Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #56 (Part 1): 25.12.1983 – Oh Dear!! A Bat Bit You

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Al Needham’s hosting a late New Year’s party, and all the Pop-Crazed Youngsters are invited. And unsurprisingly, it involves you being made to sit in an armchair and watch an episode of Top Of The Pops while other people shout at you – and this time, it’s the Xmas Day one from 1983. But before that, him and Sarah Bee and Taylor Parkes leaf though that week’s Melody Maker, reminisce on Xmases past, and get you all ’83-compliant for our LONGEST EPISODE EVER… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. 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 to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. chart music chart music Up! You pop craze youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music The podcast that left it too late to shove its hand right down the back of the sofa Of a random episode of Top of the Pops in time for Christmas.

I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing by my side today are, well, nobody at the moment. Here I am in my living room, all on my own, just contemplating what the fuck's going off. So, you know, got an episode of Top of the Pops for you. It looks like it's just gonna be me but oh hang on a minute is that the doorbell fucking hell taylor parks hello taylor hello merry christmas blimey it's snowy out there isn't it just yes yeah oh yes have you had the place done up i don't remember that roaring open fire and uh giant husky dog i've just done a song and dance routine with a load of kids but they've gone now so

thank god you're here yeah all right well i hope you don't mind me settling into your enormous leather sofa and no not at all this decanter no get stuck in mate that's what it's there for just freeloading. That's what Christmas is all about. So, yeah, I'm just going to stay here until you're sick of me and start dropping polite hints. I wouldn't leave it any later than that out of respect. So, who else is coming round?

No, don't tell me. It'll be a surprise. Taylor, did you have a good Christmas? I was just trying to think back um yeah well it was you know i just it's surprising how exhausting isolation can be when you're in permanent furlough yeah i don't know this christmas it was different yes in the sense of being like all the recent christmases but more so I was stuck in my house I always dreamt of spending Christmas in London at my place instead of having to race around Britain standing up on hundred quid trains

yeah with all your crushable presents stuffed into the overhead luggage rack 15 feet away from you and just hoping Bill Sykes isn't back at your flat cramming the four things that you own with any resale value into a burlap sack, you know. And crack pissing over everything else for a laugh. But, yeah, my vision of Christmas at home sort of involved me wearing a big jumper surrounded by all friends who've all inexplicably decided to come round to my shit flat instead of being at theirs.

You know, walking past a Victorian lamppost in the snow and all that. Yeah. You know, having some sort of adventure with a moral rather than the reality, you know, getting up when it's already dark and eating scrambled eggs on low-carb toast. Mind you, there's a moral to that too. Yes.

Which is? I don't want to think about it. Still, there's always the birth of Jesus to cheer us all up. Yeah, to contemplate. To cheer the world. Yeah. Cheers, love. What a difference you've made.

Yeah. I heard something interesting about Jesus the other day. Apparently he was 5'5". Right. I've got no idea what this is based on or how that was calculated or from what the measurements were taken. But that's what I heard. Yeah, and I think it's pretty good because he didn't let it hold him back, did he?

No. He went out there and he showed the world he didn't just get where he was because of who his dad was. But it's impressive because he must have had that sort of short guy intensity and compact, controlled rage, you know, like Al Pacino or Joe Pesci or Bob Dylan or Jose Mourinho, you know what I mean? Like you can imagine him getting furious in the temple with the money changers just turning over all the tables and much bigger blokes sort of step back,

looking inexplicably worried, like Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. It's weird. But it's weird. You wouldn't think that God would choose to put his only son so far from heaven. On the positive side, though, it does save on wood. Do you mind if I have a brandy? Go ahead, mate. All right, cheers.

Oh, hey, Taylor. There's somebody at the door. There's somebody at the door. There's somebody at the door. It's Sarah fucking B. Hey, I'm Sarahah come on in hello merry christmas dog or whatever it was no merry festive what's it yeah merry festive perennium that's the lad yes how are we well it's i'm it's i've i've just got to brush the twinkly frost off

my warm fake fur here. Can I hang it up? Is it all right? Can I just get a bottle? In fact, I've brought, I mean, it's not full, but, you know, it's cold out there. I've had to, like, fortify myself on the way, you know. But what's mine is yours. What is left in here is, I want some of it. But also you can have some because that's the kind of guy I am.

Oh, it's nice in here. Good Christmas, Doc? It was quite pleasant, thank you. Lovely. We did what we did last year which was hang out in our flat together and... And fuck everyone else.

Eat a... Yeah. It's terrible. No, you know, we phoned our folks and stuff and then we ate a bit too late and everything but not...

What is too late? No, no such thing. It's not a day for worrying about scheduling, really. No. You don't have to watch The Queen if you don't want to, because you're grown-ups now, and you can do what you want. Yeah. Mostly put on a sort of festive playlist

of not Christmas, but Christmassy music. Yeah. Which, basically, you start with the Cocteau Twins and go from there. Right. Stuff that's twinkly, stuff that gives you that little twinkle in your head, you know. So, yeah, did that.

