death-march into the dark side of 1982, breaking off on such tangents as being parodied on BBC sketch shows two decades ago, the revelation that teachers never gave a toss about you, what Shakin’ Stevens’ version of the Fool’s Gold loaf would be, how to feed your children with promo vinyl, why Imagination should have been denied trousers, and invite you to contemplate in your mind’s eye the image of your parents having sex to the sounds of Renee and Renato. Warning: the language is as Blue as Shaky’s Christmas.Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Mark Haynes, and for the last 32 years, I've been a fan of professional wrestling. My friend Pete Donaldson from the Football Ramble, he hasn't. But in our podcast, Wrestle Me, the two of us subject the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment, Wrestlemania, to the kind of rigorous scrutiny that ruins it entirely. GQ called Wrestle Me enrapturing. Shortlist said it's beautiful, and it's a hit with common people too, with well over 400 five-star reviews on iTunes Wrestle Me, available from all good podcast providers

The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence which could be quite graphic It may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words what do you like listen to chart music sharp music music. It's Thursday night. It's about quarter to eight. It's April the 7th, 1983. And this

episode of Top of the Pops has left me and Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni absolutely stiff in our musical televisual pants. Hey up, you pop craze youngsters, and welcome to the final part of Chart Music 6 there. I'm your host, Al Needham. Let's not fanny about. Come on, Top of the Pops, finish us off properly. Yeah.

Let's not fanny about. Come on, Top of the Pops, finish us off properly. That's Tracy. It's more well a production to the house than Jack will. She comes from Charleston. Okay, the hottest pop party, the top 30 now. Michael Jackson's at number 30 with Beating. In at 29, I Am, I'm Me by Twisted System.

28 This Week, Run For Your Life by Bucks Fizz. Mario Wilson's at 27 with Crimea River. 26, it's Garden Party and Meds of 40. David Joseph's You Can't Hide Your Love From Me at 25. The Celtic Soul Brothers' Dexter's Midnight Runners at 24. And Tracy's straight in with The House that Jack built at 23. Number 22 this week, drop the pilot, Joan Armatrading. And at 21, it's

FR David with Words. Bates reunited with Powell on the balcony, tells us that Tracy Young comes from Chelmsford, glossing over his failure to discover her favourite football team. He's at it again, isn't he? And what's he getting at there? Oh, she's from Chelmsford. Yeah, she's not from Detroit, in case you were wondering.

I don't know. Powell reminds us that we're at, quote, the hottest pop party as he wipes his sweaty bra with one finger and launches us into the charts from number 30 to number 21. And, chaps, as is the style in this time of Top of the Pops' gestation, if you will, the chart pictures are merely competent yeah they are you know the the record labels have finally worked out how to put a decent photograph in an envelope and give it to the bbc and the only thing that stood out for me

was uh mary wilson uh looks like she's standing in front of a gargantuan multicoloured swastika. Yeah, not one of Noel Edmonds' more successful programmes, that one. That magnificent beehive of hers as well, you know. What a hairstyle. Yes. Yeah, that's the only photo that stood out. I suppose you've got Bucks Fizz in their fucks biz mode, you know, the sort of leather cap on J. Austin. Yes.

But other than that, yeah, it's your standard promo shot of everyone isn't it finally bates introduces the next act fr david with words born in menzelburg guiba tunisia in 1947 ellie fatusi changed his name to Robert or probably Robert and relocated to Paris to begin a music career in the 60s After a spell in the French garage band Les Boots he went solo in 1967 and had moderate French success before switching to production in the early 70s A few years later he went back to performing when he formed the prog band david explosion

before because i know it's great isn't it before becoming vangelis's guitarist and changing his name to odyssey he then joined the rock band les variations i'm not saying that no i'll do it properly he then joined the rock band les Variations, relocating to America as a session player when the band split up and returning to France in 1981 to start anew as a solo artist. This is the lead-off single from his 1982 solo LP of the same name, which got to number two in France, but then exploded across Europe, getting to number one in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and West Germany. It finally got a UK release last month. It entered the top 40 at number 39 last week and this week it soared 18 places to number 21 and here he is

in the studio well there were two words that came very easy to me when this song came up both then and now fucking hate this song when i watched this episode for the first time, for this episode of Chant Music, I reacted to this like Keith Pratt in Nuts in May when he wakes up in the morning and discovers Finger and Onky making themselves a cowboy breakfast and breaking every law of the country code. Everything was perfect until you came along. I mean, the reason you felt like that, Al,

is because you were a teenager when you first encountered this record. So obviously the wedge was in, you know, this is not for me. But I wasn't a teenager. So this would have been fairly seamless in this episode for me. You know, you could say who the fuck is buying this, but the world is buying this. You know, it's a massive hit behind the Iron Curtain on all over seven continents. It's a weedy catchy europop number and and the reason it's popular i think is because

it's got an odd touch of something very old about it the melody and his massive shades that kind of hint at a near blindness they really recall roy orbison for me that's yes very old-fashioned about this the structure of the song, the plaintiveness of the singing and the chords. It makes it very, very dated. And his tremulous vocal is very Demis Roussos-ish as well. I don't think it's any accident that he's also, you know, working with Vangelis,

as you've mentioned, doing vocals on his album. So for me, this wouldn't have been a moment where I thought, oh, what the fuck is this? This has nothing to do with my vision of pop. It nothing to me about my life because i wasn't a teenager yet you know the undertow of it that synthy drum beat that fits in with pretty much that kind of fits in with pretty much everything else on this episode so i wouldn't have seen this as a big departure but but certainly whereas i think all the other records on this episode are bought by young people,

this is definitely more sort of, this is music for people who at the time probably weren't getting on with all that electronic music, but liked a good song, or what they would call a good song anyway. And yet it is completely electronic. But in a bad way. Yeah, this is kind of late 50s, early 60s pop music with a kind of synth cape on if you like and that's why it works it appeals to you know to the kiddies and the old folks and cunts a massive hit all over europe the year before simon said that this is essentially what dennis and dagmar were having a slow dance to uh at a bernie gast house in dusseldorf in Auf Wiedersehen, pet. Yeah, I mean, what this tells me is, this song,

is that the French are simultaneously the most cool and the least cool people in Europe, right? Because they gave us Jean-Paul Belmondo and also F.R. David. Yes. And yeah, absolutely, this song was, it was a punchline, wasn't it, in the playground? It was like, ha-ha, your favourite song is Words by F.R. David.

I bet you love that, don't you? It really was. Yeah, it was total mum-pop. In my mind, I grouped it together with La Dolce Vita by Ryan Paris, who was... Oh, that's a decent song, though. Yeah.

I mean, he was Italian, not French. I've got a soft spot for that. Yeah, it's all right. He was Italian, not French, though he does have a French spot for that yeah it's alright he was Italian not French though he does have a French city in his name that's how they get you these sneaky Europeans I assume that they were both holiday hits you know people go on holiday and they hear this song and they come back and buy it

but no probably not because we've got to remember we're talking about April for this song for words unless it was a big hit on the off piste yeah Apres S or or the or winter sun resorts yeah yeah yeah i actually um obviously same as you al i did a bit of research into uh robert fitusi which actually that sounds like the word that neil says in the young ones to accidentally summon the demon dwarf played by david rappaport pre Pre Les Boots, or Les Boots, as you said, he was in a band called Les Treffes,

which means The Clovers. And they did one EP of garage rock type stuff. And I was really fascinated by this. The lead track of it's called Sontil and Descent, which means Are They Indecent? And I think that's a fantastic title. And I want to hear it. I tried to sneakily nab it off

soulseek I tried to find it on on YouTube nothing anywhere I looked on Discogs it goes for 50 quid a pop so like basically if anyone out there has got it and they want to send us a sneaky copy of it I would love to hear are they indecent by the Clovers um and I suppose that that's another um comparison to Vangelis and to Demis Roussos that we mentioned in that they are associated with ultra easy listening music by the time the 80s come around but they were in Aphrodite's Child who are sort of a very kind of credible Greek progressive rock band and Fitousi also had this kind of background but maybe not as sort of glorious. Under his own name,

he did a cover version of Strawberry Fields Forever. Yes. But it's called Il est plus facile. And the way he translates the lyrics basically goes, it is easier to think of nothing when my eyes are closed. So it's not really the kind of psychedelic swirl of no lennon and mccartney there is it's uh yeah he's he's made it very very sort of normal and uh on the sleeve he looks like jermaine clement from flight of the concords which i find quite quite appealing yeah and um about with the amazing name that you mentioned david explosion right um that was early 70s uh i i love the uh the

sentence on the wikipedia page uh david formed the progressive rock group david explosion but their one album was not a success right and uh i listened to one of the singles i listened to one of the singles called a bright tomorrow and the description progressive rock is a bit off the mark. It sounds like Gilbert O'Sullivan. It's that kind of jaunty, rinky-dink kind of pop. So he's basically tried everything by the time... He's 36 by the time this song comes out. And he looks every year of that and just feels like, you know, complete...

I mean, this is mum pop, as I say. And he's got his mirrored aviator shades on and his collar turned up like Cantona. Right, when Eric Cantona came along, there was this idea that he was a cool footballer, right? But, and again, he was and he wasn't. And this comes back to the thing of the French being the most and the least cool people in Europe.

Cantona turning up the collar of his Man United shirt. I always just thought that's so embarrassing. That's what I did when I was 11, trying to be the Fonz. Yes, exactly, yes. Now the truth comes out. You know what I mean? Fucking hell. And when he did the old seagulls following the trawler thing,

which I never understood why that confused anyone. It was a really simple metaphor. But when he did that, and the media were hounding him and following him around for the rest of the year um he was wearing this awful knitwear this brightly colored pattern knitwear thing i thought so this is your cool french footballer is it fuck you and al but anyway yeah um it's fairly um unambiguous with fr david he's just not cool whatsoever no one thing that struck me about this performance, what is the guitar for? Yes.

He's got a guitar around his neck the whole time. There's no guitar on the record. Perhaps he's got a bonk on. Well, I just thought, maybe we've got to give him the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he is actually subverting the format, like Alan Rankin of The Associates, or Kurt Cobain, or Bob Geldof, or something like that. No.

