Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #63 (Pt 3): 28.12.1972 – Thank God For Belgian World In Action

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Taylor Parkes, Neil Kulkarni and Al Needham ramp up their excitement at this astonishing episode of The Pops as the hits keep on coming. We get the twin piano attack of Hilda Woodward and Roberta Flack, followed by the Wolverhampton Tramps of the Future. Benny Hill returns for one last slap of the bald head of chart success, Chicory Tip nick a hit record off poor Giogio Moroder, and Cherry Gillespie sits in a huge paper bag for three days, being let out to emote to Harry Nilsson… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Um... Chart music. Chart Music. Oh a glorious romp through the 1972 post-Christmas special. Already it's proven to be an absolute banger. It's going to get even better. So I'm here with my road dogs, Taylor Parks and Neil Kulkarni. We're champing at the bit to get stuck in, so let's do just that.

Hey! going right the way through until the new year. Here's one that took seven months, believe it or not, to get to number one. Then in October, it was at number one for four consecutive weeks. It's called Mould the Old Doe from Lieutenant Pigeon. APPLAUSE Tony, with a smattering of crumpets, bumblefoxed his way through a Christmas greeting, then remembers that it's 1972 and they didn't hang Christmas out like us bunch of cunts. I'll tell you what, Tony looks and sounds like he's been on the Valium here,

like before he actually was. Already. A Noel scene scurrying away from Tony's BBC paper cup of coffee, covering his mouth with his tiny fingers. Tittering. Gotcha. He then tells us that they're going to keep at it all the way to New Year's

before introducing an elephant's pregnancy of a song that took ages to get going over here moldy old dough by lieutenant pigeon formed in coventry in 1967 stavely make peace was a band formed by rob woodward who had been a solo singer in the early 60s called Shell Naylor, and his classmate Nigel Fletcher, who recorded their songs in the front room of his mam's, Hilda Woodward, a typist at the local Jaguar factory, who held down side jobs as a music teacher and was the resident pianist of the Stoke Ex-Servicemen's Club. In 1969, they put out their debut single, I Wanna Love You Like a Mad Dog,

which failed to chart. No wonder. Disturbing thought, that is. But a year later, their follow-up single, Edna, was picked up by Top of the Pops and shoved into their tip-for-the-top section, but also failed to chart. By this time the band were looking for an outlet for their less serious songs and to that end

started recording under the name Lieutenant Pigeon recruiting Hilda as the second pianist and they were picked up by Decca, Shell Naylor's old label, in 1971 1971 this is their debut single and when it came out in february it flopped in the uk but when it was picked up by a belgian current affairs tv show and used as their theme tune it shot to number one there beating off a cover version by d Chancer's Lieutenant Parrot. Lickin' Pickery, I've heard it. Emboldened by its Benny Luck success, Decker re-released it over here, broke out the Judy Zook satin tour jackets and pushed it hard on Radio Luxembourg for weeks

until it was picked up and played on Radio 1 by Noel Edmonds. It finally entered the UK chart in September, number 38, then it soared to number 20, then soared again to number 4, and two weeks later, it pecked at the face of How Can I Be Sure by David Cassadare and nested atop the very summit of Mount Pop. And here they are with their double piano attack. One more time for King Hell. Finally, mouldy old Doe enters the arena.

Quite right. Oh, man. The civic pride, honestly, Al, it's pouring out of me right now. I mean, I've had City of Culture here all year and it's all been shit and I've avoided all of it. But oddly enough, yeah, the moment that provides the most civic pride this year is talking about a 50-year-old record on Chinese. But yeah, I feel like Brian Kulcline lofting the FA Cup in 87. But you know what?

God, the British charts are a strange fucking thing. That's why we love them. And this is surely the strangest number one record ever it's just so fucking wrong the thing is all the other highlights of this episode and there's several they kind of point forward to things you know where the fuck does this point it doesn't point forward to other novelty records and actually i'd argue it's not a novelty record. It points back to old music, but in such a strange way that speaks of the broken ramshackle falling to bits feel of 1972 Britain. Even more than anything more contemporary sort of sounded. Because this isn't old music lovingly preserved and recreated.

It's old music that's kind of been left to decay and rot and get gamey and odd and seething with stuff and you you can you could if you want see moldy old doe as harking back to kind of knees up some piano parties and you know the stomp of pub music that was still happening in pubs in 72 but yeah no no listening to this is like opening the door on a 70s pub, isn't it? Yeah, but... Just being hit in the face with a fog of fag smoke and stale booze, and oh, it's wonderful. It's wonderful, and there's something really curdled about it.

It's just a bit off, this record, and that's a tremendously difficult thing to achieve. I mean, whenever I've read about this record and people have been looking for comparisons, I've sort of read it being compared to kind of like Winchester Cathedral, say, for instance. Yeah. But come on, that's clean.

That's easily digestible as a piece of retro... Clean and upbeat. Yeah, as a piece of retro entertainment. And Carnaby Street, this is... No, this isn't. This is Coventry High Street. Well, with this, the title is literal. This is the stuff of former pop being allowed to rot

until it makes you feel queasy. And also there's a faint melancholy to the madness of this. But it's a good queasy. Oh, without a doubt. There's also the faint suggestion, maybe all this old shit that we're re-rotating is just old shit. There's a sort of critique to it as well. I mean, later on, as we'll see we're going

to talk about a pop star later who accentuates the weirdness of old sources of old kind of influences and i think moldy old though it recovers that sense of lunatic freedom in really old music that we assume that kind of only the counterculture can enable so it's for me it's not a novelty record it's just a great record and there's genuinely nothing else like it i mean i can't think of another mother son band no i can't think of a vocal like that growl of the hook which genuinely sounds like it could have been a tramp wandering through the studio like like the whole record was built around a random tramp like a gavin Gavin Bryars thing or something. It's no accident that Fletcher and Woodward Jr.

from this band are big Joe Meek fans. I think you can hear that. And Stavely Makepeace Singles, by the way, you mentioned that that was the band before, you know, they called themselves the Tone of Pigeon. They are strange things. They're not just resurrecting something long lost. I mean, you know, we forget, you know,

Winifred Atwell, Mrs Mills, they were alive and well in 72. Still putting out albums. Still putting out albums, which makes this triply weird. And, you know, if you really want to know, by the way, for those of you who've only ever heard this song and want to go further,

I would get a lieutenant slash lieutenant pigeon album but i'd actually go to the next single desperate dan flip it over and play the b-side of that song opus 300 it's truly avant-garde nuttiness um really freaky freaky shit this is one of the highlights of i don't know i'm going to call this power cut pop um because that's really what it seems to be you know i mean there's odd things in the audience as there is throughout you know this episode during this record being played i did double take thinking the chap in the green jacket was rod stewart um but but it's very telling as well that the Bat Room Boys, they don't put any strange, trippy effects on this record.

There's no need. There's no need. It's fucking weird enough. And not to make things too cov, but I do want to stress, as somebody who's DJed in Coventry a lot, this is obviously a staple, and it has to be played at virtually every cov party.

But fuck me, I think this is a great record to DJ with anywhere, especially if you drop it late in the evening, really late, when people are fucked, because it lurches this record. It's got this tremendous sense of sort of drunken imbalance. You feel slightly pissed hearing it. I am ferociously proud that this bizarre number one came out of the city i call home um but it is it is a very cough record i have to say but what a moment what a moment i mean thank god for belgium world in hell yeah i would love to know what tv show that was i would

kill to see it on youtube to see this played over footage of i don't know youths throwing stones at tanks in northern ireland or vietnam bombing raids or god knows what but what a thing to put on your current affairs tv show man yeah something kicking off in antwerp yes see i do like this record but i sort of took against it a bit on this watching because it bothered my now geriatric cat who responds with bug eyes and a grim stare to any sound in the frequency range of birdsong or mouse squeak, including the title sequence of Soul Train. or Mouse Squeak, including the title sequence of Soul Train, the squeaking of my exercise bike, and the penny whistle on this damn record. Now, on the first two, I told her to lump it, but sooner or later I have to back her up, right?

But she likes this record about as much as she would like an actual pigeon. So I've got to, you know. But, I mean, look, yeah yeah for a while this record was bigger than kate bush's hands so it must have been you know people must have connected with it on some level yeah and i can see why you know i can hear it in the the timbre of the tack piano and especially the fact that like the strange doubling effect when you've got two of them going at once like the glitter band yeah it but it creates a slightly eerie effect which is pleasant and a bit unsettling it's like a flat beer british approximation

of brian wilson's spectral piano on the smile sessions right it's not completely absurd to think that that might be what drew a lot of people into this record and not every sale of it was to old granny grave clothes you know buying it with the money she should have been saving to piss away on social care you know it's like this there is something really enticing and intriguing about this record like even before you see the band yeah i mean it's it's grandma glam isn't it it's glam more and glam more we love, like, for anyone listening to this who can't see this, you've got Woodward Jr. on the piano dressed as Robin Hood, a little nod from Coventry to Nottingham there.

Yeah. You've got Kevin Ungodly on the drums. You've got Fletcher on the drums dressed like a pirate. Best of all, you've got Woodward Senior playing the piano, dressed as a witch. Yes. She looks amazing. It's just this kind of huge old lady, dressed in like a crap Halloween witch outfit,

just with a permanent grid on her face all the way through. This is actually who the Eagles wrote Witchy Woman about. witch outfit just with a permanent grid on her face all the way through i was saying this is actually who the eagles wrote witchy woman about i'm surprised mary whitehouse wasn't right into the director of public prosecutions about this i think you will find if you consult your bible it says thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. I urge you to take the strongest possible action immediately. How brilliant would it have been if the audience was whipped up into like a witch craze frenzy and became a mob and dragged her off the piano and started ducking her?

It'd be amazing. What are her familiars? Black cat and a stootzer. Or a pigeon on the piano. That was her familiar. Well, although, disturbingly, just as witches were said to do to their familiars, she did actually suckle one of these people. So I wouldn't necessarily be against giving her a go on the ducking stall just to be on the safe side.

But the terrible thing, actually, if you look at her closely, what she really looks like is Arthur Marshall from Call My Bluff. Yeah, she does. It's like any second the music's going to stop and she's going to go, well, now well now come with me if you will back to the court of george ii the last of the foreign-born monarchs who uh if you were to enter the court of george ii you would have been expected to be carrying your condyloma because your condyloma was a kind of oh fucking i give up don't call my bluff gags. Fucking Jesus Christ. This was not how this was meant to pan out for me. Too late for marriage now.

Next time I get in a big black car, they'll be loading me in through the hatchback. Never mind. No, I'm only joking. I couldn't afford a funeral. Do we know how old Hilda Woodward is at this time? I do, and I was startled. Go on.

I think she's 58. 58. 50 fucking 8. According to the papers of the time, even more shocking there, she's actually 52, which is one year younger than I am now. Oh, I'm not having that. I am not having that. And that is a fucking dagger of ice down the spine.

It's awful, man, because this year has been filled with people I know turning 52. And every time they do, I'm on Facebook saying, happy birthday. Oh, by the way, you're the same age as her on this. But no, when she died in 1999, her age was given as 85, meaning she would be at least 57. Right. She still looks about 15 years older than that though,

doesn't she? Yeah, I know. It's nuts. Harsh paper round. But shouldn't that actually make you feel good about yourself? No. No? When you're 53, Taylor,

nothing makes you feel good about yourself. Trust me. Just you wait. I played that piano that she played. No! Oh, yes. It's in the museum. It's in the Coventry Museum.

We meant the Lieutenant Pigeon Museum. We have a Coventry Music Museum and I tend to avoid it because you know how Scar has basically become big, bald, old white bloke's music. It's kind of one of that sort of stuff. But that piano's in there. Add a little tinkle. Only the second famous piano that I've ever played.

The first famous piano. It's not that famous, actually, the other one. It's not as good. But I played Agatha Christie's piano in her home in Greenway in Cornwall. There was a sign up that said, feel free to have a tinkle. So I did. So, yeah, that's two famous pianos I played. I was just thinking, if the sign said, feel free to have a tinkle,

you stood there and just started pissing all over the piano. You go, what? What? Look at the science. You ever played on a famous piano, Taylor? Yes, I played on the piano on A Day in the Life. Wow, man. I don't mean I played the piano on A Day in the Life.

