Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #46: 17th December 1987 – Mission Accomplished, Agent King Cole

Episode Date: December 21, 2019

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: why didn’t they let Simon Bates do Top Of The Pops USA?We're out of the Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, so it's time to grasp the fly-encrusted and whiffy end of the Eighties Stick. It's a Thursday evening one week before Xmas in 1987, and your panel are a) in a Soho pub, chucking their musical-journalistic weight about, b) trapped in a bingo hall in Nottingham being handled like a piece of meat by randy octogenarians, and c) sprawled out on a rug in Yorkshire, with a garter snake wrapped around their glasses, waiting to be dazzled by the life-affirming beauty of Pop. Two of these people made the right choice that night.Musicwise, this is a heavily adulterated, gelled-up, suity, unwiped arse of an episode, with only a couple of standouts. Mike Read and Gary Davies pretend to be mates. Wet Wet Wet attempt to do True and fail. Mel Smith's attempt to encourage kids to hide in fridges is denied by the BBC. Mick Hucknall - leader of the Kennyist band in Pop - reminds us he can sing a bit. Nat King Cole cock-blocks Rick Astley. We finally get to see a bit of Top Of The Pops USA. And Kirsty and Shane and Neil and Chris ride in to save the day. None of these people are The Young Gods.David Stubbs and Sarah Bee join Al Needham for a rummage through the Quality Street tin of Xmas 1987, and - as always - the detours and tangents are manifold, including what it was like to work at Melody Maker in the Laties, how to buy a shark in Yorkshire, the lack of a decent wine cellar at Dingwalls, the pointlessness of CD Walkmans, the annual F-word debate, how Marti Pellow ruined Stars In Their Eyes, and an open apology to the Pogues for a 33 year-old LP review.This is the bumper pack of all four parts which came out last week. It's not a repeat, it's been tweaked slightly, just like when they put TOTP on BBC4. Yeah, yeah, take it to OFCOM. Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here. This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hey up you pop crazy youngsters and welcome to part two of episode 61 of Chart Music. I'm your host Al Needham, with me once again are Sarah B. Oi, oi. And Simon Price. Hello, hello. So, on the block for this episode is July the 25th, 2003. And I'm not going to lie to you, Pop Crazy Youngsters, right now I'm feeling like a cross between a high court judge and me mam when I took her in for her first curry.

She said I wasn't to worry if she didn't like anything as she already had a pan of chips cut up at home waiting for her just in case. I'm oblivious to this era and I'm fearful of this era. Not going to lie. What have you got cut up waiting at home for you if you don't get along with this Top of the Pops? My wrists.

I mean, it's a bit stupid because it's still Top of the Pops. It's still pretty much the same format. It's still number one. Still number one. Sort of. Asterisk. The acts that are on tonight, there's very little that's shit in this episode,

I have to say. But I don't know fuck all about virtually any of them. So my first question to the panel is, what is the difference between the music of 2003 and the music of today? Because to my mind, this episode could have gone on last week. I think the answer is very little. And that may just be a function of us being old farts who can't differentiate the minute differences and shifts in pop but i do think it's an objective uh sort of real fact that sort of new

trends and changes in in music have slowed right down probably from the late 90s onwards and yeah you could pretty much parachute most of this episode into 2021 and very little of it would seem particularly anachronistic i suppose things that have come along since include you know that kind of mumble rap stuff that you probably expect to see some of that going on in a more modern episode kind of emo rap and all that business but other than that boy bands you know will always be with us and dancehall jamaican reggae inflected hits and the sort of token metal thing and if you sort of make the uh comparative leap backwards from 2023 sort of 18 years earlier than that which would be what 1985 oh my god so much as it would have changed wouldn't it so yeah there's there's probably a certain kind of recirculation

and recyclement of sort of influence that is now, the sort of churn of it is steadier maybe. And there's kind of more cross-pollination now between genres and genre is composting down and down and down. But, you know, that was happening here. It's a tricky question. That's an imponderable, which I'll have to ponder for a bit longer i only said it to delay having to go through this episode so just tell me to fuck off and we'll get on with it all right then pop craze junk says it is now

time to go way back to july 2003. 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. We've got intruders in the building and they're eyeing up our talent. Oi, teacher, leave those kids alone.

It's still number one. It's Top of the Pops. It's still number one. It's Top of the Pops. It's half past seven on Friday, July the 25th, 2003, and Top of the Pops, as is its want in its waning years, is on its arse. The falling ratings of the show and calls for its demise has been an oft-used stick,

which the tabloids have beaten the BBC with ever since the early 90s, and the show has been locked into a pattern of low ratings, leading to a new producer, leading to a makeover, leading to rising ratings, leading to falling ratings, leading to another producer producer and so on and so on panel it seems like top of the pops has been on death row for 10 years by this point what's what's the reason for that i mean there's kind of lots of reasons and and no reason i guess primarily anything that's been going for this long it's kind of not a natural lifespan for a show, is it? You know, it's like animals kind of...

When you see like really old animals, they always look really weird because nature kind of does them in when they're still young. The show's been going for 40 years and it sort of lost its way in that profound and irreparable way that long-running things generally do. It's like the centre cannot hold. Whatever you're doing, if you've been doing it for so long that like nobody who was involved in it at the start is still involved that culture has changed every element has changed and there are such forces being brought to bear on it that like nothing can survive that pressure it's like the simpsons has now been bad for longer than it

was great and its legacy is completely secure and it will always have been a great show. But, you know, it is not what it was. And the same thing has happened to Top of the Pops really is that everything about it has changed. And there's a kind of self-consciousness when you start to focus intently on every aspect of a thing and try to analyze and micromanage what exactly is going wrong and what's right and what do we like and what do we not like. Who's the audience? What side of the bed do they get out of in the morning how many eyelashes do they have you can end up sort of destroying things by just over analyzing them when you start a thing there's an innocence about it and everyone is let's put on a music show we'll have some bands that'll be lovely and then after a few decades you're like but do people still like this and why and why not and that process i think is just like it's just death by a thousand cuts isn't it i like this idea of tv

shows having a natural longevity like animals it's like the hayflick limit do you know about that no yeah it's this theory i i learned it from uh going to one of those gunter von hagen's uh exhibitions you know where he he plastinates human bodies. It's this theory that biological cells in an animal's body or human body can only replicate themselves a finite number of times and then you just conk out. This is why immortality is not a thing. Although there are things that do challenge that.

For example, lobsters. Lobsters, which some types of lobster can live to be at least sort of 700 until some arsehole catches them and boils them in a pan but yeah the hayflick limit for television programs possibly is a thing i was wondering about top of the pops in 2003 and it had a few predators out there as as do lobsters but the internet was not yet really one of them. The internet was still in its infancy and YouTube hadn't even been launched yet, I think I'm right in saying.

No. So in terms of getting your visual fixer pop, the internet really wasn't killing it. But what the internet was doing was changing the way people kind of got together as music fans and how you construct your identity as a music fan. Which in the past,

it would always be a consensual group effort that you would be a rude boy or a meddler or a hip-hop kid but you would be doing it kind of in definition against everything else that was going on and it was in the context of everything else that was going on it would still have a nod to the rest of the world and be part of that world and it was much easier by the early years of the millennium to consume your music and to construct your tribal identity it's not just the center cannot hold the the center wasn't even there and being looked at you know top of the pops was originally central to culture but it sort of didn't play that role anymore so once upon a time you know it would gather everything in all these genres every genre every little scene it would

gather in the sort of most popular versions of that and then amplify them and make them more popular again whether you're you know a jangly indie band like orange juice or a horrible heavy metal band like motorhead it would still have the function of taking to that next level and then bringing you into the homes of people in shitty little towns who don't get to see gigs and i i think that that had kind of gone by the millennium. I really do. Top of the Pops was one of the BBC's flagship shows alongside things like Match of the Day and Panorama.

But none of those other shows got fucked about with as badly as Top of the Pops did. By the time Top of the Pops had moved out to Fridays, the charts had moved from Tuesdays to Sundays, which meant the charts were even more out of date by the time it got on Top of the Pops had moved out to Fridays, the charts had moved from Tuesdays to Sundays, which meant the charts were even more out of date by the time it got on Top of the Pops. Yeah, because I suppose CDUK on ITV would be less than 24 hours after Top of the Pops, but dealing with a brand new chart, because essentially CDUK was using the midweek chart, wasn't it? You know, sort of a spoiler for the, you know, the Sunday evening chart.