Yeah, this song, it was the biggest selling single of 1982 in South Africa. And if that doesn't tell you why apartheid needed to end, nothing will, really. I mean, we've already demonstrated that you can have a Rammel single on top of the pops and still be entertained by it, but not here and not now. Well, there are the zoo wankers there is that yes i mean the only other interesting thing about fr david is that he looks the spit of graham bonnet

of rainbow yes but that's not going to sustain us over the next three minutes and 20 seconds of this shit song so michael hurl's got a plan or two hasn hasn't he? Plan A is give the kids loads of gold cardboard party hats. And plan B is plonk two girly zoo wankers in cocktail dresses on either side of him. There's one with frizzy blonde hair and one brunette. And, you know, a slight smidgen of satisfaction. But the overall effect is this is what the human league would look like if they were absolutely fucking shit. If words don't come easy to you, mate,

do an instrumental or just dance or do anything but this. Fuck off. What Michael Hogue should have done was take the Sesame Street route and had zoo wankers dressed up as giant words on legs, like flouncing past him and ignoring him and just coming out of his reach. And at the end, three of them stand behind him and they spell out,

Shit record, mate. I ate it. Those two zoo wankers. Is there anything else anyone's got to say about this appalling confection? Yes. I'm trying to. Good.

Sorry. Those two zoo wankers Alright you've got the one with the black hair and the bin bag She's basically wearing a bin bag dress The blonde one with the red frock She right She is Jeanette Landre And do you know who that is?

No Well basically it's not surprising she looks a bit bored and pissed off by this Because she was essentially a sort of goth post-punk singer Right Obviously she was a zoo wanker first But she ended up being the lead singer of The Glove was essentially a sort of goth post-punk singer right obviously she was a zoo anchor first but she ended up being the lead singer of the glove the group formed by robert smith and steve severin no yeah because fucking hell um when yeah because when uh basically uh robert smith obviously he'd

been on tour as a member of the banshees and he was big mates with steve severin and during downtime from the cure he would often just go and hang out with Steve Severin in London and they talked about making some music together but the trouble was that Robert Smith and obviously I know all this stuff because I'm writing a fucking book about The Cure called Curepedia which is going to come out probably next year now he was under contract Robert Smith to Polydor and he wasn't allowed to sing on anything else that wasn't The Cure. So they had to bring someone in. So they brought in Jeanette Landre,

who was an ex-girlfriend of Budgie, the drummer from the Banshees. Right. So she's a sort of minor post-punk icon. And a fucking traitor as well, being on Zoom. Well, I think Zoom was kind of her first gig, and it's a job. But yeah, certainly in her her eyes you can see her thinking you know this is beneath me it is a little shot of kind of

radio two-ness in an otherwise very radio one episode exactly yes I suppose that has to happen I guess unfortunately but by the way if we're mentioning F.R. David's previous musical work i can't let things pass without mentioning his single from 1967 called symphony um seek it out

on youtube seek out a show called mini show which is a french tv show from 67 which has him doing it's a fucking tune even for monkey shaggers yes there's only one interesting thing i've got to say about fr david so let me get it in now all right so i was working in an office in the late 90s or so and um it was one of those offices that played hot fm all the fucking time so you get this kind of shit on endlessly but this came on and a bloke on the next desk to me just started pissing himself laughing to the point of tears coming down his face and it's like i've got to know why you're doing that mate and he told me that when this came out in 1983 he was about 17 or so and he had a little sister who i think was 12. And he told her when it came on,

oh, that DJ's fucking thick. He's not called FR David at all. He's actually called Friar David. And he told her that he'd read in the paper that Friar David used to be a French monk who'd got permission off the Pope to take a year off from the monastery to have a go at being a pop star.

Wow. Yeah. Well, no, it gets better because he then said to her, you know what the song's actually about? It's about how words don't come easy to him because he took a vow of silence 10 years ago and he's just broken it to make this record.

And of course she went off back to school and told her mates and they obviously took the piss out of her for the rest of the time she was at school and uh yeah he got he got severely done by his dad for life but what a great fucking lie that is that is amazing i love stories about lies you tell to little brothers and sisters about pop stars that is up there with with um stewart lies you told to little brothers and sisters about pop stars that is up there with with um stewart mcconie inventing the old bob wholeness thing playing sax on baker street yes and um the one i'm trying to get going is is that um emily makeless was one of sheila's wheels um so yeah just anybody listen to this just yeah just do me a favor and spread that one about i'm quite into that I'd love it if somebody says that back to me

and they don't realise I invented it Mission accomplished It's all about getting the plausibility right isn't it? The only lie I ever managed to impart to someone it wasn't pot related actually but I did manage to convince someone once that sharks piss fire

No! Who was that? It was a mate's girlfriend, and she was... How old was she? She was old enough to know better. She was good 16, 17, I think, at the time, but extremely credulous. I couldn't believe it worked, really.

I hope she's not gone on through life thinking that. I'm really interested by what Neil said about having been too young to hate words by fr david because you and me are right we're exactly the right age to hate it yeah oh definitely but i'm a bit unsure about so-and-so's new girlfriend she's she's too young to hate words by fr david that's the new len faircloth yeah yeah, that is quite a good gauge, good measure, actually. Because, yeah, there is, I think, a whole younger generation now who don't have any of the baggage associated with it that we do. And they can just enjoy it as a nice, soft, melodic 80s pop song.

And I think part of that's because it's used in the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name. It's playing in the scene on the transistor radio when Timothee Chalamet and Esther Garrel take it in turns to go down on each transistor radio um when timothy chalamet and esther garell take it in terms to go down on each other in a shed um and it's romantic and uh uh yeah and i think it's taken on a second life after that in the same way that a lot of middle of the road oldies which used to be kind of musical contraband as far as we're concerned have been rehabilitated by things like the avengers films

and uh guardians of the galaxy and it's always kind of interesting when that happens puts me off the fucking films though yeah yeah it's bought my enjoyment of watching people having a nosh in a shed and presumably one you know q youtube comments insert film bought me here yes and also just under that i am a fetus and i like this music am i weird when music was good yes this boys and girls is what we used to call music yeah yeah or somebody getting completely wrong and saying i love the 70s yes i've just got to endorse uh neil's roy albersison comparison just purely so I can make a final joke about FR David which is that he's trying to be the big O

but he's actually the big zero so the following week Word soared another 13 places to number 8 and 2 weeks later it began a 2 week run at number 2 number fucking 2 kept away from number 1 by True by Spandau Ballet.

The follow-up, Music, only spent a week at number 71 in June before tumbling out of the chart and he never sprayed his foul musk upon the UK chart ever again. Get thee to a monastery. This is why I voted leave. Yes. Here's this week's top 20. At 20, another record from Michael Jackson called Billie Jean.

At 19, Orchard Road from Leo Sayer. At 18, Two Hearts, Peters One from U2. Forrest and Rock the Boat at 17 this week. At 16, Na Na Hey Kissing Goodbye, that's Bananarama. Nick Hayward, Whistle Down the Wind at 15, No Change. At 14, Blue Monday from New Order. At 13, Fields of Fire from Big Country. At 12, Rip It Up from Orange Juice.

And at 11, Don't Talk to Me About Love, altered images. And back to this week's number 15, which is a song from a guy called Nick Hayward. He is currently finishing his album, and he's also going to do a in new orleans in just a week or two for the new single but now listen to this called whistle down the wind nicki Look what's happening Pow! Surrounded by a melange of zoo wankers and actual kids All waving little yellow top of the pops flags Places his hand on a girl's shoulder in a pervy cool teacher manner

Before breaking down the chart from number 20 to number 11 The only interesting pictures of note on this rundown, Forrest looking like a black Dave Lee Travis. And there are three band pics on the bounce where someone Scottish is wearing the same black and white plaid miniature. Yes. Big country, orange juice and altered images. And then Powell, when he's naming the altered images song,

he says, don't talk to me about love. I don't know why he does that intonation. It's really odd. The other thing that struck me is that fucking New Order, Blue Monday are there. It's a great song,

obviously, but it's gone up the week after the notoriously bad performance, live performance of that song. There you go. The power of top of the pops. And good go, the power of Top of the Pops. And good to see the old sailor in there. Yes, of course.

Paul, back with some very flouncer, frilly dress-wearing female zoo wankers, including one being grabbed at by a black male zoo wanker dressed as a cowboy in a manner that Bill Cotton would have massively disapproved of, tells us that the next artist is about to go to New Orleans to make a video. It's Nick Haywood and Whistle Down the Wind. Born in Beckenham in 1961, Nicholas Haywood was a trainee commercial artist who had been playing in a band originally called Rugbear since 1977.

