Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #46 (Part 3): 17th December 1987 – Mission Accomplished, Agent King Cole

Episode Date: December 18, 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. Now available in Fun-sized portions, and full of rich, chunky swearing. 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.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. is a member of the great big owl family this will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence which could be quite graphic it may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words what do you like listen to um Um, chart music.

Chart music. It's Thursday night. It's Top of the Pops. It's December the 17th, 1987. It's Top of the Pops It's December the 17th, 1987 It's cover versions It's loads of gelled up blokes in suits It's absolute cat shit Ey up, you pop-crazed youngsters And welcome back to the third part of Chart Music number 46

Sarah B Hiya David Stubbs Hello, hello I am still reeling from the shitness we had to witness in that last part. Fucking hell. This is not good. Well, you know, hang in there.

Yeah. The shitness we had to witness. Something like that. Sorry, go on. Yeah. Let's not fanny about them. No. Let's just gird our loins and get stuck in.

Hopefully something will turn up. I'm sure it will. Simply rag and how strange the change from Michael to Gary. Yeah, great. Let's have a look at the absolute answer this week. Stop worrying. A new entry at number 40, Kiss and Reason to Love. Second new entry at 39, The Christians with Ideal World.

At 38, it's Boy George to Be Reborn. New entry number three comes in at 37, Sunita's GTO. Wally Jump Jr. with Tighten Up is a new entry at 36. And 35, Rick Astley, Whenever You Need Somebody. New entry at 34, For the Smiths, Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me Nina Simone, My Baby Just Cares For Me at 33 At 32, Whitesnake, And Here I Go Again The Housemartins, Build at 31 And a new entry for Jellybean at 30, Jingo

Dormedly, Jennifer Warnes, I've Had the Time of My Life is this week's 29 And at 28 it's Cutting Crew and I've Been in Love Before Some Guides from Maxi Priest is this week's 27 And at 26 it's Five Star with Somewhere, Somebody New Orders Touched by the Hand of God, a new entry at 25. And Satellite from the Hooters is this week's number 24. At 23, I am the man from Anthrax.

And up to this week's 22 goes level 42 with Children Say. Wet, wet, wet, big leak to 21 this week with Angel Eyes. And Nat King Coles, When I Fall In Love, a new entry at 20. Highest new entry from former go-go Belinda Carlyle, Heaven Is A Place On Earth at 19. And at 18, The Communards Never Can Say Goodbye.

A big leak to 17 from 33 for Simply Red and Every Time We Say Goodbye. And So Emotional from Whitney Houston is this week's 16. Up to number 15 from 27 goes Johnnyny hates jazz turn back the clock and paul mccartney's once upon a long ago is this week's 14 13 this week got my mindset on you from george harrison proclaimers letter from america is at 12 and at number 11 a, Alexander O'Neill with Criticize. I absolutely adore this new record. I hope it's going to be number one for Christmas.

The Pogues and Kirstie McColl and the fabulous fairy tale of New York. This is The Pogues. It was Christmas Eve, babe In the drunk tank

An old man said to me Won't see another one After Reid demonstrates what a piss-poor singer he is and the viewing audience sigh with relief that he's not been allowed to bring his guitar to the studio, Davis leads us into the first three quarters of this week's Top 40, from number 40 to number 11. Fucking hell, they chonked through that, didn't they?

This is really the dawning of Top of the Pops beginning to dispense with the charts as soon as possible, isn't it? Yeah, not like me, you know, I used to have my little exercise book and write down all the kind of what had gone up and what had gone down. I suppose people like me were thinner on the ground. Have you still got those? Yeah, a little exercise book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three different felt tip pens, a grey felt tip if a song maintained its position, etc, etc, and then coloured ones if it went up or down. sarah were you um charts obsessed at this time not in precisely that way you weren't tapping things into your personal organizer or your file no no i wasn't whatever else i was doing it was not that but um definitely there's something strangely reassuring about uh about the charts there were highs and lows. There were tears.

There was laughter. It was an uncertain world. Yes, indeed. This chart rundown, I counted 18 suits. You did a suit count. It's interesting to note, however, that the disgusting habit of rolling up the sleeves of one suit has been consigned to the dustbin of history by late 1987.

Only the two lads in Five Star are doing that now. Yeah, good. What do you have against exposed forearms, Al? Oh, on a jacket. It's not that. If you want to expose your forearm, wear a T-shirt or a short-sleeved shirt, you know. Don't roll your suit jackets up. When you're about your business, you need your upper arms to be warm,

but you need your wrists to be free to you know do what they want any old time yeah well don't wear a jacket then simple as that what if you've already got your jacket on well you take it off and you put it on a coat hanger you put it on a coat hanger quite honestly i thought you were complaining about everyone wearing suits and now you're like oh carry around a gentleman carries a coat hanger around with him yeah and then you get your suit bag out and you put it in there and you hang it up responsibly. And then before you put it back on, you must steam it.

Yeah. Yes. With your portable steamer. Put it away for the next wedding or funeral. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's a disgrace.

It's like a cold party, you know, a glimpse of stocking was something perfectly shocking. Well, you know, it's a bit like, you know, a glimpse of wrist, you know, makes us feel very pissed or something. I don't know. Something like that. Heaven knows anything goes. It's all bloody Miami Vice's fault, of course.

I mean, it's all that wank, isn't it? So it's that kind of, you know. Hunger for massacre and blokes rolling their sleeves up. That's the dowry that Miami Vice brought to the table. Yes, yes, pretty much. I feel like we're scratching the surface of something here. I mean, I don't know. Maybe we should leave it for now.

I don't know what's going to get stirred up. The rundown images are, of course, boringly proficient by now. But, you know, Top of the Pops was made up for that by slapping everything on in a fucking awful late 80s background of green, purple and yellow splodges. So it makes them pictures look like posters on adrian mole's bedroom wall yeah we should point out that the graphics at this point are shocking really kind of really like boxy sort of ugly primary colors it's like a sort of um when you were at school and you would kind of get you get the good building blocks and you get the kind of

crappy off-brand ones and they're sort and there were always too many missing and stuff. It's like that. It's just like the arse end of the box of blocks. If you were going on a commando raid on the set of Rainbow, this is the camouflage you'd be wearing. Yeah, it's a sort of over-enthusiastic response to the dark rafters of 70s Top of the Pops, really, all through it.

It's like, light, excitement, fun, glitterball, energy, energy. You know, it's like, turn it off. response to the the dark rafters of 70s top of the pops really all through yeah light excitement fun glitterball energy energy you know it's like turning off i mean the only interesting pictures by now well in this week anyway was that the pitch for the smiths that wasn't morrissey yeah or was it are you yeah it looks more like edwin collins yes it does yeah yeah yeah i have my doubts about that one i thought thought it could just about... It doesn't look like Murray Melvin either, so... Is it my choice? I think it needs to be one that's thrown out to the Pop Craze youngsters,

actually, that image. Oh, who'll immediately go, Oh, that's him, stupid cunts. Yeah, exactly. What the fuck do they know about pop music? The other interesting image is New Order dressed up as a glam metal band. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes.

That was quite funny. When I first saw this, I thought, oh, they got the wrong picture. Ha, ha, ha. Fucking hilarious. Then I realised it was actually New Order. Then I thought, oh, they've just done it for this picture. They've given it to Top of the Pops. And I thought, oh, man, imagine if New Order did that for every new single.