That would be quite the play to play pre-birth. Gee, that's put me back in my box. I mean, the thing about this song, as soon as you hear it you're into it and then you hear the bloke going oh the old day you just think oh this can't get any better then they pop up on top of the pops and they look like this yeah you just you've just surrendered to them haven't you totally every now and again there's a moment where the british people collectively actually get something right and one of the prime examples is putting this at number one i know it's fucking mental that they've got to number one but of course it makes total sense as well yes that it would absolute total sense the thing about um lieutenant

pigeon in in a sense similar to other acts that we're seeing in this episode, they've had pasts, you know, they've had pasts that they're coming out of. They're not neophytes in the biz, as it were. I mean, another thing to seek out when seeking out other stuff Lieutenant Pigeon related, please, people, find a track by Shell Naylor. Shell Naylor was the name of Rod woodward basically from the senate penny when he was signed to deca in the 60s um at age 17 he did a song called one fine day which was actually written by uh dave davis from the kinks and came out as a single in 64 with jimmy page on guitar and it's a fucking tune um do you see that one as well that should go on the video playlist i would say there was actually a tabloid kerfuffle in late october which makes the story even better a front page article in the sunday

people entitled moldy old muddle granny hilda woodward's pop career struck a discordant note yesterday michael jerry a 19 year old, claimed that he and not Granny Woodwood played the piano in the recording of Mouldy Old Doe, which has been top of the charts for three weeks. Pianist Michael has instructed solicitors to take action against the group, claiming he is entitled to payment or royalties. Michael sat down at the piano in his home in Burbidge's Lane, Coventry, played mouldy old dough and said, there, you can see it was me. Rubbish. It was me on piano, Mrs. Woodward, who is 52, said today. She sat down at the piano at her home in Kingsway, Coventventry and said it was definitely me

rob shouted me out of the kitchen and i played just like i'm doing now rob woodward said it's true that mike sat in for one session but for technical reasons we had to scrub that tape and send another one to deca i called him mum for the second one. So amazing things coming out there. Number one, this woman's shaved six years off her age in a doomed attempt to appear younger. Yeah, somewhat unconvincingly, it has to be said. And Lieutenant Pigeon have gone, oh, you know, what we really need to get this song up the charts

is to pretend that my mum's played on it. Insane. need to get this song up the charts is pretend that my mum's played on it insane probably the best bit in this whole performance is where the bass player johnson creeps up behind uh fletcher pulls his tricorn hat down over his eyes in response to which flletcher seems to bark, fuck you. No. Yeah, perhaps forgetting where he was for a moment, which is easily done during a Top of the Pops appearance. Did British people say fuck you in 1972, though? I don't know.

Fuck off, yes. Fuck you, I contend not. Actually, no, maybe the best bit is near the end, at the beginning of Woodward Jr.'s big closing penny whistle solo during the drop. Something goes a bit wrong, possibly something Brown Ale related, and the whole thing just collapses. Oh, that is the absolute worst case of granny class

in the entire history, on top of the pop. It's just, oh, it's gloriously shambolic, isn't it? Yeah, but two seconds, which you can reasonably say, is the most musically challenging and disruptive moment in the whole show. Yeah, all the granny clappers are totally thrown off. And in fact, granny herself ends up turning the beat around, still with that grin on her face and she's clapping

then again people that age do tend to clap on the on beat anyway don't they but yeah yeah the demented smile doesn't falter for a second no i don't know if anyone's got around to watching the amazing film fright mare that i was going on about next time but i would definitely have cast sheila keith in the Lieutenant Pigeon biopic, which will mean nothing to most people, but if you know, you know. But fucking hell, what an amazing tune this is. Yeah.

I mean, look, the Queen's on her last legs. Let's, you know, let's not beat about the bush. When she goes, get rid of that shit national anthem that we have and have this, man. Do it, old man. I mean, the thing is with the I mean the thing is with the vocal the thing is with that vocal it is the missing link between

Albert Steptoe and punk rock there's something resistant about it it's not just fun I love it when the camera by the way in this episode I think it's just before the granny claps go badly wrong it does that thing of centering in on Fletcher's face right in the middle of the screen,

and he doesn't do anything. He just laughs. They all seem a bit pissed, actually, a bit half-cut. They're fucking about, but it's all right. You can fuck about to this song. He sings Dirty Old Man instead of Moldy Old Doe at one point. Yeah, yeah. It's wonderful.

It suits the song. I mean, this record in Cov has gone nowhere. It's always been about. It's always been on every jukebox in a way. Whereas in the rest of the country, it hasn't. I mean, a mate told me that when Joe Royal used to manage Oldham Athletic in the late 80s and early 90s, this was the track that they played when they used to come out onto the pitch.

But then of course they got promoted to Division One and then it got replaced with Fanfare for the Common Man by ELP. Oh, fuck. Anything else to say about this? Yeah, I was going to say, when you talk about the National Anthem, one of the many things that's wrong with our current National Anthem is like, you know, leaving aside all the lyrics and everything, is the fact that it begins with a drum roll of indeterminate length which means

that everybody comes in out of time always every time how is that supposed to give you any national pride right to at least have this at least the bit where everybody goes out of time is at the end at which point everyone's just waiting for it to finish anyway so moldy old doe would spend four weeks at number one eventually shooed away by clear by gilbert o sullivan it would become the second best-selling single of 1972 behind amazing grace by the band of the royal scots dragoon guards selling over 790,000 copies. It's now most commonly used by unionist marching bands in Northern Ireland. Blimey. Fucking hell. Because it's got a bit of pipe and drum in it, I suppose.

Yeah, I guess so. Fenian blood. The follow-up, Desperate Dan, is currently number 34 in the chart and would get to number 17 in January of 1973, but they never troubled the charts again. Although the band are active to this day and will be releasing their next single on February 18, 2022, 50 years to the day that mouldy old dough came out.

Here we go! And from Lieutenant Pigeon to one of the more emotional sounds of 72, Roberta Flack. The first time ever I saw your face After a weird transformation where we get to see the blurred out vision of what is presumably the top of Noel Edmonds head We transmogrify very quickly into the darkness at the top of the top of the pop studio that David always goes on about. As Edmunds puts his British accent on and introduces one of the more emotional sounds of 72. The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack. Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina in 1937, Roberta Flack was a child prodigy on the piano and became the youngest person to receive a music scholarship at Howard University at the age of 15. After graduating four years later, she became a music and English

teacher in Washington, D.C. whilst trawling the music clubs at night playing and singing jazz where she was discovered by the pianist Les McCann. He set her up with an audition for Atlantic Records and after being signed up she put out her debut LP First Take in 1969. Two years later while Flatt was struggling to make any sort of a dent in any US chart, Clint Eastwood picked this cut from her first LP, a cover of the 1957 folk song written by Ewan McConk for his bit on the side, Peggy Seeger, which had already been covered by Peter, Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio, and used it in the film Play Misty for Me. Released as a single, it shot up the US charts, spending six weeks at number one in April and May. And in the UK, it became her first hit,

getting to number 14 in July. And here's another chance to see that original performance. Isn't it telling, chaps, that it's Tony that gets lumbered with mouldy old dough and Edmonds gets to introduce the serious quality stuff? Yeah, which is weird because I would associate these two records completely opposite to that. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

So we start with the elephant in the room, which is her amazing haircut. Yes. I wrote in my notes, Flack, the Princess Leia pioneer. And any rappers listening, feel free to take that line because I have to say its flow is exquisite.

She rocks rough and stuff with her afro puss. Yeah, she's got these two huge side bunches with every strand of hair gathered up and scraped over. Basically, if she'd drawn faces on both of those bunches, it would have looked like she had three heads. It's fucking amazing. It's like a Beats by Dre haircut. She looks so great.

She's wisely got them round her ears. They're quite low because with that look, if you have it any higher, you start looking like Mickey Mouse or Chairman Mouse. There is that danger. And if you have it even higher, you look like Dave Lee Travis in 1981 with some dealy bobbies. But what can we say about this? Not a lot, because it's a brilliant...

Apart from it's fucking amazing. It's a good song, you know this, but I think it was waiting for it. It was waiting for Roberta to do it. I don't like this. You and McC it was waiting for it it was waiting for Roberta to do it I don't like this I saw Ewan McColl's reasons for writing it and his hatred

of all of the cover versions of it particularly hated Elvis's one didn't he he said it sounded like Romeo singing to Juliet

who's on top of the post office tower yeah and he had a section in his record collection called the chamber of horrors which contained all the colours of this song.

But which seems a tad harsh. Considering they paid for that part of his house. You know, and also I think there's something a bit sanctimonious about Ewan McColl in general, and then suddenly writing this love song. But it was waiting for Roberta Flack to do it, because this is a lovely version. Off First Take, which is a great album,

I would say I Told Jesus is the track. It's amazing, that track. But this is beautiful. But there's not much to say about it, because it's just a really competent performance by an amazing-looking person of a beautiful song that she absolutely nailed. I mean, it only got to number 14 in the charts,

and it's here, obviously, as a bit of a mam-sop. But, you know, who cares when it's this good? a bit of a mam sop but you know who cares when it's this good something's got to follow moldy old dough oh god yeah you need your heart rate to reduce a little bit yeah and this does a job more than adequately to my mind yeah top of the pops always at some point has to

slow things down a little with a beautiful song recorded by a beautiful lady beautiful lady and uh you know rather this than almost any of the other available options from 1972. Because it's a very, very, very, very good record. And it only becomes a piss break in the context of this episode. Yeah, yeah. Because of what most of the rest of the episode is like.

It doesn't fit because a mood has already been created, which is not this mood. And is not complemented by this mood. And it does deserve better because the original recording is one of the warmest and most intimate records you could ever hear. And even here, the Top of the Pops Orchestra can't mangle it because it's too simple to score. And because 99% of the soulfulness is carried in her voice and her performance rather than in the arrangement which makes it so irritating that so many hack singers

have seen this as a great song to cover i mean i don't yeah this is a cover but they tend to cover this version and it's always a sort of screwed up face and splayed out hand held out in front of them type singers I wouldn't have minded if Faust had done a version or you know Les Rallies des Nudes or something but if you're going to do this song in the Roberta Flack style you'd better

be at least as good a singer as Roberta Flack. Are you as good a singer as Roberta Flack? And if the answer is Christ no, then go and cover Yellow Submarine instead, right? Because otherwise you're going up to Botticelli's Birth of Venus and you're pasting a gurning

selfie over her head. You're absolutely right. All the people who cover this song, or at least cover the Roberta Flack version, they always do everything that Roberta Flack doesn't do. They add extra notes and you know they put all this melisma in it she never does it she keeps it clear she keeps it simple it's just beautiful yeah and it's because they can't do this because it's not

a trivial thing to stretch out your voice like this so the individual notes begin to dissolve like airplane trails you know and to do it in a way which demands an emotional response. And, yeah, singing this song the way almost all modern singers would and do, it's a grotesque thing to do. Neil's right, though. It's a terrible shame. Almost every time we get a great black American female singer on here, we all agree that it's one of the best things on the programme.

Oh, if this was on any other episode, we'd have been fucking raving about it. Yeah, but none of us have all that much to say about it, and it's always the case. Yeah, because there's nothing to laugh about or take the piss out of, you know. Well, is that who we are? No, but you know, it is just...

When you do just... I mean, look, look, we talked about Gary Glitter earlier, OK? Now, it is just, when you do just, I mean, look, look, like we talked about Gary Glitter earlier, okay? Now, that is a great record, but it's not a great record made by a beautiful artist or anything like that. There's all kinds of extraneous shit going on. With this, this is as pure and simple as this episode's going to get. Yeah, it's just a woman doing a job.

Yeah. Which is turning up on the telly and being mimped with a brilliant record. I'm sure you're aware of its use on December the 15th of this year, 1972. Go on. Well, the first time I ever saw your face, I think, yeah, it's played as the wake-up music on flight day nine to the astronauts aboard Apollo 17 on their last day in lunar orbit before returning to Earth.