In 1981, under the name Haircut 100, their demo was picked up by Arista Records and were an immediate success with their debut single Favourite Shirts Boy Meets Girl getting to number four for two weeks in November of that year. After peeling off three more top 10 hits, Love Plus One, Fantastic Day and Be Nobody's Fool and getting their debut LP Pelican West at number two that year, they commenced work on their first single of 1983, Whistle Down the Wind. But a split developed between Haywood and the rest of the band, leading to Haywood undergoing a period of convalescing due to the stress of leading one of the big teeny bands of the era and the rest of the band getting sick of waiting and eventually firing him. This single has been dusted off and put out as Haywood's debut release, although it's been delayed by legal action from his former bandmates

who have promoted percussionist Mark fox up to lead singer and are intending to carry on it came out nearly a month ago with a live appearance on the tube on its release date enter the chart at number 43 then soared 17 places to number 26 warranting an appearance on top of the pops of fortnight ago where Haywood for reasons unknown forgot or chose not to mime the opening line of the song, which spots no end of playground conversations and general pointing at girls who liked him and laughing at them. Although it didn't stop the single jumping nine places to number 15. This week, it's still at number 15,

and as no one wants to repeat the previous performance, here's Nick again in the studio. Oh, boys, we've not even got round to covering Haircut 100 yet, so obvious first question, how did you get on with them? Well, I mean, I'm younger than you guys, and I loved Haircut haircut 100 pelican west was a big big album around our way and and i still have how can i put feelings about nick hayward i think as a young uh boy he was one of the first to really properly suggest to me

you know that men could be pretty and whereas the of, the other pretty men in pop, and there were plenty about in this period, they were almost kind of, I don't know, desexualized by their flamboyance in a way. I mean, Adamant's an incredibly gaudy... This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. ...man, but as a young kid watching him, he's so outrageous. He's not exactly, you know, approachable. Whereas Nick Haywood, because his music seemed a bit dressed down,

as did he, you know, He just seemed more approachable. And he's definitely one of my first male crushes. And he still makes me feel a bit blushy. He's like a really gorgeous ventriloquist dummy, isn't he? That's right. I'd get my hand up him, give an half a chance. Well, I'd be massively tongue-tied meeting him to this day. And I also remember that they encountered

a lot of hostility haircut 100 you know for a lot of people they were the moment because he was so good looking and they they all have this slickness about their look for a lot of people haircut 100 kind of the moment 80s pop goes wrong and it gets commercialized but but the trouble is for me with that is they make great records you know great singles and pelican west is a fantastic album i realize now that for someone like say edwin collins it must have been intensely aggravating to you know hear these southern softies basically take the ideas of something like postcard records combine it with a bit of brit funk and make massive massive hits out of it but you know i really love pelican west and listening back to it as i have done in recent weeks it seems to

really prefigure a lot of 80s stuff actually more than you'd think remember when we were talking about um i think it was the color field i said that what they did was this kind of non-specific nostalgia sort of borrowing from from other high points across a lot of areas not exactly dress up but a kind of collage of different things i think that's exactly what's going on here haircut 100 you know i loved this song as you say though is a totally different kettle of fish entirely and it and it would have passed me by as a kid as a bit bland but now as a grown-up kind of i really like this song. I like its grand structure and its ideas about epic symphonic 60s pop. I like also the slight Joni Mitchell influence here,

especially in the sound of that bass. Although I think I have said previously, you know, I notice your bass guitar looks like an acoustic guitar. Would you like to help the Conservative Party win the next election? I don't like the look of those bases but it's a really interesting sound and also i i do really feel for neck here in particular because he has to deal with that perennial enemy of top of the pops performers you know a balloon a yellow balloon yeah yeah it's like the ghosts of his past come to haunt him in

an orb you know yeah yeah he's feeling the residuals, definitely. But he deals with it well. So, yeah, I mean, I still have big feelings for Nick Hayward. Haircut 100 was one of those bands that I, as a jam fan, was supposed to hate because Paul Weller hated them. But I couldn't. I didn't mind them at all. If Haircut 100 came on the radio,

I'd be like, oh, yeah, this tune, it's all right. You know, Love Plus One's a fucking brilliant single. This would have been their next single, which would have been a major about face for Haircut 100. I mean, the previous single, Be Nobody's Fool, almost a bit teardrop explodey, isn't it? I cannot see this song being done by Haircut 100. I don't think it would have been this slow.

But I think it's a really good song, and I really like everything i've heard him on since haircut 100 days or on anything he's just really nicely self-deprecating but he still looks fucking ace we forget that in the pre-juran times nick hayward was pretty much the teeny bop icon of the era but while juran could spread the load of fan worship between them to the outside world haircut 100 were essentially Nicky and the hair Ken's I've been reading

star lost the Fred and Judy Vilmora book about man obsessions in the early 80s and it's fucking brilliant yes there's one lad and his female friend who torment each other over

how they're never going to get to marry Cheryl Baker and Mike Nolan there's a culture club fan who's convinced that Boy George is going to die at any moment. There's loads of lads who ring up a phone line to tell them what they'd like to do to Sheena Easton and Susie Sue before spunking their loads on the phone.

And there's a glorious bit of fan fiction about having bum sex with Bruce Foxton in a school toilet. Oh, I need to read that out on Chart Music one day. But the three main objects of lust, in order, David Bowie, Barry Manilow, and Nick Haywood. They reproduced

some of the letters that have been sent to people, obviously gotten from the record companies, never got anywhere near the actual stars. One girl keeps writing to him about a fantasy of eating a sandwich made by nick haywood i would totally fucking eat a sandwich made by nick haywood well i don't know if you want to eat this one it's got it's got a special ingredient in it but hey hey, I don't know. Do what you like, Neil. It's 2021. Oh, the other great story about Hacker 100 fans is that they, like Bross a few years later,

a load of their fans used to congregate round Nick Haywood's mum and dad's house. Oh, yeah. They'd not only give them cups of tea, but invite them up to have a guided tour of Nick Haywood's bedroom. Good Lord. Every now and then, open up his drawers and say,

oh, here's some of his clean pants here. Do you want those? Imagine your mum and dad giving away your pants to your fans. It's not fair to tell Neil this. Don't tell Neil. Fucking hell. I mean, the thing is,

he was approachable. He looked... I mean, I'm not saying anyone remotely as good looking as Nick Haywood went to my school, but he kind of had that approachability. He was incredibly good looking. But you could imagine him being a really good looking lad in Hayward went to my school but he kind of had that approachability he was incredibly good looking but you could imagine him being like a really good looking lad in your year

as well he had that kind of approachability definitely there was actually a kid um that I used to knock around with um called called Gerard and uh he was he was always at the sort of same house parties as us and I think we all thought he was a bit of a dick and he wasn't particularly cool or anything but he was the first person in barry to learn how to do any breakdown sing by the way and we just thought god stop showing off you're such a twat but um he never wanted for female attention and i thought what's going on there and then i realized he looked the spitting image of nick hayward and i thought that's what's going on here it's's this transference. Because, yeah, I mean, girls loved Nick Hayward, didn't they? My sister-in-law was a massive fan.

She's obsessed with him. Hello, Kate. And I once got a signed copy of Pelican West, signed by Nick. Because here's where Neil might swoon with jealousy. I know Nick Hayward. Oh, you've got to introduce me. I love that yeah yeah yeah and yeah um I've I've got to know him only only recently the last sort of four or five years through a mutual friend I first probably met him

at this mutual friend's birthday dinner and I was sat with Nick Hayward sat opposite him and he's just um everything you'd hope he would be, just a really lovely bloke and really self-deprecating as you say but also he's got some stories I mean the thing is, he was from now let me get this right, Beckenham which is part of the Borough of Bromley

so he was around he was younger than them but he was around when the Bromley contingent were doing their thing he's a bit of a kind of zealot of the music scene of the late 70s, early 80s, in that he was quietly hanging around. So, you know, he saw Sex Pistols, you know, one of their early gigs, and went to, you know, the Roxy, he went to the Blitz Club, but he wasn't one of the people. Fucking hell.

Yeah, he wasn't one of the people who ever turns up in documentaries, or you don't see him in the footage he was just this this quiet young London kid who was just observing and around and taking note and um you know he he's he's way sort of cooler and more switched on than probably anybody would certainly would have given him credit for in the early 80s and um yeah really lovely guy i went to see him live um two or three years ago now and well this is something nobody would expect from nick hayward he started making knob gags it's no it's about his own penis he was talking about his own cock um right again in a self-deprecating way essentially i i think it was to do with kind of either either size or performance one or the other right but doing himself down there and and the crowd seemed to love that um but uh he

also spotted me in the crowd i don't know how he spotted my silhouette in a darkened room i've got no idea but but what he said what he said he gave me a shout out. He goes, hi, Simon Price. Simon, over there. Wow, you say some stuff on Twitter, don't you? Very brave. Going back to whether we were on board with Haircut 100, yeah, I was. I wasn't supposed to be. You said yourself, being a Wellerite, being a jam fan,

you weren't meant to be into this kind of stuff. And I suppose, same as me, I was into two-tone and all that and uh they were sort of seen as wimps i think this is the trouble um neil talked about them being desexualized and i think that's exactly it and that's their strength and i think that was the in a big way that was their influence i think haircut 100 are now acknowledged as being quite a big influence on the kind of cutie pop c86 scene a few years later um not so much musically as the way just the way they they were in the world the way they presented themselves the fact that um and they always made fun for this the fact they they wore their guitars quite high on their chest yes they were almost like one of those scottish bands like orange juice or something like that

the way they wore the guitars rather than as a phallic thing. They're basically playing the guitar as high up your body as you still can to avoid it looking remotely phallic. Yeah, that Mersey beat style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I quite like that. And Favourite Shirts, just a banger. What a tune that is. Again, I was talking about the kind of white funk thing of the questions.

Well, Favourite Shirts shirts by haircut 100 absolutely nails that that is up there with um the aforementioned again precious by the jam or something like that or maybe too nice to talk to you by the beat or yeah or chart number one by spandau ballet those those cracking white funk new wave singles of of the early 80s i would put that haircut 100 single a debut single right up there with those. I think at this point we're catching him where he's navigating the transition from being a band frontman and a bit of a pin-up to being a solo artist quite well.

It seems that he's going to get away with it. He got Le Molde before it even happened to Le Molde, didn't it? Yeah, yeah. I guess he's kind of George Michael-ing before George Michael as well in that he's taking his music in a more mature direction and all of that kind of business. It's a damn shame that Aircut 100 couldn't get another album together. You're right, but you have alluded to the split

that was happening in the band and they all had different ideas. I mean, he said in an interview I read recently that the band were going three different ways in terms of how they wanted to take the music. And he wanted it all to sound bigger and wider, as he put it. He liked Pelican West, but he said it sounded clear and crisp. But he wanted the next one to sound more like the Pale Fountains or ABC, a kind of big expansive sound. This is an interview. It's on the website. God is in the TV if anyone wants to go and find it.