So yeah, absolutely. In the fast moving world of pop, I suppose Top of the Pops was looking pretty stale by the time Friday came around. Yeah. Yeah. And of course with Countdown UK, when that became a thing,

it turned out the bands were more interested in being on that than they were on Top of the Pops. Because if you can get your shit out in front of the kids on a Saturday morning just before they're going into town with their pocket money it's a better situation for them. That's a very clever bit of programming. It's weird how it becomes, you know, it's just not cool anymore. I mean, the kind of great thing about it is that it was never cool in some way, but it kind of was by default

I think, and I mean it's very snazzy at this point, but the trouble is, as we we know as we have experienced in in our careers once you start trying to chase an audience and pander to them like people know when they're being pandered to yeah even even dickheads know when you know they go wait a minute you're pandering to me I don't like it yeah um so it's kind of it's just turning that way and that's you know it's kind of in the

death spiral it's the poochy stage of Top of the Pops isn't it this it really is they've rasterised this episode of Top of the Pops

by 10% however there has been a steady hand on this tiller for the past 6 years and his name is Chris Cowie born in S and his name is Chris Cowie. Born in Sunderland

in 1961, Chris Cowie went to Rye Hope Comprehensive School where his English and drama teacher was Malcolm Gerre who came to national attention in the mid-70s when his school production of the David Essex film Stardust made the cover of the NME and was filmed for an episode of the London weekend art show Aquarius. After the broadcast of that program, Gary was approached out of the blue by a viewer called David Putnam who persuaded him to pack up teaching and get involved in TV. After Gary landed a job as a researcher at Tyne Tees, he would regularly get former pupils, including Coway, involved, and in 1979, Coway was filmed and interviewed at his night job, DJing at the local Mecca Ballroom for Tyne Tees' new pop programme, All Right Now. After the interview, he was approached by Angela Wanfor, the head of Time Teaser's kids programming, and invited to audition for a presenting gig. He was immediately picked up by the station and given the job of co-presenting Check It Out, a local bi-weekly youth show,

which is best known nowadays for the interview with Public Image Ltd, with Public Image Ltd, which they commenced by showing the band a film of local band The Angelic Up starts being interviewed by Coway as they took a stroll along the Tyne, where they accused John Lydon of selling out and being an old man, called Public Image the worst band ever,

and stated that the Sex Pistols would have been a hundred times better with Jimmy Percy as their lead singer, which led to Lydden tossing his mic at coway and walking off set and also effing as well as jeffing after all right now and check it out while i'm down in 1982 gary was given the job of producing a new tiny's pop show for the brand new channel for the tube and while cowowie was still working as a presenter, he also became a trainee researcher on the show

and by the mid-80s had worked his way up the ranks to become involved with Tube specials and outside broadcasts. In 1987, just before The Tube was phased out, Cowie went freelance as an assistant producer and linked up with Gary and 1-4's new production companies, leading him to get involved with Wired, Big World Cafe, The White Room, Jonathan Ross Presents, Channel 4's mid-90s coverage of Glastonbury and linking up with Gary again to co-produce the first televised Brit Awards since the Fleetwood Fox debacle. In the spring of 1997,

while he and Gary were working on creating a TV version of the Pepsi chart show for Channel 5, he was approached by the BBC to take over from Rick Blacksall as the producer of Top of the Pops and rescue a program that was on the verge of being axed. Once installed as the new boss of the Pops, he reinforced changes that had already been set in motion by the interim producer Mark Wells, such as phasing out the practice of celebrity guest presenters and replacing them with a pool of Radio 1 DJs and CBBC presenters and getting acts to record performances in the studio in advance before

their new singles had been released in order to use them when they actually made the charts. He also scrapped Red Hot Pop by Vince Clark as the theme tune in preference of crashing straight into the first single of the night. More importantly, he clamped right down on videos unless absolutely necessary telling record companies that if they wanted their acts on the show they would have to appear on set or not at all this culminated in the most complaints ever made for an episode of top of the pops in december of 1997 when he was told that the teletubbies who had got to number one that week would be unable to appear in the studio because they never left Teletubby land.

Leading Cowey to play the video for only 40 seconds at the end. Yeah, fuck you, Tipsy Whipsy, or whatever the fuck you're called. In May of 1998, he commissioned a new-ish theme tune, a drum and bass version of Whole Lotta Love, a new, cleaner, 60s-inspired branding, which he plastered all over the set. Then, in 2001, the BBC decided to push he sends us out to four episodes a week,

which would require more space at Elstree, meaning that Top of the Pops had to squat at the Riverside Studios for a bit and was eventually brought back to its spiritual home in Television Centre in a studio built to Cowey's exact specifications and relaunched once again. While Cowey was being credited for writing the ship adding on an extra 3 million viewers by the end of his first year, his paymaster sorts out new revenue streams for the Pops, franchising the show out to Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey, with the BBC version being exported to 87 countries,

sometimes intact, other times with a local presenter doing the links. sometimes intact, other times with a local presenter doing the links. This, alongside the Top of the Pops magazine, which was first published in 1995 as a rival to Smash's, and was selling half a million copies a month at its peak, video and DVD sales of Top of the Pops performances, and a compilation CD series, meant that Top of the Pops was bringing in an estimated £20 million a year to the BBC coffers.

In 2001, the first edition of the Top of the Pops Awards, an attempt to give the BBC its own Brits, was broadcast, and a year later, Top of the Pops Saturday, a spin-off show bolted on to BBC One's Saturday morning programming, was introduced. BBC One's Saturday morning programming was introduced. However, by the summer of 2003, the viewing figures are dropping again and Cowie has been making noises about more wholesale changes. He's already said that the top 40 is full of crap because they're dictated by record companies and no longer fulfills its role of providing a list of the most popular singles

in the country possibly due to the deployment of judy zook satin tour jackets in an era where 20 000 single sales can bag you a number one single he's pushing for the charts to be determined by the value of sales as opposed to volume and for radio plays to have more of an influence as they do in america so yes chris cowey a man with a with a rock solid pedigree and also someone who clearly got what top of the pops was supposed to be all about um in the interview for the guardian to commemorate his first year in the job he said the most important thing about top of the Pops is that it's BBC One at 7.30 prime time. I remember watching it as a kid and your dad would like something, your mum would like something else, my brother and sister would like other things. It's real family viewing.

Well, is it? Is it now? First of all, there's so much to unpack with that whole backstory of gary and cowie yeah i know sorry i waffled on pop craig's youngsters but i had to get all that shit out because the footage of the uh of the rye hope comprehensive which is uh um just outside sunland um their production of stardust um directed by mr gary yeah um it's there i'm sure you'll put it on the on the playlist oh most definitely but yeah um if you watch it, I mean, first of all, you've got Russell Harty introducing it.

And I don't get it. I don't get why NME and ITV are so interested in this. It's what schools do or did. I suppose you can compare it to all the fuss over the Langley Schools Music Project, if you remember that. So for those who don't know what, that was in 1976 and 77, there was a schoolteacher in rural Canada called Hans Fenger who got the children to record these enthusiastic

but very lo-fi versions of songs like Calling Occupants and Help Me Rhonda and Space Oddity, complete with all the sort of guileless bangs and crashes of a typical junior school orchestra, but performed with this real joy and charm. And the tapes were rediscovered and released as an album in 2001, and it kind of went viral, and it's now considered a masterpiece of outsider music.

And it was actually performed live at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002 as part of David Bowie's Meltdown Festival with London school kids. Instead of... What they should have done was get the middle-aged survivors of the 70s recordings that would have been amazing but the point with langley schools is um it was discovered decades later and therefore it served as an evocative time capsule which might have been the case with the ryhope comprehensive stardust if the tapes had been

discovered years later but what i don't get i'm really amazed that enemy and itv gave a shit at the time what's what's that well before that they'd done a production of tommy right and i think on both occasions they they did the stage show before the actual films came out all right okay i think gary was seen as stereotypical 70s trendy teacher oh god isn't he just yes fucking hell yes by the way there's loads of wrongness in that right hope thing i mean they they stage a new faces panel show and there's a girl group who are billed as the ronettes but they sing to do ron ron which is a crystal song and that really annoys me for a second but the panel has this limp-wristed gay stereotype on it which everyone in the audience finds hilarious and there's loads of sexist objectification of the six-form girls right and the itv crew isn't exactly innocent of that there's

lots of lingering on the girl group from the neck down yes and then they interview them about their outfits and one of the girls explains mr gary got a special person in to decide what we should wear white jumper and a black bra so it shows through. Black hot pants, black boots and black fishnets. Fucking hell. A special person, eh, Mr. Gary? A special person. Wasn't Jules Holland, was it? Oh, Christ.

I guess it's interesting, in hindsight, in terms of television history, because of that kind of Macca mafia that emerged from all this. And first of all, Gary getting a job in TV and then him handing out jobs to some of his former pupils yeah why don't we have fucking teachers like yeah exactly including cowey of course cowey's in the cast of the right hope stardust yes and he's i don't think to look at

even he's very much gary's mini me all right so he ends up as his ex-producer top of the pops i've got to say i can't hear the name cowey without thinking of Colataly Sisters on the day-to-day, where she goes, and it was a rather Cowie night for the pound. It stood at 3.9 against the German Bordello. That's up 0.5 against the Portuguese Starling and down 100 against the bitch. Chris. Yes, exactly. And also on YouTube, and I'm sure you'll give this to the PC-wise on the playlist as well, is the that version of, was it called

Check It Out, the show? Yes. It's basically nosing around. At this point Cowie looks like Bobby Ball, doesn't he? Yes, very much so. And obviously, I don't know about the rest of you but obviously I'm on Rotten's side here. Yes. Oh, total stitcher, wasn't it? He's been fucking ambushed by Cowie and Menci from the Angelic Upstars, who by the way

doesn't look very punk with his nice centre part. No. But they think Rotten's sold out because his new band isn't punk and because they've moved on and made their music more complex, which is bollocks. I mean, I'm on Team Rotten all the way. Yes. Oh, incidentally, Cowie's co-presenter, if you close your eyes,

sounds exactly like Lauren Laverne, which is disconcerting. I suppose she would, obviously, coming from that town, but yeah. He's not averse to nobbling a famous act, as we're going to see on this episode, actually. Something very similar happens later on. I think the thing with Cowie is he's that sort of very confident chancer and hustler of the sort I'm sure we've all met a hundred of in the industry.

