Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #59 (Part 3): 3.7.1986 – It’s ‘Orrible Being A Slave On War Orphan Farm

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a proper evisceration of a mid-’86 TOTP, only to talk about what a ball-ache making covermounted videos for British grot mags was in the Nineties, how horribly grim girls comics of the Seventies were, and examine the aftermath of the Bucks Fizz coach crash…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, I'm Scott Hancock and I host From Queer to Eternity, a new podcast exploring what it means to be queer, where we have conversations like this. I look at younger generations and go, you can just Google this stuff. The fact that the only mention of queerness was don't get AIDS. If I'd been marrying a girl, that would not have happened. Maybe we can find a universality that we weren't aware of before. That's why this podcast is so great, because actually, I guess we just don't think to speak of this stuff,

and yet it's part of our fabric. From Queer to Eternity, available to listen to now from the Great Big Owl Company. 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. Hey, you pub-pop crazy youngsters, and welcome to part three of episode 59 of Chart Music. I'm your host, Al Needham. I'm still here with Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parks. We're not going to fanny about. We're going to rejoin the episode of Top of the Pops in progress.

It's Gary Newell and I can't stop. Has Martin's my biggest fans. Okay, cut the joke, lads. Over here, Samantha Fox, who's gone up 12 places this week to number 12, and do ya, do ya want to please me? We swing back to all night on the balcony with three of the House Martins, minus Hugh Whittaker, who's probably breaking down his drum kit or hasn't been allowed to be seen in his on the unemployed t-shirt again and a bloke holding up a London Nil Hall 4 scarf. As Janice introduces the next act while the Housemartins do rabbit ears on her

the bloke in the scarf starts gurning a Norman Cook and Stan Cullimore grimace and give the thumbs down to Samantha Fox and her latest single, Do Ya Do Ya Wanna Please Me? Born in Milan in 1966, Samantha Fox was a singer who formed her first group at school at the age of 14 and a student at the Anna Shear Theatre School. When she turned 16, she signed to Lamborghini Records, and under the name SFX, she recorded Rocking With My Radio, a cover version of the 1981 French Europop singer Leslie

Jane's single. In the same year, her mother entered photos of her to the Sunday People's Amateur Modelling Contest Girl of the Year. Out of 20,000 000 entrants she was selected as the winner by the editor but when he solicited opinions from the female members of the paper she was downgraded to second place for being too mammalian after her dad packed him working as a carpenter to manage her career her parents gave their consent to post topless and she was signed to a four-year contract to the sun and on february the 22nd 1983 a nation of van drivers opened the sun saw the headline sam 16 quits a levels for ooh levels slapped the back of their necks and went before violently masturbating into an empty ginsters packet that was on the dashboard by the spring of 1986 she'd become page three girl of

the year three years in a row and had her breasts insured by lloyds of london for a quarter of a million pounds was reportedly earning five grand a week was planning to buy a house two doors away from Margaret Thatcher, was lined up in a park for a new soap opera about posh people who get servant girls pregnant, and had become Danny Baker's replacement in LWT's The Six O'Clock Show, where she did an Esther Ransom

and interviewed the general public. Hang on a minute. She was going to buy a house two doors down from Margaret Thatcher? What, like number 12 Downing Street? No, no, no, no. Margaret Thatcher had bought a big baritone somewhere for her retirement. Oh, right. And Sam Fox bought one too.

Well, he was going to. Right. That's what the son said anyway, so. Yeah, it must be true. But the call of the recording studio was too much, and she signed a deal with Jive Records and put out the single, Touch Me, I Want Your Body.

Hyped up relentlessly by the son, it entered the chart at number 22 in late March of this year, and then soared to number four the next week, eventually getting to number three over here and becoming number one in Australia, Canada, Finland and Switzerland. This is the follow-up and the second cut from the debut LP Touchmare which comes out next Monday. It entered the chart last week at number 24 and this week it soared 12 places to number 12 and here's saucy sam in the studio backed up by the hanoi rock spin-off band the cherry bombs featuring

former sham 69 bassist dave tragunner and terry chimes formerly of the clash on drums oh so yeah that intro they try and do a joke which it's fair to say uh janice doesn't she doesn't really nail the punch line quite the way a professional comic might and i i'm just unnerved why the drummer's not there like he's off sharpening i mean the thumbs down gestures from norm Cook and Stan Cuddemore, it seems massively off from the house mods. It's a bit disparaging, but it is worth remembering that only recently, Gary Boshill of The Sun has written an article entitled House Full of Hate,

which had been called from various music paper interviews, which alleged that they wanted to assassinate the Queen, give free guns to women and it also revealed that Norman Cook's real name was Quentin and he came from Ryegate. I see. Bush will also claim that Norman Cook was gay which rather upset Cook's fiancée at the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the same time, Samantha Fox had told The Sun that she would only enter their new offices in whopping which was surrounded by razor wire and surrounded by pickets in a tank which encouraged the paper to do a photo shoot of her crossing the picket line in an armored staff car wearing a tin helmet so in the eyes of the house martins samantha fox is essentially kelvin mckenzie with tits yeah i forgot that explains it so yes three middle-aged men talking about page three girls of the 80s this is gonna go down well

isn't it let's get the finn bar saunders stuff out of the way samantha fox absolutely fucking massive in 1986 yeah oh yeah in the papers every day even when she had a top on everyone had an opinion on her and her own opinion was sought on every single issue of the day she was on the cover of the mirror the day after the world cup quarterfinal between england and argentina uh under the headline we was really robbed as england fans suffered last night, many British stars shared their misery. And Samantha Fox had eyes for only one man as she watched at home with her family. Diego Maradona is a brilliant player, she sighed. But when I saw the replay of the first goal, I thought it was definitely handball.

Tonight, I just feel let down. That article goes on to say that Ernie Wise said that that Belladonna fellow did his job well. He really put England to sleep. Roy Hattese claimed that England were hypnotised by Maradona and Tommy still cried at his own party at the injustice of it all. Oh, Maradona, you bastard. It's easy to forget that round about this time,

Sam Fox was a bit like a national working class mascot. You know? Yes. It was like she was painted onto the fuselage of a collective mental B-52 bomber. You know what I mean? Like the nation's favourite. I mean, of course, she had her knockers.

I promised myself I wasn't going to say that. I looked myself in the mirror this morning and said, don't say that. Not only riding high in the pop charts, but also in the computer games charts. Apparently this week, her video game, Samantha Fox Strip Poker poker is being ported over from the spectrum where it's been number one for ages over to the commodore 64 did you ever play

that game oh that's interesting because my mate who had a commodore 64 i've mentioned before used to make samurai swords and listen to venom a lot yes he was the one who had he had a scrapbook he kept to page three models at this time, you know, which mainly contained the big three, which I'm guessing is, I mean, it was Fox, it was Lissardi,

and it was Whittaker. And he favoured Whittaker. So as you can imagine, he was delighted in 87 when Maria Whittaker appeared on the cover of Barbarian, the Ultimate Warrior. Yes. Along with Wolfram Gladiators.

And then they appeared again in Barbarian 2, the Dungeon of Drax. Yeah, even with her factorism, I always got on with Fox, to be honest with you. I liked her from the off. Perhaps down to her Smash Hits singles reviews. Yes. They were hilarious when she reviewed the fall and the smiths and that and took the piss she always struck me as a good soul i think quite incisive and funny when she talks about music and just keen to go as far as she could with what she

had because the roots out of page three are pretty limited but um she went as far as she could yeah she's announced earlier this month that she's retiring from Page 3 which was a load of bollocks because she still had a year left on her contract but, you know, she was told by her mam who used to be a dancer on Ready Steady Go that you've only got until you're 21 before gravity takes over

so, yeah, you better find a way out which is usually, you know, opening a beauty salon or a dance studio. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to her credit, right, it's a big leap from, yeah, lobbing your bristles out in the tabloid press to singing and dancing and doing rock things with the mic stand. But she does come across on this performance like a proper trained front person.

