Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #45 (Part 2): August 2nd 1979 - Treat Dad To Joan Collins For Xmas

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: who would win in a stage-show spaceship fight between Earth Wind and Fire, ELO and Funkadelic?It's the final furlong of the Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and Our Simon has dragged us back to the dawn of the Eighventies and pulled out a ridiculously bountiful episode with so much to talk about, making this our BIGGEST EPISODE EVER. It's the middle of the Summer Holiday Of Our Extreme Content, your panel have spent their downtime crying tears of laughter at the sight of nudists in supermarkets on telly, avoiding the Punk House, and having a break from the draconian private school system respectively, but are all clustered around the telly to see what Peter Powell has up his sleeve this Thursday eve, only to discover that he's not wearing any.But so what? Because musicwise, this could well be the greatest episode of TOTP we've come across so far, and a solid case for '79 being even better than '81. The Dooleys are gotten out of the way early doors. Sham 69 have their end-of-term party. Olympic Runners get mithered by Some Bird. The weediest-looking lead singer in Pop history sings with his teeth. There's an actual naked woman playing a cello in a massive pram. Abba slap it about in a disco. Ron Mael stares at us. Legs & Co have a sultry mornge on some sand. And we see the debut performances of The Specials and BA Cunterson.Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham as they just switch off their television set and go and do something less boring instead, veering off on such tangents as pulling your trackie bottoms up around your neck and running at girls, integrity-free reviewing jobs, your chance to have your achievements in the Welsh music scene recognised at last, wearing the wrong-coloured laces in your Docs, having a wazz on a Pop star's back door, and Exciting News For All Listeners. Swearing!Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. is a member of the Great Big Owl family. All right, then, Pop Craze Youngster, it is now finally time to go way back to August of 1979. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have.

Hiya, it's Thursday, we've got the music if you've got the time. Here's Top of the Pops, the charts and the doolies. You know you can't deny it's a price I've got to pay But it's all right The 801st episode of Top of the Pop starts without fanfare, ceremony or even a theme tune as we see a cutout of a palm tree and your host dressed in a fawn suit with short sleeves, a yellow shirt, a brown and gold tie, standing neath it, if you will. Why, it's Peter Powell.

We've already covered Peter Powell in Chart Music No. 4, and this week he's filling in for Simon Bates, while Pig Wanker General himself handles the Radio 1 Roadshow with the same authority and sense of purpose as he would handle a boar's cock. And today, he's at the Green in Hunstanton. Peter Powell is also

holding down his Saturday morning 10-1 slot, but will soon make way for Tony Blackburn next month and take over the Saturday early evening slot from Chris Jones and will bounce around the weekday schedule as a fill-in before taking over the post-school slot from Andy Peebles in July of 1980. I just can't imagine Peter Powell,

the most relentlessly optimistic man on the Radio 1 roster, doing our tune. Can you? No. No, wouldn't say. He'd be way too chirpy. The day before the wedding, Tony was involved in a sensational car crash. Wow! Really exciting.

But that kind of enthusiasm does kind of make him quite a good presenter atop the pops. Yes. And in the meantime, he's wetting his beak on weeknights by doing DJ sets across the country like most DJs do on Radio 1

but while Kid Jensen is doing promo nights for Nescafe Powell has made his own beverage related move as the following advert I found in a Glasgow newspaper bears out Tiffany's Glasgow tonight sounds alive with tea and Peter Powell.

What? Have a ball with Peter, visit his tea bar and win yourself a free T-shirt, tea mug or badgers. Peter Powell laying tea on the kids. Got to ask, Neil, would you drink a cup of tea that was made by Peter Powell? Yeah, I think I would. He looks clean. He looks well-groomed-ish.

I don't think any stray hairs would fall into it. I don't think he'd... If he was doing it in a pot, he wouldn't warm the pot first. He wouldn't mash the bag sufficiently. But I'd take a cup of tea from Peter Powell, yeah. At a disco, maybe maybe not that'd be strange but yeah that's the thing isn't it a morning cup of tea definitely with peter powell but the thought of him uh in my kitchen in a terry tally dressing gown is unpleasant enough so

now at a disco it's a strange combination that is isn't it kitchens and nest cafe coffee is an upper tea isn't yes so um what that's doing in a nightclub, I don't know. I can't imagine wanting to spend any time in Peter Powell's tea bar. I think it'd be too enthusiastic at that time of the day. It'd be banging on about how great the cakes are. Simon, any thoughts? The most

famous person who's ever made me a cup of tea was John Taylor of Duran Duran. Good fucking lord. So really, nothing can really compete with that. I guess I'd say yes. Like Neil says, he seems quite clear. I should say, I have had teabags off of Popstar. Yes, Ozzy Osbourne.

Yes, as mentioned in the Q&A. But tell the general public, Neil, this is a good one. Well, yeah, I was interviewing Rob Zombie and Ozzy Osbourne in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I was in his dressing room waiting to do the interview and just goggling at his rider, which was fucking immense. And Ozzy comes in very, very wobbly. Obviously, I hadn't taken his meds or something.

Sharon comes in. Sharon looked lovely. She comes in. She notices that I'm wearing a suit. And she goes, oh oh you look nice and then she gives me a kiss right it lingered a little little bit too long a little bit too long i thought um but anyway i'm interviewing campus grass but i'm interviewing was it a bit devon deardress

it was it was a moment there was definitely a little frizz on of electricity there but no anyway anyway this was before the aussie osborne the osborne show had really happened but the kids were there they were really young and they all tricked out interviewed aussie who as ever with old pros was just a sweetheart and good and he got on with it but i did have to ask him because i've been in the states for about a week by that point and i've been interviewing various other bands and I'd said to Ozzy, look, I've not had a fucking good cup of tea in a week and it's killing

me and he was like, help yourself. And he gave me a box of Yorkshire Gold tea bags and a normal box of Yorkshire tea bags as well so God bless him. By the way, the best song, speaking of recent things that have happened and Ginger Baker passed on the other week. Ginger Baker was responsible for the best song about how Americans can't make a decent cup of tea.

It's called T.U.S.A., and it's on the Masters of Reality album called Sunrise on the Suffer Bus. So any UK people in America feeling aggrieved that they can't find a decent cuppa, listen to that song. Beautiful. Thank you. You mentioned his sleeves rolled up. That's key, isn't it? Is it? This is the thing, though. Are the sleeves rolled sleeves rolled up or are they just naturally short like a safari suit thing i err on the side of it being a choice that he made to communicate something and what he's communicating you know with his sleeves rolled up in his leon-esque mane and his unpleasant use of the phrase we've got the music if you've got the time yeah it's got that mild come on vibe

to it he is he is always that teacher who straddles a chair he's that he's that slightly cool english teacher who at this time was starting to replace the kind of army bread sadists and pederasts who made up the rest of our teaching staff um we got the odd teacher like this the kind of teacher that some girls and boys develop crushes on um but who actually they kind of kneel on your desk in overly intimate ways and idly toy with the zipper of their tracksuit when watching you swim lengths they're not dodgy they're not dodgy but they're doing a really good damn good impression of someone who is um i mean put it this way i remember a mate telling me once that he got up one saturday morning and went downstairs to the kitchen and our economics teacher was in there in a terry

towel and dressing gown that belonged to his dad sat drinking coffee and reading the papers he clearly copped off with his mum the night before the middle class i mean that said this was a mate in his hallway he had photos of you, you know, like family shots, framed family shots of his family, all naked, wrapped up in a fucking film. The middle classes, man, they're fucking disgraceful. I live right by Brighton New Dispatch. And I mean, you know, I'm not going to call them sick perverts or anything,

each to their own. But it is just sometimes you're walking along the sort of upper promenade bit, just enjoying a view out to sea, and then you glance down and you see some, like, 60-year-old bloke with his arse waggling about and it's just the last thing you want. You know what?

I'd totally forgotten about this, but is this the summer that the BBC did that documentary about nudists? Do you remember that? Vaguely. Oh man, I remember watching that with my non-Auron grandpa and I was in my usual spot of laying on the rug

with my elbows put up and they're tutting away but not changing the channel and I'm there just absolutely fighting not to piss myself laughing just coming down my face particularly there was one where they're in a supermarket and this fat nudist couple are like bending over with a basket and and looking at carrots and stuff

like that and it's just like oh my god please come can we just have an emergency reconvene of school tomorrow just for the playground conversation so when you were lying there there wasn't a sort of uh inverted pants tent it wasn't like um little al little al becoming great big al at that point no no no no not all it was just this was at the time when sex was still hilarious yeah yeah you know the slightest thing about sex, you just piss yourself. But, I mean, I could not watch that in the same room as my parents. No, absolutely not.