And I thought, oh, I know, I'll put on one of those. I've got YouTube on the telly and it's like, there's like seven hours of relaxing fire loop. So it's that slightly weird fake fire and it has a sort of crackling, you know, the pleasant go. And I love the sound of a crackling fire because who doesn't? Yeah. So it was on under the music and in between the songs, it gets lovely, peaceful crackling noise, you know the pleasant guy i love the sound of a crackling fire because who doesn't yeah so it was on under the music and in between the songs gets lovely peaceful crackling noise you know nice um

but unfortunately it was sort of half relaxing and half really stressful because i kept forgetting that it was on and i'd be sort of loafing about and then i'd be like ah oh isn't this nice wait what's burning no no it's fine no it's the thing you put on oh yeah yeah it is oh isn't that nice what a what a fun thing yeah it's lovely hang on what's burning does it i can hear it i can hear it oh it's fine and so i that was you know stimulating didn't have ads crushing in every 10 minutes that was like have you ever thought of investing in bitcoin no i really haven't can you fuck off no so that fortunately um it was yeah i don't know i must be i'm going to be paying for that in other ways aren't i for the sort of three hours of fake fire that i had on but um yeah we just it was like let's make it because we weren't feeling very christmasy and it's like oh god we have to like

find the christmas in ourselves and it always you know feeling very Christmassy. And it's like, oh, God, we have to, like, find the Christmas in ourselves. And it always, you know, you find it in the end. So it's just like, yeah, get all the fairy lights that you can, get all the candles. And, you know, that kind of did it. And we had some neighbours on Christmas Eve. One of the neighbours was like, oh, we didn't get crackers and the kids will be sad. And we had four crackers and the two of us.

So my bloke ran round two crackers to the neighbours and then we had the other two. And we got a little chess set in one of us. So my bloke ran round two crackers to the neighbours and then we had the other two. And we got a little chess set in one of them. A fucking arse small. A tiny weedy one. Like a little kind of, like a plastic one, obviously. The jokes were not really worth repeating. They weren't, like, you need really shit Christmas cracker jokes.

And they kind of weren't of that specific quality. And we played the shortest game of charades it was like okay five words film book first word around around the world in 80 days yeah that's it let's let us now continue drinking worse than bad cracker jokes someone i know has got a cheese advent calendar oh you get a different bit of cheese every day and you get a joke with it and they put a picture of one up on facebook the other day it says do you know the most popular cheese in great britain and the answer is brie tish cheese oh fucking hell i think that's actually

the worst joke i've ever heard in my life. Yeah. It's like art. Since the one that was on Teletext Kids Jokes page in 1989 that said, what did Bross say when he gave his girlfriend a box of chocolates? Answer, chocolates in the box! What? Yeah, it actually hurts to read it.

Incredible. I do wonder who does these things because, you know, I've done various weird copywriting jobs and it's like, oh, now I know who does that thing because now it's me. But I'm not proud of it. But bloody Poundland were looking for, like, terrible joke writers, so I applied for that. And they probably just used my shit and didn't, you know.

What was the joke? I can't even remember what I... Oh, I i know i only gave them half of the joke i would like get back to me it's like you're going to be intrigued by this terrible question aren't you i think it was a 50 shades of grey joke because you know they like sort of saucy shit like it's a bit naughty great family fun yeah yeah but they are they're gross aren't they i'm not proud of it i'm really glad i didn't get that work. I've done enough work in my life where I've gone, I'm going to have to answer for this one day, you know.

Just went round me mum's and het. Yeah. That was it. Just another Sunday. I prefer New Year's Eve anyway. Oh, yeah, yeah. New Year's Eve's a far better ceremony. Yeah.

Because there's no religious bollocks in it. It's just like, like oh we need a new calendar let's get fucked it's the festival of the fresh start and i love that even if it doesn't i know that it's bollocks in a lot of ways and it's not like oh you know people kind of going let's hope 2021 is better yet definitely not at first it's not going to be this is going to get uh but it's a nice it's a lovely sort of idealistic thing isn't it and yeah it's that you get the countdown and i defy you not to you're not going to sit there going five four three you know you're gonna have a feeling of like just for just for a minute you're

gonna go this is a fresh clean new year and nothing bad has happened in the first minute of it you know this is to be our year. That's what I said at the start of 2020 as well. Yeah, we do it every time. It is proper like Charlie Brown, Lucy with the football shit. Yes. But still. No, because I used to like New Year's Eve when I was a kid.

Because, you know, number one, you could stop up late. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you got the pleasure of seeing your mum and dad pissed up when they come back. But also got to see the hogman show as well and that was fucking weird that's the only time you ever saw scotland on telly and you just thought fucking hell they're all mad up there i can imagine the pot crazed caledonians just with their hands sliding down the face going oh fucking hell this is what they think we are it It'd be like if every TV station in America just showed the England show, where it was just non-stop fucking Morris dancing

and cheese rolling and the Wurzels. It'd be worse than that for Americans. It would be the Canada show. Yes. It'd just be like a moose walking around for like three hours. A Christmas moose, though, a festive moose with his ant for like three hours a christmas moose though a festive moose with the with its with his antlers all all adorned that would be lovely anyway yeah fuck christmas i'd like to see the back of the cunt i am um you know we normally do a christmas one but i hit the

fucking wall a few weeks ago and i just couldn't get my shit together so we're gonna do some at christmas there but we're just going to, I mean, fuck it. Let's hang Christmas out as long as possible. Who gives a toss nowadays? Not me. We're going to act like them bellends on your street who still have their Christmas decorations up in February.

