Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #48 (Part 2): 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard This

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Chart Music #48: 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard ThisThe latest episode of the podcast which asks: Matchbox – big elderly Ted-racists, or just really keen on The Dukes Of Hazzard?It’s a long-overdue return to the Pic n’ Mix counter of TOTP, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and this time we’ve pulled out a plum from the early days of the new decade, which is now FORTY BASTARD YEARS AGO. Mike Read has been quarantined to the balcony, resplendent in a clankening of badges, and he is poised to drop an episode shot through with Eighventies goodness.Musicwise, well: Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes mark time before going off to be Stunt Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. The Nolans drop the Staying Alive of Mum-Disco.  Legs and Co have a bit of a float-around to the last knockings of Beardo Disco. Bob Geldof looks like Richard E Grant playing Rambo. Suzi Quatro has a whinge about her Walter the Softy-like boyfriend. David Van Day shoots John Lennon in the back a full eleven months before Mark Chapman gets the chance. The Specials con you into thinking every gig you’re going to go to when you grow up is going to be an incredible experience.  Sheila and B Devotion (and more importantly, Chic) kick in the afterburners, and we get the First New Number One Of The Eighties.Simon Price and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham  for a comprehensive dismantling of early ’80, veering off on such tangents as Space Oppression, DAAANGERFREAKS, caravan warehouse-owning lions, The Great Jumpsuit Shortage, another examination of I’m Your Number One Fan, Nazi double basses, and Colleen Nolan’s unfortunate teenage crush. ALL THE SWEARING.Video Playlist |  Subscribe |  Facebook  | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.PART 3 OUT TOMORROW - AND THE ENTIRE EPISODE GETS RELEASED ON FRIDAY!This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following podcast 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 to listen to? Um, Chart music. Chart music. Hey, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to part two of episode number 48 of Char Music, January the 24th, 1980.

I'm back here again with Taylor Parks and Simon Price. Hi. Shall we get stuck into it chaps, let's not fuck about. Hey ho, let's go. Alright then pop craze youngsters, it is time to go back to january the 24th 1980 always remember we may coat down your favorite band or artist but we never forget they've been on top of the pops more than we have 30 seconds earlier and i could have been on tomorrow's world as it is it's top of the with the top seller. We're immediately thrown into a cold open

of tonight's host. Mike Reid is he's back. Yeah. At least he's actually bothered to work out a line. Right, he's got a little joke. I've noticed that about him, that he does sort of script his links, unlike, you know, DLT just sort of wings it or whatever. They're not good links. They're not funny.

They often don't even mean anything. But you can tell he sat down and written them so i'll give him that yeah he says 30 seconds earlier i could have been on tomorrow as well yeah well i was thinking mate if your dad had pulled out 30 seconds earlier we'd all retrospectively owe him a pint that's just not how things turned out but yeah it's it's not it's not a joke is it it's he says it with his slight kind of droll wobble of the head you know as if he's imparted a nice little witticism but it doesn't work you know he's he's he's glib and smooth in his delivery but he gets away with not actually having any material as such yeah it's nice that he's still new enough to look like he's trying and it's not like when DLT shows up in the 80 nice that he's still new enough to look like he's trying.

And it's not like when DLT shows up in the 80s and he's basically scratching his bollocks and yawning while he's introducing the act. But unfortunately, Mike Reid trying is almost worse than Mike Reid on autopilot. You know what I mean? It's like he's doing his best and that's the saddest thing of all this is it this is the peak of a man's life and it's a bit embarrassing to see how pleased he is to be up there you know for no reason just wasting everyone's time and looking ghastly by

the way yeah oh i'm going to disagree with you on that but yeah okay you think i mean he's got he's got that stark black and white Czech shirt on with a cream jacket. I would have wanted that shirt. I would wear the shit out of that shirt. I would wear it now, actually, if it fit me. I actually had a shirt a bit like that later on in the 80s, but it was more of a sort of swirly, psychedelic chessboard,

like a sort of op-art Bridget Riley kind of thing. Nice. I would love to wear that now unfortunately i have a neck like a tree trunk so you just can't get them to fit but yeah um some people would look at mike reed in that you put it on now and all the lines suddenly turn straight exactly yeah yeah yeah some people look at that shirt that mike reed's got on are going to think pizza chef but or pizza chef's trousers but you know i i think it's a lovely shirt i've got to say no we know we know what he's getting out there don't he's down but

would you wear it with a cream jacket because it looks it just looks like he's been left out in the air and uh gone discolored and crusty around the edges you know like the artificial cream on a school donut by the time you got there it's got a shell on it you know, like the artificial cream on a school donut. By the time you got there, it's got a shell on it, you know. Yeah. I didn't see him in this era. I didn't see him until a few months later. I hadn't heard of him yet. I didn't see this episode.

So when I look at this now, there's something a bit unsettlingly off and different about him, and I couldn't figure out what it is, and it's that he's not wearing glasses. And you know when you see somebody who's always got glasses or sunglasses or something on and they haven't got them on they just look really wrong and there's no there's no sort of physical explanation for why that would be the case because they've still got a face with normal eyes it's just that um somehow that it yeah it looks like they've had something sucked out of them or whatever. You know, it's just kind of wrong.

It's his weak mole eyes squinting into the light. I mean, it's like, all right, so you're vain and myopic, right? But what is this? The days when contact lenses were like a Pyrex dish you had to hammer onto your eyeball. You know, I mean, what's his problem? I don't know. I don't like to see it it's like he's stumbling around like velma you know what i mean he comes face to face with an escaped

tiger and pats it on the head and says no thuggy i mean it's horrible he looks like he's been shaken awake after three hours sleep it's a bit like the the old joke you wouldn't hit a man with glasses would you and then you take off the glasses and then hit them you know now no one needs those those pinhole peepers they're peering out of the telly put your fucking bins on man yeah a nice colorful pair that express your personality yeah that and you that and your blue shorts you'll still attract all the classiest ladies. I'm going to come to that, yeah. Maybe you drop the Tomorrow's World reference just to make sure he actually wasn't on Tomorrow's World.

Walked into the wrong studio. Al, right, you're the expert. You're the Top of the Pops expert. You've been on the story of Top of the Pops 1989 more than we have, right? Yes. You know the timeline. So I've got to ask, this thing, that green illuminated disc with his autograph on it,

was that a brand new thing? I mean, I don't recall seeing that in any episodes that we've covered. How long did that last? It can't have just been for him for that one night. Well, as we'll see throughout the show, a couple of other bands and artists get that as well, don't they? As we've discovered when we've covered 1980 in previous chart musics, this is their fucking about period, isn't it? So they're just trying new things, new production ideas.

Yeah, yeah. This is the beginning of the tinkering era of Top of the Pops. Right, yeah, yeah. At this moment in time, Mike Reid is currently holding down the 8pm slot in the week and tonight he's lodged between Talkabout, a regular open forum held in time, Mike Reid is currently holding down the 8pm slot in the week, and tonight he's lodged between Talkabout, a regular open forum held in schools where Andy Peebles reasons with the youth on the issues of the day and then plays their requests for madness in the police, and John Peel. He's a year and a week away from ripping Dave Lee Travis out of the breakfast show throne.