Jesus, no. No way. I'd just been dying inside. Oh, no, I was just laughing, man. My mum would have been laughing, but she would have been taking a piss out of me, doing the old, would you fancy her? Because she's got some fat german bloke playing volleyball it's always the way

isn't it people people i mean like far be it from any of us to body shame anybody but i mean it's always the people who perhaps should have a little shame about their bodies who feel absolutely flagrant in displaying it yeah when they do the documentaries about news is camping it's never it's never carry on film nudist camp no no no but anyway uh peter powell you know proudly displaying a bit of wrist and forearm on this uh episode i can imagine a young anthea turner cooing over him and yeah i think the um the school teacher comparison really does work because his tie i thought it was a school tie it's just it's saying yeah i'm young i'm just i'm just one of you young guys yeah i'm one of you young guys but i'm having it off with women yeah that's the

that's the implication that was always there with that sort of teacher wasn't it yeah yeah it's amazing how much kind of symbolism you can get just from the just from a bit of wrist 40 years ago you know we've got all this from it some of my finest memories are from a bit of wrist several years ago so yeah peter powell and it is thursday night beneath the plastic palm trees yeah powell tells us that he's got the music if we've got the time and immediately shoves our faces into the glorious carousel of the top 30 as the first music of the night plays. It's Wanted by The Doolies. We've already covered The Doolies in chart music number 36 and this, their fifth top 40 hit, is the follow-up to Honey I'm Lost

which got to number 24 in March of this year. It's the opening cut on their latest and first album, The Best of the Doolies. Fucking hell, start as you mean to go on. Which is currently at number 16 in the album charts, and it's gone up this week from number five to number three. Number three. Wow, yeah.

Yeah, Simon, your case, the case you're laying out's been a bit spoiled here, I think. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But it's nice that they're getting this shit out of the way early. Yeah, indeed, indeed. And we're not seeing the fucking Dooley family being cunts. Well, I'm surprised we're not, right, because they always seem to be in reception as the saying goes.

Them, along with probably Depeche Mode and also a certain punk band who we're going to come to later on, just always seem to be in reception at Top of the Box. They always appear to me like the kind of extras you'd see in a log or advert of the time. Yeah, yeah. Where everyone's

having fun, but it's not gone too far. They'd be, yeah, you know, staying sharp to the bottom of the glass with a pint of heart. Yes. Or maybe surrounding the Hofmeister bear, doing a little sort of conga. Yes. A fair play to Peter Powell, actually,

for pumping the doolies with, you know, way more enthusiasm than they strictly merit. He deserves some kind of medal for that. I mean, obviously they're a bit crap and they're total mum disco, second-rate Nolans, pop music for cruise ships and holiday camps and all that. But it's not worth hating them.

It's just not. Because they never got in your way. We had a good go in the last one. Well, yeah. I think the decline of Britain was pretty much pinned on the Doolies in that episode. Well, alright. We've done decline of Britain was pretty much pinned on the doolies in that episode. Well, alright, well we've done

that now. Well played, Taylor and Dave. Yeah, yeah, I mean, they had a few hits and then they just fucked off,

didn't they? I mean, this episode of Top the Pops, as we've hinted, turns out to be so great that it doesn't matter

if it kicks off with a bit of doolies. You can't begrudge them that little bit of exposure. This is pretty much the cod liver oil that you've got to have before before the buffet yeah if this if this

had happened later and they were actually there that would have been a really annoying sort of dead spot in the show but it's a really canny choice to play this track over the rundown uh because i think we frequently see that decision made this year and in top of the pops to put a kind of dull record on often a disco one to accompany the rundown so as not to really distract the viewer from the chart i mean when you look at this chart imagine this chart with like death disco over it it wouldn't work it would be too distracting it'd be awesome but but it wouldn't quite work so you need you need something a little bit dull like this this briscoe record it's the it's the getting your coats off uh section of the yeah

yeah getting your first pint in yeah the startling thing is that the person who co-wrote this i mean it's he's also responsible for billy ocean's love really hurts without you which i love that record how can you write something that astonishing and then make this? It's just odd. But it's perfect as kind of, yeah, basically a kind of theme music in a sense that you're ignoring whilst you're doing it. But you know exactly how somebody like that could write this kind of song because they're not artists. They're pros.

They're professional songwriters. Yeah. So I mean this. I mean, it's a classic kind of Hispanic chord descent, isn't it? The melody of it. As also heard in I Will Survive and i love to hate you by erasure and millions of other things and i think it works because we we've all heard these chords played by flamenco guitarists in hotel courtyards you know so it feels like you already know the

song and and obviously it worked as you say number three their biggest hit um as we find out during the countdown number one in japan and And I love that, apparently, right, they were big in the USSR at the height of the Cold War. Yes. And they recorded a live album in Moscow. I mean, I've never been to Russia, right? But I love the idea that if I went there and I told someone I was a British music journalist,

you know, they might not say, ah, Beatles. They might say, ah, Doolies. You know? Yeah. That'd be amazing. You know those... First Western band to play, Russia? Is that right? Yeah.

Wow. They're practically the equivalents of the pandas that China sent to us. Oh, that's a fair swap. They're our cultural dowry. We're probably still seeing the repercussions of that unbalanced trade deal now. Yes, yes.

But you know those... They're musical Novichok, aren't they? You know those... They're called Rundgenizdat records. They were apparently circulated in the Soviet Union. They were bootleg discs made from X-ray plates. Yes. That thing.

Apparently loads of them were by the Beatles. And I'd love to own one, even though I'm not a Beatles fan, because they're just a really desirable item, I think. Just a record with somebody's femur and tibia on it. And I'm a bit of a Soviet fetishist. I'm not hiding that. God, the ultimate Beatles souvenir would be of one of those, a Beatles single printed on an X-ray scan

of John Lennon after he got shot. Fucking hell. Can you imagine how much that would go for? Well, if Jonathan King couldn't get his Yorkshire Ripper record off the ground. Exactly. Yeah, indeed. But you know what?

If I got my hands on one of those and I put the needle on expecting the Beatles and Wanted by the Dooley's came out instead, that would make my life. That would really appeal to me. It's funny though, the kind of Soviet fetishism that you're talking about I engaged in quite a bit of that in my youth as well but now obviously Russia is the last place on earth I want to go to um you know but I was very much cccp on my pencil case and yeah I was actually secretly pleased I was I had a holiday lined up there that fell through because they're absolute cunts with the visas

and then when Wales failed to qualify for the World Cup there I was kind of secretly pleased as well because I thought you know do I really want to go there? It just sounds a fucking nightmare Apparently it was great once you were there I've had mates who've been to Russia and they say it's fucking brilliant Maybe. One of my adult mates went

Oh really? That might be a clincher for me but just doolies everywhere you go presumably you know just blasting out to this day so this is the um this is the spoiler-tastic version of the countdown isn't it where they they give you the whole thing uh rather than rather than them yeah rather than stopping off at certain points to play a song but i think that's because the assumption was that anybody who was into top of the pops knew what the charts were anyway. I suppose so.

You know, because it had been revealed two days before. Yeah, but Al, this is 79. I mean, the last time I saw that rundown, you know, going all the way through to number one, was in the episode I did in 1970. They didn't think of changing that in nine years. It's mad, isn't it? It's absolutely mad.

No. The introduction of, yeah of the rundown later is such a vital move later on in Top of the Pops history it's a smart move totally changes the feel of the show

and of course with the chart rundown we get another choice selection of chart picks don't we we have the Gibson brothers

standing in front of Hilda Ogden's Muriel a photo of Public Image Limited that shears off the heads of half the band and has a rainbow tint as if it's been left on a window ledge all year. And Amy Stewart in a hoopy headjoy

and a star-clad expression making her look like a deer trapped in headlights. Anything on there you didn't recognise? was thrown by tom pace yeah yeah that's the one for me as well yeah thom thom pace oh thom yeah thom yeah yeah like like thom york uh yeah so yeah i'd never heard of him either i looked him up and uh so he's this american singer songwriter yes and and uh his song was called maybe and it was a theme from Grizzly Adams. Yes. I don't really know...