Oh God, there's a thing, isn't there though, with like how long Christmas decorations are up for. It's like end of January. Nobody, people forget when it is. It's fine. You understand when you get into February. It's like end of January. People forget when it is. It's fine. You understand. When you get into February, it's like, hmm. And then by the time it's March, it's like someone is dead in there.

Yeah. So you should probably call the police. The most depressing thing in the world is where you go past someone's house where they've affixed some sort of decorations to their windows that they obviously couldn't get off. Yeah. They've got some sort of fake snow spray, like stickers of snowflakes or that,

just stuck to the window pane. Just big talon-shaped trenches going down. So anyway, there's no Patreon list and there's no top 10 in this episode, but I want to make it known right from the off that this episode is dedicated to all the pop craze youngsters who have put a jingle in our g-string this year because fucking hell if it wasn't for you i would be sitting under a fucking cash point machine playing the eastenders theme

on a penny whistle yeah me too fucking hell i lost all my work this year only chart music a sustained mess so if you're one of these people seriously thank you so fucking much yeah really you saved my ass yeah i quite like my ass where it is and you know so thank you we really really appreciate it yeah yeah me too it like freed me up to start work on my unauthorised, muckraking biography of Tony Blackburn. It's going to be called 4,000 Holes. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to December 25th, 1983. Oh yes, it's one of them Christmas specials

where the winner's circle of that year's charts are brought out for a trot about for a full hour. Sarah, let's start with you. Was the Christmas Top of the Pops an essential part of Christmas Day for you? Not at this time because, even though I was thinking about this, I think Top of the Pops probably entered my consciousness before the charts did on the radio, you know.

But we probably wouldn't. We were at my grandparents because I used to live with them. And then by this time, we had just got our own place. But we'd go back to me and my mum and then we went back to my grandparents for Christmas Day for the traditional get the big table out get the traditional dry turkey and slightly lumpy gravy and you know the sort of soft sprouts and yeah so I think we would definitely we we watched the Queen's speech everything stopped for the Queen but um but not for Top of the Pops I think it was it was a bit um my grandpa probably would have would have found something in it,

but I think my nana has been slightly troubled by it. So, you know, when the olds would be sort of like a little bit disturbed, like, what is all this? And they weren't even that old, you know, but it's like the way that people used to lean into being old in that way. I think they lent right into it. So, you know. You can't tell the difference

can you what is it a man or a woman i'm so confused i don't like it we've touched on 1983 a couple of times haven't we and as as david pointed out in the last episode when we did late december 1982 1983 seen as the year that the rot started to set in. But, you know, there are some belting tunes on this top of the pops. And I came away from it thinking, you know what, we may have to look at 1983 anew. Well, it's sort of like the ghost year, isn't it? It's like the Avent is over and done with. But there's still some dispute and confusion over where the eight is a going. And yeah,

one of the interesting things about this episode, because it's a compilation, it more or less covers everything. It's got records, which really clearly point the way to 84 and 85 for better or for worse. It's got records, which point the way towards a different 84 and 85 that never happened yes there's records that are still stuck in 1981 and trying to find a way out

and even the first coughings of what would become the late 1980s are here in bits and pieces and a couple of failed attempts to do something completely different, which just end up on the compost heap. So it's a lot more interesting than you would expect from 1983, isn't it? Yeah. In the last chart music that we did, Top of the Pops demonstrated that it could fill an entire episode with almost all British acts. I think Bing Crosby was the only American in that episode.

And I do recall the 1982 Top of the Pops. You know, I had a couple of American acts in it, obviously, but it was mainly British. But it would have been a more difficult job in this one, wouldn't it? Because if 1982 was the year of the British invasion, 1983 was the year that the Yanks started chucking crates of British bands back into the water. The pushback began here, didn't it?

Yeah, it was weird actually um because you know i always think of 1984 as like my year zero for pop culture and stuff but all of this was was super familiar to me when i watched this episode and it's like the two years are sort of inevitably very closely coupled in my memory and trying to sort of peel them apart is kind of is quite tricky but i do think there was a mad vitality in this year because it is a sort of like who is going to claim this decade who's going to set the tone who's going to set what it's about and it's you know there's there's less of the attempts to align with existing tradition and there isn't quite yet the sort of futurism that

was uh going to shortly explode So there's a kind of naive immediacy to a lot of it. There's kind of an attempt to sort of capture like a nowness and a sort of vitality in that kind of slightly sparkling, slightly fizzy kind of superficial way. It seems

sort of superficially superficial and frivolous and throwaway a lot of it. But I think that's kind of slightly literal minded way to to take it it's like that was a an attempt to just do something of the moment now and so for some people it's like this is dated really terribly but for me it still has that zing about it i think it was a good moment to be coming into sort of cultural consciousness, to be sort of waking up into the world in that way.