In the meantime, he's been enjoying the perks that presenting a Radio 1 show can bestow on a man by wetting his beak in the trough of personal appearances at regional nightclubs. Article in the stage, mid-1979. As many cabaret venues throughout the country convert their premises into discos, the demand for named disc jockeys has increased considerably. Mike Reed is one of the leading DJs represented by MPC Artists and Management, who report bumper business for all their artists during the summer months. or their artistes during the summer months.

In their experience, the appearance of a well-known DJ at one of the larger venues can sell up to 2,000 tickets in advance. Fucking hell, that's how bereft we were in the eventers. Yeah. But it has to be said, there is a downside to this. As reported by a pop-crazy youngster by the name of Chris, who sent me a series of letters that his partner wrote the drafts of which he kindly passed on to me and yeah this is a while ago so i've lost your surname chris i do apologize make yourself known on social media and you'll be bigged up in the true style and fashion.

Imagine the excitement. The year was 1982 and megastar Mike Reed announced he was to make a personal appearance at the Saturday night disco in the Kettering Leisure Village, a dilapidated sports hall. The 16-year-old Jill can hardly comprehend the glamour of such an occasion, so prepares a note to hand to Mike, should she get a chance.

Dear Mike Reed, Hi, I'm Jill. Well, this is not a bad disco. Please could you play a record for my friends Emma, Maria, Sue, Alison, Sam and my boyfriend David? Susie and the Banshees would agree with us. Well, me and David anyway. Tar. Jill.

I'm not sure exactly what a live appearance by Mike Reed entails, but I doubt it's going to involve Susie and the Banshees. How did it go? Well, here's the letter of apology she sent to Mike Reed on behalf of the good people of Kettering. Dear Mike, I am writing to you to personally apologise for the pathetic behaviour of certain people who ruined Saturday evening completely. I feel really ashamed and embarrassed that when someone like you takes the time to come to Kettering, we thank you by causing a riot. I really wouldn't blame you if you never come to Kettering again. Anyway, thank you very much for my autograph.

I almost didn't have the heart to ask you after all. That maybe apology would have been more appropriate. Yours sincerely, Jill. And here's, this is how fucking deep it goes here's a letter to her friend Wenda explaining what happened God, on Saturday me, David, Maria

Alice and Emma and Sue went to Mike Reed, boy I shouldn't think he'll come to Kettering again, there was a load of fighting, ending when the police came and dragged off half the audience. Mike Reed was so disgusted he walked off. He came back on at the end to sign autographs. I got one. He looked really terrible. All yellow and drenched in sweat. Yuck. He looked fed up.

and drenched in sweat. Yuck! He looked fed up. And to my knowledge, Mike Reed has never been back to Kettering. Riots at Mike Reed PA. Fucking hell. Well, you see, you know,

it happened to all these sort of two-tone legends. Yes. He's going out there in the world with this message of love and peace and racial unity. But inevitably, inevitably, the national front skinheads were drawn to his sort of jumping up and down, stomping tunes. Yeah. Yeah, it's a tragedy. Happened to Jimmy Percy, happened to the Specials,

and now it's happened to Mike Reid. Yeah, he turned up in his madness, modernist bad. Yes, yes. Thing is, and going back to that bit you just read out of the availability of DJs and how much they bumped up the takings of those provincial nightclubs, you think that's tragic. In Barry, right, we didn't even have famous Radio 1 DJs. We had famous Radio 1 DJs' brothers.

Fucking hell. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. didn't even have famous radio and djs we had a famous radio and djs brothers fucking hell yes um yeah yeah there was a sort of church hall on holton road the main shopping street which quite often had a poster outside for a disco held by vince saville no no yeah yeah did you go no i was too young oh actually maybe i wasn't hey but yeah jesus younger people don't appreciate this the the cultural bleakness of this time they really don't i was just thinking you know i was comparing mike reed's uh sartorial choices on this episode to the artificial cream on a school donut and i was thinking that was the dessert for like a salad which was a heap of carrot shavings one leaf uh a single hemisphere of instant mash doled out with an ice cream scoop

and a little pile of salted peanuts that was the healthy option and it's this was the universe within which we experienced mike reed yeah and within which mike reed made some color of sense you know this these eastern block conditions uh under which most british people still lived in 1980 you know in terms of food standard of living the cars people drove and the the low quality goods they had to buy and so this prick comes on tv and he's basically a rusted up austin maxi you know but in radio one terms he's the he's the sporty little coupe of the range you know of the fleet tr7 isn't it and we took it because he wasn't a murkin faced workplace bully uh or a or a sinewy albino sex offender it's like hey this guy's cool yeah or off-duty maths teacher yeah yeah i Yeah, I mean, I liked him. Yeah?

There's no point rewriting history. The heart wants what it wants, you know. He was the cool one. Yeah, and he had, and last time we talked about it, I think it was episode 20, when we found out that he was called Mickey Manchester in his past. I did like his sort of chortlesome twee style that he had. And he was a slight, just a very slight shift forwards from the old school DJs of the 70s.

Yeah. Well, he's buttoned his shirt up, hasn't he, for a start? He has, yeah. Buttoned his shirt up to the top without a tie. Yeah, big mistake. Well, I don't know, but it makes him look part of the new wave, at least. Yeah. And he's got all the badges.

The badges are very performative, aren't they? There's so many of them. Yes. It's laying it on a bit thick. Well, it's a clankening. A clankening clankening yeah i mean i can't even have a go i'm sure we've talked about this before but on my harrington yeah or later on my bomber jacket the idea of not wearing all my badges at once i just didn't get that you know i didn't get that just like one badge can make a huge impact i would wear every fucking one and he's doing that

the one thing that infuriated me about this episode was I could hardly make out any of the badgers. Well, there's madness. There's a madness one. There's a madness one, yeah. And there's one I think is Kate Bush. Looks like there's a prisoner one as well. Oh, really? Yeah, because he's got some big badgers on,

which was not the style at the time. No one cool, was it? They had to be one inch. No. But just all these trappings and everything about him, just these little tiny details, made you build a bigger picture in your head that was probably wrong.

In fact, we now know it was wrong. But you assumed he was one of the good guys. You assumed that, you know, including politically in that, you just assumed, you know, he's name-checking the jam, he's into the specials and madness and all that. Yeah.

You know, he's on our side. You know, you just thought... He's on the side of the angels. But, well, boy, did we turn out to be very wrong about that. I don't know. I was just listening to his beautiful song about the 2004 tsunami. What? Do you remember that?

No. Yeah, yeah. It got number four in the British charts. Oh, my God. What's it? It was a charity record. Oh, well, yeah. It was, yeah, with what they called One World Project,

a pretty, actually fairly impressive supergroup of pensioner rock stars singing Mike Reid's song about the 2004 tsunami, the comfortingly titled Grief Never Grows Old. And it's not a song i have to say it's not a song that shows too many signs of being the work of an older more experienced songwriter uh it sounds like it was composed on a glockenspiel uh but i don't one thing you can say about it is that it's not as bad as the 2004 tsunami. Completely passed me by that. Didn't even know that existed.

Yeah, me too. So when I was preparing for this episode, I remembered that last time we talked about Mike Reid, inevitably there were lots of jokey references to Blue Tulip Rose Reid. Of course there is. We did lots of quotes from that. and for people who don't know it was this uh documentary on channel 4 in the 90s called i'm your number one fan about stalkers and um the most eye-catching and memorable character in it was this woman who'd renamed herself blue tulip rose reed and was a mike reed fan and um she's

only on the show for about 15 20 minutes out of an hour. But what 15, 20 minutes they are. And I decided, partly because, I'll admit, I was trying to dredge it for more funny quotes for this episode, but just to sort of get a feel of it, because I haven't watched it for a while. I re-watched it, and it was just way darker than I remember. Obviously, the funny bits are still funny in a kind of bleak way, in a way that you feel guilty for laughing, because it's clearly

something with severe mental health issues. The programme probably wouldn't get made now, for exactly that reason. But you laugh at it, and you watch it in the same way that, you know, you watch something on live leaks, or faces of death, some really

awful thing that you can't take your of death some really you know awful thing that you you you can't take your eyes away but you know you know that on some level you shouldn't be looking at it but um so it's like that so i i just thought for anyone who hasn't seen it and it is probably out there on youtube anyway if you want to go looking but i i just want to summarize it for people so is that is that okay if i can just yeah go ahead yeah well it starts off and we we see her basically gilling off under the bed covers and this in itself was obviously kind of pre-planned and she's going no i can't listen to him it's going straight off this this is how his voice and then she does a sort of sex noise and um and then you know uh and she goes oh uh about about uh meeting him in the Radio 1 car park.

This gorgeous looking guy. I thought, he's an absolute cracker. And then you get the famous, the first really iconic line from it is when she talks about Ed Stewart being there with him in the Radio 1 car park. Ed Stewart's breath stinks. Mike Reed has got beautiful breath. He's gorgeous. He is fantastic. He he is top so he gives it all that and then taylor alluded to the blue shorts thing where she slaps his arse and was

whoa tenders tenders talk about the electricity going through me and all of that um so that's the kind of meet cute at the start of it if you like uh which it sounds very much to anybody watching it like you know it wasn't an accidental meeting. She totally went there to stalk him in the first place. And, you know, she does quite a few of these monologues to camera where she's saying, you know, get very emotional, saying, he is everything to me. He's very, very, very precious to me.

There is no guy in this world that I've ever loved till I fell for Mike mike and then we get this this is the bit where and in in the last uh the time we did we did mike reed taylor said that she's literally barking mad this is the evidence of that um she goes mike reed husband dearest eat your heart out and she starts barking woofing to mike oldfield's portsmouth yeah it's all of that um she sends him messages going like when can i get in bed with you um yes uh oh this is when she goes to the print shop that the scene in the print shop it's incredible she goes in she wants to get a t-shirt made so you know when can i get in bed with you and uh one of the guys behind the

camera says i thought he was gay she's like hey, now you can pack that in as soon as you like. And she breaks down. She starts sobbing. And then we see her on camera sobbing to the camera going, I don't mean to cause you any harm. And this is the chilling bit. If I have caused you any harm, I've not meant it. And, yeah, and this is is it just starts getting really dark and she says this phrase which it would be a pull quote if this was a magazine article this would be she goes you have to be a nuisance to get what you want today

yes and yeah that that would be kind of on the film poster or whatever. And she goes, so I'm warning you viewers, if you happen to fall for a DJ, please be careful. And then it gets to the bit that, seriously, you know, you wonder why the cameras are still rolling, but she goes, Mike Reed made me very,

very ill and it's put me on these. And she holds out diazepam tablets. And she basically talks about an overdose. She talks about having this failed suicide attempt. And she goes, I've always been lonely because my marriages have never worked out i mean marriage is plural uh best will in the world that raises an eyebrow but then she goes but mike's the only one who can cure me because mike has special powers special powers and then there's the bit she's on a train station on the way to london and there's a couple of teenagers sort of dry

humping each other on a bench on the station. Yes. And she pesters them to show them one of her homemade Mike Reed T-shirts and starts cackling wildly. And then they go to the graphologist, and also there's this woman who's basically a station manager at Classic FM, and they start showing the actual letters that she's written to them. It's like, My sweet lips, Mike Reed,

I am enclosing you some tennis balls. I cannot wait to play with yours. Will you play with mine? Now will you marry me? Love, Blue Tulip Rose Reed. Oh, man. Fucking hell. And there's another one, there's a typed one that says,

how would you like to find a dead body in your doorway? And then it goes into her suicide attempt in the letter. Then we have a bit of light relief with a famous washing machine photo. Of course. She sent in a photo to the station that she has named Mike Reed. And on the back it says, this is to show that I have a washing machine. And there's an envelope, which I think the photo came in, with scrawl

on the outside the envelope which i paused it and it says yeah i badly need your sexy body and it's got a picture of a cock and bull squirting yes out of it here comes yes um very bad the one as mentioned before absolute amateur yeah it's not very good is it no no no and i've never noticed before but when you pause it there's a topless photo of her, dear God. Oh, yes. And we see her typing naked, and then the office manager at Classic FM starts reading extracts, saying, you will know when I am in a temper.

I go pure white and shake. And, yeah, you do sort of feel like it shouldn't have been made, but then she goes to Classic FM. She's actually there, and she's saying, I'm going to a prison camp because everyone there are treated like prisoners and she's walking through camden town crowing like a cockerel and and she enters and and then here's the prison warder now and uh and and then then we have a voiceover from her saying i don't stalk i don't believe in it i've never stalked anybody in my life so it's this kind of delusional thing and and uh just the way she says she says i changed my name to blue tulip rose reed spelt r e a d she says it quite aggressively like that you know and uh she's

talking to the um sort of gatekeepers the um that the the office manager in the lobby at Classic of M and she goes, have you ever known anyone go celibate for the guy they love? And then she pauses and goes, in case you don't know what that means, they all crack up laughing and go, yeah, I do. And

they say to her, what do you think his girlfriend thinks of that? And she goes, he hasn't got any. he hasn't got any, he hasn't got any, but he has now me. I'm a jealous woman. I've never hurt anybody. I've never hit anybody,

which sounds a bit menacing. And then she goes, I do not come here. I do not come down here every day because I cannot afford to. I mean, this is where there's all this dark stuff, but there are these moments of just pure comedy that you could not have scripted better if you tried and afterwards she she actually feels

great there's almost a moment of light at the end where she she at least feels great for spilling it all out she feels top banana and then she's walking away she's walking away giving you know give me an m you know that thing walking down the street and and that that's the last last we see of her but you watch it now and then you then then you watch this episode of top the pops and might read and you think you poor fucker you might be a ukip loving you know frankie goes to hollywood banning bastard but nobody deserves that and you know presumably because you know we hear that he did see all the letters yeah it must have been pretty fucking traumatic for him in this episode no spoilers we don't see a lot of interaction between mike reed and the kids no fucking hell no wonder he's probably quarantined himself wouldn't

it be great if when you look back every single television appearance that might read ever made it's okay pause it there right now zoom in on that bit of the there she is yeah yeah yeah yeah one of these members of legs and co are not like the others the thing is wild as she was i'm not sure blue tulip could have kept pace with mike's uh real life uh love life um because i was thinking about this watching this program and i suddenly remembered when one of his exes did a kiss and tell thing in one of the tabloids did you ever see this yeah no and she said that he got her to tie his erection to a bedpost what one of her with one of her silk stockings now when you stop and think about that it's really peculiar it's like a combination of different elements all of which some people find

sexy but put together in a way that makes no sense at all it's like she tied his erection to a bedpost with a silk stocking. It's like... Fucking hell. You picture that. I mean, I picture that in explicit detail. I would say needlessly explicit, in fact. Like, quite shocking in its frankness. And to me, it's like someone's built a model aircraft with all the right parts,

but it's got a wing coming out of the front and like the wheels are on the roof you know what i mean it's like what's he doing there you imagine this scene with love is a wonderful color yeah across the room yeah it is a bit like sort of jeff goldblum in the fly or one of those things where people get teleported but when they come out the other end, they're all jumbled up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah, all the elements are kind of wrong and they have to redo it. Just to stop him from sticking his balls in her ear.

You know what I mean? It's like, Mike, you're getting it wrong. We're immediately thrown into a cold open of Mike Reed, standing on a balcony under a green light with his signature etched into it in black trousers, pale cream suit jacket with a clanking of badges down the left lapel and an on-trend black and white Czech shirt as he drops a Tomorrow's World reference and introduces the top 30 rundown as we are assailed by the sound of Jazz Carnival by Azimuth. Formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1971,

Azimuth were a jazz funk trio who first came to prominence in Brazil when they did the soundtrack to O Fabuloso Fittipaldi, a documentary about Emerson Fittipaldi, and they signed to the American jazz label Milestone soon after. This is a track from their third LP, Light As A Feather. It entered the charts a fortnight ago, and this week it's nipped up two places from number 21 to number 19. So, chaps, this is what Brazilian jazz funk sounds like then.

Okay. There's lots of this about in 1979, 80. Stuff vaguely like this. You had Spirogyra, Morning Dance. And a few years later, Mezzoforte with Garden Party. And also, there were these LPs that people would often have in their homes. Because this was the era where people had just started buying what was then high-end hi-fi equipment. And there would be LPs that you would buy

that would be specifically made to show off the dynamic range of that. And they'd be called things like, you know, the sound of stereo or hi-fi sounds or something like that. And it would be light orchestral. Light orchestral or sort of cocktail jazz, like that. And, you know, it's a whole different world and you sort of can't imagine why people would listen to it for pleasure the thing with azimuth is uh given their story their backstory

their heritage the fact they were formed in 1971 and they were brazilian jazz funk band um i'm thinking that somewhere in their back catalogue there's got to be some fantastic music there must be but it ain't this yeah exactly i feel like an ignoramus for slagging this off but this tune why was this a hit i don't get it at all this came on at the disco you wouldn't dance to it yeah what's what's its point well it was the early days of home video and maybe people needed uh background music for their you know promotional video presentations of their abattoir or you know because this is what it's like i mean i thought you're going to say home videos of tying their erections to the bedpost with a silk stocking as

well you know yeah it'd work for that yeah i can't hear this without seeing the words press start flashing on the screen it's yeah it's this is the background music on the power boating segments used to have on electric blue isn't it yeah or it'd be on danger freaks do you remember that taylor that was on central all the time in the 80s no it was this documentary that used to trot out every bank holiday about australian stuntmen oh yeah had a ridiculous theme tune where this bloke would just go danger freaks right at the end after they jumped through a hoop of fire or something. And that caught on at our school. We'd just formed a group called Danger Freaks,

and we'd dare each other to walk on the science tables and get from one end of the classroom to the other without falling off or being caught by a teacher. And at the end, you had to jump off and go, Danger freaks! You're like the original Jackass or Dirty Sanchez or whatever. Yes. That's what this is like, isn't it?

It's that sort of bespoke, unobtrusive jazz funk tinkle that people would commission for this stuff, you know? It's like if you need music that's not going to be listened to but you haven't got the funds to use library music, people will just get their mate to do it. Do you know what I mean? Like lower than test card music. It's like this is, you would hear, you'd only hear it,

yeah, football highlights videos, porno films, interlude sequences or VCR demonstration tapes featuring film of paragliders and brightly dressed skiers. Someone's got a mate who owns his own studio. Oh, he can play anything. He's got a setting for that. Yeah, it's a great thing to have done, though, surely, isn't it? Because at least you know that your contribution to this world was actually useful,

which must be a nice, peaceful feeling. And it was exactly the sort of thing which 15 years after this suddenly became very hip when all those types like the Sound Gallery and, you know, Mike Flowers Pops and stuff like that started, that easy listen revival.

Although I don't recall hearing this Azimuth record on that scene. And I did go to some of those nights and probably because it's just, crap, it's irredeemable, you know. Well, it's tainted with the musk of disco, isn't it? Even though it's not really. I mean, it works quite well as a backing for the countdown,

because, you know, you're not really listening to the song, you're just thinking, well, fuck this, I'm going to look at the photos instead. Oh, yes, and we've got a choice crop this week, haven't we? I like the Kool and the Gang photo, because they're stood next to this this posh car that looks like you know when you get teenagers standing next to a fancy car that isn't theirs but they want to make out that it's theirs i got that kind of feeling from it um got the skids looking like extras from blake seven i thought rupert holmes looking like a young james wale um the tourists yes theists look like a TV director's idea of a new wave band.

They've basically been sent to the costume department. Fiddler's Dram, man. Day Trip to Bangor. Twelve of the fuckers. Twelve piece band. Good luck with the royalties. I know. They make Dexys look like Blamange or something. You've got John Evangelis

walking off into the sunset arm in arm like it looks like a remake of casablanca in they look like they're about to have a snog yeah yeah yeah it's good to see they've found happiness yeah you've got you've got a classic cliched photo of the clash looking hard in a shopping precinct yes you've got you've got the beat with saxo looking like he's photo bombing them which he always did, really, to be fair. Yes. And then there's a couple of examples of anachronism that slightly bothered me.

There's a Pink Floyd one where, and I'm not a huge Pink Floyd person, I'm not a Pink Floyd person at all, but there's this picture of Pink Floyd, and it's a live shot, and they've all got very long hair, and it looks quite psychedelic, and they're performing under what looks like

a sort of projection or backdrop of this swirly kind of space monster. I thought that's got to be the wrong era because this is the wool now. This is, you know, a fairly modern time and I don't know, that may be right. And it's a fucking awful photo, isn't it? There's lots of awful photos. It's like it's been taken by someone at the back of Wembley Arena.

Well, there's lots of very bad live photos. There's one of Sugar Hill Gang, which is a sort of like red... Oh, that's awful. Yeah, yeah. That's awful. It's like someone's just jogged the camera in a nightclub. Absolutely, yeah. The other anachronism that bothered me was Booker T and the MGs, where they've got what looks like a very modern era photo for a record that came out in the 60s.

Yeah. A couple others that jumped out to me were American middle-of-the-road rock acts. There's Styx, where one of the guys in Styx, he's got these white plus-fours, sort of like jodhpurs tucked into gold riding boots. He's quite a look. And then there's

Dr. Hook, who just look elated to be alive. And all I'm saying is, if anyone's seen that legendary performance of theirs on German TV, i think that dr hook were elated to be alive quite a lot of the time i've not seen that oh fucking hell yeah it's just basically if if you rule out uh brian jones in the rolling stones we love you video uh then dr hook on live on uh on German TV is the most fucked that any band has looked on film I'm saying

it's extraordinary, Taylor's probably seen it I haven't but I will you haven't, oh my god video playlist everyone my favourite pictures aside from Rupert Holmes looking like a photo fit that suddenly turned into quarter profile

is new music um a bit of horse play in the queue to audition as manuel in the local rep touring production of faulty towers one of them's got an open hand held out under the other one's chin and it looks like he's saying are you chewing boy and on azimuth slide on the chart rundown you can't really see what's going on it's a live picture bit of a mess you just see uh half of a much too big drum kit and a musician sat on a high stool. And everything's too fuzzy to see what he's playing. But it's not a piano. So get off the fucking stool. Yeah.

You look like you're waiting for a roadie to walk on and feed you Cowan Gate mashed banana pudding on a plastic spoon. And then give you massive backhanded slaps around the head when he thinks no one's looking. Rose Royce, nine-piece band. Nine, yeah. Just laughing at Fiddler's Dram and waving handfuls of banknotes at him derisively.

And a lovely shot of Sheila B. Devotion that looks like, as it's listed, there's some confusions, but I I'm sure will come to you later. Sheila and B Devotion. More correct. Looks like someone's pressed pause two seconds before John Holmes walks into the shot anyway. It's that lovely aesthetic, that sort of like, you know,

that Boogie Nights aesthetic. Glossy and healthy on the beach before you die at 34 in mysterious circumstances. Not that this happened to Sheila, thank the Lord. I mean, I've got Matchbox, who look like the rapists in Deliverance at a works dinner dance. They are scary as fuck.

Richard Jobson of the Skids in a yellow jogging suit, which makes him look like Hyacinth Bouquet on a fun run for the local church. And Fiddler's Drum, they do look like a shoot football team center spread photo from the 1534 stroke five season and like overpopulated bands right you've got rose royce with nine uh fiddlers drum with 12 even dollar there's five members a dollar who knew yeah who knew david van day looks like he's got a bum fluff mustache as well in the photo oh god the weirdest thing about this chart rundown though is when you get to number two billy preston and cyrita their name written in a different type yes to everybody else why didn't notice that the only possible explanation I can think of is that somebody spelt Syrita wrong and they had to change it at the last minute.

Called him Billy Preston and Ryvita. Yeah, well, but such trifles had never bothered them before. We've seen misspelt band names on there. Yeah. And secondly, if they were capable of putting new letters on a slide why would they not have access to the usual letter set yeah a mystery for the ages so the following week jazz carnival dropped three places to number 22 and they were never reacquainted with the uk charts again but it sold over half a million copies worldwide which set them up as a regular fixture on the International Jazz Festival circuit,

and they split up for the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. All of television history is contained in the Box of Delights. I've climbed up Nelson's column once before. These are small.

And put it down in front of Bagpuss. I'm Julia Rayside. Join me and my guests as we dip into our favourite TV memories. Suppose I mustn't hesitate bashing my head like this. You can't tell me what to do, you ain't my mother! I love when a plan comes together. Come and tell us what yours are too. We've all been told we can't discuss nominations.

It's a bit car-ish. Shut up with a novel on the top. I think I us what yours are too. We've all been told we can't discuss nominations. It's a bit of car-ish. Shut up. With a novel on the top. I think I like you Lovejoy. Find us on Twitter at Box Delights Pod and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Every day my mental friend Shakes my bed at 6am Then the shiny serving clones Run in with my telephones

We immediately fade into the backdrop of the next act, bearing the band name in a non-more-Aventis digital watch font. It's The Plastic Age by the Buggles. Formed in Wimbledon in 1977, the Buggles consisted of Geoff Downs, the former keyboard player of the mid-70s jazz fusion band She's French, who had turned down a position in Wizard, and Trevor Horne, a former Bob Dylan tribute act from Durham who moved to London in the early 70s to help re-record top 20 hits for BBC Radio, which still had restrictions on needle time, and playing in the orchestra for Come Dancing.

They linked up in 1976, when Downs joined Horn and his then-girlfriend Tina Charles in a covers band called Northern Lights, later becoming members of her backing band when she became a solo artist, while arsing about in assorted side projects. They'd already recorded their first single, Video Killed the Radio Star, in 1978, above a Stonemasons in Wimbledon, but they didn't land a record deal until 1979 with Island, and it took five weeks to knock Messaging a Bottle off number one,

spending a week there before giving way to Lena Martell. This is the follow-up and the second cut from their debut album, The Age of Plastic, which came out a fortnight ago. It's a new entry this week at number 54 and here they are in the studio. The main takeaway from that pot of history is Trevor Horn was Tina Charles' baby who just loves to dance, who wants to dance,

who loves to dance, who's got to dance. That changes everything for me now. I interviewed Trevor Horn and asked him about this he's not on the record sadly he was just in the live band but still a great introduction to pop history

to be part of Tina Charles' backing band hooked him up with Bidu and all them lot well that's it yeah which probably put him in good stead for production stuff, I would imagine. I went to see the Buggles once. He did a kind of charity gig in,

oh, maybe up 10 years ago now, in what used to be called Subterranea, maybe is now called Subterranea again, in Labyrinth Grove, underneath the Westway. And there were lots of guest stars, people like, oh, God, Gary Barlow and Richard O'Brien from the Rocky Horror Show and all these kind of people. And they did Video Killed the Radio Star seven times in the gig.

No, no. Seriously, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they did the album The Age of Plastic, which, of course, has the song on it. But basically, all the crowd wanted to hear was that song. And they had a local children's choir join them for one rendition of it. And I think, yeah, Richard O'Brien for one and Gary Barlow. And they literally did the song seven times.

Fucking hell. If any band has milked their hit more than that, I'd love to know about it. Did you shout, do video kill the radio star at the end, Simon? Yeah, exactly. Buggles currently tussling with new music for the

electronic nerd pop crown and they're certainly winning commercially. Artistically, I'm not sure who comes out on top new music had better tunes but buggles were more full-on you know robot way to gross out yeah pseudo plastic i say pseudo plastic because of course they were old musos, really, you know, just having fun. And there was never anything simply celebratory about the futuristic blankness of Buggles music. When you listen to it, it's always a bit regretful, you know, pining for the past.

It's like a satire of ultra-modernity, sort of bittersweet at best. And to me And it's, to me, it's quite funny how this record is trying really hard to sound modern and bleepy and not like late period. Yes. Which it keeps threatening to lurch into.

And then suddenly it reaches that bridge section and the lid blows off and it starts going for the one. Like he can't help himself because that's what he is musically, Trevor Horn, which is why he's a better producer than artist. You apply all that skill and all that bombast to some decent pop music and the result can be phenomenal. But when the source of that technical wizardry is in charge from top to bottom you might not get what you need and he i mean i you know i i quite love this record

and he has been involved in the songwriting and performance of some great pop music but you know most often the good stuff happens when someone a bit fresher and perhaps dumber comes up with the meat and he goes off and cooks it you know uh i mean this it's a good record this but it sounds like a project whereas the best records he was involved with sound like events which is just something he couldn't do on his own yeah that that yes bit, and I know the bit you're talking about, is that they send the hard police to put you under cardiac arrest. It's you, like John Anderson,

just like John Anderson. Yeah, exactly. You can totally imagine John Anderson singing that bit. And it struck me as that, coupled with the fact that Jeff Downs has four keyboards on the go, right? Yeah, yeah. It struck me as what amounts to, in football,

in football they call it a come and get me plea, right? There'd be a post-TOTP interview, and Trevor Horne would say, obviously I have a great deal of admiration for Yes, but I'm fully committed to the Buggles at the moment, and I'm just taking each single as it comes. Yeah, want-a-way musician. Yeah, the want-away musician. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So controversy when he likes a post on Twitter showing him photoshopped into the current Yes lineup. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, while us pop kids were thinking the Buggles were part of a new wave, the remnants of a much older wave were watching with evil intent. I mean, I've gone a bit hd wells war the world's

out jeff wayne's version anyway but you can imagine the kind of richard burton uh voiceover no one would have believed in the first years of the 1980s that chart pop affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of prog no one would have dreamed that synth bands were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of a Yes revival involving the fucking Buggles. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded top of the pops with envious eyes. Slowly and surely they drew their plans against us. with envious eyes slowly and surely they drew their plans against us yeah and the lyrics are taylor's right about the ambivalence of whether it likes the future or doesn't like the future

but the bit that jumped out at me is uh the the first lines every day my metal friend shakes my bed at 6 a.m and i'm thinking yeah well if you will live in a house share with craig lafilth, what do you expect? All right, yeah, I'll tumbleweed, I think. Shakes my bed at 6am and there's Mike Reid's cock tied to the end of it. The worst lyrics, though, is in that bit where he says, yeah, they send the heart police to put you under cardiac arrest. Yeah, very nice. Doesn't mean anything. It's just an empty empty pun i hate it

it's like you might as well say they send the bear police to put you in a panda car it's like it's not it doesn't mean anything at all of all the things it's scared of with the future is where the heart attacks are seem to be the preeminent one because heart attacks are you know as old as time and he just seems to think that cardiac arrest is somehow this terrible thing that the 1980s is going to bring you know i mean the whole thing is just kind of sub alvin toffler future shock stuff about artificial intelligence and plastic surgery but the main obsession is heart attacks i don't we get it yeah you'd think if anything they would become less frequent yeah technology marches on yeah but i did like this record um i liked it at the time and i can prove it because um the copy of it i've got is clearly

one that i bought at the time because i don't know if you remember these they're these panini stickers like similar to the football ones of pop music that came out for a while and and i collected them i never i never got enough of them to fill a book in fact i don't even think i had the book but i just used to put them on the cut out sleeves of whatever records i owned by that artist and i've still got my copy of living in the plastic age in an island records sleeve with that sticker on it but the sticker's slightly too big uh so i've had to sort of tuck the corner of it fold it around the middle you know the circle in the middle we didn't get that in nottingham i don't think i've got no recollection of that come to think

of it what we had even then even in 1980 there was an ice cream van and it still had in the window by the serving hatch buy a screwball and get a mirabelle sticker of your favorite pop star and it was david cassidy and donny osmond and the way out of date still couldn't have been bothered to take it down and i always wanted to ask just out of interest but i thought no i'll lose all street credibility if I stand on this street with loads of kids behind me asking for a David Cassidy sticker. Yeah, well, it's like in 1980, 81, 82, whenever there was, like, on a birthday card or something,

if there was, like, a drawing of a pop star and he's still got stack heels and glitter stars on him and a big guitar. Usually an acoustic guitar for some reason. Yeah, they look like the band Child, if you remember them. Yes. That's what they would look like. See, I do remember this from the time,

but I don't remember having any reaction to it at all. To me, this was a bit of a non-event. It was a bit underwhelming after their last playground smash. Video Killed the Radio Star was just as innovative as Our Friends Electric. They were of a pair to me. And looking back now, you just think, why the fuck did you think that, you twat?

No, it's a great record. It was a great record. I bought it. That was one of my number one singles that I had to buy that week. But with this one, you could say that the pressure's on for the Buggles here. It's the underwhelming follow-up, isn't it? Yeah, it's the underwhelming follow-up, which is a classic thing in pop history, really.

Yeah. And then there was like Clean Clean and Elstree. And I think, I don't know the chart positions off the top of my head, I'm sure you do, but I reckon it's just sort of a perfect downward curve, for them yes yeah yeah yeah the term diminishing returns was made for the buggles career but the thing about this it's like just because it's got a simple riff like out of a zx spectrum game you know that doesn't mean it doesn't mean it's commercial you know it's really it's a producer's record sort of in the wrong way in that it's it's commercial, you know. Really, it's a producer's record, sort of in the wrong way, in that it's like it's all sound and feel and concept,

like posing as a pop song, you know. But it's sort of, in a way, it can't really commit. It's like I'm really unimpressed by the hook line where he says, this could be the plastic age. It just sounds a bit weak. Don't speculate. Declare. says this could be the plastic age it just sounds a bit weak don't speculate declare this is the if if sir jimmy savel obe kcsg had said this could be the age of the trade yeah he wouldn't be where he is today um and it and this is not just a pale successor to video killed the radio star it's a pale precursor to their best

record for my money which is l street which is the one which really shows how a how a song and a record can be totally cerebral and conceptual and clever clever and a bit of a put on but also gorgeous and poignant uh and genuine and to me, that one also does a better job of straddling that comic futurism and authentic nostalgia. Much better than this one. As good as videoconference. But whatever anyone thinks of the Buggles, I would say it's a clear sign of how open and unrestricted the pop scene of 1980 really was

that anyone could consider this an acceptable look and sound and general aesthetic for a hit group you know whereas in fact straight into looking no problem um i mean they weren't a hit group for very long because they're not the kind of band that builds a following and they also were not a churning hit factory but they also they sort of weren't a novelty band or an obvious one-hit wonder band either they were just this they were like just an odd arrangement of unphotogenic men in bad clothes that don't really go together looking like the sort of avanches geeks you might see on making the most of the micro you know talking talking about sending electronic messages by computer but uh you know but except they're dressed like they're dressed up for a play

in their village hall for which they've done all the music on a synthesizer. I don't know, though. You say bad clothes, but the guitarist has got this amazing quilted silver jacket that I would wear the shit out of, possibly along with Mike Reid's chessboard shirt. I feel bad for him, though. Yeah, he looks...

For a start, he looks like the impossible offspring of Peter Duncan and shamed comedy actor chris lagham but he's he has his moment stolen he's got a mic set up right and he mimes that vocode a bit near the beginning where it goes hello um and that should have been his big star turn you know his novelty cameo you should have got a big close-up of his face going hello like steve priest you know um but in fact what happens is the camera at that point is zooming in on trevor horn and removing him from the shot and then to make it worse trevor lives up to his name and horns in on his bit and he mimes fuck's sake. And he mimes it himself. And on such moments, careers can turn, you know.

No one ever heard of that guy again, Paul. He didn't get headhunted by Yes. No. I don't think, no. Oh, and did you notice the drummer? No. It's our old friend Richard Burgess, who was last seen in Driver 67,

who is currently working on Landscape's debut LP No way! I was just distracted by what's his name, Down's seemingly homemade green flash jogging suit which he's chosen to wear with a

bako foil wind cheater which is a dystopian vision of a never occurring future just as unsettling as the one in metropolis so the next week the plastic age entered the top 40 at number 35 and would take four weeks to get to number 16 its highest position however a few months later the buggles were commencing work on their second LP when another band were in the studio next door. Yes, who were one of Horn's favourite bands and were also under the wing of their new manager. And after Horn bunged over a song for them to record,

him and Downs were invited to replace John Anderson and Rick Wakeman, so they did that instead. In the meantime Ireland would put out the follow-up Clean Clean which would only get to number 38 for two weeks in April of this year and they would close out 1980 with Elstree which straggled up to number 55 in November. After Yes Dismanded in the same month they returned to London to get on with the second Buggles LP, but Downs walked out on the very first day of recording as he'd been invited by Steve Howe to form the band Asia with Karl Palmer and John Whetton of King Crimson. So Horne started messing about with a fair light, finished it off himself, said fuck this for a game of soldiers and went on to be the production overlord of the 80s. Choose Ray Wankers.

The Buggles on the Blaster Gauge, the follow-up to Video Kill the Radio Star. The Nolans once had the doubtful pleasure of having me sing with them around a piano. Fortunately, it hasn't stopped them. They're up there this week at number four. MUSIC PLAYS The camera pans back from the stage to reveal Reed standing behind the kids as he reminds us that he's a musician too, you know, before handing off to a video of I'm In The Mood For Dancing by the Nolans. We've discussed the Nolan sisters many a time and oft, and this is their 11th single. It's the follow-up to Spirit, Body and Soul which was their first chart single in the UK after five years of flopperage and it was rushed out the week after the previous single peaked at number 34

in October of 1979. After stalling at number 73 for two weeks, it suddenly soared 33 places to number 40, then soared another 20 places the week after, and this week, it's nipped up two places, from number 6 to number 4. Oh, more

red-hot Nolan action. Al, I've got a complaint to make. I think you're trolling me here. I really do. No. Yeah, because this, right, this is the third time we've done the Nolans, right? Because I was on episodes 34 and 42

when we also did the Nolans. And it still hasn't been the good song. The good song, of course, the good song is Don't Make Waves, which is a sort of Irish Catholic, Kay's catalogue-clad take on george mccrae's rock your baby and i absolutely love it and the fact that we still haven't done it is making me think that you're deliberately choosing all the shit ones with your episodes you're saying you

are right yeah and right here's the thing with the nolans right we often use the word mum disco on child music right not i'm sure we will again. Not only to describe the Nolans, but people like Tina Charles and Liquid Gold, Kelly Marie, the Doolies, Doolies without ghoulies, that is, all that stuff. And I'm in the mood for dancing is very much the rock around the clock of mum disco.

In fact, it didn't launch the genre, but it crystallised it in such a commercially successful way that it became the defining anthem of mum disco. Well, I'll go further on that one, Simon. I'm content that if Saturday Night Fever was actually about John Travolta's mam, this would be the staying alive. Yeah. You would get an opening shot of this film of a swinging fine fair carrier bag and nerris hughes sauntering down the high school perfect yeah yeah yeah but you see you know someone talking to me about i'm in the mood for dancing in relation to the nolans is a bit like

someone saying oh yeah dexys the band who did come on eileen or yes oh yeah soft sell the band who did tainted love and i you know i just grumble fuck that what about this is what she's like or sex dwarf or or in the nolan's case don't make waves anyway yeah that's my complaint over and done with yeah disco in this case being short for discomfort um i think i've previously uh outlined my theory that the creepiness of a pop group increases exponentially with each sibling in the lineup. And sure enough, there's something faintly troubling about the Nolan sisters to me. you know, like a panzer division of cloned Philistine Littlewood shop assistants just rolling over all delicacy and detail and human creativity and combining this absence of wit and self-awareness

with the inflexible clannishness and force and solidarity of the large family. It gives me a chill it could be partly because i'm an only child and adopted at that but i always feel a bit disturbed and discomforted by the thickness of blood do you know what i mean so almost perceive it as a threat to individuality i mean obviously people have a strong link to their parents and their own children but beyond that it gets gradually scarier as you move along the branches of the family tree now i'm well aware this might be my own poorly adjusted problem but seeing all these nolans marching towards you as one flattening the landscape you know loud and not listening maybe others can can share a little of my trepidation it's that quasi-fascistic thing

about family do you know what i mean why just because it's family in it my family right or wrong yeah blood if not soil i don't like it good to see this clip though if just as an explanation for the world jumpsuit shortage uh nolans are not the nolans without saggy jumpsuits and kitten heels it's i believe jumpsuits are back on the high street these days, but some genius has managed to make them look not like what a clown wears. So progress rolls on. But you see the Nolans standing in a line here, and surely any woman immediately thinks, okay, that's a nightclub toilet queue that's going to take a really long time to go down. Oh, and also, why am i in this nightclub

constantly being offered baby shams by engaged glaziers with police mustaches you know researchers for blind date just driving through the middle of the dance floor in a flatbed truck just hurling people over the back i mean they've gone for deliberately unmatching evening wear here haven't they it looks as if they've actually bags it different pages of the case catalog this time yeah they're trying to strike out on their own yeah it's almost as if it wasn't coordinated as if they just rang each other up individually uh one evening said um i'm in the mood for dancing are you in the yeah i'm in the mood for dancing as well yeah yeah let's see what bernadette thinks oh yeah she's in the mood for dancing. Are you in the mood? Yeah, I'm in the mood for dancing as well. Yeah, let's see what Bernadette thinks. Oh yeah, she's in the mood

for dancing. And they're all wearing different outfits. Because even their dancing isn't coordinated. I noticed there's a moment where Colleen almost collides with Ken, Kenette, Kenina, whatever her name is. You know. Yeah, which surprised me, given

you'd expect at least, from what Taylor was saying, some kind of fascistic discipline to the way they move. The other thing about the way they move, well, there's a couple of things that kind of upset me. It's the dainty way that Bernie holds her microphone sideways between her fingers, almost like Groucho Marx about to twiddle his cigar. I hate that way of holding a microphone.

And then there's a bit near the end where i don't know if you clock this she sort of gets down for what's almost a slut drop like grinding her crotch which is just all kinds of wrong for the nolans i mean the nolans are obviously very low-hanging fruit to say the least and i mean there's not much to be gained from us sitting here saying that their music isn't really very good or you know maybe they didn't look especially classy but there is something sort of interesting about the pitch of this particular horror you know and the fact that this is probably the last or these are the last years when this kind of club act was part of the mainstream music scene, right? Like people who advertise their albums on TV rather than in music papers.

Yeah. And there'd be 20 tracks on their album. I mean, club comics were still getting TV work into the 90s. Little and Large still had a primetime Saturdayurday night bbc one show in 1991 yeah um and other variety acts you know could still find a place in the big time for a while but the early 80s was really the last call for this sort of wheel tappers and shunters type turn black lace were one i think black lace i guess yeah the last one when did they get under the wire 84 was it yeah

something like that yeah yeah after that you had to be a TV star already like that cruise ship singing woman

you know what I mean it was a kind of novelty but yeah any traffic then was in the other direction and ex-hit singers would vanish into

nostalgia cabaret you know, or eventually tumbling all the way down to sort of Phoenix Nights level, you know, until even that dried up because it's cheaper and it's better for the bar takings to just book, you know, Dean Spunk presents a tribute to Olly Murs. And, you know, but that gap in charts was was filled by more professional stuff like from america like share and things like that you know sort of stepped into that that that whole

but i don't know it never fully compensated for the loss of something horrible but unique you know that sort of nasty british or anglo-irish variety tradition just gone forever so yeah they've already done this in the top of the pop studio late last month and there's a perfectly serviceable video knocking about but in this case we're treated to a live performance with a full orchestra and it's been doing my head where it's come from. We all know that the Nolan sisters were BBC people, so it could be anything. And I thought, oh, it looks a bit seaside special, but obviously it's not because it's January. So it may be a filming from the Radio 2 series

of Tuesday night is Gala night from the 18th of December, which came from the Golders Green Hippodrome and that's the Jeff Love orchestra there if that's the case and it's hosted by Terry Wogan because hey it's radio two in the Aventus whoever it is hats off to the

bass player he's having a great time there bubbling away just really animating this blasted death scape it's uh quite impressive what this makes me want to watch again actually is the opening night of sound tv uh originally to be called the great british television channel but eventually went out of sound tv which was the amusingly short-lived satellite channel set up in 2005 i think by richard digens chris tarrant um ex copycats superstar mike osmond and jethro the corn comedian, horse breeder and West Country landowner,

which was meant to be a haven for good old-fashioned variety acts and up-and-coming talents, right, who couldn't get past the North London metropolitan liberal elite gatekeepers at the BB so-called sea. And anyone with a taste for hardcore british rubbish and the sour end of real life partridge really should watch this their their launch night it's all on youtube right as should anyone who thinks brexit came out of nowhere um they they start off showing you previews right of some of the stuff that's going to be coming up on sound

tv some of the some of the delights they've got in store which is like sailing down the river sticks on a raft made out of rancid gammon and then after a taped message from chris tarrant who mysteriously couldn't be there. The first programme is just Richard Dijans, Mike Osman and Jethro sat around a table in some noisy restaurant in Southampton where they're having

their launch party with a pretend bottle of champagne in a bucket in front of them. No glasses. Without a script. Just fucking chuntering on and on and on about how they're such heroes for bringing all this great British talent to the great British public.

And how all these out-of-touch TV executives don't understand what people want. And they're going to give a break to all these Joe Beasley and Che cheeky monkey type club acts you know um and it's amazing in itself like just for being the worst tv you've ever seen in your life but also it's the fascinating arrogance of these people right that they live in a tiny world but they're the center of attention wherever they go so they assume that they're the center of the world and it goes on and it goes on and they're following their stream of consciousness and over the course of this hour

they gradually start to sound more and more bitter and it all starts to come out and it's less and less about how great their new channel is and more and more about how they're not on proper television anymore um and this is the launch spectacular like going out live like firing their brand new channel into an overcrowded market just three snarling old cunts who've never forgiven tony ayers you know indulging themselves via satellite it's really something you need to see. But it's, oh, and the channel lasted about six months, by the way. Of course it did. Nobody watched it. As long as that.

Yeah, and they all fell out. But the thing is, that is the inevitable end point of the culture that we see blooming here in this Nolan's clip because it's a dead-end culture. And dead-end culture is always tainted with the smell of death and once you smell that you you can't ignore it you know and i've never felt that sentimental warmth you know towards end of the pier shows or working man's club turns you know not really i mean i'd rather have that than another braying toff on live at the Apollo,

you know, trying to get applause breaks by talking about Brexit and stuff. But I remember growing up around this stuff, this sort of tatty variety, and just at the time thinking, fucking hell, we can do better than this. We're not all savages. I mean, they claim they're in the mood for dancing, but really they go no further than a bit of twirling around and then an awkward bit of twisting and some Andrew's sister's arm gestures.

Yeah. I'm feeling obliged to dance. Simon, is Colleen Nolan the one you fancy? Yeah. Okay, right. Alas, we can't pretend this didn't happen, right? No. I only found this out recently.

I found this out five minutes ago. You know exactly what I'm going to say. I'm shocked that it's not come out. At the unfortunate age of 13, she released a solo single called Andy about her presumably imaginary love affair with prince andrew oh my god um it goes it goes i wouldn't swap my jubilee poster for all the david souls in the world which is one or two if you count kid jensen um says you are my super prince i've loved you ever since i first set eyes on you it's very touching it's just the the simple heartwarming

story of the love between an untouchably privileged and powerful man and an innocent underage girl. It's a true fairy tale. Fucking hell. Yeah. It would have made him break out into embarrassed sweat except he's unable to do that. Well, Colleen's fantasies of this better and more glamorous life know no bounds because she sings

you come to my house, I go to your house, we spend the evening watching TV. Then we go to your house. We spend the evening watching TV. Then we go to Pizza Express. Yay! Look out for that stench of uncontrollable sweat moving closer and closer through part two of Emmerdale Farm. King hell.

So I'll offer him a packet of Tato crisps and a glass of red lemonade and hope that incapacitates him. He's not going to marry you anyway, you're Catholic. So the following week, I'm in the mood for dancing, stayed at number four, but then dragged itself up to number three where it stayed for two weeks. The follow-up, Don't Make Waves,

would get to number 12 in May and they'd have a number 9 with Gotta Pull Myself Together in October and a number 12 with Who's Gonna Rock You in January of 1981. And on that bombshell, we're going to leave it for now, Pop Craze youngsters. Come and join us in a bit for part three of this episode of Chart Music. On behalf of Taylor Parks and Simon Price, my name's Al Needham. Stay Pop Crazed. pox and simon price my name's i'll need them stay pop crazed