And so he wanted to go for that big sound and he worked with the right people. So first of all, he got in string arrangements from Paul Buckmaster. Now his credits include You're So Vain by Carly Simon, Without You by Nilsson,

Your Song by Elton John and Space Oddity by David Bowie. Well his strings are also all over Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones amazing arrangements on there indeed and he got in as a producer Jeff Emmerich, now Jeff Emmerich was the engineer on Revolver and

Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road by The Beatles so he was getting in people who were going to give him the sound that he wanted Nick Hayward's a massive Beatles fan he wanted this album to sound like penny lane or something like that and he said when i was working with jeff emmerich i had to set aside the fact that he made my favorite pop record of all time he made that and i i love the fact that he you know hayward had to kind of like swallow his nerves and hi just sort of normal with this person who to him made the greatest record ever made another influence

apparently was elvis costello big time and particularly the album imperial bedroom he wanted that sound and it so happened because um he booked into air studios and they did a bit of it the album that we're talking about it's called north of a miracle he did a bit of in air studios it's george martin studio of course um and some of it in abbey road so um both the studios had a beals connection when he was in air studios steve naive from the attractions who played on imperial bedroom was there just happened to be there recording something else recorded i think um recording the album punch the clock with alvis castello and the attractions so um he was literally there on hand so hayward was able to bring in the personnel that he wanted to get just a perfect

sound and it is a lovely sound on this record. The bassist who Neil talks about, the Tory bass, the fretless acoustic bassist who sat down with him, that is, of course, Pino Palladino. The overlord of the farty fretless bass sound. Absolutely. Who's just worked with Paul Young on No Parley, hasn't he? No Parley, particularly Wherever I Lay My Hat, That's My Home, was the song that made Pino Palladino, if not a household name,

then certainly the name that trips off the tongue of people who know about music. And of course, he also played on Alan Partridge's famous airbass moment, Music for Chameleons, by Gary Newman. Not exactly a Barry boy, but born in Cardiff and grew up, I think, in Penarth or Dennis near Barry. So I kind of feel an attachment to him because of that. I found it odd, though,

that for this performance, they're in this kind of Meccano cube, girders, whatever. It's like a cube-shaped thing. There's only Nick Hayward and the bassist. So I thought, either you've got to go the whole hog and have an orchestra. You listen to the Soundless record, it's very orchestral.

Or just have Nick on his own. Why just have the bassist? It's really odd. Really peculiar. And it must be really weird for him not to have a guitar running there. Yeah, he hasn't even got a guitar. Yeah, he's got a really nice suit on. He's a nice, clean boy in a nice, clean suit.

It's geek chic, I suppose. He's wearing a tie clip, which is... I was trying to think, is there a less rock suppose he's wearing a tie clip which is i was trying to think is is there a less rock item of clothing than a tie clip he's wearing it probably the uh collar studs with a little chain like the snooker players used to wear yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah i mean the gorgeous lead singer of a band who writes all the singles has gone off on his own so from this point it looks like it's going to be non-stop success all the way through the 80s for Nick Haywood why wasn't it I don't think he broke the top 10 did he had a few in the

20 I really liked warning sign which was a little bit down the road from here it was a couple years later maybe but it was it had a it was like a funk track basically I thought it was really good and I think that was the last time he even broke the top 40 for 10 years or so. But yeah, you'd think he had everything in place. He can write songs. He's good looking. It's not as if he was being left behind by the tides of music. Because everything about him should have fit in quite nicely with the new pop.

So yeah, it's a mysterious one. I think it's fair to say that Nick Hayward's been forced to grow up too fast for his fan base here. Because, you know, when George Michael did it a few years later, he actually had the time to tip the wink to Wham fans that he was, you know, it wasn't going to be stuffing Shucklecocks down his shorts forever. And he was ready to kick on by, you know, having a separate solo career with Careless Whisper in a different corner. But Nick Hayward clearly didn't have that luxury. And he's ready to move on in his fan base aren't yeah i mean but crucially i don't think

nick haywood cared that much about that fan base i mean he cared about them but not in terms of maintaining them you know i normally yeah hold it against the musician to only care about music but i genuinely think at this time you know nick hayward did only care about the music i'm not sure he was really that fussed about the success that all of us were kind of predicting him at this point you know as a solo artist and consequently there's a there's a sort of lack of drive and ambition at least in a career sense he's kind of focused just on the music so he's you know he's using all the right studios and all the right musicians to make these beautiful, beautiful records that don't sell, ultimately. In an interview with Smash Hits round about this time, he talked about actually sitting down in a cafe for a head-to-head with his nemesis, Weller. They'd sniped at each other in the music press and think they wanted to clear the air or just calm it down or whatever.

But they got into an argument about lyrics because Paul Wellerer said where do we go from here is it down to the lake i fear where's you where's your head at nick and nick hayward just turned around and just said well you wrote in the city there's a thousand things i want to say to you what does that mean strange i mean one of the reasons this song um and just the album as well is a lot less poppy and upbeat than maybe his teenage fans wanted it to be. He was suffering a lot with his mental health around this time. You know, towards the end of Haircut 100, he was suffering from depression. And he said in an interview that I saw, life was crumbling around me at the time I wrote that song. And it came out in the writing.

And there is that. There is a melancholy that comes through in this song. And this is the, right, most times when we do chart music, there's one song when I look at the list, I think, oh, I don't remember that one. And I've got to admit, this was the one for me. I remembered him having a single called this, but I thought, oh, which one is that?

And it's because it's the hello the hello hello hope you're feeling fine song because because he doesn't sing the title whistle down the wind till nearly the end it's almost a virginia plane situation yes but um yeah i i quite like i think i like it more now than i would at the time yeah it's well it's a grown-up song haircut 100 fans are fans are not going to dig this. I've got a mate who worked at one of the venues where he played his first solo tour. And he says, yeah, it was just loads of screaming girls still throwing teddy bears at him while he's trying to do Whistle Down the Wind.

Oh, man. There's a melancholy to it. And I think it's down to him feeling confined by that preppy youthfulness of Haircut 100. Like Simon says, you know, all the tucked under the armpit guitars and the very preppy look. It's a very, Haircut 100 were a very shiny, bright, optimistic Colgate kid thing. And I think Nick Haywood felt somewhat confined by that. This is a great song, Whistle Down the Winter, to bat all of that away in a way.

But unfortunately, he can't make himself look like a miserable old bastard even if he feels like it because he still looks like Nick Hayward he still looks amazing Talking of how the fans turn up with teddy bears and stuff to his gigs one thing that he told me about was that some of the real hardcore fans

of Haircutting at 100 used to turn up in yellow fireman outfits because there was a song called Lemon Fire Brigade. Nice. Yeah, they had. So there was this sort of hardcore people in yellow plastic helmets and stuff like that. But it could have been worse.

Another thing he told me was that at one of his solo gigs just a few years ago, and he was in Cardiff when this happened, and I'm sort of strangely proud of this. He said that there was a couple down the front who were really clearly having sex in front of him in the audience. Oh. What song? Yeah, God, I wish I...

Right, we can all fill in what you think the funniest title that he could have been doing. Fantastic Lay. But, yeah, I mean, and apparently it was basically, you know, the guy was making eye contact with Nick Hayward as he was shagging his misses.

Yeah, and it was a fairly tightly packed crowd, so he couldn't see, you know, everything that's going on but it was really obvious what was going on. And this guy is just looking deep into Nick Hayward's eyes as it's happening. Fucking hell. How disturbing is that?

All of this talk of him making cock gags on stage and now this, I genuinely have had to just loosen my collar to let a jet of steam out. One day, Neil, I'll introduce you, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Oh, mate, do it. Why is it called Whistle Down the Wind? Because obviously that's the film or novel

about children who discover a fugitive who's wanted for murder, who they believe to be Jesus. And I can't see any connection with that in the lyrics. Did you pick up? No. All right. Just a good song title, isn't it? I'll ask him next time I'm having dinner

with my showbiz friend, Nick Hayward, I'll ask him what it is. Next time I'm having sex with my wife... In front't it? I'll ask him next time I'm having dinner with my showbiz friend, Nick Hayward. I'll ask him what it is. Next time I'm having sex with my wife. In front of him. I'll ask him. Yes. Fucking hell. One thing, because obviously one Googles around when one is about to do a chart music.

Of course. I found out something that I missed at the time, but from 2017, that he was on a Channel 5 reality show in which he lived in a caravan for a week with Melvin Hayes of It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Don Warrington from Rising Damp. Whoa! I'm not one to normally watch Channel 5 reality shows, but when we finish recording this,

I'm getting straight onto YouTube to try and find Nick Hayward, Melvin Hayes and Don Warrington. Fucking hell. So the following week, Whistle Down The Wind nipped up two places to number 13, its highest position. The follow-up, The More Haircutty Take That Situation, got to number 11 in July, followed by Blue Hat For A Blue Day getting to number 14 in October.

But he closed out 1983 with On A Sunday only getting to number 14 in October but he closed out 1983 with on a Sunday only getting to number 52 in December and he'd have two more moderate top 40 hits in 1984 before having to wait 12 years for his last top 40 hit Rollerblade getting to number 37 in January of 1996. to number 37 in January of 1996. Meanwhile, the all-new Haircut 100's first single, Primetime, only got to number 46 in August. They couldn't manage anything better, and they split up a year later. All of television history is contained within the box of delights.

It was happening in front of us. Incredible. In our living rooms. It was amazing. Guests pick their favourite television moment. And tell us why they love it. And is this the episode where Daisy's just been for the interview at the woman's magazine flaps that's it yeah named one of radio times best podcasts of the year i don't understand people who don't see the joy in drawing the curtains mug of hot chocolate and something nice on tv like what could be nicer than that than having a snuggle exactly nostalgia in bite-sized chunks. Box of Delights from Great Big Owl.

CHEERING Time to move on with this week's top ten. At number ten, it's Snod Rap and Kenny Everett. Straight in at nine, the highest new entry, Church of the Poison Mind from Culture Club. Bonnie Tyler's at number eight with Total Eclipse of the Heart. At seven, ooh-to-be-ah, it's Catch Goo Goo. Tracey Ullman's up to number six with Breakaway.