Although it has clearly, it's also scarred me for life. It's like, this is the music that formed my neural pathways and I'm still whizzing around that like a sort of little slightly knackered scale X trick. Let's get stuck in!

Yay! get stuck in. Yay. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, I'm Justin. And I'm Lucy.

And together we are the hosts of Plenty Questions. It's a very straightforward general knowledge quiz. We ask you 20 questions, one after the other, five second gap in between, and you shout the answers out. And then you tweet us to let us know how you got on. See if you can get 20 out of 20. No one has so far, but that's because we haven't started doing it yet. But we will.

And there's also going to be some fiendish brain teasers, so join us for Plenty of Questions. Radio 1 News In the news, an IRA bomb has gone off in a rubbish bin in Oxford Street but it was Christmas Day so no one was about.

Pope John Paul II has nipped over to Ribibia Prison in Rome for a cup of tea and a chit-chat with Mehmet Ali Agha, who shot him four times 18 months ago. The two spoke in private, so there is no record of the conversation, but it's safe to assume there was at least 40 pound a snout and a blank passport for inky stevens under that castle loads of mad americans have been punching each other in the face in various toy shops in a doomed attempt to get a cabbage patch kid for their spawn a family of 10 have been allowed to emigrate to the Falkland Islands next month, boosting their population gain since the war by nearly 30%. They intend to run a croft and open a Vietnamese restaurant.

Two Oxford dons have announced that they estimate that baby Jesus was actually born on Friday the 3rd of April, AD 33. Yuri Andropov fails to turn up for a Communist Party meeting, sparking more rumours that he's on his way out, and he dies five weeks later. Oh, this close to being in the Two Tribes video. Violet Carson, who played Ina Sharples in Coronation Street for 20 years, has died in Blackpool at the age of 85. A Fortnum

and Mason hamper worth £1,000 has been sent to the Greenham Common Peace Camp by Linda McCartney. Level 42 have offered to play a free gig in Luxembourg as an apology for England fans who picked it up and threw it through a pub window last month. But the big news is Santa's been. What did he get you? I think I got a Viewmaster. Wow. It's such a, can you imagine that now?

It was just a little set of red non-binoculars. And you put them up to your eyes and you put it on. And there were slides that you could look at of things what was in it i bet it was disney cannot remember anything at all about it i just remember that you know and i i'm sure if i saw one of those images now i'd just do the hyper jump back to that time but i can't remember i just remember the sort of the particular quality of the light in it and that's it but i think i also got uh i think i got a hasbro glow worm which i loved and uh it's just a little just a little sort of thing and it's in a little sleeping bag and if you shine the light on it and then you look at it and the government like glows and it

has a lovely sort of a lovely sleepy smiley face and it was one of my favorite things i actually had in a fit of nostalgia earlier this year i went and got one off ebay and it doesn't glow very well but it tries oh that's all that matters that's all you know it's like at least you tried an effort was made you know um but yeah i think i also got a spirograph set also don't know what happened to that and i could really i could i could go for a bit of spirograph now it's like a really soothing thing and it's like ah order in a chaotic universe you put your pen in the thing there and then you go you do whatever you want you go with your pen all over the paper and yet what comes out is a perfect kind of orbital um pattern and you know yeah you've essentially just designed a ray flyer circa 1991 yeah yeah yeah basically yeah i think i got the view master of the opening of misty beethoven

on the cover of the enemy a silhouette of santa playing the saxophone. On the cover of Smash Hits, Howard Jones raising a glass as someone out of shop pours champagne into it. Probably vegan champagne, no doubt. On the cover of the Radio Times is an Art Deco Christmas tree with loads of 12 Days of Christmas semiology. On the cover of the TV Times, an

appalling illustration of Prince Charles doing up the Christmas tree, Prince William grabbing a party hat and Lady Di leaning on a puff that's right up against the screen of what looks like a Ferguson colour star television. Fucking hell, that's insane, isn't't it it's a disturbing image it really is yeah kind of dead-eyed and sort of yeah it's really weird it's bigger than the body the radio times one that's lovely and the radio times now really phones it in they just have the same kind of they have the same guy like just slightly redo a very sort of pastely fluffy father christmas with or without reindeer and you know why try harder the number one lp in the country at the moment is now that's what i call music the original one

no parlay by paul young is at number two over in america the number one single is say say say by paul mccartney and michael jackson and the number one lp of course is thriller by michael jackson it's 22nd non-concurrent week at number one so me des what were we doing on christmas day of 1983 this was the second last proper christmas of my childhood right because i was 11 and everyone's last 100 christmas is when they're 12 do you know what i mean like after that it can still be great but it's a holiday whereas before that it's a tear in the fabric of reality um and in 1983 i was still feeling that eerie glow you know i mean obviously i was too old to believe in anything uh but you still got that eerie glow. I mean, obviously I was too old to believe in anything, but you've still got that sense of everything being different