Obviously, she's got the experience of being in a band, which was her initial ambition before Page Three came a-knocking. The narrative of the song is really about sexual stamina and at least it gives her more of a sense of agency and empowerment than Touch Me did. Because Touch Me, it's easy to forget what Touch Me is like lyrically. Yes. Yeah, I wonder when this was going to come up.

Yeah, like a tramp in the night, I was begging you to treat my body like you wanted to it's not exactly um empowered stuff yeah she's moved on from sex vagrancy like you've said neil she's no stranger to the pop game but she's trying to position herself as smash hits would say a vixtress yes absolutely and dabbling with the leather fringes of rock. Yes. I mean, in that Melody Maker interview that that bloke was slagging off in the letters page, she laid out her credentials to Carol Clark, claiming that her first gig was seeing InfoRioter to CND benefit. And she saw the stranglers at the Rainbow.

She used to have posters of Jimmy Percy on her bedroom wall. And she's best mates with Lemmy. The article, of course, was called Tickle Tackle. Carol Clark used to bring strange people into the Melody Maker. You know, and this is why you'd get, I don't know, a mad Frankie phrase for reviewing the singles one week. Because Carol Clark just bumped into him

in a pub and played around and stuff. So, yeah. And I'm guessing it was Carol Clark that actually brought Sam Fox into the fold-up melody maker a little bit but that leather and lace thing you mentioned that kind of that lita ford slash lisa dominique look yeah is very much something that sam fox is going for at this point yeah suzy quattro of the 80s yeah and a record company have totally surrounded her with

that style unfortunately here they've not really given her a memorable song because this is barely music really and in an era of appalling guitar solos the one on this that manages to combine um sort of chuck berry and ingway mouse steam in ways no one wants or needs to hear is really one of the most ridiculous things you've ever heard but i don't think it really matters whether it's a good song. And that's kind of etched in Fox's eyes too in this performance. It's all about going for the gusto, putting it across. And she does it. I think she does it really well as well. Do you think she would have been better served trying

to be a bit more Euro-pop as she was in the beginning? Potentially. That could have been disastrous though. I mean, she absolutely couldn't be. Because physically, I'm not saying she resembles her facially or anything, but in terms of body type, she could have been a Paula Abdul or something. But no, I think she was right to go this way.

I think that was where her natural musical inclinations would have gone. So perhaps they should have given her the kind of songs they were giving Bonnie Tyler at this point, maybe. But I don't know whether she's exactly got the pipes needed to needed to do this yeah she can't sing a note that's the trouble yeah this is it see the thing is i think the problem like she's a rock fan so they thought they'll give her a rock song yeah the trouble is the people in charge of this record writers and producers have decided well you know we've got to go raunchy because that's there's no other option right and of course that's raunchy in this mid to late 80s sense of like soft metal wristbands and mullets and like the sort of music that might be playing in a dean street clip joint

at lunchtime you know what i mean and and it means sam has to do all these growly throaty sort of like back of the sunday papers sex chat line uh vocal bits you know yeah and of course it's a huge misfire because the whole point of sam fox the reason why people or the reason why the people who liked her liked her was that she wasn't raunchy and American and fierce and assertive. She was a chirpy cockney sparrow who was all smiley and bubbly and like an everyday person and best mates with her mum. And she was sort of unchallenging in all the ways that a certain kind of bloke appreciates, right?

Like she was small and young and she didn't come across as, you know, especially clever or difficult or troublesome. And she had that air of like brassy Britishness like most of the other great British bombshells, you know, like Barbara Windsor. She'd go, all right, and not be remotely slinky or erotic in her manner, that was the whole appeal it's like

the combination of that and the exposed boobs as they used to call them and that's all you know slightly smoky eyes right which was just enough sexual signifiers for the great british public because the great british public are obsessed with sex but at least in those days not comfortable with anything serious right any version of sexuality where you can't just grin and nudge the bloke next to you in the ribs you know and that's what sam fox was it's not sex it's slap and tickle in it yes i mean we need to talk about this a bit. And I'm sorry to go on, but this is like my non-existent dissertation topic. So forgive me if I go on a bit here. But in the 80s, the general perception in this country was the actual representations of sex,

and specifically the fundamental seriousness of sex like eg images of actual human copulation were somehow tainted with a terrifying darkness right like those people's objection to anything that was sexually explicit it wasn't like they weren't worried about the the ethics of pornography or the nature of the sex industry or or anything like that it was the the problem was the fundamental obscenity of an essential human truth right as if it was like shit yeah or dead bodies, and it had to be kept away from us for reasons of public health. You know, like, you could talk about it, you could joke about it,

but you couldn't ever look into its eyes or wherever, or you might lose your soul, you know. And that censorship is what forced British representations of sex down the one acceptable, available channel of comedy. Like the tradition of blue jokes and music hall and, you know. So by 1986, most male adults' experience of growing up and the sexual imagery that they had experienced was like

20 dirty mags and and calendar girls and page three where it's just women presented as motionless objects uh and 80 on the buses um and this is how britain wasverted, and you ended up with this degraded and defused national sexuality where people were sort of expected to come and cackle simultaneously. You know? I didn't come just then. No, I'm pleased to hear it. Actually, I'm not pleased to hear it at all. You should be enjoying this more.

But that negation of the deeper and more serious aspects of sexuality also has serious consequences in other ways which are sometimes a bit darker you know and it's like my problem with page three like i mean regardless of any other problems anyone might have with page three what always creeped me out was the stillness of it um which is like a stillness the only possible response to which is objectification because it's obviously all still photographs are still but the odd mute stillness of page three always felt like a hangover from the 1950s, where the Lord Chamberlain decreed that you could have nude or nearly nude girls on stage at the Windmill Theatre, provided they didn't move.

They could only form like a creepy tableau and freeze because anything else was too sexually suggestive. Of course, the ironic thing is that in 1950s Britain, keeping perfectly still was probably much more suggestive of most people's actual experience of sex than if they'd let them move about a bit. But how creepy is that? It's like, oh, no, all right, it's okay

as long as you don't look like you're alive. Yeah. Or that you have any agency at all. So, I mean, people fret rightly about young lads these days watching internet porn, a lot of which is quite extreme and is really for experienced and slightly jaded adults. It's not a helpful educational tool for 14-year-old boys. But in a way, this kind of thing was worse for young people's development,

including the ideas that it instilled about female sexuality and sexuality in general, right? Because all that chortling really obscured the fact that sex is playing with fire, both in a good and a bad way. And that's an important thing to be aware of. That's important knowledge. That's a kind of uniquely British thing that you're talking about, isn't it? And I wonder if there was ever a time when it wasn't thus in Britain.

Yeah, I don't know. Because if you look at representations of sex from the old, old days, before this kind of prudish attitude took hold, it's still jokey and bawdy. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So it may just be that that's just a natural fit for the British psyche. But the fusion of that and moralism and censorship,

really unpleasant. The fact that it dovetails perfectly with a hatred of queer stuff and alternative sexuality of any kind. It's just a horrible, horrible, destructive thing. The poison of that is still in the British sexual bloodstream, as it were. It's a very British thing, because you can't even say it's a northern european non-mediterranean thing because i mean look at the countries that share our lines of latitude if you will and and they're not remotely yeah correct correct all the other protestant

north european countries are completely like to the point of being blasé about sex you know it's like they don't really have a concept of the dirty or the naughty because for them sex is like a you know it's just a healthy thing like eating carrots you know it's just what you do yeah in a way that's quite bad as well i think because you know because because i'm british it's like we have that dirtiness that that concept of filth is a good thing. It's just like a lot of good things. It only exists because of a lot of terrible things that have happened in the past. Yeah.

