Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #67 (Pt 1): 9.6.77 – God Save Chart Music

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham for a massive street party to commemorate the Silver Jubilee episode of Top Of The Pops – but before that, it’s a coat-down for the Monarchy, a comprehensive breakdown of the Nationwide Jubilee Fair, a flick through that week’s Melody Maker, and a look at how the Department of Transport thought that a picture of Simon Bates massive unbespectacled floating head would teach the kids not to get killed on their Grifters in the mid-Eighties. IT’S A POTENTIAL H-BOMB OF AN EPISODE, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS…   Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon*** See us LIVE on Sept 17th *** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Um... Chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop craze youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music The podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee On a random episode of top of the pops i'm your host al needham and standing firm with me today are neil culcone hello and taylor parks hello teammate tv land once again all up in the area if you will indeed so boys the pop things the interesting things gizm, nothing pop and interesting.

I've got a bollocking from the doctors, so I've had to eliminate chocolate and crisps from my already joyless existence. Oh, no. Oh, no, man. What am I going to do? You're made of about 70% crisps, aren't you? I don't know what's going to happen to me.

Because healthy alternatives, no, they're not going to hit the spot. So I've just had to eliminate them in a Catholic sense. So, yeah, somewhat joyless at the moment. I've had a bit of them in a catholic sense um so yeah somewhat joyless at the moment i've had a bit of work on bit of interviewing been employed unbelievably as an expert advisor to a museum oh yeah that's bizarre south asian music museum in manchester um they sent me all their exhibits and asked for my expert advice as if i know what the fuck i'm doing um but that was interesting but to be honest with you that the poppin interesting has been displaced by the sheer pornographic joy of watching the fall of boris

johnson and you know i mean around here the sudden online rise of of binley mega chippy to international prominence yes which was is that any good no no it's mediocre chippy um at best the marina fish bar in will and all about a mile down the road or the poseidon that serves the pig people of charles moore are both much better but yeah that was seriously fucking mad i mean you know city of culture which we've had for the past year had no impact whatsoever no shifting public perceptions of commentary binley mega chippy biggest global sensation we've done since since wheelie been cat lady really um so you know people seem freaked out and delighted that we have a neighborhood called binley i mean thank christ they didn't find out

about mount nod or spawn end or paradise or any of these other weird neighborhoods in coventry but yeah pop an interesting stuff thin on the ground to be honest with you for me no taylor well graham green said that success is more dangerous than failure uh which is easy for him to say after all those hits with the goodies but if it's true then all i can say is few so i've been mostly at home you know finally filling in the gaps in my cultural education uh so i've been watching some game for a laugh right and let me tell you they shot the wrong kennedy and also i thought it was finally time to tackle one of the great long works uh i'm not getting any younger well i am but not temporarily so i thought okay now's the time. And so it was between La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Le Mort d'Arthur, Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann,

and Triangle, the ill-fated early 80s BBC soap opera. Yes, sailor! Sailor Passenger Ferry. passenger ferry so i tossed two coins and um spent the last month or so really trying to savor the nuance of triangle it's a series that's become a kind of one joke aside in shit lazy tv programs about shit lazy tv programs and i thought well there must be more to it than this. So I watched the whole of series one, which was 26 episodes. Now I'm on series two of three of this nautical odyssey. And basically it's everything you'd expect from a program shot on video aboard a ferry that sails between Felixstowe, Gothenburg and Amsterdam

over and over again you got uh non-actors shouting over the sound of the ship's engines curtains drawn against the glaring gray void outside uh high drama in parked estate cars on rainy wet dockside concrete in suffolk all shot like an aventies management training video or or the dialogue scenes in a learn french program that went out at 7 40 a.m on a sunday but presented as prime time entertainment like practically every scene starts off like uh hello mr exposition hello mr info dump so what's been going on then it's amazing after 35 episodes of this um just nothing in the universe seems to matter anymore except this uh life on the low seas knock it all you want taylor but no triangle no el dorado and where

would we be as a nation it's true it's true i mean people are familiar with triangle as an easy gag right like everybody knows like the first episode starts with kate omara super milf um seven years younger than i am now i think it would practically be cradle snatching taylor faircloth sunbathing in a bikini on deck which obviously sounded great in a production meeting but of course they're shooting in the middle of the picturesque north sea in late autumn and they still had to go through with it it all became a running joke for terry wogan and all this sort of stuff but it's like once you get past that you discover the deeper truths concealed within like the archaeologists sifting through the Roman rubbish dump.

You know, you get that true insight into this world of blue blazers and grey slacks, you know, where a lettuce and radish salad with thickly buttered white bread and a glass of just juice is health food. and a glass of just juice is health food you know your lunchtime routine might be uh light ale bacon rolls and a game of squash it's britain trying to soup itself up you know away from the the shabby egalitarian 70s and into uh an exciting euro-american future but finding that it had nowhere to go it was always for me let down by the actual boat itself that show yeah because kate omara undeniably glamorous but the boat just looked like a herring trawler or something yeah it didn't look in any way kind of somewhere you'd

want to be yeah and it's a shame because as a kid i loved cross-channel ferries like the loved is too weak a word they were magical to me it because it was a rupture in everyday life getting on one of those things especially if you're from kidderminster which is like virtually the furthest point in britain from the sea but you get on one of those things and set sail it was like going into space that this this boat might as well have been Apollo 11. You know what I mean? If Apollo 11 had had a track and field machine. It's like your entire experience of the world just changed the moment you stepped aboard into this alternative universe.

Yeah, I would have liked a bit more of that spirit in Triangle, to be honest, really. But anyway, it'll all be in my forthcoming book, Triangle, the Unfolding Text. honest really you know but anyway it'll all be in my forthcoming book triangle the unfolding text uh but having basically having now absorbed close to 35 hours of triangle i can say with some measure of authority that they should have called this program ship of cunts or possibly the boat that sucked. Just never go back. Never, never go back.

But it's, no, no, I know. Do you remember that thrill of standing on deck and the North Sea wind was blowing so hard you could just lean into it and it would keep you upright. Oh, beautiful. Just happier, simpler times, you know. The pleasure you could take from simple things like 30 tonnes of floating metal with triple

controllable pitch propellers uh three solzer za40s and an inaccessible club class lounge sloping towards boulogne it's still absolutely pristine in my memory is being on a ferry off the coast of scotland and seeing the proud prow of this boat completely bisect a jellyfish in the water. What a delightful sight that was. It was so satisfying. Yeah. I tell you what, though, Series 2 of Triangle is much worse than Series 1.

For a start, Kate O'Mara's not in it. So, like, I mean, what's... What? No! They've got a new character which is like a rich old lady does she troll up about in a bikini um alas no but she's got a she's got a little yappy dog and the point is that she lives on the boat she's like a permanent passenger like as if it's a cruise liner Imagine being rich and choosing to live on a boat that sails between Felixstowe, Gothenburg and Amsterdam.

Like, she just loves that bluish-grey half-light. She's got a thing about sleeping in very narrow beds. I don't know why she's got a dog on there as well. She's got this fucking dog running around. Yeah, yeah, bounces ball on deck, bounces over the railings oh well i've got something that's very pop and extremely interesting in case you've not heard chart music is making its first ever live appearance at the london podcast festival fucking hell we announced it first to the pop craze Patreon people and the day after we sold it right out on day one. It's mad that.

But the good people at King's Place have opened up the balconies and tickets are still available. So sit tight, listen keenly. King's Place, King's Cross, Saturday, September the 17th at 2pm. Ticket price £12.50 plus 10% booking fee. And it's going to be me and the London contingent of Chart Music. So that's David, Sarah and Taylor. And yes, we're going to attempt to break down an episode of Top of the Pops in 90 minutes because we're fucking stupid. I won't mention which one it is yet, but we've looked at it and it's doable, isn't

it, Taylor? Yeah. Thanks. Back to the early days where the podcast was about an hour and a half long. Yeah. What are you going to do about all the sort of bootleg merch shitehawks who are going to be outside, you know, with their split-up scarves and stuff?

Well, arms are going to be broken, aren't they? Yeah, we've reanimated Peter Grant. He's just going to strideide around in an open neck shirt, patting a baseball bat against his open bum. Yeah. Afterwards, because it finishes at about half past three, we can all go to the pub.

And if you're really nice, I'll let you have a feel of me. Judy Zook sat in tour jacket. How's that? Pop crazy youngsters. How can you resist? A couple of questions that need to be answered. Yes,

we will be recording it and putting it on patreon as for a live cast don't know yet and yes we will be attempting to sell merch our own merch official chart music yeah none of these t-shirts with the chart music logo over a picture of stewart mcconaughey and andrew coll. As far as tickets go, there's, I don't know, let's ask future Al, shall we?

Greetings, people of chart music slightly past. This is Al of the near future. At present, I can report that there are three seats

available in the stage balcony And 37 in the main balcony So I command you to buy all the remaining tickets Before B.A. Robertson and Toya do And they lock balloons full of piss down on us Oh, an owl of the past Well done for doing all the merch in the wrong dimensions, meaning I have to spend the entire weekend doing the properly thick twat.

Anyway, chart music live. Tickets still available. You can do it right now, please. You can do it right now Please Well thanks very much Al of the very near future And fuck you too What's the weather like?

So yeah Here's what you need to do Right now Get your arse over to Bit.ly Slash Chart Music Live And you

Yes you Could be in the same room As some of us for a bit it's going to be mental because you've got people traveling i know a long way for this it's brilliant i know and it's frightening i'm not going to lie to you mate i'm shitting myself what happens when they see me and they've got this image in their head of what i look like and just be totally disappointed i'm terrified that the fucking audience is just going to get up after three minutes and go to the bar at the back and ask for angelo and you're going to look up whilst you're doing it and there's going to be like a sea of phones out there all taking photos and stuff yeah i want to say that now don't hold your phones up all the way through it please

just live in the moment but yeah it's something we've we've put off i've put off for fucking ages but you know what? Sod it. Let's just do the fucking thing. And yes, Neil, the next one we do will be in the provinces. And yes, you and Simon will get your go. Oh, fab. Great. Oh, the other pop and interesting thing of late is that I have treated myself to my first bike since 1981.