and better and sharper and that glorious loss of all sense of what day it is and the wonderful sprawl of the festive perineum. Lying around eating a chocolate orange at 11 o'clock in the morning you know god watching a czechoslovakian animation about a mouse that saved a snowman's life yeah it might this might be the year i got a beanbag actually no it wasn't i would have been earlier but i definitely remember sitting in the beanbag eating toasted cheese sandwiches and watching skiing with no understanding of the sport like you know france clammer or some cunt in the the downhill from lauba horn you know which for some reason i remember is the perfect moment of peace and

contentment just uh just grooving on the the alpine ambience you know that sort of ding-a-ling-a-ling basically what i'm saying i had an existential fever and the only prescription was more cowbell i was five at this time i was a magical time five and two thirds yeah really um it was properly good me and my mum had our own house by now and i'd start god i'd been at school for like a year already and was already pretty tired of it i think we had our own house and it was like a mile away from uh my grandparents where i had lived before so we we went back there for christmas dinner i definitely remember it being very very warm from the gas fire and very very bright from the overhead the

big light would be on like all through into the evening and i am now like i don't know how i stuck it because now i'm absolutely like very very low light at all times please and i hate it when the big light's on yeah fuck the big light fuck the big light the big light is for when you have dropped something of value and you need to fight although at no other time you have iphone torches for that though so big light is is just for doing the hoovering if if there's not you know it's a practical thing and the rest of the time it needs to butt out especially on christmas christmas is a time for low light and fucking twinkling um but yeah it was still nice but that's my if i if i think of that time that's i'm like stiflingly warm no air at all um but it's somehow still been quite pleasant so at home we had uh we

had guinea pigs which um i guess we had to uh we couldn't leave them for very long because the guinea pigs had shagged and so there were more guinea pigs and they they were born on christmas eve i think so we had two called holly and ivy because they were festive guinea pigs. And they were born on Christmas Eve, I think. So we had two called Holly and Ivy because they were festive guinea pigs. It's like along with Raymond Briggs' The Snowman, these are the things that teach you about life and death when you're a child. Because The Snowman was actually, it was 1982 that it was made. And it's basically, it's become a Christmas tradition where it's on every year. Either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Just like on the buses films. Exactly. and it's it's basically it's become a christmas tradition where it's on every year either christmas

eve or christmas day just like on the buses films exactly but um except with with with more death in it um it's like everything and everyone you know and love will leave you okay cool that's that's a good message yeah great um but it didn't seem to be in the listings this year maybe i missed it but um so i guess we didn't watch the snowman but that was like a like early trauma oh yeah and we had very fancy crackers which had um wade whimsies in them do you know what this wade is like a um yes oh yeah and the crackers had those in like the little tiny pot animals and you could collect them there were hundreds of them and i amassed a huge collection not just from the um first from the crackers i think that was the start of my collection and then later on we would go to sort of you know junk shops and antique fairs and whatever the hell

and you'd find them for like you know 10p or 20p or whatever so i had loads of them and eventually i've sold most of them sarah's ark sarah's ark that was it and yeah though most of them have gone now but you know because people still collect them now. Some of them sold for like 10 quid each. So that was like my little nest egg. I didn't even realise it. And now I've spent it all on frivolities and staying alive. I'm 15 at the time, so it's the money and clothes period for me

and the only thing I can remember from it was I got a jumper from Marks and Spencer with massively long diamonds down the front this is the casual era but I couldn't afford any of that shit and I wasn't going to nick it

so I had to make do with this and I teamed that up at school with a black shirt, and my black and red op art cravat, and some white trousers, which I got for Christmas as well, and I remember in January of 1984, I'm walking along the corridor, and there's this one girl, who was always fucking horrible to me, and she's just staring at me aghast and eventually she says fucking El Nidim what are you into and I just looked at her and just said oh I'm into jazz now just to confuse her further um but I do remember it being a fucking mint Christmas because people always go on about the magic of a child's Christmas and they never go on about how good it is when

you're a teenager because you can still dip into the worlds of childhood child's Christmas and they never go on about how good it is when you're a teenager because you can still dip into the worlds of childhood and adulthood. You know, you can read an annual still and you can drink booze as well. That's the sweet spot, isn't it? It's perfect. I mean, why didn't fucking Dylan Thomas write a follow-up called A Teenager's

Christmas in Wales? It would probably end with so much wanking. so much wanking. So much wanking. As a teenager, your only obligation over Christmas is just to be in a chair for Christmas dinner.

And after that, everyone wants you to get the fuck out of the way. And then the day after Boxing Day, your parents fuck off back to work and you've got the whole house to yourself. So it's just perfect. And, you know, the telly was fucking skill at the time. So all you've got to do is nip downstairs, load up on crisps and sausage roll,

get a landfill of Quality Street and fuck off back to your nest again. Fucking brilliant. Now you're a grown-up. You've just got to be there all the time. There's no time that you can actually just go off and just be on your own fuck being a grown-up at christmas it's shit so while we're waiting to see if any more guests turn up why don't we leave through the crates and pull out the melody maker from this week shall we have a leaf through and talk about the old times. Yeah, all right. Good-o. So I've got Melody Maker from December the 24th, 1983. My Christmas present to myself.