I don't know what or who Grizzly Adams was, but Wikipedia tells me it's based on a true story about a man... You didn't know Grizzly Adams? No, no, I didn't watch it. Wrongly accused of murder, he goes to live in the woods and becomes a sort of animal whisperer. Yeah, yes. So, in modern-day parlours, was he a prepper?

Was he a survivalist? So I don't trust Grizzly Adams politically. I'm guessing he's NRA, and the federal government will take his shotgun from his cold, dead hands. But Thom Pace, though, is the opposite from what I can glean from Twitter. He's got 266 followers, and most of his activity involves retweeting Scott Dworkin and other anti-Trump

content. So he's probably alright. He needs more followers. Yeah, follow Tom Pace. Go on Pop Crazy Youngsters, chuck him a follow. I'll tell you some photos that jumped out at me. There's a picture of Toothy Judy Tsuk and she's

pictured with four blokes, also mostly Toothy. And I wonder if that was a sort of criteriony Judy Zook. And she's pictured with four blokes, also mostly toothy. And I wonder if that was a sort of criterion for joining her band. You had to be able to eat an apple through a tennis racket. But honestly, looking at the chart run down in the late 70s,

it's like getting your fucking holiday photos back from True Print and realising just how shit your camera is. Yeah, it's not exactly Annie Leibovitz, is it? No, no. The quality of photos here. All that's missing is a fucking giant thumb over Judy Zook's face, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, Mick Rock is spinning in his grave, even though he's still alive. Absolutely, yeah. But I think you get an interesting snapshot, pun intended, of the moment that punk splits into post-punk here. Yeah, yeah. Because Pill and the Pistols are both in there.

And the Pill photo has got Jar Wobble front and centre, and John Lydon's half out of shot. And in itself, that's symbolic, because Lydon was sort of retreating from being a public face. And then in the Pistols photo, he's absent entirely, which is correct, because the single was come on everybody which he isn't on obviously um another one that jumped out at me the beach boys looking very weather beaten they had a hard paper oh they had a hard paper round in the 70s my god um but yeah

as well as the sort of surfboards yeah yeah maybe they spent a little bit too much time in the great outdoors um but yeah as well as the the post-punk thing, just becoming evident, we're also at the high point of disco, I think in Summer of Sense9. There's a few examples in this countdown. So there's Donna Summer and Sheikah both in there. And you mentioned Amy Stewart wearing her mad headdress, but yeah,

it's also the high point of New Wave. So you've got the ruts, the police, Tubeway Army, and some of the bands that we're going to talk about in the show. So this, just looking at that rundown, even without the songs that we're going to talk about in the show. So just looking at that rundown, even without the songs that we're going to actually talk about,

does show you why it was such a great year because you've got those two movements, sort of new wave slash punk and disco, at their very peak. Yeah, yeah. And rather enchantingly, the one I like the most is probably Ricky Lee Jones. Oh, yeah. Just having a fag, you know. Yeah.

Well, that's a great single chucky's in love i mean that's the thing some of these singles in here are all-time great so you got good times by chic silly games by janet kate in connection with is what you could have won yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly and and my shona by the knack so you know you could have made a whole alternate episode of songs that didn't get shown this week would be just as good um there are to be fair also a few singles should be taken outside and shot and i'm talking about elo the diary of horace wimp and you know you know how much of an elo fan i am but jesus christ that song really horace wimp oh god alive it's just the worst oh i think i prefer it to mr blue sky you know. Oh, get out.

You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak. So, the following week, Wanted dropped back two places to number five, and the follow-up, The Chosen Few, got to number ten for two weeks in October. But as we've mentioned in a previous episode, Wanted spent ten

fucking weeks at number one in Japan Wow 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.

Yeah! Yeah! We immediately get stuck into the first act, Ursham Boys by Sham69. We've already covered Sham in Chant Music No. 4, and to all intents and purposes, they are a band in crisis. They started 1979 with a calamitous tour of the UK, where they sealed their reputation as the country's biggest

meathead magnets, which peaked in a riot at Middlesex Poly and ended in Ellesbury on the last day of January with Jimmy Percy announcing on stage that the band had played their last ever gig. They also found out round about this time that The Who had turned down the two songs they recorded for the Quadrophenia soundtrack because they weren't 60s enough. In April, BBC Two broadcast an episode of their arts documentary series Arena while the band were recording their third and seemingly final LP, The Adventures of the Ursham Boys,

as Percy had announced that he was splitting the band up and joining forces with Steve Jones and Paul Cook to form a punk supergroup which was being called the Sex Pistols, the New Pistols, Pistol 69 and the Sham Pistols depending on which music paper you read that week. After playing a successful comeback gig at the Glasgow Apollo in early July they were tempted into playing another gig at the Rainbow which ended in chaos. Meanwhile this is the follow-up to questions and answers which got to number 18 in april of this year and it's the league cut from the new lp and it's the highest

new entry this week at number 23 oh there's a there's a lot to unpack here isn't there chaps there is um i mean as was hinted in in in the enemy letters stuff that you read out earlier um we're really in an era where a lot of people are sort of asking you know what what is punk I mean, as was hinted in the NME letters stuff that you read out earlier, we're really in an era where a lot of people are sort of asking, you know, what is punk rock and is it still going? And is it over? You know, those kind of questions. And really, Sham, 69, always came across to me as for the kids sort of too young to have been there for the Pistols, perhaps.

Yeah, exactly. But who also felt that the bands that came in the Pistols' wake were kind of mainly just shit copyists. And also, it's the fact that he cares. That's the thing about Jimmy Pillsy. It's the fact, the Pistols, you never got the feeling, really, that they cared about their fans, in a sense. They were just going to be this explosion that happened.

The Pistols, obviously, could never write a song that was so gauche and unironic or simple in its stance as as the kids are united sam 69 care about the kids that they're singing about or at least you've always got a sense that jimmy did definitely but in 79 like i mentioned i'm seeing skins and punks with sham 69 on their jackets and they tend to be the scary right wing ones um jimmy's sort of tactic of all these meatheads turning up and almost conducting debates with them to try and turn them around i'm not entirely convinced but you know so many farewell gigs it's virtually every gig they do that year seems to be a farewell gig in a sense i read a brilliant chris needs review of their

supposed last gig in aylesbury um which is a treat just for the bit where he reports that Percy, when he's about to go into the Kids United, shouts at the crowd, you know, they slagged us off for this song, but I don't know. It came from here, in here, and sort of punches his heart. And that's simultaneously kind of what's a bit grisly about Percy, but also what's really likeable about him. It's kind of like what Pricey was saying,

oddly enough, about Mick Jagger. Last episode we did together. A likeable twat as a front man. Do you know what I mean? That's sort of the way I see Jimmy. The prime example. Well, yeah. And he's one of those figures.

He sets himself up as kind of not giving a fuck, but really, really, he does give a fuck. And he clearly feels injured by every word that's said about him. Because in 78, there's very much a piss-takey tone in a lot of the coverage of Jimmy Percy in Sham 69. And sometimes you do get, as a music journalist, you get these sanctimonious front men, to a certain extent, who it's kind of fun to take the piss out of them,

just because you know that their bottom lip's going to wobble and they're going to react really badly. Later on, this would be like Eddie Vedder or Billy Corgan or somebody like that, or the band Smash perhaps. But, you know, Sham69 for me were always a bit too close to Gary Bushell's heart for me to ever really kind of be affectionate about them. And I'm also dubious when a band gets props for bit i mean

the gary bushell review of the album that this single comes from is unbelievable because it kind of starts with finally sham 69 are going to be written about which somebody understands them and gets them um you know in the same month that gary bushell's kind of writing a review of the second magazine album that just pulls it apart for its its puffiness if you like um so it's it's a bit too oi for me and i'm always dubious when a band gets props for being for being working class ultimately because it's it's usually a reductive notion of class and what what different classes can do but yeah um jimmy percy this year is saying we're not a new wave band. We're not a power pop band. We're a punk band. And if this is where punk has ended up, I guess it's time is up.