So, chaps, let's fast forward to 1997. And I'm in my last few days at Dickie Desmond's Wank Factory. I'm a freelancer by now, so I'm doing anything to cover my arse. And they're giving me this job where I had to make cover-mounted grot videos for their wank mags. And that involved me in a Television X video suite from about

10 o'clock at night right through to the morning with a big stack of electric blues having to lash them together into compilations. Now, nowadays due to technology and uh more liberalized um censorship rules uh i could piss that out my arse but it's 1997 so i'm on the old school reel-to-reel suites and i'm under the heaviest of manners from the bbfc so i've been told that there's to be no gratuitous fan air uh no No arseholes and no diddling. And I just thought, well, yeah, fair enough.

Electric blues, they're softer than cow shit. What's the problem? And they said, no, you don't understand. They can't even look as if they're about to touch their fannies. If their hands pass within two feet over their groin, you've got to cut it out. So I've spent an entire night looking at 80s women with hairdos like Wicicker lampshades rolling about

and pulling faces like dead horses just screaming at the screens going no don't touch your fan oh fucking hell so by about 6am I've fucked off with this shit job so I go to the kitchen and have a cough there trying you know wake me

up a bit now I'm supposed to be the only person in this building apart from the security guard, but as I'm walking down to the kitchen, I see this woman and she's hunched up on the floor up against the wall like Michael Jackson in that drawing in the history booklet. And it's Samantha Fox.

It's Samantha fucking Fox. What the fuck? She's sat there trying to look as small as possible, and she looks like the whole fucking world is on her shoulders. Yeah. I mean, fuck knows what she was doing there. I'm guessing she was waiting for a meeting with the controller of Television X to try and get some work.

And I just said the first thing that came into my head, which was, Oh, hey, Sam, how are you? Do you want a cup of tea? And she said, No, thanks. And I and I said oh all right and take care doc and I go into the kitchen oh my god now I'd love to be able to sit here and say that I did go over with a mug of tea and said come on Sam let's you know let's go and sit on

the balcony and share our problems but she clearly didn't want to be bothered particularly by the likes of me so I just ended up peeking through the window of the door to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. And even today, I think, you know what, did I imagine that? Did the fucking seat ladder show Waddy Waddy come cartwheeling down the corridor as well? That's chilling. That's Force's sweetheart. Oh, man.

Isn't it? I felt so sorry for her, but I couldn't say anything. I couldn't do anything. That's a genuinely sad story, though. It is. It is. Yeah. I mean, who'd have thought when you saw her crushing through the picket line in an armoured truck with a fucking crash helmet on,

you'd go, you know, I'm going to feel really bad for that woman one day. You go, you know, I'm going to feel really bad for that woman one day. But to finish what I started off saying and then got waylaid for about 10 minutes on my fucking obby horse, the problem with this record and this performance is that Sam Fox, the pin-up personality, and Sam Fox, the person, both of whom were about this cheery, you know, shitty work stand, that cafe kind of thumbs up cheekiness,

have been handed this great wobbling slab of uncooked raunch. And she's expected to somehow deliver it convincingly because, despite what I was saying before, pop music was one area where british people were allowed to let loose a little bit more yeah with expressions of desire and sexuality especially post madonna you know it was even women were allowed to do it post madonna right so the obvious logic is all right we're writing a song for this girl She's a topless model and blokes fancier. So automatically they go for this kind of,

give me what I want. Can you please me right now? And, of course, Sam Fox is no better suited to delivering a song like that than Sue Pollard would have been. Yes. Because that's not what her sex appeal was, even to the people who loved her. She was more like a seaside postcard or Ivor Biggin, you know, or those Bob Godfrey cartoons about the Karma Sutra

that they used to project at rugby club piss-ups. It was on OTT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't fit with any actual representation of human desire that stuff even the ludicrously stylized representation of human desire that you get in a a grim-faced hip grinding piece of crap sex song like this right it's just it's the wrong song for her and the fact that nobody at any point thought yeah it just doesn't look convincing does it just goes to show that like just really low levels of care and attention be given to this record i know she doesn't put the song across totally convincingly because it's a fuck awful

song i have to say her mic work her swinging of the stand etc she's not a bad front woman of a rock band but yeah the song does her no favors whatsoever no yeah it's like if uh sisters of the moon by fleetwood mac had just come down off a three-day codeine binge like horrifically constipated and woosily unsure of itself and if i was to say to you that a former member of The Clash is on this 1986 episode of Top of the Pops, you'd have thought, oh, big audio dynamite. Yeah, yeah. But no, it's Tory Crimes himself.

I bet Joe Strummer was well fucked off about that. I was really surprised when you said it's an actual band. I thought it was like just a stupid pretend band. Yeah, I said it all. With Wayne out I thought it was like just a stupid pretend band. Yeah, I said it all. With Wayne out of Alvides ain't pet on guitar. They look like someone sent them off with a stylist to get togged up, but they only got as far as one of those little denim shops that you used to get in the shopping centre in provincial town.

You know, like called something like Jean Pool or a denim dungeon or the fancy look or something and the only one who doesn't look like that is tory crimes who looks like he's murdered someone and he's now trying to flee the country but he's got to appear on top of the pops first yeah well it's just weird in i mean in this period of pop it's very much the case that american ideas are very much dominating yes a lot of things if if things aren't directly inspired by black american pop or by european dance music then what they tend to sound like is very much in hock to this kind of american aor kind of sound and this this is the years of fucking cunts like jonathan king getting the american charts on top of the box, kind of coming home to roost a little bit.

That sound is just fucking everywhere. If you can't be, in a sense, if you're not going to engage with what is truly modern in this era, then you're going to sound like this. And it's in a weird way. I'm not saying it's the same, but it's similar to the Gary Neumann song that we've just heard in in that you've been a big ugly guitar solo big pointy headstocks there's nowhere else for rock to go at this point

if it wants to be popular anyway well the thing is if you want to hear sam fox tackling other musical styles the afterlife of her pop career did involve her tackling other musical styles she did get a bit euro pop again um but i suggest you listen to the only really interesting sam fox record which is a 1991 single hurt me hurt me brackets but the pants stay on yes um which is a force is a full force track yeah but with her vocal what's weird about that one even though it's from loved up 1991 it's yet another of those 80s anti-sex anthems and it's full of all these quite un-sisterly lyrics like now you know this girl ain't no hoe. Because it's never enough just to say no thanks, end of story. You know, it's always necessary to imply that anyone who values sex for its own sake or just as an antidote to alienation is subhuman and degraded and morally inferior and must be spoken spoken to sternly it's the anglo-american 80s still living on but it feels really natural when you listen to that in context because it's

like the smiley bangers and mash sex bomb has had to become the opposite of that because it's as if the immense power and even more immense powerlessness that sam fox never really asked for and never expected i presume and didn't particularly seem to enjoy it it feels like that's left us cynical and closed in that song right you know right which is hardly surprising like because it's like in the same way that in real life, it was completely unsurprising when you read in the paper, oh, she's now in a long-term lesbian relationship, right? Now, I'm not suggesting that that was caused by her being the object of the British public's snuffling attentions,

because it doesn't work like that. But all I'm saying is, if that had been me, I would probably never have wanted to look at a man ever again as long as I lived. Maybe that's why she looked away from me in the back corridor. Like, no, Sam, I've seen enough tits. I've been looking at tits all night, don't worry. I just want to look at a calendar with some kittens on it now

so the following week do you do you wanna please me nipped up two places to number 10 thank god i didn't say nippled it's highest position and due to the hanoi rocks connection it would get to number one in finland later this month as mentioned in chart music number 24, Fox was invited by Hamburger SV to perform during their pre-season friendly with Liverpool in an attempt to quell any threats of football hooliganism.