On the cover, Tracy Ullman all sanded up. Yeah, a front cover which fairly screams another cover fell through. Yes. I think that happened to us about 95 or 96 at Melody Maker. We'd been promised something, you know, unusual and exciting like Oasis and got fucked over and had to drag the designers out of the pub or the same cubicle in the pub toilets, and to create some kind of photo collage or something.

Christmas message, you know, probably in the light and inauthentically laddish style of the day, like, you know, Merry Christmas, fella, or something. Have a pint of beer. Top Christmas. Drink some beer. It's F asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, in apostrophe Christmas. Oh, God, I'm just remembering the

final ever Melody Maker was it had Fred Durst in a fucking Santa hat. The least festive man. Just giving it that weird stare that he did. The ghost of Christmas shit.

In the news, Pete Town's enders announced that the who will never work together again due to his inability to compose any new material that the rest of the band want to record i will not be making any more records with the who the statement read and i can now say that i will not perform live again anywhere in the world with the who tickets for the who's 2021 tour of the uk and ireland are now available on the internet the clash have announced their latest tour of the uk even though they currently consist of joe strummer and paul simon and meanwhile Meanwhile, the recently sacked Mick Jones has been putting it about that he had no idea he was about to be knobbed off

and insisted that he hadn't drifted away from the original Clash philosopher as stated by Strummer. And nothing else happened at all because it's Christmas. Inside the paper, well, Steve sutherland finds himself in business class from amsterdam to heathrow with the it girl of 1983 tracy allman they open the conversation with a discussion on whether len fairclough did something in that swimming pool allman thinks not wow and when asked about her hopes for 1984 she asked for itv to repeat please sir and on the buses fucking hell she must have been happy as a pig in shit over the christmas period

good old forces tv and itv3 according to her the highlight of 1983 was having a phone chat with Margaret Wilkins, the matriarch of the 1974 documentary series The Famlet, which was repeated this year. When asked about her music career, she confesses her fears of being put in the same bracket as Bucks, Fizz and The Doolies. And whenever she's on top of the pops, she's been advised by the crew to stick to the acting.

She's also had enough of creepy male journalists who keep trying to cop off with her. But how are we meant to reproduce? It's funny, though, that she mentioned that. He must have been leaning in a bit or something. You know what I mean? You know, like, as a bloke, if you ever find yourself talking

to a woman that you don't know like completely innocently like maybe if you're if you're both at the scene of a hang gliding accident or something and you're just having a conversation with her as a stranger and after about 90 seconds you just find a way to mention her boyfriend and i absolutely understand why that happens, but I never quite know what to say. It's like, well, you know, okay now. Yeah, that's Tracy Ullman in that mode. Ian Pye nips down to heaven to see a 15-minute PA

by a new band from Liverpool. Frankie goes to Hollywood and isn't sure if they're pretending to have oral sex on stage or are actually doing it. During the interview the next day, Ollie Johnson has a cop on that the video for their debut single Relax has already been banned.

Moans at his solo career after Big in Japan was a non-starter because the label was obsessed with Pete Weiler and assures us that they're not going to be the new village people because it's the 80s they'd all have to be on the doll wouldn't they he signs off by telling the readers do anything you want licking boots and eating shit is normal remember Remember, as if you're going like, oh yeah, I forgot, it's normal, isn't it? Yes.

If he likes licking boots and eating shit, he should hang out with people who live on Holloway Road. Then he could save time by combining the two. Paul Strange finds himself outside Stiff Records HQ in Camden on a Sunday morning about to embark on a coach trip to Amsterdam with King Kurt fans to see them play at the Melkweg After having to endure the stench of puked up snakebite he discovers that the band have already caused £600 worth of damage in the hotel

and halfway through the gig he gets dragged up on stage stripped to his pants and his force fed a bucket of snake bite through a funnel the gig is cut short when the locals get sick of having flower bombs lobbed at them and start letting off fire extinguishers in return it's quite festive though isn't it nick cave gives steve suverland one of his first interviews after going solo and says that reading a recent gig review of suzy and the banshees in melody maker which praised them for still carrying on made him feel that he was completely right to split up the birthday party he talks about feeling that people were only turning up to the band's last few gigs

in the hope that they would disintegrate on stage, and then gets into a row with Sutherland over having a swastika on the Mutiny EP, claiming it was there because it's a dead powerful symbol, and in any case, he used to have a Jewish girlfriend, so there. He didn't give the real reason that it sort of looks like an N when you rotate it a bit, because he used a crucifix

for a t you see and dessa fox ruminates on the future of pop television and points out that as youth unemployment is here to stay and the pop craze youngsters have more time on their hands than ever before there's going to be more of it. She lauds the new Channel 4 output such as the Switch and the Tube and claims that a Midsummer Night's Tube was the televisual event of the year. As for Top of the Pops she asks why they're still employing Jonathan King

and out of the current crop of presenters only Peter Powell, Kid Jensen and John Peel should be kept on. It's funny, isn't it, the way they're like, oh, well, there's going to be more youth unemployment, so there's going to be more pop TV to cater to it. It's like people in the early 80s thought they were having a fucking hard time. It's like the unemployment apocalypse to come next year.