They're not all called Crispin. Some of them are just called Chris like these are the guys who are always going to be our bosses and they'll be dead friendly to us and then as soon as they turn their backs we don't exist to them that's who that's who Cowie is he's a yep he's an operator isn't he you know people like that get shit done but you know they are remarkably ruthless I think he also said it's really important that there are things in top of the pops that one group of people should like and another is alienated by then it swaps around the reason the program is doing well is because we embrace that idea that pop music is diverse top of the pops to some extent is a program for people who don't necessarily like music, don't necessarily buy CDs

and who aren't necessarily still part of youth culture. But if they only dip their toe in the water of that culture once a week, they watch Top of the Pops. Now, these are very fine words, but they're buttering no parsnips with me. And it's all down to the BBC's decision to move Top of the Pops to Fridays. We can't move away from it because when that happened,

the concept of family viewing is just gone because your mum's always going to want Coro on. In 2003, the highest rating programme in the country was the episode of Coronation Street where Richard Hillman, the Weatherfield mass murderer, drowned. That got 19.4 million viewers. And that is a colossal amount for this century. You know, England's got to lose in a final for those

kind of numbers nowadays. Yeah, I guess they weren't even trying to compete on a level footing with Coronation Street. They weren't even thinking, well, some people will just almost on a coin toss decide which to go for.'s very much all right then combination street has millions and millions of viewers and we'll just skim off another three million off the top who are pop kids yeah you know as his comments for people who still want to dip a toe into music well he's talking to someone like me in 2003 and people like me in 2003 are either already in the pub on a friday evening or getting ready to go to the pub. Friday night is not a night for watching telly.

You've got to have a major life-changing event to keep me in the house on a Friday night. Were you watching it, Sarah? Because we're slightly different ages. I don't think I was. I don't know what else I was watching. I mean, I wasn't watching Corrie at that point. But that was a thing that I saw when i was a kid because everybody watched it but um yeah no i i

wasn't i just i don't know it said nothing to me about my life at that point i guess i mean he's a solid choice to oversee a music program but the problem is it's top of the pops which is more than a music program judging by the interviews he's given since he took over he's clearly a paid up member of the campaign for real music although the insistence on live performances has been relaxed he's he's clearly not keen on miming is there there's a video on youtube of him uh giving viewers a guided tour of the top of the pop studio which is quite revealing isn't it yeah for a start i quite like i mean he's obviously been given a big budget because yes everything everything behind the scenes looks the same as front of scenes as it is everything's white plastic no more darkness yeah unless unless

the darkness is on yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah david stoves wouldn't be able to give his usual spiel about the darkness in the corners of the screen here because there isn't any yeah it's a bit sort of corova milk bar from clockwork orange any, yeah. It's a bit sort of Carova Milk Bar from Clockwork Orange meets the Mondrian. It's a bit Mondrian as well, yeah. And yeah, he's been given a big budget by the look of things. And the whole thing is this sort of labyrinthine complex. There's an actual bar called the Star Bar,

which we're going to come to later. Oh, God. And there's the top that pops a magazine off. It's right there in the middle of it. It's not farmed out somewhere else and as he's walking about he he has got that trendy teacher energy hasn't he he's got a phil redmond energy of middle-aged men with in a suit but with long hair which is always a bit of a red flag yeah yeah um there's a bit there's a bit where he

goes into the control room and he fades up a bit of puddle of mud who are that dreadful third wave grunge band puddle of mud with two d's yeah yeah and and he goes pretty good huh which which it plainly is not and uh oh and he makes a point of telling us that one of the top of the pop stages that night will later be hosting one of my favorite bands i saw them the other night foo fighters yes yes dad you're very trendy we get it it's a little bit weird this isn't it it's like hey gang welcome to my gaff people are very at ease now with the whole branding thing which i first started to become cognizant of when the maker went under and it's like well they kept the brand alive artificially for like a month yeah thanks like keeping the the adverts bit yeah it was the um the um yeah the music bit and kind of grafted it into the enemy with the logo on it which is like

remember that time when they they managed to grow a human ear on a guy's arm they could like transplant it onto it so it kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies a bit i just sort of have brand ptsd from that so it's like ah it's the top of the pops brand oh no it's it's basically it's all over at this point yeah i don't know i suppose what he was doing was was kind of in that respect was similar to what conor mcnicholas was doing with nme in you know turning it into this monolithic brand that went across several platforms and i think it's quite clever you know he's made it into this syndicated international franchise yeah he's he's ikea-ified yes exactly it's flat pack it's kit form it's modular it's so they had exactly the same stage exactly the same backdrop whether it's in germany or italy so if a band couldn't make it to the london studios they they could perform in one of the continental studios and

the footage would be patched into the main show which i strongly suspect happened in one of the Continental studios and the footage would be patched into the main show, which I strongly suspect happened in one of these cases we're going to see, by the way. So, yeah, it is this sort of modular, flat-packed IKEA version of Top of the Pops. I think it is quite clever as a business model. Yeah, yeah. That's the problem, though, isn't it? Because people don't want to watch a business model.

No, I know. When we were young, we didn't go away and go, fucking hell, what an amazing business model that was last night. No, true, but I think he's made a good decision by focusing on live or at least you know mimed performance rather than videos because you could see videos pretty much fucking everywhere at at this point yeah whereas this footage which has got what he hoped would become iconic um top of the pops backdrop that mondrian white plastic stuff everywhere so that when that gets resold around the world or you know for all time really right until the present day people will look at it as

oh there's there's so and so i'm not going to sort of spoil a very famous star who appears in this episode but there they are on top of the pops rather than just there's the fucking video that we could see anywhere so i think that that was kind of smart i guess it was but i i kind of missed the videos there's just a um because you know as as we know you can get some spectacular feats of artistry in in pop videos that you know and things that we we still talk about now and we still remember and you know that and when you hear the music that's the image that comes to mind i mean there's you know there aren't really any well apart from maybe frankie like what music is there now where the first

mental image that comes to mind is a Top of the Pops performance as opposed to a video? I've that maybe now that I've said that that's very controversial, isn't it? But do you know what I mean? There are lots from the past. But I do see what you mean. And I suppose he's made a rod for his own back there. Because essentially, by shunning the artistry and the excitement and the spectacle of videos, you then have to make sure that pretty much every episode of your show has got something equally fucking memorable, but it's on the stage. Yeah, which you're not going to get.

You're just not. And so it's like there's a variety to it, which is now lacking, which makes it more monotonous when everything is a performance, I think. And also there's the idea, everyone now, there's the whole thing of everything being curated. You know, it's like if you, literally everything, it's like I've curated this fucking sandwich that I'm having for lunch. But it's like it's curated videos. It's like somebody has chosen that.

Like I would always trust that someone had had a choice in like, well, it's five videos. I'm going to pick this one to show to the people, you know, so you would get a sense that somebody wanted you to see it, you know. But I mean, I'll tell you what, just as a side note the having the magazine office like right in the studio i guess it's convenient in some ways but it just reminded me of uh i had a brief writing gig in an office in the middle of soho and it was above a you know a strip club and so at like five o'clock in the afternoon you could just hear this weird rattling noise which i realized was like the pole it was a pole as the weight of a woman kind of hung off it amazing it's quite distracting when i worked at paul raymond we were

right next to the windmill and the only thing we could hear in the afternoon was the theme tune to take the high road because that's what all the strippers used to watch no way on the tea break yeah i'm gonna say they were stripping to that music. That's a challenge, you know. That's a warm-up. Yeah. Yeah, we'd just be there tapping away and all of a sudden

you're just there. There we go. Ah, yeah, there we go. Strippers are having a break. God bless them. Your hosts tonight. Born in Paris in 1976, Liz Bonin relocated to Dublin at the age of nine with her parents

and ended up studying biochemistry at Trinity College. After graduating, she joined the Irish girl band Chill, but apparently the world didn't need a Celtic spy skills at the time. And after they were dissolved, she went into television, presenting the RTE kids program the den telly bingo and the irish fashion show off the rails in 2002 she relocated to london and became an entertainment correspondent for rise channel four short-lived digital clock nomenclatured breakfast show which once registered a rating of zero viewers one morning luckily one of the few people who were watching rides was chris cowher who offered

her presenting gig in may of 2002 and she's now part of a rotating talent pool which currently includes Edith Bowman, Colin Murray, Reggie Yates, Sarah Kaywood and Richard Bacon. Her partner this week, born in Northwood, West London in 1981, Fern Cotton was the daughter of a sign writer and an alternative therapist who was also a distant relative to Bill Cotton, the former controller of the BBC, who destroyed Ruby Flipper in 1976 because a black man lifted a white woman up once. At the age of 15, she began her presenting career when she won a competition to become a TV presenter and was given a spot on the GMTV kids' show The Disney Club, moving to CITV in 2000 to present Draw Your Own Tunes and the kids computer show Mass. A year later she was approached by CBBC to present the kids science show Eureka while also doing the CITV kids art and craft show Fingertips, eventually replacing danny bear in the saturday show the replacement for live and kick in

on bbc one it was only a matter of time before she was funneled into the top of the pops presenting team and she made her debut in february of this year this is her sixth appearance on top of the pops wow chaps by this time as morrissey might have said in order to present top of the Pops. Wow, chaps. By this time, as Morrissey might have said, in order to present Top of the Pops, one must, by law, possess a fanny. As we've discussed before, from the mid-90s, the gender balance of Top of the Pops presenters has completely swung the other way.