So basically, this was the last song played. That was the last human exploration of the moon, and this was the tune that brought him home. Makes a change from country music, which is what the music was. Should have been Moldy Old Don't. This is the problem. It's a great performance, it's a great song,

but we've just had Moldy Old Don't. It's like, oh, why haven't you got an older white woman playing the piano next year as well the thing is i worried for a bit about this phenomenon of these records that we got nothing to say about because i was thinking is it my background in writing mostly about rock and pop that's limiting me or worse still can I only write or talk about people whose experiences and influences are like mine but no because I could write about roots reggae and dub from now until spring and I'm fairly sure that the church community of Black Mountain North Carolina is more like suburban lower middle class Britain than the rocker community of Washington Gardens, Kingston, Jamaica.

So I think it's just simply that a record like this does not leave much to be said. No. If you're in a crowded room and this plays and then it stops, nobody says anything for a minute. No. Which is not the case if you put on Naughty, Naughty, Naughty by Joyce Sarney.

Certainly not. This just doesn't need much commentary and I've always been a little bit dubious in the past about the way that most writers who specialise in writing about soul or R&B of this period always seem to focus more on

biographical or contextual detail than digging into the actual music but now I think I understand it better because I mean look the biographical or contextual detail than digging into the actual music but now i think i understand it better yeah because i mean look the biographical and contextual detail is often stuff that i don't know enough about to hold forth on like an expert or it's stuff that i don't feel particularly well qualified to comment on so i tend to get a bit stuck you know so i guess in future chart musics these ladies are going to keep appearing and I'm going to keep saying this is brilliant.

Let's move on. And unless we get Nelson George to join the team or something, you know, I'd like to hear him on B.A. Robertson. Door's always open, Nelson. Perfection is difficult to talk about, you know. And for many of us, the most perfect music ever made was 70s black pop. So that's why whenever we encounter it, not whenever we encounter it,

but quite often when we encounter it, we can't really go beyond that. This is perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is surprising, though, that, yeah, it's introduced by Noel and not Tony because Tony's the style guy. So I wonder if he was slightly gutted about that. But Noel's the serious music guy. That's why he's trying to put himself at the minute.

He is leaning into the Americanisms at the moment, isn't he? He's not found his voice, which is a very annoying and twee one. So the first time I ever saw your face would win a Grammy a year later for Record of the Year. And as Neil said, two weeks before this episode was aired, was played as the wake-up music for the crew of Apollo 17 ending the last bit of contact humanity has had with the moon the follow-up of sorts was a duet with Donny Hathaway where is the love which got to number 29 in August and she'd roar back one time in 1973 with Killing Me Softly with his song, which got to number six in March of 1973.

Your face That's Roberta Flack there. It's party time here at Top of the Pops. Our cameraman has dressed up as Father Christmas. This is Richard from our sound department. Evening, Richard. Evening. It's rainbow time once again. Mama, we're all crazy now.

The Fabulous Slaves! Tony, back amongst the crumpets, reminds us that it's party time and then introduces us to Richard from the sound department who has come dressed like one of Jack Reagan's on-off girlfriends in the Sweeney who sings in a club. He then declares it rave-up time and to a huge cheer from the kids introduces Mama, we're all crazy now, by Slate.

Yeah, but it's hard not to focus on the sheer ecstasy plastered all over Richard's face throughout this little link section. I mean, life's full of surprises, Richard. It's funny because at the end of Robertata flack as soon as she stops singing you hear this laugh and she's got a smile on her face and you think it's her doing that yeah i did think which is really odd because it's like oh i've just done this love song look at me pissing this out of my arse but it's actually richard who's laughing you can't stop we've done slayed loads on chart music and this their eighth single under the name of slayed is the follow-up to take me back home

which got to number one for a week in july and featured on the christmas day episode it's the lead-off single from their third lp slade, with a Y and a question mark, and it came out on the 1st of November and was inspired by Chuck Beret when the band saw him play live earlier in the year and noted that he'd stop singing from time to time and let the audience take over, and they decided that they wanted some of that

in their repertoire. When the single was finished, the band and manager Chaz Chandler told their label Polydor to get their arses in gear and make it the first single to enter the charts at number one, since the Beatles did it with Get Back three years earlier. But the label was convinced that that was an impossible task in the climate of 1972 and were therefore knocked band air when it entered the charts at number two in september and a week later it toppled you wear it well by rod stewart as the topper most of the popper most and here is a repeat of their original performance that chair

that goes up that tells you everything you need to know about slade in 1972 chaps the people's band yeah and we hadn't had one of them in a very long time but probably the beacles would have been the last band that it was generally considered by everyone were fucking mint and skill and that's why it's so smart for them to write a record which writes the crowd into the song um into the process yes but yeah i mean absolutely this is half about this performance in particular of this song is half about looking at slade and half about looking at the amazing audience and i've got to send up the kind of um the retrospective fancying someone klaxon here because I am actually hugely curious

about that aforementioned total mum that we see in a blue dress who has a silver belt on who's cutting a rug to this and clearly knows

the words who is she where is she from what's her story but just after the camera picks her up there's a girl to her right in a sort of

spangly diamante long dress who's the spit of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. I fell hard for her. I really fell in love there. The boys don't know how to dance to this, actually,

in the audience. There's two lads at the back in slave T-shirts who you'd think would be going mental. They would just sort of stood there who almost look like roadies. Yes, I think they might. They may well be roadies, but the girls certainly

know how to dance to this. In an episode full of records for kids with those jitters in their legs, this delivers massively, a massive overload moment. I've got mixed feelings about the audience on this

because there's a few too many silver top hats down the front there. It looks like the lair of a Monopoly thief. Somebody should tell those girls don't imitate be inspired you know take a lesson from the coolest person in the crowd there that woman who looks like the home secretary's wife yeah um doing a slinky dance it might just be my age but yeah there is something interesting going on very much so it's awful man the older you get

the older the the people you fancy i would say that's not awful that is merciful yeah yeah actually right heidi hi when it first came on i really fancied tracer then i started fancying gladys and nowadays i'm i'm looking at fucking Yvonne going, are you all right, you know? Terrifying. Fucking, I'll be Amy Turtle next. No, everyone grows up to love Ruth Maddock a little bit more, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. But in terms of the audience here, yeah, I was quite amused and very faintly disturbed by that small gang of lads in slade t-shirts at the back of the stage because they just got their arms folded yeah yeah stone-faced emotionless they're like security of the first world um or security of wolverhampton which is at least near the first world yeah and what's weird is they stay completely still even at the moment when this record spills over, which is, of course, the key moment in this record

is near the end. It's the ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-yeah bit. The choruses have always threatened to give you that overload, but they don't quite deliver it until the end. And Noddy, of course, just has the best, ultimate rock and roll voice for that kind of moment, which isn't to say that the lead up to those moments isn't great. We've already said, you know, 72 and Amazing Guitar intros.

This song starts amazingly. It starts as well as schools out. And in a weird way, in terms of, in a mild sense, parent and authority kind of threatening sentiments this is almost like a twin record with that albeit with the caveat that with slade you never get the feeling of us and them it's just us and i i i do like the kind of the frantic bingey british feel about hedonism of this record, about getting the scotch and the pints in and getting wankered very quickly you know, don't stop now, come on another drop, come on full

fire water won't hurt me but for me it's all about those ending choruses and by the end of it we're in a weird place with this record really I mean when it fades it's like Acid House or something, it's just the beats are nuts and the kids are hysterical.

So it's so good. I can't even begrudge it. I know this might not be everyone's favourite Slade tune, but I think it's one of the best they ever did. And I think it's one of the best of Slade as well. And it's so good. I can't even begrudge it stopping Children of the Revolution getting to number one.

I think it's wonderful. It's really telling in this period, of course, that, you know, the only, I think trying to break America is eventually what kills Slade a little bit. And the only US kind of hack boosting them at the time was Lester Bangs, which makes total, total sense. They were never really going to crack America because they're not, they don't do country rock, really.

They're not loud, heavy metal. They're not're not loud heavy metal they're not quite bubble gum they're not quite mainstream and also there's that traditional suspicion in america of funny costumes and stuff but um yeah i think that's what eventually breaks the band but this is this is a band getting close to their zenith i would say slade or slade's fans were really fucking organized you know they had a rough idea when the band would be on top of the pops months before and so they they just bombarded the bbc with applications so that's why you see a lot of people wearing the slate t-shirts and stuff like and of course the band might have lobbed one or two out but yeah they were organized like the s1w's i think a big part of that is probably chas chandler as well but yeah i mean organised like the S1Ws I think a big part of that is probably Charles Chandler as well

but yeah I mean as far as the performance goes possibly the debut of the mirrored top hat on Nodder with Dave Hill in a matching full length coat and the people in the gallery know what's expected of them you know there's loads of Dutch angles and lots of mad Stone Age visual effects not the kind of effects you'd expect with a band like slade but it kind of works yeah it does kind of work because the whole record's about getting

unhinged yes and you know we're fucking mentalists so we're all mental um so yeah the increasing kind of trippiness of the visual suits it actually yes yeah i was thinking the fact that slade were so clearly wearing pale blue y-fronts under the sequins and tartan is the best and in a way the worst thing about i mean i mean to the extent that there is a worst thing about slade because the tension between the the euphoria and the dizzy party whirl on the one hand and on the other the the gurning uh rootsiness is what gave them that enormous and unique power but it also placed a bit of a limit on how far they could take it not that i think that there's a problem with making you know a run of like eight or nine of the best singles of the 70s you know and then stopping but i'm actively looking

for negatives here just to open the conversation up a little bit because we all know what we all think of slade so yeah whenever i hear what is probably my favorite slade song which is uh how does it feel which is right at the end of their period of being big i always find myself thinking they had the talent and were a sufficiently deceptively musical group they could have followed up the three-year chart blitz with a move into something a bit more emotionally affecting without losing the fizz right which is something that only the very great groups ever do because it involves a level of talent or a type of talent that's categorically different from the talent required to make mama we're all crazy now yeah and they had that but what's also required which i don't think they ever had is a kind of

starry-eyed otherworldly aspect to your nature because to really do this you have to slip the chains which have thus far held your talent in place and forget all the faces in front of you and start thinking like an artist which can be very dangerous i mean it can be very dangerous to your creative hygiene and it can be even more dangerous to your bank balance right but it's a chance you have to take and I don't think they ever would have. If they'd suddenly come up with Eleanor Rigby or Strawberry Fields,

I don't think they'd have gone with it, right? I'm not sure they could have taken themselves seriously for long enough. But if you don't make that leap into the darkness, there will be a limit on what you can do and there's a time limit on how long people are going to want it from you. The only time they ever did that

was when they made a film. Right, which is brilliant. Because everybody was expecting a Black Country Beatles film. And Robin Nash, who by that time was running Top of the Pops, called them afterwards and said, do you realise you've made a huge mistake here?

People don't want you being serious. Yeah, I know. But it's what a great film what an amazing film it is yeah you know but it just meant that instead of moving on into doing something else inevitably slade end up fucking around in america and slowly devolving into a crap hard rock band you know as the audience fell away. And, I mean, nobody criticises Pilot or Dead or Alive for not turning into a different group, and nobody should. It's only a side issue here.

It's just because of those tantalising hints that Slade running out of hit juice needn't have been the end, you know, but those pale blue wire fronts were chafing. Completely. The thing is, Taylor, you used the phrase there regarding their musical complexity and stuff. That's the thing about Slade. Musically, they're amazing.

When you listen to this record, this is not a straight ahead stomp of a record, even though the effect is deeply physical. It's really quite complicated what the drummer and the bassist are doing and you know it's a fucking clever record in that regard they definitely had the capabilities

of like Taylor says pushing into perhaps a new lease of life but they had this run of amazing singles a run of singles that could have lasted a band a decade you know packed into a year or two. And yeah, Trying to Break America fucked them.

If you want to understand how musical Slade are, go and listen to an Oasis cover version of one of their songs. They were more than just the Oasis it's okay to like. Mama We're All Crazy Now would spend three weeks at number one,

yielding the floor to How Can I Be Sure by David Cassidy. And although Polydor had started to accept the challenge of an instant number one and worked up a marketing strategy, the follow-up Goodbye to Jane, another album track, entered the chart at number eight in November of this year, got to number two three weeks later, and is currently at number six. And contrary to Brian Connolly's prediction, Slade pissed 1973 out of their arses, racking up three number ones that went straight in at the top.