It's time is limited. But yeah, the crucial thing about Jimmy Percy and Sam 69 is that unlike most of the first generation of punk rockers perhaps accepting The Clash, they cared, man. They cared about their fans. They cared about the kids. And that's simultaneously what's sort of slightly appealing about his daftftness but also sort of puts me off a little bit as well the night before uh cellar black had formed a punk band with frankie howard on a on a television show so you know it's safe to say that punk has officially been defanged but also i contend that this is the moment where punk is at its absolute peak. I mean, it was around my

way. By this time, I'd started going to the discos at Top Valley Youth Club and also at the community centre and that's the first time I ran into actual punks who, you know, some of whom were as old as 15 and

they scared the shit out of me. Simply because when you're 11 years old, any 15 year old's going to scare the shit out of me. Yeah. Simply because when you're 11 years old, any 15-year-old's going to scare the shit out of you anyway. But yeah, there was a lot of bin liners. There was a lot of kicking about. You know that dance that punks were doing at the time, which was basically kicking the legs up in the air while swinging their arms around.

And yeah, it used to scare the shit out of me. But Sham 69 were huge. There was a gang of youths round about this time and every night they would go from one end of the estate to the other, walking up and down the streets, just shouting, Sham 69! Over and over again. And you could hear them from streets away

while you were laying in bed. And just absolutely terrified that bricks were going to come through the window and that. And they loved this song because of the opening guitar stabs. Because you could kick someone while you were doing it, you know. But also, Sham69 were, they'd become the kind of like the lad band at my school. They'd taken over from Show Waddy Waddy. I remember a group of my mates, I think we'd got Smash It,

and we're all in the playground. It might be before Smash It, it might have been Disco 45, but we've all got our arms around each other, just marching up and down the playground, singing We're Going Down the Pub. Because the idea of going down to a pub was a very, you know,

oh, that's what we wanted to do, be like our dads. I think this was around the time that Martins, the news agents, were selling little key rings in the shape of cans of Guinness and stuff like that. So, yeah, we were very alcoholically minded without actually having had any booze, apart from at Christmas. Yeah, it was the top deck years.

Simon, in you come. First first of all I want to apologise to pop crazed youngsters for any cat meowing noises you can hear no no it's good yeah yeah that's Bowie um she is very vocal and um I thought about locking her in the other room but she'll just shit no she'll shit and piss everywhere and it's just no good um yeah so um I I really feel for Jimmy Percy because I just recently I I watched I watched the documentary on the story of Skinhead, the Don Letts one, that's back on the iPlayer. And there's quite a lot of stuff there about what happened with Sham69. And Jimmy Percy's not racist. They weren't a racist band.

They were really anti that. And they played the Rock Against Rac racism concert to make that point um yeah but and it was precisely because they played the rock against racism concert that um their gigs the particular gig you know that was the sort of final one was was invaded by by a gang of sea hiling skinheads because they they just wanted they they resented Sham coming out as anti-racist and according to Percy, there are only about 25 of them but they managed to sort of get the rest

of the crowd going as well and it just turned into some sort of hate mob. In this week's NME, I've got the report on that. May I? Yeah, go. Sham69's farewell show at London's Rainbow Theatre on Saturday was halted after just five songs when a riot broke out. John Hamblett gives his view of the affray.

The dimly lit Rainbow Theatre is almost full of people, many of whom could be loosely described as skinheads. But there are skinheads and there are skinheads. And the difference between the two is sharp and well-defined. Skinheads are revivalists. Their main concern is with fashion and appearing to be affiliated to a hardline youth movement. Skinheads are brutal.

They appear to be political extremists aligning themselves with the National Front of the British Movement, although it has been suggested that if wearing Tufty Club badges were as antagonising, they'd be happy to do that too. Most people here, whether skinheads, mods or loosely interested parties of no strict denomination, have come to witness and be part of Sham69's farewell concert. The skinheads have Double Book the Hall, they are here to stage an alternative happening.

And, you know, you can guess the rest. I mean, basically, they really fucked Jimmy Percy over, didn't they, the cunts? Yeah. Sham69 could have been a huge band. They fucked Sham69 over. They also fucked the skinhead movement over. Yeah.

Because one thing that comes out of that Don Letts documentary is that it started off as very much a thing of like working class, white and black British people celebrating Jamaican music and Jamaican culture. And it was all about that up until probably in the sort of early to mid 70s, you start to get this sort of second wave that were more associated with football hooliganism and that kind of stuff.

And by the time you get to 79, it's almost, you know, as the NME writer there says, it's a revival. And this sort of new breed, 10 years later of skinheads, don't know anything about that. They don't know about the origins or they don't care. You know, it's just an excuse for a ruck. So, you know, yeah, it was just a hugely destructive thing and you know this this

is why i i really support um that movement sharp skinheads against racial prejudice i've often walk around in their t-shirt and stuff like that because i i i think it ought to be reclaimed you know some people may say you just can't reclaim it but i i really believe in the anti-racist skinhead yeah but i mean those documentaries they do gloss over things a little bit because every time i've seen a late 60s early 70s you know news report or documentary about skinheads and they're all in the youth club and there's you know there's a mix of black and white kids and and they always say oh yeah you know we get, we get on with the black kids. We just hate the Pakistanis. And it's like that hand immediately goes to the chin. It's like it's not that clear cut.

There's lots of great things about early skinhead culture. But one of the things that I pervasively see and experienced at the time was that there was plenty of solidarity between white and black kids. And an awful lot of that solidarity happens being hate in Pakis, used to call us do you know what i mean so we were we were always underdogs in that regard without a pop presence without a pop star without our own music in the charts you know i mean so so we were always the outlanders of that party um so consequently yeah as skinhead culture gets more far right and and it's interesting also that you mentioned the british movement the british movement because everyone knows remembers the NF, but people don't tend to remember the British movement.

The British movement was kind of almost like a, it was like the Combat 18 of its day almost. It was the harder form of the NF. So for a young Asian kid, I've said it already, but for a young Asian kid in 79, you don't make those distinctions. You can't make a distinction between a good skinhead and a non-good skinhead to you that all want to kick your head in um and and that was the pervasive thing you know if i see sham 69 on so many jackets of these scary looking fuckers it takes something

for me even now because that fear is so residual and deep to to listen to them do you know what i mean and and appreciate them um and the fact that they're boosters of people like Gary Bushall doesn't help. But, you know, that's not Sham69's fault, but it has consequently tainted them for me. Yeah, I understand that. It's weird that Sham got saddled with skin anyway because they were ostensibly a punk band.

But I suppose it's because they had that kind of bother boy sound. Like Slade. They're kind of bother boy sound like slade they're like kind of like the slade of punk i'm not putting the same quality bracket as slade but that same kind of stomping terrace anthem thing yeah well the story goes that um jimmy percy was was you know there was a sham 69 gig and and from the stage jimmy percy could see one of his old mates and he shaved his head or something like that. And he just said, oh, you know, oh, I see skinheads are back then, you know, taking the piss out of his mate. And apparently he got reported in the paper that Jimmy Percy grabbed the mic and went, skinheads are back!

Ah, for fuck's sake. Right, right. I'm wondering whether Herschel Boys is the first punk record I ever bought. Right. It was either this or something maybe maybe by Blondie if they count or the Boomtown Rats if they count I'm saying they do don't at me but the thing is about punk is that at the age of 11 um you know because it's you know you said though kind of the band for late comers to punk and I wouldn't have understood the original kind of political

agenda to punk no any of that what i would have enjoyed about sham 69 about this song and this performance um is a band being unruly yeah yeah yeah sham 69 are not very ruly nor are they uh couth or shoveled and all of that would have appealed to me you know the fact that jimmy percy's singing in this kind of oikish working class voice. Whilst waving a violin about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not subversive. What it is, is insolent, which is a lower level of rebellion. But it's still something you cherish when you're a kid.

Someone being gleefully disrespectful of decorum. That's what I would have enjoyed. And yeah, you mentioned the violin so yeah he's waving that around without any intention of playing it and then he smashes it at the end and then he's waving his boots around he's got his boots off he's waving them around and the whole

band just abandoned their instruments at one point apart from the drummer Ricky Goldstein who's playing Standing Up in a Davy Crockett massively out of time as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. So that, yeah, they're one of those bands who are sort of like Nirvana and the Associates and various Boomtown Rats, sort of

subverting the whole miming thing by just sort of taking the piss out of it. The audience is a bit of a sparse crowd there but they look pretty bewildered by the whole thing. But the song itself, there's a verse that starts, it's down to the hop for the local girls. They're not beauty queens, but there are pearls.