Why is that? I do like this quote that I dug out of an interview with Chris Cowie, where apparently he had a look at every male DJ on Radio 1 and decided they were all too ugly to become a presenter. So that's possibly one reason. Well, that really is turning things on its head from where it used to. That used to be a positive plus. If you look terrifying and creepy, then, you know, hey, hey welcome aboard here are some naive young girls

you can slip your arm around on screen they're all right aren't they they they look good together they but i mean it's a very it's they're very professional and they're very kind of they're slightly too professional in a way that makes me wince a little bit i'm kind of pulled in two directions with top of the pops where i get frustrated with it for being so shonky. And then when they make it less shonky, it's like, but that's not Top of the Pops at all. It's supposed to be slightly crap. I mean, Liz Bonin's certainly no thicko.

And Fern Cotton has been doing this sort of thing for eight years by now. So they are professional. But you wouldn't necessarily call them pop people, would you? They've definitely gone for, you know, it's presenters above all else rather than you know nerds of any sort or you know but liz bonin is really great she has gone on to do a lot of nature stuff doing a bbc program called animals in love where she uh hung out with some bonobos and tickled them it's like which i think this should this should go in a complete... You're saying, oh, my God, this is going to be...

Because we all know... I don't know if people do know about bonobos. They're the apes that just have sex all the time. But on this occasion, they're not. They're young ones. They're being tickled by a delighted Liz Bonin. And it's very wholesome content indeed. And, yeah, she's really great.

And she's very telegenic and um also um apparently she turned down fhm when they were like hey liz hey liz come and do you want to come and do as a spread do you want to do that thing where you pull one side of your pants way down over your hip and that's the thing isn't it and she said nah you're all right now you're right so fair dues yeah i like them i have to admit um i'd never heard of liz bonin until watching this episode of top of the pops the other day yeah she completely passed me by somehow um i know she mainly makes nature programs now she's sort of basically being groomed as the new attenborough but i don't really watch those those shows so she's brand new you hate nature don't you I hate nature

you hate nature you hate nature you hate nature don't you God see once we popped we can't stop with Adexi's references yeah so she's brand new to me but I've got to say

I could not be more impressed by her I mean for a start there's her backstory yeah she's mixed race of west indian heritage um trina dad on her mum's side martinique on her dad's side and growing up mixed race in a country as white as ireland i can't even imagine i mean people shouted the n-word at her on the streets in dublin when she was a kid and to to have the strength not only to come through that but to actively put

yourself in the public eye takes a sort of streak of steel i would say and we've seen what happens to high profile women of color in the media repeatedly of late i mean with the way alex scott and naga manchetti have been treated so there's there's that for starters and you know liz bonin is just she's obviously really smart and obviously just really sound i mean she also as well as the bonobo thing you mentioned she made the bbc documentary meet a threat to our planet and she doesn't eat me she does loads of environmental campaigning and she publicly had a pop at boris johnson over single-use plastics so you know she put her head above the parapet there she publicly supports black lives matter and all of that so you know she's obviously really sound yeah and on this top of the pops she's a warm

likable presence it doesn't hurt that she has that irish accent in which she could basically read out a statement telling me that i've been sentenced to death and it would still sound lovely and and because she's brand new to me and maybe this is unfair fern cotton not brand new to me, and maybe this is unfair, Fern Cotton, not brand new to me, she has the disadvantage of having made a very bad first impression on me back in the day, whereas Liz Bonin's brand new. I strongly took against Fern Cotton when she first emerged. And I can't rewrite history. I can't pretend I didn't. For me, she, around that time, was the walking embodiment of a certain cultural shift that I hated.

Around the turn of the millennium, there was a watershed moment where this kind of abyss opened up. It wasn't just a generation gap, but I would say a gap in values and attitudes. And it was marked out in geographical terms by the shift between people who socialised in Camden and Soho and people who socialised in Hoxton and Shoreditch. in verbal terms between people who would never ever or would always use the word sick right um so there was this there was this new as far as i this is how i saw the time i'm just sort of you know channeling my my then self but there was this proudly vacuous post-modern post-everything mentality among the hipsters of east london where everything was held at arm's length in implied quotation marks as tongs, you know.

And everything was just a bit of a laugh. And they were taking over radio. They'd taken over TV in the noughties. You had your George Lamb and your Nick Grimshaw and you had what Stuart Lee called those Russell comedians they have now. And yeah, right at the front of all that, you have Fern Cotton with her mean little downturned mouth

and her dead shark-like eyes. And I really thought she was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the noughties. I thought she was vacuous and thick and just one of those renter presenters who were colonising the telly. And in many ways, looking back, my dislike is irrational because that's how TV works, right? It's not as if I was ever likely to end up on TV myself, partly because i didn't come up via the enemy to bbc fast track but rather the um the melody maker road to nowhere but i was never someone who was dying to get on tv because i thought about it right uh and i used to talk about this with friends and i thought i hate nearly everyone on tv i scream at it i throw things at. I think everyone on TV is a cunt.

So why am I going to be any different if I'm on there? So there's a moment in an episode of Friends I recently re-watched, right, when they're all sat around watching the Gellers high school prom video and they're all laughing because Monica used to be fat. And she goes,

shut up, the camera adds ten pounds and Chandler says so how many cameras were actually on you, right? And what I reckon is what I reckon is not only does the camera add weight but it adds loathsomeness unfairly sometimes. I really think the very act of pointing a camera at someone and thereby you're giving them access to

invade your living room and get all up in your face, right? Immediately makes them ten times more hateable than if you just met them in the pub. Because you're like, who the fuck are you? Fuck off, who are you? What are you doing up in my face in my living room? And yeah, when you look into it,

Fern Cotton has done a lot of admirable things. Her Happy Place podcast and the related books speak up about mental health. And she's written a vegan cookbook, which obviously I approve of, being a tree-hugging meat dodger. She's done loads for good causes. She's not vegan, though.

No, I know. She's pescatarian. It doesn't matter. Like me. Yeah, but by putting the book out there, she's making it easier for people to be vegan. But we agree on that, me and Fern. Fish are cunts, aren't they?

Fish are cunts. When's a fish ever rescued a child from a well never oh man i remember the first time i went to glastonbury um i bought a badge that said fish have feelings too just because i thought it was hilarious but but yeah um and the other thing and i know i drove on about this sort of stuff, but at least she wasn't privately educated, you know, which makes her a bit of a rarity in the broadcast media, it really does. And plus, on a humanitarian level, we have to feel pity for her regarding this sentence on a Wikipedia page.

Yes. Oh, no. Cotton dated Ian Watkins, front man of the band Lost Prophets, in 2005. I mean, just when you thought Billy Piper had some horrors lurking in that catalogue of exes. I really did want to say, it doesn't matter, it's not like she's ever going to hear this,

but I hope she's okay. I really do. And the thing is this, even if I did find her dead-eyed and vacuous as a TV host, so what? It's not as if she's any worse than the DLTs or the Anthea Turners of

previous generations on that score, right? So I'm not going to say that I've made my peace with her to the extent that I'll ever willingly watch or listen to any of her shows for enjoyment. But, you know, I can just make the decision to quietly avoid her work without getting so enraged by it as I was at the time. And so I do regret going so overboard and and letting it get me so annoyed at the time not that she'll ever have been aware of my ire or even my existence you know but I want to apologize sorry once you start apologizing I know she's caught me on a good day you know what I mean because I another day I might have doubled down but you know there we go no it's true though you can just and it sounds really wet isn't it

it's like well if you don't like it you can just not look you can just turn away but it is true you can just go it's all right you know go go live your life um and i'll live mine and and we good well now more than ever if it's 1977 it's a different matter but you know now you can just not not watch stuff satisfying your musical needs tonight benny benessi their carol d side beyonce and the official top of the pops top 20 but first one of these songs of the summer it's wayne wonder So, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Fame Academy judges, leading Cotton to drop a Pink Floyd reference and Bonin to utter the show's well-worn-by-now catchphrase, it's still number one, it's Top of the Pops. We're then thrown into the 10th and penultimate Top of the Pops theme, the drum and bass remix of Whole Lotta Love by

Ben Chapman, which has been going for five years now. I mean, they really should have done a dubstep remix of Yellow Pearl after this, but, you know. Yeah, nice bit of UK garage. I mean, already, we're only 15 seconds into the episode, and there's quite a lot that's annoying, isn't there? Yes. I mean, for a start, Cotton can't even get the Pink Floyd lyric right,

which wound me up. And, yeah, these kind of sinister figures, that man and woman they cut to as if we're meant to know who they are. It's just assumed, but we'll come to that. But the thing with the credits, the whole lot of love, is that halfway through it,

they spoiler the whole show by telling you what's coming up. Now, Al, I know you know the kind of twists and turns of Top of the Pop's history inside out. And there were certain phases in the sort of classic era when they did this. I don't like it when they do. I don't think any of us do really, do we? No, no, no, no, no.