No change at five for Sweet Dreams and Made of This from The Eurythmics. And at four, Speak Like a Child, The Style Council. At three, it's Boxer B from Joe Boxers. Duran Duran are at number two with Is There Something I Should Know? And a brand new number one is the godfather of rock, pop and every other kind of music. This is Let's Dance. This is David Bowie. Bates does yet another time check before Powell whips us into the top ten, settling upon this week's number one, recorded by, in Powell's words,

the godfather of rock, pop and every other kind of music, including presumably Gaelic mouth music. It's Let's Dance by David Bowie. We've already covered this single in chart music number 56, and as before, it's the lead cut from the LP of the same name, his first on EMI, which comes out next Friday. It's either the follow-up to Little Drummer Boy, Peace on Earth, the 1977 duet with Bing Crosby,

which RCA slipped out when they knew he was leaving, and got to number three in the last chart of 1982, or Cat People putting out fire, which got to number 26 in April of last year. You decide. It entered the chart at number five a fortnight ago, and this week it's nudged up one place to the very summit of Mount Pop, telling Is There Something I Should Know by Duran Duran to get the fuck off its land. And here's another opportunity to soak up the welcoming atmosphere of the Corinda Hotel and the Warrambungle National Park in New South Wales. Before we go into this record, fair play to Powell.

He's finally shaken off the ailment of the B-bomb. There's a radio clip of him that we broadcast on a previous Chart Music where he's introducing tracks from this LP. And he's not only repeatedly dropping the B-bomb, but he's actually getting it right the first time and then correcting himself to say Bowie that's a triple salco B-bomb

by the end of the year he finally got it right when he voiced over the advert for the live video when he said David Bowie said let's dance and the whole world danced amazing of course you know the video to the song you just mentioned little drummer boy if you watch the full length version of that we have incontrovertible evidence of how the name is pronounced because when david

bowie knocks on ben crosby's door he's like hello I'm David Bowie you know so yeah there's no excuse really rhymes with snowy I'm such a stickler for this this is like this is the hill I will always die on it really is there's a great bit in an episode

of This Time with Alan Partridge I don't know if you saw it when he's up in a spitfire and he's obviously in a spitfire. And he's obviously in the passenger seat. And he says something about, you know, planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do. David, and then he goes to the pilot, do you say Bowie or Bowie?

And the pilot goes, Bowie. And Partridge goes, yeah, me too. And that's obviously because we're meant to think Partridge is a really embarrassing cunt so I love the fact that the Gibbons brothers the writers of that just slipped that in there well you know Simon me and you talked about this quite a bit in the last Christmas Charm music

so Neil well hang on hang on because yeah I will get out of the way obviously because here we go a fucking game. And I do think I said almost absolutely everything I have to say about Let's Dance by David Bowie when we talked about it in Chart Music 56, which was just a few months ago. I've only got one more observation to make, actually,

which is that the red shoes that are fetishised throughout the video are actually a bit shit and cheap-looking. I didn't say this at the time. I don't understand why they're on display in the window of the upscale shoe shop because they look well primark or uh maybe you know for a more uh 80s reference for a sort of cheapo shit shoe shop um faith or dulcis back in the day probably stitched by a child with you know uh for one pence an hour um with the same skin tone in the same hemisphere as the aboriginal girl who ends up putting them on over her crinkly toe you remember how freaked out i was about her crinkle tips and then stamping

on them because they represent western civilization and all of that yeah and her shit yeah yeah so um that's what they're probably doing, stopping out the window going, hey, I made those shoes. So essentially what I'm saying is you've got shit shoes on your shit shoe bastard. So that's all I have to add. Neil, over to you. The thing is with this song,

it wasn't the first Bowie to reach me. No. You know, the first Bowie song to get me, or the first one I was kind of cognizant of, was probably Ashes to Ashes. And the first one to really slay me andant of was probably ashes to ashes and the first the first one to really slay me and make me think who is this guy i must know more about this guy and his music was was probably fashion actually i fucking love that song as a kid there was something

about it but with little else to go on really bar the videos for ashes to ashes and fashion as a little kid i was about seven and eight you know when they came out what emerged as a little kid reading my sister's smash hits and also asking my sister about Bowie was clearly that he'd been going a while, obviously, and what was going on with Ashes to Ashes was kind of self-referential, these nods to Space Oddity, et cetera. Whereas this, Let's Dance, which I encountered, you know, age 10, this wasn't seemingly just him playing to his congregation if you like this was him

aiming to have a massive you know mj style yeah international pop smash um because it has that big big beat in it it worked on me and it still kind of works on me it's it's interesting it's an age gap thing as well i mean my wife was a huge bowie fan grew up with him in the 70s in a way she was six years older than me this is the album um let's dance and this is the single whereby this was the moment really where her sort of ardor lessens a little you know this is where she started falling a bit out of love with bowie and by the by just to note an odd little double standard in relationships um it's odd in it that women can tell their partners about who they fancy celeb wise whereas men can't it's an odd thing yeah or the assumption that you only like that pop star because you fancy

them yeah whereas men are brave enough to say well i wouldn't listen to a fucking second of britney spears but you know she she'd get it free britney, by the way. Free Britney. Yes. Just got to say that. This still works on me, this track. It passed the supermarket test the other day. I was in a Morrison's and this was on. And I was going up and down the aisles. And it was startling how many people were, you know, tapping a toe or singing along. You'd have one person doing the bass line and someone else doing the harmonies.

It was nice. You know, by the by, one of the reasons I don't like the neighbourhood i live in which is an area called charles moore in coventry um i rather unfairly characterize the people around here as the pig people of charles moore i was in a supermarket here and a tune came on i think it was janet jackson's when i think of you and you know not one of those docile fuckers in the supermarket was even moving which just left me staggered and disgusted really but yeah i mean it still gets me this record but how how can i put it um in a cold way you know it intimidates me a bit as to be honest bowie did himself in the video you know

this album let's dance is perhaps too often characterized as his kind of sudden step away from art and into commerce i mean he'd made plenty of commercial music before but there is a kind of clipped control about this track and this album that i do think is new to bowie in a way there's there's an interview in the face that year in 83 where bowie says you know he wants something now that makes a statement in a more universal international field. I mean, he's almost talking like a marketer already. I didn't get the idea from the previous time where he attempted to kind of emulate Black Pop,

i.e. Young Americans, of that coldness. But here I do. Because, I mean, partly his vocal is still massively Bowie-esque. It makes no concessions to the song or the style. It's just kind of slathered over the song. And there's no other way of putting it, really. It's a very harsh song, you know, harsh and heavy. And it doesn't really flow.

It's like a series of freeze frames. And really, the whole album, once I'd got to this album, which was very late in my Bowie experience, because obviously I'd developed all the great stuff first before getting bored enough to actually wonder what this album sounded like the whole album feels like he's not really much into music anymore it you know it's recorded in 17 days and these old collaborators like Visconti and Carlos Alomar they're just sort of like shit and cast off basically so you know at the time there's no denying i dug it um it you know it's not exactly homage the way the the opening to this record those twist and shout horn blasts but it is almost

parody in a way and this is what i mean about him not being entirely serious about music anymore my my wife who was such a huge bowie fan she went to see the Sirius Moonlight tour and and she always recalled it as being very very very very slick you know all the hits and kind of soulless and empty inside um I could never say I don't like this record if it comes on the radio I don't turn over if it comes on in a supermarket I have a whistle and I tap my feet but I'm not sure Bowie liked this record or even cared anymore whether he liked his own records. Now, that's probably the right mindset to have if you want to be a massive international star.

And I'm guessing, you know, it seems daft to say it, he must have needed the money because I can only imagine the kind of debts he'd built up on them, you know, in the previous decade of total excess and experimentation. Going through that book, Starlust, you just flick through that

and you just think, fucking hell, no wonder Bowie wanted to start making music for estate agents in wine bars. Just all this mad shit being sent to him. You just think, oh, fuck this. Well, yeah, I mean, it gives him that elevated sphere where he doesn't have to deal with this stuff. You know, later in this decade, his career as a recording artist, certainly it just massively falters.

He's still a big star and his tours always sell out. But as a recording artist post Let's Dance, his career really falters. In 97, I read an interview where Bowie says that the Let's Dance album, he says it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many. And he says, it was great in a way, but it put me in a real corner because it fucked with my integrity. Yeah.

You know, and I kind of sort of go along with that. He's obviously gained shit tons of fans with Let's Dance, but for a lot of Bowie fans, me included, this is the point where I stopped listening, you know, and I only really come back for Blackstar. I loved it as a kid, but the album's pretty poor. And this is pointing towards the kind of end of his relevance as a recording artist.

Yeah, interesting point there, Neil, because a few months later, Smash Hits had reviewed the Sirius Moonlight tour in London. And instead of actually reviewing it, they just went up to any pop star they could find, of which there were many on a fucking leg, league and saying what did you reckon to that it was divided up into two camps there was your frothy bananarama types and bucks fizz type saying oh it was brilliant this is all this is how you do a gig nowadays and the other half who were people clearly influenced

by bowie just like what the fuck is he doing i mean the key quote from it was ian mcculloch who said we used to look up to bowie now he ought to be looking up to us i could never begrudge him his bank rage you know anything that sustains david bowie is is a good thing you know he's an amazing artist and human being but am i going to be digging out let's dance and recall him what a great album is fuck no whereas something you know like as old as five years still hits me around the head so i'm defo in the in the latter camp of non-believers at this point with bowie i mean as as a live act and a recording artist he did get a fuck of a lot worse before he got better right because um the never let me down album and the tour that went with it that that tour the glass spider tour was, was actually my first experience of Bowie live.

And it nearly put me off. I went to see it at Wembley. I thought, fuck this. And it was, like you were saying about this song, there's just something really cold about it. I actually made myself listen to the first, well, I could only stick 15 minutes of it, but there's a recording of the Glass Spider tour

from Roker Park in Sunderland. The reason I listened to it is because I wanted to hear the infamous moment where he says, Good evening, Newcastle, to the people of Sunderland. I wanted to find that bit. But fucking hell, yeah. There's a whole spoken word. I wish I'd have made a metal spider now.