People's band. People's band. And you know what? When you read interviews with people like Bolan or Brian Ferry in this period, they all repeatedly say, oh, I don't want to enter the sort of hellscape that Slade are living in. I don't want to do that Slade thing.

There's a real snottiness about Slade, especially from their contemporaries. Because of the hellscape that Slade are living in. What, like next door to the girls' school? Yes. Oh, I didn't know when I moved in. One of the most sonically and visually exciting acts in the world. Slade, there, and Mama were all crazy now.

You know, one of the most difficult things to do in the recording business is make a comedy record. An even more difficult thing to do is to make a successful comedy record. It's nigh on impossible to get one to number one. But January, this year, he did it. Benny Hill and Ernie. This year, he did it, Benny Hill and Ernie. You could hear the offbeat pain as they raced across the ground and the clatter of the wheels as they spun round and round

and he galloped into Market Street, he's badgered upon his chest, his name was Ernie and he drove the fastest milk cart in the West. Edmunds, flanked by two girls, is clearly being stalked by beard twat now, and we see him adjusting his pubic adornment in a comedy manner. What makes it worse is that he now has a mate, sporting a red nose and looking very pleased with himself. Unfazed, Edmunds tells us how hard it is to make a comedy record, Unfazed, Edmonds tells us how hard it is to make a comedy record, and it's nigh impossible to get it to number one,

but he knows someone who did. Benny Hill with Erne, the fastest milkman in the West. Born Alfred Hawthorne Hill in Southampton in 1924, Benny Hill was a former shop lad at Woolworths, and a milkman who became a stage manager with a touring review before he was called up in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as a mechanic After transferring to Ensor in 1944 he changed his surname in tribute to Jack Benner

and became a radio performer when he got back to Civvy Street In 1950 he transferred to television, and by 1971 had appeared in five films, including Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and The Italian Job, and the star of The Benny Hill Show, which began on BBC One in 1955, and had transferred to ITV in 1969. Like most TV performers of the 60s,

Hill signed a record deal with Pi in 1961 and had already racked up three chart hits, Gathering the Mushrooms, which got to number 12 in March of 1961, Transistor Radio, which got to number 24 in June of the same year, and Harvest of Love, which made it to number 20 in June of the same year, and Harvest of Love, which made it to number 20 in June of 1963. And after he moved to ITV, he was picked up by Columbia Records for the LP Words and Music. This single, the lead-off cut from that LP, was written by Hill for his Tem show in 1970 and scampered up the charts in November of 1971, knocking Cause I Love You by Slade off number one in mid-December

and holding on to become the Christmas number one of 1971, keeping Jeepster by T-Rex at bay. And here, once more, is the promo video, which was re-shot when it became a hit as the original was filmed in black and white and yes if you're old enough to be listening to chart music you probably know this video shot for shot like many of the videos that were on the Benny Hill show over the 70s and beyond but not for those reasons reasons. Benny Hill, did you get on with him? I mean, he was always there.

He was always there. I mean, as a child, I found him a hilarious sucker, I say. Right. You know, which might seem odd. I mean, it is annoying to me that this record keeps Jeepster off the top of the charts. This record that I've always considered the pervy cousin to Scott Walker's Jackie, in a weird way. There's a lot of similarities there and also lest we forget this is also a record that

David Cameron chose as one of his Desire discs at precisely the time actually David Cameron was making a big fuss about violent lyrics in rap music so I remember people questioning whether it was strictly appropriate for him to be endorsing a song about men fighting to the death for sex but as a child i did find yeah i did find benny hill hilarious i mean it's kind of

revealing to me thinking about myself that i also found kenny everett hilarious in that there are similarities in that obsession with control and editing and absencing yourself from anything live and risky which i think is what what Benny Hill was all about, turning the editing suite into this kind of comedic tool. When you read about Benny Hill's early years coming up and auditioning at places like the Wimbledon stuff, what is a persistent theme is how he always pretty much died on stage, especially when he toured with Reg Varnie.

He's not naturally funny. He's quite a shy individual. He went down particularly badly in Northern clubs. And it's also revealing that what does excite him post-World War II and what becomes a niche for him is television, much as with Everett, when you haven't really got a natural rapport with people and that isn't an option,

the kind of conspiratorial close-ups and glances that tv can give you that's a neat substitute if you like for actual you know being able to in you know being able to connect with an audience he always struggled with a live audience for me as a kid i always thought he was a very very funny man clearly one of those funny men who was only funny on screen and went in control and hopeless in a lot of other aspects of his life because there didn't seem to be a natural humor to Benny he was never going to be performing this song live on top of the pops like you know no like Waterman and Cole with their comedy record a decade later but as I got older I have to admit I started

feeling more uncomfortable with his comedy and and the sexism i mean even before i knew the word sexism there was something wrong about this old fella chasing young girls around a park or about you know therapist starting to be read as the rapist this was all starting to look wrong in the 80s in a big way. So, of course, I fell out of love in that period. This record, it's often held up as a kind of a really good example of true comedy record. It's a very precise record. I suppose we should applaud the finesse. It's not a precursor of rap.

I want to knit that in the bud. What? Well, no, I mean, it's spoken word, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in the lineage, I would say, of Stanley Holloway and things like that. But it does show up the usual things about British people and sexuality. When we did the episode about Kenny Everett, oddly, and I was on Mixcloud finding old Kenny Everett radio shows,

I also found a Noel Edmonds Radio 1 show during Ernie's stint at number one in January 72. And as usual, it's a good time capsule, you know, and it shows that Noel was playing on a kind of Kenny Everett light theme, if you like. But what's interesting is he plays, I remember he played Jeeps the first, Noel Edmonds, in this show. Yeah.

And you know the bit in Jeeps that I'm going to suck you, that line. He plays a Donald Duck noise over that, covering it up. Well, that makes it sound like he's saying, I want to fuck you. He just obscures it completely with this weird Donald Duck noise. And then two records later,

he plays Theme from Shaft. And, you know, obviously he's a bad mother. The mother goes missing. It's just, he's a bad. But this record, of course, just gets played completely fine yeah because it's harmless i guess um this record it doesn't matter whether i like it or don't like it it's in there as you say it's in my head yeah this video is a bit of fun in terms of throwing comestibles at each other i would argue the goodies did it better with the bun fight at the ok tea rooms um later on in the decade it is sad what happens to benny i think yeah regardless

of what you think of his comedy his treatment by the industry i think was pretty fucking appalling yeah um towards the end of his career so i was tremendously fond of him as a kid and i'm not even going to say an innocent kid you know i I think his comedy got worse and it didn't progress in any way and you know I'm not saying his comedy should have reflected the sexual politics of his day but I actually think the sexual politics of his comedy got worse and worse and worse and and in a way it started getting a tad misogynistic almost towards the end rather than it just being kind of innocent fun so yeah I'm not a massive fan of this record, of course, but it's in there.

It's part of my cultural lineage. It's in most British people's heads. And this video, frame for frame, yeah, you remember every single moment of it. Yeah, when I was a kid, this used to be on Junior Choice every single week. Yeah, yeah. And I used to find it quite upsetting and scary

because he died and then became a ghost. And I'm pretty sure that one morning I ran off and hid in another room. And when my mum found me, I was sniffling a bit. And she said, what's wrong? And I said, I'm thinking about old Ernie. Oh, mate. Which, you know, is not really bad skit as i was only five but i did immediately start building myself a huge emotional war so it would never happen again which i finally completed about

five years ago and now nothing gets through it in either direction unless it comes through the cat flap um but of course i didn't realize at the time this is actually a kind of parody of those old records like johnny remember me yeah and ghost riders in the sky you know the old death discs and perhaps perhaps not to be taken 100 seriously did any other records upset you like that death records um because i reckon i've got a faint memory of Lily the Pink doing that to me really yeah later on much later on I think

obviously later than it came out I wasn't even born when it came out no but yeah they can hit you hard when you're a kid records in which the main protagonist dies

as we've all pointed out David believed that Terry Jacks was actually dying when he did Seasons in the Sun so yeah yeah he thought it was like

Hurt by Johnny Cash yes the only song did seasons in the sun so yeah yeah he thought it was like uh hurt by johnny cash yes the only song that's ever hit me in that way was old shep by elvis not because it affected me but because it affected me dad we'd be in a car and he had an elvis tape and i would know the track listing back to front and i'd be counting down going oh fucking hell in about three songs time old shep's coming on and if there's a traffic jam or anything my dad's going to be roaring in the car about elvis's dead dog and i'm going to sit there next to me weeping dad please please all the traffic lights stay on green oh bless i mean i don't like this record very much but i would say it's a superior novelty record.

And of all the songs written to make people who aren't bothered about pop music laugh, this would be comfortably in the top half of that table, you know. And as Benny Hill pop music parodies go, it's not quite as funny as his spoof of Supersonic with Mike Mansfield. Yes. Which is not that funny in itself although is that super chronic i can't remember i just remember it gave him a chance to do his

peerless roy orbison impression again albeit somewhat out of time um but i mean this is funnier than those goodies records without the distraction of desperately wanting to be serious you know and of course the video's got henry mcgee who just has funny pouring off him at all times yes um even when he's not trying to be funny alas no bob todd no or jackie what's his name yeah yeah but it's not stutter rap or you know shut that door by larry grayson or something you know or les dawson's version of uh i can't control myself by the troggs done as comedy sex pest cosmos more oh i like that though yeah well i mean i've heard worse but this is better this sounds like it took longer than an afternoon but he he was a weird bloke. He did actually work as a milkman for a while.

Yes, he did. Presumably is where he got the inspiration for this. I don't think it's a true story, but he had a sort of unspectacular but quite an interesting life. Like, you know, he grew up in a condom shop. No. Actually, it was like a surgical appliances shop and sort of medical bits.

But really what kept it afloat was young men buying condoms. But it was like one of those old things where you have to engage in this ludicrous pretense, you know, that like, oh, no, this isn't a condom shop. We don't just flog John, is it? But they did. That's what it really was. And it's possibly not too simplistic to speculate that might have

had some effect on his aesthetic and his later work um you know at least as much as the fact that his dad was a bit of a cunt and he got on really well with his mum and all that sort of stuff that biographers love you know uh but people always assume that formative experiences are the obvious things and i'm not so sure you know yeah i mean always assume that formative experiences are the obvious things and I'm not so sure, you know. I mean, there's two things

that people always talk about with Benny Hill, the person. First of all, he was obsessively frugal. Like, he made millions out of the overseas sales

of his show because it was big in America and stuff. Yes. That does my head in, that does. I've read so many biographies by members of the bloods and crips and they all bang on about how much they fucking love benny hill there's one where

someone says oh yeah i went i went into the other territory on on a bike and i got my shotgun and i fucking killed four people cycled back with you know bullets flying over my head got home went up to the bedroom laid the shotgun under the bed just in time for the benny hill show yeah yeah i remember when uh snoop doggy dog as he then was was on the cover of melody maker he said in the interview that he loved benny yeah yeah yeah but yeah he was he had millions in the bank from yes But he lived in a crap flat round the corner from Thames Television Studios. Yeah, Teddington Lock, Middlesex. And he would go down to the docks with a big bag and buy cans that had got wet and the labels had come off.

Yeah. So you didn't know what was in them, which they used to flog off cheap in bulk. And Benny would be there with a bag and seven million in the bank. And, you know, there he was, a surprise every mealtime. Yeah. Like a London grill with peaches. Which he'd exchange for sexual favours from factory girls, wouldn't he? Yeah, it's been said.

What about this? Give me a blowjob and there's plum tomatoes and kitty cat. Yeah, maybe. And he never bought anything or he used to get all his stuff from like just doing like openings of shops and stuff and in payment he would take like a three-piece suite or something really weird the only things he ever spent money on were foreign holidays and the ladies um which is the other thing, because he lived on his own and he stayed a bachelor and he was so excessively demonstrative about his interest in women, people assumed that he must be gay, which he wasn't.