And obviously we all know now that that refers to the notorious Walton Hop, which was a disco where 14-year-old Jimmy met Jonathan King. And obviously it was frequented by King's fellow sex offenders, the DJ Chris Denning. Yes. Tam Payton, the Bay City Rollers manager, and a music journalist called Rob Randall. Oh, really?

And he was just down the road from the Duncroft approved school where Jimmy Savile preyed on his victims. And Max Clifford was also involved in that circle. And the founder, Dennis Corday, had a flat upstairs from the hop where it all went on. The euphemism apparently was washing cars. Boys would be invited round to wash cars on quiet days of the week. It's really grim.

And when you read the survivors' memories, you wonder about the things Jimmy Percy must have seen. He was interviewed in that John Ronson documentary. He went back to the hop. Amazing documentary. I don't think the hop. Yeah. Amazing documentary. I don't think it's on YouTube at the moment. There's an interview in The Guardian that preceded the documentary. And yeah, he said, oh, Dennis would be there.

And if he liked the look of you and you were a bit older, you would get a slosh of whiskey in your Coke. Yeah. And there was one time when he turned up with a wank mag and uh he opened it up to jimmy percy and he kind of like laid his cock inside the magazine do you fancy this and jimmy percy just kicked the magazine away fucking hell so yeah bloody hell yeah so um there's there's a spoken bit in this record i was trying to i was trying to figure it out i was trying to figure out is it romani gypsy language or polar polari gay slang introduces the general public to the word chub doesn't it

well it does yeah right um so yeah it's not standard english i was kind of fascinated so i looked into it and and um genius the lyric site has it as follows dick i chavvy it's the mudtown slosher right yes and i i don't know if that's entirely correct, but as I understand it, chavvy or chav was a traveller term long before it entered popular use. It just meant an unmarried young male. Oh, no, or a chow, because on that Celebrity Big Brother

with Jade Goody and her mam, Jade Goody's mam goes off on one again and says, oh, I can't you know i can't stand what's going on that's my chavvy there she's suffering yeah yeah right so yeah it means kid um one of the first uses recorded in english language was 1898 uh it was a poet called walter theodore watts dunton um in the coming of love rona boswell story and he wrote the line she loves to see her chavvy looking grand so uh that's the tradition that jimmy percy's in there yeah so um at the time it would have completely

just gone past us we just thought he's talking some bollocks but it turns out to be yeah the first uh introduction of the word chav or chavvy into pop culture and also you know to a kid of my age jimmy percy was lik Yeah. Simply because he was essentially Tucker Jenkins with cheekbones, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's fun. He's not hostile. No.

He's not hostile. And he's actually, I mean, when you think about what he's going through at this period, it's fucking tough being a figurehead, as he is. Yeah. And, you know, he's slightly paranoid about the press, but what massively comes across in interviews, he does seem like a genuinely lovely guy, put into this position that's incredibly difficult to maintain i wonder if they just

shouldn't have in a sense not forgotten about their fans but just gone purely for just mainstream success and stopped giving a fuck about punk rock in a sense i mean the album that this comes from the gary bushel review that i mentioned it starts, can't wait to hear this because I'm somebody who properly understands this music. And it ends up with him slagging it completely because he feels that Sham69 have lost touch with the working class roots that they used to have. Lost touch with their initial fans. I also suspect with Bushell, even if he might have been a vav socialist at that time, that he was probably a bit more in common with the skinheads than he did with Sham69's majority fan base. But he's in a really difficult position at this time, Jimmy Percy. It's easy to forget just how big they were,

just how massive they were and what a figure Eddie was. For so many kids who, like I said, missed out on the pistols to a certain extent, but wanted that. I think Simon's spot on in saying that this is unruly music and that's all that matters. The unruliness, the waywardness of the performance and everything, that's all that matters, it's kicking

off isn't it? Yeah and there is a distinct end of term feel yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I mean they might as well have got their board games out as well and played ricochet races and stuff like that, I mean they are clearly fucking about and you can just see the relief on them

you know as I've said before Sham69 loved doing television performances because there was absolutely no chance of dickheads ruining their fucking act I think this is where I think the end of term comparison really works because this is where trendy teacher Peter Powell comes in again

at the end he's encouraging it he goes what a way to go nuts so the following week Hirsch and Boy soared 16 places to number 7 eventually getting to number 6 the highest position for any sham single however

the follow up you're a better man than I took 4 weeks to get to number 49 in November of this year and the collaboration with Cook and Jones fell through when neither party could get out of their contracts so it was decided to keep the band together you have you heard any of the sham pistols demos I've not bothered I've not bothered do you know what though this um this sheds an intriguing light on something I read when I was sort of reading up for this episode.

Apparently there was an altercation at an airport between John Lydon and Jimmy Percy. Oh, really? Yeah, about 15 years ago. Oh, right. I think Jimmy Percy went up to sort of offer his hand to Rotten and Rotten just sort of kicked out at him and there was a scuffle and I think they both got detained or something.

Oh, man. So I wonder if it's kind of like very much belated afters from the whole sham pistols affair. Jimmy at the time was slagging off people like, in the interviews he was slagging off people like Billy Idol and he was slagging off people like Johnny Rotten quite a lot and he was just getting paranoid about the

amount of attention he's getting. There's a quote from one of them where he goes, you know it's getting like if I took a crap on the motorway you'd get a headline in Melody Maker. Jimmy Percy shits for the people. Joe Strummer asked to comment. He was very much under the microscope at that time. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if Twitter had been going in the late seventies? I mean, particularly in the early eighties as well. Can you imagine what fun that would have been? Right. But they conducted these arguments through the music press.

Yes. To a large extent. And that's why it was so brilliant reading the music press. Yes. Yeah. I mean, of course, he was also, he was trying his hand with running his own label called JP Records and he'd signed the chords,

but they were supporting the undertones one night and Jimmy Percy turned up with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. And yeah, they apparently bum rushed the stage and started lobbing amps and lighting rigs into the audience and yeah the band parted company with him soon after that. Can't imagine why. I think the last

person Jimmy Percy needed to knock around with at this time would have been Steve Jones. I love Steve Jones though. Yes. He's the best sex pistol. But not very much of a stabilising influence. No, I'm not. I'd hazard a guess. In the last week of September,

Jimmy Percy will take over Mike Reed's 8pm slot for a week on Radio 1 until giving up the chair to another person on this episode of Top of the Pops. And at Christmas, he will present an ITV kids show about the 10 biggest singles of all time. But after Sham's next single, Tell the Children, only got to number 45 in April of 1980,

and the LP The Game got a 1 out of 10 review in Smash Hits and flopped in June, they split up soon after. But before we move away from Sham69, if you don't mind, i'd like to read the poem that jimmy percy wrote for the enemy in this week's issue about that final gig wow my manager said it's going to be fantastic they're crying out for you the stage was set for the final fling but out in the audience, they didn't realize what was happening. The curtain lifted my eyes, saw their faces, and they saw mine. They knew and I knew that it was the very last time Sham69 would fall into line.

would fall into line. The bouncers looked like sheep that could hear a wolf a-calling. The audience looked like the boy that cried wolf and no one was listening. And I, me, the band and all were only there to play rock and roll. At Glasgow, the fantasy was seen for real. Sham could play and I could feel

At London it was all so cold The place, the record company pound note spiel The kids, fighting, singing, not giving a fuck What's wrong Jimmy Percy, tell us the truth Did the nightmare hurt you Or did your dream come true That's when you become joe public they tell you sorry son that's us not you

wow walter theodore watts dunton eat your heart out. What a way to go. NUX, Persian Boys, highest new entry at 23, sham 69. This is the Olympic runner. Bitch, uh-huh. Gotta have the guy who gets the bitch. I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said,

I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, The bad ones are all I've ever had Powell looks on at the denouement of the previous performance and references the presumed demise of Sham69 by exclaiming What a way to go! Nuts!

before immediately throwing us in the direction of the bitch by the Olympic runners. Formed in London in 1973, the Olympic Runners were put together by Mike Vernon, the founder of the Blues Horizon record label, who also produced a swathe of British blues LPs, including Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, as well as producing David Bowie and Ten Years After for an LP by the blues guitarist Jimmy Hawkins,

which was recorded at Olympic Studios, hence the name. After the LP was finished, the group decided to stay together and enjoyed moderate success through the mid-70s on the US R&B charts, as well as putting out the Do What Pastiche 18 with a Bullet, fronted by their keyboard player Pete Wingfield, which got to number 7 in July of 1975. But they'd have to wait until 1978 and the disco boom before they sprayed their mosque on our charts, when whatever it takes got to number 61 in May of that year. This is a follow-up to Sir Dancelot,

which got to number 35 in February of this year. It's been written by Don Black, who wrote the lyrics for Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With The Golden Gun, and Bidu, the man behind Cole Douglas and Tina Charles. It's the title song of the Joan Collins film of the same name, which is out next month, and it's up 29 places this week from number 66 to number 37. Now, shall we talk about the film first?