There's a whole thing. Oh, I'd have made a metal spider now there's a whole thing and the fucking spider's legs man they were like you know the rope lights you get at a mobile disco in the old days they were just like these giant rope light legs that were supposed to look like a spider hanging over the set it was so shit

but yeah I was listening to it and I've forgotten there's this whole spoken word bit at the start that's supposed to be like Future Legend from the start of Diamond Dogs. It's this fucking awful, pretentious narrative about this, well, glass spider. And I just... And the audience have to stand there through that while Carlos Alomar, I think,

is doing this sort of Hendrix-esque guitar whittling before Bowie actually appears. Like, fuck me. He was really taking the piss at this point. It was really, really bad. Yeah, yeah, it nearly put me off for life. But I will, in terms of the Let's Dance album being poor, it's, yeah, I don't love it.

I love Nile Rodgers, and I'm glad that he and Bowie did well with it. But I will stand up for Modern Love. I think Modern Love is an absolutely genius single. And in a way, it sums up the kind of functionality of what Bowie was doing at that time. Because just in the bit at the start, I know when to go out. I know when to stay in. Get things done. And that's what he's doing.

He's getting things done. He's getting his career back on track. I know a lot of people who were just too young slightly to see bowie in his 70s heyday and they did only really get to see him live even though they were huge fans of him on things like the serious moonlight and the glass spider tours and you know all of these people they were gutted yeah missed out on the on him in his 70s pumping away you, my missus had really pungent memories of the Glass Spider tour. I think she saw that tour at Milton Keynes Bowl

and she always remembered him coming on and her coming on. I mean, Bowie has that effect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, she just recalls spending the rest of her evening just increasingly pissed off with the kind of slickness

and deodorized nature of it now he's not there's a standing ovulation does the 80s begin here with this single go on then it's your theory let's hear it what he does just basically sets the benchmark for the rest of the 80s doesn't it you know the big advertising campaigns album releases as event and huge tours you know just bringing that american tour circuit over to britain saying well i don't have to play fucking 20 dates anymore yeah i could just do a big weekend at milton keane's bowl and i've done with it yeah yeah i mean but well i mean other big dinosaurs like the stones had kind of already been doing that but i think you're right in as much as that kind of, that sense of bigness, if you like,

that an album or a tour could be like this blockbuster summer event like cinema. And you do get that sense of that from Let's Dance onwards in the 80s with Bowie. Good. Just going to pat myself on the back there. So Let's Dance would spend two more weeks at number one before giving way to True by Spandau Ballet. It would go on to sell just over 900,000 copies in the UK, making it its biggest selling single here.

Two weeks later, Let's Dance the LP smashed into the album chart at number one, displacing Thriller and would also spend three weeks there before being displaced itself by True the LP. The follow-up a cover of China Girl the song he wrote with Iggy Pop in 1977 got to number two held off number one by Every Breath You Take and he closed out 1983 when Modern Love also made it to number two in October, denied its place at number one by Karma Chameleon. I'm a man of my word It's been a good party. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye, everybody. We cut back to Bates and Powell, who are flanking Julie, while the other kids from Fame stand underneath them. Julie has a microphone, but neither of them are bothering to talk to her as they need to get their sign off shit in bates thanks the kids who are waving flags about while pal tells

us it's been a good party and hands us off phrase yeah yeah formed in dunfermline in 1981 big country was put together by stewart adamson formerly of the skids who had just split up and bruce watson a former member of myriad five new wave bands. After recruiting Mark Brazicca and Tony Buckler from the local band On The Air, who supported the Skids on their last tour, their demo attracted the attention of Ensign Records, but they knocked them back and later signed with Mercury instead. Their debut single, Harvest Home, failed to chart in September of 1982 But they were invited to support the jam on their five-night stint at Wembley Arena in December

This single, which came out in the middle of February With a picture-diss version with a map of Scotland on it Which left out the Orkneys and the Shetlands, Tusk Is the one that put them over the top Taking two weeks to crawl from number 64 to number 37 another two weeks to get to number 31 and then aided by their debut Top of the Pops appearance soaring 18 places to number 13 this week it stayed at number 13, but Top of the Pops clearly can't resist the skull of the MXR Pitch Transposer 129 guitar effect, so here they are to see us off before we go. Simon, you've already made mention that Big Country stirred your Celtic heart, so come on in and tell us all about it. Yeah, this blew me away. I mean, I guess it would have been the previous performance

that really snagged me in, but I do distinctly remember that in the same way that I went through a phase of speaking in a Scouse accent because I'd watched so much Scully and Brookside and Boys from the Black Stuff and my mum called me out on it. Big country made me want to be Scottish. I had a severe case of haggis envy we had hills where i come from very steep hills um anyone who's seen the opening credits to gavin and stacy

that's trinity street that was my walk to school every day very steep indeed but we didn't have mountains the nearest thing to a mountain in my region was the garth man of the garth which was nine miles away and that was a setting for that fucking awful patronising Hugh Grant film, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, the whole premise of which is that it's not quite a mountain. For mountains, you need to go to North Wales, really. But the music of Big Country made me want to stand on a windswept mountainside, surveying a dramatic landscape and feeling very

romantic about myself there was something very stirring about it i i wanted in um and i i mentioned that there were a number of uh performances on this top of the pops that uh affected my dress sense and yeah big country was was one i bought a tartan shirt and uh big pleated trousers elasticated at the ankle and and uh and and i tied a ribbon in my hair like bonnie prince charlie um nice the whole yeah the whole thing big country it was a performance of celticness i mean you can you can also see dexys for that and there was a lot of that around in 1983 but it was usually irish or scottish um never the type of celt that i was um you had the alarm i suppose who were in a similar vein but they were from northeast wales

d sides really which is kind of industrial rather than the mountains and they didn't really evoke my henrod van addy and all that stuff so i went full scottish cosplay because of big country and um and i i i ran away and ran away it's an exaggeration but i'm gonna say i ran away from home to see big country kind of in the sense that i bought a ticket for the gig at birmingham nec and my mum knew i was going but what she didn't know was that i had no way of getting home so um after the gig i was um i don't know if i've told no way of getting home. So after the gig, I was... I don't know if I've told this story before, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I was wandering around the car park looking to hitch a ride on a coach back to Wales, and that's when I ran into their support band for Colt between two buses, and Ian Asprey was shagging a groupie up against the side of a bus. And rather than politely back away and leave them to it, I said, hi, you don't know where there's a bus to Cardiff or Swansea, do you? And they were like, no, fuck off.

So eventually I found a bus that very kindly gave me a free lift as far as the roundabout off Junction 33 of the M4. And I had to phone my dad in the middle of the night to come and fetch me from there. He was not pleased. That's how into big country country I was they inspired me to go on that mad adventure Ian Asprey right just out of interest was he wearing his white trousers I can't remember that level of detail I'm afraid I don't think he he had the white trousers yet in my mind they're kind of black leather or something but right yeah Yeah, yeah. Is that working for you, Al?

What around his knees? They were certainly down. Yeah, they sagged down because he was freeing his inner wolf child. Let's just say that. Yeah, yeah. I think it was rock expert David Stubbs. Or if it wasn't rock expert David Stubbs, it was his sidekick Simon Reynolds who wrote that Stuart Adamson's bagpipe guitar was the most useless guitar innovation ever

I respectfully disagree it definitely stirred something within me what he was doing and you've stolen my thunder there by mentioning the MXxr m129 pitch transposer um which bruce watson also you used he was playing um a yamaha sg through through that pedal um in the early days of the country's career and um people may have found the gimmick a bit overdone across a whole album um but it it worked for me I had the crossing, and it came in a lovely sleeve. It was this textured, embossed blue and silver sleeve. And the album's got bagpipe guitars all over it like a rash. Also, lots of shah!

Yes. That was his verbal tick. Like, you know, Jacko had shamo and uh mark boland had yeah or um larry blackman had oh you know um yeah all over the big country record and um their real masterpiece um also on the crossing is chance yeah which which is a song about sadness and loneliness specifically of a woman who goes from being an abused child to an abandoned mother. And it's incredibly depressing and incredibly beautiful.

And the B-side of that was a live recording from Ibrox of their cover version of Tracks of My Tears. And I actually heard that before I heard the Miracles version. So I learned one of Smokey Robinson's greatest ever songs via Stuart Adamson. And I've got to say, he didn't do it a disservice at all. But Fields of Fire is much more kind of up an atom. In hindsight, it's got the same DNA as Into the Valley

by the Skids. I think I only had a vague awareness that Stuart Adamson had even been in the Skids. Right. I really liked working for the Anki. I really liked working for the Anki. I had liked working for the Anki Dollar and circus games. But that didn't really matter to me at the time. I didn't really make a connection that Big Country were a new thing to me.

And then another person I know who was a big admirer of Big Country was James Dean Bradfield. Yeah. I was on the Mannix tour bus after a gig at Warrington Parr Hall in 1993 and Where the Roses Sewn came on a tape deck which is a brilliant song about the Falklands War and

the chasm between the patriotism whipped up by the media and the grim reality for the soldiers and their families. James turned to me and said if you ever tell anyone about this I'll fucking kill you because that's the thing big country was seen as embarrassing for many years they probably still are in some quarters but you can see what James Dean Bradfield took from Stuart Adamson that heroic style of riffing. And in fact, the Mannix sampled Stuart Adamson on Motown Junk.

It's got a snatch of Charles by the skids looped over and over. Right. And it kind of surprises me when I look back that I was so into Big Country because I wasn't a rock person. This was as rock as I got. I certainly didn't cross over into Twisted Sister territory. But yeah, there was just something about them that got me and that's the end of my monologue about big country I'm just going to sit here now and wait to be shot down by you telling me how nasty. Shut!

Well there was a lot of this kind of Celtic influence at the time we've seen it already in this episode with Dex's yeah you know forging their own kind of Celtic connections. I think with English fans, it's different. If you consider the kind of ways of immigration from the 30s to the 60s into English industrial cities, it is a time where second generation immigrants like the people in Dexys, they're looking for ways to connect themselves with their roots and also, of course, disconnect themselves from thatch right England and those thatcherite ideas that society erases these kind of differences and that capitalism can obliterate those kind of roots.