And I'm fucking loving the shit out of it it's great brilliant yeah i just got bored of being a fat cunt sat at a fucking desk looking at a computer like i'm doing right now and i wanted to lose a bit of weight but you know me i'd rather go to a scat club for the elderly than go to the gym and one of my biggest regrets of lockdown was that why didn't i get a bike and claim the empty streets of Nottingham for myself? You can say it's my midlife crisis, but instead of arsing around in a sports car and trying to relive the 20s that I didn't have and wouldn't want anyway,

now I want to be fucking nine again, man. I just want to go out and just bomb around the streets all day long. What sort of bike is that? Is it, like, well, chunky? Or is it, like, well, racer-like? How many gears gears it got and all that it's an e-bike of course oh you still have to pedal yeah yeah but you can touch a button you could get up hills without having to get off your bike and push it up and have people laugh at you so you've got like uh eight massive long wing mirrors on each side coming out no no not yet now obviously because it's been so fucking long and the roads

are so fucking dangerous i've been very nervous to go i'm not going to be one of these cunts who ride on the pavement because i fucking hate them but i've been really worried about going out on the road and been casting about for advice and what better pool of experts are there to teach me the ways of two wheels than the Radio 1 DJs of the mid-eighties? Chaps, I'm going to send you something right now. Say what you see. The Radio 1 Guide to Pedal Power. A poster which was issued by the Department of Transport, which was sponsored by the department of transport which was sponsored by motocraft

ford illustrator by sandy james of tiger with the real johnny cougar's face at the bottom and packed with tips on bicycle safety from some of the radio one djs of the era who happened to appear as ghostly disembodied heads who float over which i think is a bit dangerous but let's go through it shall we so kid jensen the modicum of common sense as always tells us to keep that bike in proper shape you know check the chain and the spokes and the lights and the tires and accompanied by an image of what looks like billy dane sorting his bike out, which is nice. Mike Reeds in his react-alike repeat phase here, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Telling kids to read the highway code.

Mike Smith, what's he saying to the youth? Don't risk it. It's a typical Mike Smith message, isn't it? Just don't risk it, whatever it is. No chances. Instead of moving to the centre of a busy road to turn right, it's often safer to stop on the left-hand side and cower on the pavement like a bitch, essentially.

Which is completely wrong now, apparently. I think the highway code encourages you to go in the middle of the road. No, I think you're right there. Mike Smith also says, remember, a helicopter is actually a safer way. Yes! Or, on to the next image. Why is Peter Powell in full woo full woo hey mode isn't it yeah he's delighted isn't he practice cuts out all sorts of wobblers basically telling kids to

just fuck about on the playground get off the fucking road and out of my way essentially i saw peter powell in a 1983 top of the pops the other day he didn't half look middle-aged fast it's like yeah because you know like he's all sort of bubbly and curly in the late 70s ones someone from 1983 looks like grant shapps oh he's always had a bit of grant shapps about him which is weird actually because grant shapps also looks like anthea turner yeah on to the next panel why it's steve wright telling us to dress up and get crazy with fluorescent or bright clothing and of course who else but pig wanker general that's a really disturbing image isn't it yeah yeah why uh am i wrong i've not seen him without glasses on before that i'm not used to that look at all no he almost looks like

he's leering he's telling the youth let's have lots of good clear signals telling others exactly what you're going to do but that doesn't fucking matter to the driver behind the bike because he's looking at the terrifying sight of simon bates's massive edge veering for him man yeah he does not suit not wearing spectacles, that man. No. That should never happen again. On to the next one. Andy Peebles tells us to watch your backs.

Yeah. Check behind. That's essential. Whenever you start or make a turn or move out to overtake, watch your back. Yeah. Andy Peebles here looking like a pornographer. Yes.

Very seedy picture of Andy Peebles. He's always looked seedy, hasn't he, Peebles here looking like a pornographer. Yes. Very seedy picture of Andy Peebles. He's always looked seedy, hasn't he, Peebles? Yeah. And finally, who else but John Peel, who tells us that the others may be crazy, but there's no need for you to be. Get yourself fully trained to ride a bike properly. And that's accompanied by an image

of what looks like a really satanic-looking Dracula in a Volvo, about to plough into poor old Billy Dane. Yeah, it's like a small-scale remake of Spielberg's Jewel going on. Yes, yes, without the tarantulas. Draculas like Volvos. Department of Transport,

Motorcraft Ford, Johnny Cougar, and Radio 1, putting the youth right it's interesting to note who is it on that i'm putting this at about 1984 1985 don't you think yeah yeah no travis he fucking ate cyclists obviously no janice either no because what would she say get some nice pink tassels on your underbars and boys will like you, no doubt. Do you think any of the people in this poster have actually ridden a bike since they got out of short trousers? I don't know if any of them have ever ridden a bike at all. The important advice for bike riders at that age and at that time

is how to avoid the saddle hitting your head when you come over the crossbars and stuff like that. There's none of that here. No. Can you do wheelies on your bike al i wouldn't dare try it's become a sort of male right now it's just a thing boys do they just ride around with a constant wheelie it's like pre-epism in bike form yes i think bikes are designed to do that whereas i don't know hefting a grifter wheel off the ground oh no if you weren't jeff capes you couldn't do that oh yeah notes and corrections from the previous episode we mentioned when we talked about the inspire of carpets how they were

in the dance charts and we cast dispersions and scoffed at it well yeah obviously it was a remix of this is how it feels isn't it and if it's the one that i've heard it's fucking cat shit really yeah it's just some generic biff boff and you have to listen for about five and a half minutes before um tom hingley comes in and does a bit of singing so yeah and secondly when we covered new kids on the block we assumed that that t-shirt that ken out of new kids on the block was wearing was South Today as a tribute to the BBC regional show no no no no no then it wasn't it was actually and thanks to an unknown pop craze youngster who chipped in when he was given as a five-star review which you can also do pop craze youngsters it's

Youth of Today the um the hardcore band of the late 80s early 90s one of the forerunners of the straight edge movement. Oh, I thought you meant it was a promotional T-shirt for the musical youth single. It's a judgment time, sang bong, bong, bong, ayo. Anyway, it's time as always to give thanks and praise to the true heroes of chart music, the new batch of Pop Craze Patreons. And in the $5 section this week, we have...

Leighton Crook. Bongo Inferno. Matthew Trash. Bexter. Michael Murphy. Peter Moore. Pete Boardman. And Phil Robinson.

Thank you, babies. Cheers. Lovely people. And in the $3 section, we have... D, Hannah Wood, Simon Banner, Jeff Lloyd, Duncan Condé, Two Meter Wingspan, Jim Tomlinson, Mark Colclough, and Matthew Evans. Oh, you are the wind beneath our wings. Oh, you are the wind beneath our wings. Oh, and Gavin Montgomery, Denise King, Kat and Clive Parry just jacked it right up this month.

Oh, bless their arse. You get special treatment. And, of course, one thing that all Patreon members get to do that you cheapskates out there can't is jig and a rig and a reconfig the brand new chart music top ten. Shall we, boys? Yeah. Hit the fucking music!

We've said goodbye to mini whores, the worst dressed homosexual in the Castro. He big cunt and semiotic trousers. Which means two up, four down. Four new entries and a brand new number one. Whoa, bloody hell. The former number one drops seven places from number three to number ten. Two Ronnies, one cup. Hey. New entry at number nine for ar's One Cup. New entry at number

9 for Arse to Mouth. Down two places from number 6 to number 8. Rock expert David Sturhams! It's a three place drop from number 4 to number 7

for Bomberdog. But it's a three place jump for this week's number six. The banked cunts who aren't fucking real. Into the top five and they're up three places from number eight to number five. Here

comes Jizzum. A new entry straight in at number four for Cliffy Whiteboy and DJ Mr. Bronson. Top three time and it's a one place drop for That Dog's Dead Now. Straight in at number two, My Fucking Car, which means... Britain's number one. The highest new entry, straight in at number one, the Airbnb 52s.

Oh, my days, boys, what a chance. What a time to be alive. Exciting movement up at the top there. Let's just go through those new entries, shall we? Arse to mouth, and that's a Roman two, of course. Like soul to soul, but a bit fisty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliffy Whiteboy and DJ Mr. Bronson proves once again

that there's always been a dance element to the chart music top ten. Yeah. My fucking car is obviously a 90s indie landfill. And the Airbnb 52 speaks for itself really, doesn't it? It does. So, Pop Craze youngsters, if you're still holding back on dobbing in your subs to chart music, now is the time to get things right.

Now is the time to see the light. You get them fingers, you set them up on the keyboard, you mash, mash, mash patreon.com slash chart music and, hang on, let me demonstrate, you get that money. Hear it? You pull open this G string right here. And you hear that?

I'm jingling, baby. Just for you. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, really should have been the last episode but it didn't cross my mind until it was too late due to me being a big thick bell end of a man because this time we're going all the way back to june the 9th 1977 yes pop craze youngsters jubilee week proper jubilee week because when you say the jubilee you always mean the silver jubilee week proper jubilee week because when you say the jubilee you always mean the silver jubilee you know i mean yeah yeah just like the war is the war that jubilee is the jubilee yeah and it wasn't this fucking shitty recent one that got in the way of everything indeed indeed so how did you

spend shaking jubilee because you didn't mention it in the pop and interesting things. Can't imagine why. Just tramadol, I think. I mean, the difference is, with this, with the platyjubes... Oh, that word's banned. That phrase is banned, Neil. I don't recall anybody calling it the silbyjubes in 1977,

because we're a proper people and not cunts. A country of adults. Like fucking thick adults, but adults nonetheless. I mean, the thing is, of course, with the Platinum Jubilee, you could ignore it. Yes. And only let it percolate in for you to take the piss out of it. Whereas when you're a kid, it wasn't quite so simple.

I mean, what I caught, you know, is as usual, you know this myth that we have in this country, oh, we do pageantry well. It's the old myth. We don't, actually. We do it fairly poorly. We do it in a way that reflects our national character, really, kind of half-assed and totally embarrassing.

Yes. And what kind of disgusted me about the bits that I did see was the blending in of all that bloody wokeness. Yes. Kids pretending to be a river with flags emblazoned with their worries about climate change i mean for fuck's sake i would rather have had yeah that's a north korean style statement of mass fealty to the crown really perhaps a procession past the queen and and king tampax

and prince nonce with kids crawling on the knees yeah nonce andrew and it was just way too touchy feely and the only genuinely moving moment was was boris johnson getting booed yes um oh that made me proud that was sweet but you know i mean during the original coronation in 52 when the cameramen and the presenters went on lunch that day they didn't bother putting anything on they just had a shot of the uni and jack flapping for an hour in total silence part of me would have slightly preferred that uh or something similar you know like just just a flag just for three days on bbc one yeah with a faint face on shot of the queen looking like a miserable cow bag as normal

but with infinitesimal slowness yeah it going from the center of the flag right up to her eyeballs um that would have been much better than this sort of mawkish, cringeworthy weekend of national shame. But hey-ho, yeah, I avoided it because you could. But 1977, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Proper jubilee went on all fucking year. And this is the absolute pinnacle of the cap doffing, isn't it? We're two days removed from the official day of celebration

and the street parties and the non-stop ramming of the royal scepter up the arse of the nation i mean i was nine years old when all this went down and it was the first time in my life where patriotism had reared its ugly head seeing union jacks everywhere seemed like an absolute novelty as opposed to nowadays where the union jack's just a fucking logo on a bag of carrots you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah it wasn't the idea so much that oh we're a great country and all this kind of stuff it was like oh it's the mid-70s let's have some kind of a celebration let's do something yeah i know what you mean it's like when argentina used to win the world cup and everyone was cheering. They were going like,

but aren't you worried the dictatorship views it as propaganda and all that? And they're like, yes. No, yeah, it's our football team just won the World Cup. People are able to separate that a bit more. I'm not sure if you can do that in Britain now, unfortunately. It doesn't seem possible to do, you know. No, no.