They just sent Top of the Pops an image of themselves as another band, like, I don't know, Show Waddy Waddy or, I don't know, The Bay City Rollers or something like that. But no, it's from their video that was out at the time.

That is a shame. That would be a good prank. For a moment, I was nearly interested by New Order. It was quite shocking experience. I wonder if it's something they would have done

as Joy Division. I imagine that Syl of Ian Curtis would have slapped a veto on it. Or he might have been up for it, you never know. We never got to see the amusing side of Ian Curtis, did we? Yeah, I think they like to laugh. They were northerners. We like a laugh at North. They like to rub their own

shit on light fittings and then smash the light bulbs in toilets. Yep, yep. Witty stuff, you know. The Beatles of Aventus Indy, they toilets. Yeah, witty stuff, you know. The Beatles of Aventus Indy, they were. Eventually, Reed tells us that he hopes the next single will be

this year's Christmas number one. It's Fairy Tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty McColl. Formed in London from the ashes of the Nipple Erectors and the Millwall Chainsaws, later the new republicans in 1982 pogue mahone were forced to change their name in 1984 after gaelic speakers in scotland

complained that their name meant kiss my arse after supporting a clash tour they were picked up by stiff records and put out the lps red rosesoses For Me and Rum, Sodomy and The Lash. But it wasn't until 1986 that they made the top 40 when the Poketry In Motion EP got to number 29 in March of that year. This is the follow-up, of sorts, to the Irish Rover, their collaboration with the Dubliners, which got to number 8 in April of this year, and it's also the lead-off track from their next LP, If I Should Fall From Grace With God. It was originally written in 1985, when their producer Elvis Costello bet the band they couldn't do a Christmas hit record, but it was set aside when Stiff went into administration and Kato Riordan, the original co-singer, left the band. After signing to Warner Brothers in late 1986, they came back to the song when recording their

third LP at Rack Studios, but that take features Shane McGowan singing both the male and female parts. And it wasn't until August of this year that their new producer, Steve Lillywhite, And it wasn't until August of this year that their new producer, Steve Lillywhite, suggested a suitable replacement, his missus, Kirstie McColl. It entered the charts two weeks ago at number 40, and this week it's jumped 11 places to number 8, and here they are in the Top of the Pops studio. Now, me dears, this is the second time the Pogues have appeared on Top of the Pops pops so the audience has already been sort of primed for the sight of shane mcgowan but you know in the middle of all these sooty lads smiling and everything it must have been must have been quite terrifying yeah pogues um i had a bit of a downer on the pose um one thing they weren't the young gods um but you know most definitely you know in the sense that um there was something that the whole ethos of that kind of sort of you know folks and it's

and rooted us just see you know i was a kind of a bit of a futurist at the time i still am really and just everything about and everything that they seem to sort of celebrate people celebrate and there was just going completely the other direction from the stuff that i was kind of invested in and evangelising about. You know, I just thought, you know, all this kind of writhing about in the metaphorical mud, you know, or the actual mud, if they played at Finsbury Park, was, you know, it wasn't really, you know, it wasn't really what the dialectical requirements of the day were all about, you know. Well, David, I fucking love the pokes at this time.

All right, yeah. As I mentioned earlier at college, there was a lot of tape trading going on, and I had a mate called Jim. He came from the posh end of town, and he wore German Army shirts and all that kind of shit. And yeah, we got traded and everything, and he put a lot of really good shit my way,

like Jimi Hendrix and The Clash, and he gave me a tape of Rum Sodomy and The Lash and it was like, fucking hell, I love this shit. To me, it was the nearest I was ever going to get to punk in a contemporary sort of setting. So, yeah, I fucking love the Pogues round about this time. Yeah, there's something kind of lusty and rough and arsey about it, isn't there? But as a Christmas song, this is, you know, it kind of stands apart, doesn't it, isn't there? And, you know, but as a Christmas song,

this is, you know, it kind of stands apart, doesn't it, really? There isn't anything else like it. Yes, it does, yes. I love it. I mean, I've always loved it and I will never tire of hearing it, really. All the best Christmas songs are melancholy as fuck. Yes.

This is, but there's so much in it. It's so rich. It's very joy this is but there's so much in it it's so rich it's very joyous but it's also really grim and sort of rollicking and there's so much going on with it and it's so odd it's it's not like anything else on on top of the pops and then yeah so oh no so this performance we've got shane mcgowan kind of um there's a tatty brown upright piano, which already looks so weird. It's like they've just kind of hauled it out of the local kind of pub with this sort of tobacco yellow walls and just dragged it in and stuck it on the stage and plonked Shane McGowan, propped him up.

Kirstie is sort of leaning on it, looking kind of sultry. Yeah, I'm fucked off. Yeah, just looking, just sort of pouting. And he's kind of mimultry. Yeah, fucked off. Yeah, just looking, just sort of pouting. And he's kind of miming badly. He's got round shades on. He sort of looks typically like a bloodhound just coming round from anaesthesia. Sort of slobbering.

He's the first bloke we've seen not in a suit, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, who is even allowed here? Yeah, because the Pogues, you know, they were wearing suits right up till this point, weren't they? And then they just discovered it. Yeah, in that old show band style. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got a really nasty baggy leather jacket on and a white T-shirt and some shades. He essentially looks like the Fonz at 70. Yeah, the Fonz who's kind of fallen through a wormhole. Who actually lives in that toilety office yeah i mean it's just the whole thing has just got such gusto and you know listening to watching this and and kind of uh you know doing doing a bit of research for this it's yeah there's just there's so much to it and yet it's so kind of light. It's such a kind of easy listen in some ways.

So it's quite a remarkable record, I think, and it's quite remarkable, the story of it and the history that it's, you know, and the life that it's had is quite amazing. I mean, like all great Christmas songs, Christmas is pretty much incidental to this, isn't it? It's about the great Christmas tradition of being trapped with your family members and having a good round. Well, yeah, I mean, it's also because it's like a lot of Christmas songs.

It's so familiar that you kind of feel like, you know, it's just part of your life and it's always been there. And when you start to sort of unpick it a bit, it's like, oh, fucking hell. So it's actually really cleverly written in so many ways. You know, obviously he starts off in the drunk tank and he's he's thinking of her but as you go if you if you sort of read the lyrics it's like you're not quite sure when this is happening you're not quite sure i mean is it it's in this kind of alcoholic fug and it's like are they together are they not together is it are they are they there at christmas are they remembering stuff are they projecting stuff at one point she's in the hospital yeah like lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed so is he's like a flashback in raging bull isn't it yeah yeah but you yeah and you don't know it's

quite disorientating but all the time there's this really pretty melody that that kind of doesn't so you don't connect this kind of weird dissonance about that, which is so clever. I mean, there's a school of thought that says that the actual back-and-forth interplay by McColl and McGowan is actually going on in his head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and he's essentially having an argument with himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, yeah, there's kind of no way to know, and you can read it various different ways, you can hear it different ways. But, yeah, like I said, you kind of don't notice this until you have to look at it for a podcast. Because, you know, like all the Christmas songs, they're all kind of tarnished or worn smooth by repetition. And also by repetition in places of shopping

and at times of heightened stress and or boredom and having to be nice to people that you hate and spend money on them. So, you know. It's like a kind of sodden Irish-American Dickens. Here's a couple of derelicts and they're obviously, they might have some happy memories together and they might have a future, but probably not.