He was just a randy old man who didn't want to get married because he liked staying in on his own and watching the telly. Because that never happens when you're married, does it? But specifically watching what he wanted to and watching the telly. Because that never happens when you're married, does it? But specifically watching what he wanted to watch on the telly. So he'd take these women out for a posh lunch and a couple of drinks, bring them home, get a blowjob, apparently not interested in what the news of the world would call full sex,

and then he'd get them a taxi home. So he could sit there on his own eating biscuits and watching Coronation Street which you could argue displays a certain emotional immaturity or you could argue that it displays an admirably stubborn resistance to doing what he didn't want to do

on the reasonable grounds that there was no actual reason to do it as if there aren't enough divorces in the world We're Hazel O'connor though did it got to kick up his ass for his troubles if you're insanely wealthy i'm guessing like that kind of weird hermetic frugality is just more interesting than the mansion life as it were i heard that i know this is all going to be a lot of i heards, but with regards to his sexual peccadilloes, it is,

yes, so frequently suggested that he was gay. I mean, what I've heard is, yeah, he didn't like full sex as it were. It was all blowjobs and he liked the person administering the blowjob. Is that the correct phrase?

To call him Mr. Hill because it showed respect. But, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's twisted in a way itself. People want to seek the twisted in Benny Hill. I just think he was a very quiet private individual who I think was mainly obsessed with comedy. Yeah.

Oh, the story that Bob Monkhouse always used to tell was that apparently Benny Hill's hobby, he'd go round to the houses of his middle-aged female friends and do their cleaning for them like this he was not in return for sex or anything yeah this would be people he wasn't sleeping with he'd go around and he'd clean their kitchen and bob munkhouse said that in a business full of eccentrics, this was probably the strangest thing he'd ever heard any comedian do. But you know what he was saying about America? Americans don't think of him in the same bracket

as other broad mainstream comedians. This is the weird thing. They think of him in the same bracket as Monty Python, which is ridiculous, but quite interesting. I think it's because they used to show them both on a loop on American TV. Yeah. Which is ridiculous, but quite interesting. I think it's because they used to show them both on a loop on American TV. Right. And they were both British and sort of naughty with tits in at a time when American TV was a bit more sort of uptight about that sort of thing.

So to all those people, they were just essentially the same. Like, you know, when you go on a podcast app and you see chart music, and underneath it says, similar podcasts you might enjoy. And it's always like word in your ear. You know, it's like, oh yeah, it's just the same. Oh yeah. But in a work way, Taylor,

there is a similarity, isn't there? Because the Pythons, masters of the edit and masters of the editing suite, and it's not just a case of speeding up stuff to make it funny. It's cutting it funny. And I think there is that similarity there, isn't there, a little bit. So maybe that's why Americans perceive them similarly as well.

Yeah, well, when you look at his early TV work, it was really different from what we grew up with. Like, it was really inventive. Yeah, yeah. Like you say, it was all about that sort of, technical wizardry split screens and stuff yeah yeah just trying to do stuff that you could do on telly that you couldn't do on a stage and all that sort of thing and i mean that's where he built his reputation and that stuff really is good i think what we got um in the late 70s and 80s was uh i don't know it was he'd reached that point where he didn't really have to work

because he knew that if he slapped the little bald fellow on the head and he looked up a young woman's skirt and then looked at the camera and did a face, people would just fucking scream with laughter, you know. So that stuff's all just the same jokes. It was comfort-letching, wasn't it? You know, to my mind, by the late 70s, the Benny Hill show was right. Okay, you've got to sit through a load of very samey sketches uh to see some woman in

stockings and suspenders yeah that's what you were waiting for yeah although americans thinking he's like monty python is is probably more defensible than the french who think he's a fucking chaplain physical comedy genius I mean he's good but he's not that fucking good I went on a French exchange when I was at school and the mum of the house where I was staying tried to think of something English that she

liked to start a conversation with me right rather than talking about the French things that she liked like Jean-Marie Le Pen and I remember her coming up to me and saying which was not the sort of thing my 13 year old self expected to hear a french woman say no you know such were the insights granted to us by the eec right i think british audiences do understand him best in the same way that no one really gets Bruce Springsteen like a Randy Carmichael from New Jersey.

But I think there's still a few misconceptions about the nature of what he did in Britain amongst British people. And you're right, the way that he was treated, the way he was drummed off the screen was a little bit slimy. And it's not that his time wasn't just about up. And if you've seen any of his shows from the late 80s, it certainly was because they're fucking awful. And it's not that it was unreasonable to say, look, I understand that you're still very popular, but for various reasons,

we don't really want to do any more prime time family light entertainment hours where the only women in it are models in bikinis getting goosed by 60 year old men you know and and bella emberg is the the patron saint of unattractiveness you know and it's not i mean it's like 80s stuff his only innovation was to bring in Hill's Little Angels who were children in the tradition of the little rascals not in the tradition

of the mini pops I hate to do that but it's still revolting because children just are in any kind of comedy show you know

but he made a hundred million pounds for Thames TV yeah by the time he'd finished. Fucking hell. It's just easy to forget he was an innovator. And yet he's the first TV comic to actually love the medium of TV

and not see TV as this thing that you do in addition to the live circuit. That eats up all your material. Yeah, he's the first person to truly use the form. I mean wondered the only question i really have about this record it's not a deep question is it the ladybird singing on it i believe it is right got you makes sense yeah of course who would spend a lot of time on top of the pops in the 70s where their mates the top of the pops orchestra oh yeah yeah i just hated that weird because i remember it when he got the axe and comedians who weren't fit to kiss his enormous arse

were throwing street parties. You know what I mean? We used to talk about it. There was this weird celebratory thing, like self-congratulating, as though he was a bad person rather than an old person. You know what I mean? And it's like...

People have very simplistic ideas about comedy and what is or isn't offensive right and it's one of those things that everyone thinks they understand even when they do you know i'm always moaning that anyone who can kind of spell and put words in order that it makes sense thinks that they're a fucking writer right it's not the same thing it's the same with comedy because everyone watches stuff and laughs at it people think that means they know what comedy is or they understand how comedy works and most of them don't right and you really see that when people start talking about what comedy isn't isn't acceptable or offensive right of course there are jokes which aren't okay and of course there are jokes which reveal the

people who tell them to be unpleasant people but a lot of the time people are trying to plot this on two axes you know and it isn't that simple there's no formula for this the context and effects of humor are far more important than the topics right or even the the plain on paper meaning of a joke right so there's so-called edgy comedy that really does perpetuate unpleasant ideas because what it's effectively doing is nudging you in the ribs and saying hey i shouldn't say it but it's true isn't it hey aren't I daring to say this? And then there's other superficially far more appalling comedy that's actually perfectly valid because it isn't doing that.

What it's doing is dragging you down to its own reprehensible level and then asking you whether you recognise yourself, which is totally different. That's something that comedy has to be allowed to do. But a lot of people don't understand any of this. So you end up with a load of people who think that, like, smug trash like Ricky Gervais is hilarious, but Benny Healy's somehow offensive

because he did tit jokes, like as if fucking Spike Milligan didn't do exactly the same tit jokes for his whole career. Like he was some sort of crusading misogynist rather than just an old-fashioned musical comic. And there's stuff in Benny Hill's shows that certainly should be euthanised. When you watch it, there's a few jovial rape gags, which aren't very nice. And there's a fair bit of racism from time to

time um we all remember his hilarious chinaman character for instance it's not it doesn't look nice now but people assume that because if you did those jokes now they would be obviously mean spirited and awful therefore that's what Benny Hill was, which he wasn't. And that's not just temporal relativism, because there's a lot of old comedy that really is quite horrible and just means exactly what it seems to say. You know, nudging the ribs. But when you look at Benny Hill doing endless tit jokes,

it's not a celebration of male supremacy. It's about men being led by their dicks and making themselves foolish and being rewarded with a slap in the face every time it's just that if you stage jokes like that within a culture that is still extremely sexist they might come out looking extremely sexist especially to later generations as if he's laughing at the existence of tits or something like that. In fact, he's laughing at the effect of tits on male dignity and self-possession. And a lot of people just don't go. Yeah, I don't get any mean spiritedness from Benny.

That's the thing. And that's what's so mistakable in comedy, isn't it? You can straight away spot when somebody is kicking down. Yeah. And I don't think he ever was, really. What I think his problem was, was he was stuck. Yeah. He couldn't develop his act.

And it had been going that long that he just had to keep telling these same old appalling jokes, some of which inevitably started looking very ropey and quite offensive. But I don't think, you know, he was, i don't think he's a racist or sexist now i resent this kind of idea that we can you know apportion that to somebody in that way as if it's a massive reveal of their character um i don't think it is in the case of benny hill and this isn't the only reason that i think there was generosity of spirit in his work but his his demise is truly sad and and it you know the fact that he wasn't found for two days and this sort of stuff and the fact that the son quoted

him as paying tribute to Frankie Howard who died. Yeah, fucking hell, forgot about that. Yeah, they quoted him from beyond the grave, I suppose because he had already died the day that, you know, two days before Frankie Howard died. Yeah, he was treated really, really badly and I wonder what could have happened i think by the time that he's in

his sort of zenith of his fame nobody's going to come along and suggest he changes his act which he couldn't do so he is stuck there you know um but i think the way that he departed from tv the way he was kicked out was brutal and cruel for somebody who had given a lot to British TV comedy in a big way. And for so many of us, I've got to say, as a kid, I fucking found him hilarious. Yeah. No, it's true. It's not that the jokes he was doing at the end

weren't completely inappropriate, but, yeah, they were completely inappropriate for the 80s and would have become, I was going to say, would have become even more appropriate in the 90s. Something of a comeback of that sort of humour in the 90s. is they can't see past themselves and they don't understand how to take something in and evaluate and assess it. And they can't look at anything from the past and not judge it by their own current standards. Yeah. And past judgment and think that must be what it is.

I mean, I remember when Peter Powell was doing the Tuesday Tea Time Top 40 Roundup, and this is in the 80s, and nearly all the new entries were novelty records. They were like the Torval and Dean music, and it was Fraggle Rock, and Alexi Sale, and Mel Brooks, and all of these

novelty records. And I remember Peter Powell getting really irate about this and saying there should be a separate chart for those sorts of records. Because, you know, there are proper bands out there trying to earn a living and these people are, you know, stopping them. But, you know, I think Ernie's a good example. I love Jeepster, of course. I want that to be number one.

But at the same time, I think comedy records, they add to the strange magic of the British charts. Yes. Add to the strange magic of the British charts. And these sort of weird happenings where, you know, you end up with, I don't know, the Sex Pistols in between Kenny Rogers and the Muppets. You know, I think those moments are good. The charts are always a democratic leveller in a way.

So I don't resent this record being number one. I do kind of resent it appearing at the end of 72 when it was, you know, it was an overhang from the previous year. So Ernie would stay at number one for four weeks, eventually sent off to that milk round in the sky by I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing by the New Seekers.

The follow-up, Fad-Eyed Fal failed to chart, and he never troubled the charts again until a re-release of Ernie in the wake of his death got to number 29 for two weeks in May of 1995 and as Nils pointed out in 2006 the song rose from the grave when David Cameron selected it as a desert island disc alongside fake plastic trees by Radiohead, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd and This Charming Man by The Smiths. Culture war.

At the same time, however, it was revealed that Hill used to donate money to the Communist Party of Australia to pay for their annual barbecue as his sister was a member. Brilliant. Brilliant. Did Henry McGee pop up and say, like Johnny Moore did, that, no, David Cameron, you can't like Benny Hill?

Benny! And he drove the fastest wheel car in the West! Hey! Hey! There we are once again, the four men's Morkman-wise. That was Benny Hill and Ernie. This is Chickery Tip and Son of My Father. Edmunds and Blackburn finally reunited.

Share a microphone as assorted kids, including one in a silver top hat and Slade T-shirt, cluster about them. Here we are once again, the poor man's Morecambe and wise, says Tony. But before he can finish what he had to say about Benny Hill, Edmund snatches the mic away, introduces the next act,

and starts frugging away, deliberately avoiding the gormless, confused smile of his co-host. That was awkward. Very awkward. And you can't help feeling deliberate on Noel's part. But although he's sort of rushed into it, it does mean

that Noel delivers his best ever Top of the Pops intro. It's the cleverest thing he ever said on Top of the Pops. He says, the cleverest thing he ever said on Top of the Pops. He says, this is chicory tip and son of my father. Perfect. Perfect. More of that, please.