Article in the Liverpool Echo, Sam's fans in bust-up. Samantha Fox introduced a new dimension to a football match last night and then had to be rescued from her fans in dramatic fashion in the arms of a burly bodyguard. Sexy Sam's gyrating antics in a tight black leather outfit brought a group of fans surging over the barrier and onto the pitch.

They surrounded her as she leapt about screaming, Touch me! Touch me! The tiny figure with the giant assets suddenly looked very vulnerable as she belted out the words of her song, and her father, standing protectively in front of her, had to fend off the fans as they tried to claim a very personal autograph. The bodyguard signalled that enough was enough and one of them whisked her up in his arms.

Her dad turned out to be a right cunt, didn't he? This is Britney Spears before Britney Spears, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much shades of Apocalypse Now in this story. Yes, yes. The follow-up, Hold On Tight, got to number 26 for two weeks in September of this year, but she'd close out 1986 with I'm All You Need

stalling at number 41 in December. She roared back in May of 1987 when she teamed up with Stock Aitken and Waterman and took Nothing's Gonna Stop Me to number eight and would have four more top 40 hits across the latter half of the 80s. Good on her. Yeah.

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. That's Unboxed this week at number 12. We shall meander through the top 40 right now. And it's a chart entry at number 40. It's Haywood with Roses.

And a chart entry at 39, The Promise You Made from Cock Robin. Steve Wynwood, Higher Love, that's a chart entry at 38. And Billy Bragg with Levi's Stubs Tears, a chart entry at 37. Jump Back, Set Me Free, Dar Braxton, down to 36. And the highest chart entry, it's Left of Centre, Suzanne Vega at 35. Down to number 34 The Teacher Big Country and Jackie Graham

with Set Me Free down to 33 On My Own from Patti LaBelle and Michael MacDonald is down to 32 and down to 31 Invisible Touch

from Genesis Opportunities let's make lots of money it's the Pet Shop Boys, down to 30. And up to 29, it's Brilliant Mind from Furniture. Mid-Yore and Call of the Wild, down to 28. And up to 27, I Can't Stop from Gary Newman. Paranoia, Art of Noise with Max Headroom, up to 26. And Bowie with Underground, down to 25. Down to 24 this week, Vienna Calling and Folco.

And up to 23, Let's Go All The Way, it's live on. Peter Gabriel, Sledgehammer, down to number 22. And Nasty, Janet Jackson, down to 21. Miami Sound Machine with Bad Boy are down to number 20. And up to 19, it's horrible being in love when you're eight and a half, Claire and Friends. The real rock stang, bang, zoom, let's go, go, up to number 18. And up to number 17, it's headlines for Midnight Star. Addicted to love, it's Robert Palmer, down to 16.

And holding back the years, Robert Palmer, down to 16. And Holding Back the Years, Simply Red, down to 15. Staying at 14 this week, it's Queen of Friends Will Be Friends. And Amityville, from Love Bug Starsky, down to 30.

Up to 12, it's Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Please Me, it's Samantha Fox. And The Real Thing, Can't Get By Without You, stays at number 11. Do ya, do ya, wanna please me? It's Samantha Fox. And the real thing can't get by without you. Stays at number 11. We do the top 10 business in a moment.

I was a late developer, didn't fall in love until I was 16. But at number 19, Claire and Friends. Very experienced. It's horrible being in love when you're eight and a half. You are, you are. You are, you are. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Janice, sat in front of the video screen which sports the Top 40 logo, breaks down the chart from 40 all the way down to 11, which presumably marks the beginning of the charts being an inconvenience

that need to be got out of the way as soon as possible, I contend. What's jumping out there for you chaps? Well, none of the photos. Nothing really, is there? Because they're all fucking boring. I mean, as usual with the chart run down, if I'd have been watching it in 86, I'd have been bellyaching about the songs

that haven't made the cut to be on this episode. Namely, you know, Haywood, Roses, is in at 40. I'd probably want to see the sledgehammer video again nasty by janet jackson's in there robert palmer love bug starsky so there's some great singles in there um none of which make the cut and also noticed furniture in there who i believe included uh our future reviews editor taylor am i right is that it's the same gym yeah of course yeah it is yeah yeah the man without whom we might have made a positive contribution to the world.

The only things that jumped out for me was Patti LaBelle being pronounced Patti La Space Belle and Suzanne Vega being the highest new entry at number 35. What a vibrant go-ahead chart this is. Vega being the highest new entry at number 35. What a vibrant go-ahead chart this is. Janice tells us that she didn't become awakened until she was 16, possibly by Emlyn Hughes, but I wouldn't like to speculate. But the next act are far more advanced.

It's Claire and friends with It's Horrible Being In Love When You're Eight and a Half. Born in Stockport in 1977 Claire Usher was one year old when her oldest sister scaled the heights of Pop Mountain as one of the kids backing up Brian and Michael on Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs which got to number one for three weeks in 1978. Two years later one of her other sisters and brothers were part of the St. Winifred School Choir, which became the Christmas number one of 1980. Earlier this year, Brian and Michael, otherwise known as Kevin Parrott and Mick Coleman, picked out Claire, who was now a pupil at St. Winifred's, to record a demo of this song, which was submitted to a talent competition held by Shakin' Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore.

And out of over 1,000 entries, it won. Usher was immediately signed to BBC Records, and the song was rushed out as a single. It entered the top 40 at number 38 a fortnight ago, and after being aided by myriad TV appearances including Wogan, pushed out as a single. It entered the top 40 at number 38 a fortnight ago, and after being aided by myriad TV appearances, including Wogan, it jumped 12 places to number 26. And this week, it's up five places to number 19,

warranting Claire and her titular companions a shot on the top of the pop stage. First question, chaps, is this the last in the line of the kiddie pop acts? I can't think of any that came after this. No, I can't. I mean, I think in terms of British ones, certainly. As the 90s happened and the noughties happened, that entire sort of area of things

got taken over by the fucking Disney Channel, basically. And, you know no i can't think of one from the uk even up to the point of x fact not x factor that you know things like britain's got talent what you got there is you know in contrast to this particular child star you just get a load of you know ruthlessly in the bonnie langford mole of being adults in kids bodies you know but this kind of gauche kind of kid star no there isn't another one after this i mean we're about three years removed from the mini pops which pulled people up and made them question the wisdom of dressing up six-year-old

girls as banana rama and getting them to sing i like the way he turns me on but this on the surface at least is is far less sinister isn't it on the surface well have a look at the lyrics fucking hell the girl's a psychopath oh man the lyrics you know it the biggest of all my dreams is to hurry into my teens i put my mum's high heels on yesterday so you see i'm growing up in every way innocent enough i guess yeah thing is it's like davey jones isn't it really that's what it's i mean aside from the fact that it looks like him like same accent same height same haircut but also the song is a lot like, you know, Years ago I knew a man Here is me mother's biggest fan Except that that was written by Harry Nilsson.

So there is at least some melodic interest. Whereas this is written by Michael out of Brian and Michael. So it just gets straight on a rail once round exactly where he expects it to go and back again. And that's the worst thing about it really the fact that this won a saturday superstore talent competition yeah it's all mike reed's fault despite having been written by a professional songwriter yes and sung by a pupil of a school which had already had two uk number one hits. The whole thing stinks. Yes.

Let's face facts. I'm only surprised B.A. Robertson didn't win that competition. And then, like, turn up to collect his prize in shorts and a school cap, you know. Yeah. Oh, it's A.B. Robinson. Yeah. B.A., you cheated.

This is a competition for children. Ah, well, let me tell you something. Nice guys finish last. But, I mean, either the whole thing stinks or it just tells you something about what all the genuine entries were like. Yes. Which is also a possibility. Like, we can't let any of those win

or this store will lose all credibility in the eyes of its customers what a shame they've been lost in a way they could have been the great outsider music discovery of our age you know like the shags or something what would i pay for a huge carrier bag full of all those tapes yes but of course the split second that this record was released the top of the pops appearance was grimly inevitable like partly just because it's on bbc records but also because it hits all those targets like a novelty record uh little kids uh routine to act out in front of the audience and most importantly it's not something teenagers and young adults would like. Yeah, yeah.

And therefore it gets fast-tracked onto the show because stuff that teenagers and young adults like was never allowed to dominate Top of the Pops if it could be helped. Yeah, I mean, Top of the Pops has long had to give up its plans on being a family show, but as this is a total BBC confection it's going on whether they like it or not

Michael Earl's got no say but you do feel Michael Earl kind of wants it on. Well I mean even unaware as I was at the time of the kind of behind the scenes machinations there is this feeling now and then that the BBC want a record in the charts and they'd exploit any opportunity they could

to showcase this particular one. So it's not just Top of the Pops, is it? It's fucking Blue Peter and everything else that has to suffer this. I mean, Claire Usher has bagged a double-page spread in this week's Smash It. It's looking exceptionally moody on some waste ground outside her school, giving off every

indication that she's a bit embarrassed by all this palaver already. Is that the one that ends with uh are you full of chocolate yes she sees a um a cabaret's lorry going down the street and just runs off after it yeah shouting are you full of chocolate is my weird photographic memory for old smash yeah and she tells tom hibbert that she's already having the song sung at her in a disparaging way by boys at her school. She knows that girl who sang the lead on, there's no one quite like Grandma,

is still hanging about the school. And her life's been made hell by people singing that song. And she's worried that she's going to get that for the rest of her life. And she wants to give all her royalties to handicapped children. So very much the spirit of 1986 living in this girl but she looks kind of moody in this performance to be fair it's yes kind of joylessly mechanical isn't it and there's that bizarre bit at the end as well what the fuck is with her closing pose where she crosses the arms at her arms over a chest like a gunslinger propped up outside a saloon as a warning or some kind of

holy relic. It's a really weird fucking ending to this performance. But the thing is, even when St. Winifred's Choir had their hit as a kid, their age of course, I mean, I wasn't close to their age then. Even then, I hated them. By this point,

at the age of 14, this shit was like, this was just beneath my contempt. I would have walked out of the room, I would have got myself a bag of Wotsits, proper claggy Wotsits, finger-staining Wotsits before the foil freshers started taking over that ruined Ringo's and Monster Munch, etc. And that's what I would have done.

I would have stood in the kitchen eating Wotsits as a protest against this even being on top of the pops. This would have mildly irritated me at the time. Not very much. I mean, I quite like her because she's not sailing on the good ship lollipop. No. You know what I mean? No, I like her as well.

She's not really like that. Yeah. But. If she was my kid, she could have all the fish fingers she wanted. But it would have boiled my blood if I'd been eight or nine yes myself yeah because i was quite a weird bolshie preteen and i used to get very angry whenever i perceived that adults were using children as puppets yeah and treating them as idiots you know or creatures that are only there for adult amusement right yeah sort of or exploitation i was a bit sort of kids lib you know what i mean and i

particularly hated kids what was that that was in the till death is due part film wasn't it i can't remember yeah he's stumbling back from the pub and there's some teenagers snogging and he has a go at them and the girl just goes, kids live in it! But I particularly hated kids being made to perform their own childishness, not as an expression of their own feelings or their own experience,

but to fit a demeaning stereotype for the amusement of adults. And I was really serious about this. And it's partly, I think, down to being an only child because only children have a different relationship with the adult world because adults are your only contact for 90%, you know, when you're not at school. And possibly a bit to do with being adopted which

can make you hyper conscious of your own identity as a kid and keep it in a unstable sort of state of flux but I think mostly it was down to being a horrible precocious little shit with a grudge against everyone and everything um but just to see this stage set up here with all these kids in the background playing with a skipping rope and playing cards like it was 1928 purely because this record is being marketed to grannies yes it's this is a sort of inside out sort of quasi voyvoyeuristic variation on there's no one quite like grandma, you know. And they're being made to act and speak just a little bit more childishly

than they actually would. Yeah. Bring back those angry feelings. No, you're right, Taylor, because I can tell you right now what's more horrible than being in love when you're eight and off is being nearly 10 like claire rusher is and being forced to sing a song about being in love when you're eight yeah yeah because you know when you're that age if someone said do you want to make a song and go on top of the pop she'd go fucking yes yeah and then they say right okay you've got to sing a song called la la la i like boys let's get married

and have a house and everything when you want to sing a song called La La La, I Like Boys, Let's Get Married and Have a House and everything. When you want to sing songs about real kids issues, like Boys Are Ugh or I Am Skill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not this Rammel. And she don't look happy about it. She don't look happy about it. Yeah, cover of School's Out, thumbs up.

Yes. This, no, no, no. And also, I mean, it's a shit song anyway i mean that's i know that's going to be a controversial thing to say but i mean there are ways of doing this kind of thing a bit more gracefully i mean aside from the basic shitness of the lyrics right like it it's horrible being in love when you're eight and a half got got your picture on me wall, got your name upon me scarf. Yes. Who has someone's name on their scarf?

That isn't Les or Woody. Yeah, yeah. Or unless your name's West Ham United or something. Yes, yes. Or Berbera. Well, it suggests to me that this song was originally written about a crush on a pop star or a celebrity or something and then changed to a classmate.

But he couldn't be bothered to rewrite the main fucking hook line, you know. Just sits there ruining it. The fucking flat-capped, cheating, incompetent. Imagine, though, if you were that age at school and some girl turned up with your name on a scarf oh jesus oh imagine the shit you'd have to take from your peers oh yeah oh go on kiss her kiss her you getting married you're gonna have a baby yeah i'd be taking that shit off my mum never mind my and what's even worse it's got that strange karaoke backing track like if you listen to the actual music on this it's it's the bbc records speciality that sort of synthetic

gray or powder blue uh non-music you know with no form no features and what's worse this is her best song because i i've tracked down a few selections from a solo album which is called super claire yes including a follow-up single uh which was called superman which sounds more like you expect it to than you would ever actually expect it to. And it's, you know, it's completely valueless. It's this record again, but without the gimmickry. And I mean, a more pointless endeavour than that, you'd be hard pushed to even imagine. It's like sugar-free meringue.

You know what I mean? You're just eating a cold egg um and this was the coldest egg of all off the top of my head there's only two kiddie pop singles that this country's ever made that are any good one of them is i am an astronaut by ricky wilde which i mentioned before because it's just just the lyrics about being a kid and just wanting not to be a kid and be anything else but a kid and um babysitters by the stupid babies which was an 11 year old adamska and his five-year-old brother on vocals which was picked up by john peel because of course it was oh god you just reminded me of a great forgotten one which i made single of the week in about

1997 or something in melody maker it was one of those weeks there's no good records out but then i found in the pile this record by these 13 year old kids from uh from bristol they were like 13 year old skate punk kids i remember remember this review. It was fantastic. It was this song about how they hated Britpop. Yeah. And it came on and it went like... And it stops and this kid goes, Britpop is fucking crap.