And that flag has just become completely corrupted by bmp nf fraud whoever's been waving it um yeah razor light included it's funny though isn't it like a few years ago it seemed like it had become old hat and almost embarrassing to talk about how appalling the royal family are as a institution and as a reality because it was pretty much taken as read yeah but you know yet another consequence of the upper middle class colonization of culture that's gone out of the window now you know and people can't see it for what it is which is basically the kind of uncivilized illogical idolatry the existence of which in other countries the british used as justification for conquering half the world to civilize them out of these uh

backwards ways but who will civilize the civilizers it's uh i wish i could say that it astonished me that we're still having conversations like this. You know what I mean? But what can you, I mean, what's that quote? You can tell a lot about a country which has a royal mint and a national debt. You'd think people would catch on. But it doesn't really surprise me because it's part of the erasure of class consciousness or class awareness and people now seem genuinely unaware of the fact that the purpose of the royal family is to enshrine and personify the british class system and to nail the entire country by

the bollocks to the church of england you know which is a an appropriately made up religion which only exists in the first place for the convenience of a narcissist psychopath serial killer who's also one of the great icons of our nation and it's just another thing you're expected to pledge loyalty to as if it were real and people wonder why post-truth politics caught on so quickly in this country when the the basics have been embedded in the national psyche for centuries you know this solemn faith in things that are self-evidently not true like the inherent superiority of what clearly some of the worst people in the country it's like you know how in most countries where fascism took off it was

effectively the political arm of the catholic church um because fascism needs a mystical glue to hold it together to persuade people to participate in their own degradation and it has to be something that's already wedged deep into the national psyche right something pre-existing and the quasi-mystical blind faith aspects of catholicism work for that in latin countries and in germany they use like blood and soil myths and ancient germanic horseshit well if you listen to followers of mosley in this country the old buf people there's a great radio documentary called um potter is fascists about mosley supporters in stoke-on-trent and they went and interviewed a load of old geezers who were you know and the one thing they all said was oh he was a gentleman sir oswald he wasn't like us

we had faith in him because he was a gentleman because the british equivalent of these fascist enabling myths is the class system yeah and it never ends you know it never ends because even in times of mass cynicism the royal family is the one institution about which the media is just expected to lie. It's not optional. Like Michael Fagan broke into the Queen's bedroom. And for years, we're told that she was amazing. She was so brave, so utterly calm and composed. So ruddy, bloody brave.

She just talked him down. and composed so ruddy bloody brave she just talked him down and and yeah it's just like how kim yong-il got a hole in one the first time he played golf all those ancient eastern rulers where like historians say well all we know about him from the historical record is that he was nine feet tall and he once ripped a tiger apart with his bare hands you know it's like maybe not and i feel embarrassed to say this stuff because for people of my generation it's so fucking obvious but it's barely said these days and this perception persists of the royals is purely a ceremonial thing as well with no power you know or like even a bulwark against extreme politics taking hold in this country which you know would you want a president blair then yeah whereas of

course anyone who knows anything about history could tell you exactly what would have happened if the fascists had taken hold in this country i don't think the royal family would have been a bulwark against them as far as i can see the only extreme viewpoint against which the monarchy is a bulwark is the viewpoint that we should abolish the monarchy and of course you know when you actually look at it it's not purely ceremonial there's countless examples down the the royals abusing queen's consent you know where she has to wave through every law that goes through parliament to secure exceptions for themselves especially to equality and diversity laws. Anybody who was not white was not employed by the palace

in any role in which the royals themselves had to see them until surprisingly recently. And they tampered with the 2010 Equality Act along those lines as well, which was also something barely reported in the papers you know and that's before you even get to a fucking jug-eared half-wit of a son with these these henry root level letters you know leaning on various public bodies about architecture and the value of homeopathy you know because, because, of course, like all pampered celebrities, they're enthralled to quacks and too fucking stupid to read a book.

It's another consequence, partly, of the upper middle class colonisation of culture. This idea that it's an armless lark or something to be proud of in some unspecified sense. You know, like recently, all the posh kid pubs and cafs around where i live in london all had the union jack bunting up you know here it is fucking bunting and it's like wannabe cool kids you know like celebrating the platy jubes my life fucking i did leslie crowther die for this tay Taylor, stop that. First public warning.

I do think there is a class split in this, though, Taylor, because like you were saying about the sort of middle-class kids, you know, unironically waving Union Jacks and stuff. I do think for a whole load of kids at the moment, it is a protection racket set up around a nonce. That is the way that they think about the royal family. They think about Andrew. I think that Andrew thing has cut through a bit

on social media quite a lot. So I think to an awful lot of people, but the idea of not having a royal family just does not occur at the same time. Do you know what I mean? Well, they do so much for business and tourism, don't they? Because no one ever goes to fucking Cairo or Paris anymore

since they got rid of their royal family. And people go on about that. Oh, they do so much for tourism and it's like what so do they stand in the fucking arrivals lounge at heathrow airport giving out fucking lemonade and a sticky bun singing here we are again like the cast of i.d.i no fuck off you get more tourists if they weren't about because it could stop the night in buckingham palace yeah yeah i told i was watching the other day. Do you remember that thing? Monarchy, the nation decides.

It was a big studio debate on ITV in 1997, probably the peak of the unpopularity of the monarchy. So they have a big studio debate and a phone-in vote whether you should have a monarchy or not. And the people of Britain voted in the, yeah, you should have a monarchy. But. And the people of Britain voted in the, yeah, you should have a monarchy. But it was only like 60-something percent. It was, I think, a lot closer than it would be now.

And as something in the papers at the time pointed out, yeah, look at what was on the other side, food and drink, Brookside, and the Harry Enfield show or something. So there's probably not that many people watching it. But it was famously a complete debacle.acle i mean people should watch this to be reminded that social media makes things worse and more visible but it doesn't change what britain has always been like was it full of angry loud people who don't know what they're on about so there's this massive out of

control studio audience on this program all bellowing and making animal noises, like, from both sides. All of them just waiting for the internet to be invented so they don't have to leave their homes anymore. And it's all in this 90s nuclear brightness as well, sort of like Terry Venable's sports jacket, eye assault, you know, brash New Britain. And it's all exactly what you would expect from a fucking pantomime like this right there's people like frederick forsyth you know just

lecturing and barking at the mob like literally just pointing at the audience and shouting at them you know like people like peter hitchens and bernard ingham trying to be a blunt overbearing yorkshire patriarch, but he's just too squeaky and he's got a big Muppet foam face, you know. And then on the other side you've got, like, a few sort of beard and tie socialists, you know, like some lunatics shouting. And there's this guy, he's like Captain Tom, OG, you know what I mean?

Like, after the war he met with some Russians and they explained it like Captain Tom OG you know what I mean like sitting there after the war he met with some Russians and they explained it all to him you know it's just horrible Max Clifford turns up to add a bit of gravitas you know or grabitas Geoffrey Archer

comes on right trying to do the Boris Johnson bit but with no charisma right it's like a dry run for johnson he's doing this are you you boring gray republicans you all hate fun off with your heads you know but while looking like the least fun mammal on earth it keeps coming up on screen ring this number for yes and this number for no you know it's like i'm not saying they're trying to destroy all nuance for a sensationalistic tv experience but it might as well have been you know which is better red or blue call or text now 19 pound a second um and it's just yeah it's just

burke's screaming right and as you can imagine all the pro royal ones are completely unheeded but it's the point is you watch it you see these absolute lunatics screaming and you think okay a lot of these people are now dead but if you restage this today it'd be exactly the same but just with these people replaced by a load of old punks and new romantics you know it's like even after all these years people still act like the next generation is going to be the one that saves the world and puts everything right you know as the old fools die off yeah how's that been working for the last hundred years anyway the final result of this is like yeah we we should have a royal family it's been

decided and the way they big it up and they've got newspaper editors coming on live links telling you what the front page is going to be the next day like as if it's legally binding as if it had gone the other way the queen was going well it is with great respect that we bow to the wishes of the itv viewers but the right always set up the debate like that that they have a joy for life and the left yeah it's the whole thing it's exactly the same as what happens now it's just in those days everyone involved was a little less sophisticated at being a cunt and of course it's going to get sticky when the queen dies because oh man the psychological blow to this country is going to be fucking immense you know those posts that people share on facebook where people take the dogs out to the beach and then feed them a massive flintstone sized steak

with all the trimmings before they go off and put the dog down that's what the platinum jubilee is like you know i mean it was she's going now this is the last chance and she didn't even turn up either no couldn't even be asked but i don't blame her yeah basically it's gonna be really tricky because despite all the racist remarks and the pedophilia and the fact that the queen is shortly to receive tens of millions of pounds from the public purse even in the middle of the current cost of living crisis because of a law that david cameron made that said the queen's income cannot decrease regardless of the economic state of the nation just delightful things like that but despite all of this there's still this idea that the queen at least is somehow fundamentally a good person

yeah she's the good one yeah yeah you hear people saying this i don't like the rules but i do respect the queen just based on thin air right it used to happen with the queen mother like a viciously anti-semitic quasi-fascist with a sincere belief in bloodlines as the measure of human worth. Oh, isn't she lovely, though? Isn't she a lovely old lady? And this still goes on with the Queen. Do you remember after Brexit, you heard liberals saying, oh, maybe the Queen will step in to save the country from this...

Oh, she wore a blue and yellow hat. I know. It's the same Queen who oversees the extra private education given to young royals and young people marrying into the family where they have to go and sit in a room with these specially brought in handpicked, very right wing historians to tell them imperialist lies about royal history and the importance of the crown in the greatness of the nation something i only found out recently during the miners strike wives of striking miners petitioned the queen because they just assumed that she would be on their side because of their perception of her fundamental belief in fair play and decency we wonder why we live in a country that's infantilized at every level do you know what i mean so we live in a country where people respond to their sports team winning by pulling a face like someone's just shot their nan and they're out for revenge it's just a

weird place isn't it yeah i think the royal family's got a big part to play in this. I say, bring back the days when these fuckers died at 31 from eating a surfeit of lampreys. We have one chance. We fucking blew it. Fucking Cromwell, innit? Like, thanks for that. Yeah, let's cancel Christmas and outlaw fun. It would really make people think Republic's great.