I like the surprise of somebody I don't fucking like and it's going to piss me off when they come on. Yeah. You know? Yeah, because, you know, after that, there's going to be something that you do like. Yes. If your tagline is, it's still number one, it's Top of the Pop,

stand behind that and go right what we have chosen for you tonight you're going to like enough of it that it's worth your while and you know the point is that you know we know what we're doing yeah it's just such a disappointment where it's like no don't touch that dial well i literally just put the show on it's you know 7 31 and two seconds like no no wait wait wait don't go away i'm not going anywhere what during my top of the pops watching phase i used to be absolutely militant about not looking at the telly pages in the in the newspapers because they'd spoiler it and say oh here's who's presenting it and here's two or three people that could be going on it's like no i don't want

to know you did the likely lads thing but with top of the pops exactly yes yeah i mean it's like everybody you know we've all squeezed a christmas present occasionally but that's you don't open them all on christmas eve unless it's you know unless you're in some scandinavian countries where that's what they do yeah yeah and also these two that also is a mark of of kind of weird desperation like here we've got something completely different for you that isn't anything to do with Top of the Pops. Well, I thought I was going to watch Top of the Pops. Yeah, it's almost like saying, this is Top of the Pops and it's number one.

But if you don't like it, there's other stuff here. It's really so needy. It's so needy. And do you think they're just shitting it because, you know, it's Covenation Street starting on the other side? Yes. And that's purely, you know it's uh combination street starting on the other side yes and that's purely

you know uh the fact that bonin and cotton are stood there announcing the start of top of the pops means that there'll be some people on the sofa saying oh oh yeah that's uh combination street time time to switch over yes so they're sort of leaping in there no no no don't go anywhere please yeah you know is it is it that you know i guess it is i feel bad for them too obviously being in that position having to toe that line you know and say that and mangle that line because they're good aren't they on in cotton they're all right no simon bates though so i miss the authority and gravitar of bates he'd certainly told you not to watch coronation street because it may contain northern swear words.

To be fair, he is prettier. Eventually, they introduce us to one of the songs of the summer, No Letting Go, by Wayne Wonder. Born in Buff Bay, Jamaica, in 1972, Von Wayne Charles began his dancehall career at the age of 15 as a member of the Metro Media Sound System. After coming to the attention of Sly Dunbar, he eventually linked up with King Tubbe and recorded a slew of records,

including a cover version of Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. But when Tubbe was shot dead in 1988, he eventually linked up with the producer Lloyd Pickout pick out dennis and recorded his debut lp no more chance a year later he moved to penthouse records and did cover versions of fast car by tracy chapman hold on by on vogue and forever young by alphaville eventually linking up with label mate buju banton and co-writing Murderer and Boom Bye Bye with him

for which he can eternally fuck off. By the end of the century, he made a dedicated turn towards R and B, setting up his own label Sing So and working with Foxy Brown and Lisa Left Eye Lopez, eventually picking up

a worldwide deal with Atlantic Records. This is the lead-off single from his new LP No Holding Back which came out in March. It crashed into the charts at number five a month ago, spent three weeks there on the bounce then dropped to number seven but this week it's nipped back up again to number three and here he is on stage one of the five stages in the top of the pop studio actually all named after crew members and wade and his chums were on the biggest stage of all called chris after chris cowell it's a bad choice because that stage is looking very sparse isn't it well yeah just one man and a dj and a couple of dancers it's a dog yeah and he's not really kind of prowling and owning

the stage in a very charismatic way not to me anyway he's having a go at a little prowl and trying to like work the crowd and stuff you say he's prowling about but only in the style of a kitten that's just getting used to a new home and sees its reflection for the first time. You can see like how kind of low down the stage is as well. I quite like the look of it. I mean, it's a massive kind of lighty-uppy. I mean, it's a little bit local nightclub, isn't it? It's a bit sort of, you can see the headlines in the sort of local free sheet.

Local nightclub installs new floor and it lights up. I love that. in the sort of local free sheet. Local nightclub installs new floor and it lights up. I love that. But overall, the whole production is not, it doesn't set anything on fire, does it? No. I love a lit up dance floor, you know.

I mean, obviously, it makes us think, if we're of a certain vintage or even not, of the Billie Jean video. And of course, Saturday Night Fever, particularly the front cover of the album. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's got a long, there's a storied history. I'm sure there's a, you know, there's a long read

in the history of the light up dance floor. And what was the club as well? It's in the Common People video. Oh, yeah, Eve's, where smashing happened. Eve's, yeah. Smashing. Yes. And I dare say that we've all been to clubs

where smashing happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is where the Common People video was smashing. Yes. And I dare say that we've all been to clubs where smashing happened. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is where the Common People video was filmed. And yeah, I loved it. That was the main selling point. Apparently it was where Christine Keeler used to go with Profumo on their sort of secret dates in the 60s, or at least that was part of the selling point. And she'd like put a chair in the middle of the dance floor

and sit on it funny. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's storied history. It's great. But yeah, and Wayne Wander is kind of a very small footnote in this now. It's funny watching this, seeing this guy who, clearly by his sort of chart position and his status at the top of the show, was at least fleetingly a big deal.

Because, you know, as I said, it was my job in 2003 to have a handle on what was going on pop-wise, but I've honestly never heard of him until we looked at this episode. I saw the name and my first thought was, you know, Stevie's son, like Damien Jr. Gong Marley or Enrique Iglesias. No, he was called Wayne Wunder

because he spent lots of time at school sitting there and pondering things. Right. And reasoning. Wayne Ponder would have been at the stars yes yes and Lazarus yeah yeah sadly he's got nothing to do with uh what we must call the ebony and ivory hit maker but um yeah the name it does sound like a piss take doesn't it like some really on the nose comedy character from a second rate sketch series you know like somebody who's watched the day-to-day and thought, oh, we can do that.

And they, I know, we'll call a pop star Wayne Wonder. That would be hilarious. Oh, it's like somebody, or maybe, you know, a friend of Philomena Cunk, who's like, no, I've been, no, I had a wonder about that. And I thought it was shit. Yeah. The other thing about this set is that he's got on a sort of blue and white track suit, which kind of really coordinates, but also with the kind of general blandness of the track

and the performance serves as quite effective camouflage. Yes. Yes, you can hardly tell there's even anyone there visually as well as orally. He's in a blue puma track suit and a white t-shirt, looking very sports casual. Yeah. He's gone and got himself an urban starter kit hasn't he which consists of some decks uh a dj with dreadlocks and movable arms to do all the gestures they do when when they put on a record and got fuck all else to do for the next

few minutes yeah and uh two honeys with a z on the end in batty riders. Yeah. Very tight cycling shorts. I mean, if he'd had a bit more pocket money, he could have got himself a bouncy car and some youths doing some graffiti on a wall and then spinning on their backs. Or indeed a bouncy castle. Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be even better. It's funny you mention it being a starter kit and being budgetary issues because puma right all right it's all about perception and maybe i'm not a sportswear aficionado anyway so i'm the wrong person to ask but i always thought puma was a bit kind of third division do you know what i mean yeah well it's we could spend hours talking about this ever since krs1 had a go at MC Shining for wearing whack Puma sneakers,

I've always been an adios boy. So yeah, I understand what you're saying. At least it's not fucking Umbro. No, but the thing, that's it to me. Puma is only just a step above what your mum gets you for Christmas when she's got it wrong. Gola.

Yeah, or she's gone to like Woolworths and got their own brand thing that's got two stripes instead of three or whatever yes there's a really good article about this in the Beastie Boys

magazine Grand Royal which is really hard to get hold of now but somebody's archived most of it online about the birth

of Adidas or I'm going to say Adidas right because that's what we said in the 70s and that's what Run DMC say themselves

and Puma because it was two brothers a bit like little and aldi now isn't it it's these sort of feuding german families why aren't you fighting each other over the difference between little and older that's coming that'll happen trust me yeah you boys and your sports wares just as long as it's velcro i'm i'm good like i don't understand why velcro has not it's one of those things it's like you, I'm good. I don't understand why Velcro has not... It's one of those things, it's like, you know, finally we've got the electric car now,

but it took a really long time because it was being suppressed and everything. Who was suppressing Velcro? Velcro is the best... Big shoelace. That's who's suppressing it. Big shoelace. Big shoelace. That's who.

Fat lace. Anywho, Wayne Wonder, that guy. You remember that guy? Yeah. So shall we get onto the song okay it's so based around

the very solidly head-bopping Diwali rhythm yes by I love it when white people say rhythm that's I'm not

yeah but it would be whiter still for me to say rhythm wouldn't it I think we should lean into it based on the Diwali rhythm I believe I think we should say it in the whitest way i think we should lean into it based on the diwali rhythm i

believe i think we should say in the whitest way possible we should really lean into the whiteness do you just say rhythm or do you really commit to go redeem um i i don't know i would refer to corrupt fm on on this however they would do it you know based on duality which is a loop a loop created by a jamaican producer steven lenker marsden yes well done it's something that you kind of can't it's really hard to fuck it up because it's just solid thing um this actually would appear in two weeks time as the foundation of uh-oh brackets never leave you close brackets by lumady which is the famous one where it's sort of slightly out of key but in a really compelling way and that was massive and um you know if you don't twitch one muscle or another to it something has gone wrong

and you should probably see a doctor um and also this it would form the uh backbone of rihanna's debut single in 2005. Yes. So in a couple of years' time. Yeah, Bond Replay, yeah. Which is a fucking banger. Get Busy by Sean Paul. Get Busy by Sean Paul, yes. Feet, sorry, Feet Sean Paul, obviously.

