Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #71 (Pt 4): 19.3.81 – Shaky Of The Dorm

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

Neil Kulkarni, Taylor Parkes and Al Needham finally stumble upon the real 1981 – Strange The Clock, and the New Street Station Dolls – while Al deals with an industrial dispute over Toyah by locking Neil and Taylor out and getting some robots in. And we finally get to grips with the most malign influence upon the charts of 1981 – the Syd Little of America…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | PatreonGet your tickets for Chart Music at the London Podcast Festival HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Um... Chart music. Chart music. It's Thursday evening. It's about 16 minutes to 8. It's March the 19th, 1981, and thus far, this episode atop of the pops has been a morbid carousel of cat shit. Dad synth, violent Rupert the Bear, the return of the Top of the Pops orchestra,

and we're still recovering from being forced to contemplate the denim gusset of Shakin' Stevens. Hey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the final part of Chart Music 71. I'm Al Needham, they're Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parks, and we are rejoining the episode in progress. Come on, 1981, you're better than this. Britain's entry to Eurovision, Max Fizz and Making Your Mind Up. Good luck to them.

OK, their number one in Germany at the moment is Fade to Grey, which is a single released before this in Britain. It's Fizzage, A Mind of a Toy. My bleeding face is chipped and cracked. My mind seems to fade too fast. Clutching straws, sinking slow. Nothing lasts, nothing lasts. As Pau, off-camera, wishes Buxfiz the best of British, we're immediately catapulted into the glossy futurescape of now, as he introduces us to

the current occupants of the very summit of Poppenburg, this arch with Mind of a Toy. Born in Newbridge, Caerphilly in 1959, Stephen Harrington was the son of a former paratrooper turned seaside cafe mogul, who spent his teenage years as a Bowie youth and Northern Soul disciple, who caught on to punk very early due to his many weekend visits to London, and first came to public attention when his photo appeared in the Western Mail with the headline, Wales's First Punk. After seeing the Sex Pistols at their gig in Caerphilla, which resulted in every pub in the area being boarded up

and local religious nutters holding a protest in the car park, Harrington, who was now calling himself Steve Strange, linked up with Glenn Matlock for a drink afterwards, which would have long-term implications. That Pistols gig inspired Strange to start organising punk gigs in Wales, where he got to know Billy Idol and Jean-Jacques Bernal, which inspired him to relocate to London in 1977. Desperate to get in on the music scene,

he was roped into an extremely loose collective involving Sue Catwoman, Topper Hedden and Chrissie Hynde, which immediately made a splash in the tabloids. Article in the Sunday Mirror dated January 8th, 1978. Why must they be so cruel? A new rock group called the Moors Murderers have recorded a number called Free Myra Hindley. The disc is a plea by the members of the band

for the release of the infamous murderess. The man behind the record is Dave Goodman, who claims to have produced records for the Sex Pistols. The lead singer and guitarist calls himself Steve Brader. After Ian Brader, Myra Hindley's lover and accomplice in the horrific Morse killings, the group refused to be photographed unless their faces are masked with hoods or plastic bags leader brady said last night the least a criminal sentence to life can expect is consideration for parole did somebody interview them and say so do you really mean this or is it just a publicity stunt? Yes!

Although the single was never released, the experience scared him off a music career for a bit, although he did fill in as the frontman of a Liverpool band called The Photons. But when Matlock's new band, The Rich Kids, got a record deal, he started working in their London office, where he teamed up with the band's drummer, Rusty Egan, to start up an assortment of Bowie and Roxy music nights at a club called Soho called Billy's in mid-1978, with Strange working the door to keep people who weren't getting into the dress-up spirit away and Egan on the decks. By early 1979, the club nights were becoming so successful that Strange was offered

a residency at the Blitz Club in Covent Garden, which was located between two major art colleges and became a magnet for young designers and the future peacocks of pop, including Boy George, Marilyn, Azy Fantasia, Spandau Ballet and Martin Degville to name but a few. While the club harvested a swathe of media attention, particularly when it was reported that Strange had barred Mick Jagger out due to the place being rammed out, Strange was approached by Midyore, keyboard player of the Rich Kids, who told him that the band were on the verge of splitting up due to musical differences,

EMI owed him a watch of studio time, and he wanted to try something new and electronic. He invited him and Egan to work on a demo together, which resulted in Visage and the single Tar, which was put out on Radar Records in 1979, but failed to chart. Undeterred, the trio pulled in Billy Curry of Ultravox, who would invite her to replace John Fox as the frontman of the band very soon after,

and John McGeoch, Dave Formula and Barry Adamson of Magazine. They set to work recording an LP with Martin Russian, but their new label Polydor didn't know what to make of it and left it on the shelf for six months, eventually putting it out in November of 1980, along with the lead-off single Fade to Grey. It took a month for it to enter the chart at number 68, but with the help of a video directed by Godley and Cream, it began a seven-week cruise all the way up to number eight over here last month and number one in Switzerland and West Germany at the moment.

With Fate to Grace still in the charts at number 40, this follow-up immediately became a new entry at number 32 and this week it's gone up eight places to number 24. So here is the video once again directed by Godley and Cream and fucking yes finally 1981 is here and finally Steve Strange comes

into play it actually feels like the first time in the episode witnessing something that could not have happened in the 70s exactly and it also feels like the diametric opposite of Philil collins very much so i like this song a lot it's probably my second favorite visage after night train and just better for me than than fate to gray it's an interesting time this because i don't think

music journalists as yet in early 81 are so convinced of new pop let alone the futurists or the new romantics that they're bold enough to say it's okay for steve strange to kind of look amazing and be incredibly stylish every interview i've read in 80 and 81 he's having to fend off these very sort of raucous questions about superficiality about not having any substance to it um you know it's very much still assumed if you self-create yourself in fashion or style there's got to be this hollowness inside. Whereas, you know, I'd argue quite the opposite. And, you know, actually, there's just as much pop artifice

in Phil Collins' dressed downness as there is in strangers' dressed upness. But the cut of his gym, man, watching this, aged eight, watching this amazing video. And don't forget, it also needs remembering the retrospective um way people look at times as if like everyone knew what the new romantics were or it existed it might have done in london out in the sticks new romantic was just one lyric in a in a song to be honest with you you know i mean they did get a lot of tabloid attention yeah so it

was known about but you didn't see any in the street no you certainly didn't see any of them at school no no i mean this is this weird in-between period really where we find this bizarre video it's in between the release of fate of gray and basically spandau and juran are going to eventually have a victory in this entire sphere really they're going to win but what's really noticeable at this time when you're a man like i said it hadn't really been coined for most of us what was thrilling about visage as a little kid was that even i mean you'd been aware of craft work maybe but you know you could not visualize how this music was being made even with human

lead you could see guys the boring looking guys in the background doing stuff but whenever you caught visage on the telly it was always a video or just strange just you know steve basically so you had to kind of imagine the making of this music so so that helped and this video is fucking fantastic yeah a proper music video you know none of the band pretending to play a gig or the band having fun in the studio bollocks here this is pure concept and the kind of poncing about that's going to set the playground ablaze tomorrow morning yeah because visage are pretty much the first band of the era who bring out a new video rather than a new single yeah Yeah. The early 80s wasn't all fun and games.

No. I really would like to like this. But to me, it's like if you took the early 80s, ground them down into meal, fed it to a diseased hog, waited for it to pass through his polyp-ridden digestive system, and then when it emerged, froze that liquid shit into the shape of a giant hammer and then a dull bewildered farmhand walked by picked up the frozen pig shit hammer and smashed

you in the temple with it this is that intense level of early 80sness that you see in old episodes of riverside oh yes the bbc Youth magazine show of the time, of which no caricature is possible because the early 80s are already being pushed to the absolute conceptual limit of early 80s-ness and satire expires in the resulting vacuum. I mean, if this track had a composer credit of Curtis Goodall, it wouldn't look any different. And it would only sound better.

Possibly a niche reference there, but fuck it. Let's use what freedoms we have remaining. And I just, I can't help thinking, for all the great things about punk and post-punk, this is what happens when deeply untalented people are given the means to express themselves. It's better than nothing, but it's better than nothing but it's worse than anything good you know mid-year and rusty egan the swan's legs thrashing away beneath the still water here i mean fucking hell i just can't go with it he looks like you know the supposedly

cursed painting of the crying boy yes and in fact everyone who bought a copy of mind of a toy by visage did soon find their house burning down and in the charred ruins right there in the middle of what used to be the front room they found the seven inch of this record completely untouched by the fire but there was nothing supernatural about it um it turned out those fires were started by uh music lovers so fair is fair and the reason the record didn't burn is that it was shit all of that just sounds great though to me the the pig shit hammer etc yeah as jimmy tarbuck would say we've got a difference of opinion here. We're going to have to agree to disagree. But, no, it sounds great to me too.