Formed in Maidstone in 1963, the Sonics were a beat combo who played the Medway circuit to little success, splitting up in 1965. Two years later, however, they reformed, taking their name from a jar of camp coffee, and after they linked up with Roger Easterbeck, the manager of Vanity Fair, they were signed up to CBS in 1970. Their first three singles failed to chart, and they had just released their fourth, entitled I Love Onions, in November of 1971, but then Easterby chanced upon an advanced copy of a single put out in West Germany by Giorgio Moroder called I'm Free Now. Played the B-side, an English-language version of the 1971 hit Nachtschen Dishonor, which he wrote for Michael Holm,

and was convinced it was going to be a massive hit over here and wanted to be first in. Complying with the arcane rules of the UK music biz of the time, which dictated that you couldn't cover someone else's song until it had been played on the radio, he pulled a few strings with BBC Radio Kent and got it played once and then set to work on making it the hit that Chicory Tip were gagging for. After transcribing the lyrics by ear as not to alert Hansa, Giorgio's label, to the sting,

and booking Air Studios for a session on Christmas Eve 1971, getting in Chris Thomas, George Martin's right-hand man throughout the late 60s, to programme a Moog in an attempt to recreate Maroda's synthy thwack. CBS pulled the promotion for I Love Onions, which was shit anyway, and rushed this out in the second week of January. It entered the chart at number 30 at the end of the month, then soared 19 places to number 11, then boinged all the way up to number two, and a week later deposed Telegram

Sam by T-Rex as the undisputed king of Pop Mountain. And here's another chance to see their original performance 10 months ago. And here, chaps, are those unkempt youths that the reviewer from the Coventry Evening Telegraph was going on about. And where do we start with this? I mean, fucking hell, what a palaver. Poor Giorgio, man, had it snatched under his

mustachioed nose. It's such a strange rule. I didn't know that, Al, about that you can't cover anything unless it's been played on the radio. Yeah, apparently so. Well, that's what it said on their website. That's mental. The Chickery Tip website.

Yeah, what's weird about this is, lyrically, it's such a strangely specific and left-field topic for a record that is unashamedly just a vehicle for the sound of the Moog synthesiser. Unfortunately, one of those words where you sound more like a dick if you say it correctly. I know, I was told there. Yeah.

No, I'm going back to Moog, fuck it. Yeah, too right. But the oddness of the words is probably just an artifact of this song's rather convoluted gestation. But I can't think of another period in pop history where anyone charged with writing english lyrics to a space age bubblegum tune showcasing a crazy new sound would not have just made it go oh i love my baby she's lovely and she's lovely and i love her so you know rather than thinking, all right,

I'm going to make this one about the stifling pressures of familial expectation. It needs to be said, man. You know, you know that song, my old man said, be an Arsenal fan. I said, fuck off, bollocks, you're a cunt. Like that, sort of like that. I mean, you know.

My dad's a bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard dad they might as well have made it about you know the superiority of drawstring bin bags or something it's like yeah but the thing is with the lyrics i mean it you know try to find the lyrics to this in a sense it reminded me of how antagonized i get when you when you do google lyrics because i thought i knew what the lyrics to this in a sense, it reminded me of how antagonised I get when you do Google lyrics because I thought I knew what the lyrics to this was. And I'm sticking with mine, I'm sorry, regardless of what Google says. As far as I'm concerned, he sings,

I also think he sings, I also think he sings, Commanded I was stranded in a plastic crime. And I also think he sings, Surrounded and confounded by statistic vibes. They're very, very strange lyrics. I'm sticking with those. I mean, the actual official ones are no less strange,

to be honest with you. But you can't trust them, can you? No, you can't. Those lyric sites. And also, mooling is just a fantastic word. I don't know what it means, but I'm sticking with that. Cross Channel Ferry. I put down a board and I went to Boulogne.

That would have been good. The thing is, I think this is much better than the... It's a great single, this. And I think it's much better than the original Michael Holmes single that you've mentioned. By the way, don't fall down

the alluring rabbit hole of the B-side to the original German single that's called Smog in Frankfurt. That is such a great title, and you have to listen. But it's not worth it, honestly. But here, on the chicory tip version of this song,

you know, the moog is, and I'm going to say Moog as well it's accentuated I find in the original German thing it's a sort of peripheral detail the use of the synth but in this I think it just is way more accentuated it actually is the low end of this record

is all Moog and it becomes a big part of the mix which oddly enough mirrors what happens with the other chicory tip single that year What's Your Name of this record is all Moog, and it becomes a big part of the mix. Which, oddly enough, mirrors what happens with the other Chicory Tip single that year, What's Your Name? Which, you know, just like Son of My Father

is a Moroder composition and production, and just like Son of My Father, there's a version in German first, which is Wo bist du, I think, by Peter Maffet. That similarly keeps the synth sounding polite, if you like. Whereas with Chicory Tit,

they're front and centre and they form the low end. You know, what's startling is how sparse the record is really. It's basically based around that. And what a mind blast it must have been hearing this for the first time.

Oh, without a doubt. Being used in a pop single. Totally. Baxter, Wollard and Rod would have been well pissed off. Their show's gone for hours and hours and hours because before they play the fucking song, they tell you what the synthesiser is and what it does and how it's made.

Just get a fucking half-hour lecture. This should be available in English shops by about the year 1982. Manufacturers estimate a price of about £17,000. The thing is, it is important. What you can't really see here is the future, in a sense. We do have to wait for Kraftwerk for that, I would say. But what you don't see here is synths just used as kind of gimmickry. You know, although the guitarist is up there

pretending to have been on the record, fundamentally what you have here is a long-haired, rock-like frontman. Oh, what hair. Oh, God, what hair. What a fucking bouffant he's got on him. He's got marvellous hair. Marvellous and tough-nalesque hair. He looks like he's got two wigs on his head.

He looks like a rock frontman, but he's happy to sing on something purely synthetic. So, you know, it's very Philociish in that regard. And crucially, there's a real joy in this sound. It reminds me of whenever I let my grandkids play on my keyboards and stuff. At first, their impulse obviously isn't musical. It's just simply how can I make this sound like the future? How can I make this make robot noises or make weird futuristic noises?

And I think part of that sort of delight in that novelty of synth noises is really important and it comes across in in this single which is a fantastic single definitely the earliest if not the earliest pop singles to embrace the synth uh certainly the first number one single with a moog on it and uh as you can imagine quite a big deal was made of it at the time there's an article in in the Sunday Mirror from this February entitled, Chickery Click with a Robot Line in Music. The age of electronic music is really with us. Chickery Tip, a group from Maidstone, would probably still be comparative unknowns

if it hadn't been for electronics engineer chris thomas they went to record their adaptation of a continental song called son of my father and chris who was officiating in the control box connected up a piece of electronic wizardry called a moog synthesizer the result was magic chris got 20 pound for session, but he won't receive any royalties. Some people might be inclined to fly into a furore at the thought of chicory tip riding to fame on someone else's back. But lead singer Peter Hewson explains the Moog synthesizer is a complicated gadget which, when connected to a piano keyboard, provides an incredible number of sound effects. It takes two people to work it, a trained electronics engineer and a pianist. The big snag now is that we've had to buy a £1,000 Moog outfit and engage a full-time expert, but it helps the hard rock sound that kids want

they are fed up with obscure underground noises with no definite beat now they demand excitement something they can understand again yeah man testifying he's right he's absolutely right it's just a bit of an issue that, despite what we're hearing, we have to look at them there miming with guitars, which does look ridiculous. And it was only when I looked into this that I found out Chickery Tip didn't even have a keyboard player when this record was made.

And the bloke playing on this clip, I think, is just sitting it. It's like if there hadn't been any horn players in the Brighouse and Rasputin band. They'd have to go on top of the pops and they'd mime to the floral dance, like loping about with zithers. It's all a cod, man. But what I do like is that there's a drummer on the record.

Yeah. And a drummer here. Because all of these, well, most of these early groups that used electronics had human drummers because development of drum machines sort of came later than the development of early sense so if you listen to like the silver apples or or united states of america you know like right up to tubeway army you still have this strange situation where like most of the band were living in the year 1999. All you have to do is you press a button that says music on it

and the whole song comes out by itself. But then the drummer is still sat there, like, surrounded by the cumbersome relics of the acoustic age. But the combination always sounds brilliant. Yeah, absolutely. And the drums here are absolutely crucial when he starts rippling about and breaking up the beat and the flow it's just sensational and really really deeply pleasurable yeah it doesn't help that peter hewson is a very unsure front man i think he he's

performing this as if he's worried that the robots are actually going to take over. And a Cyberman's just going to push him off the microphone and take over. He's not quite sure when to do the clappy bits. And he's doing this stupid lumbering step in front of the mic stand. You know the end credits of Dad's Army, where they're all marching across the field with their rifles? God, Frey. That's what he looks like. cross the field with their rifles godfrey that's what he looks like chicory tip are essentially a lab band who've just been given this amazingly futuristic song it's like i don't know giving fire starter to dodgy or something like that isn't it it really is it's just look right that song

about the onions forget it it's shit you're doing this just do this just stand here and do this you'll have a hit but if glam was establishing itself as a buzzword of the era there's another word that's already been established in 1972 aggro um one of the pleasures i've had of researching this year is seeing the two words sparking off each other from time to time as the idea of football hooliganism really took hold in the media. So I present to you this article from the Sunday People in October of 1972, entitled, When Those Gold and Silver Boots Go In. Roy Ahmed has a bizarre gimmick,

which distinguishes him as one of the hooligans on Sheffield Wednesday's terraces. He wears, of all things, silver bovver boots sprayed by himself with aerosol paint. There to show I'm one of the leaders, he boasted. They also distinguish him and his imitators with silver boots from a group of rival fans who follow sheffield's other team united they wear boots sprayed with gold paint insignificant louts with a desperate urge to be noticed one of the golden boot boys told our investigators we have a reputation as a hard crowd and I want it to stay that way. I'm trying to get more people to fight.

And, you know, it's not hard to imagine Roy Ahmed and his chums and the Golden Boot Boys stamping a metallic boot on the dance floor to this single, which, as we all know, very quickly became a terrorist anthem. Yeah. Pardon my ignorance, but I'm feeling that 72 is the year where football and music does come together a lot more. Obviously, a couple of weeks after Son of My Father stops being number one, I think it's Man City fans

who start using it, chanting about Rodney Marsh. And, you know, it becomes the template for any number of different songs. And also, you know, don't forget, 72, I think, is also the spring in which the first club-based, as opposed to England-based football record, gets into the top 10 in the shape of, you know, Blue is the Colour.

I think good old Arsenal. Leeds United as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. And good old Arsenal the year before only creeps into the top 20, whereas Blue is the Colour gets to number five, I think. So, yeah. And that's, I mean, it's mad, really, whereas Blue is the Colour gets to number five, I think. So, yeah.

And that's, I mean, it's mad, really, because Blue is the Colour, I think, was about the League Cup final. It wasn't even an FA Cup song. But that's happening more and more, isn't it? That connection between football and music in this period. Yeah. See, I'm slightly intrigued by the fact that the whole band seem to be wearing Farrah slacks.

I mean, smart and comfortable, and even slightly fashionable at this time, but not really the sort of trousers you associate with a sneak preview of the 30th century. Do you know what I mean? Doesn't that happen to Chicory Tip later, that their record company panics and gets them dressed up as futuristic Satanists? Yeah, there's loads of

pictures of them on the internet dressed as uh yeah like non-super non-heroes out of a bulgarian sci-fi movie um which is quite the sight to see but they all seem to be associated with a later flop single of theirs called iou which is of no interest whatsoever. And there don't seem to be any moving images at all of this bold new look. I mean, if they'd managed to time the cheapo futuristic image to coincide with the cheapo futuristic sound, they would have been even more widely derided,

but they might have been even more exciting derided but they might have been even more exciting as well although i would forgive these people anything for having put out a single called i love onions a message i endorse wholeheartedly well quite except when you actually listen to it yeah it's not good news it's sort of it does expose them as actually being in that tradition of Vanity Fair or The Mixtures, you know. Like the only record that they'd ever heard was DW Washburn by the Monkees. It's like old-timey, ingratiating rubbish, you know. It's all very arch and aggravating

and basically just waiting for the bright bright clean synthesizer wind to blow through and purify them you know also any extra credit earned from one of their follow-up singles being called uh good grief christina and the lyric going good grief christina how come you never heard of rock and roll um also melts away when you actually try and listen to it. And you realise that, yes, Son of My Father was to them what shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to Gavrilo Princip. He's not hugely interested in his exploits in the All-Serbia Inter-County Table Tennis Championship of 1912.