You'd probably get your fucking benefits stopped if you caught watching TV. Single reviews. Well, there aren't any. But the Melody Maker number one single of 1983 is Keep Feeling Fascination by The Human League. And the number one LP is Touch by The Eurythmics. In the LP review section, well, the main review is given over to Japanese Whispers, the Cure singles November 1982, November 1983, and Adam Sweetin writes about it as if it's the final kiss-off

from a soon-to-be-defunct band. He lavishes praise upon Lovecats, claiming this is what the band could have been, while the remaining seven tracks demonstrate where and how often they went wrong. With musicians currently being auditions for touring purposes, perhaps a new cure is about to spring out and surprise everybody. But don't get rid of the Valium yet. Sweetin also throughs at the mouth at the re-release of Otis Blue. Not a milestone in soul music, but a milestone period. He means full stop. scrubbed clean you can't even recognise it. One teaspoonful of dirt to ten gallons of water.

Retaining all the threat of a toothless teddy bear, Stevens has allowed himself to become the plaything of kiddies and idiotic adults alike. The cabbage patch kid of the 80s. Good old Carol. Clark is more charitable towards the amazing kamikaze syndrome, the 11th studio album by Slade. No matter what the deifications of fate, no matter what the odds against survival, no matter how many kickings have to be endured, Slade will never abandon the battle

while there's spirit enough left to fight it. Number two at the minute, Slade, don't forget. The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome features the song Cocky Rock Boys Rule OK. Bang up to date. In the gig guide, David could have seen madness at the Lyceum, Toyah at the Marquee,

Elvis Costello and Prefab Spratt at Hammersmith Odeon and Duran Duran at Wembley Arena, but probably didn't. Taylor could have seen Judas Priest at the Birmingham Odeon, the Police at the NEC, Robert Plant at the Odeon or the Meteors at the Tin Can Club. Neil could have seen Vardis at the General Wolf or King at the General Wolf. Sarah could have seen the Damned at Leeds Queen's Hall and fuck all else. Al could have seen Gary Glitter at the Palais, Marillion at Rock City or nipped over to Leicester to see King Kurt at the Belfry and Simon could have seen hot chocolate at Cardiff St David's Hall

or Fairport Convention at the same venue. In the letters page, Andy of Guildford writes to complain about a recent singles review page written by Lyndon Barber. He may feel his style is trend there but it's bloody useless to the record buying public looking for an informative guide to what's available in the shops it's look at me i'm hip morons like barber

that drag your paper down yeah you're always trying to be cool aren't you yeah it's just it's just arrogant the only the only non-arrogant thing to do is to assume that your subjective view is objective truth and inform the readers why don't you give them the registration number for all the singles that's what the that's what the readership wants yeah lee shankster of coventry takes massive offense at melody makers review of an icicle works gig at the general wolf not for what was said about the band, but the venue. I agree that Coventry is a shithole for live bands, but the Wolf is an exception.

It has a very good atmosphere and doesn't have turkeys that think they're hard by staring at you. Yeah, well, turkeys that think they're hard is not what anyone needs at Christmas time, is it? No. A usually placid female from Prestonpans unleashes the fury upon Puffy Boy from Paisley for slagging off David Bowie in a previous instalment of Backlash.

Who the hell do you think you are spouting forth from the cultural echelons of cultural paisley? Obviously someone with two bob in your faded denims who can't afford a baggy suit. And Perry of no address is incandescent with rage at Quiet Riot having a massive hit in America with Come On Feel The Noise. A quiet riot having a massive hit in America with Come On Feel The Noise. Slade are a great band who made a fairly concentrated effort to break America before the advent of MTV. Now we're forced to put up with these Slade clones mimicking the masters. Let's see some justice for a change. The important issues there.

Well, as we know in that chart music the week before this lord stephen regal dragged the lead singer of quiet riot over a dj desk for uh being uh catty about slade and his wig came off so yes there's your justice perry 64 pages 80 pennies. I never knew there was so much in it. Did you enjoy the Christmas music papers? Yeah. As a reader, not so much as a writer, I'm guessing. Well, yeah, only as a reader. As a writer, it was just like, you know, you've got six seconds.

We need 6,000 words, you know. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One commences at 8.35 with The Christmas Raccoons, a musical cartoon narrated by Rich Little, with the raccoons played by Rita Coolidge and Rupert Holmes. Do you like pina colada and eating scraps from a bin? Then it's carols from Newby Hall in Clifton, Away in a Manger, where kids from around the

country prattle on about the nativity. Followed by a Christmas morning family service from the Mint Methodist Church in Exeter. Next door to the Skill Synagogue. After the weather with Michael Fish, it's The Little Convict.