Because the bitch soundtrack is an absolute monument to Briscoe. It's got Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet by Gonzales, Can You Feel the Force by The Real Thing, The Love of My Life by The Doolies, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing by The Old Sailor and The Lone Ranger by Quantum Jump. Good stuff. Gonzales were essentially just a sort of reshuffled version

of Olympic Runners because George Chandler, the lead singer of Olympic Runners, was in Gonzales. Right. So Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet was a hit earlier in 79. So it's a bit of a sort of sham front, isn't it, for the same revolving team of session musos. But it's also got Herbie Hancock's I Thought It Was You in it, which is a fucking tune.

Yes, there's some decent tracks on it. Neil, you've seen the film, haven't you? I have. Well, you know how... I mean, because it's a sequel to The Stud. I'm certainly not holding The Stud. Yes. I'm certainly not holding The Stud up as some sort of cinematic masterwork, but you know how a sequel can feel kind of rushed and squalid

in comparison to its former? I'm thinking like, you know, Robocop 2, say, or Grease 2, or even Speed 2 or something like that. The bitch managed to follow up an already squalid film with an even more squalid follow-up. I mean, for me, the Jackie Collins novel that really needed filming was probably Lucky. I would have done that with Morgan Fairchild in it.

It would have been fucking awesome. But The Bitch, even in my memories of it, it's as if I'm coming to it through a kind of, the same kind of quaalude haze that the cast were in. Everyone, I mean, they started filming it, basically, as soon as the stud hit big, they started filming it. They didn't bother with the script or any of that malarkey. They just started filming it.

And the performances, I mean, everyone knows, everyone involved knows it's a cash-in on the stud. So there's no gusto to it. There's no script. The performances are pretty much all awful, including Ian Hendry. And there's some plot going on about the Mafia that never really makes sense.

But the sex scenes, oh my god. They're some of the most unpleasant sex scenes. And I don't mean in an explicit way. They're just... The pool orgy, which is kind of the most famous scene in the film, is so revolting. Jack Owen, David Hunter's

wife you sort of half wish I don't know something akin to that scene in Caddyshack would happen I would have thrown in a lion bar just to get them out of the fucking water it's just gross and the whole film is like that

it gives you this kind of shiv ass regal headache watching it it's grimy it's grimy in a really totally unpleasant way and there are these endless queasy kind of disco passages that basically give you a headache watching them

of which yeah this song The Bitch is one of them but the soundtrack yeah I mean the soundtrack has its moments especially for that Herbie Hancock tune and by the by whilst we're talking about that Herbie Hancock tune one of them yeah um but the soundtrack yeah i mean the soundtrack has its moments especially

for that herbie hancock tune and by the by whilst we're talking about that herbie hancock tune if you're ever reading music critics and they say that some jazz funk album is a poor attempt at disco that's the album you want that's the album to go for never mind the rest of jazz funk go for the stuff that is slightly poor attempts at disco because you get great stuff like that herbie hancock tune in it of course uh cherry gillespie is uh in the trailer for the bitch and in the film she's just one of the disco dancers though she doesn't right yeah she doesn't have it off with jacko or anyone like that thank god well this this is the time when joan collins stops trying to sort of pretend to be young in a sense and admits she's in that milfy kind of territory yeah but in in terms of the best joan collins film from the 70s it's not a patch on empire of the ants or i or i don't or i don't want to be

born which is which is which is also great it's more tilth than milf isn't it thinking about the song also the singer's got who wrote the lyrics again you mentioned oh yeah don black don black she's a wicked witch um i wish i could just ditch the bitch the singer's got a good voice she gave me a stitch yeah yeah it's yeah it's rinsing that itch rhyme to its to its end degree yeah I've got a groin of lich. The possibilities were endless. But I mean, you can tell... The thing is with a performance, the singer's got a good voice,

but you can tell he thinks the song is a bit daft. And there's a sort of apologetic grin on him every time he gets to the line, end of the line. But the key bit, obviously, of the performance is when the female backing singer yeah who keeps getting the camera going to her on the bitch line which i think is a bit yes but she's clearly forgetting the words but she then does a bit during the instrumental yes where she sort of goes around she does a bit she does a bitch in the instrumental absolutely

where she goes around sort of listlessly teasing the band the bassist in the bassist in particular doing a really unpleasant i've just pulled face it's just not right if if it's like a dancer from like legs and co doing that that's fine but it's not right if it's a band member i mean imagine if in i don't know if fleetwood mac were playing on top of the pots and mick fleetwood had like gone and twerked in front of Stevie Nicks or something. It's just not right. So, I mean, it's always a painfully embarrassing thing when that happens. But she's a band member.

That's just not right at all. It's my favourite bit of the performance. Well, I mean, as Sarah said in the last episode, she is some bird, isn't she? Yeah. She's the equivalent of that woman who comes out and gets twirled around in Some Girls by Racer. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. But she's been there from the beginning.

She's been doing backing vocals, ostensibly. So it's very straight. You don't get turned on by fellow band members like that. That shouldn't occur. Yeah, but you can't hear her voice in the backing vocals. No, no. She's like, look, just stand. I mean, obviously she's got to stand there,

and it's like, oh, well, we haven't got a... We can't get a lamppost at such short notice, because, you know, this is the week the bad girls are in the charts. Yeah, Donna Summer's done that already, so, oh, look, just give her a microphone. But I also wonder if they thought that if it was just all blokes singing this song the bitch um whether that was i doubt they thought that was problematic but obviously you know the bitch in 1979 means a totally different

thing to the thing it means later on where you would never yes you would never in 1979 call a bloke a bitch um it means something completely unless you were gay unless you're gay yeah yeah absolutely but because i mean she is she is clearly the protagonist in song is clearly a 70s british bitch you know all you bitch so it's like you know are they trying to get themselves off the hook of the charge of misogyny by actually having her there perhaps she is a bitch actually she's actually behaving like a bitch she isn't really though is she she's just slinking around well she's prowling around and sort of teasing them then going off the next one and next one yeah yeah sort of basically acting out the song that's not

being a bitch though well that's kind of what the film's about if she just chucked a bottle of ink over the lead singer's crotch or something that would be being a bitch or she was slagging him off but all i'm saying is i think that's her role they don't care about her being a bitch or she was slagging him off but what i'm saying is i think that's her role they don't care about her being a singer she's there to basically justify the title of the song yes usually yeah and i i love it i think it's worth seeing it just for that 20 seconds i think she's hilarious she really she's chewing the scenery the way she acts yes it's really quite so yeah she really is i I mean, she is a late 70s British. I don't think she's an early 70s American bitch. No.

And she's certainly not a mid-90s biatch. No, no, no, no, no. What I think of her as is a sort of precursor to the woman in the middle of Bad Boys by Wham! who goes, Yes! Boys like you are bad through and through. Yes.

Still, girls like me always seem to be with you. She's like that. That's the kind of character. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I noticed, by the way, Peter Powell can't bring himself to say the title at first, at the top of the performance. Yeah.

He can't say the B words. He just says Olympic runners. Put on Peter Powell there. Well, he says it at the end, that's the thing. Like he's been psyching himself up throughout the performance, like, can I say it? Can I say it? And eventually he says the bitch at the end. But I've

not seen, I sort of have and haven't seen the bitch at the same time, because I bought the DVD when I was running a disco club about ten years ago, and I wanted some sort of sleazy and disco-related stuff to project on the big screen. So I had that, and I had the stud, and I had Thank God It's Friday, and I think Saturday Night Fever as well.

I sort of alternate between these. So it looked kind of amazing, but I've not sat down and watched it. So you're saying I maybe shouldn't? No, I think everyone should watch the bitch. Just like everyone should watch the stud. They are capsules of their time. Like everyone should look at their toilet paper for signs of blood. Well, you know, I mean, the thing is the stud,

I could imagine some, well, I don't have to imagine. It was me for Christ's sake. I could imagine somebody using that for masturbatory purposes. The bitch, I mean, look, these were desperate times times it was either that or falcon crest you know what i mean but i mean it it you know the bitch you'd be hard pushed to crack one off to that film it is so depressing depressingly squalid and grim i mean how a film can actually be more squalid than its predecessor and not feature ol Tobias, I don't know, but it managed it, it's a tawdry tawdry thing. I mean the film

was immediately rushed out to video, in the days when straight to video was actually a good thing it meant that you could make a lot of money for it there was an advert in the papers at the time that said, treat your dad to Joan Collins for Christmas and I also do remember there being

full-size cardboard cutouts of joan collins in her baskin stockings and and the uh the chauffeur's cap and the fur coat and everything yeah and uh that i think that was in hmv and that fucking terrified me i would not trust myself to walk past that yeah I'd be scared. Yeah, well, ultimately, Joan Collins is a bitch in that film in 1979 because she has sex with who she wants to have sex with. And that makes her a bitch in 1979. Yeah, and I say that the woman in this performance is more of a vamp than a bitch, perhaps. Yes, yeah, totally, yeah.

Yeah, I like how the lead singer guy, who is George Chandler, not to be confused with Gene Chandler, he's taken the band name really literally, isn't he? He's in his trackies. Well, here we go. He may be the first non-pedophile to appear on Top of the Pops in a tracksuit. Blimey. You know, this is the era when tracksuits started to appear amongst the youths. Yeah, he's way ahead of

like Break Machine or anything like that. But it's not the sort of tracksuit you'd be allowed to wear on the school playground. I mean, number one, it's white and number two, it looks pretty expensive. It's the sort of tracksuit that you see Engelbert Humperdinck wearing in the morning when he sat at his

breakfast bar with some freshly squeezed orange juice. I bet the legs of that tracksuit haven't got stirrups in them either. No, they'll be the kind of flared, maybe like a little zip at the side. Yeah, yeah, because I had a Forrest tracksuit at the time from the club shop as a birthday present.

And all of my mates wanted to borrow it when we were playing football because it made them look more like footballers. And, you know, already at the age of 11 some of my compatriots were starting to sweat and I'd bring the tracksuit home and it absolutely reeked of my mum banned me from wearing it

to school. Well you couldn't play football really in those particularly the tracksuits with the flared legs because you'd be going to kick the ball and just the flappy bit would get caught in your other leg and it would just all go wrong. I mean one thing I used to love to do with the tracksuit with the bottoms because of the stirrups I found

they were so stretcher that I could pull the bottoms of the tracksuit right up until I got the waistband around my neck and then I'd be automatically hunched over but I would do that and just run and scream at girls who were you know clustered around the

edge of the playground and i'd just go ah and scatter them and it was very satisfying and it was very ball splitty as well is that still your preferred pulling technique al yeah i already knew how to impress the ladies at that age so yeah he's taking the band name very literally um as an olympic runner but he reminds me of cutty from The Wire, if that means anything to you, by wearing that kind of retro trackie. The thing is, right, so this guy, George Chandler, as I said, he was previously in Gonzales, and he also did some pretty decent solo stuff. And you mentioned Pete Winfield, who's in there on keyboards.

I loved 18 With A Bullet. That's a brilliant single. And Mike Vernon, you mentioned all the stuff he produced and all that he was also a member of Rocky Sharp and the replays incredibly so they're all kind of well travelled journeymen of pop aren't they I looked at their chart positions Olympic runners

they all seem to get somewhere between 70 and 100 in the billboard charts and no higher than 35 in the UK charts one of them had the amazing title Sprouting Out, I really want to hear that one after that listen, so they are very much also rams

it sounds like my bollocks after I pull the tracksuit so if you'll pardon the pun they're very much also rams and it's alright, it's alright this nothing more but we cut from it at the end to Powell trying to look as if he's been dancing but he's so off his face yeah he's like he's like swinging his arms and clicking his

fingers but it's as if it's as if he's been told to on a count of three like three two one click your fingers you know and then he does and and this time he does he does say the b word like he has been psyching himself yeah i think he'd be saying that a bit more often after his wedding. We still haven't determined whether he arranged that exploding motorcycle accident. The jury's still out. You know, you said that tracksuit stank a B.O.? Yes. I've been wondering of late, when did deodorant become part of your life?

Oh, for me, it would have been about 13 14 but i mean when we look back at these clips um do most of the people stink do you think i just wonder about the widespreadness of deodorant in this era oh no it was all over the place mate oh right okay mom right god roll on deodorant yeah all that kind of shit yeah people were okay people were aware that the pits reeked at this time and wanted to do something about it I don't think people

cared as much as they do now yeah maybe maybe I think I was a little bit older maybe about 16 17 before I started doing that yeah I think actually

I think talcum powder might have come first yes not not not because I bought it but because somebody would have given it to me yeah

like as a part of maybe like a Christmas gift set with some old spice or something like that which is a really weird thing to give to essentially a child but there we go I suspect that a lot of my compatriots were using deodorant long before they needed to

I put that alongside shaving as well so the following week the bitch dropped back one place to number 38. It would be the final hurrah for the Olympic runners, who split up soon after when Mike Vernon joined Rocky Sharp and the replays and changed his name to Eric Rondo. Oh, fucking hell. You imagine the meeting for that.

Oh, yeah, lads. Disco's gone as far as it can go. I'm moving on to the future. I'm joining Rocky Sharp and the replays. And keyboardist Pete Wingfield produced Searching for the Young Soul Rebels by Dex's Midnight Runners. Before going on to produce To Be or Not To Be for Mel Brooks, Tribute writes on for the Pasadenas

and that old devil called love for Alison Moye. And unbelievably, in my research, first thing I did, I just wondered how many gangster rappers sampled this song. None of the fuckers. Not sampled anywhere, is it? No, apparently not. According to whose sample, there are no samples for the bitch by Olympic runners.

It's waiting to be used. Yeah. Yeah. It's good that. That's the Olympic runners featuring Pete Wingfield, of course, and the bitch. This is the sound of summer. guitar solo The other day I saw you walking You looked as pretty as a peach As a digitised curtain falls upon the Olympic runners,

we cut back to Powell, who is pretending to have danced all the way through it. He then points at the stage and says, This is the sound of summer. It's If I Had You by The Corgis. Formed in 1978 from the asses of Stackridge, an early 70s folk rock band whose main claims to fame were opening for Elton John at Wembley Stadium in 1975, and that their fans had lobbed turnips at the jam in an early career support slot, the Corgis were immediately picked up by Nick and Tim Heath, the sons of 1940s band leader Ted Heath,

and when they didn't get signed to a label, they formed their own Rialto Records. Their debut single, Young and Russian, failed to chart, but this single, the follow-up, was played to death by Tony Blackburn, began a slow pull up the lower reaches of the charts, finally made it into the top 43 weeks ago, and it's up this week from number 20 to number 13. And this is its second appearance on Top of the Pops.

Oh, Tony Blackburn just turns the fucking world of pop once again, doesn't he? Yeah, he's the Geppetto pulling the strings at this time, very much so. So, yes, we usually ask a question round about this time, don't we, Simon? Go on. James Warren, the lead singer, how old is he? Fucking hell, right. So they've been around since the sort of late... Oh, I thought you were going to find this out. I don't know.