Yeah, it's a shame that, isn't it? It's such a shame. Fucking war-encrusted lunatic. Still, the music's all right in this episode, isn't it? Well, some of it. It's a proper mixed bag, isn't it? A proper grab bag, yeah. A lot of stuff on this episode's not even in the charts yet

and some of it won't be. Can't understand that. It's a really weird episode of Top of the Pops and I kind of think the producers sense that, you know, and some of it won't be. Can't understand that. It's a really weird episode of Top of the Pops. And I kind of think the producers sensed that, you know, Jubilee fatigue was perhaps setting in, especially among young people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, they sort of swerve it a little bit, include it a little bit, and consequently a very, very odd mix of music. Yeah. As tonight's host said in a Daily Mail interview a couple of years ago, the best thing about Top of the Pops was you couldn't get on it if you weren't in the chart. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's.

It's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Onward! Radio 1 News. In the news this week, the train siege outside the village of Depunt in Holland by South Moluccan nationalists is in its 18th day, ending two days later with a counter-terrorist attack which kills two hostages and six hijackers. Commonwealth Conference, which is taking place this week in London, with the Home Office declaring he'll be detained at whatever airport he arrives at and sent back on the next plane. After he tries to get a crog on President Mobutu of Zaire's plane and is turned down, he gives up and crashes round Colonel Gaddafi's house instead. A group of six-form girls in Leicester who were caught drinking in a pub have protested

against sexual inequality by writing a letter to the county education board which accused their headmaster of contravening the sex discrimination act by not caning them like he did to their male counterparts an estimated 10 000 sc000 Scotland fans go mental after they beat England 2-1 in the home international at Wembley, ripping down the goalposts and causing £18,000 worth of damage to the

pitch. Fucking hell, that was the most punk thing I ever saw in 1977. Oh. Great days, great days. Meanwhile, England have gone straight on to their summer tour of South America Without manager Don Reaver Who has gone to Helsinki to see Finland lose 3-0 to Italy But while England hold Brazil to a goalless draw

He's secretly nipped off to Dubai to take a big fat check off the United Arab Emirates To manage their national team A Led Zeppelin gig in Tampa is cancelled after 11 minutes due to torrential rain, and when it was announced that the band wouldn't be returning, an estimated 4,000 fans stormed the stage and go all Scotland. George Harrison and Patti Boyd have got divorced today. Kevin Keegan has been transferred to Hamburger SV for half a million pounds. Agnetha and Bjorn of ABBA have announced that they're having a second baby.

But the big news this week is that the country has gone jubilee mad. Chefs at the Jester Hotel in Leeds have made a record-breaking yorkshire pudding measuring 16 foot by three and three quarter foot which has been dyed into a union jack oh god there's something grotesque about that that ain't right a mr and mrs lee have named their daughter juby j-u-b-i it will never date The winner of a competition for the best way to commemorate the year in Nationwide has suggested that we tow massive chunks of Great Britain out to sea and terraform the country into the shape of the Queen's head. Bonfires are going off all across the land.

The Sunday Mirror has started a campaign to reward the European Cup winners by renaming them Royal Liverpool FC. Of all the fucking clubs. And even the Queen's gone a bit mad by deciding to make Derby a city

for a laugh. Royal Liverpool FC. Good Lord. Because man you, that year's cup final, they went out with Jubilee, didn't they, on their shirts, I seem to recall. Did they?

Yeah, just below the Man U logo, on their shirts for the 77 cup final. It said, yeah, it had like, they'd sewn in some silver Jubilee emblem, sycophants. Yeah, no doubt under immense pressure from the equally royal crazy people of Manchester. But yeah, this is it. This is the absolute pinnacle of all the Jubilee nonsense.

And we've been fortunate enough to have a taste of that trifle, if you will, haven't we? Oh, we have. Oh, yes. We went on the dark web and we pulled out the nationwide Jubilee Fair. Oh, it's so good, isn't it? It is a remarkable document of those times. Broadcast two days previously, just before all the royal balcony waving shit. Let's go through it.

It's mad. It's mad. The moment I started watching it, I mean, I did get that familiar feeling of looking for an exit, you know, wondering how long this was going to last, the pool to see that it's like 90 minutes of this shit but i started finding it strangely compelling it's a different country isn't it so it is and not just because steadily i found myself totally seduced and falling in love with valerie singleton for the first time but partly because of the juxtaposition of the show you know it's got these strange studio pieces big chunk of pride time with

so many audience members milling about yes but i started enjoying it for when it went to the streets and just spoke to these grassy eyed flag shagging pricks it was actually strangely reassuring to see that the great shittest public who celebrate these things they've always been these docile chirpy cunts much as they are now so yeah it's a mental hour and a half yeah it's got to be one of the finest things ever broadcast during the golden age of british television it's a fitting tribute to our bejeweled superiors it's yeah it's 90 minutes of it's like a studio full of scum like real bank holiday peasants and it's like most celebrations of royal occasions it really ends up being a festival of a certain kind of britishness yeah yeah plain cotton underwear curled up white bread corned beef sandwiches

and coppers who look like graham gooch it's that world you know what i mean and then so there's they're all like milling about in the studio and it's like the boys and girls from nationwide are holding it all together yeah it's hosted by frank boff of course who i notice isn't sitting down right but he is dressed like brian jones for some reason yeah he is isn't he yeah but in this unchanging england he's a reassuring reminder that we do still have progress of a sort because back then frank boff's presence and manner and look were ideal for prime time television but his private life almost finished his career uh whereas nowadays his private life would be celebrated but his presence and manner and look

would get him banned from television um so he's in this giant studio full of these flag-waving now-deads um introducing guests like they've got humphrey littleton of all people in the studio with his band because nothing says monarchy like new orleans jazz queen's favorite music i'm sure but it's because like most patriotic occasions it's really a nostalgia trip so that's there for the that middle-aged generation of wool and pullover wearing national service doing goon show listening public school homosexuality dabbling pre-beatles british men you know and god bless humph but listening to this it really is hard work it's like i remember louis armstrong said to me he said who do i sign this to and they go around

the country like on like ob stuff to to meet the people out and so there's like some piping fools at edinburgh castle yeah it's a proper shortbread tin of an ob isn't it yeah and then they go to wales and nobody says in wales like how do you feel about the fact that all the castles of wales aren't actually Welsh castles. They're fortifications built by the English to subjugate Wales. And they're so impressive because the English wanted to strike fear into your hearts and remind you of your place in this country. They don't say that. They go to Cardiff Castle and they say to some kids,

what do you like best about the Queen? To which the answers are she likes dogs and uh i like the way she waves i dug the uh there was total wicker man vibes when they do go to that castle in wales a stunning aerial shot of diane the presenter in the middle of a maypole dance you can almost smell the singed pubes and you know john stapleton cutting some capers and using his bladder the stapleton of knowledge but the weird motif as well throughout the show wherever they go outside or inside the studio is they've encouraged audience members to bring in objects that they think summate the last 25 years of british history and and it's just so bizarre it's

grotesque to see how many the fucking old dears are perfectly happy to fall into every stereotype of just confused old racist nan whether it's a woman saying that her object is her artificial hips do you remember some daft old cow from Harrow-on-the-Hill talking about Churchill. And then there's that woman who says, you know, quite darkly, she's quite old. She starts saying quite darkly,

you know, what a pity some people can't enjoy England. And the presenter senses that she's going to embark on some rant about the darkies. So she moves on. That inner Enoch is festering under the surface

of a lot of this stuff here. Yeah. I mean, the whole tone is, oh, weren't things better then yeah completely and then there is quite a lot of imperialist bilge as well right there's somebody comes on talking about the commonwealth and they say like as a boast well we made all these countries independent. Yeah! Well, that's one way of looking at it. Did you notice that Paul Burnett, the kind of, this lanky, gormless knob who looks a bit like Prince Charles. Yes!

At the beginning, yeah, he gets interviewed, keeps his hands in his pockets. Of course. Doubtless his fingers don't look like a ten-pack of Richmond sausages sizzling and singing in a pan, so we wanted them hid. But, yeah, oh, man, some mad moments. And they go to

Edinburgh and Wales and Cardiff sorry or was it Chepstow I can't remember but you know they go to Northern Ireland don't they no

no of course not there were some great moments featuring people who simply don't exist anymore and I don't just mean that they're dead I mean no sort of people don't exist anymore

I was particularly struck by Mrs Duncan who's introduced in Edinburgh who has kept a royal scrapbook going I mean, those sort of people don't exist anymore. I was particularly struck by Mrs. Duncan, who's introduced in Edinburgh, who has kept a royal scrapbook going for over a hundred volumes. And she speaks with this kind of cut glass poshness that's a really careful construction. Yeah, she's well high as Sim, isn't she? Very much so.

And you can detect this sense of old fuckers thinking that the values that they were taught, you know, total loyalty to king and country, have absconded in some way. So that's a faint thing to the whole show. You know, it's very telling that, you know, they look back at the 50s and they look back at the 60s with fondness. But there's no sort of, yeah, there's this sense that today, right now, things are horrible. You know, we need to bring these values back. But fuck me. They should have tried to lighten it a bit.

Mrs Duncan, out of interest, are you Rangers or Celtic? Just raises one eyebrow and it looks like. But yeah, lots of looking back to the 60s. Maybe this is where it all begins. Maybe the mod revival starts right here on Nationwide Jubilee Fair. Yeah. Lots of Union Jacks. But look, back at the 60s is so, I mean, obviously, look, this isn't a critical piece, this show.

But it's so fucking shallow, isn't it? It's like, mini skirts, the Beatles. There's an astonishing bit. I think my favourite, well, there's too many favourite bits in this, where two of the presenters, for some some reason they go down this thing called the tunnel of love in the studio and what flashes or i mean there's two bizarre things about it firstly it's just a collage of various famous couples from the past 25 years so you got i think you got you got paul and linda haven't you and you got mick and marianne and then straight after mick and and Bianca. But they keep the presenters there as if they're travelling through this journey of love.

Yes, and they're cuddling up to each other, aren't they? It's just bizarre. And there's too many amazing bits. There's also a chef, a French chef, an almost comedy French chef. A French chef, how dare they? Yeah, who cooks like, he's cooked these ridiculous dishes

to one of the queen. It reminded me very much, because they're so literal, these dishes. It reminded me very much of an episode of Great British Menu I watched when they had to cook something

to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. And all the chef's creations were pretty much, you know, like two spherical mounds of raspberry coulis foam on a bed of chocolate dust representing the, you know, the shot- mounds of raspberry coulis foam on a bed of chocolate dust representing, you know, the shot-off genitals of an infantryman in Verdun or something.

It was just so fucking literal. There's all these bizarre tableaus. And the chef, oh, my God. I mean, Taylor, can you describe the food he makes? I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, this bloke is like a hee-hawing caricature. I was really suspicious that he's not actually french

at all but he comes on and he's like yeah he could have been a feud for the queen and it's like it's just repulsive things sealed in aspen which being french he's almost certainly pissed in right i mean you know we we can think well okay maybe this proud frenchman is here to celebrate the the queen of england or maybe he's just done what's come naturally straight into the salmon royale um yeah he's got like a glazed ham that that has got brown piping on it and that description of much of the audience of this as well. Yeah, it's glazed ham. It just looks like a big sort of football,

but just covered in like some sort of weird opaque white stuff and brown piping on it that says E2R. And he's got, yeah, you just got this idea that if you eat that, you're just going to instantly vomit it all straight back up again. E2R. And he's got, yeah, he's just got this idea that if you eat that, you're just going to instantly vomit it all straight back up again. But it doesn't matter because in my country, that is a great compliment. Yes. His best dish that he's got is duck a l'orange, which... Couldn't even be bothered to do swan a l'orange on Queen.

I guess he couldn't get her permission. even be bothered to do swan a la ronge i guess he couldn't get her permission but his duck a la ronge appears to have an impromptu flanders gravestone sticking out of it you know those little like sort of simple little gravestones they put where they don't know where the body is it's one of those like so reading you.P. Mr. Wadley. But you've never seen such a feast of congealed gloop. In fact, I don't believe he's a chef at all. His accent is obviously fake, and his beard and all that. I think he's a disguised anarchist bomber. At any moment, he's going to rip off his large-nosed mask

to reveal a little thin mustache and a wide-brimmed hat and a cape and a stubby flat filterless cigarette and then the duck explodes but that's the thing that there's lots of ideas in this show that read on the page might have made sense but maybe a kind of sense, but when they achieve realisation, the result is just... Occasionally in the show, there's just genuinely mind-meltingly surreal moments. They tie a message to a pigeon.

Yes, they do. The message, it's a 3-2-1 clue or something. It's just bizarre. And then it cuts to this guy playing you know a sort of fanfare for the queen with this massive legend on the screen airborne the tribute nationwide our affection and it's just where the how did we get here and that bloke looks just like fred quilley bent jockey but yeah generally the main thought you have while watching the nationwide jubilee fair is how strange that the most enthusiastic supporters of our national insanity should

be actual mad people like it's always a danger for royal reporters throughout time like wherever you find them when they're out in the mall or outside the palace of whoever's just died like whenever they have to interview the crowds for royal occasions like well let me just speak to this lady and gentleman here oh dear they're actually insane okay let's speak to this person over here oh no he's insane too and the artifacts that people have sent in that they've made as well just reveal a national oh yeah the artefacts that people have sent in, that they've made as well, just reveal a national insecurity. Oh, yeah. Just a load of shit that people have made

as a gift for the Queen. Yeah. A tiny little crown. And also a massive crown. More befitting, you know, a Colossus Queen or something. It's just, there's just so much strange shit in it. And a fucking enormous Welsh love spoon.

Yeah. And there's that radio that radio that obviously there's loads of companies trying to get a free advert and they've done a radio which is just a big silver brick that's worth thousands of pounds also i was really disgusted to note that there were a load of really amateurish paintings of the queen by henry mellish infant school who were the rodney bennett to my school's grain gel. Oh, no. You look at them, you go,

yeah, your parents have done that, and they're still shit. And one would think in a show so jam-packed full of insanity that the music sections would introduce some normality into proceedings, but they don't really. I mean, beyond anything else, at one point, I think the kids are given woodwind instruments or something because i swear down when those you know that big royal pie gets bought out and frank buff has a bit yeah they bring out a selection of royal food don't they at that point it sounds

like albert euler's spiritual unity is playing in the background it's fucking demented they bring out a load of ladies um dressed as Henry VIII's knockoffs. Still with their heads on, obviously. Yeah, bringing out things in aspic and just enormous stupid pies. I think the goal of all the food sections in this programme was to make you feel a bit more grateful for the sausage rolls you were going to get. Yeah, yeah. For your buffet this afternoon.

But yeah, all the way through i mean because the musical passages that there's a bit where new edition the dance troupe yeah sadly not bobby brown and his mates no unfortunately um dance to some jubilee girl you used to run half the world yeah well they dance to some 50s stuff they do the twist yes with this really palpable sense of sadness of what's lost. Empire deprivation trauma in full effect going on there. It's like being in a care home, isn't it? It is.

It really is. Are we going to talk about Alan Price's song? Yes, we are. Alan Price sings a song all about the 60s. It's a kind of proto We Didn't Start the Fire, isn't it? Yes, it is. Cherry-picking certain moments what what moments does

he cherry pick again i think i he mentions the beatles he mentions those two pandas getting it on yeah he does do the chatterly band and the beatles first lp that's right oh my god he doesn't mention his appearance in bob dylan's don't look back drinking vodka and orange by taking a massive swig out of a bottle of vodka, then a massive swig out of a bottle of orange. And doing the mixing in his mouth. Pretty awful song. Searchers are also on. Oh, yeah.

And actually, you know what? The Searchers, I mean, look, it's a shit show. I think they're the least shitty in the whole thing because they've got a nice little jangle to them. It's already that thing of the 60s it was the last time we were any good and we are just declined as a world power now because there's a bizarre tableau at the end where yeah like taylor says all the countries that we supposedly you know out of the beneficence of our heart gave an independence scroll up the screen the union jack

gets lowered it's it's so weird um but know, if I was sending someone something to diagnose the mental illness that is being British, I probably would send them this. Yeah, absolutely. It's fucking amazing to watch all these old fools and think, my God, these people won the war. won the war because look we all spend a lot of time criticizing that tedious british self-deprecating sense of humor you know that like all the endless tiktoks of the general public dancing you know and all that sort of comedy shows where the only joke is that someone who looks awful does a dance dressed up as someone who looks good and you just laugh just that shit british self-deprecating bollocks that that mindset where it's like to stop people getting above their station you know where like it's that oh well at least they don't take

themselves too seriously who do you think you are why don't you join in with the fun it's this thing that where they won't be happy until we're all walking around with clown noses on, with our trousers around our ankles, right? But I'm never going to criticise that again, because watching the nationwide Jubilee Fair, it dawned on me that if we hadn't had that in our darkest hour,

we'd have been bigger Nazis than the Nazis. And madder. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and of course it ends on a thrilling denouement doesn't it oh god yeah the winner of the nationwide jubilee song contest what a thing that is an event of such monumental musical arse lick that we've decided that we we just can't toss it away here so we're going to do a very special bonus podcast about it. Only available on Patreon. Yeah, you are not going to want to miss this. No, no.

So now is the time to get on Patreon if you want that. Fucking hell. So on the cover of the NME this week, a massive mushroom cloud. Hooray! On the cover of Record Mirror, the Sex Pistols. Fucking hell, first time we've mentioned them. It's like they've been censored. The number one LP in the country is Arrival by ABBA.

Over in America, the US number one is Sajouk by Stevie Wonder. And the number one LP is is of course rumors by fleetwood max so boys what were we doing in june of 1977 well i remember it being a reasonably big deal at my school i'd literally just started school it was my first year of primary school i think and the first two things i remember about school are the local rector came in to give us a talk about god every week thankfully hands off and then this peculiar assembly for the silver jubilee where we all had to queue up to be presented with a Jubilee coin. Yes. I got one of those. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was like some base metal medallion, you know,

now worth £1.79 on eBay, no doubt. Just to leave us in no doubt as to our place in the Jubilee picture, you know. And all the Union Jacks were up everywhere and hideous potato print portraits of the queen by the slightly older kids you know and at the time it never struck me as odd that both these things the rector and the queen were essentially compulsory and considered a valid and important part of a child's education in a free post-war society you had to be there and you weren't allowed to snigger or talk back and i wonder sometimes whether it was that kind

of upbringing that made our generation such piss takers right so yeah so widely atheistic and and cynical about the royals it's like in america you can't mention god in schools at least until the current supreme court gets to grips with that but there's there's immense social pressure in a lot of the country to go to church and all that sort of stuff but then they look at britain with when we were growing up compulsory christian prayer every day and americans are astonished that the result of that is a nation of atheists and apatheists when in fact that's part of it you know you grow up associated in the certainly the church of england with boredom pomposity yeah um the shit experience of school people you don't like droning on at you in cold wooden halls um and you see

straight through it and you can't get away fast enough it's not some magical thing that exists in your community outside of the imperfect state you know offering you salvation you can see it for what it is it's part of the apparatus so maybe it would have been a good thing in the end to, you know, if they'd made us bow down to Her Majesty a little bit more, you know, really rub it in, might have made it seem less of a jolly lark, you know. Taylor's right. It was sort of mandatory in 77, unlike now. I mean, there's photographic evidence of what I was doing for the Silver Jubilee.

You know, I was sitting in a garden in oxendon way earnst for grange commentary pretty much appalled by everything i was seeing hearing and experiencing i mean you know i was only five probably like i i think i had a dim awareness of the jubilee and also an unsureness about it and whether i mean the worry of course of whether i was expected to be part of anything. I mean, shock horror, that would have been fucking awful. We were given a big coin. Older kids in our school got given Jubilee sweets. What? Yeah, a little tin of sweets.

Fucking hell. And some were given a leather bookmark as well. Yeah. But I do also remember the sort of cowardly likes of the Beano in 77, having special Jubilee covers, you know, plastered in the Union Jacks. The newsstands, you wouldn't see that many Union Jacks until, you know, the rise of Britpop, basically.

As an adult... Did it have Dennis the Menace on the cover, slapping his arse and saying, softies, go home? It should have. But as an adult, you know, you could have avoided it, I guess. Because these things always bring all the cunts out the woodwork but as a kid you were plunged into all this nonsense

and like any public event involving that horrible hateful idea of participation for a small shy child i loathed every moment of it i've seen the photo of your face now it just says everything well one of my major terrors my whole life is a fucking lp cover waiting to happen one of my major terrors my whole life as i may have mentioned in the past on shark music is characterful dads yes you know and things like the jubilee much like comic relief now it just seemed to be an excuse for these wannabe sort of new faces cunts i want to be it's a knockout dads to come out the woodwork put on a dress put on some unsuitably ribald entertainment for children and as far as i can ascertain from the photographs i

have i'm in someone's back garden and there's two characterful dads both bearded because it was after all 1977 oh yeah expecting us kids to watch their pratfalls and be amused and and shockingly it seems most of the kids were i was wary of one of those chaps. His name was Uncle John, just like everyone we knew was called Uncle something. And he'd always put himself about on special occasions. You know what I mean? So at the old people's home, when we lived there,

whenever there'd be like a special day, like Christmas or something like that, he'd be there dressed as something. I remember him doing Santa. I remember him doing drag and jokingly coming onto my dad at a show sitting on his lap and flirting with him which everyone in this old people's home found fucking hilarious because my dad was quite straight laced but obviously you know no one needs to see their dad going through that it angered me um because i was

just grateful that i didn't have a character were you scared that your dad was gonna run off with him not at all but you know you don't want to see your dad at times like that. Were you scared that your dad was going to run off with him? Not at all. But, you know, you don't want to see your dad get hurt and you don't want to see your dad laugh that. No. And there's this photo of me. And you also don't want to see your dad lamping someone in a dress.

No, no, no. But there is this photo, Al, yeah, you're right, of me sitting in a tent with a plate of Jubilee food before me, looking as I normally did at occasions, whether with family or friends, any occasion, you know, like I just wanted it to end when can i go home please well this week really sticks in my mind because on the saturday before the entire family as we did on a saturday night round about that time we went out to the meadows to have a drink in the queens with me non-oran grandpa and

they'd let me and my seven-year-old little sister sit in the corner or hang about in the doorway, which was a fucking massive upgrade from having to sit in the car outside a pub without the radio on, like I used to do with my dad. But on that night, Scotland had just ravaged Wembley that afternoon and practically every Scottish person in Nottingham

had just come out to get absolutely battered. And the landlord refused point blank, and rightly so, to let kids witness the carnage that was going to unfold. But of course it didn't stop me dad and grandpa and me nanos staying in there and having a drink. So I remember for hours sitting on the back seat of my dad's car watching some absolutely graphic violence like three feet away from me and it got to one point where there's two blokes just practically fighting with pint glasses with each other and my mom in her best white trouser suit trying to lean over the back and cover my eyes and me dodging out the way and anticipating my status as king of the playground when we went back to school on wednesday were you scared oh you're scared no because i was

in a car and i was with my parents i thought oh nothing could go wrong here yeah yeah i mean actual jubilee day like you i've been given a jubilee medal but also we got given a Jubilee mug, which had the official logo on it and lots of filigree and gold shit all around it. But it also had a massive logo of BBC Radio Nottingham and Pork Farms, which was a local sausage roll and pork pie factory. But the actual day, it had been decided upon pretty early in the day that to my disgust no one on our street could be arsed with a street party and that ruined my fucking ve day fantasies because i was really looking forward to a proper street party with you know bunting and all that kind of shit so we just put up my grandpa's blue enzyme on the garage door right and some massive swirly red right and blue banners by the side of the

house and then we went to the lammy's next door and their dad played loads of boe my dad played loads of elvis and i was just absolutely disgusted that i wasn't having my ve day moment so by the end of it i can remember lying flat on the settee, absolutely bored and angry, with a Union Jack over me pretending to be asleep and just seething while my dad and Lamy got pissed up and took turns to say, fucking Elvis is the fucking king, isn't he? That was the day that I became completely anti-monarchist. Lamy, the bloke next door, absolute fucking vision rare two weeks before this episode i was around

his ass being babysat and we were watching liverpool going through the streets holding up the european cup on the top deck of a bus and he turned around to me a nine-year-old boy and he said you see that two years time that's going to be forest wow and i looked at him as if he'd fucking gone out but my god he was so right yeah an unwise prediction at that point it has to be said this is what forest were in the second division yeah just got promoted right i mean music wise i'm still into show waddy waddy and playing the shit out of elvis and little richard and buddy ollie on a tape to tape player that my dad had liberated from his round as a removal man and not yielding to Punk at all

because I hadn't heard any yet. You know, the only thing I knew about Punk was what I was seeing in the Sunday papers and they all looked very scary and I was just worried about ever seeing one, which I hadn't yet. I would have definitely been on the side of the Teds in the forthcoming

King's Road Wars but you know Forrester just got promoted Judge Dredd is fighting Call Me Kenneth in the Robot Rebellion in 2000 AD the six weeks

holidays coming up you know it's all good there's going to be a lot of Sabutio that's going to be played over the next six weeks or so but that's all

when you're a kid that's the thing though you don't have any affection towards the royal family so just one. But that's all it... When you're a kid, that's the thing, though. You don't have any affection towards the royal family. So just one bad day, that's all you need to turn yourself into a committed anti-royalist. For me, it wasn't this day. It was Charles and Di's wedding.

Well, I just got fucking sick of it and decided to hate the monarchy as a result. You know, that's all it takes. I mean, a few weeks after this episode i actually saw the queen and prince philip and i was standing in the exact same spot where all those scottish people were beating the shit out of each other wow yeah luckily they'd stopped by then yeah yeah and my jaw just swinging wide open because it was the first time i'd ever seen a famous person yeah they're the people on my grandpa's t-shirt there they are in front of me and i was absolutely awestruck but to be honest with you if it had been rod hull and emu i would

have had the same reaction and then you know afterwards i'm walking about in a daze and i thought hang on i waved at them and they didn't wave back at me yeah how dare they that is star power in it and there's no denying it i mean mean, I even felt it once, like in 2010, when Gordon Brown visited where I worked. But, you know, yeah, famous people, oh, I've only seen you on the telly before. Fuck me, you're in real life. There's nothing between us but air.

That's always a mind-blowing moment, isn't it? Well, chaps, I do believe it's time to retire to the chart Music Crap Room and rip open a box or two and peruse an issue of the music press from this very week. And this time, we've gone for Melody Maker, 11th of June, 1977. Would you come and have a riffle with me? Oh, yeah.

On the cover, while the NME get into the party mood with a mushroom cloud and the headline, a hard rains are gonna fall, Oh yeah, that's it. shattering news that martin carthy has rejoined steel ice band the cover is dominated by a great barry plumbershot of bob marley from his recent sellout shows at the rainbow in the news wow unsurprisingly the main story is the sex pistols and their current single God Save the Queen, which is selling like a bastard despite a total nationwide TV and radio ban. Under the headline, Pistols Beat the Sensors, the maker reports on the blanket ban on the single by the media. Quote, A statement issued jointly by BBC Radio and Television says the corporation has no intention of playing the record because it is in gross bad taste.

And they intend sticking to this edict even if the single gets to number one in the charts. Radio 1 spokesman James Conway said, We're not pretending the record isn't there. We mention it when announcing our chart listings, but we refuse to play it. If it reaches number one, our top 20 show will finish with the number two record. The compere will say what's at the top, and then it'll be straight into the news headlines. Over at BBC TV Centre, Robin Nash is asked whether they'll be allowing Johnny and the Chaps on top of the Pops and he says the single is quite unsuitable for our

Thursday evening pop treat. A BBC spokesman is also quoted admitting that it was unfortunate for the Sex Pistols that their chart success coincided with Jubilee Week. This is what bad luck. Terrible timing on their part.

If it had been at any other time in the year, we might have given it the occasional play. Oh, would they bollocks. Would they bollocks. And the IBA and ITV have not only followed suit, presumably denying the band the opportunity to play the single on Get It Together, Run Around and The Sooty Show,

but they've also put the block on Virgin's attempts to buy advertising time. The piece concludes by reporting that Radio Luxembourg have taken the issue a step further by ignoring the single completely. As far as they are concerned, it simply does not exist, and God Save the Queen does not feature anywhere in their top 30, nor will it at any time. Good job they didn't do a song about the Queen of Luxembourg. Yes, the fascist regime. The rest of the news is dominated by gig and tour announcements, including Blond Air, City Boy and the Curzel Flyers. But the big news is that the Beach Boys are coming to Wembley and they're bringing along the fragrant Romeos of pop themselves.

Dr Hook as support. While promoter Ken Campbell is mooting the very unreal possibility of Richie Blackmore's Rainbow and the Steve Gibbons band headlining an open-air concert at Salford Rugby Ground. The gig never materialises. There's a party going on at Alexandra Palace. A communist party. People's Jubilee Festival, organised by the CP, will feature Soft Machine, Aswad, and none other than the white-shot commissar of heterosexual rock and roll, Shakin' Steve.

Yeah, man. Brothers and sisters, we shall keep fighting until the only bands allowed to perform here are those personally approved by Moscow, which we are sure will include the Soft Machine and Aswad. While everyone else who plugs in electric guitar will be taken to a five foot by five foot concrete cell with a metal grill in the floor for the blood to drain away. And don't let decadent Western propaganda trick you into thinking this is not desirable. If you don't fancy that, then top promoter Richard Wrigley has announced a series of Jubilee concerts in a circus tent next to Tower Bridge

from mid-July to October. They include the likes of Lindsay DePaul, Perry Como, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, John Lord performing his latest solo album, Sarah Bands with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York City Ballet, and reunion shows for Deep Purple and King Crimson. Yeah, on second thoughts, all power to the Soviets. Meanwhile, Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes have announced plans for a two-day punk fest on the outskirts of Bristol, featuring the

Pistols, the Tubes, the Clash, Iggy Pop and the Ramones. As you can imagine, we're running into all sorts of problems with the local council, says Rhodes to the maker, but the site is fairly isolated and hopefully won't lead to any protests. In more flared news, CBS have announced that Punter's paying the £1 admission fee and turning up before 7.30 for any show on the upcoming CBS promo package tour, which features Crawler, the band which had Paul Kossoff in it before he died last year,

Moon and Boxer, will be presented with a free EP, whether they like it or not. It features all three bands and is part of CBS's ultimately futile promo push for three shit-bricked cock-rock acts. The maker reluctantly confirms, however, that Steely Dan will not be touring Britain in September,

contrary to reports elsewhere. But Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers are shaking off their recent arrest in Birmingham on suspicion of breaking into a telephone box by announcing that they're going to bring £1,000 worth of fireworks to their July 4th show

at an as-yet unannounced location. This does not come off, unfortunately, but they do spend that evening playing The Vortex on its opening night with Buzzcocks, The Fall, and John Cooper Clark. A thousand pounds worth of fireworks, fucking hell. Can you imagine, in 1977? That's a lot of fireworks.

Just imagining the heartbreakers, Buzzcocks, The Fall and John Cooper Clarke playing to a room full of mildly disappointed Steely Dan fans. And finally, under the headline New Beagle Show on Tour, we learned that a new musical based upon Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band begins a six-week national tour later this month entitled lucy in the sky and directed by michael bogdan off it follows the fortunes of the girl whose hopes and ambitions are drawn to the magic of the circus with beacles tunes interspersed with various specialities circus acts yeah they, they've gone straight to, for the benefit of Mr. Kite,

and gone, yeah, and what next? Serious question. Has there ever been anything associated with the Beatles, but which wasn't actually created by the Beatles themselves, which shouldn't have been set alight in an oil drum? Because I can't think of anything no apart from the rules yeah nothing of course yeah in the interview section well harry doherty hits the road with 10cc in the wake of the departure of lol cream and kevin godlair and

reports that the whole band are feeling great about the split the old band was like a musical eunuch it had no balls this one is much healthier says eric stewart i'd resign myself to the fact that life in the music business just stank but at this stage there's no aggravation nobody's bored no self-consciousness or funny remarks oh get the reggae singles going like see i would accept this split if they'd rename themselves 5cc why didn't they yeah actually that would uh that might maybe would have been singly inappropriate since he's suggesting there that kevin godley and lol Cream each represented minus one testicle. Yes.

Their departure is a kind of negative castration, allowing the remaining two members to come up with testosterone-packed hard hitters like Dreadlock Holiday, which they just wouldn't have been capable of. From Rochdale to Ocho Rios. Still, there is something for all those disappointed Steely Dan fans. Go and see Aluminiumy Dan, as I like to call him. Stanley Mises catches up with Ian Hunter in New York

and they have a natter about his new album, Overnight Angels. I've done an all-out rock album because nothing else moves them in England. Any modicum of common sense is ignored there. They have to be faced with the national front to be moved. It's so civilised it disappears up its own arse. Gentility and civility is what keeps them down. The great minds have left. The Labour government is in total chaos and when the Conservatives come in, they don't get on with the unions. They're kicking out the middle class and bringing in Asians. There's no difference in them as people, but the economic support is not there. I'm a patriot, totally loyal. live in new york because what's going on in the uk is stupid

it drives me nuts oh do you see the nationwide jubilee fair mate what the fuck we're going on about what does he mean they're kicking out the middle class no idea i'm bringing in asians yeah yeah i've heard an interesting line there any yeah i've heard people make that argument, like, you know, kicking working-class people out of jobs and giving it all to immigrants. But what does he mean they're kicking out the middle class? From what? Maybe he's been in America a while, and consequently he's got that middle-class definition that they use

rather than the British definition, so perhaps it's that. He's probably just pissed. Yeah. Yeah, more like it. Rob Halford and KK Downing of Judas Priest sit down with Harry Docter and pretty much predict the wobbum. I can't understand why really big

bands do things like Earl's Court. It's a total money thing. You don't need to put half a million watts in there and use a million light bulbs, says Halford. Bands like Zeppelin should play more gigs and give the kids something back. The kids in our audience want to feel the music as well as hear it. They want the floorboards

vibrating. When he asks if he feels his style of music has had his day, he says, I don't think rock is dead. Punk to me is rock. I saw the pistols and they packed a wallop called raw rock material Oh. And finally, Paul Barreira of Little Feet whinges to Roy Carr about his band's inability to score a hit and indulges in some light bitching about Laul George. Laul's trouble is that he doesn't do anything by half measures and recently he's been overdoing it, staying up too many nights in a row, too much booze, too many pills to help him stay awake, insufficient sleep, and in the end,

he went down with a bad case of hepatitis. Perhaps next time he'll think twice, says Paul, 14 months before George dies from a heart attack. This is not a good way of cementing good band relations, man. No, it's not, is it? Doing your bitching in an interview like that, fuck me. Single reviews. Well, in the chair this week

is caroline coon who stops being the original female punk journo it's okay to like for a bit and addresses a slew of distinctly non-punky product single of the week is so high rock me baby and roll me away by dave m, which is an inspired love song celebrating dream days of good time fulfillment. The single is commercial without sounding like a cross between Peter Frampton and the Carpenters. A hit. Reader, it wasn't.

There are two singles out that have been written and produced by Dominic Bugatti and Frank Musca, the King Tubby and Scratch Perry of Coddiness, who wrote reggae like it used to be last year. According to CC, the first, Woman in Love by Twiggy, has definite chart potential. It's the best musicianship, production and guidance for Twiggy yet, says Cass. A simple love d'etat, superficially catchy, but hardly inspired. It failed to chart, but eight months later the song was given to the Three Degrees, who took it to number three for three weeks. The other Bugatti Musca single, Heaven on the Seventh Floor by the conquering lion himself,

Paul Nestor Nicholas O.olas om fares much better paul an artist who excels in sugary showbiz presentation is never less than a bunch of energetic good fun but it's a coat down for dandy in the underworld by t T-Rex. The very lovely mock, I was the first punk, B, slows it right down for a deathly dirge, suitable for the gloomiest of occasions, like the burial of the album from which this song was taken.

Fuck you now. Was Caroline Coon being played by Jane Asher in this singles page as well? We'll explain a lot. Queen's first EP, a selection of tunes from their last four LPs called Queen's First EP, is out. But Caroline doesn't understand why they've even bothered. Staunch fans need hardly bother since they have all the albums and the packaging is too dull for want for aesthetic reasons alone.

If the band is searching out new fans, then why release such unlikely bait like these second-rate tracks? Another EP, Cirilla by Demis Roussos, fares much better. There's a move afoot to persuade us all to holiday on our own shores this year and really with anything but english being spoken from brighton to st times and the king of benidorm blues releasing this smashing ep who needs the costa brava a hit forced jollity of the kind some adults imagine will appeal to 10 yearyear-olds, says Coon of Southern Comfort by Bernie Flint. The song drifts tritely along,

with Flint obviously trying to do his best behind gritted teeth. The Small Faces scored a hit last year with the release of Ichiku Park, and they're having another go by shoving out Tin Soldier. But Caroline spends a review comparing them to the Buzzcocks before stating that it's a fine reminder of the fresh rock style which is still admired by young musicians today. Rose Royce, a follow-up, I want to get next to you with an even better tune, I'm Going Down, but our Kaz doesn't reckon it good try people but it won't work it's the third or fourth track lifted from the soundtrack to car wash classy and moody but

without the instant appeal of next to you no no duck slow down by john miles is an unimaginative disco sound which reduces everything to the lowest common denominator. Everybody Have a Good Time by Archie Bell and the Drolls is an uncontrived atmosphere of gay disco abandon. Dancing in the Dark by Acker Bilk is debonair and suave. Anything that's rock and roll by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sees a band that many people are dying to be a huge success pissing on their chips once more. If this were not another song with boring lyrics about rock and roll is rock and roll, etc., it would be great.

Block out the words and you have a near-perfect diamond-hard sound. But it's not a patch on American Girl. This band are requiring a second division aura oh harsh but you know you know what caroline coon right routinely held up as a kind of godfather god mother if you like of punk writing her stuff when i've read it it's actually not bad you get the sense she's a music fan you get the sense she knows what she's talking about she i think can be effectively contrasted um with what's going on at the enemy at this point because because you know i mean the enemy front cover this week of the mushroom clown looks tremendously exciting but i've actually looked at that issue and and oh my god it's

terrible it's full of tony parcel and and Julie Birchall just chatting shit. And, you know, when you read those guys writing, you genuinely cannot believe they got away with just this unfunny dog shit writing. You know, the NME that week, I think the LP reviews page, it's got Julie Birchall slagging off rock follies of 77 or something. And you've got all these great names in there. Yeah, there's some Leicester Bang stuff. A bit off-colour Leicester Bangs, actually.

You've got some... Really? Yeah, which he sometimes does. But, you know, you've got some Nick Kent stuff in there that's pretty good. But the domination of the NME in 77 by Tony Parcell and Julie Birchall is unbelievable. They get loads of pages to just write what they want. Tony Parcell does a whole piece about wanting to drive across America. And it's just fucking sad.

They've clearly like made an impression, if you like, i.e. generated enough angry readers letters, that they're now being given half the paper. And, you know, when you read that NME from, you know, I'm sure that mushroom cloud cover is probably held up as a wow wasn't the enemy amazing it put stuff like this on the cover dig into it into the actual issue itself and the writing it's fucking terrible because birchall and parsons were always terrible terrible writers so yeah i massively disagree with a lot of what

caroline keane says in this singles page but she's a thousand times a better writer than them two. Imagine not being able to make nuclear war fun and interesting. Fuck's sake, NME. But, I mean, look at what Caroline Coombs had to review, man. Fucking Demis Rousseau. Acker Bilk in 1977? As The Clash said, no Rousseau, Bilk and Flint in 77.

Clearly not the case. But that's it. The punk records themselves are few and far between. It's still quite a live phenomenon rather than a recorded phenomenon so you're going to see them on the

live pages but maybe not on the singles pages and certainly not on the album pages yeah you have to feel for any idiot who have to try and

think of something to say about Demis Roussos and Bernie Flint in the LP review section the lead review this week belongs to Peter

Frampton's I'm In You. The follow-up to the massively selling in the USA Frampton comes alive and the dagger is handed to Chris Welch. But after pointing out that it doesn't quite have the magic of his big-selling predecessor, he concedes that it's pleasant, unpretentious, and there is no reason to suppose it won't be another giant smash. Golden age of music journalism, right?

Oh yeah, it's a toe-tapping smash. David Coverdale has struck out on his own, and his debut LP, White Snake, is received more than favourably by Brian Harrigan. Of course. In a nutshell, he he surpassed all expectations. It's easy with the benefit of hindsight to suggest that Coverdale wasn't really at home with the Deep Purple musical concept, but here he demonstrates where his musical inclinations really lie.

The man has already recorded his second solo, and I can tell you now it's even better than this for good measure harrigan tacks on a review of the re-release of his old band's debut lp shades of deep purple and deems it's a great start to a career and a valuable collector's item imagine if you started a metal band in this period and brian harrigan didn't like it you'd be screwed if brian harrigan and tommy vance both thought you're a crap yeah be like being an american fascist now who donald trump had a personal problem with yeah just be like your career's over before it's begun coverdiles are just another one of those people fleeing from richie blackmore because richie

blackmore just antagonizes everyone he works with although i think richie blackmore because richie blackmore just antagonizes everyone he works with although i think richie blackmore is delightful and delicious i think he's hilarious but yeah you know the amount of people who just part company with that guy whether it's ronnie james dio from rainbow or david coverdale from deep purple it's just there's something about richie blackmore that is truly hilarious like dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker has realised that it's possible for a country singer to cross over, but her latest LP, Riding Rainbows, sees her falling between two stools, according to Michael Oldfield.

The bulk of the album is dreary pop songs on which Tanya wastes her superb country voice. Brian Harrigan reckons that bringing in Barry Blue as producer will kick Moon up into the first division with their new LP, Turning the Tides. It doesn't. Michael Oldfield reckons that Two Can Do It Too by Amazing Rhythm Aces

is a great album that could have been a masterpiece if they'd spent more time on the lyrics. But Fundamental Role, the debut LP by Walter Egan, is a bit cat shit, according to Harrigan. He really needs to work harder than this if he's going to bring out a memorable album. And if you're wondering where all the punk is, it's in the live section. Where Blonde Air, Television and the Cort in bristol gets bouquets and brick bats from simon kinnisley it is with bands like television and talking heads that the more wholesome future of 70s music lies he says and he praises the cortinas for musically extending

themselves further than the more usual holocaust punk-a-rama but blondie performed with detached indifference as debbie harry went through a series of laughably lame martial arts poses as the band plodded along behind and caroline coon goes to ramones talking heads and the saints triple header at the roundhouse which she calls one of the most exciting, good, fun shows of rock to be remembered for a long time to come. Thank you, William McGonagall. In the gig guide, David could have seen the jam at the winning post, Twickenham,

or if he'd rather, at Chelsea Football Club, Hawkwind at the Music Machine, Sarah Vaughan at Ronnie Scott's. Georgie Fame and the Blue Fames at Dingwall's. Mike Harding at Victoria Palace. Or Eddie and the Hot Rods at the Rainbow, but probably didn't. Taylor could have seen Clodagh Rogers at Billingham Forest.

Yes! The Damned and the Adverts at Barbarella's. Muscles at Sloopy's Birmingham, or Strider at Dudley JB's. No, no, it's Clodagh Rogers. She's going to bounce up and down on her spring. She invented pogoing, didn't she? Neil could have seen Mealticket and Lou Lewis Band

at Coventry College of Education. Oh, Yoffie. Or nipped out to Wolverhampton to check out trapeze at the Lafayette. And fuck all else. Oh, Yoffie. Out could have seen Lou Lewis band at the Boat Club in Nottingham or ventured out to catch Johnny Nash at Bailey's Club in Leicester, City Boy at the Retford Porterhouse or the fabulous Poodles at the 76 Club in Burton-on-Trent. And Simon could have seen 5cc at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, bombed over to Bristol to catch the jam at Bristol Poll Air or darts at the old Granary, then nipped

back to catch Ian Hunter and the Vibrators at the top-ranked Cardiff. Not many decent gigs knocking about. It's 1977, what's going on? Too hot. But, I mean, judging by the news section, most of the managers are just making up gigs that aren't going to happen just to get in the papers,

you know, it's a bit crazy. In crazy in the letters page well this week's mailbag kicks off with an impassioned letter from malatis deville from derry northern ireland to all the angry young punks out there joe strummer may look awfully impressive in his battle fatigues but he and his playmates prance about, pretending to be urban guerrillas. Over here we have had seven years of urban guerrillas, only we call them terrorists, which I'm afraid isn't quite as glamorous. It sticks in my gullet to see Strummer clowning about, glorifying the kind of bastards who have wrecked the lives of thousands of people and left a country in ruins. There wasn't anything dashing about the men in the shades and parkas who would roll up to your house to blast you away because they don't like your religion or politics.

I hope this puts a new angle on the new punk chic for you. I'm so bored of the uda ira dup uvf uff etc etc what does he know i'm sorry but i have to say that's very naive in more contentious news caroline coon dared to coat down the new genesis ep spot theon the other week, and S. Eggington, P.G. Robbins and J.C. Hume, all studying at Grey College, Durham University, have drafted a combined response directly from the common room. What on earth did Caroline Coombe mean when she wrote that the new Genesis single is, quote, a prehistoric attempt at reviving interest in a strange band.

The whole phrase is a collection of misguided, if not false, statements, taking it piece by piece. A. Prehistoric implies outdated and simple. However, this band have been constantly changing and influencing modern rock, and still are. B, how is it possible to revive interest in a band that sell records by the million and incites thousands of fans to queue out overnight to get tickets for their concerts, which sell out at every venue?

Admittedly, punk rock has its place, and although we don't like it, we wouldn't put it down unnecessarily in the way CC puts down Genesis, say these three spots. You wouldn't expect pernickety condescension from Genesis fans, would you? No.

Meanwhile, Simon Kinnisley made a fatal error in his live review of Queen by suggesting that Brian May was never a wildly gifted guitarist. And now he has to deal with Alison Maloney from Heddington, Oxford. This must come as a great surprise to anyone who has ever seen Queen live or heard them on record he is a highly sensitive and mature musician with a rare gift in that he has no need to bring his music to the front of the band to reveal its brilliance maybe queen as a unit is becoming jaded and in need of a change but to condemn one of the best guitarists britain has seen since hendrix is nothing short of criminal.

Twelve-inch singles are starting to become a thing and Kevin Botting from Budde Cornwall is not having it. Is it right that such quantities of vinyl should be used for just a few minutes of music? Haven't we forgotten the infamous vinyl shortage of not long ago, which sent the prices of albums rocketing? shortage of not long ago which sent the prices of albums rocketing let's save resources for the future and keep prices down by not wasting vinyl or when can we expect to see 24 inch albums that play at 45 rpm that'd be amazing yes but imagine having one of those under you fucking arm coming out of wolves on a saturday afternoon though or getting it on a bus. Kate Constable of Dorchester made the mistake of watching

the nation's top pop show the other week and was appalled by the sight of Brendan. Having sat through another edition of Top of the Pops, I wonder how the Beeb can show pathetic little people singing something called Rock Me. Good grief,

they obviously don't know the meaning of the word. The programme was saved by the brilliant Stranglers. Thanks to John Peel, the only DJ giving groups like Stranglers and The Clash some exposure, it might just keep the music industry alive. And finally, there's a pat on the back for Alan Jones for his piece on John Otway, and in particular his mention of Pete Townsend as an early champion of the new wave. Townsend, regularly pilloried as the epitome of jaded old wave flatulence in less discriminating journals, was in fact the first person to discover punk, to see its potential,

and may his shallow detractors eat humble pie though never having met him in my nine years of knocking around the edges of the music business i get the solid impression that he is one of the very few rock stars who cares writes pete frame of yeoman cottage north marston yes that pete frame blesses that i wonder how the letter was laid out was it one of Yeoman Cottage, North Marston. Yes, that Pete Crane. That Pete Crane. Bless his heart. I wonder how the letter was laid out. Was it one on a massive sheet of A3 with all branching offs and everything?

Yeah, he's right, though. It's like the only problem with Pete Townshend was unfortunately he cared just slightly too much, which you wouldn't think was possible, but yes, it is. 48 pages, 15p. I never knew there was so much in it. So what else was on telly today?

Well, BBC One commences at 20 to 7 with a double-barrel blast of Open Universitaire with programmes about peer gint and embalming. Then they close down for four hours and five minutes. Yeah, can you imagine taking that for your degree? Then they closed down for four hours and five minutes, springing back to life at noon with live coverage of the Queen on a boat in the Thames

and walking around the Tower of London. Then after closing down for another 15 minutes, it's on the move, the midday news, then ragtime with maggie enderson and fred harris and closes down again for another 10 minutes at five to two we're whipped over to the park in nottingham for the second round of the john player grand prix the men's warm-up tournament for wimbledon after regional news in your area, it's Play School with Julie Stevens, Brian Kant and Christopher Lillicrap, White Horses and Scooby-Doo. Then Blue Peter checks in on the progress of Rags, the trainee pony for disabled riders who was paid for with 800

tonnes of old wool and cotton collected by viewers two years ago after captain pugwash it's the news nationwide and they've just finished tomorrow's world where the power trio of baxter woolard and rod have been augmented by judith han for the screamy high-pitched bits no doubt the rod of correction that's what they used to call it down in Sodom and Gomorrah. BBC 2 opens at 6.40 with a triple bill of organisation development, organosilicon compounds and viewing the invisible in

Open University. There's a gig poster right there, isn't it? Then shuts down for three hours and five minutes before coming back hard with Play School. Then he shuts down for three hours and five minutes before coming back hard with Play School. Then he shuts down again for another four hours and 25 minutes before picking up the tennis. Then it's two hours of more Open Universitaire,

news on two, and they're a quarter of an hour into having a baby. The series about everything to do with pregnancy, apart from the shoving it in bit. ITV kicks off at 10 to 10 with Woobinder, Animal Doctor, the Australian kids drama series of the late 60s involving kangaroos with their arm in a sling and such like. Then Ron Ely rescues a load of kids from the jungle in Tarzan. After a repeat of survival about some snow geese,

it's the Woody Woodpecker show, followed by Granny's Kitchen, where one of the old uns gets a musical box to play Akin Drum, and then makes some cream cheese and pastry men. Jeffre takes a couple of puppets and a man in a bear suit to the seaside in Rainbow, then it's the first in the new series

of treasures in store which looks at a sort of museums and what's inside them after the news at one and regional news in your area it's the drama series rooms followed by women only then the 1950 alistair sim and margaret rutherford Happiest Days of Your Life, then The Cedar Tree, more Australian kids drama with The Lost Islands, and the evil stamp collector Colonel Gum gets a biffing in Batman. Hughie Green is the special guest in the latest episode of Moon Movies,

where a celebrity is asked to name what films he'd take with him on a journey to the moon. Yeah, nothing like Desert Island Dish, honest, what are you saying? That's followed by the news at 5.45 and regional news in your area. Then David Hunter finds himself in the shit with his casino debts in Crossroads, and they're currently 20 minutes into The Magnificent Showman, crossroads and they're currently 20 minutes into the magnificent showman the 1964 john wayne and rita hayworth film about a circus that was known everywhere else as circus world boys what is

jumping out at you there anything not a lot apart from my my very very first crush oh yeah woody woodpecker what yeah woody woodpecker i would say would say. He wasn't arousing in any way, but yeah, probably my first crush, Woody Woodpecker. We can discuss this perhaps in a separate podcast now. Yeah, I think we need to, man. Taylor, anything? No. Stunned silence.

No, I was listening to all of that and I was astonished at how little there was to comment on. I mean, it was all, you know, entertaining to hear, but I couldn't think of anything to say about any of it, I'm afraid. Great. No wonder they're queuing up to see us live. And on that note, I do believe, chaps, we've got the trestle tables out with the Union Jacks over them

and we're holding them down with sausage rolls made with a Torah or possibly Trex, don't you think? We've laid the table, in other words, for this thrilling episode of Top of the Pops that we're about to drill down into. T-R-E-S. So we'll come back tomorrow and we'll start to tuck in properly and say, slew, time for a feast, eh? So, tar very much, Neil Kulkarni. No worries. God bless you, Taylor Parks.

God save the Queen. My name's Al Needham, commanding you to stay pop crazed. Ah! Shark music!