Why can't anybody see that cockney assholes doing their bit i'm just remembering this off the top of my head brit pop is really shit it fucking was so good i remember you i you gave it single of the week, and I remember wondering whether you'd made it up. I thought, yeah. I couldn't believe it was real. And the publicity shot that came with it was the three of them walking around in like a car park or something,

like waving sticks at the camera and going grrr. These tiny children. Fucking great. I think they were called Headcase. Right, yeah. Was the name of the band. I can't remember what the song was called. But, no, it's so great.

The best bit is where he's like, he does a thing where he goes like, you know, why don't you all fuck off with whatever the line was. And then as the music starts afterwards, just off mic you're him go i mean it oh man anything else to say about this yes because bring it the other thing about this record that annoys me is that i'm not convinced that this is a fair and honest reflection even of prepubescent female psychology of the time. Because lately I've been reading a load of girls' comics from the 70s and 80s, which I've never seen before, even though I had a girlfriend once who assured me

that they were genuinely demented. But that appears to be completely true. When I was a kid, I just assumed it was all fluff about ponies and ballet schools. Yeah, yeah. And it turns out they were all about ponies and ballet schools, but they were about dying ponies and ballet schools that were run as lesbian concentration camps

and stuff like this. I'm fucking astonished and delighted by the sheer horror and darkness of these comics like non-humor boys comics at the time were all about like football and yeah fighting in wars and stuff and it was all situations where young lads lost parental protection and authority and had to survive on their wits you know it was basically different scenarios in which males could battle adversity and prove themselves whereas these girls comics are all full of scenarios where young females could face adversity and suffer and suffer and suffer before maybe eventually they might prevail.

But really that was irrelevant because the meat of it was the torment and the tears. Like practically every single page of every strip in these comics features a young girl being physically assaulted by an adult. It's jaw-dropping when you look at that either systematically or just casually as and if it's not that it's a dog or a horse being hit with a broom handle you know by old nasty old alf in his wellies and flat cut flat like eg in the the very first issue of uh tammy this is from 1971 there's a strip called slaves of war orphan farm whoa what a band name yeah that sounds like a sven hassell book or something but it makes those sven hassell books look like comics for little girls in this story, young Kate,

whose mum and dad have been killed in a Nazi bombing raid, is evacuated, because it's set in the war, obviously, evacuated out to a remote, seemingly idyllic farm in the Lake District, only to discover that it's secretly being run as a slave labor camp uh for the benefit of uh evil matriarch mrs thatcher um who keeps keeps the kids locked in the barn steals all their clothes and sells them and forces them to work for hours on end in a quarry with uh young ned and old benskin standing over them and beating

the shit out of them when they fall down and week by week it just gets grimmer there's a there's one where where kate is trying to save the life of another little girl slave who's tried to escape but she's run straight into the man traps that mrs thatcher has placed in all the neighboring fields and all her foot's been mashed up and mrs t has now locked her in one of the upstairs rooms to bleed to death but as kate is trying to rescue her she gets caught by young ned and there's one frame where she's lying on the ground while young Ned is hitting her with a massive stick. And then the next frame says, minutes later, dot, dot, dot.

And it's her lying unconscious while young Ned walks out of the barn saying, that'll teach you I'm no fool. And just little girls seem to just lap this shit oh yeah really there's also no tears for molly where it's 1926 and young molly mills arrives in devon to work as a servant girl to an aristocratic family and on the first page she literally bumps into her new boss, the butler, on the station platform. And he immediately belts her in the face and says, you clumsy, stupid brat. Take that.

God. You know, start as you mean to go on. The other great one is My Father, My Enemy, where this girl's horrifically violent dad. These are all great band names, aren't they? Yes! You'd see them on a gig post You'd definitely think about going, wouldn't you? But in this one

the horribly violent patriarch is also a wealthy industrialist and strike breaker So she sides with the workers and helps them out, undermining her dad. You've totally reminded me of something, Taylor. Right. You know,

I mean, one of the things you've mentioned there, this horror aspect of girls' comics, because there weren't really horror stories in the comics that I read as a boy, reading things like Roy the Rovers, obviously. But I'll never forget, my sister wasn't that into girl comics. She was more of a Jackie, kind of, by the time she was buying stuff like that. She was buying, like,, obviously. But I'll never forget, my sister wasn't that into girl comics.

She was more of a Jackie kind of by the time she was buying stuff like that. She was buying magazines more. But I remember an annual turning up in the house in about 82 for the girls comic Diana. Right. There was a story in it that, honestly, it etched itself in my memory as much as, say, watching Hammer House of Horror or something like that it was just this wrong story that really creeped me the fuck out called um the story was called in an english country garden and it was kind of introduced by this kind of man in black type storyteller and the story was about a family you know mom dad small boy baby sister they move

into a new house where the previous occupants have mysteriously disappeared and in the garden are three sort of seemingly innocent looking gnomes right and a series of nasty accidents starts happening to this family there's a near drowning there's a runaway pram the cat gets run over i think that's i remember it so distinctly there was a near miss involving a lawnmower blade and a fire and the family eventually this is for 12 year old girls you know it's for little girls um you know and after this series of accidents the family resolved to leave and i remember every single fucking panel unfortunately they're sort of too late in reaching this decision and the gnomes just come and get them one night with their eyes all red i remember that really distinctly and the story kind of concludes when a few months later a new family

moves in and they admire you know the realistic little statues of a family in the garden it's the final frame of the little family with eyes blazing red and evil expressions on their face. It's burnt into my cortex ever since. Girls' comics were terrifying, and they had horror in them, which is something I don't think boys' comics had. Certainly not in that kind of really distinctly

M.R. James-ian unsettling way. Yeah, this is before we even get to Misty. Yeah, which practically invented goth didn't it yeah yeah in misty even death brought no relief to these unfortunate little girls so so presumably this is the kind of thing that would have been sloshing around in the head of claire usher so could we not have got at least oh it's horrible being a slave on my orphan farm there's an horrible bloke has broke me fucking arm could we not at least have got a hint of that

in this song no no because this record isn't about her no it isn't for her no it's non-art bait isn't it she's effectively a brian and michael corporate logo and nothing more um is this is the the spiritual bankruptcy of popular art you see ironically a theme explored albeit obliquely in federico fellini's masterpiece eight and a half. Sadly, a film which I suspect poor Claire Usher has never been able to fully enjoy. So after this episode of Top of the Pops was in the can, the paparazzi were desperate to get a shot of Claire with Samantha Fox. But her dad, who was in attendance, wouldn't allow it as, quote, I don't agree with the job that young girl has.

The following week, It's Horrible Being In Love When You're Eight and Off jumped six places to number 13, its highest position. It was later revealed that less than 200 copies of the 12-inch version of the single had been sold, accounting for 0.2% of the total sales of the single, making it the lowest-selling 12-inch single ever. What was there, a dub mix on it or something? After jettisoning her friends and becoming clear, she recorded a follow-up single in an lp called superman and

super clear respectively but both failed to chart after reuniting with and friends for the posse cut welliphant with graham the singing fireman matches matches never touch they can hurt you very much she retired from the music scene becoming so much of a recluse that she turned down the opportunity to present the saturday superstore talent trophy to the 1987 winner because she had a netball game on that day yes and after leaving some winifred she took a drama degree appeared in the Broadway production of Riverdance in 2000 and is now a teacher in Manchester according to our secret source of knowledge Taylor Wikipedia she she also wrote songs for the indie band Shrag yeah which I do not believe to be true because Shrag were like a sort of a bright a very bright knee band in that sort of

traditional like huggy bear comic gain that sort of thing uh quite arty and and spiky and there is no record of claire usher being in any way musical so i would put what little i own on that being a piece of wikipedia vandalism and i think the finger of suspicion points squarely at the shrag camp. But I might be wrong. I might be completely wrong. All I could turn up in my research was her living quietly with her husband and kids. And I only know that because I stalked her on Facebook. I'm very pleased to report that there was absolutely nothing funny or interesting about it.

So well done to her. She got away. Glad to hear that. She just turned her back on the crowd and all of that jiving around. Yeah. I defy you to sit there and not go, ah, after that. Fair and friends, horrible being in love when you're eight and a half.

Staying at eight this week, it's Bucks Fizz. Here they are on video. New beginning. New beginning. staying at eight this week. It's Bucks Fizz. Here they are on video.

New beginning. New beginning Janice, waving back at Claire Usher in front of a neon representation of the disgusting new many-fonted Top of the Pops logo, defies us not to go, ah, after seeing the appalling confection that's just been on. Go on, then. I dare you. Ah. No, you're supposed not to go on. Oh shit, sorry. Moving on.

She then throws us into New Beginning, Mamba Sarah by Bucks Fizz. We've done Bobby G, Mike Nolan and Cheryl Baker's Bucks Fizz all the bloody time on Chart Music. And the last time we chanced upon them in Chart Music number 56,

they were on the 1983 Christmas Day Top of the Pops, performing When We Were Young, looking like a load of robots on an After Eight advert, while their latest single, Rules of the Game, was failing to do much, eventually becoming the first ever Bucks Fizz single not to of the Game, was failing to do much, eventually becoming the first ever Bucks Fizz single not to make the top 40. After a period of woodshedding throughout much of 1984, they roared back in the autumn when their cover of The Romantics, Talking In Your Sleep, got to number 15 in September. But the follow-up, Golden Days, stalled at number 42 in November. A month later, they were all returning from a gig in Newcastle when their tour bus collided with an articulated

lorry which injured all four members of the group. Bobby G suffered whiplash, Jay Aston suffered a back injury, Cheryl Baker broke three vertebrae in her spine and Mike Nolan suffered internal brain bleeding and fell into a coma for three days. With Nolan out of action for the first quarter of 1985, the group eventually realigned and put out the single You and Your Heart So Blue in June of that year, by which time Jay Aston walked out of the band or was sacked, sold her story to The Sun and claimed that she had knocked off the husband of the band's manager and she'd made next to no money from the group due to severe mismanagement. The remaining members

of the band immediately put out a statement which read the group have been unhappy with Jay's contribution for some time and they decided to ask her to leave before the coach crashed. As the lawsuits pinged back and forth and you and your heart so blue died on its arse at number 43 the band immediately held an audition at the Prince of Wales Theatre for a replacement, and out of 800 entrants who could be no taller than 5'4", so they wouldn't tower over the boys, they unveiled the new member live on Wogan, Shelley Preston, a 21-year-old singer who had just finished a residency at a hotel nightclub in Sri Lanka.

They charged into the studio to record the big comeback single, Magical, which entered the charts at number 57 in September of 1985, stayed there for two weeks and died. And when their contract was up, they were dropped by RCA. Luckily, they were immediately picked up by Polydor, and this, the comeback to the comeback, which is a cover of a single released by Force 8, a Dooley spin-off group written by Tony Gibber, was released a month ago. After entering the chart at number 55, it soared 31 places to number 24,

then soared another 13 places to number 11 and this week it's at its second week at number eight their first top 10 hit since when we were young all of three years ago oh chaps what a story story yeah i love how you say uh they'd asked jay to leave before the coach crash like as if she could know she insisted on staying for the coach crash. I'm not going to miss this. It was big news, that coach crash, I remember. Very big news. I mean, big news enough to the point of,

yeah, there being crass, appalling jokes being told in playgrounds about it. Oh, really? You know, what's the biggest hit? The windscreen, that kind of thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in terms of remarkable returns after horrific tour bus accidents,

this isn't quite up there with, you know, say, Fairport Convention, who managed to make some of the most amazing albums ever around their horrible van crash. But it's actually a pretty strong return, this, as a single. And it suggests a future for Buxfizz that Buxfizz never actually end up getting. I mean, this is supposed to be the triumphant comeback of Buxfiz, and that's how history terms it, but it's not, is it?

It's the comeback to the comeback that died on its arse last year. Yeah, yeah. And I can't help thinking that the Judy Zouk satin tour jackets have been broken out to get this into the charts. Well. Just got a feeling about it. You might be right. I think it's a better song than the other comeback singles.

This feels more like a guaranteed bank raid than any of the other comeback singles. It's probably the strongest of the comeback singles, down to its production to a certain extent, but it's also just catchy as fuck. But, you know, no one in 86 has really seen Bucks Fizz as a viable future for UK pop, you know. I'm normally very

doctrinaire about kind of new members in bands yes you know except oddly when it comes to my favorite band the stones but but books viz make this transition fairly painless with this single and you know it's clear that the record company behind them this is one hell of an expensive video yes big budget i'm reminding very much of things like wild boys of victims culture clubs video you know they take the band to a warehouse fill it with sub-industrial accruements and a dance troupe it ticks off all those those big boxes and and you know that's showing a bit of confidence through the budget that kind of in a sense after watching the video it kind of sucks people along in a sense um but it is a catchy song. I think it's way catchier than the other comeback singles by Buxfiz, hence its success.

Yeah, you can see how this video is drawing on other recent videos. But it's also another thing on this programme, looking ahead to the late 80s, of all the little-known facts about Buxfiz, possibly the littlest known, that not only were they world music pioneers but uh also in the vanguard of late 80s youth orientated visual presentation styles as you see here the 1980s would you please welcome african style dancers in silhouette on metal platforms in the middle distance, swathed in dry ice and blue light

against a backdrop of industrial machinery and pipes and fans. So get used to this site and remember where you saw it first. Disclaimer, this might not be where you saw it first. But the thing is, this isn't an amazing thing this record or this video but you do know that when they first saw and heard this combination a lot of people at the record company will have felt very confident about it um because it has got that kind of superficial power and grandeur that is often mistaken for big hit potential by Cokie Know Nothing. And this was the last biggish Buck Fizz hit,

and their biggest for five years because it is fairly impressive and it's a reasonably coherent audio-visual blast, you know, despite being by Buck Fizz in 1986. And this mixture of sort of popped up pseudo african music uh mid-eight is power chords and power drums and a very crafty giorgio moroder type bass line underneath it is appealing in a sort of trashy way um even though inevitably it feels more like a giant papier mache and chicken wire construction in the shape of a big hit record than it feels like a big hit record you know but it's competent and it works even though ultimately it is a bit like taking a load of coke and watching the early 80s tv advert for the west midland safari park

except less wonderful just i just was watching this thinking oh i'd love to go on the splash caps there's one other definitively late 80s thing stylistically in this video which is of course what they're wearing that um you know long coats sleeves rolled up i mean that is that is everywhere in 86 and books and the boys are mulleted up to ross aren't they fucking hell oh yeah proper lockdown here yes yeah well they've they've undergone a full visual overhaul and i mean the main adjustment though is the removal of sex yes the year of of uh fucks biz is well and truly over there will be no more impure thoughts generated or seemingly entertained by this band ever again no no um and in all honesty i mean it may or may not be down to the