But for those outside of England, you know, bands like Big Country, for instance, I mean, I'm not saying it's a nationalistic thing, but that kind of assertion of some kind of national identity is also, in a way, a contravention of facturism as well even if not all of big country are scottish at this point i mean i'm not saying that there's kind of two types of scottish band that's too simplistic but if you could say that you know orange juice and altered images are small bands you know in a way they're making a small sound brilliant bands but small bands big country are much more although not as synth based they're

much more in that kind of simple minds area of of bigness you know everything about this record is really big and um you know also by the way which is something i doubt that big country would admit and maybe it wasn't a direct influence but but this song also does remind me of thin lizzy a bit and the way that lizzy would interpolate kind of old Irish tunes into their music a bit. I wondered if you were going to mention the Lizzy because I thought that. Yeah, go on. I've got to admit though, you know,

at the time this meant fuck all to me. But were I a Scottish kid or living anywhere, you know, hilly rather than the concrete flat jungle that I was living in and continue to live in, I would have thought this was fucking glorious you know after the kind of postcard altered images period this is a way more brazenly proud thing than than other scottish bands have been i was slightly freaked out by this because i wasn't familiar with them having a band on after the number one had played

they started doing that in 1981 not every week but, but, you know, it was an option. Yeah, every now and then. Of course, you know, for all the subtlety and sensitivity of Adamson's lyrics and songwriting, of course we get Zoo treating it with typical contempt and tastelessness, doing some fucking Scottish country dancing. Well, there's two of them who are trying to do some rudimentary body popping, but it descends very quickly into status quo front line,

rocking to and fro. It's also very noticeable that one person, very much struggling to dance to Big Country, is Leroy. He really cannot get his steps right. I mean, you know, ultimately Big Country in a way, and I don't mean this in a kind of derogatory way, they're just not for me.

And this record isn't. But I can imagine how, for various kids around the country, especially those in the Celtic fringes, this would have been a big, big moment. Sadly, the one great Scottish single that got nowhere near the charts, Over the Sea by Jessie Rae. Fucking hell. I look at that and I fucking curse myself for being english he's essentially full-on braveheart standing with bernie warrell out of funkadelic with

who's got a keytar on on top of the world trade center swinging a claymore around which flies all the way to scotland and just embeds itself next to some heather. You're essentially being sprayed down by a water cannon filled with iron brew. It's fucking amazing. Yeah, it's a shame we haven't got rock expert David Stubbs here because I know he's a massive Jesse Ray fan. Yeah. And he doesn't see him as a novelty act. He sees him as a proper avant-garde artist.

Yeah, which he is. Yeah. Fucking brilliant. If that had been on top of the pops jesus christ we should remember you know this is still the era when scottish people turning on the national broadcaster they're still getting you know russ abbott and shit like that and those are the characterizations so i can totally understand how this might have and must have felt massively righteous in some ways the scots do buy into their own caricature. I don't know if you heard about this, but

at the Euros, Scotland's sadly short-lived visit to the Euros, they disobeyed Delamitri and they did come home too soon. Involved as a sort of little warm-up to get them going, the captain, Andy Robertson,

arranged for a gift pack to be sent to all the players containing loads of stereotypically Scottish stuff. It included a can of iron brew, and it's like, for fuck's sake. You're not doing yourself any favours here. Anything else to say about this? I just want to praise you, like I should, Al,

for actually having a crack at pronouncing the drummer's name because in Smash Hits, he was always Mark Unpronounceable Name. Oh, did I get it wrong? No, no, no. Well, I don't know. I'm not Polish. I think it's a Polish name, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'll do my best. Well done. Well done. Give yourself a pat on the back. So the following week, Fields of Fire jumped up three places to number 10, its highest position.

The follow-up, In A Big Country, got to number 10 its highest position the follow-up in a big country got to number 17 in june and their final release of 1983 chance got to number nine in october they go on to have 10 more top 40 hits two of which made the top 10 before splitting up in 2000. And Friday night live version would get to number 13 in May of this year, but the follow-up, Body Language, would only get to number 76 in June, the last dent that the kids from fame would make on the car roof of the UK chart. A week after this episode, NBC announced that it that it was canceling fame but due to its massive popularity in the uk and elsewhere it was picked up by lbs communications and lived on for four more series which isn't quite forever but it would do and that pop craze youngsters closes the book

on this episode atop of the pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with the Kenny Everett television show. Then it's part six of The Paras, the documentary series about the recruits of 480 platoon as they're transferred to Wales and wonder if they're going to get called up to the Falklands. After the nine o'clock news, it's the first part of The Jury,

a drama series about the private lives of the 12 members of a jury and how they tackle the case that's been set before them. Then they finish off with Question Time, 10 Million People, the magazine show for the oldens, and the news headlines and weather. That's on a bit too late for the oldens isn't it bbc2 has started part four of the history series carl marks the legacy yes then grace kennedy sees the singer teaming up with peter skellen and sue pollard after the

medical series a gentle way with cancer it's the second part of Dancers a series of plays set in the world of dance then it's Newsnight, more Open University and they shut down at a quarter to one ITV is giving over the whole evening to Channel 4 output in an attempt to show ITV viewers that the new channel isn't all Lenin bumming a Rastafarian.

So they put on Father's Day, a preview of the new Channel 4 sitcom starring John Alderton, then a repeat of the Jack Rosenthal TV film Patang Yang Kippabang about first love and cricket. That's where the lad puts on the boxing gloves to stop himself from wanking,

like the zoo wankers did in Boxer Beat. After the news at 10, it's cheers, followed by the 1981 documentary Personal History of the Australian Surf, and they close down with portraits of a legend with Petula Clark banging on about her career channel four has just started dancing man a one-man showcase from the canadian huffer jeff his lop then tvi changes channel for the night for a one hour special that's followed by the 1955 katherine hepburn

film summer madness what the papers say and they closed down at midnight. One thing that really struck me about those TV listings is how many dance related programs there are. It just shows that fame was so in touch with the zeitgeist at the time because yeah you had Dancing Man you had Dancers

and earlier on on Channel 4 there had been Masters of Tap so it's you couldn't get away from it another thing was Karl Marx The Legacy Part 4 which is running directly opposite Top of the Pops on BBC 2 I love the fact that the BBC at that point

was just sort of espousing Marxism or certainly explaining Marxism to an early evening audience albeit one where young people would probably be watching the other side. You just wouldn't get that now, I don't think. Oh, I miss old Channel 4. Well, that early Channel 4 output, you mentioned Batang Yang Kipabang.

Those films, those sort of self-made Channel 4 films at that time were really important, I think, really kind of an eye-opener. were really important i think um really really kind of um an eye-opener um that they were usually set in britain and they they they sort of had kitchen sink realism themes that you you wouldn't normally get on you certainly wouldn't have got on itv's normal output and um i remember that they were definitely something you'd stay up late for also because you might see some tits i suppose but there was always yes yeah um and and as uh as critics ourselves obviously we don't believe that success proves you wrong if you dislike something however cheers was described in the in the listings as a yes a lukewarm american effort about a drink spa

boy yeah it's mad isn't it would we have seen Cheers if it wasn't for Channel 4? I mean, Central might have picked it up. They were quite go-ahead. I think, you know what? It would have come to occupy the slot that MASH was occupied on BBC Two, maybe. But I'm not sure it would have been as popular as it was on BBC Two. And just to echo what Simon says about there being so many dance options uh on the telly i would argue that fame isn't just tapping into that zeitgeist zeitgeist

but actually created it you know in a big big way the show i remember that leaps out to me from those listings is paras which which you know post fortlands one would imagine some sort of triumphalist show about the british army but fuck me watch that show you will never want to be in the fucking army you know ever in your life it's even basic training looks horrific we got the army coming around all the time all the all the armed forces would come around to our school and give presentations round about you know when we started being fourth years that was our career option you know no one from a university ever came around to my school and said have you considered doing this yeah similar to us yeah we we had an airbase nearby raf saint athens it was similar thing you know careers day and

everything would you like to be in the raf and yeah we're watching these planes getting shot down over the south atlantic like fuck that thank Thank you very much. No. So, yeah, this episode of Top of the Pops, ultimately imperfect, but I feel it came so fucking close. It's satisfying. It's just really satisfying. That's the word. So, if I were to hand this week's charts over to you

and ask you to rebook this episode under strict Top of the Pops rules, what's coming out? What's going in? Well, I'd keep um dex's i'd keep mj i'd get orange juice in um i'd get altered images in there just because i will never ever not fancy claire grogan but also i love that record the 10 year old kid in me would also probably get kenny everett on and another sort of shameless i fancied a thing i'll probably get tracy allman in there as well and if we're allowing you know things just bubbling outside

of the charts could we not get man parish in there oh that's just gone down yeah that's a shame that's a shame but it's a cracking chart and this episode very very nearly reflects it i've um i've put a lot of thought into this because i've got nothing better to do right so um i've i've come up with a an alternate episode of this because the rules of course being that you can't have anything that was on the previous week and uh it's got to be at least standing still in the charts or going up but but you can have things from outside the 30 or the 40 because they are they often did yes so i've I've taken that and run with it right so here we go presenters Janice Long and Tommy Vance right Janice because she's lovely and Tommy because he's hilarious nice 10 songs because that's about the average at this time but I've gone a bit rogue

okay because you said we could have stuff from outside the top 40 and I've taken that and run with it because in my alternate universe TOTP there are only two songs outside the top 40 and i've taken that wrong with it because in my alternate universe totp there are only two songs from the top 40 and only one from the top 30 in fact so right to start off on its way to being a massive hit second time around i'd have your rhythmics love is a stranger um which i far prefer to the hit that broke them sweet dreams just outside the 40 i would have this Bauhaus with their goth dub masterpiece, She's In Parties. And I show the video of that because it features that classic 80s

trope, a swinging light bulb. Got to have that in there. I'd have Grace Jones with My Jamaican Guy. Always good to have a bit of Grace for the sheer terror of it. Video all live. Have her in the studio because you want to see the faces of the audience. Jesus Christ, yeah.