Probably they're going to freeze to death in a doorway and be buried in unmarked graves. It's really dark. And the key line, of course, is I could have been someone. Well, so could anyone. Because, you know, the other thing about Christmas is that it is a time that you look back. You spur a noddy holder.

You don't look to the future. You leave that for New Year's. But you look back and, you know, so this is Christmas and what have you done? Well, put my missus in hospital what have you done yeah yeah and it is a time for um regretful looking back and thinking or you know i should be in a better place than i am now well yeah that sort of ruefulness but that that is the kind of dickensian thing it is a bit kind of a christmas carol it's like yeah the kind of christmas

karma like are you going to take stock of your shit right now or not, or are you just going to get really drunk and forget all about it, or both you know, and it's, yeah, all of that is all in there in this very jolly package it's devastating, it really is

I mean chaps, the last time we saw Kirsty McColl on Chart Music, she was essentially acting as the happy monday social worker uh but she seems a lot more comfortable in this setting on that piano well she had um she suffered quite badly from stage fright as as i understand and right but it's the kind of thing that you can't i don't know if that applies when when you're on top of the pops i would i would imagine that it would imagine that it does. It's a weird thing, stage fright. It's completely understandable as phobias go.

It's like, oh God, everyone looking at me. But she seems very cool and very together. It's quite sweet and awkward because they hold hands and they have a little dance. And it's lovely you know and it's lovely but well it's more like she's supporting shane mcgowan yeah he has a little he has a little yeah i mean i guess we could get into the whole angle of the of the lyrics and the offensiveness thereof oh yes i think it's very ironic right at the beginning that mike reed talks about how he really wants us to be the christmas number one and it obviously contains

a line about cheap lousy faggot and it's a striking contrast there with his attitude towards frankie goes to hollywood well uh you see this is the thing and i don't uh i do not have a complete annoyingly as as as a whenever there's something really fucking important and I have to have an opinion on it, my opinion is that I don't fucking know. But I do, I have a lot of thoughts about this. I just don't have any final conclusion. Shane McGowan's line on the word is that it's a kind of slang usage.

It's not, you know, it is not a homophobic usage but also it's a character that he was trying to write authentically who is you know kind of a nasty fucker and is just throwing out wherever she can and so it's it's meant to be offensive in that context you know it is in that kind of theatrical context but of course then these things do pierce through into the real world and unfortunately and i i get really i i think fiction which is basically what this is needs to be ring fenced to a certain extent otherwise you you're completely hamstrung you can't yeah you can't express things but you can get into obviously there's the word slut in there as well which um and and

other people the thing is it's not like it's just me there has been a lot of dithering a lot of going back and forth um apparently in 2007 uh radio one agreed to censor it and then agreed not to censor it on the same day they went back and they had an official decision and then a few hours later they went so i mean the bbc just just bbc-ing really hard even then yes the thing is i feel like it's churlish if enough people i mean last year there was a big thing about it and a lot of people said look this is not how you know you don't want to hear this now and it's a bit churlish if you take the opposite side to that and go no free speech free speech, and you become one of those people. Yeah. Just give it up, do you know what I mean?

It's like, don't be a prick about it. Even Shane McGowan was not super gracious about it, but was like, well, if you don't understand that I'm not being offensive, then fine, censor it, I don't care. Which is kind of, you know, he could have been more gracious about it, but he could have been more of a cunt about it. So I don't know. he could have been more gracious about it,

but he could have been more of a cunt about it. So I don't know. I think personally, I would say for the sake of not being a prick at Christmas, you know, just, just give it a bleep. You know,

it's probably, it is a, it is a word. I mean, because I know the weight that it carries now, I kind of don't, I hesitate. I hesitate to say it even. It's like, yeah, these things do kind of don't i hesitate i hesitate to say it even it's like yeah these things do kind of they do matter you know but then then on the matter of the word slut i kind of don't

care but then i mean it goes on and on with this because it's like in this performance you get happy christmas your ass because supposedly that's less bad than ass top of the pops they're okay with faggot in 1987 not so much with ass but but kirsty bless her she does that thing that um kate bush did in the video for a while and slaps her ass as he says ass yes and to be fair she is living in New York. Yeah, there is that, yeah. Well, where are they from? You see, you don't even know. How have they ended up in New York? You know? Yeah.

Well, they're Irish-Americans, aren't they? And somehow fetched up in New York, come recently off the boat or something, perhaps. Because they've very much retained their sort of Irishness and you know, Gaelic overtones. They haven't been Americanised. They're not second generation. But they have done enough to absorb the word faggot,

which actually seems slightly odd and out of context used by this particular character. I suspect it was just McGowan casting around in the rhyming book for Maggie. Faggot wasn't really part of the vernacular in Britain in 1987. It wasn't, no. That's the thing. So it always sounds slightly odd for that

reason. In fact, that's why I always actually thought that it was just used in some other context. This is the weird thing, is that the word bugger, which I think all of us probably use all the time without really remembering that I feel like that's lost a lot. There was a time where that was

a worse word than it is now, and it's actually kind of become neutralized in some way there's definitely there's still context in which i wouldn't say it but you know but it just goes to show the kind of uh amorphous difficult nature of these things the slippery nature of of words and terms and um you know this is going to i'm sure they'll there might be a point in the future it It's like, is it better or worse? Do you keep saying it until it loses all of its meaning? Do you lock it away and say, we don't say that anymore?

And again, I'm not taking any firm position on this either way because you kind of can't in the end. But with this song, I think probably just to be polite, you know, just to be nice, just to not be a prick is probably the better way. Of course, when it was covered by fucking Ronan, it became you're cheap and you're haggard. Well, she did, Kirsty did that in the first place, didn't she?

There was a time that, I don't know, like I said, I kind of looked this up and there's this rabbit hole of like all the, you know, the times when it's been okay, the times when it hasn't it hasn't and you know how they've tried to get around it yeah but um yeah i i feel like if you're gonna do it now just just it's got to be a swear i mean that they are right they're ranting and screaming at each other yeah um the other thing is um there's a couple of mentions of punks in there the word punk had a different meaning before i mean there's a couple of mentions of punks in there. The word punk had a different meaning before. I mean, for a couple of hundred years, it meant prostitute. And then you get into the kind of the early 70s usage in America before it was adopted by musicians. It was a derogatory term for, you know,

a younger man who'd be used for sex by older men in prison. Yes. So the thing about this is that, yeah, there's a lot of extremely spicy verbiage in there. And I feel like it's such a great song. It's such a kind of majestic, wonderful, unique song that it needs to be, I would hate to see it kind of thrown out with the bathwater of the difficulty of the lyrics. You you know i feel like it needs to be preserved and cherished and and loved by generations to come it's just i don't know maybe it can be a teaching moment it's like

you could say this but you can't say that but why um yeah and yeah if it comes down to if i have to be on one side or another i would have to side with people who are going, come on, mate, can't say that now. Because you kind of can't. You wouldn't use it in any other context. You two have been, you know, you see, I can't even say it even now. It's just, it's a horrible word. But I appreciate Shane McGowan's bold usage of it. At the time, it was absolutely right.

Yeah, it's also supposed to be Irish slang for somebody who's lazy. Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah. And of course, you know, a bit of kindling for burning as well, if we're going right back to the dawning of the word. Yeah, I think that is actually where there's actually a connection between the kindling thing and the gay thing. Oh, God. You should have just called him a cunt, Kirsten. Sounds so good in an Irish accent, that word.

The thing even about the word slut is that it has more than one meaning. It's like, do you remember there was a... Christ, I really don't want to be in the position of having to defend a fucker from UKIP, but there was a fucker from UKIP who said it, and he basically got... God, this was a more innocent time.

He got basically booted out of UKIP for saying slut but what in the context he was he was talking about um uh you know being slovenly it's kind of an old way of saying oh what a slut you know i've i've said this about myself before it's like oh dear i'm such a slut when i have not wiped the worktops down in the kitchen you know when i haven't done the washing up, oh, God, what a terrible slush I am. Because, and it kind of amuses me to use it in that way because you don't hear it now. Anyway, he was still a fucker and he can fuck off. But it's a very difficult thing. Basically, it's always hard when there are these deeply important things,

which are art and social progress, you know, cultural and social progress. And there are odds with each other. They're sort of banging into each other. And you need them to be in harmony. They're kind of the double helix of enlightenment, aren't they? So you have to take you can't be too flippant. You know, you can't have to take this thing seriously. Basically, it's like with with this, with the word in question, like, would you you use it in any other context other than maybe a discussion of what old-fashioned mincemeat treat you'd like for your tea? I mean, would you say it in the pub? Would you call a friend that even with however many layers of irony?

Would you yell it at a stranger in the street or on the internet or on a podcast without heavy quote marks around it because if you wouldn't then that probably tells you something about the uh the resonance of it and um if there are people who are saying i think this contributes this is kind of a little sharp pebble on the on the road to progress you know and it's something that might contribute to an atmosphere, a really uncomfortable atmosphere that is oppressive for a certain group who are quite accustomed to being oppressed and kind of know what it's about.

You should probably listen to that. I mean, it happened again this year, didn't it? It all flared up again. It's become quite the Christmas tradition, isn't it? You know that Santa's not far off when people start arguing the toss about the lyrics of Fairytale in New York. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of the time I think it's it's not that it's necessarily performative.

The kind of the outrage. But I think for some people it is. I mean, what did that guy say? So people sort of making a huge deal of it and then being incredibly offensive in themselves because people have these blind spots. You know, going and tweeting and saying it's a disgusting record that's beloved only of chavs. We have a long way, we have far to go still.

Yeah, but broadly speaking, I think that this younger generation are genuinely more woke and perhaps people in my generation might hear something like that and think, sort of maybe chuckle a bit and don't really, oh, but of course, you can't really say that, can you? Whereas I think the younger generation now, you know, they're conditioned, quite frankly, to be left genuinely cold by stuff like this and find this is completely offensive and doesn't stir me in any way whatsoever. Yeah, but like I said, I feel like, you know, that said, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and something like this.

The greatness of this song is also important. So these things balance in all things. I'm working in a heroin reference as well. That was pretty decent for 1987, wasn't it? Yeah, it's almost like there's such an onslaught in this that they can't they can't bleep it all you know i wonder if it influenced marty pello hearing that you know this is what the power of words and songs you see another reason what you mean by that heroin that's that's about heroin isn't it yeah jesus christ but it's that's a beautiful i have to say in it's such a beautiful line it's a horrible scabrous to say, it's such a beautiful line. It's a horrible scabrous,

you know, but it's yeah, you're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on jungle and there I was, driving out of bed, which you can, I never knew what it was for years. No? Because it's just this like, it's just like,

like you hardly, you hardly move your jaw at all. You just kind of flail your arms around and go... Hello, I'm John Holmes, and yes, the last thing you need is another podcast that takes apart a television show and hacks through it like a cough going through a pensioner. Except wait, because this is The The One Show Show, in which myself and my guests force ourselves

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It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. David. Yes. You happened to review this album, didn't you? If I shall fall from grace with God. Please, regale the tale to the Polk Crate Masters.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think the album came out afterwards, if I'm right. Yeah, January. Yeah, it came out in January. And Paul Mather, who was reviews editor at Melody Maker, decided, because he was aware of my feelings about the Pogues, that it might be an awful lark if I were to pen in my thoughts on it for the lead review.

Now, what happened is, obviously, in those days, pre-internet, et cetera, et cetera, there had to be very fast turnarounds. So, basically, I had to come into the office on Thursday and pick up a cassette, a preview, a cassette preview of this album. Not a CD. And then file the copy, 700 words, you know, the next morning. And that must have been great, David,

walking around with an album that hadn't come out yet. You must have felt very Mr. Billy Big Bollocks. I did, yes. Those gonads swelling with pride, yes, definitely. But, of course, you know, I didn't really have much time for that kind of testicular surge because it was a pretty very short window of time. I've been looking after my younger brother, my brother-in-law, as I said, was married at the time, and he was only 11. So I had to escort him back to Euston Station for him to get the train, you know, put him on the train to go back up to Birmingham, where he lived.

And what I did is I called in at the offices, which were in High Holborn at the time, picked up the cassette, and off we went, you know, set him off on the train with all his bags, et cetera, et cetera. Went back home, rummaged around my own bag, realised, oh, my God, I've put the cassette in his bag. Oh, mate. Yeah, I know.

So, okay, so it's now about sort of 7.30, 8 o'clock. I had to wait for him to, obviously, to get back and get back in. So, you know, give him a bell up in Birmingham and got Jas on the phone. give him a bell up in Birmingham and got Jas on the phone. I said, Jas, mate, if you look around in your bag, there's a cassette and it's by a group called The Pogues. Can you find it? Can you find it? And then he goes, oh, yeah, what?

And he goes, you know, rummaging around, says, yeah, I've got it. Oh, excellent. So I said, look, what I want you to do is, you know, you've got your cassette player, your little cassette player. Can you put it by the phone and play it so that I can listen to it? Because I need to write a piece about it for Melody Maker for tomorrow. He says, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Tomorrow?

Yeah, that's right. So he, that's right. Around about this time, I would assume that album reviewing consisted of someone like you sat in a music room with one hand up to your forehead and the other one with your quill in your hand just waiting to drop the review upon which the whole world of the Pop Craze youngsters will turn for a week. Yeah, I know, you'd think like that, wouldn't you?

No, this is how it was on this particular instance. Sometimes it's a little bit like that, you know, you have a sort of lengthy consideration in kind of, you know, calm chambers and what have you but um um yeah so anyway relief came surging over me in great chunks to quote pg woodhouse and um so anyway he puts the he puts the album on and i listen to like the first 10 seconds and it's oh god i can't really bother with this you know it'll be quite a stressful hectic sort of afternoon evening so i thought i can't i'll tell you what, just leave it on.