A cartoon about how Australia was populated by crims starring Rolf Harris. That's followed by Ziggy's Gift, where the American comic strip character that means nothing to British people takes a job as a street Santa. After a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it's The Glitter Ball, the 1977 Children's Film Foundation picture, which is essentially E.T. five years before the event, but with a massive ball

bearing instead. BBC Two has stayed in bed reading annuals and ripping through a selection box until 2pm, where they give us a repeat of Nobody Minded the Rain, the story of the preparation and execution of the Queen's coronation 30 years ago. Ugh, Nobody Minded the Rain.

Yeah, they should have called it We All Got Pissed On. She was in a carriage made out of gold in a £600 billion hat. ITV kicks off at 7am with Rubber Dub Tub's Christmas special with special guests Michelle Detriest, Bonnie Langford and Edward Woodward what's the fucking equaliser doing on that he had a

little side career as a family variety, have you never seen the Edward Woodward hour it's worth a look it's his variety show where he like he does a bit of singing, introduces a few acts. Then he cleans the street. Yeah, he's a bit more convincing cracking bones than cracking jokes, I have to say.

After that, it's Christmas with TV AM, where Anne Diamond, Nick Owen, Richard Keyes, Wincy Willis and Mad Lizzy pretend to have a party, while Chris Tarrant bothers the residents of a children's hospital and Cardinal Basil Hume pitches up with a thought for Christmas. I thought you were going to say Cardinal Basil Brush. I'm going mad. After Roland's winter wonderland, where the Johnny-eared rodent and his mates piss about in a ski hut,

it's the night the animals talked. The Sammy Kahn parable about the nativity from the donkey's point of view. Then it's a five-minute preview of ITV's next big kids show, The Fraggles Are Coming. Taylor! You're quite excited about that weren't you Taylor no I was just excited recently they found all the missing episodes of Fraggle Rock

yes so happy about that of course for celebration that and the vaccine the other thing is even better than that the missing scene from the Muppet Christmas Carol that was taken out because they thought it was either too sad for children...

Because of nudity! God, you people are... Honestly, you people are terrible. No, the missing scene, which is... They didn't have the original tape of it because they chucked it because they figured it was either too sad or too boring for children because Scrooge's girlfriend sings a song to him basically dumping him because he's awful and he's got all his priorities wrong.

What was she going out with him for in the first place then? Yeah, you'd think she would have figured it out. Well, you can't always tell with people, can you? And then you get all invested and then it turns out they're a legendary miser. But yeah, so it's that and it lasts. It's like a 10-minute scene or something and they took it out. But the thing is it has to be in lasts so it's like a 10 minute scene or something and they took it out but the thing is it has to be in there because then there's a reprise at the end there's a really heartbreaking and heart-lifting song at the end it's the same song but with

different lyrics the song is called uh when love is gone or the love is gone and then at the end it's the love we found oh bless the love we found we Found. We keep it with us so we're never quite alone. And you need it. And children don't mind sad stuff. I always lapped up the sad stuff. Anyway, they found that. They found the original tape. They're going to restore it for a new edition.

And happy fucking days. You know, God is in his heaven, et cetera. Give us the vaccine. After that, it's Messengers to Earth. Another nativity parable, but this time set in space or summer i don't know then it's even more christmas morning worshiper how much do you need to be fucking worshipped baby jesus god in god's sake he's god's a bit like donald trump you know what i mean yeah you just you have to just keep telling him how great he is or he'll fucking kill you. Yeah. Then it's the magic planet

where an astronaut lands on a planet, falls in love with its queen and then rescues her from a kidnap attempt. And it's all on ice. After that, it's the capture of Grizzly Adams, the film version of the Beardy Loner TV show. And they've just started the Royal Year, where we get to see all the countries that the royal family have ponced about in

off our taxes. Channel 4 starts at 10.30 with a Christmas oratorio from Vienna that goes on for two and three quarter hours and then bungs on the gangs all here. The 1943 Busby Barclay, Alice Faye and Karma Miranda musical, which was banned in Brazil due to a 60-woman chorus line being very suggestive while they waved about some massive bananas. Yeah, Christmas morning telly's not that, is it, this year?

Apparently not, no. Yeah, well, they're just assuming no-one's watching at that time of day isn't it yeah telly is for the afternoon really it's when you're sitting there and you can't that you can't move and you just have to sit there and try attempt to digest what you've so foolishly crammed into your face and yeah just put whatever the fuck on the telly yeah you just look at this and it's like look let's get the religious shit out the way as soon as possible because the main

events about to happen, which is the Christmas top of the pops. And I do believe we shall attend to that in the next episode. So for now, you know, go off and get yourself some nibbles and I'll talk to you soon, but thank you very much. Taylor parks.

All right. See you soon, Sarah. See you in a bit. My name's I'll need them. Stay pop craze.wise, don't you? Chart music. GreatBigOwl.com

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