Yeah, hell of a tune. Sampled, of course, in the 90s by LL Cool J on Doing It. So it's Sly and Robbie, of course, but it's all about Wally Baddow's keyboards on that record. That would have brought some real class to my fictional TOTP, I think. This one was in the top 40 just about kissing the pink the last film a bit of uh movie new wave art pop there um oh god yes i'd have a

bit of american soft rock for the dads in the shape of rosanna by toto which is outside right now in babylog patty smith says well i haven't fucked much with the past, but I've fucked plenty with the future. I've done the opposite here. I've fucked with the past and made stars out of two artists who never did become stars, but were lurking outside the 40, right? The first one is the Farmers Boys with Muck It Out. Now, I don't know if you know that.

Right. It's this insanely dramatic electro-funk epic. It's huge. Everyone thinks the Farmers Boys must be a kind of twee, a little indie pop band, and they sort of were a lot of the time. The name doesn't help, the Farmers Boys. No. But Muck It Out is a monster.

We will never talk about it on Chart Music again because it never became a hit, but I'm just begging the pop-crazed youngsters to put it on loud. That's really a really good record. Video playlist. The other non-stars I've made stars are Vicious Pink Phenomena. Right. youngsters to put it on loud um that's really a really good record video playlist the other non-stars i've made stars are vicious pink phenomena uh with with their eight minute version of je t'aime one on plus we'd have to show an edit obviously um they were a duo best known as soft cells backing singers and this is produced by dave ball it's honestly not very good

it's very upbeat and cheesy as a cover of jetep but it would tee them up nicely for their brilliant electro goth singles kakaka can't you see and fetish which should have been hit the other way i've fucked with the past is by essentially killing hitler metaphorically speaking the valentine brothers original of money's too tight to mention is new in at 99, right? And if we'd made that a hit, pre-empting Simply Red, Simply Red might never have happened. I'm not comparing Mick Hocknall to Hitler. I actually don't mind a bit of Simply Red sometimes, but it's just a nice kind of alternate timeline

that might have happened. And I'd show Prince doing a little Red Corvette. Of course. Or little SOS, as my mate Sharon thought it was. Which was in at 95.O.S., as my mate Sharon thought it was, which was in at 95. 95. It might have kicked off my Prince phase a whole year early instead of waiting around for Purple Rain to happen. And in my counterfactual timeline, there's a song at number one, which only got to number seven in real life.

Neil's mentioned it. It's Altered Images, Don't Talk to Me About Love, it it's altered images don't talk to me about love which basically um does the double of uh white sort of independent minded acts of the early 80s drawing upon black disco in that it's influenced both by donna summer i feel love and by chic you've got both things going on there it's a fantastic single and i would watch the shit out of this fictional episode of mine it might actually be in my top five greatest episodes ever if it existed um what i wanted to do like you neil i wanted hip-hop bebop don't stop by man parishing i might have put the video on but the videos fuck it have you seen the video it's mental it's gay as knickers and mad i always had this image of some break dancing lads you know

doing a proper shift in the shopping precinct on a saturday afternoon knowing that the video for hip-hop bebop don't stop's going to be on switch or air say on channel four and just gagging to see it because you think they're going to pick up some fresh break dancing moves and then they see this which is just lots of lads being gay and then someone turns up as a Doctor Who monster and starts dancing with them in a non-breakdancey way. It's insane.

So I probably wouldn't have used the video but I would have brought some actual breakdancers in. I would not have left it to Zoo. Yeah, you've got to get Zoo out of the fucking building. Yes. Basically, make sure that when they're doing this Scottish dancing to Big Country, there are some actual crossed swords under their feet and they slash themselves up i'd bring some

break dancers into the studio rather in the manner that they did in 1975 when they got some actual northern soul dancers in to dance to fursa which is an incredible bit of footage but anyway i don't know what i'm talking about that for because it's not allowed so i would leave everything up to trace as it is i'd replace that with my jamaican guy and at the end i would have been tempted to take out big country and let the kids from fame do friday night because they're there yeah and it'll be something to have in the can later on when it gets into the top 40 but but it's it's a live version so it's complete non-starter so i would tell friar david that he had to perform in amongst cow with some dancing words around him in the hope that he'd fuck off and in his place you've got to put something a bit novelty in i did think about

brontosaurus will you wait for me by dav Bellamy, which is currently at number 88. Oh my God. Yes. But with my BBC head on, I thought, no, let's go even more BBC and go for Nora Batty's Stockings by Compo and Nora Batty backed by Ronnie Hazlehurst's orchestra.

That's quite the tune, man. Kathy Staff just spits out bars, guy. Oh my God, imagine them in the studio. The younger kids would get a bit of a chuckle out of it. The old ones would be able to see themselves represented on top of the pops. I think it's an all-round winner. Yeah, Kathy Staff never spat a whack verse, ever.

So, dear boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? I went to an all-boys school, so I can tell you that there was quite a lot of talk about Tracy. Yes. And also for very different reasons

about Twisted Sister. Joe Boxers, Zoo Wankers, but to be honest with you, Twisted Sister would be the two words on everyone's lips in the playground

the following morning. What a performance. And what are we buying on Saturday? Fucking most of it. No, Dexy's already had the album, so not that. But Culture Club, Joe Boxers, and Big Country. Probably all of them bar Big Country, which didn't float my boat. And what does this episode tell us about April of 1983?

If I was a comedy 1980s stockbroker with a massive phone, I'd be shouting, buy blusher for blokes, buy tartan, buy string vests, and sell dungarees. What it says, it kind of suggests a lie in a way. What it's saying is kind of everything's fine.

In fact fact perhaps things are even going to get better but you know underneath everything perhaps what is actually number one points the way forward more than anything else in this episode and that pop craze youngsters brings us to the end of this episode of chart music all that remains for me to do now is the usual promotional flange so that's www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast reach out to us on twitter

at chartmusic t-o-t-p jingly jingly money down the g-string patreon.com slash chartmusic God bless you Neil Kulkarni Thank you Simon Simon Price. And Bancroft.

Hoyl vaw dabochie. My name's Al Needham, and I'm not waiting for approval from you. Chart music. Great big owl dot com. Hello, it's Mr P here. Chart music. GreatBigHour.com Hello, it's Mr P here. And the other Mr P. And we are the hosts of two Mr Ps in a podcast.

The educational podcast where you don't actually learn a thing. No, instead we explore the weird, wonderful and downright hilarious things that happen in school from people actually doing the job. We reminisce on our own time at school, funny things we experience each day. And of course, we share your hilarious stories from the chalk face. So if you work in a school or just want a nostalgic trip down memory lane, sit up straight, fingers on lips and get ready for the lesson. Nora! Oh, it's not you again, is it?

Get off me, Stets! Here, old me ferrets. I've got something to tell you. I'm mad about thee, Nora. I've loved thee all my life. Of course, I'm very glad that you are someone else's wife. But there's one thing about thee that sends me up the wall Of course it's confidential, so I won't tell a soul I just can't stand them awful wrinkled stockings

Ah, just shut your mouth, what will the neighbours think? It's like they've had a perm, they make you looking firm Or else you're going fishing and that's where you keep your worms. I will not have you talk about me stockings. Depraved you are, you should be put away. I see your knickers on the line and passion sends me reeling. But when I see them stockings, ooh, I kind of lose the feeling. Be off with you or else there's something else that you'll be feeling.

Now, daughter, put that yard brush down. Put it down, will you? Get away, you weird. Go on, get off. I just can't stand them awful wrinkled stockings. Oh, get off me steps. You're always talking legs. Please pull them up, I beg.

I heard from Norman Clegg. He says you've not got wrinkled stockings, you've got wrinkled legs. Will you stop going on about me stockings? It must be cramp or rising damp, I'm sure. If your elastic's getting slack then see the doc about it.

He'll tell you, tie him up with string when you walk round the houses. Here, you can have this piece of rope, what's holding up me trousers. Oh, your trousers are falling piece of rope that's holding up me trousers. Don't worry. Don't worry, daughter. I'll play the ukulele. Listen to this. Rock expert David Stubbs Rock expert David Stubbs Hi, I'm David Stubbs

Rock expert David Stubbs Bringing you a hard... Rock expert David Stubbs, rock expert David Stubbs, bringing you a hard... Rock expert David Stubbs! Rock expert David Stubbs! Bringing you a hard-driving, hard-hitting mix of hard rock and hard facts. Today, I want to talk to you about that glam daddy's,, the rockermost of the topermost, Twisted Sister. That's T-W-S-S-I-D-S-T-D. Hey, hey, we're not here to spell. We're here to rock.

Twisted Sister, man, they suffered for their art. They had to put up with jives more twisted than any sister. And as a dude who had a nine-year-old sister in 1983, I can tell you, sisters are pretty twisted. Nancy Spungen, they said, about Dee Snider. Hurtful. But Vera Duckworth? Vera Duckworth?

Vera Duckworth? Vera Duckworth Vera Duckworth Vera Duckworth He's a rolling and rocking and rocking and rolling Rock expert David Stubbs Vera Duckworth Man, that's cruel Everyone can relate to I Am, I'm Me Catalog number 674 674324-66. That's 674324-66.

Why, when they bust this out on top of the pops, the tremors of that bass line literally shook the foundations of suburban houses in Kettering. We can relate to it, you see. I am. I am too. Are you? We all am. And I'm me.

And Dee Snider was Dee Snider and not Vera Duckworth! They have further hits. The kids are back. Schneider, and not Vera Duckworth! They had further hits. The kids are back. You can't stop rock and roll. We're not going to take it. And in 1987, their biggest hit, Breakout. Breakout.

A change of image, but they still delivered the goods. Join me next time for more hard rock and hard facts from the man who knows. Meanwhile, take it away now! Rockin' and rollin', rollin' and rockin', rockin' and rollin' and rockin'! If you want to hear more from me, rock expert David Stubbs, subscribe to me on YouTube. Address, HTTPS, full colon,

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