And then turn it over at the end of side one and put on side two. And what I did, I thought, I'll listen to this later. So I recorded. I got my own little cassette recorder and made a recording of the album being transmitted over the phone. And I basically write the review, which, to be honest, was half written in my head anyway um based on you know on that you know so um after about a sort of three quarters of an hour an hour and said all done all done just yeah thanks a lot for that mate save my life cheers phone down a few more drinks went to bed i thought you know i'll turn and get up early in the morning and turn this

around no problem so anyway i got up about eight ish and went over, played the cassette, the recording I'd made of the cassette from over the phone, and it was like... Oh, shite. So basically, I had to spin out a 700-word lead review on this landmark album based on having heard the first 10 seconds over the phone. And, oh, spin i did and and and it went in it went through i just about made it oh you know you know what did you think of it david come on give us some quotes oh oh no no i mean it's i i i blanked it out of my head i was i was

disparaging i mean that's a mistake for a start i think if you're going to pull a stroke like that at least be kind to the album um no i i was disparaging but it's very broad base i think the pogues aren't the young gods would probably have cropped up at some point no doubt um but yeah i mean and it went through but as was often the way in those days there's a lot of retrospective editing and editorializing so you know the editor alan jennings sort of you know he read this and in the editorial meeting and says there seems to be a tendency in one or two of the reviews to be kind of waffling a bit and not really getting down to sort of specifics about tracks you know like david i mean i just think perhaps this you know maybe a bit more detail yeah fair enough fair enough no yeah actually fucking listen to the thing yeah exactly but and then so i told and obviously i you know told a few like the mates in the

arse quake league you know people like the studs and simon reynolds and i told him all about it and blabbermouth that he is next day i go into the pub there's alan jones the editor staring thunderously at me and simon sitting next to me says i think i made a bit of a gaffe david oh anyway you know it's um it all blew over so the pogues annually i i mean i you know i think the pogues this is the only time i ever listened to the pogues is and or hear the pogues be honest, is annually when this kind of does the rounds along with Stop the Cavalry, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. And, look, I mean, you know, an appall of guilt and...

I think an apology should be made to the Pogues right now, David. Well, I do apologise. I apologise profoundly, but it isn't the first time I apologise, I assure you. But, yeah. This is Birmingham's Six levels of injustice It definitely was I mean of course the album

Regardless of my kind of cutting words The album went on to do gloriously well Just showing the power of the press there To create and destroy It was the last album I ever bought By a contemporary band of white people Don't you know That's interesting

Yeah I was disappointed by it yeah i mean i've never listened to it since Birmingham six that's mint but fiesta that that song put me right off them i mean i think that with this song because it comes on every year um it does kind of get to haunt you david i know i know exactly yeah so but um old slut on junk yeah that's right you cheap lousy haggard yes um but you do i mean as well as it does get smooth with familiarity or whatever but you do get this annual opportunity to consider all of its merits and its dimensions and facets and i agree with everything that's you know positive that sarah was saying about the song and i think you know it is what it is and i think

it's marceline i think that in the sort of pantheon of Christmas songs, I think it really does capture that sort of complex mystery emotions that a lot of people feel about Christmas. There's a lot of it is kind of, there's a lot of rancour, I mean, you know, amid the bells singing out, et cetera, et cetera. Ringing out, David. Yeah. What did I say?

You said singing out. Because you were listening to it over the phone on a fucking tape. Yeah, probably. No doubt. Yeah, leave that. I mean, you know, I'm you were listening to it over the phone on a fucking tape. Yeah, probably. No doubt. Yeah, leave that. I mean, you know, I'm a little bit sketchy on the Pogues. And retrospectively, all hostilities towards Pogues kind of ceased with me, really. And actually, those individual members like Jen Finer have done really interesting work in the sort of much more kind of avant-garde vein that I genuinely do like.

in the sort of much more kind of avant-garde vein that I genuinely do like, you know, even if I, the whole sort of, you know, retro faux Irish thing or whatever at the time I found anathema. So, yeah. It's just as well, really, David, I think you didn't dodge all the bullets, but you did dodge one,

which is that, you know, at least you realised what had happened and you didn't go, what's this, you know, there's a kind of crazy avant-garde experiment that you know like when somebody reviewed the other side of that John Lennon that single-sided John Lennon LP and said it was some of the best work he'd done as a solo artist that was pretty much yeah it could have gone that way yeah yeah could have been worse but not much so the following week fairy tale of New York jumped six places to number two where it stayed for

two weeks the follow up If I Should Fall From Grace With God would only get to number 58 and they would only have one more top 40 hit before McGowan was sacked by the band in 1991 which was Fiesta which got to number 24 in July

of 1988 Fairy Tale ofiesta, which got to number 24 in July of 1988. Fairytale of New York would get to number 36 in December of 1991 and has appeared in the top 40 13 years on the band since 2005 and got to number four in January of 2009. Probably in the charts now as you're listening to this. It's also been voted the greatest Christmas song ever in numerous polls and one of the best singles to ever get to number two. As we mentioned this time last year, it earns the writer £400,000 a year. And yeah, it's also a very important song for chart music. Let me take you back

to 2003. And a youngish lad. Let's call him Al, who came down to London one December night for a work's Christmas party that had a karaoke machine. After Reid had a go,

he was approached by a young lady. She was obviously impressed by the way he made say hello, wave goodbye sound strangely heterosexual. While he was impressed that she knew certain people that he'd argued with on an internet forum. Well, they were getting on like a house on fire. So finally, he dropped his guard and asked her a question that had been on his mind all night. What's Taylor Parks really like? Well, the ice had been well and truly broken, so she thought, why the hell not? She shyly, yet boldly, asked a question in return.

Will you do Fairy Tale of New York with me? Well, he could hardly refuse. He called her an old slut on junk. She called him a scumbag, a maggot, a cheap lousy faggot. And then, after saying goodnight, she was gone. And that girl grew up to be Sarah B. It's all true. Sarah, this is our song. It is, and I'm sorry to you and to anyone who might be offended. I blame Shane McGowan and or Kirsty McColl and or the vagaries of the English. Was it that long?

Oh, my Christ. Yeah. You should have stuck around, Doug. I would have put right out and done Lucky Stars by Dean Friedman with you. Oh, man. These are the so many missed opportunities of my life just coming back to me. Oh man. Sliding doors Sarah. Sliding doors.

And the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day. Tune in to your Panda single. The Pokes, Kirsten McCall and Fairytale of New York. And now let's have a look at some of the climbers on this week's chart. It's the Top 40 Breakers and here's Level 42 and Children's Say It number 22. We cut back to Reed and Davis now standing in front of the massive video screen. Reed describes Fairytale of New York as a truly stupendous single while davis

stumbles over his introduction to this week's climbers when he actually means breakers and the first of which is children say by level 42 we've already covered level 42 in chart music number 31 and this single their 20th is setting the seal on a year that got them three top ten hits on the bounce and a spot on that year's Princess Trust concert at Wembley Arena. Eric Clapton joined them on Running In The Family and Mark King gave it some thumb

with Benny King on Stand By Me and George Harrison and Ringo Starr on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. However, all was not well in Level 42 land, as guitarist and drummer Phil and Boone Gould have just walked out while they were supporting Madonna on a world tour, forcing the group to draft in Paul Gendler of Modern Romance and Neil Conti of Prefab Sprout. in Paul Gendler of Modern Romance and Neil Conti of Prefab Sprout. It's the follow-up to It's Over,

which got to number 10 in September of this year, and it's the fifth cut from their seventh LP, Running in the Family, and it soared 14 places this week from number 36 to number 22. Well, me dears, 1987's supposed to be the year that house music started to take over, with Jack Your Body being the first number one of the year,

but dance music in December 1987 is pretty still much this sort of thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's just this kind of overhang, and I think Top of the Pops tends to reflect that, doesn't it? I mean, if something really struck in 1986, then it'll probably only really impact on top of the pops in 1988 and or you know whatever but um i did love love games and i bought it um when it came out um on on 12 inch but 20 singles my god i mean they could have

just left it there i mean that would be wonderful it could have just been this kind of definitive statement after which they simply walk away we We're not going to top that. Let perfection be perfection and shine for what it is. You know, it would have been marvellous if, you know, if the manager and people like that said, look, are you sure about this? No, no, we're going to leave it there. We're not going to top that

and we're not going to sully it by retrospective crap. Are you sure? Are you sure there's a big market out there for, like, mediocrity and shit? And, you know, you could really just spin a kind of homeopathically dismal version of this until Kingdom Come. You get 20 more singles out there, 20 more singles. Oh, no.

We would just be smirching ourselves. We can't do it. As artists, we just can't do it. I'm sorry. We're going to pass it all up. The yachts, the money, meeting George Harrison and Eric Clapton and everything. Sorry, but our minds are made up. But no, no one has that kind of integrity, do they?

You know, most of all, Mark King and... How dare they want to make a living? Exactly, exactly. That's what I'm saying, yeah, but, you know, this is art. It's like Marcel Duchamp. In 1923, he stopped making art. I mean, he could have carried on whacking them out, but no, he said, no, there ought to be silence sometimes in art.

And so he didn't do... So the end of his life, he died in 1969. From 1923 to 1969, he produced no more art. And, I mean, people should do that a lot more often. Kraftwerk stopped in 1986 producing new stuff because they'd said everything that they had to say, definitively. And you just don't get enough of that. But there is a demand for this sort of thing,

like some level 42. I mean, it's like this sort of... So that's why Melody Maker stopped in 2000 then, did it? Yeah, pretty much. Sales were rocketed to 200,000. We've reached perfection. Yeah, 200,000. And we're just, you know, with that Craig David...

We've done Craig David on a toilet. We're never going to top that. So we thought, no, I know sales are 250,000 and climbing, but no, sometimes it's a new millennium. We have to stop. Yeah, I think that's about... Much the same as uh i have to say david i do admire you for putting your money where your mouth is and uh and never writing about music again after your legendary uh pogues review oh yes yes yes well i think that was that was probably the opposite really that was an idea from which

i've had to live down you know in terms of my integrity ever since you know i've had to redouble my efforts and restore my integrity. But, yeah, level 42 and this kind of thing, it's weird. There is actually a huge, huge demand in this country for this sort of affable beige-ness, this jazzy... You think of the 90s, the big groups of the 90s, all the groups that signify the 90s, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, etc., etc.

But one of the biggest-selling groups of the 90s was the Lighthouse family And no one ever talks about it They're so nondescript that no one ever references them We had a go A few episodes ago And we struggled, didn't we? Yeah, I mean they've probably got their own island now

They probably all live on Lighthouse family island And they're just living it up To quote the 42s Yeah, they should be living in a lighthouse I think if you've got a name like that, you've got to live up to it. Yeah. The lighthouse family should have been made to all marry each other and then live on a lighthouse.

Absolutely, and they should have made a cartoon series of it, you know, like sort of the Jacksons or whatever. Similarly, level 42 ought to be living in a flat, a really big flat. Simply red are not allowed to wear any other colours ever. Yeah, than red, yeah. Yeah, see? It's red all... yeah.

Is that what happens to them when they go to hell? It's like... and the literal devil says, Aha! Little did you know you lived your feckless lives and now you have to weirdly play them out in very literal terms. OK, all right. Maybe that's why Pogma Ho changed their name. Yeah. Speaking of that actually,

I realised that, I was like, is their name then, the Kissers or the Arses? But it is, it's the Kissers, basically. It's basically their Kiss. The Arses would have been a fantastic name. The Arses. Here they come with their latest single,

The Arses. The Arses. Here they come with their latest single, The Arses. Hey. Yeah. Yeah, Gene Simmons could sue them, couldn't he, I suppose? Yes. I hope he doesn't. Don't say that. God, Gene Simmons is... He would as well.

He's not a nice man, is he, from what... No, no. And he would. He is a fucker. Yeah, no. God, don't give Gene Simmons Fairytale of New York. No. Fucking hell.

Well, Kiss should have been called The Asses. Yes, definitely. Because that's what they are, isn't it? Yeah, superbly. The Ass or The Asses. Yeah. Just Ass. A, A, capital A, capital S, capital S.

I interviewed Gene Simmons once, and you're right. I mean, Kiss are the worst band in human history, and I disagreed profoundly with everything he said, but it was very very entertaining and it was an extremely cooperative um interview I have to say that and very funny as well yeah sometimes some of the worst people can give you the best interviews can't they because they they you know narcissists who just like to talk about themselves it's obvious really anyway should we talk about level 42 yes let's yeah let's look what I what I have to say about

level 42 is that I quite like Level 42. I know I was taking the piss out of them in relation to Depeche Mode last time, but they've got good pop melodies. I know that what puts people off is the production is so brash and so kind of clunky, and they have that very clunky, extremely uncool. They're very, very uncool. They were always uncool. Mark King is not a cool man.

He's not been blessed with game at all but apparently i have to say and uh not that it's um necessary to be a nice person obviously sometimes assholes make the best music but by all accounts mark king absolutely top bloke really really nice dude nice dude. Yeah. I believe that. This is not necessarily a story that proves that, but it is nevertheless a good story. So, yes, this comes via a friend of a friend who asked Mark King of Love of 42 if he'd ever had any touring disasters.

And he said that when they were just starting out, they got a gig supporting the police somewhere in Italy but they weren't they weren't listed and nobody knew who they were when they walked out on the stage the fans thought it was the police

went crazy and then they realised that it was just some guys that they didn't know and they got really angry and started started booing oh fiasco oh vendetta um and they started booing and throwing shit as as people at gigs do when they're when they're upset so and and you know they're very gamely carried on it's like well we're here to do the job, and, you know, let's just do the thing. So Mark King decided that the best thing to do would be close his eyes and just get through it.

So he could feel. So he's there. He's there with his base snug under his arms, kind of just plowing on heroically. And he can feel various things just hitting him. And he can hear things falling around his feet. And they're kind of bouncing off him. And he's like, it's okay, it's okay. Just keep going.

And then he felt something lodging. Until the sun goes down. Exactly. You know. So then he feels something kind of lodging his armpit somehow. And so he's like, I'd better see what this is. So he opens his eyes, looks down. It's a lit firework no

i don't know what happens after that i'm assuming you know you can still play the bass you can still play the bass he probably disposed of it in in a safe safe fashion and uh and nobody was hurt. But yeah, that's the level of passion that greeted Italy in 1982 or something. Oh, they should have just done a jazz funk version of Roxanne and then just said, my name's Sting and I think all Italians are scum. Yeah, you guys don't know any better. It's like before there was photography,

you could kind of get away with, you know, and then there were only portrait paintings, you know. It's like, yeah, well, you know, they're all painted to a romantic ideal so you can kind of get someone else to fight your duels for you because they don't know it's you. That would have been superb if they'd just done a set of police stuff for 40-odd minutes and then the actual police come on and say, what the fuck did you do?

What the fuck was that? I'm sorry, look, they were throwing fireworks and everything. We had to do something. I'm sorry. Sting would have just sued the arses off all of them, wouldn't he, really? Like a fucker. Oh, dear. If ever there was a man

who deserves a lip firework I do not approve of throwing lip fireworks under any circumstances except at Sting yeah but it's funny I mean it's what you say

about Mark King being you know this lovely top load etc etc I'm sure it's true I mean they always talk about like never meet your heroes don't they you know like the whole

Van Morrison syndrome etc etc oh Christ there's also like never meet your villains because they turn out to be bloody nice yeah yeah and then you've got it yeah and also never meet shane mcgowan because he'll probably duff you up i did see shane mcgowan at the boogaloo highgate uh about eight or nine years ago and i was maybe thinking about having a word about the whole fiasco. But he was just sitting there over a big mug of coffee

at 5.30 in the afternoon, just looking utterly catatonic. So I thought, oh, no, I'll leave you to it. Well, that would have been the ideal opportunity, I would have thought. He'd forgotten in 30 minutes, David. Yeah, yeah. Maybe taking a swing at you and just, you know, falling on his face on the carpet, you know,

and you could have just scampered away. But, oh, well, these are the opportunities that we miss in life anyway this song um yes i had i'd forgotten this song it's it's really good totally it's really good i really like it it's got a really nice yeah i don't mind this at all i mean this and fairy tale in new york the the um the souffle is lifted a little bit hasn't it well the souffle of doom and mediocrity. But yeah, I know that Taylor did say that Mark King's bass playing makes me long for a

thumbscrew. In the same way as Simply Red was sort of very easy to hate. I think Level 42 were kind of, you know, people kind of need whipping boys, I guess, but... The thing about Level 42 was, it wasn't them. It was their fan base.

You know, there was many a time that a level 42 bubbled up in the charts. It's like, oh, I like this, but I better not. Yeah. Because, you know, people think I'm one of them. I've got an escort with my name on a strip at the top of the windscreen and a blank space next to it because they haven't got a girlfriend. That's the thing with a lot of fandom to it because they haven't got a girlfriend that's the thing with a lot of fandoms though isn't it it's like i you know you've got a you've got a really you've

got to really suss them out before you kind of throw in your lot with any kind of group like that otherwise you you look around and then you you you discover that you're in a tribe that that you'd rather not be in you know it's like if you've ever been to an oasis i mean i was never an oasis fan but jesus christ oasis fans i'm not sure even oasis deserved the the fans that they got yes oh god i mean i've never actually been to a football match but i can imagine like the the worst kind of football match where everyone's just everyone just wants to fight but yeah the video they're being a bit parsimonious with the videos, but here's another clip. And, you know, it's quite a nice one. You know, by this point, Level 42 are pretty much Mark King and his mate Mike Lindrup.

Yeah, they're capering around very fraternally, aren't they? In Paris, yes. Level 42 are Paris. And they're arsing around with a camcorder or something that's tricked up to look like a camcorder and they've also got this girl who looks about i don't know 13 or something like that she she might be algerian she might be mixed race and she's she's wearing this ma1 flight jacket with all space patches on it which makes her look the most fashionable person in the whole episode of top of the pops because that look was all over the shop in 1988.

And she's wearing a Burberry scarf as well. And she holds up some words written on a bit of a paper. And she's having a bit of a laugh, which is nice. That is nice. It's, yeah, again, very, very, very literal video making. You know, children say, here are some children and here's the thing that they're saying. Yeah, it's nice. It's nice to see a bit of sun in December. King's got a bit of a receding hairline going on,

but he's got quite a restrained mullet to go with it to compensate. So it just looks like his hair's just slid down his head. He's kind of the Martin Clunes of pop, isn't he? Yeah, I think Martin Clunes would definitely play him in the biopic. Well, I mean, I realised the other day, though, that Martin Clunes needs to play Boris Johnson when all of this particular shit is over.

Oh, man. Oh, my God. He wouldn't even need to do a lot. Just give Martin Clunes a drink and hit him in the head a couple of times and he'd be perfect. So, yeah, good song, got to say. Well played, Level 42, again.

Well played, guys. No more lit fireworks for you so the following week children say dropped one place to number 23 the follow-up heaven in my hands got to number 12 in september of 1988 and they bob around in the lower reaches of the top 40 until they split up for the first time in 1994. Hard on the heels of Rick Astley, Nat King Cole and When I Fall In Love. It will be forever Or I'll never fall in love Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1919, Nathaniel Coles was the son of a Baptist minister who learned to play piano from the church organist,

his mam. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and joined a sextet formed by his older brother, eventually settling down in Los Angeles, where he got married at 18 and played piano in assorted clubs. His solo recording career began in 1940 when he recorded Sweet Lorraine and he went on to become one of the top recording stars in the USA and when the first singles chart was published in the UK in November of 1952, he went straight in at number three with Somewhere Along The Way. He'd go on to have 14 top 10 hits in the UK throughout the 50s and early 60s until he died at the age of 45 in February of 1965.

Then, in November of this year, Stock Aitken and Waterman released Rick Astley's cover of When I Fall In Love, which was originally recorded by Gerry Southern for the 1952 war film One Minute To Zero, then covered by Doris Day later that year, and then comprehensively bagged by Cole in 1956, who took it to number two in June of 1957. And before this month, the song's last appearance was when Donny Osmond took it to number four in November of 1973. Alarmed that it would keep one of their singles off the Christmas number one and responding to the general level of revulsion over Stock Aitken and Waterman, EMI immediately released the sort of original version of the song as an outright

spoiler tactic and it's this week's highest new entry in the top 40 up from number 51 to number 20 and here's a video of Nat's appearance in the 1957 film Istanbul which starred Errol Flynn as a pilot who gets tangled up in a Turkish diamond smuggling ring and Nat King Cole as the bloke who sings when I fall in love in that one scene first things first me dears obviously the rick astley cover of when i fall in love we've got to talk about that because you know people including myself were absolutely fucking horrified that stock aiken and waterman were going to ruin christmas and you know reacted to the idea of rick astley covering this song as if he was going to go on top of the pops and wipe his cock

on a picture of Nat King Cole's face yes indeed the thing about it, it's not only attempting to colonise the present, it's attempting to colonise the past as well and all these kind of memories that people have of Christmas' past via films or whatever which are still

very much shown on TV at that time, they're very much part of the kind of primetime, mainstream, whatever. You know, so your Perry Comos, Bing Crosby's or whatever and all that kind of stuff was very much part of, you know, you would collide with that, you know, on mainstream TV and especially around Christmas. And it's like trying to colonise that by deliberately going for that kind of slightly sort of 50s-ish look, you know,

perhaps they've sort of distressed the footage slightly in such a way it looks like it was filmed in about 1956 and the video that they put out for Rick Astley's version he's just wandering around in the snow by a log cabin that looks a bit like a medieval bus stop and you know they're going for this sort of pensive reflective tone but to me it just looks like Rick Astley's been locked out the house and he's waiting for and, you know, they're going for this sort of pensive, reflective tone. But to me, it just looks like Rick Astley's been locked out the house and he's waiting for his missus to get back from Gateway. I mean, yeah, that's the reality. And he's really been poked with a stick by Pete Waterman

to sound a bit more like Nat King Cole. Yeah, yeah, go down. He's really given it some of that. So he's got a bit of the stars in the eyes about it. Yeah, yeah. It's a respectable, you know, queasiness aside, if you can, it's a respectable effort. I mean, he's got a really good voice.

It's no Silent Night by Bross. He's actually got the clout to sing it. You know, he's not embarrassing himself by any means. Whether or not any of this should be happening is is is another matter but he does he he's he's really giving it the whole bing crosby in in the video and the song and it's a little bit like it's a bit it's it's really well done it's like an incredibly good pastiche apart from yes the kind of hilarious that he looks like he's at you know the kind of hilarious that he looks like he's at, you know, the kind of dismal winter wonderland

things that happen. Almost, there hasn't been one for a couple of years. I always look forward to this. Like the kind of, you know, sad children whose irate mothers have paid 30 quid a pop to see some fake snow

and some drunk elves. It's like, it looks like that. It's like, just kids crying their eyes out, going, Mum, you promised me Nat king cole not rick astley yeah basically and they're not real logs they're definitely not they're kind of those plastic yes like they were molded on real logs but but they they have not seen a real log in a very very long time which kind of which sort of says it all but i don't think

it's I think Rick Astley was probably fucking told to do it oh yeah by the dastardly Pete Waterman rubbing his

oily hands yes because Simply Red got practically no shit at all for doing every time we say goodbye

but Rick Astley got all of it I mean that's perhaps unfair because they should both have got shit basically and they're both have got shit, basically. I mean, you know...

And they're both gingers. Ooh, no, no, no, we don't go there. But, I mean, it's... Yet again, it's, you know, young white singers making some sort of statement about themselves, you know, by kind of replicating vintage black music in some way. It's just like, what are they trying to say? Why are they doing this?

I mean, yes, technically, he can do it. It's just like, what are they trying to say? Why are they doing this? I mean, yes, technically he can do it. He's technically capable. He's got the kind of, you know, he's got the range and the depth in his voice or whatever. It's not like, you know, if he was like Dovna, you know, they just wouldn't release it. You know, yes, he's technically capable of doing this, but why is he doing it?

Why do we need this? Well, you know, why is this happening? It's been happening all bloody evening, is these young white singers paying this kind of pious homage to the music of 20 or 30 years ago. I just don't... He's more Rick Viscount Gass than Nat King Cole, isn't he, really? It's one thing or the other, though.

It's either pious homage or it's year zero claiming of thing for yourself, and you can't really have it both ways. Well, the record industry's worked out that people like having old songs at Christmas because, you know, the previous year's Christmas number one was Repetit by Jackie Wilson. So, you know, we're going to get a lot of re-releases at this time of year

and we're going to get a lot of cover versions. You know, I'm not trying to let anyone off the hook here, but capitalism gonna capitalism. Do you know a capital i'm not trying to let anyone off the hook here but capitalism gonna capitalism do you know what i mean that's oh yeah it's a particular point though it's a particular point at this time where there seems to be this kind of it seems to be sort of the dominant motif you know of top of the pops around this time this this sort of wistfulness and reverentiality towards the past um and i mean it's like these days i these days, I mean, I don't think kids would necessarily even get that it's a kind of 50s pastiche and lookalike video because they're not actually,

they don't see that sort of, that stuff on TV anymore from the 50s, the 60s or whatever. So they wouldn't be accustomed to that kind of visual language. You know, now everything's about six weeks old, maximum. But just in 1987, this was just very, very prevalent. And I don't hold with it. I didn't hold with it at the time. I hold with it still less now.

It's not the Young Gods. No. It's not the Young Gods. Oh, and I forgot to mention about Level 42. They weren't the Young Gods either. They thought they got away with it. This song, though. This version of the song.

Yes, that's the one that we should say. This is the Nat King Cole version that we are actually, yeah, that is actually on this episode of Top of the Pops what we are talking about with our mouths yes and the version we see here isn't Nat King Cole's original version but it's safe to say that

it would have to wait until 2010 and the erection of the Burj Khalifa to find a height enormous enough to piss on Rick Astley's version yes definitely definitely yes it's absolutely immaculate um but and then the only sort of doubtful note it strikes with me I suppose is just the idea that again there was this fixation on a lot of black music but preferably

as I say vintage vintage black music. And, you know, it's very uneasy to look at this video where you think the only black people in that room, in that video, are going to be either crooning or serving drinks or back in the kitchens. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's the world that it comes from.

Those two white actors that are gagging to cop off with each other, they seem to like it. So they basically, it was a spoiler. Yes. Which, yeah. It was cock blocking. It was a chart cock block on the part of, it was warring record companies.

Yes. So. Feeding for their Christmas bonus. So yeah, they didn't want, well, they wanted, I don't know if we can give it away what number one is. They wanted what number one is this week to continue to be number one for Christmas. So they spent however much money to get their guys, their guy or guys or girls, to number one. So the Rick Astley version of When I Fall In Love came out,

and they figured that the way to keep that from number one was to put out the original, which people would then be drawn to. Hey, guys, it's like oh no let's get the original and apparently people did and it didn't get that to number one it got something else to number one i find this really this is amazing i mean i don't know if i'm if i've been terribly naive to this point there's like what what amazing skullduggery and like what it might not have worked you know it but that's obviously there's there's going to be all kinds of that stuff yeah what why do you want that artificial tree when you can have a real one yeah look at it oh smell the smell the sap of this one um but yeah

this is like it's like a caper that you could make a late 80s comedy out of it's like you know like bruce's millions a working girl or something it's like various warring industry factions fighting for the coveted christmas number one and there's like the innocent hero singer who's caught up in it and then the grieving daughter of the old time star who is at first furious with him for covering her father's classic song but then softens towards him and it ends in a crazy dash across central park in the snow to the grand offices of the official chart and he must choose he must choose between winning the chart and winning her heart. Oh, like it. Name like Christmas singles.

No, very good. I will open the negotiating at $10 million. Definitely, definitely. Danny DeVito playing Pete Wart. Yes. Some sapling, Rick Astley, who's completely sort of pleased with the whole thing. Just keeps getting slapped on the head

shut up yeah and a kind of cigar chomping mogul and all of that it's all there it's all there for the do

maybe another record company should have put out a version of When I Fall In Love by somebody called Dick Astley to just confuse people even more

Dick Astley Dick Astley and Muttley this would be Dick Astley Dick Astedlyley. This would be the... Dick Astley. Dick Astedly. That's it. That's the ending. Dick Astedly.

This is the fake-out ending, though, is that they rush to there, they're breathless and all covered in snow and everything, and they run to the official chart, they go, there, we've got the figures, it's us, it's us, and it's like, you're too late, and it was some other cunt who had done, like, a novelty bollocks,

and it's them but then they realise that it doesn't matter and what really matters is love. Because it will be forever. It will be forever. And then he sings it to her under a streetlight. Oh! And Shane McGowan and Kirsten McColl stop arguing and put their arms around each other and walk

away. Yes they would be like it's like the kind of the tramps in trading places it would actually be them wouldn't it and they would be like, it's like the kind of the tramps in trading places. It would actually be them, wouldn't it? And they would walk by and go, shall we just have a drink? Yeah, all right then. Yeah. Oh, I'm writing this.

You're a lovely old slut on junk. I love you, baby. So the following weekend, record shops around the country were reporting that Nat King Cole was outselling Rick Astley to the point where extra copies had to be pressed up. The original version soared 13 places to number 7 and it would eventually get to number 4 while Rick's version was stuck in the number 2 slot. Yes. The follow up, a re-release of his 1951 single Unforgettable,

only got to number 84 in December of 1988, but he'd have one last hurrah in the top 40 when his 1961 recording of Let's Face the Music and Dance got to number 30 in March of 1994, off the back of those Allied Dunbar adverts and Torval and Dean's routine in that year's Winter Olympics. And in 1996, Natalie Cole, Nat's daughter, virtually duetted the song with him for her LP Stardust.

And Stock Aitken and Waterman would have to wait two years for their one and only Christmas number one when they produced Do They Know It's Christmas by Band-Aid 2 and stuffed it with their own axe. Well then, Pop Craigs Youngsters, business really is starting to pick up on this episode. So come and join us tomorrow on the final stretch of this episode and let us see how this episode of top of the pops played out thank you

very much sarah b cheers to our episode david stubbs all right till next time stay pop crazed shark music great big owl.com dot com.