To give him his full name. Basically, the noughties are the noughties Feet Sean Paul, let's get it right. And they were better for it. The thing with that with that rhythm um if I'm going to say rhythm that rhythm um is that yeah it was inspired by the Indian Feast of Lights Diwali so I don't know how exactly maybe sort of Bollywood kind of are we saying Diwali right oh are we Diwali I don't know but yeah the thing is there was a whole compilation yes

in 2002 on Greensleeves called Diwali all using the same beat which I mean I'm trying to imagine I've not listened to it but imagine listening to that

all the way through and the thing is No Letting Go is on there so it's already a year old by the time it's a UK hit so if this is

the waters you're swimming in musically if this was your thing you must be thinking, oh, fucking hell, not this rhythm again. I don't know. But most notoriously used a year later in Dirty Kaffar by Sheikh Tara and the Soul Salah crew,

which was a jihadi rap video, which basically stated that Tony Blair, George Bush, the BNMP and Ariel Chiron should be chucked on a massive bonfire and 9-11 was dead good and there should be more of it but the problem is it's a fucking tune

I mean bad people good music hey man you've got to separate the art from the artist man this is very soft and weedy and nothing yes very slight very slight it's meant to be a sort of lovely kind of sit on the beach think about your woman kind of thing but it yeah also it's a bit the point isn't the lyrics obviously but like yeah there's nothing to the lyrics oh lovely lady i like you oh it's fucking colon isn't it kicking the sun yeah girl

i'm so glad we've dated oh wow you old you old charmer wayne um mr ponder why haven't we mated this sounds a little bit it's a bit of a confusing thing as well because it's like oh we're in love we're sitting on the beach we're drinking daiquiris it's all good but there's trouble in paradise they say good things must come to an end but i'm optimistic about being your friend though i made you cry by my doings with keisha and anisha but that was back then doings fucking hell that's such a non-art word that my non-art used to use that word all the fucking time whenever she ran me a bath when i was a kid she she'd always used to say oh make sure you go all around your doings sorry carry on so is he is he just sneaking in he's just slipping in a little confession of

infidelity well no he's bragging on um inter the song just goes to show that reggae and its offshoots have absolutely withered on the vine by the turn of the century you know if you discount sean paul i mean he was expected to be a breakout reggae dancehall star in the 90s but he's gone and taken the r&b shilling here hasn't he and from now on reggae is just going to be something that you can bolt onto your record or your mobile phone advert for a bit of urban credibility which is fucking weird because in the 90s, reggae, or at least pop reggae, was huge. Yes.

You know, everything from, you know, Shaggy and Red Dragon and Chacodemus, and it was enormous. Like, every summer, there'd be four or five just inescapable pop reggae songs. But yeah, by the time we get to 2003, it's very much sort of Lego or Meccanoconnell bolt on isn't it yeah it's your standard male r&b thing here isn't it there's a bit of gangster milkman whistling at the beginning and he's he's dedicating it to the ladies uh there's a bit of shouting from the dj who who goes you know oh come on london or whatever top of the pops very offensive to people from

macclesfield who are tuning in. What about their issues? What about their needs? Level up the North, DJ. Fuck's sake. We've spoken before about how certain pop and dance records have some rap bolted onto them. But you could basically shrink down everything that Wayne Wonder does on this

track. Just call it some reggae and just stick it in the middle of a Nelly Ftado single or shakira single or just whatever you know i don't know if they'd want it but you know yeah r&b is a strange genre anyway because you know the men always have to sound like soft lads who go on about the ladies or almost always cat shit there's obviously some brilliant exceptions to that rule but the truly great r&b is almost always made by women yeah even if all what they usually have to say is your skin so what you're looking at me for you fucking trump piss off

you know there's huge gobs of female r&b which is essentially no money no funny i suppose the comparison that's staring us in the face here if we're looking at a guy who started out as a producer before having hits in his own right and he's wearing dark glasses and all of that is R. Kelly he's kind of like trying to be a sort of reggae R. Kelly by doing this yeah it's not very good is it he's flat as a fucking pancake isn't he yeah he's singing over a backing track obviously so either he's got no in-ear monitor so fair enough can't can't blame the guy, or he's just a legit terrible singer. I don't know. Well, the thing is that I always notice this just because I had, like,

because I had a few singing lessons one time and so I sort of know how to do it. So you can just hear that everything is coming out on, like, the last 10% of each breath. Yeah. Which is, like, just don't do it to yourself. It's actually really easy to, like, not do that. And he can't not sing, but there's this unpleasant thing of, like, it doesn't sound relaxed. It makes you feel tense because you're just kind of like, breathe, breathe, breathe, you know.

And it's just, it is unpleasantly sort of just a tiny bit discordant. If you're going to be discordant, like, really go for it. Like, the Lumidi track is so much better than this, even though she's way, way off. Which apparently wasn't her fault. She maintains that it was recorded to a completely different backing track and then the producer just slapped something else on yeah but whatever it is it's one of those weird things that just sort of works right and this doesn't really yeah and if he hasn't got any an ear monitor can't they spring for that have they spunked all the money on the fucking lighty up dance floor we've already talked about the branding even the record labels on the

on the records that are spinning around on the decks top of the pops logo oh yeah slap right on them yeah like it's the wig and casino they're trying to hide the fact that it's that it's way wonder no letting go that pot of history though jesus christ king fucking tubber reduced to producing stock aching and waterman songs at the end of his life fucking breaks your your heart, man. Like the whitest thing. King Tubby meets Sonia Uptown. But, you know, Jamaica did have this kind of long tradition of doing that, going right back to people covering the Beatles, you know, Marcia Griffiths in that brilliant version of Don't Let Me Down.

But, yeah, I mean, it's just something that was just a standard thing. They would churn them out. They would hear what's coming on the airwaves over from the mainland US and quite often they'd be easy listening or country tracks and then somebody like Johnny Nash or whoever would just churn out a cover of it so I can see why they did it

I'm sure King Tubby's heart wasn't in it necessarily Yeah but the difference is Simon back then when they did cover songs like that, more often than not they made them better or at least equally brilliant in a different way. As pedestrian and generic as the lyrics to this song are, at least they're a cut above something else in his back catalogue, which you have touched upon.

Boom bye bye in a batty boy head, rude boy no promote no batty man, dem halfy dead. This not a deal. Guy come near we. Then his skin we must peel. Burn him up bad like an old tyre wheel. So that's not from No Letting Go.

That's from the, as you mentioned, the notoriously homophobic single Boom Bye Bye by Bougie Banton, which Wayne Winter apparently wrote. So if that's true, Wayne Winter can, once again, absolutely go fuck himself. And yeah, I think maybe we've wasted plenty of our breath on the arsehole already. Well, I mean, he did say in an interview,

Budger Banton said, the standard get out clause. Number one, the Bible reckons it. Right. And number two, it's about a paedophile, actually, that was living in the area. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, so there you go. So he's conflating

gays and pedophiles oh that's okay then as long as he's only conflating somebody's sexuality with crime great yeah yeah fine that's fine anything else to say about this um the dj um god bless him bless him he's he's giving it the old college try but he kind of goes take it to the bridge and the you know which is not all that at all i mean i guess you know this is not a moment to do your james brown thing really it's like just just leave it mate you've done your job you've pretended to lift an arm and put it on the fucking record that's it that's your job just stand there now yeah you've earned your 50 quid but i mean personally i know this may be a personal thing but when i hear somebody say take it to the bridge the next thing that my brain wants to hear is dirty babe uh-huh that's what i want you know i don't want to hear more

of this yes you know why would i want that also there's sort of slightly embarrassing fade out the dj is like yeah top of the pops london we love you top of the London again and fucking oh i know it's it's where they were though to be fair yeah but they all do that though don't i know it's terrible we all feel terrible about it people have gone out on stage at glastonbury and said london oh well that is embarrassing which is quite funny actually but yeah there's that sort of slightly uncomfortable moment of like demi silence while wayne brings the vocals to a close and the dj goes tab of the pops london we love you and then everyone just like oh is it over now okay yay and yeah it's just a little bit it's a sad end to a sad start yeah and the reason for that is because

the song is so fucking slight but it's got that rhythm and you just think oh well this is going to kick off any minute now he's doing his soft ass bit but it's really going to kick in and it's going to get proper and some arses are going to be shook. And it never happens. It doesn't really have a dynamic or a structure as such. So when he says take you to the bridge, you think you're looking around for a bridge. You're looking around, it's more like a step. A style.

A ledge. Take you to the ledge. So the following week, No Letting Go dropped three places to number six. The follow-up, Bounce Along. There, that's when you have your bouncy castle, got to number 19 in November of this year, and he was done as a chart act. By the middle of the decade, he'd gone back to covering rubbish 80s songs in a UB40 styler, including a cover of Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins, which was on some Adam Sandler film I haven't bothered to watch.

And when he appeared in the identity parade of Nevermind the Buzzcocks, he revealed that he had gone into business at home selling yams. He was still gigging and everything, but he was selling yams on the side. Makes a change from T-shirts and knocked-off CDs, isn't it? Well, the trick is to give them away for free like, you know, the darkness with their pizza. Just a bit of free food. Yeah, maybe if you had the Puma

logo burned into them or something. Like a sort of Halloween lantern just carved in there. Yes! I think he was just in the pocket of Big Yam at that point. Maybe when I'm with you it's mr p here and the other mr p and we are the hosts of two mr p's in a podcast the educational podcast where you don't actually learn a thing no instead we explore the weird wonderful and downright hilarious things that happen in school from people actually doing the job we

reminisce on our own time at school, funny things we experience each day. And of course, we share your hilarious stories from the chalk face. So if you work in a school or just want a nostalgic trip down memory lane, sit up straight, fingers on lips and get ready for the lesson. We love you, London.