All right, OK. I believe he's 30. At this point, I wasn't so much fixated on his age. I mean, obviously, they've been around a while, having been in Stackridge before this. My question was, has there ever been a weedier looking singer in history than james warren possibly possibly randy van warmer but other than that it's yeah you'd be hard pressed to find a weedier looking man he's incredible isn't it yeah yeah and i love the corgis i'm not having a go i

know they're an odd bad by the way i love that story you just told about throwing turnips because, you know, as I understand it, I think they're mostly like a West Country, Bristol area kind of band. Exactly, yes. That's such a perfect thing, throwing turnips at the jam. That is amazing. Yeah, but they're an odd band because their sound and their logo and their suits and they've got that kind of punky K,

the spiky K with which they spelt their name and the suits and they got that kind of punky k the spiky k with which they spelt their name and the logo and the artwork all of that was loosely kind of new wave it sort of seemed to be positioning themselves in a new wave but they were relatively old like new music yeah yeah but they were obviously old fellas hitching a ride they you know they they were i'm not saying chances but they they were second chances it was like like, well, we've done this sort of folk rock thing, but let's try the new wave. I actually did a bit of a deep dive into, recently, not the album that this is off, but the following one,

which is called Dumb Waiters. And I, because I quite often sort of pick things up on vinyl for a quid that I've often wondered, is that any good? So I played it, and it's fascinating, really, because it's sort of not how you expect. Like, for a start, there's loads of stuff about eco-destruction and so on. The first words, there's this opening track called Silent Running. It goes, futuristic landscape, futuristic skies,

no birds or vegetation, earth remains despised so it's like someone off the holy bible by the man at street preachers right it's like it's not not what you expect from the mellow if i had you hit makers um there's some quite nice sort of synthy textures on there so they're obviously adopting synths but you can tell it's one of those records it's when when people who've internalized prog um decide that that they want to go at being Elvis Costello. So you've got both of these things going on. So on that record, when the big ballad drops, everybody's got to learn some type, which is amazing, obviously.

No argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then at the end of side two, there's all this mad shit. There's this instrumental track called Rover's Return, which is this weird fairground music and a sample of a barking dog all over. Maybe this is why Tony Blackburn music and a sample of a barking dog all over it. Maybe this is why Tony Blackburn liked it because of Arnold it sounds like Arnold let

off the leash and gone berserk and yeah I guess corgis, I see what they've done there, corgis and all that but I remember I let slip at school that I liked the corgis and some people were sort of laughing at me for it and I remember telling my dad

and he sort of like almost took me to one side and said, look, he gave me a bit of a talk saying like, if people are going to be musical bigots, as he put it, that they're only going to lose in the end and that really stuck with me. And I adore this song. It's almost literally irresistible

in that it's got this kind of um melodic logic to it that i often talk about with other things that almost from from the first chord change you know exactly where it's going to go but it goes there with such panache and delivers it beautifully um powell going this is the sound of summer i don't know about it's a kind of quite quite a heartbreaking record um yeah it's not it's not somewhere i'd want to know but it's a quite quite a heartbreaking record um yeah it's not it's not somewhere i'd want to no but it's got beautiful harmonies beautiful slide guitar i thought it was pedal steel at first but it's like guitar on there and um uh also i remember being at melody maker in in the 90s when a lot of bands like like teenage fan club for example um were always getting compared to previous

bubblegum pop or pop rock bands and it was always people like the Raspberries and Big Star who never really had hits in this country because that was the cool obscure thing to come into but I'm thinking fucking hell man no the Corgis if you imagine a band like Teenage Fan Club

doing a cover of If I Had You by the Corgis it would be immense although still not as good as the original. I put it in the same bracket as something like Photograph by Ringo Starr, which I also love as just kind of this sweeping, beautiful, melodic, irresistible pop rock record. So, I mean, yeah, I've probably wanged on enough there

about the Corgis, the sort of improbable love I have for them. I believe they've got back together and they're touring at the moment. I'm gutted. I miss they played the rope tackle in Shoreham, which is not far from me, earlier this year and I didn't even know about it until it was too late. So I hope I do get to catch them sometime. But enough

from me. On you go, Neil. Well, no, the fact that you love this song, it sort of suggests to me I need to listen to it some more because I was kind of slightly immune to its charms. It's the kick-off that references kind of Ramanunov's variations on a theme by Paganini and the beat was his kind of slide guitar.

I think what you said about them being proggers who have then moved on, I think absolutely they've got that little classical touch to them. Obviously everybody's got to learn sometimes there's a different kettle of fish entirely in a sense but who could not love that fucking record that's amazing in all it's different in kind of you've obviously played that at late night mini cab fm haven't you so we certainly have yeah yeah yeah absolutely it's just a beautiful beautiful song with that this is not that um no i need to perhaps hear it a few more

times and really let it get to me but But I think what I was put off by was, you know, I ordinarily like weedy singers but this guy looks so fucking weedy I want to bully him. He looks so fucking weedy. And so you can also tell to a certain extent that after the, you know,

Statridge did play a lot live they made a decision, didn't they, the Corkies to not play live much or not play at all In fact you can sort of tell That it's a similar decision that I think Steely Dan took in about 76 Just to focus on being in the studio You can tell they're not a live band

You can sort of tell that in the somewhat Marabund performance Because the performance ruins the song Doesn't it He looks so fucking Pained while he's singing he's like he's snarling that's it and i think it's like oh this is what you got to do to get on top of the pops now that you got to snarl at the at the camera i think it yeah it's and his

teeth yeah when he's singing his teeth you know um you know the charlie says um adverts yeah yeah public information films you know the one where um you know i got an apple and charlie got something he likes and charlie just fucking demolishes that fish yeah yeah he sings like charlie eating that fish just with his fangs and he's just chomping away that's the thing i was kind of rendered oblivious to the quality of the song because he didn't annoy me as such but he was so pitiable that anything he's moaning about in the song i just sort of thought yeah you fucking deserve it mate i mean he's got a wine colored shirt on and a golden brown pattern tie and the tie's worn trump style isn't it's really long and it's so long that someone or him has threaded it between

the strings of his bass maybe you did did that, Neil, to bully him. No, but the thing we have to bear in mind is, is that song quality, it's an odd thing. It's like, if, say, I don't know, a member of One Direction came back with a solo single and it was this song and nobody had ever heard it before, they'd be being hailed as the new Bowie right now. You know, it's probably a quality good song,

but I'm slightly put off by the performance. But with regards to the corgis i haven't got past um everybody's got to learn sometimes because why would i i love that song even in even in its baby d incarnation i love that song i love the melody of it and the feel of it so i obviously need to explore further this one didn't quite float my boat but perhaps i need to revisit it as a listening experience rather than as a top of the pops experience. Yeah. But this is another effect of punk,

isn't it? The idea that, you know, if you're in a band, you can look like whatever. I mean, it doesn't matter as much. It doesn't matter as much now in 1979 as it,

as it would have done in 1976 or in 1982. Yeah. But I wouldn't have associated their look with punk at all i would have associated it with those older musicians but the knock-on effect throughout all of the music it was more like a new wave vibe with them you've you felt that they were somehow loosely connected to things like costello and nick low and all that kind of stuff yeah maybe that kind of end of things yeah yeah but they have got it wrong You mentioned his tie like that. Clearly what he needs to do is turn his tie round

and have the skinny little bit coming down and tuck that bit inside. That's what you meant. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, his look and his snarling. It just makes him look like Curly Watts having a really angry wank,

doesn't it? And it also makes you wonder what the world would change to if he had her and you've got to say probably not for the better really so stay away from him duck but i've seen the video for everyone he's gone alone sometime he looks miles better and i've seen a recent photo of him and he looks even better still he's one of these

people who just looks better the older they get so yeah don't be afraid to go and see him simon fans like the corgis they are are a proto-white pyjama band, aren't they? Ooh, that's a good shout. You can imagine them existing very well in the mid-80s, I feel. Absolutely, alongside China Crisis and Fiction Factory and all that stuff. Yeah. So, the following week, If I Had You dropped three places to number 16. The follow-up, a re-release of young and russian

failed to chart but they roared back the following year when everybody's got to learn some time got to number five for two weeks in late june early july however after taking a cue from the buggles and refusing to tour their new album it really did for them and their next single if it's all right with you baby stalled at number 56 and after not even a Trevor Horne remix of the single Don't Look Back failed to chart they split up for the first time

in 1982 I can choose the world if I have you I could change the world for you. If I had you. greatbigowl.com.