That's what annoys me about this record. I should be enjoying it. Yeah. I should certainly be enjoying the video. And I do think it's a mostly positive mark of the time that although these people must, at some level, be at least peripherally aware of their own mediocrity they still dress up this way and they still call themselves you know

ian interesting and construct a ian interesting i'd buy his records yeah i mean it's you know it's a fantasy self however second hand it looks because the notion still prevails that pop stars should be something other than ordinary and if you can't achieve that naturally you should force it which is the complete opposite of what it's like now obviously where being an identikit middle-class kid in a jumper is a selling point because now it's a desperate market and so the trick is not to alienate anyone yeah and so this is a lot better than that because at least it's a desperate market. And so the trick is not to alienate anyone. Yeah. And so this is a lot better than that,

because at least it's funny. And at least it's umbilically connected to something which was sort of kind of counter-cultural, right? But the trouble is, it's one thing to say that pop is better when it's a bit silly and overdressed and a bit preposterous. And that's usually true but i just think if a record is in my subjective opinion as crappy as this one it breaks the spell

and suddenly you're just looking at some bloke standing there in makeup thick enough to stop a bullet uh dressed like adrian headley and you know he neither looks good enough to legitimize that or surprising or weird enough to make looking good irrelevant and that's the fine line between glorious and ludicrous but you're kind of witnessing this in isolation when you say that i mean in the context of this episode it's a moment i mean there's this sense yeah when you read in the press about strange uh you know early 80s stuff it's kind of it's a very london based press and consequently they see him as running this club night this new movement uh you know out here in the sticks of course you know especially age date we're not cognizant of that

we just see him as this weird figure he crop up on the telly now and then and in between times you know presumably climb into a crypt until being awakened again um if new romantic history is all about the way club culture feeds into and is kind of fed on by the music business that's fine but for us underage as much as we clung to say two-tone by what we could get hold of i.e harrington's maybe you know embraces we hung on to something like visage well i certainly did anyway sort of purely on videos like this really they were exciting things in the middle of quite a bland period for top of the pops i mean if this single had come out a couple years before like a lot of electronic pop it wouldn't really have been seen as a change in direction for

british music it would have been seen as numenoid you know but now that now that newman's moment has faintly passed and steve stranger's becoming known i i think it hits that much harder and the video is fantastic it's kind of maddening that it's cut short in this episode of top of the pops uh because you know you don't forget what we've been through you know i mean i've had to look fierce but we've been through phil collins and we've been through the who and and you know we want something that i'm not saying we're there thirsting for modernity or something but we want something to look at you know and we certainly did not get that with fucking dave stewart and colin blundstone

yeah this is true you know so yeah i think i think it's important to remember that at this point in this rather bland episode it does feel like something new and exciting, I think. Oh, yeah. As we all know, chaps, the last video featured Steve Strange having a snake painted on his arm that bits him in his own face. So following that up is going to be a big ass.

So, you know, let's see how he gets on. And the first thing we notice is we're hit with the sight of a gilt mirror frame on a blue background on a blue wall displaying a blue staircase. It's a godly increment of clearly being given a proper budget this time because, you know, there's a proper glossy sheen to this

that would have stood out even on 1981 crappy tellies. Yeah, yeah, it feels like, I'm not saying it births MTV or anything, but it'd sit nicely with all the other big budget videos at the time. And then a load of teddy bears tumble down the stairs, and then we're confronted by Strange the Clock, which is a terrifying big grandfather clock with Steve Strange's own face,

which has taken Homer Simpson's makeup gun full in the face, and with an arm for a pendulum. That's fucking mental. And then, while we're still trying to process that, we're confronted by a puppet of Steve Strange strange some kids dressed as steve strange who was in his little old fongleroy outfit and then my favorite bit which was massive licorice all sorts tumbling down the stairs so the viewer can imagine themselves sitting at the bottom with their mouths wide open going slew did you notice there were no pink ones?

Was that a trademark thing, I wonder? Oh. Oh, you see, the pink ones would be the ones I would have been like, I hate fucking licorice all sorts. Yeah, I'm like you, Neil. The pink ones are my absolute favourite. I liked licorice all sorts, but I didn't like licorice. So I would just nibble the good bits off

and just lob the licorice in the ashtray which used to piss my mom off no end i mean what should have happened was steve strange pitching up as bertie bassett because you know after all he is britain's greatest asset and then we get a really creepy bit where strange confronts his own puppet who kind of like sneaks off in fast motion, and then he rides a rocking horse. He's essentially picked up 1981, and he's battering us around the head with it. Yeah, a real sense in this of the sort of horror of puppetry. And crucially, it's not something that's so out of the ordinary.

I mean, this was stuff you might have had in your own home, the Teddies, the Jack in the Box, the rocking horse the House. It very much reminds me of the sort of infamous, disturbing sequence in Dario Argento's Profundo Russo with the puppet. And also the final, you know, which we all know, the Herbert Lom sequence in Asylum. Yeah. It came to mind.

I mean, what a shame that he didn't have Sutty and Sweep and Sue playing the Sims, man. That would have been perfect. That would have taken the edge off it a little bit i mean at the time i would have taken right against this because it wasn't real kids issues and it immediately became the forgotten follow-up to fade to grey but when it came on when i revisited for this episode i did fucking go yes because you know now i've grown up i can really appreciate a good pons about and it's not like i've paid for the making of the video so yeah fuck it have this on what it reminded me of was a few months ago when sam smith one of the most boring pop stars even in this shitty

period of music when he turned up at the brit awards looking like a prostate stimulator and you know you immediately got all the usual twats moaning on about it, well, I was thinking, oh, fucking hell, he's actually done something interesting for once. Yeah, yeah. Well, in thin, gruelish times, you know, these sort of slim pickings, they're there to be, yeah, grab that. And that underlying theme of the lyrics, I should say,

you know, I love it discarded like a toy. I think it works. It's sort of strong enough to be understandable by grown-ups and kids so yeah i mean i actually had a distinct sensory memory of this coming on in this episode and suddenly feeling happy top of the pops was on where i hadn't for sort of the past half an hour to be honest with you i consulted blitzed the autobiography of steve strange in the hope of finding out something about the making of the video but all i got was him describing what the video is which i've just done so that's no use to anyone but what he does say is maybe the video was too effective it was banned by top of

the pops because they said it was frightening for children well hand going to chin there when a hand goes to a chin strange has this habit i should say you know of a miss not is it misremembering i don't know whether you call it because you know the moore's murderous thing i mean you know in interviews he's saying i never knew anything about that you know um i turned up i didn't know that they were going to call the ban this but that's clearly not the case is it no um it's after the event correction of history and i suspect that there is as well yeah i'll change my name in tribute to liam brady yes imagine my surprise i mean look i'll i'll grant you that this is not boring to look at which is the first hurdle

overcome do you like any visage? I like Fade to Grey but I tend to think they should have left it at that really do you know what I mean it's just because if you do one single

you can sail on the novelty of it and the sort of initial shock of what you look like. But after that, you kind of got to sort of do some music. You know what I mean? And to me, this is just another illustration of the axiom that nobody who ever took David Bowie as their primary influence ever made really good music. It never happened.

Loads of people have taken bits fromid bowie and made it work but nobody ever took him as their main central inspiration and survived artistically because you can't take most of that stuff and use it yourself because it was fine-tuned for him yeah and his own strengths and weaknesses and if you do it yourself you're going to be fundamentally second rate not just because you're an original but because you're not david bowie and this is the difference between being a post-modern artist who steals and adapts and thus forges a true expression of themselves as a human being adrift in a culture of other people's ideas and just being a cunt in a silly hat just making an exhibition of yourself but you're saying you're and just being a cunt in a silly hat just making an exhibition of yourself

but you're saying you're saying that being a cunt in the silly hat in a way it i know exactly what you mean because it's like david bowie's definitively post-modern so if you're going to be post-modern about somebody post-modern the dilution gets too thin doesn't it yes yeah yeah i know what you mean and but i i still think visage have something um and actually you know what it is i i'm not saying these are great songs but they they i think it's a kid thing for me because nobody's repping in my experience you know night train by visage i fucking really love that song and yeah i liked it too i i really liked it at the time um but it's not held up as some sort of great classic of the early 80s so perhaps it is kids stuff but you know i mean

what else have we got in this episode well in the interest of fairness first of all i don't think you could i should say i don't think you can blame david bowie for any of this any more than if some idiot jumps out of a window thinking they can fly you can blame superman and in some ways or robert wyatt yeah in some ways i do admire his bloody-minded refusal to accept that he doesn't look very good dressed like this and he doesn't really you know he's not a mysterious guy and to some extent you can even almost appreciate the determination to carry on regardless because he has no other musical vocabulary right you can feel him thinking no no i've allowed this to mean everything to me i i can't do anything else now

you know i can't get a job in a pet shop um and it's a bit of a gray area because we do need people who think like that yeah even if we don't necessarily need this you know i don't know it's like all those people you read those interviews with rock stars and they say oh i never did any work at school i never went and got a job because i knew that i was gonna make it i never doubted myself and of course you're not hearing from a representative cross-section of everyone who's ever said that because nobody's ever bothered to interview 99 of the cunts so it's just yeah i don't know but i also i do feel bad for steve strange because at some point he rang up midure and said okay fucker what's next and midure said yeah i'm in

ultrafox now bye yeah and he was sort of left stranded on a bit of floating ice like a climate changed polar bear you mean nothing to me yeah can you can you imagine being dependent on midure fucking hell with his one ounce moustache. Fuck it. In fact, was anyone with a standalone moustache any good? I mean, once you rule out some 80s soul singers who did one good single,

right? Who is that? Prince, Lee Hazelwood, when he looked like John Alderton, Paul McCartney, when he looked like John Alderton, John Lennon, when he looked like John Alderton John Lennon when he looked like a Victorian

doctor and who else have you got there's Hitler Stalin Ewer Viv Stanchel yeah but beyond that Sue Ness

South Yorkshire Police Mr Bronson DLT if you shaved off the rest of his beard and just left the moustache dominic rob if he grew a moustache um it's not a happy crew is it you've raised the problem with this arch because you know they're being pitched as this neo band but it's a fucking super group yeah you know every time visage come out with a song the automatic response is oh so this wasn't good enough for ultravox was it this wasn't good enough for suzy and the banshees was it this wasn't good enough for fucking magazine for fuck's sake yeah but their impact relies on my not me but their impact relies on our ignorance

to a certain extent you know i didn't know any of that. When I heard the name Visage, the only thing that I associated it with was Steve. So, you know, all of the rest of it, I didn't know or care about, to be honest with you, at the age that I was. But, you know, fuck it. What would you sooner have on top of the Pops in 1981? This or Status Quo or Shaking Stevens? There's lots of Quo. You know what I mean?

There's lots of good records in this chart this week that don't get on. Oh, yeah. You know, and there's lots of shit records that do get on. Now, we may disagree about the shitness of this record. I quite like it. This is using Top of the Pops' time much better than an awful lot of other things on this episode. Yeah, I agree with all that. And, you know, he's dead

now, so God bless him and everything. And better to do this than to just sit in carefully, of course. Just don't make me listen to Mind of a Toy by The Visitors again. I'm just thinking of Sweet playing a synth

with a moustache now. So, the following week, Mind of a Torce soared ten places to number 14, and a week later would nip up to number 13, its highest position. The follow-up, Visage, would spend two weeks at number 21, and they'd have two more hits, so we skirted the top 10 with the damn don't cry night train but diminishing return set in it became impossible to get the band members together as they were already committed to ultravox suzy and the banshees and magazine and they split up

in 1985 strange resurrected the visage brand in 2002 in order to get in on the Here and Now Heritage Festival bonanza and put out the LP Hearts and Knives in 2013, but he died of a heart attack in Egypt in 2015. What about Ron Mayle? No! Oh, yeah. Yeah. Whole argument in pieces.

LAUGHTER Oh, yeah. Yeah. The whole argument in pieces. Yeah. Mitch, Joe, Russ Egan, Steve Strange and the crew make up Visage, Mind of a Toy. Total Pops is about charts and charts exactly what we're going to take a look at now, starting with the top 30. At 30, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, Dave Stewart and Colin Blumstone. At 29, Rock This Town from the Stray Cats. At 28, Can You Feel It, The Jacksons.

At 27, It's Madness, A Return to the Lost Palms at 7. At 26, It's a Love Thing, The Whispers. At 25, Intuition from Lynx. At 24, Mind of a Toy, Visage. At 23, Hot Love from Kelly Marie. At 22, I Surrender, it's Rainbow. And at 21, it's Einstein and Gogo from Landscape.

And at number 20, it's Planet Earth from Duran Duran. He came outside to watch the night fall with the rain. Pow! Now with his jacket off and flung casually over his shoulder, stands next to the video screen with The Charts in the Top of the Pops font emblazoned upon it. He reminds us that Top of the Pops is all about the charts and runs them down from 30 to 21. As he alights on the number 21 single, Einstein A Go Go,

the fist punches the air once more in anticipation, but Top of the Pops doesn't run videos back to back just yet. So we're hit with a photo of the next band who all look as if they're saying, tonight, Matthew, we're going to be Japan. It's Duran Diran with planet earth why wasn't it fucking einstein a go-go man we've done jiran jiran loads on chart music and this is where it all began with their debut single it's the lead-off cut from their first lp jiran jiran which will be coming out

in june and it took three weeks to enter the chart at number 67 late last month. But while it took another three weeks to meander up to number 47, it was seized upon and played out by none other than Radio 1's man at C&A, Peter Powell, leading to their debut performance on the show, helping it to soar 21 places to number 26. This week, it's moved up six places to number 20, so here's another repeat from Top of the Pops, a fortnight ago. And sadly, chaps,

one thing Hurl has already done in his reformation is sort out the band and artist pictures, which has taken out a lot of the fun of it for us, isn't it? Yeah, boom. Yeah. Yeah, although I like how they show that publicity picture of Duran Duran for a few seconds at the start of this. Yes.

And just for a moment, you think they might just leave that on the screen and play the record over it, which would have been brilliant. It's a pretty bad photo of Duran Duran, isn't it? I mean, it's possibly the one image that cemented the incorrect aspersion that Simon Le Bon was a bit of a fat bloater. Because he's got his bandolero over a billowy white shirt, making it look like he's got a beer gut.

I mean, he effectively looks like Sancho Panza about to play for the Bronze Bullhead. I mean, when we flick over to see the band in action, you know, he's got some very tight pvc trousers on so he's slim enough i mean looked at purely visually they're not the way they're going to end up looking yeah yeah on this showing they really need to go back to the bedrooms and put more work in on their girls world heads because on this showing in 1981 they're pretty much the new street station dolls aren't they chubs no they look sort of more i don't know proto goth and new romantic but i mean really they are exactly as they are in the video for this song right albeit with lebon not wearing the pirate pantaloons that he wears in that video and roads has got a different hair color in the video as

well he's blonde in the top of the pop studio rather than ginger and of course we don't have any of those odd captions that the video has about the surface area and the population of the planet and the oldest song in the world being the shadoof chant and all of that nonsense that happens in the video you know as a package this appearance is astonishingly accomplished for a bandit. I mean, they'd only hired Le Bon about a year ago, and they're already sort of talking in interviews, but looking, yeah, starish. Although I think that this little Lord Fauntleroy look that they had at this time is not the best. It's a bit lacking because it infantilises them and that wasn't their thing right they're not

meant to look like boy princes their appeal was that they were young adults and they were sort of a little bit sexy and druggie you know living it up that was their real life appeal but it was also baked into the image and the way they sold as they never did that osman's or rollers thing of condescending to their audience you know they were like the musical equivalent of calling the magazine just 17 so that 13 year olds would read it and the idea of them being adults and men of the world was kind of aspirational in itself so when you see him dressed like you know when did you last see your father? It's just sort of wrong. It doesn't sit right, especially not on Simon Le Bon,

who has that big flat dog face, which could never look delicate or sensitive. They do suffer in comparison to Steve Strange on this episode of Top of the Pops, particularly as he is dressed as a little old funkal Roy. But it's very clear that Top of the Pops likes the cut of this band's jib. This is a repeat of a couple of weeks ago,

but it appears that that week's audience are a bit older and savvier than the gormless youths in visors that we get this week, because you can see them on the side fucking loving this tune, bouncing up and down like bastards. Well, you know,

pop radio, pop television is never going to have a problem with Duran. They're not a challenge, really, Duran. They're funny in interviews at this time because they're always slagging off Spandau and they're always slagging off the London scene, calling it kind of tense, where in Brum it's more of a release, they say, at the Rum Runner than it is at the Blitz. They're very sort of unproblematically about entertainment. I'm not saying they've not got big ideas but it's very

telling that in interviews at the time that they talk about how they think melodies have gone missing in the last three years of british pop and how they want to bring that back a little bit so they're much less of a kind of foreboding proposition than visage for instance and this is why they're going to be bigger than spandau they're going to be bigger than anyone because they're literally it's a ghastly phrase but they are as they used to call themselves techno rock they're a little bit proggy about their music they love gabriel era genesis they say that's a big influence and it's that progginess that accounts for some of the slaggings that the debut album gets so consequently you know that nobody's going to have a problem with duran so when

neuromanticism blows itself out, they're still going to be around because they're working always towards, how can I put it, new songs, new hits rather than just new sounds. And as listeners and music makers, they're interested in music at its point of consumption. They have no sort of lofty demands of pop. When you think about the other bands in the Midlands at this point, seen as as you know

this is team atv land dexys specials um serious bands it's not just that duran don't sound like those bands they unproblematically want to be massive and they have no problem with being stars and no desire really to use stardom as a platform for something else or being a mouthpiece for something else biggest band from brumson sabbath yeah really i mean the midlands is a shithole in 1981 oh yeah you know it really is dying industry just everywhere and and you know absolute crumbling infrastructure and everything else and yet still largely tory yeah that's the depressive thing about the midlands we don't like to talk about like the north responded to its emasculation

by like never voting for the Conservatives ever again until Brexit. The Midlands has always been Tory and right of Tory like where I come from where I was born West Bromwich, Smethwick and Tipton and stuff. Fucking

BNP, NF, Heartland you know. It's a really depressing thing about the Midlands. I think it might be the inferiority complex of the region, weirdly enough, that it never wants to stand up to the government and say, hang on, you're fucking taking the piss here. Yeah, yeah.

There's something quite servile about Midlands. The West Midlands, it's fucking Enoch land, isn't it? I mean, when you think about what happens in Smethwick and stuff. I mean, Durant, biggest band from Bromson sabbath but unlike sabbath of course they're studiously determined in a way only to reflect their surroundings in their sense of aspirational escape durant music does not sound like it's from birmingham really it sounds like it's made for a nightclub and it wants to stay in that nightclub really and and in interviews they talk about pleasure and entertainment and product as being what they want to create that that's actually

a really good quote from i think it's paul morley interview in 1981 where they talk about how we have a responsibility i think it's nick rhodes who says it he says we have a responsibility not to tell them things when he's talking about the audience he's saying he wants to keep them ignorant in a sense when it comes to politics, because they're young, their audience, you know. But that escapism that I think is inherent to Duran and why they appeal so big is it eventually does start smelling quite Thatcherite

by the time they say Rio. But at this point, it's still just, it's kind of just a little purer, I guess. So I don't have any problems with this. Yeah, they were never like flying the flag for birmingham that's for sure they were not yim yam yim yam but in a way that's the most birmingham thing about them completely but yeah top of the pops have really pushed out the boat from you know not only do we get that stop motion effect that the punk bands used to get but they also get a proper massive globe hanging down as opposed to the scotch

egg that legs and co had to deal with and they can do it they can fill out that stage i mean you think about other bands never mind sort of electro pop or anything else you think about other bands given that space and what they'd fill it with, there would be no one here as good as Duran. You know, I think of something like OMD or something, you know? Yeah. Something that was contemporaneous. Always just looked like, yeah, indie kids giving a pop stage and consequently the discomfort was part of the enjoyment.

But Duran already look like a stadium band, you know what I mean? It's mad how developed they are at this very early point. Yeah, there's a few gigs of theirs on youtube from around this time that were on telly and stuff and they're more like big country or something than visage you know what i mean they're like they're a real they've got dry ice going and they've all got their guitar techs hanging around and stuff it's uh yeah it's rock they're proper rock and it's hardly an original observation, but I quite like the fact

that they based almost their entire catalogue on late 70s Roxy music and almost nothing else. And Japan, right? It's like those are the only records they've ever heard. It struck me while I was listening to this. It was like, fucking hell,

this is Atomic by Blondie. Oh, it is a little bit. Yeah. Perhaps that and the bass playing. The bass playing needs noting. I didn't notice it at the time because I was a little kid. But the bass playing raises them above a lot of other things, I think, Duran. It's really, really good.

Yeah. I didn't mind that when this came on the radio, it was like, oh, it's this. It's alright. I didn't mind it, which was a massive achievement when you look at what they look like with the ruffs and everything well their ubiquity hadn't started chafing on your titans yet i mean that's what's happening soon but at this stage it hasn't i think what it is is that first of all they demonstrate a lot of sort of energy and personality of their own

and somehow they give you the impression that they're grinning at you, even as they've got their pouts fixed tight. You know what I mean? I think that's why people are sort of forgiving of Duran Duran and give them the benefit of the doubt. You know, they skate. They always skate and with distinction, like a five-headed Robin Cousins. Because if you're a pop star and what you do just works you can get away with

anything you know like in terms of theft i mean my god the greatest pop stars are the greatest thieves you know would mark boland ever have written those lyrics if he had never heard sid barrett singing send a cage through the post make your name name like a ghost. But who cares? You can't sit around drumming your fingers and waiting for musical abiogenesis, you know. And when your aesthetic is trashy enough, you don't even have to wait for an original thought. You just need a spark. And for me, that's what's missing from Visage.

But it's there in Duran Duran. They've got a spark, if nothing else. Anything else to say about this? No, but the episode, for me, it suddenly got good. So, the following week, Planet Earth jumped eight places to number 12, its highest position. As discussed in Chart Music number 39, EMI then forced them into putting out Careless Memories as the follow-up,

which only got to number 37 for two weeks in May. But the ship was righted when they went with the band's original choice and put out Girls on Film, which got to number five in August. Stupid EMI. Hmm. 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. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. And their debut album will be due out soon. Right, let's go back to the charts. At 20 is Planet Earth from Duran Duran. At 19, Somebody Help Me Out from Beggar & Co. At 18, Stevie Wonder and Lately.

At 17, it's Jones vs. Jones, Cool on the Gang. At 16, Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads. At 15, Please Don't Touch, Mona Head and Girl School. At 14, it's Phil Collins, I Missed Again. At 13, it's Kiki D and Star. At 12, Something Bad You Baby I Like, Status Quo. And at 11, it's Southern Freeze and Freeze. But now we go to number 8, and here's Toya. It's a mystery. We cut back to

Powell with some youths but with no jacket as he's draped it over the shoulders of his pick of the litter the lucky lady he then shoves us into the second part of the chart rundown from 20 to 11 before introducing it's a mystery by toya we covered toya wilcox and her band of Kens in chart music number 36. And this, her sixth single release, is the follow-up to Danced, her live single which got to number seven in the independent charts in July of 1980. It's the main cut from the EP Four from Toya, which immediately rose to the top of the indie chart when it came out in the first week of February, but it also marked her first dent on the proper chart

when it entered at number 59 on Valentine's Day. The following week, it jumped 17 places to number 42, which gave Michael Hill all the incentive he needed to get her into the top of the pop studio, and the following week, it soared 16 places to number 26. A week later it jumped 10 places to number 16 and a repeat of the first performance was trotted out again. And this week it's nudged up three places from number 11 to number 8.

And here she is in the studio. So chaps, off you go. Well go well you know different strokes of different folks it takes all kinds of people to make what life's about um you know even if you don't like toy i think you can agree that um you know music's the real winner here yeah i mean toy may not be to everyone's taste but these things are subjective and she obviously worked very hard on her music and this may not be the kind of thing that I'm into but I imagine if you are into this kind of thing it's probably a very good example of this kind of thing

so who am I to criticise it? Anything else to say? No. So the following week four from Toyah jumped four places to number four, its highest position. The follow-up, I Wanna Be Free, would get to number eight in June and she'd close out 1981 with Thunder In The Mountains, getting to number four in October.

To you, it's a mystery. Oh, it's a mystery. No, no, no, no. We're not done we're not done come on let's do this properly dad oh can i also say i think most of the people who want to knock toy are probably just jealous of her success it's either that or they can't handle a strong woman who doesn't pander to men you know any nina simone, Jodie Mitchell or Betty Davis fans who knocked her, I think they're just revealing themselves as sad little men. It's the only possible explanation.

Now then, Pop Craze youngsters, you're going to be shocked and appalled by what I'm about to impart to you, but impart it I must. You'll recall a while back that Taylor and Neil here delivered a comprehensive coat down of I want to be free. And when this episode was mooted, I wanted to do 1981, but I let them have their little say and told them to pick the episode out. They really wanted to do The Who and You Bet, You Bet, but it turned out that both of their appearances on top of the pops coincided with this fucking single here and when that was made

apparent my so-called colleagues claimed that they were all toyed out and went on a work to rule and just wanted to say a little bit and move on well you know i can't have that and the pot crazed youngsters can't have that either so like all creative industry entrepreneurs faced with the difficult challenges of the age i called upon the services of artificial intelligence went on chat gpt and typed in taylor park's review of toya and Neil Kulkarni's review of Toya. Yeah, you weren't expecting that, was you, lad? Yeah. So, Neil Kulkarni delivers an enthusiastic review of Toya

in his article, commending her for her energy and entertaining performance. He praises her ability to connect with the audience and create a memorable experience. Kulkarni notes that her setlist includes plenty of hits, but also showcases her lesser-known tracks, which he found to be a pleasant surprise. Overall, he describes the concert as a fun and nostalgic experience that left him wanting more. Wow,canny. And I didn't say she stank of piss or anything.

This is amazing. Meanwhile, Taylor Parks of The Quietest reviews Toya's 2020 album Posh Pop, describing it as an impressive and adventurous release that defies genres and expectations. Parks notes Toya's ability to surprise her audience with her range and versatility as a vocalist and praises the album's eclectic production

and bold musical choices, including nods to punk, disco and classic rock. Overall, Parks regards posh pop as a testament to Toy's enduring creativity and willingness to take risk with her music. Well, we're dead

and gone. That's what's going to be left. Yeah. No use of the word iconic, though. What a letdown. Well, we've got standards, man. Yeah. But that wasn't enough for me all the pop craze youngsters so i went back in and typed taylor parks and neil kulkarni review it's a mystery by toyah all right yeah here we go taylor parks reviewed toyah's album it's a mystery no such thing there never was an album called it's a Mystery, but anyway, you know, let's

carry on. Describing it as a synth-heavy pop art terrain he praised Toy's ability to mix various musical genres here you're back on that one again Taylor and acknowledged the diversity of tracks, such as the title

track and Thunder in the Mountains. Parks remarked on the album's sci-fi soundscapes and commended toy as charismatic and confident singing throughout overall he deemed it's a mystery as an eccentric glorious bizarre wow pop gem yeah however however there is a difference of opinion here because neil kulkarni's take on toyah's album it's a mystery is less than favorable he deems it a synthetic black hole with cold and vapid vocals that lack emotional depth. Kulkarni also criticised the album's production, calling it suffocatingly slick and lacking in musicality. Overall, he sees the album as reflection

of the shallow, commercialised nature of the music industry in the 1980s. Yeah, man. Oh, AI Neil Kulkarni there trying to make a name for himself. Yeah, see, nobody tell AI about theulkarni there trying to make a name for himself. Yeah. See, nobody tell AI about the word wank snap or I'm fucked. As Dusty Rhodes said, a computer just took your place, daddy. I can't believe neither of us called her a songstress.

That's the only thing that I can remember it saying. The Birmingham Sparrow. It's a bit misogynist, your review there, I thought, Neil. Yeah, well, you know, the older you get. Before we say anything else, I don't know why we're bothering, because I think that said it all. Yeah, Al, do you even need us here? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, man.

As soon as AI can develop a yim-yam accent, mate, I'm fucking laughing. After this episode, I'm going to type out David Stubbs' reviews, if I shall fall from grace with God, my folks. Oh, what amazing times we live in. Let me just get this out and we'll move on. My mate was a stage manager of an open-air production of a Midsummer Night's Dream in the 90s, and he says that Toya Wilcox was the nicest actor he's ever come across.

There was nothing she wouldn't do for anyone, and he won't have a word said against her. So, you know, that's out there now. But having said that, you can be the nicest person in the world, but if you turn up on Top of the Pops and you take up three minutes of Top of the Pops in order to get on my tits, I'm sorry, but that gets held against you for the rest of your life,

and I don't make the rules. So here we go. Well, you know, I just wanted to note the presence of Nigel Glockler on drums here, future Saxon drummer. Really? Oh, yeah, he joins Saxon later this year. Is he the one with the headband on? Aye, aye, that's him.

But even he can't save this. It's fucking horrible. Can I just say, the terrible moment at the start of this, where they do the chart rundown, Can I just say, the terrible moment at the start of this, where they do the chart rundown, and just for a second, you think we might be about to go into southern freeze by three.

It's like someone holding out a big juicy pineapple in front of you, and then suddenly snatching it away and flicking shit up your nose off a fork. I mean, Toy is pretty much one of the first acts to break out of the independent chart ghetto and make it to the big boy charts, along with Joy Division, UB Forte and Depeche Mode. And yes,

pop craze youngsters, Toya is the person who uncorked the best pop single in years that should make you feel good about life for about three and a half minutes, according to Clive James in next Sunday's Observer. Fucking Australians. So, yeah, this song is as good as watching Japanese lads getting tortured in a game show.

That's mental. Although, you know, it was kind of mental, wasn't it? Not to rake over our past glories, but, you know, when we last discussed Toya and then I tweeted something, I think Chart Music tweeted my thing about Giles Brandreth. He got back to us, didn't he? Yes.

Yes. What did you say? If Giles Brandreth was asked to write a punk song, yeah, it'd be, which song was it again? I Wanna Be Free. That's right. And he said, yeah, a classic of its kind.

I think he tweeted back. Yeah. Interaction from the brand. The jumper man himself. Indeed. Toy is getting a lot of praise in the media at the minute, but mainly the London media. Because Jim Cusack, who does a column called Rock in the Belfast Observer, offers a different take in his article a few months from now,

entitled The Face of Rock or Just a Passing Fad. Just to prove that there is no accounting for taste, tickets for Wednesday's Toya concert in the Ulster Hall seem to be selling like hotcakes. A charted It's a Mystery is no doubt an important contributive factor, but apart from this song and a couple of other forgettable numbers, Toya has little to recommend her as an important rock performer. She is in fact a bit like Hazel O'Connor, in that she is a figure the London media have seized upon

as the modern face of rock music. But Toya is more a media event than a rock artist. I thought everyone would have had enough of her by now because of all the coverage she was receiving a couple of months ago. She actually had a one-hour TV documentary and received endless praise for her seemingly ordinary acting abilities. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the media image fares as a live artist.

The concert is being screened as part of a series on Northern Ireland BBC, and this column will be watching carefully to ensure that all that appears on stage appears on screen. But then, a few days later, Mr Cusack was forced to change his tune in the following review. Toya entered stage right at the King's Hall last night,

about 20 foot, up some scaffolding. She was apparently trying to imitate a monkey, and grabbed hold of the bars and shook them and displayed other mannerisms associated with caged anthropoids. Meanwhile, there was a voice coming out of the PA and a synthesizer somewhere making a growling noise that grew in volume. The voice was going, E-U-E. The rather tame looking section of the audience Where I was standing was slightly taken aback

Well bred teenage girls Most of them wearing leg warmers Looked around quizzically at their boyfriends Unsure if this was not all a bit weird For a Wednesday night But within a minute or two Toyah began a more normal stage show Shaking a wonderful head of orange hair And within a minute or two, Toyah began a more normal stage show, shaking a wonderful head of orange hair.

And within a number or two, the show was fairly cracking along. Toyah has, in cabaret talk, a real belter of a voice. And the band, who seemed a bit ordinary at the start, were soon showing some rare talent. It really became a good rock show. The only things that really job with a sound and stage set the echo near the back of the hall was unique in my experience and the stage set looked like a really bad night on blake seven yeah try and copy that ai you cunt

but the song chaps i mean really it just sums up tori in one go doesn't it something that's been presented as punk or post-punk but he's actually really fucking proggy yeah but you know the thing is the trouble is she's that worst thing she's a contrarian pop star you know the the one that if they're annoying you they see that as more grist to the mill as proof that she's on the right track. And this song, she moans about this song that, you know, she didn't like it at first because she was, she's got the fucking gall to say, you know, she was losing her punk roots.

You know, it's too poppy and all of this stuff. But I think it's probably her most annoying one um the shot in the dark line there's lots of annoying moments in this and you know that it's weird with toya because she's one of those where an awful lot of the attention she was getting was quite positive but there's just it needs pointing out there's there's there out, there was so many of us sat at home just fucking hating it. Come on, Taylor. Oh, well, all I can give you is this article from the Sunday Mirror in June 1981 from the Star Time section. Again, the Sunday Mirror gets the big exclusive.

It says, what disgusts Toya in Top Pop? I don't know what that means. Her hair and clothes have stamped Toya unmistakably as a fashion leader. Quote, people see me and think I'm thick. Some silly tart who dyes her hair different colours, she said. But it takes guts because I can't walk down the street without being laughed at or thought cheap i want other kids to have the courage to do what they want to do so what if she dyes her hair she's still got a brain up there her hair is currently sunshine gold a colour fans can copy using toyah's crazy color hair coloring

at three pounds a bottle mom it burns i use the stuff myself toyah said her style may be outrageous but her opinions are not morally i'm very strict she said the promiscuous side of the music business disgusts me i have seen a lot of women get emotionally mixed up because of sleeping around they cheapen themselves so yeah down with people having the courage to do what they want to do yes she also believes in capital punishment and castration for rapists. I have no compassion for anyone like that. She says, well, you know, people like Peter Sutcliffe, who should be put to sleep by an injection.

I'm too bitter to write songs about it at all. Well, yeah, okay. Doesn't Toya go on in interviews that, you know, whenever she's backstage and there's some girl chatting up the sexy, virile members of her backing band, she slaps them about? Yes. She boasted of this.

Yeah, that's not on, is it? I mean, fucking hell. I mean, if we were doing a live show right and sarah was standing at the bar and some bloke was just talking to her and saying hello and everything and i just went up to him and fucking lamped him that that made me a right cunt wouldn't it and made me a gentleman now no yeah i forgot yeah from the daily mirror thursday fe, February the 26th, 1981. After Punk, meet the girl on the crest of a new wave. Toya is a bit of a funny name, so her close friends call her Toilet. That's the opening line. I'm not making this up.

And the in-crowd trendies have nicknamed her Toyota. Her rather posh mum, no kidding, from the better side of Birmingham, And the in-crowd trendies have nicknamed her Toyota. Ooh. Her rather posh mum, no kidding, from the better side of Birmingham, probably wishes she'd... Oh, there's a better side of Birmingham, is there? Have you not been to the worse side of Birmingham? Fucking hell. It's called Coventry, isn't it, Neil? Oi, fuck off.

Cheeky cunt. It probably wishes she'd christened her Beryl and saved herself a lot of sleepless nights. It would have been tough for a girl called beryl to dye her hair tangerine and yellow leave home with just a carrier bag immediately land starring roles in big films and host her own chat show all before her 22nd birthday but i don't know why but toyahilet Toyota Wilcox did just that and more. And then there's a bit where they ask for her opinions of the other women who seem to be making it in the 80s. Because if you're a woman and you're successful, it's only natural you would want to bitch about all the other women who are successful.

My publicist says I shouldn't put other artists down but really i think honesty is the best policy so hazel o'connor i like her as a person but frankly i'm insulted being compared to her she's not very original debbie harry she's beautiful and i don't see why she shouldn't exploit that she's got some good people working for her jesus paulie yates i think she regrets doing all that nude stuff i did a photograph once with a nipple hanging out painted black for a laugh i couldn't believe it when people were shocked and those are all the women that there's obviously no other successful women in the eight no just uh hazel o'connor debbie harry and paulie eight well i mean far be it for me to tell toy how to be a

good feminist but she's got a sort of bit of that in a lot of interviews i read one where she you know she was talking about kind of what made her want to go to drama school and stuff and she says you know seeing scores of teenage girls pushing prams around birmingham on a saturday morning affected me i'd rather have died than gone through that i mean you know what i mean am i am i the only one to detect something wrong about saying that it just seems she's slightly scorned. I mean, in a class sense, she's very scorned. This article finishes,

she lives in a huge flat in Hendon, North London, where she moved to recently from a weird warehouse home in Battersea. Her remaining ambition is to be a goddess, to be worshipped. Quote, that's what it takes to have a guaranteed commercial audience for the rest of my life. Or what about just being dead good at what you do, Toya? Well, come on, come on. You can't ask for the world.

But yeah, 1981 is the year of Toya, and she would end it like all good 80s pop stars. And if you had little sisters and they'd been nice all year, there's a reasonable chance that they'd be getting a little Toya in their stocking this Christmas. Article in the Birmingham Evening Mail in November. Birmingham's trend-setting Toya Wilcox has gone into the beauty business. Already a fashion leader in her own right, the star of stage, screen and disc has dreamed up a makeup range that's good quality and low price,

theatrical and great fun. Under the banner Soul Reflectors, there's a kit of four different coloured eye shaders and another kit of two face shaders, while there's also a duo pack of two bottles of nail paint called Man Scratchers. Still available

now on eBay. Recommended retail price £11.99. Soul reflectors. Why do I see nothing? The last time we covered Toya Chaps, I did ask the question, who the fuck is buying this?

And who the fuck are her audience? And then afterwards, it just hit me. Adrian Mole, who charts her rise and fall perfectly. On November the 19th of this year, he compiles a list of suitable names for his new baby sister Which include Diana, Pandora and Toya Then there's this diary entry from December the 12th My mother has gone out with Mrs Singh, Mrs O'Leary

And her women's group to have a picnic on Greenham Common She has taken Rose so the house is dead peaceful. I played my Toya records. At full volume. And had a bath. With the door open. But then. On Tuesday April the 12th 1982.

After his run away from home. And come back in distress. He writes. Nigel has just left. After trying to arouse me by playing my favorite toyah tapes at a discrete volume i signal that i would prefer both his and toyah's absence how the mighty fall indeed you know where toyah's makeup was available gone it was marks and sparks really yes it was marks and spencer which is a bit upmarket for her fan base You know where Toya's make-up was available? Go on. It was Marks and Sparks. Really?

Yes, it was Marks and Spencer, which is a bit upmarket for her punk fan base. I'd say. I thought you should sell it on the street from a cart fashioned out of the carved-out anus of a rotting cow. So, the following week, 4 From Toya jumped four places to number four, its highest position. The follow-up, I Wanna Be Free, would get to number eight in June,

and she'd close out 1981 with Thunder In The Mountains getting to number four in October, and the EP Four More From Toya spending two weeks at number 14, in December, but her first single of 1982, Brave New World, only got to number 21, in June of 1982, and Diminishing Returns, set in rapidly, coincidentally around the time,

that she co-starred, in the BBC Two sketch show, Dear Heart, with B.A. Robertson, what a combination. Nice. Fucking amazing. What a shame Paul Nicholas wasn't in it as well, man.

That's Toya. And four from Toya, that's a track called It's A Mystery. All right, we take a look at the top ten best-selling singles this week. It's a not-so-best... Hey! Joe Dolce and I'll shut up your face. Up seven and nine is The Who and You Better, You Bet. Right, babe.

Three and eight you saw on the show. It's 4 from Toya, It's A Mystery, Toya. Good, babe. Three and eight you saw on the show. It's four from Toya. It's a mystery. Toya. Good for her. Down three, alas. The number seven, Ultrabox, and the Magnificent. Magnificent.

I hate being right all the time. Yay. Yes. Seven and six go Teardrop Explodes. And their reward... No change of mind. Why is this on? It's coast to coast.

Hey! And they take it to number one, down two and four. It's Kings of the Wild Frontier, Adam and the Axe. Down two of four, it's Kings of the Wild Frontier, Adam and the Axe. For her first single, she's up three of three. Yes. It's in America, it's Kim Wilde. You can just hear the sound of Shakey's piss trickling down the outside wall. And up five of two, good old rock and roll, Shaking Stevens, This Old House.

Careful with that act, Shaker. And just before we get to that big number one, let me tell you, the Radio 1 en masse is going up to Scotland starting on Sunday with a football match. Hope very much to see you there. Hope you've enjoyed Top of the Pops. Great audience tonight. And to celebrate the fact that Roxy Music have their first ever number one, it's been there for two weeks, and it's a great song. Until next week, good night. Here's Jealous Guy. Bye-bye, everyone.

I was dreaming of the past How? Now surrounded by the girls in the previous link, as well as a couple of unruly youths including one who pretends to chew gum behind Powell's shoulder drags us through the top ten. Almost all of them have videos apart from poor old Coast to Coast who have to make do with a publicity shot

and the cover of Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants. Yeah, that top ten, 10 chaps it gives us further proof that the 70s are still hanging about because i noticed not only one but two songs with a liberal deployment of the word hey you can't get rid of hey you just can't yeah i still contend that every song in the world would be massively improved if there was a hey or seven in them yeah as long as you put it in the right place unlike joe dolce's audience who despite the fact that he's told them exactly when they should say hey proceed to do it at the end of every line which is not what he said they got it completely wrong well he should have known what he was letting himself in for there

yeah and it's doubly bad because it's not even a real audience it's joe dolce's band in the studio pretending to be an audience and then double tracked so there's just no excuse and i'll cut paul's italian accent for that he was well wario on mario kart 64 wasn't it it's a me peter paul i'm gonna win he's a spicy meatball as we cut back to powell who we now discover is sitting with the audience with his best girl still wearing his jacket and the unruly youth still building their part up by pushing about gurning and in one case pointing a finger at powell's head he introduces this week's number one, Jealous Guy by Roxy Music. Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1955, Mark David Chapman was the son of a staff sergeant in the US Air Force

and a nurse who was relocated to Decatur, Georgia in his teens, where he got Jesused up. After working in a YMCA summer camp as a counsellor, where he read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and thought it was dead good, he then moved to Chicago and effectively became the American Sid Little, playing guitar and singing in clubs while his mate did impressions. After working in Arkansas counselling Vietnamese refugees and a spell working for World Vision in Lebanon he enrolled into a Presbyterian college in Georgia but dropped out after one semester

and eventually wound up in Hawaii where he tried to commit suicide in his car but the end of the hosepipe attached to the exhaust melted He ended up working at the hospital where he was treated for clinical depression as a janitor, went on a trip around the world in 1978, returned to Hawaii and got married there in 1979 and took up a new hobby of fantasizing about killing someone famous. He compiled a hit list which is alleged to have included Jacqueline Anassis, Paul McCartney, Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Carson, George C. Scott, Ronald Reagan and David Boer,

but one stood out among the rest, John Lennon, who Chapman read about in an article in Esquire in October of 1980 that documented his four mansions, that documented his four mansions, his yacht, his private beach in Florida and his collection of 250 dead expensive cows and deduced that he was a massive sellout man. He flew to New York in October of 1980 with the intent of doing him in but nipped over to Atlanta to pon some ammo off his mate and when he went back, he went to see the Robert Redford film Ordinary People at the pictures and changed his mind and went back to Hawaii but on the 6th of December he flew back trying to pick between killing Lennon or jumping off the Statue of Liberty

finally on the 8th of December he stopped pissing about and did it, giving Lennon's solo career a massive boost, British people a golden opportunity to coat down Americans for all being mad bastards, and absolutely ruining the British charts for months. Just like Starting Over, which dropped 11 places to number 21 the day after the murder, soared to number one the following week before immediately giving way to There's No One Quite As Racist Like Grandma by the St Winifred School Choir. But Apple responded by rushing out Happy Christmas, War Is Over, which got to number three on the Christmas chart of 1980, and Imagine, which entered the chart at number nine on the same week

and began a four-week stand at number one. In the last week of January, when we were already learning out to fuck, Geffen put out the true follow-up to Just Like Starting Over, Woman, which crashed into the chart at number three and a fortnight later usurped Imagine and spent two weeks at number one. Just when we thought it was all over, when

Woman Was Toppled by Shut Up Your Face by Joe Dolce Music Theatre, another Lennon song entered the charts at number 21, a cover of a track from his 1971 LP Imagine by Roxy Music, who were Roxy fucking Music,

who were touring West Germany at the time, and immediately added it to their set as a tribute and then put it out as the follow-up to the same old scene, which got to number 12 in November of 1980. A week later, after a screening of the video on Top of the Pops, it soared 15 places to number six. And last week, it rose from number three to the very top of most of the pop of most,

slapping away everyone's favourite Italio Ostril singer-songwriter. This is its second week at number one, and here's the video again. It's mad, isn't it? Past six number one singles. Yes, Neil, let's imagine the number ones of early 1981 with no dead John Lennon. It's easy if you try.

So, Stop the Cavalry for one week, Ant Music for two weeks, In the Air Tonight for two weeks, Vienna for one week, Shut Up Your Face for three weeks, In The Air Tonight for two weeks, Vienna for one week, Shut Up At Your Face for three weeks, as it was, and Kings Of The Wild Frontier for one week. That is two number ones ripped

out of the hands of Adam In The Ants because some fucking tubby menclist was allowed to have a go. Thanks, America. It's mad. Lennon, novelty. Lennon, Lennon, novelty, Lennon. It's the past six number one singles and and it's a slight shame, really. This is Roxy's first number one, isn't it? I know.

Which is a shame. What else is a shame, Neil? This is our first dig into Roxy music, and it's not mad arty genius Roxair or Monte Carlo disco Roxair, both of which would have been an absolute joy to tuck into, but Lickin' Pickridge Roxair with their single, I Remember Johnny Lennon. Oh, I love to hear him sing. I mean, by this time, we were thoroughly Lennoned out, but the music industry was still churning it out. You know, Woman's Still Malingering at number 32.

Walking on Thin Ice by Yoko Ono's drop five places to number 40 djm have rushed out elton john's live cover of i saw her standing there when lennon made a guest appearance at an encore in 1975 and we're a month away from watching the wheels coming out and i don't know about you but as a pop craze youngster of the time i felt that we were being told that all this classic material was better than all the shit i listened to by bent cunts who aren't fucking real and and this puts a tin lid on everything doesn't it yeah yeah i don't trust this bloke his eyes are too close together no first of all this is the worst roxy music single and possibly the worst Roxy Music track,

just because it is what it is, a dropping of character, behind which there's very little character, because it's mostly a sincere tribute, and sincerity is not what Brian Ferry did well. No. And he's trying to have his cake and eat it here, right? He's honouring the dead legend, and at the same time he's still trying to be glassy and gassy and 100 miles away and i'm not sure you can do those things simultaneously like if it was me

just been shot dead i don't think i'd appreciate it you know either pay tribute like you mean it or do your own thing either of those is fine you know the thing is sonically right this version it's kind of immaculate it doesn't mean i like any of it but it's kind of immaculate it almost seems to create the need for the invention of cds as you hear it um it sounds very cd-ish but the thing is you know i don't know what your thoughts are about the original of this um the john lennon version i kind of really like the original. It's one of my favourite songs, in fact. You know, it's one of those songs that percolated over

from the kind of Beatles time, because I think he started writing it, White Album era, didn't he, really? Yeah, he wrote the music on the White Album, and then he wrote the words for 1971. It has that kind of melodic strength to it, and the string arrangements, which I'm guessing are by Spectre on the original,

they're pretty amazing. I mean, the thing that always made me uncomfortable a little bit about the original was that lyrically it came across as the, you know, it's the talk after she's been given a black eye a little bit. And the way that he sees the song out, because he goes, watch out, doesn't he?

In the original, he goes, watch out. He goes, look out, baby, he yeah the original is watch out he goes look out baby indicating that the relationship is kind of ongoing you don't really get that in this version this feels like this person has already left yeah it's sung towards someone who's never coming back um and and the video accentuates that loneliness i think because it it's very close up on brian and and in an almost creepy way but it feels like he's singing this walking through a kind of now emptied out living space knowing that the person he's singing it to will never return no more carefree laughter silence ever after but that whistling at the

end you know which goes on for far too long it's almost absurd oh the cowboy shit it goes from sort of romantic to i don't know pathetic almost there's been lots of covers of this song and this is probably sort of one of the best but yeah i mean at this point it's galling that lennon's on sale again you know it's it it's we've had enough yeah well the greatest version of this song by a country mile is donny hathaway's live version yeah oh god yeah i'd completely forgotten about that but that is that is amazing yeah yeah i take a trad view on this song to me this is one of lennon's greatest ever songs right because unlike a lot of his emotional stuff it doesn't just put across raw feelings which you have to make sense of it's got a bit

of self-awareness but you can't quite tell the extent to which it not having complete self-awareness is an unreliable narrator device or if more likely it's a genuine lack in the 31 year old man writing the lyrics because on the one hand it's like a an ashamed apology song which considers being a dick to your wife or girlfriend as being on a continuum so the words can cover everything from snapping at them in the car on the way back from morrison's to leaving them in a ditch by the side of the road and the problem with this song is that he's reached the point of thinking this but but not yet the point of fixing it. So he's still at that stage of, oh, sorry, I'm just a jealous guy.

You know, like he's not a psychopath. He's not taking any pleasure from being toxic. In fact, it upsets him too. You know, so his mates might say, ah, that's just John. So it's a start, but it's not a finish you know my suspicion is that this is actually the point that lennon was at when he wrote it because that's where a lot of people are about 30 you know depending on the degree of manipulation and emotional abuse the other half of the partnership is capable of which in his case did appear to be quite a lot even if you don't go

so far as believing the Albert Goldman narrative and you just look at the established facts. Not the healthiest situation in paradise. But obviously, if there's one singer on earth who's absolutely not going to convey this emotional complexity in their interpretation of the song, it's Brian Ferry. You just get this chandelier glimmer other when you squint past the light that reptilian coldness which changes the atmosphere

of the whole thing completely in a way that's moderately interesting but it doesn't improve the song you know and i never bought his interpretations of other people's songs anyway song you know and i never bought his interpretations of other people's songs anyway because it was always like he'd suddenly missed the point of himself which is the frictionless sound of later period roxy music and the solo brian ferry records suits that unnerving disconnected semi-imaginary world in which that work exists spiritually and it feels like a conceit when you take someone else's song and you deaden it the same way as your own songs because what this record's doing is taking a raw disturbed complex song and treating it the way a 70s italian horror director would treat the female murder victims.

You know, they look immaculately beautiful lying dead and porcelain white with a perfect drip of crimson blood, you know, empty headed. And it's always creepy. And I can see that it's a clever and interesting idea to take an agonized song and glaze it when the man who sung it had just died. And, of course, creepy is a big part of Briarferry's charm. And the surface of this track is almost as gorgeous as any of the other near-identical sound worlds that he's strolled through. It just seems a bit forced and in a way beneath them it's kind of really gutting that this is how we come to roxy yes sorry about that

hopefully at some point we'll get to do virginia plain or get to do the strand i mean well you know we'll even get to do other records that roxy music are making in this period i could have had much more fun talking about more than this or something oh yeah with him in the white jeans and the gingham shirt although you know listening to this it did remind me of that um you know the brian ferry spaghetti story so that's always nice to be reminded of that go on uh well someone who was at art school with brian ferry remembers him draining a colander of spaghetti over the toilet and accidentally sending a sort of big load of the spaghetti into the toilet bowl and just totally unperturbed just pulling it out and adding it to all the rest of the spaghetti oh that was smoothie

rinaldo would never do that no no i mean i was only 12 at the time but i remember being really surprised when it turned out that roxy music were doing a cover of john lennon because even then i had them down as a band that were a million miles away from the era of the beacles and you know even now they're held up as one of those bands who cut through that post-beacle split of malaise and and kicked everything on so the idea that they were looking back in tribute and citing him as an influence, that did my head in. Yeah, and it's very explicit. I mean, it says a tribute on the sleeve to the Seven Inch, doesn't it?

And you do get... In case you thought they were taking the piss. Yeah, yeah. And I think they donated a lot of it to charity. I mean, obviously, Lennon's estate would have got a lot of it to charity i mean obviously lennon's estate would have got a lot of the proceeds and the sales of this as well but you know you do get mckay and you get manzarina in the video but um it's much more of a brian ferry move than a roxy move it that's what it feels like to me because obviously he's done albums before full of covers

so yeah this did this bit of and it's a shame that we're coming to it like this it is a great song though because I mean yeah having to do this meant I went back to the Lennon version which I hadn't done in ages and it is one of it's best I think yeah there's only about three good tracks on the album Imagine which is hugely overrated

but yeah Jealous Guy is a wonderful and chilling record but it's a right downer to an episode of top of the pops that hasn't fulfilled our expectations of a 1981 episode at all has it no and this probably i mean that's precisely what makes this episode quite interesting i mean nothing comes on after it this is the last song of the episode the credits roll over to the bitter end of the credits yeah because how can you follow up to this, man? The fucking coffin lid's been shut.

Yeah, you can't really fade this out and then go, anyway, where are we? Back next week. Here's Do The Hucklebutt by Coaster Cuts. Hey, and it's a foxhide better than all those years ago by George Harrison, which we're going to be treated to in a couple of months. Oh my god. Yes. I don't know

it's just it's weird seeing roxy doing this because it's such a dull narrative you know the biggest rock star dies and they do a tribute because this is the the first band to understand and use post-modernism you know because generally speaking when bands attempt to do that it's really a cop-out and they get it all wrong whereas roxy music it was probably only them and david bowie in the 70s who could actually have told you what post-modernism was and they actually understood what they were doing and that approach was what gave them meaning you know and it's surprising how few bands even art school educated bands really understood how to do that so here they are on top of the pops and it's like oh you know theatrical

tears the guy's dead you know it's just do you think mankind will ever stop going on about the beatles and is mankind as well you know i mean the obsession with elvis that's tailed right off but just when you think the tea bag of the mop fabs has been thoroughly squeezed some new artifact will pop up and it starts all over again i mean i always look at the podcast charts see how we're getting on and we're surrounded by beacles podcasts a lot of them really fucking good but it's like will we ever stop going on about them no pop needs centrality here and there it needs a canon so it's never going to go away no no and you know the the only thing that's going to happen is there's going to be more of it yeah um i mean

has everything been uncovered about the beatles yet i don't know i'm not sure the best book has ever been written about the beatles yet but i mean no pop needs he's still writing it yeah so our beatles fans will know exactly what i mean but no i don't think it will and it shouldn't do to be honest with you if we could do with a little less i personally think we could do a little less because you know there is that sit down eat your beatles thing yeah and it's funny how other bands i mean for instance the herb and and you know the stones don't get that centrality i don't think that the beatles are but you know they didn't in our lives when we were growing up they're part of the national songbook to a deeper extent than any

other band you know you did these songs at school you knew them by the time you were 10 you knew a lot of beatles songs whether you liked it or not and there were so many others you hadn't discovered yet yeah yeah they're the kind of mandatory that they're sort of yeah the mandatory if you're british it's gonna rise to a massive peak when mccartney dies yeah especially if he's the last one to go but or even if he isn't yeah it's i think we could do with a bit less beatles in the in as much as the beatles are now like the royal family of music i think we could do with a lot less of that but i think we do with a bit more beatles in the sense of them being smart intelligent cynical imaginative people trying to

create something that was really valuable and you know but without taking themselves seriously in that way while they did it yeah and i think that will only come with new people talking about them rather than the same old fuckers that it always is you know what i mean yeah there's gonna be bbc for stuff there's gonna be documentaries and you're gonna see the same old heads different perspective but would be beneficial i think i think it's just that what i perceive as the bad reasons why a lot of music is made now is the opposite of the reason why the beatles were making music and the way it's done is the opposite of the way the beatles were doing it bring that stuff back make that stuff the standard not the the bit about you know oh look you know paul mccartney's like the fucking Paddington Bear of music.

So I don't think that helps anybody, especially not Paddington Bear. I've got to admit that this Lennon deluge of early 1981, it put me off the Beatles for quite a few years, to the point where when I finally got to listen to Sgt Pepper, when I got it out out the library in 1984 i would play it really low on my dad's music center in absolute terror that someone i know would walk past and catch me listening to the beatles you know what i mean yeah their stock was that low yeah that's what i'm like with marillion getting back to the matter in hand though i should say i completely believe in brian ferry's work

all of it right even this which i don't like very much and i don't think works very well i believe in it even the stuff that you barely notice is there because that really is him right he really is that vague and offhand and decorative, you know. I interviewed him a few years ago. Yes, you did. I think probably a badly overwritten article, like a lot of my stuff from that time. Oh, Taylor. But I was going through a peculiar period.

But part of the reason for the overwriting is that he had genuinely nothing to say. It wasn't a front. He wasn't being rude. He wasn't tired. It wasn't that like daniel powder's confidant he'd had a bad day it just wasn't there i was prodding him into talking about art right trying to get to all these extraordinary ideas under the surface but he would only talk in the

blandest and most superficial terms so i was trying to get him to talk about silly stuff trying to crack it open a bit but he's got no sense of humor so he's very pleasant and obviously intelligent but he just came across as a man with middle brow good taste and nothing much else you know putting together these records out of complementary shades of nothing which as I said at the time sound like an expensive gas like nothing there at all which is i think is fine right but you're thinking can this really be an accurate reflection of brian ferry who started all this by scattering a million fantastic ideas in intriguing patterns out of his own weird, brill-creamed head, right? So something must be going on in there. But my speculation now is that sometimes

people with a lot of ideas in their head don't really like it. And as they get older, their ambition is to work towards a quieter mind and a state of grace where all these things are in balance and you can just float through your existence and maybe that complex network of signs and signifiers which

held up early roxy music was really just a ladder on which he could climb out of that into a universe where he didn't have to care anymore where you can just glide around doing that shrugging palms up dance you know eyes screwed up drifting in the clouds of this lush anesthetized music you know and everything's fine oh somebody's hijacking your plane yeah no worry it's like being in heaven to him maybe it would be for me but that would marry the trajectory of the Roxy albums when you think about it. I mean, there's a real dissonance with what you've just said about how he was in an interview.

And then you think of, obviously, like the first three albums, you think about Siren as well. I mean, these are dazzling records. And, you know, if you were interviewing him in 73 or something and he was genuinely just that blank, that would be really dissonant

because they're full of ideas, those records. Whereas you do get the feeling with late 70s rock, see, it's not so much that they're aiming for a purity or a sincerity, but they're aiming for perhaps a little bit more simplicity, perhaps a few less ideas. I think eventually he starts aiming for dignity, which is an odd thing to aim for but yeah no that's really interesting that he didn't actually say much but truth be told it's probably

better like that in it i mean if he'd have fully explicated all of his ideas what about fox hunting and brexit i think you should have just asked him some better questions taylor to be honest yeah no i agree i would have asked him what's the best out of whoops scott is um tasty tarts foster grants and allied for carpets for you yes which one do you look back on with most pride brian i was really tempted but the thing is when you look back what's the most amazing thing is he was there in that period where you could propel yourself from that difficult place to that easier place financially with art rather than art dealing or financial services or some other branch of the industry of human unhappiness. of human unhappiness because nowadays you can only really get rich by making less fortunate people unhappy or taking something from them or overcharging them for something and if you want to do something positive or artistic you're expected to do that in your spare time assuming you're allowed any and it slightly blows the mind to think that in our living memory you could be

skint do something purely constructive and creative and made with love and as a result of that end up in a mansion and i don't mean like you know one american singer or rapper has got 85 private jets and a golden toilet and everyone else in music only eats next week if they can sell five t-shirts after the gig in those days a lot of people made really good money just from bringing beautiful things into the world it's like another reality but this is always the thing when you're looking at the passage of time and it involves moving forwards and backwards at once, like the staircase shot from Vertigo.

I better get somebody else to drain his spaghetti over the bog now. Yeah. And what a shame Mino wasn't still in Roxy Music because maybe they'd have done Revolution No. 9. This episode would have gone on for another fucking 15 minutes. So jealous Guy would spend two weeks Revolution No. 9. This episode would have gone on for another fucking 15 minutes. So, Jealous Guy would spend

two weeks at No. 1 before being crushed under the white-shot heel of Comrade Shaker and would be their only No. 1 single in the UK. For shame! The follow-up, More Than This, would get to No. 6 in

October of 1982, which was the first cut from their final LP, more than this, would get to number six in October of 1982, which was the first cut from their final LP, Avalon, and they split up in 1983. Mark Chapman remains incarcerated at the Greenhaven Correctional Facility in New York after 12 denials of parole, and his next attempt will be in february of 2024 in none of his many statements are either parole hearings or media interviews as he apologized personally to adamant or simon price for the playground falsehood that he cried when john lennon died so as far as i'm concerned the bastard can fry and that's, pop-crazed youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Top of the Pops.

What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with the fourth episode of their new sitcom, Hidey High. Ted can't hear you, Hidey High. Hodey ho! Where Fred Quilley, bent jockey, ise, ho. Where Fred Quilly Bent Jockey is convinced that a betting syndicate is in the camp and about to

cut him up proper. Then it's the second ever episode of Sorry, where Timothy Lumsden gets some aggro from the massive boyfriend of a woman he's knocking about with. After the 9 o'clock news, it's the final part of the American TV version of Brave New World. Then the news headlines,clock news, it's the final part of the American TV version of Brave New World.

Then the news headlines, question time, the weather and close down at five past midnight. BBC Two has just finished 100 great paintings. Then it's 15 minutes of highlights from the racing at Cheltenham. The documentary In Search of Athelstan, where Michael Wood knocks about a ruined Abbey in Wiltshire and bangs on about Smoke King, and the eleventh part of the BBC's adaptation of The Little World of Don Camillo,

about the communist takeover of a small town in northern Italy. Man Alive looks at how our chances of being killed on the road hasn't changed in fifty years and what the government is doing about it, which is fuck all. Then it's news night and close down at midnight.

ITV has just finished the latest episode of Bogner, the drama series about an investigator who works for the Board of Trade. Yeah, I've never seen that programme. All I know is that it's about a man called Simon Bogner who works for the Department of Trade. Imagine taking that on into a meeting with TV executives. Yeah.

I'm pretty confident about this pitch. You get a better pitch at the baseball ground in February 1974. Also, according to IM IMDB this programme also stars Tim Meats as Lingard. Tim Meats. M-E-A-T-S Tim Meats.

Then it's the Brian Murphy and Roy Kinnair sitcom The Incredible Mr Tanner about a couple of down on their luck street performers. Yeah which I watched in preference to Heidi Eye for about three weeks and had no one to talk about it with at school. Yeah, serves you right. Yeah, it did.

TVI investigates the Atlanta child murders, then it's Hill Street Blues, the News at Ten, regional political show in your area, then Gus MacDonald looks at the pioneers of cinema and camera, then it's regional news update in your area then gus mcdonald looks at the pioneers of cinema and camera then it's regional news update in your area lou grant and close down at 25 to 1 so dear boys what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow uh box fairs box fairs they're gonna win they're gonna win uh how come the who are meant to be mods but they all look like your mate's dad who's got a cb radio and also when the men rip the ladies clothes off

what are we buying on saturday oh um not toy obviously i think i'll buy a duran duran um visage books fears andizz, and, um, oh, what else? Um, no, that's it. No,

sorry, this whole house combination is shaky as well. I'd consider buying Roxy Music, even though it's their worst single, because these things are relative,

and The Who, just to keep the faith. And what does this episode tell us about March of 1981? The usual thing that, um,

you know, the golden, golden ages is quite often piss. And the 80s is not all going to be a young, thrusting decade. The old fuckers are actually going to have quite a big say as to how the rest of this decade is going to sound. Oh, yes. There was more than one March 1981.

Although they did happen simultaneously. And that, pop craze youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music. Use your promotional flange, www.chart-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chart music,

reach out to us on Twitter at chart music T-O-T-P, money down the G-string, and updates on our live show, patreon.com slash chart music. Thank you, Taylor Parks. Unless, of course, you know different. God bless you, Neil Kulkarni. No worries.

My name's Al Needham, and if you want to see some more... Taylor, you said she'd have pants on. Chart music. On BBC Two now, Brass Tax reports on the mood of today's university students. Here on BBC One, we go live to the Lyceum Ballroom in London for Miss England 1978. Julie, Miss Norwich. Beverly, Miss Blackburn.

Jasmine, Miss Dunstable. Carol, Miss Liverpool North. Susan, Miss Hammersmith. Jackie, Miss Chester. Janet, Miss Scunthorpe. And I'm Jacqueline, Miss Streatham. This is Miss England. Everything about her is lovely. This is Miss England. Everything about her is lovely.

This is Miss England. Looking like a picture of pure sensation. Julie, Miss Birmingham. Patricia, Miss Leeds. Linda, Miss Tottenham. Debbie, Miss Stafford. Debbie, Miss Manchester. Rita, Miss Bournemouth.

Angie, Miss Nottingham. And I'm Jill, Miss Sheffield. Christina, Miss Newcastle. Alison, Miss Sunderland. Tracy, Miss Leicester. Debbie, Miss Brighton. Beverly, Miss Southampton. Denise, Miss Liverpool South. Jay, Miss Purley. And I'm Karen, Miss Portsmouth. Good evening and welcome.

However, lest your senses become drugged with all this talk of beauty, here to bring us back to stark reality is the beast, Ray Moore. People are saying we're in love, you know, Terry. Yes, it's just an ugly rumour, though. It's about the only ugly thing here tonight. Miss Blackburn, Beverly Isherwood. Her great passion in life is watching golf. A pretty attractive birdie she is herself, too.

Yes, Janet Norris, Miss Scunthorpe, a great musician, very fond of playing the piano. Terry was telling me she's got a lovely touch. Miss Scunthorpe, number seven. And Miss Tottenham, Linda Hart, number 11. Used to be a croupier in a nightclub. She's a pretty good bet by the look of it herself tonight. She's 24, by the way.

And Susan Cockett, 28 years old, and in fact has been involved in the National Child Development Survey since birth. Developed rather well, I'd have thought miss hammersmith our final two young misses contestant number 31 jay aston miss pearly and number 32 miss portsmouth karen barb Yes, Miss Purley, a rather interesting girl, actually. Jay Aston is her name. She's 17, very keen on weight training. In fact, she picked up a train to get here tonight. Likes jogging with her dog.

But at home, she's got thousands of rabbits, she was saying. Doesn't seem to know what's causing them. She's 22 years old and recently appeared on the Generation Game with her father. She wants to go around Brown's Hatch with James Hunt and complete an army assault course. And the following day she'll have it lying. Her wildest ambition in life is to drive a police car, for reasons best known to herself. And she was telling me this afternoon she wants to try and improve her capabilities. But it finally appears that