Moving on up into the top three, it's Tropical Totty, Wayne Wonder. Next next up a band who must be huge fans of the old Sunblock featuring a member of metal maniacs it not these guys decided to form a band just to show that they have a fun side Now I don't know about taking them home to meet the parents But with their own take on the Billy Idol classic white wedding, it's the murder dolls after wonder gets described as tropical totter by bonin she describes her next act as a band who must be huge fans of the old sunblock and that she didn't know if she'd want to take them home to her parents it's murder dolls with white wedding formed in des moines iowa in 1994 the rejects were a metal band put together by the guitarist nathan jord, better known as Joe Air,

who had also played in local bands The Have Nots and Anal Blast. In 1995, Jordison was invited to play drums with a new local group, The Pale Ones, who eventually renamed themselves after one of their early tracks, Slipknot. And by the time they finally signed a record deal in 1998, the Rejects were shelved. By 1999, with Slipknot's debut LP becoming the fastest-selling metal LP in American chart history and well on its way to going double platinum, Jordison developed a hankering for side projects again and was up for resurrecting the rejects to this end he linked up with wednesday 13 the lead singer of frankenstein drag queens from planet 13 and trip eisen of the new york metal bands dope and static x eventually changing the name to murder dolls

they recorded a demo which became their debut lp right to remain violent in early 2002 and the video from its main track dead in hollywood featured a guest appearance by marilyn manson repaying jordison for his appearance in the video for tainted love and it got to number 54 over here in november of 2002 this is the follow-up, a cover of the Billy Idol single, which got to number six over here in August of 1985, and it's crashed into the chart this week at number 24. And as they've been in the country last month touring with Stone Sour, another Slipknot offshoot,

they popped in to get Summit in the can for this episode of top of the pop so yes here we go a prime example of a pre-record job the way wonder one was uh was pre-recorded as well you can kind of tell by the way they cut back and forth from the acts to the presenters so yes sarah in a previous chart music you you mentioned that you like slipknot you saw them did i'm evil panto i think was the was the phrase you used. Yeah, they were never going to be my faves. You know, I was not their audience, but I did get it after a bit. I mean, I realised that, forgive me if I've told this before, but seeing them at Reading, I realised what they were about and who they were for and what they're doing is actually

brilliant and very clever. Not clever in a cynical way, clever in a very sort of emotionally intelligent way. Because they realised what the runnings was, which is kids. And they were like a kids' party band. It's like these are grubby teenage boys on their first duet at Reading without their parents. Reading is like legendarily a kind of really gruesome kind of rite of passage, as it was at the time. A metal crash. Exactly. It was a metal crash. What they did at one point was get the whole crowd this was on the main stage

so however many thousands of people got everyone to crouch down they were like crouch right down to the ground and eventually everybody did this and it was hilarious to see everyone just sort of hunkering down like rabbits and then jump the fuck up

and so everyone just sprang into the air and it was like this is so perfect they understood that these are still kids they're still children they're just sweary grotty children lurching upwards into adulthood against their will it's play the fuck away

it is play the fuck away and that's there is a great sort of truth in that because it's like yeah adulthood is terrifying and being a teenager is extremely intense and very frightening in and of itself and you can't do anything about it and like you know there are a lot of young people who feel that they cannot handle it they're going to look for ways out which can be very dangerous and slipknot was saying to them hey it, it's OK. Listen to this shit. Do some screaming. Connect with other people who feel the same as you and know that we see you and we love you and all your grubby adolescent grottiness and just try to rupture your throat in some

way with the ah of everything and you'll feel better, you know, and tomorrow will be another day. And I think that's that's really beautiful. That's like life saving shit. And that has value beyond whatever musical value that I don't actually know how well you know, and tomorrow will be another day. And I think that's really beautiful. That's like life-saving shit. And that has value beyond whatever musical value. I don't actually know how well thought of Slipknot are. Apparently in the last, because they're still going,

and there's a kind of resurgent, actually turns out Slipknot were really good thing. But it's so far outside of what I know. I just don't know enough about metal. But, you know, this is life-enhancing, life- enhancing life saving shit which is the best you can hope for for music so i knew who that was for the murder dolls i don't know who it's for maybe there's an audience for it in the same way that there's a type of horror film fan who will watch any old shit with fake blood in it doesn't have to be good on any level just give me a hundred weight

of horror just stick the horror channel on oh what you know that's not me by the way sorry christ no it's a cartoon schlock nonsense yeah they did actually appear in an episode of dawson's creek as like the halloween party band yes it would make sitcom parents of the time furrow their brows that is what it's for it's a sort of a trash nonsense isn't it really yeah i agree with sarah about horror films um i'm you know i imagine we may have similar tastes in that you know you get people like rob zombie uh who's obviously from a similar world um making films called house of a thousand corpses and for me house of one corpse is always going to be a better film yeah you know what i mean maybe house of no corpses but an implied one you know that you know that that's

my kind of horror uh rather than you know gallons and gallons of blood it's interesting listening to sarah's thoughts about uh who slip not of four and what they mean to those people because i was i was on the bus the other day and there was a young couple sat in front of me. They're about 14 years old and the girl had like half green, half black hair and the boy had a studded dog collar on and they were kissing while keeping their COVID masks on,

which was both sweet and weird. But they were basically the same sort of emo kids you might have seen on any bus and in any shopping centre any year in the last 20, right? And it occurred to me that they weren't even alive when this murder doll's appearance happened. Fucking hell. That's funny, isn't it?

But also that their 2003 equivalents would have been watching this shouting fucking yes in the same way that we you, Al, me and Neil shouted fucking yes in 1983 when Twisted Sister came on, right? Because there will always be an appetite for this kind of band

among a certain kind of teenager if they catch them at just the right age. And in other years it might have been Aiden or Motionless in White or Black Veil Brides or whoever's on the front of karang right now i don't know i haven't looked in a while the murder dolls served a role and here's where i have to state an interest i know one of the murder dolls oh yeah one of one of them's a mate ac slade who's on guitar one of the guitarists he's on he's the one on the far left of the screen and he's been in loads of bands including Joan Jett's Blackhearts

and his own band Trashlight Vision and I got him to DJ for me at Stay Beautiful once actually but I can't remember how we got to know each other I mean through a mutual friend maybe but we bonded over a shared love of the Manic Street Preachers which seemed really unusual

for an American meddler in fact I once took him to see the Manics in Cambridge and I got him backstage Manic Street Preachers, which seemed really unusual for an American meddler, you know. In fact, I once took him to see the Manics in Cambridge, and I got him backstage, and I introduced him to Nicky Wire, who seems quite excited himself. And of course he was, because Nicky Wire's from the Valleys, and he's got that inner meddler, you know, that inner Kerrang kid. And Nicky Wire's always going to be more impressed by A.C. Slade from The Murder Dolls than if I'd introduced him to the bassist from The Young Knives or The Good Books or whoever. Do you know what I mean? So I got in touch with AC about this episode of Top of the Pops to see what he remembered about it.

And his answer might seem a little bit confusing and misremembered, but I'll come back to that. But here's what he said. Oh, yeah, I was part of that. One memory was that we performed it entirely live, which is very rare on TOTPs. This really pissed off the other bands that performed that day. One of those bands was Marlon Manson. He was supportive of the band until we started to do well.

So there was some awkwardness between our two bands, but no drama or anything. But the energy of a live band is always more impactful than a band who plays to backing tracks. That's not a diss or put down to the other bands. It's just an observation and makes me glad we fought to play it live. Right, so back to me now. Now, as we know, Marilyn Manson is not on this episode.

However, there's no evidence that murder dolls are in the same studio as Liz Bonin and Fern Cotton. They just cut to and from screens. And because of that kind of, we talked about the syndicated, flat-packed, IKEA nature of Chris Cowie's Top of the Pops, it's entirely possible that the murder dolls did record on the same day as marlin manson yeah whether i mean it turns out it was in london but it might as well have been italy or

france or germany you know one of these top the pops outposts and and manson's um clip just got used on a different show so if if ac says he recorded on the same day as marlin manson he probably did you know what i mean you kind of got to remember if marilyn manson's about yeah yeah so so that's a little insight into how the how the show was put together and also just the slight beef between these kind of icons of that era and so so the lineup uh that we're looking at it's ac slade on guitar eric griffon on bass ben graves possibly not his real name on drums wednesday 13 on vocals and joey jordison on the other guitar yeah and i guess it was perceived as being joey jordison's band and can i just make the obvious joke i'll never forgive him for that handball in 1977 um sarah's now completely baffled by this uh i mean slipknot

were very much not for me and i i did i i really appreciated what sarah said about them and i i you know i get it. But at the same time, I wasn't the target audience. I saw them at the Reading Festival in God knows where, probably the same year. And I just found it so kind of basic and reductive and stupid. But yeah, I know that's what it's meant to be. But anyway, I had a lot more time for Murder Dolls myself.