That was the backhand smash that wasn't heard around the world. Frankly, that can go hang. I'm sorry to hear that I love onions isn't any good because that's a sentiment that needs stating. I mean, imagine life without onions. It'd scarcely be worth living. Oh, you're sounding like me mum now, Neil. Well, the thing is, I i mean food does come into this because with a name like chicory tip it's almost as if they were retrospectively invented to be the ultimate 70s sort of early 70s because chicory is

a very 70s thing i mean camp coffee i was a right picky little sod when i was a little kid with food and drink and i would have camp coffee right yeah every morning mate cold um i remember the bottle with the with the guy with the bagpipes yes yeah that that sparks some memories certainly if i had i don't need to talk you through my food preferences when i was a toddler please that was my breakfast i'd have camp coffee and i'd have bacon right but annoyingly man i wouldn't just eat the same bacon that everyone else was having my mom would have to do mine extra crispy and then break into tiny finger-sized little pieces for me to eat that would i was just a really fucking annoying little little picky kid but

camp coffee was a large large part of my childhood. It was my breakfast every morning. It was my breakfast drink. Bacon Fingers. They would have been a good support band for Chippewa too. But yeah, this song is a song that's in the past. It wasn't part of my life in 1972. And I lump it in with Yellow River by Chris Day.

It's one of those songs that you always heard when you're on holiday and you were in the made marrying club or something some punch like band had turned up and they'd slog the way through this without the move thing is really to understand the importance of a synth sound you have to clarify the differences between pop and music right and the people who like one or the other. If you take two extremes, right? On the first hand, you have albums, of course. Let's say the Brown album by the band,

Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, Moondance by Van Morrison, right? And on the other hand, you have singles, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy by the Ohio Express, More, More, More by Andrea True Connection, and Ooh, Stick You by Daphne and Celeste, right? To me, those are all great records because I'm musically bisexual. But there are a lot of people who love three of those records

and hate the other three, or would do if they ever heard them. But the three that they love and the three that they hate are always from the same side of the selection um because the first three of those records have no pop value and the second three have no musical value and there's a lot of people who love pop but are bored or worse by, you know, music. And there's a lot of people who love music but they're untouched or worse by pop. And generally speaking, the music people think the pop people are aesthetic simpletons with no appreciation of quality.

Sheep, man. Yeah, and the pop people think the music people are dull and mentally lifeless, you know, with no wit or imagination. But in fact, not to sound like Bobby Bridgebuilder here, they just connect to records in a different way and their imaginations are stimulated by different kinds of intensity, right? Because pop people, it's not that they have no musical appreciation at all because they understand that Crazy in Love is a better record

than the fast food rockers um and it's not that music people have no appreciation of anything beyond technique because they love the who who were one of the most gimmicky and sensationalistic bands who ever lived you know but the one of the great battlegrounds of history between these two people is the synthesizer because heavy music people got into synth music of a type, whether it was like Stevie Wonder or Tonto's Expanding Headband. Or The Who. Right, and or The Who.

But the general attitude was you just press the button and it comes out and it's dystopian anti-music. And what they disliked and distrusted about the sound of the synthesizer, in fact, was its simplicity. It was the simplicity of the sound. Because nothing that you can do in the act of playing an analog synth has any bearing on the noise it makes. You can't bend a string, you can't skronk it,

which to those people feels dehumanizing. But also the simplicity of its appeal is a problem for them because for pop the simpler and the more direct you can make the sound the more exciting it is right and the more immediate it is and what georgio moroder realized first about the synthesizer and what everyone involved in this record then picked up on is that it simplifies the process of piping happiness into a random listener's ears and forcing them to respond because the point is music expects you to do half the work and is proud of that pop music has got no time for this it has to attack you in the quickest way while you're out shopping or you're listening to the radio so the clear basic and piercing lines of the analog synth

plus what was then the novelty of the sound were perfect and all that's left to do is write a song that's catchy enough to carry it without the song getting in the way of the thrill which is a satanic concept to like those eric clapton fans who don't understand that the reason Jimi Hendrix was a better guitarist than Eric Clapton wasn't just down to faster fingers or more soul, man. It was that Hendrix also understood things like flash and gimmickry and showmanship and all these pop qualities. You know, if you can operate on both sides

of this dichotomy at once, you've won, right? But if you can operate on both sides of this dichotomy at once you've won right but if you can't just do this write a nursery rhyme find a gimmick and oh look guess what you still need talent and vision and judgment after all or you need to know somebody who's got those things yeah yeah that certainly is part of the synth fear among musicians i think i think you know in this period there's a fear of kind of i don't know music getting de-professionalized if you like the the thing that synthesizers introduce that that is precisely why they're so exciting in pop is that they suggest this remarkable thing that non-musicians can start getting involved and that you know they can start being a part of this and i think i don't think that's happening just yet. That happens in the avanties, doesn't it?

When they become more affordable. But I do think, Keith Emerson notwithstanding, there's a thing about synthesizers that does disincline that kind of virtuosity, if you like. It doesn't foreground the virtuosic as being the most important aspect of being a musician. And I think that's a deep, deep worry for your musos, as Taylor mentioned.

Yeah, especially as I think the version of the moog that they would use on this i think would have been monophonic so you couldn't even play a chord on it you just it was like a kid's organ it just went you just play one note at a time but it's what the kids want now though oh yes you can't blame them can you? I'll tell you what imagine if Chicory Tippet got hold of I Feel Love before Giorgio had a chance to put it out properly. Fucking hell. Oh he got gazumped. So Son of My Father spent

three weeks at number one eventually giving way to the next single we're going to hear. And after initially getting the arse about it, Giorgio patched up his differences with the band and became their chief songwriter for the next couple of years. The follow-up, What's Your Name, got to number 13 in June and their next single, Good Grief Christina, got to number 17 in May of 1973.

But that would be the last spray of their musk upon the charts, despite, or possibly because of, a glam makeover which saw them wearing superhero costumes with their pants over their tights, huge orange bulbous helmets and an eye mask shaped like a massive crab, and a single called Cigarettes, Women and Wine, which was banned by the BBC for encouraging the kids to get the facts in, as if they needed any encouragement in the 1970s.

They split up in 1975, but Peter Hewson was last spotted in 1983 when he recorded the single Take My Hand with Vince Clark, while the latter was in between The Assembler and Erasure. Fucking hell, this man could have been the front person of Erasure. Wow. Yeah, imagine him in some hot pants. I'd rather not.

What would have been funnier is if, after this record, they went to Man United and they won fuck all. Yes. They went to Man United and they won fuck all. Yes! Son of a father Morning I was morning I was weak from time Son of a father The man that I was burning in a burning fire Thank you very much, though, indeed, to Chicory Tip. I'm the envy of all the fellas now

because I've got the lovely Pans people all round me. I still haven't got my Christmas present from you. You haven't got me anything? I've got you the most beautiful Christmas present. It's over there, right? I bet you can't guess what that is. It cost me an absolute fortune, I did, to send that through the post. You just don't know what that is, do you?

How about that? That's Cherry. And she is going to be the brand-new dancer with Pan's People. Well, there you go, that's Cherry, and she's going to be dancing with Pan's People all the way through 1973. Right, well, we're going to see Cherry right now dancing for the very, very first time with Pan's people to one of the most beautiful songs of 1972. It's called Without You from Nielsen.

No, I can't forget this evening All your faces you were leaving We cut back to Tony, who tells us how he's the envy of all the fellas with an A on the end due to his close proximity to four people of pan. He tells them that he's got them the most beautiful Christmas present and directs them towards a huge wadge of flowery paper tied up with pink ribbon. After some awkward faffing about, the package opens up to reveal Cherry Gillespie. Born somewhere in Norfolk in 1955, Cherry Gillespie trained as a ballerina

at the Bush Davies School of Theatre Arts at East Grinstead and was tipped as a major ballet artist in the making by the Daily Telegraph earlier this year when she played Swan Hilda in Coppelia. Meanwhile, Pan's people, who were entering their fifth year of emoting to records and being all crumpet air, were going through a period of transition. In February, Flick Colby stepped down from performance to concentrate on stick banging. Then seven months later, Andy Rutherford took pregnant,

reducing the line up to four and causing the great crumpet shortage of late 1972. An audition was called for a new fifth member and Gillespie sailed through it. And this, her debut performance, is the birth of the Imperial Phase Pans People line-up. Oh, this is landmark,

chaps. It is. It is. Sherry Gillespie, my second favourite person of Pan when I became top of the pops aware. And she got promoted up to first when louise clark left and she's clearly the bridge between the traditional pans people to the more live legs and co isn't she and apparently she cost tony an absolute fortune that's what he says that whole thing is a little bit creepy isn't it yeah just a bit yeah yeah it would have been better if they'd opened the present and inside it were all of pan's people's dogs dead and cut to tony laughing maniacally

yeah instead what we get is when it cuts to tony and he turns back to the camera he does look like he's been caught having a wank on something really surreptitious and odd i also really like the fact the attention to detail with top of pops at this time you know that gift tag on the wrapping paper two pans people yeah i really hope that gift tag that enormous outsized gift tag is somewhere still you know in the studio or in television set are covered in cobwebs and fag ash um i love getting lost in thinking of the rather mundane processes that must have been enacted to make those little add-ons real. But, you know, it's a shame about the first routine she's given, really, isn't it? Oh, God, yeah.

After this awkward bit is done with, Tony tells us that Cherry will be dancing with Pants People all the way through 1973, which is a bit of a demand even on a trained dancer. And the new era starts right here, as they're going to have a bit of emote too, Without You, by Nielsen. Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Harry Nielsen relocated to California in his teens, and eventually worked as a computer operator in a bank, while forging a career as a singer-songwriter on the side.

In 1962, he landed a job singing demos for the songwriter Scott Turner and a year later linked up with John Mariscalco, best known for co-writing some of Little Richard's biggest hits, who helped him begin a solo career. After a spell working with Phil Spector, he landed a deal with RCA in 1966, and a year later put out his first LP, Pandemonium Shadow Show. Although it didn't do anything commercially, it was seized upon by certain music biz types as the coming thing, one of whom was Derek Taylor, press officer of the Beatles, who brought home a box of the LP and started lobbing it out to folk, including the mob fabs. They were so taken by it that when Paul McCartney and John Lennon gave a press conference to launch Apple Corps in New York in 1968, Lennon claimed that Nielsen was his favourite American singer and favourite American band. He finally

broke through in the UK in 1969 when his cover of the Fred Nielse single Everybody's Talking used in Midnight Cowboy got to number 23 in October of that year but despite establishing himself as an albums artist in the early 70s, hadn't been anywhere near the charts since. This single, a cover of a track featured on Badfinger's 1970 LP No Dice, was heard by Nielsen at a party in 1971, and after going through his Beatles LPs and discovering it wasn't one of theirs, recorded it for inclusion in his seventh LP Nielsen Schmielsen put out as the lead-off single in America in October of 1971 it slowly clawed its way up the billboard chart spending

four weeks at number one in February of 1972 emboldened by the number one place in, RCA put it out over here in the same month. And a month later, it had dragged Son of My Father off number one. Flick Colby said this was the worst ever Pants People performance. Chiefly because the costumes are too voluminous. But, you know, mainly they've been dealt a right shitty hand there, haven't they? They have. Just imagine what they could have done with some of the singles we've already heard and are about to hear. Too right.

Could have been a hot pantered frenzy. But that said, I mean, I like the way that they're kind of dressed like Ingrid Pitt and Britt Eklund in the closing scene of The Wicker Man, but what they're being asked to do is pretty horrendous,

really. I mean, there's only one way to dance to this record, if you're minded to dance to this record, and that's drunk with your partner with your hands pouring each other in a really unpleasant way um that descends into a sort of unholy frot fest i mean in terms of coolness if the coolest thing pans people ever do that little promo vid they did to john barry's persuaders yes uh theme then then this

routine is down there with yeah gilbert o'sullivan's get down routine it is pan's people probably my favorite dance troupe so the things that we love about pan's people that slight sense of rushed rehearsal those tiny imperfections that make them a cherishably british phenomenon more than merely a version of an American trope. All of that's there, but I don't want to watch this routine ever again. You know what I mean? There's nothing in the routine that engages at all.

I mean, they're dressed as inmates from a sexy asylum. Or like the ghosts of 18th century children, bricked up in the cell. It's like when Sally Oldfield was on top of the pubs. Remember that one? Diana Ross and the Brontes.

I mean, we've seen other Christmas specials where Legs & Co especially were allowed to cut loose a bit from their enforced artificial innocence and stop smiling like halfwits and get a bit sexier you know like as if they were battling for attention against the post christmas dinner bloat you know but here is the exact opposite it's like yeah they're done up in yeah long sleeved smocks that go from the collarbone

right down to the grubby studio floor and when they spin around and around without getting dizzy which is fairly impressive in its way but not much of a dance routine although you know this isn't much of a dance record you can see that they're even wearing petticoats underneath just in case oh they're wearing the support garments yeah yeah i don't know what the thinking was do you think mary whitehouse has crept in to the dressing rooms she would have no complaints about this would she no it might have been one of the things that she might have written to the bbc to commend them on much as you know i think she wrote to itv commending them on a beaver documentary once suggesting that that should be on primetime television it was odd what she found entertaining

but you know what can you what can you do to this record i know let's let's cut to the chase i fucking hate this song it's pure dad divorce pop isn't it if you were around your mate's house at any point during the 70s and his dad came back from the pub and put this on or turned it up when it came on the radio that was the fucking sign to leg it out the house and have a really loud and intense game of kirby i know what you mean it's awful man it's fucking awful people go on about harry nielsen say oh you must investigate this and that it's like no i've heard this i'm not going any further fuck him on one level it's passive aggressive needy emotional blackmail this this song it's bombastic it's over sincere it's pathetically drunk as well

this song it sounds yeah um basically yeah i'm gonna top myself if you leave and i think the key word is he goes i can't live if living is right i'd have more respect for the protagonist of the song if he did spell it out in a very teenage way and said i won't live if an authentic promise rather than a needy threat i don't believe listening to without you that the singer of this will really do it if you like and and as a cry for help it's just kind of annoying the one blessing about it is it's shorter than you think this record and that's amazing Neil, because as soon as it comes on and you hear it, it's just like, oh, fucking, we're in for a long haul. It's one of them songs.

And it's totally the wrong song for pants people to dance to because it's a man's song, isn't it? Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, one thing in its mitigation is that it did, I think it kept American Pie off the top spot. And I hate that record even more than I don't like this. But the thing is with the record, and I have to say some positives about it,

I think it's arranged really well. It's very, very clever. It's kind of ahead of its time in that regard. Mariah Carey is, you know, free when this record comes out. But for that kind of singer, and for the legions of copycat witnesses and Mariahs that a show like X Factor would encourage, this is the perfect song to showcase your chops. Because you've got to do quiet, you've got to do close, you've got to do tender, but you've also got to belt it out at key points.

Or you could do it on Bulgarian Idol or whatever it was called, where that woman turned up and says, I'm going to do this song called Ken Lee. And they were like, what are you going on about? And she started singing it. She thought it was called Ken Lee. Look, I mean, the Badfinger version, right, I think goes on too long. It feels a bit demo-ish. And I've heard varying reports about the recording of this song.

Jimmy Webb was in the studio next door and said... Can you shut the fuck up? Jimmy Webb's recording an album of his own in the studio next door and said... Can you shut the fuck up? Jimmy Webb's recording an album of his own in the adjacent studio. And according to Jimmy Webb, he witnesses what he still considers to be the greatest vocal performance in all of pop or rock.

It isn't that. It is better, I think, than the overlong Badfinger version. There's actually a demo version of this as well that's even better than this version i do have problems with it because it leads to some pretty horrible records i mean i think you can draw a direct line from without you to all by myself by eric carman um and certainly if i was a kid watching this it would be a definitive piss break song it would have annoyed the fuck out of

me as a repeated play number one as well much as i would have felt about i don't know those were the days and seasons in the sun um it's one of those in it let's get out the room the problem that pans people have here apart from you know being virtually tied up in a sack is that this is not a woman's song i mean if they were dressed up as dads in an armchair knocking back a bottle of teachers it would have have been more apposite. Or they should have been dressed up as Christmas trees decorated with tears. I bet fucking Savile was playing this over and over as he frotted his mum's clothes this Christmas. The thing is, of course, it's bitterly ironic that Neil should say

that he doesn't believe the singer of this is actually going to do it. I know. Actually co-written by two people whose biographies say otherwise yeah one weird and sometimes wonderful thing about pop music is the way the rules can shift and morph around you and sometimes something which can seem like obvious rubbish can turn out to be magnificent and sometimes something which seems like it should be objectively good ends up feeling a bit unsubtle and overbearing which may be what's happened here because i don't really like this record either even before the the nightmarish pseudo sincere over singers of the modern era have got anywhere near it, right? Because let's not be in any doubt, right,

Harry Nilsson was a very talented man and an extremely good singer, at least until he broke his voice singing drunk. And in fact, the best thing about this version of this song is the layering of the vocal tracks, where he's harmonising with himself, but the more the song comes undone emotionally, the more he splits the vocal tracks

and lets them drift away from each other, which works rather better to convey desolation and mental collapse than the ghastly, overcooked screeching and bellowing, which most people now associate with this song. Thank God karaoke hadn't been invented in the 70s, man. Fucking hell. I mean, this is the Kaylee of the 70s, isn't it, this song?

But what's weird is that Nielsen was primarily a songwriter. I mean, that's how he got his start. He wrote Cuddle Toy for the Monkees, was his first success, which is a song that I've never liked because it's a bit too delighted with its own naughtiness and cleverness. You know, it's a jolly sounding song

for the biggest teeny band of the day and it's called Cuddly Toy. And of course, it's about having it off with a teenage virgin. Although the delicately ambiguous morality of the lyrics is a little bit steamrolled by davy jones on the record um but he was a songwriter that was his thing and yet his two best known records the only two harry nilsson tracks that anyone's ever fucking heard of this and everybody's talking which are both covers and both totally unrepresentative of his style um there's a tv

special from i think 1971 where he plays a load of his songs on his own on the piano which demonstrates how beautifully and and and cleverly and intricately constructed his songs were but also how hard it can be to get inside them because they're usually a little bit fiddly and a bit distanced because of the way he uses all these old-fashioned 1930s chord progressions and harmonies and stuff is what he was into and he can never resist being a bit playful you know yeah but he was at least unique and he was not at all the singer of simple major chord ballads that you'd think if you'd only ever heard him on Top 40 radio. Yeah.

He was interviewed in Melody Maker a year from now, and he was asked why he did this song, and he was blatant about it. He said, we did it because my career was on the wane, and we wanted something to make a hit. You have to have hits. I don't care who you are if you don't have hits fuck you without you gave us that boost we needed so it was perfect but my reaction then and now is if you can't live just fucking die then please die now and

finish this song and let's put something good on. That's a kid's reaction, Al. That's a kid's reaction. It is. It is. But, you know, the child still lives within there. The child that hates Harry Nilsson still dwells within there. But the thing is with Nilsson, I don't know if anyone else got lost in reading about him a little bit.

Could anyone establish for me how he died? Because I read a story about that when nielsen passed on he had a fatal heart attack whilst in the dentist chair in burbank california not with gaza they left him in situ overnight planning to move his body in the morning and that night burbank got hit by an earthquake and the chair with Nielsen in it was swallowed up by a crevice and never to be seen again

now I don't know if that's true or not I'm just sending that out there it's a strange end isn't it I've not heard that story but that'd be great wouldn't it

if you've got to go what a way to go yeah safety expense for funeral and all that yeah see the thing about this

it's not even one of the best bad finger songs yeah that's what's kind of annoying about like and i mean the story of bad finger is quite well known now but possibly not well known enough like that you know everyone knows they were picked up by apple the beatles label and they were given Come and Get It which was like you know one of Paul McCartney's more commercial cast offs but really what fucked them was the fact that Apple was not the best

organised or most professional of record companies Yeah I've heard that. Entirely stuffed by hippies right the head of press being the magnificent Derek Taylor. And if you want a quick, shocking glimpse of how PR has changed in the last 50 years,

you have to watch the clip of Derek Taylor being interviewed for American TV on the occasion of the Beatles' breakup. And imagine the same thing happening today. The biggest thing in the world has just happened. And the world's newsmen assemble in London to get the official word from their public relations about who turns up with a dolly bird in a floppy hat and is very visibly on the wrong or right end of half a bottle of scotch and several big chunky english joints and proceeds to ramble completely incoherently for 10 minutes

into the camera it's wonderful he starts talking about the emperor hirohito for no reason and he concludes some marvelously incomprehensible rant by pointing drunkenly into the camera and saying if the Beatles don't exist you don't exist and there's a pause and then he goes something like that yeah he's fucking great but it gives you an insight into how Apple was being run it was like on the one hand it was that and on the other hand like a bloodbath as all that hippie chaos was being bulldozed by financial thuggery of Alan Klein. So as the only good group on Apple, which they were, apart from the Beatles. Hot chocolate. Yeah, but it was when hot chocolate weren't very good.

That's the thing. Right. Then they really suffered. They had no guidance. They had dodgy people working for them they got into terrible trouble and all culminated in the in suicide of pete ham co-writer of this song and eight years later the suicide of tom evans the other co-author of this song because they still hadn't sorted out the shit they were in which is a horrible story yeah um it was over the royalties for this single wasn't it yeah all their money basically got they got swindled out of all their money and you know the the thing about although the

the bad finger story lights up the disconsolate tone of this song in a slightly different way really the moral of the story isn't comforting either because the moral of the story is sometimes too close is worse than nowhere near oh that's bleak although to lighten the mood here's a pop quiz question or the clue being that it's something of a callback to something we were talking about earlier what does this record have in common with hey jude life on mars killer queen your song perfect day and i don't like mondays amongst others i'll let you answer this now do you know the answer al no is it ah is it to do with the instrumentation of it taylor it is to do with the instrumentation of it, Taylor? It is to do with the instrumentation of it, Neil. And is it to do with...

Because I'm sensing no guitar, piano. I don't know. I shall put you out of your misery. Yeah, do so, please. They were all played on the same piano. Ah, wow. Studio piano at Trident Studios in London, which is a remarkable fact,

unless I got some of the songs wrong, in which case I don't care at all. But it's at least very close to being correct. Although I'm a bit uncomfortable bringing that up because for a certain class of music nerds, I believe that fact is bordering on a frank beard, like a frank heavy stubble. Yeah, yeah.

But I went with it because I'd never insult you or our listeners by assuming that any of them are that nerdish or anal or interested in things that don't really matter. So without you would spend five, five fucking weeks at number one, keeping American Pie by Don McLean and Beg, Steal or Borrow by the New Seekers off the top. Eventually giving way to something more upbeat and vital. Amazing Grace by the Pipes and Drums of the Military Band of the Royal Scots Dugoon Guards. The follow-up, Coconut, only got to number 42 in June, and the only other time he bothered the business end of the charts

was when Without You got to number 22 on two non-consecutive weeks in November of 1976. Nielsen would spend the rest of the 70s getting pissed up with Ringo and John Lennon, putting out singles and LPs to diminish in returns, eventually dying in January of 1994. But a week later, Mariah Carey splayed the song out on some chipboard, nailed down its extremities and gave it the full X Factor blowtorch, which went straight in at number one in February and stayed there for four fucking weeks.

Oh, man. I hate to be the one to stop this episode, but stop it, I must, because we need to reassemble tomorrow for the denouement of this outstanding episode of Top of the Pop. So, on behalf of Taylor Parks and Neil Kulcarnay, this is Al Needham asking you quite nicely to stay pop-crazed, won't you? Chart music.

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