absent uh contribution as they called it of jay aston but it's probably the right decision because even with jay in the group you could never quite accept those sort of kinky pouting moves from people like bobby g or even mike nolan i mean two blokes who look like if you showed them a picture of a naked woman they'd say oh my god what happened to that guy nor from from cheryl baker who seems very nice but the only reason you can imagine her getting down on her knees in front of you is to spit in a tissue and wipe the chocolate from around your mouth. And they also have dropped that late J. Aston period flirtation with the alienated mime artist Weltschmertz, which we saw last time they were on,

which, let's face it, I mean, it suited them about as well as it would have suited the House Martins or Matt Hancock. So, yeah, so now it's all loose-flowing outfits and loose-flowing mullets and this pan-global bullshit vibe, which, you know, they're hoping will distract us from the fact that the new girl, despite the conditions laid down in the audition, does appear to be at least four inches taller than everybody else in the group,

as well as ten years younger. Yes, she's ten years younger than Charlotte, and she's clearly being treated as a junior partner. I mean, there's an interview in this week's Smash Hits where they're still taking the piss out of her accent yeah when some bands take on new members and drop old ones it's supposed to be an injection of new blood but it hardly ever is it just means yeah you're going to get paid less than the rest of us yeah well what it reminded me of there's a few shots in this video where you see cheryl baker and mike nolan Nolan and Shelley Preston and it sort of looks

like like a swinger couple who've got lucky you know what I mean like in loco parentis there's that same sort of it's all right but there's that slightly vampiric vibe to it you know what I mean she does seem isolated the new member because I mean Cheryl Baker is fundamentally who Cheryl Baker is now already you know she's settling into that mumsiness that would get her you know mid-afternoon slots on things like those women later on you know she's already settling into this um in this period so the writing's on the wall for bucks for israeli i mean the video instantly reminded me of two of the dominant adverts of the era uh the mEwan's Alive and Kicking one,

where all those peasants are pushing a big metal ball about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've got a system, complete new system, new system, personal automatic. It all comes off like the big finale of a stage show that you just can't wait to get out of and leg it to the pub before it shuts. You know what I mean?

Oh, this is good, but can it end now, please? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The hook works, though. I remember it getting a lot of radio play at the time. And I remember it cropping up on a very bizarre compilation as well, this song. A Portuguese disco compilation called Disco Joker. Right. Which came out in 86.

It's a demented record, that, because the sleeve is like this horrific kind of clown figure at a disco the fonts are all over the place but it's just the tracks that are on it because this is on it which is odd enough it's not exactly a disco song but so is um the smith's panic right eartha kitt this is my life right just because i have nothing to do with it actually sorry now that i remember it yeah it's not the books for this version it's the force 8 version it's on disco joker the members of the duel is without ghouli yeah c cap disco joker just for the sleeve disco joker sounds like

a really doomed attempt to try and jazz up it's a knockout in the late 70s the worst thing here is the positivity like that kind of like that kind of meaningless sort of oblivious blustering positivity uh which usually means that someone's trying to sell you something right it's like i mean this doesn't just look like an advert as you're saying it it is an advert in both a literal and a spiritual sense yeah the all-new books fizz with scrappy j yeah it well people people have almost forgotten this is what adverts used to look like because the fashion in advertising now is to tickle people and nudge people you know it's all small scale and low-key and it's got a ukulele soundtrack and lots of macro close-ups of food and stuff yeah

and a quiet voice in 1986 the only things that were advertised like that were fruitcake and the daily telegraph and everything else it was just people just walking up to you and screaming in your face there was like an arms race for who could make the most bombastic advert. So in that sense, if no other, Bucks Fizz are right in line with the times. And it couldn't be clearer that the early 80s, with their human scale flashiness and willingness to work with one idea at a time, are rapidly receding. And for the next few years years it's just going to be

clutter and and clatter you know and right at this miserable moment for popular culture bucks fizz have caught up with the zeitgeist well done and in their minds this may well have felt like a new beginning you know here we are is page one of bucks fears volume two you know but of course with the benefit of hindsight you look at this now and you just think yep next stop the falkland island it's an enforced joy though isn't it i mean the lyric we won't take no for an answer we will restore all the laughter it's this weird mix of kind of forcefulness. You will have fun. You will be part of this new beginning.

It's an odd thing. And of course, books fizz are dominating the centre spread of this week's Melody Maker, but only in an advert for Sharp Electronics. We've cut a deal with them to front the advertising campaign, less books, more fizz. Sharp living up to their name there. Which I always took to be a really shit slogan,

because, you know, for one, we're dealing pounds over here, actually. More importantly, you don't want any fizz coming off your new ghetto blaster. No. Because that means there's a connection loose or it's been shoddily manufactured. They've not thought about it.

I tell you what, sad to see Cheryl Bakereryl baker in the news recently i don't know if you spotted this but it said that the pandemic has uh wiped out loads of planned books fizz gigs or rather the fizz as they're called now and uh this uh perhaps surprisingly has cost cheryl quite a lot of money and she's now so skint that she's setting up a concert in her back garden in Tonbridge Kent for 148 quid a ticket now I'm not poking fun here because I don't know whether the Crudgingtons still live around my manor, and I'm not taking any chances from what I've heard. But the one thing that did shock me in this article

was the sentence, bandmate Mike Nolan offered to sprint round with a fistful of cash. Because if I remember correctly, Cheryl Baker was rarely off my TV screen for most of the 1990s, and I think into the current millennium uh whereas the sum total of mike nolan's extra physical activity appears to have been fundraising for his brain damage charity and appearing as wishy-washy in aladdin at the white rock theater hastings plus a few other panto gigs,

in almost all of which he seems to have played wishy-washy, just typecasting. Mustard the part, man. So how exactly was Mike in a position to demonstrate such largesse in his colleague's hour of need? That's what I want to know. I have my theories, but nothing can be proven. That's odd.

I would have thought Cheryl, out of all of them, would be okay. Just from the, you know, pay me 50 quid and I'll wish you a happy birthday market. Yeah, and the eggs and bacon million. So she's actually having a concert in her back garden. Yeah, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes. They're all jabbed up, let's go. Well, it depends, you see.

Do you get to go through her house to get to the back garden? Or do you have to go around the side, the tradesman's entrance? You know, a lot hangs on that for me. Will you be able to use a toilet if you needed to? I reckon she'd get portaloos in. Yeah, that's no good, though, is it? So, the following week,

New Beginning dropped one place to number nine the follow-up a cover of steven stills love the one you're with only got to number 47 in august and they would never trouble the top 40 again after their deal with polydor expired preston would leave the group in 1989 to work as a backing singer, model and wife of Steve Norman of Spandau Ballet. I didn't know that. And Tony Gibber, stroke Gibber, would go on to write Now Get Out of That, which replaced Paul Hogg Castle's The Wizard as the top of the pop's theme tune in 1991.

And on that note, Pop Craze Youngsters, we're going to put the tin lid on this part of Chart Music number 59. Before I go, just to remind you, we do have a big, fat video playlist waiting for you. Everything we talk about, everything we listen to, everything to do with July of 1986 is there. So get stuck into it. It's an essential part of your pop craze diet. On behalf of Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parks, my name's Al Needham, and like a tramp in the night, I am begging for you to stay pop crazed.

Chart music. Greatfakehour.com It's an S-Pod thing The podcast revisiting S Club 7's insane TV show Yeah, I can't imagine anyone's been to watch this Anyone who's not on drugs Thank you for bringing this into my life It was honestly truly appalling Guests helped me analyse the show in more detail than anyone ever asked for

It feels weird to me to say the phrase sex object in a show that was aimed at six-year-olds. Do you think one of the problems of this show is that seven is too much? It's an S-Pod thing from Great Big Owl.