And Murder Dolls in some ways are part of this lineage that runs from Alice Cooper to be but anyway i i had a lot more time for murder dolls myself and you know murder dolls in some ways are part of this lineage that runs from alice cooper through things like the misfits and the cramps you know just mucking around with horror for fun and yeah for me all right i admit the billy idol cover they're doing here it's a bit redundant because it's a song that has a brooding menace to it anyway and you don't make it more menacing by doing a heavy metal death scream in it you just screw your face up and raise a fist at appropriate moments yeah yeah um usually when he says shotgun exactly because the thing about mechel is if you're going to be a lead singer you've got to have proper fucking pipes and he's just got a wet straw of a voice he does a bit the

thing with the original is that um there's some modulation to it because he's just got a wet straw of a voice. He does a bit. The thing with the original is that there's some modulation to it because he's sort of doing the murmuring kind of, hey, little sister, what, you know, and then kind of, you know, revving it at a certain point. But this is just like proper hairball singing from the... Hey, little sister! It's proper Eric Cartman. Hey, little sister, what have you done?

Just full gravelly screamy bit the whole way through and everything is whacked up to that setting, which I understand, like I laughed. I did enjoy this in spite of myself. There's also the, what I always bang on about, the kind of American stagecraft, which is full in evidence here. Yes.

You know, which is just, I love to see a guy, you know, spin around and point his guitar and it's like good old wednesday just properly going for it at the top screamy um register of his of his voice the whole way through it's what you call a death growl i guess the whole way through and it doesn't help that with his dreads he just looks like a fucking potato that's been left in the cupboard for two years. Now, that's a horror film I would like to see. What happens to a demon potato that's been left in the cellar?

Oh, my God, it's alive. The singing is not the point of this, is it? I mean, his breath control on this is so bad, he actually takes a breath in the middle of the word sister, which is not the place to do it, i took right against this record i was no fan of billy idol but by about this time i was accepting him as part of the canon because in the 80s a lot of people thought billy idol was rod vicious you know he'd gone to america and sold out he's called billy idol like he literally called himself billy idol what

do what do you people expect of him like it's kind of a thing i fucking love billy idol he was so cute he was so cute and ridiculous he was great i mean fucking hell by 2003 is there anything that makes you feel more old than hearing a song that was part of your life when you were a teenager but being used as a cover version for kids who probably never heard it before. Fucking hell. But there's another interesting compare and contrast here, between this and the performance of Twisted Sister in the last episode. Twisted Sister had far less tools in their presentation armory,

like just a couple of flash parts. And this lot have got, you know, they've got the fucking works haven't they have they they've got their logos massively by the side which is it's like a toilet sign for women in a coffee with horns and in a coffee yeah better lighting better costumes but not feeling it debatable whether they got better costumes really i mean d schneider i don't know if you can beat that but that's for another episode we've already done no i think they look fucking costumes really i mean d snyder i don't know if you can beat that but that's for another episode we've already done it no i think they look fucking awesome here i'll be honest with you yeah i'm enjoying the look i mean first of all as as for the song you know yeah i you know the cover version doesn't do much for me i i had more time for their own material that single you

mentioned dead in hollywood in particular but yeah i i think they i think they look amazing i mean for one thing right black white and red is a color scheme you can't go wrong with which is a fact that is known by manchester united the third reich and the designers of pretty much every vampire movie poster ever just black white and red it works shiny black as well you've been waiting years to compare man united to the nazis haven't you no comment and uh and you know they are wearing some fucking killer clobber here, I would say. Several of them have got the same sort of stack-heeled goth boots

I was wearing myself at the time. And Wednesday 13 is in this fucking awesome black PVC jacket thing with white piping on it. I would wear the shit out of that. He's got a tie on, hasn't he? He's got a PVC tie. Yeah, I know exactly where you could buy them from. Corporate goth. And there's a medical

red cross on the arm, which is a big plus. Nice. Thank you. Yeah, if someone gets a nosebleed or does their ankle in, in the front row, we can go out and sort them, can't we? Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I'm not the target audience for this because I'm too old, even in 2003. But if I was those kids on the bus that I

saw the other day, or the 2003 equivalent, I would have been bouncing off the fucking walls with excitement at this. I'm absolutely sure of that. Yeah, fair enough. I probably, when I say I didn't know who this was for, then yeah, of course that would be who it was for. In a similar way to Slipknot,

because Joey Jordison, who actually passed away last month, so I was looking up a lot of tributes to him, a lot of people who were very, very sad. And something that he said was, this was when he was in Slipknot, but he said, our music is so personal. Each person that's bought one of our records, I have something in common with each one of them,

which is just beautiful. I mean, that's like, I think they were very, all of them were very sincere in that and very earnest and really wanted to, you know, reach the kids. So, you know, this, even though I didn't quite get that from this, it took me a long time to get it from Slipknot because, you know, there was a lot of gnarly, schlocky stuff in the way of it. And I was like, what the fuck is this?

But I can appreciate this on that level too. I can see that there is that thing. It's a gang you can join, you know. Which one of Slipknot was he because they were like the fucking metal village people weren't they they all had like one in the mask he was number one which is they all had each had a number he was number one his mask was like the the pretty one i'm not sure what it was and they had various they had different versions of the masks kind of throughout but he always had a variation on it's like the comedy tragedy mask

but just the sort of you think of like the emoji no expression one did he have like his dreadlocks coming out through little holes like it was a colander one of them had that no no he had like very lank sort of sort of just very straight hair over the top he had to stop drumming because he had um transverse myelitis which is where your spinal cord swells up it's really really nasty um but um he did before that he did all sorts of he had like an amazing drum rig where they'd strap him to it and it was in the shape of pentagram he would do a drum solo and it would tip up and rotate and everything apparently he's you know technically a really good drummer but to me it does just sound like

it's like angry wasp dancing on a tin of seven up type type drumming. He's a typical metal muso. You know, a band the size of Slipknot by 2003, they can afford to take their time between albums. But he just wants to play, man. So, you know, why not start another band? Or resurrect your old band. And also for the pop-craze youngsters, it's a great way to see people in massive bands in a more intimate venue,

even though they're going to ignore your request for people equal shit yeah everybody seems pretty happy i i did just want to just want to add to this this track is from the special edition of the album beyond the valley of the murder dolls and i just wanted to read in full the track listing of this album please do i can't do the voice well i could do the voice but then i wouldn't be able to do the rest of the podcast so you know slip my wrist twist my sister dead in hollywood love at first fright people hate me she was a teenage zombie die my bride grave robbing usa 1976 66 dawn of the dead let's go to war dressed to depress kill miss america b movie Let's Go To War, Dressed To Depress, Kill Miss America, B-Movie Scream Queen, Motherfucker I Don't Care, Crash Crash, Let's Fuck, I Take Drugs, White Wedding, Welcome To The Strange, I Love To Say Fuck. Oh my god, Let's Go To War, because the Manic Street Preachers had a song called Let's Go To War just a few years after this.

I'm claiming it's because I introduced those two, you know. The cross-pollination of murder but yeah it's a fun trash thing and i did chortle all the way through it and i loved all the the pvc strides yeah it always comes back to the trousers doesn't it sarah trousers are important the leggy mount baton of chart music hey and at least they actually played it live they're not like those bent cunts who aren't fucking real yes so the following week white wedding dropped 18 places to number 42 a few weeks later murder dolls were put on hold while slipknot recorded their next lp volume 3 the subliminal verses they reunited at the end of the year for a tour of Europe but were then put on

hiatus due to other band commitments, reunited in 2010 for the LP Women and Children Last. But by which time, Jordison had developed acute transverse myelitis, a spinal inflammation which caused him to lose the use of his legs which led to him leaving or being fired from Slipknot in 2013, depending on who you talk to. Although plans were drawn for a re-reunion of murder dolls at the end of last decade, it never came off, and as we've already mentioned, Joey Jordison died in his sleep at the age of 46. All right then, pop craze youngsters.

We're going to lob this manky potato into the compost bin and knock it on the head for a while and come back at your heart tomorrow. So on behalf of Sarahah b and simon price i'm al needham thanks for listening see you tomorrow stay pop crazed shark music Start music. GreatBigHour.com Hello, I'm Alex Lynch, and this is Out of Character, a podcast about sketch and character comedy. You're not a wizard, but I say I am. I've got a beard.

Oh, yeah, he's right, he does have a beard, actually. In this show, I chat to writers and performers from the world of sketch and character comedy. And I sort of couldn't believe what I was seeing. Like, I couldn't believe anything could be that good. That moment of self-hatred is your rehearsal. That's what you've been doing it your whole life. Find out what made them venture into it.

Yeah, I mean, just getting that DVD in and binging through those was just some of the most profound comedy joy of my life. I'd spent my whole childhood being, I'll be honest, a dick. Talk about their characters. And it just made me really want to, like, make her move with her pelvis, basically. Maybe meet some of their characters. Because she's actually only got one leg,

and that's why she's been hot pink. I don't know what to say. She's quite terrifying. That is correct. And generally just shoot the breeze and more importantly, have a laugh. It's all an act, Alex. I'm horrible. I'm an horrible person.

That's so good. Recorded entirely in the first lockdown. The most joyous bit of idiocy. And Twitter was full of just people going, that's awful or that's brilliant. That's Out of Character with me Alex Lynch. Hello, I'm a spider.

That was nuts, which it was. Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts.