Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #51 (Part 2): March 20th 1975 – Guys ‘N’ Dolls Get Ready To Bomb Iraq

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: a party held by the Osmonds, or a party held by the Rollers?The LONGEST EVER EPISODE OF CHART MUSIC finds your host and his chums still on lockdown but DILL DANDING, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, which gives us the opportunity to pick out an episode from the Dark Ages of the mid-Seventies and properly wang on about it. The Saxons are at their flappiest, the collars are condor, Tony Blackburn has been uncrated and set free, and all is as well with the world as it could be in 1975. If you ignore the fact that three of the acts involved would go on to kill later this year.Musicwise, it’s the usual Seventies lucky bag, tainted with the musk of deceit and treachery: Kenny sport the kind of trousers Our Simon saw Rick Witter trying on at Portobello Market. There are obligatory appearances by Cliff and Lulu. Wigan’s Ovation have a massive wazz on the burning torch of Northern Soul. Guys ‘N’ Dolls do a biscuit advert, and Mike Reid makes a Northern boy cry, which is Bad Skit.But there’s also Britfunk in the form of the Average White Band and, er, The Goodies, Pans People having a proper flounce to Barry White, and a Whatnautless Moments – whipped on by the Top Of The Pops Orchestra – seize the opportunity to tell us how much they like girls. And the Bay City Rollers rip down the goalposts of the #1 spot, while the Osmonds forlornly look out of their window wondering while no-one has showed up to their do.David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes – the Humphries of Pop journalism – join Al Needham and dip their elongated critical straws deep into the milk bottle of 1975, pausing to veer off on such tangents as the glory of radiograms, what it would be like to get caned and watch porn with Tony Blackburn, our magazine plans which never came to fruition, a lament for Timbo, the importance of nipples and a big argument over a Kung Fu vest and pants set. Swearing? Loads of it.Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki 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. Hello, I'm Justin. And I'm Lucy. And together we are the hosts of Plenty Questions. It's a very straightforward general knowledge quiz. We ask you 20 questions, one after the other, five-second gap in between, and you shout the answers out. And then you tweet us to let us know how you got on.

See if you can get 20 out of 20. No one has so far, but that's because we haven't started doing it yet. But we will. And there's also going to be some fiendish brain teasers, so join us for Plenty Questions. 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? Chart music. Chart music. Hang on. I'm not ready yet. Let me just check. There's one. There's the other one. I'm not going to die. Fucking yes! Hey! Up you pop-crazy youngsters and welcome to part two of episode 51 of Chart Music. Chart Music. I'm your host, Al Needham, and I'm telling you now, if you have loins, prepare to gird them, because this is the longest episode of Chart Music by a good hour. So I'm going to dispense with all the fripperies and just say, all right then, Pop Craigs youngsters, it is time to get stuck into March the 20th, 1975.

Always remember, we may code down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. And welcome to Top of the Pops. Your host for this episode is Tony Blackburn, who is currently in the 9-12 weekday slot on Radio 1, where he's been since June of 1973 when he replaced Jimmy Young and would stay until November of 1977 when he was usurped by Simon Bates. However his star remains undimmed. Earlier this year he signed a new contract keeping him at the BBC for the next five years for a reported, according to the newspapers, £80,000. Over £676,000 today.

Tom Torner, the MP for Bradford South, wrote a letter to the Employment Secretary of the time, Michael Foote, which read, This plainly flouts the social contract. It is ludicrous to talk of curbing wage increases when someone who is not worth that much to the community compared with workers who operate vital industrial processors can apparently earn this kind of money. It makes my blood boil.

Tony Blackburn not a key worker? That's a controversial theory to advance. In early 1975, a wager. Yeah, I think so. He felt pretty key to me at the time, but then again, it was whosoever was in that slot, really. As long as somebody was kind of gassing slickly away, I didn't really mind too much at that point about who they were.

I became a little bit more discerning, I suppose, about Tony Blackburn when I was about 15 or 16 and realised that he represented the superficiality and banality to which the common man was all too prone. In this episode throughout, he comes across, and we've complained in the past about people like Noel Edmonds and David Lee Travis with their hideous non-sequitur non-jokes, you know, these remarks

that they kind of spit out that have the kind of contours of like quips or jokes but have absolutely no point to them. I mean, Tony Blackburn does one or two things like that, but by and large his links, there's almost a kind of poops-esque quality to them. Oh yes. He does that kind of slick burble of his.

But there's something, mean i know in the end i think people eventually when they contemplate tony blackburn or whatever there's there's there's plenty to take the rise out of but um end up sort of half quite liking him really john peel went through a process like that i mean john peel regarded him as like you know supposedly the devil incarnate whatever yes and sort of antithetical to him within the whole scheme of bbc and refused to call him Tony Blackburn. He called him Tony Bannockburn, you know. But then in the end he said, actually, I quite like the bloke.

He seemed to have a bit of a sense of irony. And, I mean, Tony Blackburn was genuinely a soul enthusiast. You know, he did have a record player. He did have a record collection. He did like music. He didn't really have a particularly kind of critically refined attitude towards pop but he genuinely loved his soul and his arm, quite obscure stuff

so I interviewed him in 1986 it was one of my very first assignments for Melody Maker and what I did, I just proposed a series of interviews in which I interviewed Andy Kershaw.

I interviewed John Peel, in fact. Fucking hell. Janice Long, Mark Ellen. And I interviewed Tony Blackburn. And it was quite the experience. I mean, I've got the piece with me. Ooh, plump up the cushions, Pop Craze youngsters. I can't make head or tail of a lot of what I'm actually saying myself. I mean, it was always very much about the precise position

of the sort of dialectical process of criticism at that time. And so everything was weighted for that specific week of 1986. So a lot of that just didn't make sense to me. And I'm surprised it didn't get knocked back and say, look, David, I don't really know what you're talking about here. But that never happened. The policy at Melody Maker was to publish everything and then take the piss out of people for writing it afterwards but um at the

end i said you know he's the only vegetarian i know that's made love to over 250 women um and there's always that kind of mixture with him of like sex sexism as well and you know a kind of tony blackburn sort of almost like harmless sexism in a way. And such genuine idealism. I mean, one of the things he was campaigning on at the time was against the sun. He was objecting to why there are no black women on page three. Oh. That was his kind of... Oh, come on now, Tony.

All tits matter. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, his autobiography, Pop-tastic, My Life in Radio, with a foreword written and read by Noel Edmonds. What I did at a beautiful wound from Barbados, I noticed that it didn't go down too well with some of the black guys at the soul concerts,

and that saddened me. My attitude was quite the opposite. When I was doing the Sex and Soul show, I proposed that we initiated a national banging day where everyone slept with someone of a different nationality if only we'd all taken that seriously it would have hastened the day when as the song put it the world would be one big melting pot racism would be consigned to the yellowing pages of history strange strange old geezer you're listening america this is what you

should be doing. That's what we should do, is force Donald Trump to have sex with Beyonce. Yes. Yeah, I did actually sort of put him to, and perhaps his attitudes were a touch unreconstructed regarding the women folk and all that. He's talking about,

you know, like, he didn't understand, like, weather reports. You know, this is why he wanted regional, just local radio to break with the BBC, in effect, because, you, because what interest is it to a person in Aberdeen what the weather's like in Piccadilly, London Piccadilly? It's aspirational. He had his own alternative weather report, and he said, we'll do the nipple test. Thrust your breasts out of the window, and if the nipples are erect,

then presumably it's chilly. And he kind of gurgles with guffaw and i i kind of stare at him appalled and he looks me says i'm sorry do you find that outrageous oh i find that crap because it was weird tony blackburn in the 80s he he did a sex didn't he i mean unfortunately because i was outside of london i never got to hear it but you know you'd read in the newspapers like oh Tony Blackburn's saying all this sex stuff and everything it's like oh man really yeah just picture just where it only is slip-on shoes over those nylon socks he was genuinely serious though about kind of you know black culture black media representation was a great show called the black and white media show in um that came out about 1985 1986 1986. And I'd seen it recently,

and it was pretty much a state-of-the-art analysis of that time, you know, of the state of play, about the way that black people were represented. And, you know, we were able to have a conversation. He'd seen it, yeah, he knew it. You know, he was well over all of that. You know, it wasn't sort of tokenism. It was something that he was sincere about

in the way that he was sincere about, you know, his love of soul music. It was very strange. I mean, it was only a short feature. It was about 600, 700 words in the end. But we talked for 90 minutes. And, like, you know, the tape had come to an end, click, and that's a nice kind of where case we can sort of wrap up there, you know. I've read it. You know, the first 35 minutes had everything, basically.

He said, no, don't worry. I've got a note to set upstairs. And, you know, so I'm sitting, oh, fuck. He goes upstairs and comes back with another C90, unwraps it, you know, and puts it in the machine so we can talk some more. And, oh, Christ, you know, the light is fading outside. And I'm just like, I didn't get home till 8.30.

There was something fundamentally likeable about Tony Blackburn for all his... Yeah, I always thought he's very much a twat, not a cunt. Yes, I think so, yeah. But, I mean, I don't know. I soured to him a little bit lately because I watched an episode of the completely forgotten low-budget TVS chat show regrets yes from 1907 from 1985 uh where tony has to face

john stapleton the lizard-necked olden-born talker martyr of late 20th century daytime television and it is it's fascinating viewing but it doesn't make you like Tony Blackburn more than you did before you watched it, right? Like, it's one of the most interesting things about Tony Blackburn for me, and there's a lot of them, but one of the most interesting things has always been the bizarre seriousness with which everyone, especially him, treats the breakup of his relationship with Tessa White. Yes. Oh, I remember listening to that.

I remember that grim morning. It was... Oh, you heard that? I did, yeah, of course. Yeah, I had it on, yes. It was just this, you know, intermittent lacrimosity. It was very strange, very depressing,

distressing, really. I remember reading that Paul Gambaccini was in the bath listening to Radio 1 when that happened, and he basically just ended up standing bolt upright in his bath, shouting at Tony Blackburn to shut up on the radio. No, no, it just felt like somebody experienced a private apocalypse, you know, their own sort of emotional 9-11.

Well, John Stapleton raises the subject like he's bringing the conversation around someone's missing daughter you know what i mean it's like he's all grave and gentle voiced um and it's hilarious and i don't understand why why tony blackburn was indulged like this i just don't it's like i was i was i was banging that posh bird off robin's nest and now i'm not pray for me you know i mean it's like we all know the stories about this it's but he spent the next 10 years casting himself as a tortured bereft lover yeah you know like a mythological figure um so that's all i thought well okay you know poor old tony but he reveals on this programme that he fucked this up in the first place

by copping off with someone else. That's why she left him. And so, you know, you can be regretful and heartbroken, but don't expect a national outpour and a sympathy for your ten-a-penny broken marriage. You carbon fibre haired Babs Windsor disappointment. You know what I mean?

He could just have kept it in his flares. It would all have been fine. But the thing is, right, hang on. He says in this programme, and I quote, we moved to a place called Cookham. And next door, I quite like oriental people, you see. And next door was a very gorgeous oriental person and i quite literally fell in love which seems like a bit of a weird and slightly impersonal way to talk about someone

you love do you know what i mean it's like he's expecting a music cue like did a little it did did gone but he says and i quote nothing in a marriage is one person's fault and i think probably i think possibly tessa should have tried a bit harder fucking bitch who she thinks she was it's like jesus christ tessa what do you want from me she was oriental don't you understand? Oriental. They're like sex robots that cook. I'm only human. It's very weird. So he goes on to give his dirty laundry another good old public airing. And he's still clearly determined to elicit sympathy from the British public.

By this point, they're firmly on board with the lads who used to gather down the front of the stage at the Radio 1 Roadshow chanting, Robbins, Ness, Robbins, Ness, Robbins. And he's just sat there chuckling, talking to John Stapleton. Oh, yeah, no, it was terrible. And I'm just thinking, Tony, mate, I've driven away more beautiful women than a Swedish undertaker. And you're not special.

You're not special. You fucked off the love of your life once nine years ago. Okay, great. Now, let's hear the new one from the Wombles, you cunt. Nobody cares. Just do your job. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.

He's just blatantly obvious that he's just trying to lure in some sweet-minded, sympathetic idiot, you know, to build a country home with so he can cheat on them with another gorgeous Oriental person. Hopefully next time it's that woman out of Audition. Well, at this moment in time, he's all over the media. I mean, the row about his salary. It wasn't as much as £80,000, but it was still a decent watch. He's running his own PR campaign at the minute.

Earlier this month, he was in the Sunday People with the headline, Why I'm Backing the Kids' Crusade by Tony Blackburn. They're not going off to Arabia or anything. It's a big petition against making beagles smoke. Oh, well, yeah, yeah. So there's a photo of him and Tessa Wyatt delivering the petition to the ICI building. Yeah, yeah.

And him and Tessa, they're also the guest judges at a competition run by DECL for two babies to appear on the bottle over the course of the next year. And apparently Tessa said that some of the babies were too bandy-legged or fat. What better judge of baby beauty than Tony Blackburn? It's funny, there's just a couple more extracts, if you don't want to read from his autobiography.

Oh, come on, give it there. There's one here. I mean, you talk about the Wormles, yeah. Here's one from, obviously, that era. It's a pity Peel wasn't travelling on the train from Liverpool to London the day Mike Batt and I were making our way back from a Radio 1 personal appearance. As we left, I said to Mike, Do you know what?

I fancy having a bit of a Womble. He knew exactly what I meant. Well, go on then. Pop it on, he urged. And for the entire journey, I sat in a first-class compartment, dressed head-to-toe in a Wombles outfit. It felt great. And we had the carriage to ourselves all the way back home.

Yeah, so that's one. And yes, and you were talking about the children, the Children's Crusade is one appertaining to a children in need event. So the reveal as to who he's talking about will come. So anyway, who he's talking about here comes later. So some years later, I had him on a guest on my Radio 1 children's show, and he came in blind drunk wearing a sailor's cap, later still at a children in need event.

He was doing the old act, yelling, come on, come on, at the top of his failing voice. By the end of the show... That's a sort of postcard. By the end of the show, he was in a dreadful state, but sparring badly and needing to be helped into a chair. Oh, answers on a postcard. Oh, I thought it was richard o'sullivan he's already made two appearances on television this week he was the celebrity guest on atv's the golden shot last sunday probably had his head turned by wei wei wong there was another appearance on a tv show that we'll discuss later but before that that, chaps, I'd like to take you back

just a few months to September of 1974 and a series in the Sunday Mirror called The DJ Kings, which led off with a piece on Blackburn. It reads as follows. Even middle-aged mums and dads who believe that everyone in pop is a no-good drunken rapist would let their daughters marry Tony Blackburn if he was single. Just look at him, they say. He's nicely spoken. You never hear him swear. He always washes behind his ears and his hair is hardly long at all. But he's not really as white as driven snow furthermore he's pleased to admit it he told me a brush with pot appeared when i went to an audition once

someone handed me a reefer and i thought here goes but I only smoked half of it and got violently sick. That was enough for me. I suppose most people have seen a couple of blue films in their lives. I saw the Linda Lovelace film Deep Throat, for example. Frankly, I find them totally boring. But I think porn should be available for people who want it. Although I wouldn't want to see it in shop windows Can you imagine getting caned and watching

porn with Tony Blackburn I think I'd announce my retirement from life after that because there'd be nothing more to achieve Is there alternately throwing up and yawning yes of course i find all this terribly boring listening to him on the radio is rather like chewing your way through a giant

box of soft scented chocolates you might find it a bit sugary but you won't break your teeth okay that's the worst analogy i've ever heard right is that they started off saying okay sort of sugary sickly all right this radio show it's like eating a massive box of of sickly chocolates okay go on complete that all right yeah you may find it a bit sickly but you won't break your teeth oh right okay like well yeah as opposed to like the Jimmy Young show Oh fuck, one of my molars has gone Fuck, it doesn't mean anything Being an open man, he won't argue with that

Of course I talk a lot of nonsense It's difficult to do anything else but chatter on inanely I'm sneered at by some people I'm called plastic Okay, so what do they want me to do i'm not a drug addict i don't get drunk i don't go around knocking old ladies on the head it sickens me when i read about groups like the who smashing up hotel rooms for fun if that's the kind of thing I have to do to stop these people calling me plastic, then thank you very much.

I'll stay plastic. Stay plastic, Tony. So yeah, Tony Blackburn, no Granny Bashahee. It's so weird, isn't it? Just such a tiny, tiny rearrangement of DNA, and you get Leonardo da Vinci. Tony!

In a green, black and white, stripy, flowery shirt with condor collars under a black blazer with gold buttons, welcomes us to Top of the Pops and immediately whips us into the Top 30 rundown to the sound of Whole Lotta Love by the Top of the Pops Orchestra. And, as always in this era of Top of the Pops, the picture selection's a choice aren't they chaps? What have you got?

Shirley and Company Yes The Company being one man who looks like a mad dentist Supertramp living up to at least 50% of their name Mud the cue for the audition for the never go with strangers advert yes

oh frankie valley who looks like he's been surprised while robbing a postbox and the osmonds of course oh the osmonds as pimps at the salt lake city hustlers convention yeah they look like hip-hop plantation owners. Bitch better have my tithe. I was puzzled by the Elton John band. Yeah, for Philadelphia Freedom. Like they're all sat around in the kitchen and Elton goes, what should we call the band? And Elton goes, well, I've got an idea.

Elton John banned from doing adverts for cabarets after that Sun article that wasn't true. I mean, I've got Wiggins' ovation in massive Saxons looking like a picket line for the National Union of Agro. Noddy Holder and Dave Hill as less convincing pimps than the Osmonds.

Someone in the Elton John band has their face obscured completely by the number 20. And yet, the reuse of the beakiest photo ever taken of Barry Manilow. It's the kind of picture that your private message you make to untag you from on Facebook. And the moments who are lying about all bare-chested, but they've got expressions that dare you to question their sexuality.

This is what's, i think there's a general theme here actually is that like you know this kind of post glam here it's like the makeup is melting away whatever you know there's a sort of distinct lack of a fitness you know despite this kind of hangover of like you know um women's clothing and uh you know accessories and what have you. We'll be right back. She should cut her head With not a hint of an introduction, we pile straight into a close-up of a piano being mashed as the camera pans back to reveal the first act of the night, Kenny with Fancy Pants. Formed in Enfield by Chris Pringle, who was working in a local banana warehouse in 1971, Chuff were a prog band who did the festival circuit of the early 70s and supported Hawkwind and the Edgar

Broughton band. In 1974, after a gig at Middlesex Poly supporting the Troggs, they were approached by the Starlight Agency, who were looking for a group to work with Bill Martin and Phil Coulter who wrote Shang-La-Lang, Remember, Summer Love Sensation and Saturday Night for the Bay City Rollers before Tam Payton fell out with them. Coulter and Martin had already had two top 40 hits in 1973 under the name of Kenny. The stage name Rack Records had given to the Irish show band singer Tony Kenny.

But after he returned to Ireland, they gave it to the new band, immediately sacked Pringle and offered the role to a 17-year-old actor called Keith Chegwin, who turned it down. So at extreme short notice, the job was given to one of their mates, Rick Driscoll. The reason for the short notice was

because their debut single a cover of the b-side to all of me loves all of you by the bay city rollers had already been recorded by session musicians who had done all the roller stuff up till this year and was already in the shops with a picture sleeve featuring tony kenny's face on it and after the new band made an appearance on top of the pops wearing white t-shirts with the Kellogg special K logo on them it shot up to number three in December of 1974 this is the follow-up which actually features them this time it entered the chart at number 36 two weeks ago and this week it shot up from number 19 to number eight well chaps if there is a theme to this episode and you know there's quite a few there's a lot of murkiness and fakery going

on in this episode of top of the pops but the main thread that runs through this is is the cult of teeny bopperism and a rush to assemble a brit reaction to David Casta in the Osmonds. You know, it's taken them a couple of years, but it's starting to happen, isn't it? And at this moment in time, Kenny seemed to be well placed to fill the void with this, their first proper single. Yeah, but the problem with Kenny is that Kenny is not so much a band name as an adjective.

Yes. This is a group without a focal point in terms of personal charisma. And someone should have told them that they can't substitute that with those multicoloured Harlequin trousers. No. Like a paint set with a lid up. If you asked a six-year-old to design a snazzy pair of trousers, they hinder more than help.

Yeah, I mean, they're all wearing white shirts with the red K based on the special K logo, and the band are currently in an illegal row with Kelloggs over it, and they have been for the past four months. Yeah, who would have thought it? Oh, absolutely. If I was Mr Kellogg, I would have... Although it is a foreshadowing of the, I think it was around Acid House time wasn't it that that

detournement of corporate logos became a trend thing to do. They were ahead of the times in at least one area. The bump, did you partake? My mates down the village hall disco would not have touched arse like that. No. It would just not

happen and there was none of the girls that we were in the proximity of would have consented to any of that either. So, yeah, I always felt that that was always a bit of an unstarter. But, you know, you mentioned the flares or whatever, but when I was 12, you could forget the rest of the song. You got me at the flares. I loved it. They represented the progress of mankind, basically.

You know, the flares like that. Wider, more colourful, more adventurous. It's like if Jimi Hendrix, you know, you look at his strides, you know. Yeah. Trousers signify progress. And, you know, we're just going to get up and up and further and farther away. I mean, I would have seen those trousers and been infused with a sense of optimism and the approach of

the kind of glorious sunlit uplands. I perhaps sort of place too much store in trousers, but you know, obviously when trousers tapered, you know, in the punk year or whatever, it was, you know,

it was the idea that like, you know, tapering the excess of the seventies and the folly of all those ideas of progress, et cetera, et cetera. Cause there's some massive fucking swinger lingers in this episode, isn't there? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, Kenny's are quite restrained. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's strange. They're throwing everything, the kitchen sink at the whole thing, aren't they? And you've got the very unlikely baritone thing. You've got the synchronised mud type attack and retreat, whatever, you know.

There's a sense of sort of tremendous excitement for excitement's sake, you know, kind of slightly opportunistically, like you say, you know, kind of slightly opportunistically, like you say, you know, just attempting to kind of make enough or the right kind of bright noise to propel them onto that kind of Osman stroke Cassidy stroke Bracey de Rola stratosphere.

Yeah, the trouble is they've just, they've kind of got nothing. I mean, this song, as you say, it's written by what bill martin and phil coulter the shaking chinna chap right and it's what befits them it's like a gelded suite it's like the most generic sort of good time glam or bad time glam you know with all the sex removed even the possibility of sex removed just to be on the safe side you know and it is very much on the safe side and it's not horrible it's just not useful you can't draw anything from it it doesn't

make you feel or think it's just a vehicle for that 70s dancing where you put your hands on your hips and lean right over to one side and then the other yeah and then back and yeah the mud rocker thumbs in belt loops yes i'm a connoisseur of what people consider trash EPOP records, and the basic rule is they have to pass one of three tests. Either they have to have some sort of powerful emotion concealed under the flash, or they have to be funny, or at least fun, or they have to provide some sort of blunt stimulant effect.

And this doesn't really pass any of those tests. It's just a youth club knees up, isn't it? But grown old, there is no youth club now. And pretty soon there won't be any knees. It's just an object. It's just sort of used. It doesn't even have that sleek artificial sound world of the bump. It's all granny piano, isn't in it and arthritic jazz hands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched everything very close at this time, and it says something I don't even recall this track, you know. Yes. I remember the bump, but I don't remember this at all, and I was watching pretty closely, so it must have, you know, to have evaporated from my memory is a pretty sorry indictment, it has to be said. so it must have evaporated from my memory.

It's a pretty sorry indictment, it has to be said. I always got confused with Kenny because, do you remember the credits to Minder? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when it says, like, music by Kenny, and I thought that, like, you know, come 79, they'd rather kind of cannily, like, adapted with the times, you know, sort of Midge's style.

And now... You know, they're completely... But I think it's another Kenny, isn't it? Yeah, it's just someone with the surname Kenny. That was Gerard Kenne, who did, you know, New York, New York, so good they named it twice. I thought for years that this was Kenny. I thought that until about 2004, I think. Yeah.

Just vaguely assumed it. Yeah. I mean, this song, you get the feeling that it's been passed around and knocked back by the likes of the Glitter Band and Mud and the Rubettes. Yeah. For being a bit too generic.

Yeah. It's like when Kylie did Sexercise and you think, you didn't have first dibs on this song, did you? It's empty excitement and there's a lot of it tonight, actually. You said that no one's standing out but i do recall uh yan styles the guitarist was uh was pushed to the forefront in

the uh in the teeny mags but but you just look at me just said well who'd fancy you yeah yeah well they the problem they've got is that they're a very image orientated band who are visually bland and forgettable right so like like rick driscoll for a start the singer is one of those unfortunate 70s men uh with a small face because his face is too small for all that hair and it's there's no way around it it's like you know the bass player who does the fake bass vocal bit? He was born to sport that curly black mop. If he was around now, he'd still have the same haircut because he's got those big, dark features,

like Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. But Driscoll has got this small, bland, weak-T English face, like Nick Clegg or Phil Neill, right? And he feels the cultural pressure to grow out his mousy, fair hair into that long, pointy-topped, 70s hairstyle, like the frame of a cathedral door, you know? And in the middle, it's just this face

that could commit a murder in broad daylight and never be picked out of an identity parade and it's just sheer volume of the hair flat and lifeless as it is overwhelms his little boy features he looks sort of top heavy just makes him look even more feeble and uncharismatic. And also, no man whose face is shaped like an icicle should be further elongating it with a cranial hair cone. It's just common sense. Because he's very long-faced with a pointy chin. He's like a bland B.A. Robertson.

You know these people with faces shaped like the club badge of Universidad Catalica, the Chilean football team. It's just an extension of the rule that small men should not have big hair. Like which Kevin Keegan most notably fell foul of. You can't have a haircut that's bigger than you are. Especially not if the face in the middle belongs to an apprentice fruiterer. It just tears away whatever dignity you've left. I mean, trousers apart, there is something kind of commonplace.

I mean, in my notes, I just thought Ipswich Town back four. I mean, they've got that kind of, you know, that air of them. People, you know, footballers are looking like that at this point or whatever. And again, it's almost like that kind of veneer of a fitness and that veneer of like, you know, androgyny. It's all kind of melting away and like, yeah, the kind of mediocre geezers beneath are kind of beginning to sort of come through, shine through. It's not even Ipswich Town back four.

It's Ipswich Town's fullbacks and the two reserve fullbacks. They don't even have the battered, characterful faces of a central defender. They're a band with no donnies, but they haven't even got a Merrill. And that kind of thing matters in 1975, unfortunately. It's funny looking at the audience. There's that girl at the front

who keeps looking back at the camera very furtively, and she's clutching a little tartan scarf, and it's like, we all know who you're here for. Yes. And it's almost like, even if she shows the slightest modern enthusiasm to Kenny, that she who you're here for. Yes. You know, and it's almost like, even if she chose the sort of slightest modern enthusiasm to Kenny, that she might get grass up. Yes.

You know, if you look closely, the drummer has got a little voodoo doll of Rick Driscoll hanging from his drum. Did you notice that? Yeah. That's really odd. Yeah, I mean, one thing in the favour of the keyboard player, once again, as is the style,

he's got his keyboard down way too long but he's adopted a kind of a striding stance as if he's doing warm-ups you know for his groin and he's keeping his back straight and i approved of that that's all that's going in the favour column for kenny i'm afraid and of course you know with a with a kellogg's thing they've got to be very careful how they organise themselves on stage because if there's a camera shot with just three of them in, then they're promoting the Ku Klux Klan for fuck's sake. The thing is, the one thing you can say for Rick Driscoll, right,

you would expect him to look horrific nowadays because he's got that kind of face where it's just an arrangement of vague suggestions with no definition, right, no bone structure. He's just a arrangement of vague suggestions with no definition, right? No bone structure. He's just a sort of butter sculpture. So generally, that ages incredibly badly. And he looks like the kind of bloke who,

by the time he's 40, is going to look like a half-used candle, you know? But in fact, I found him on Facebook. And fair play, he's now got that sort of older dude sort of David St Hubbins hair and dark glasses and a high contrast black and white picture to minimise nature's damage

and he looks every inch the comfortably faded British rocker he's got a face like an old pair of jeans you know what I mean so good for him I did notice he doesn't seem to post much on facebook he's like wait a minute his last public post is from december 2015 complaining about richmond council's s3 parking zone um but before that there's a post from him in in 2012 to the group i love 60s 70s 80s and 90s music slash videos which reads

hi all abroad church he says hi all i am rick driscoll lead singer with the 70s group kenny in the summer i run sailing holidays in corfu g Greece. If anyone would like to join me in 2013 and have a sailing holiday with a genuine 70s pop star, contact me. Now, that post has one like and no replies. But I would say it's not a bad late-life trade-off, right? Because you get to sail around Corfu all summer and you get the money to pay for it and you just have to listen to some exploded boomer on the starboard side oh where'd you get the name kenny you know what i mean like who's our days in the trousers did you ever meet

jimmy saville what was he like you know but it's that would be me I would be just like that. What else are you going to ask him? But you know, he's Rick Driscoll. He can't have no boss. He's ungovernable. Do you know what I mean? Can you imagine him trying to fit into the workaday world? Can you imagine him? Driscoll! Late again. No, he has to follow

his soul, man. And in all honesty, it's a better way to live. And I hope that his boat business, if it still exists, doesn't suffer too badly this summer. Yes. Yeah. That's a rather poignant story. It's sort of like reading an old Don Estelle

in Gunner Sudden outfit trying to sell his CDs in Lewisham shopping mall with total indifference, as he was. It was his want towards the end of his life. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. Even the trees didn't want to know. So the following week, Fancy Pants jumped two places

to number six, and the week after that, it got to number four, its highest position. The follow-up, Baby I Love You OK, got to number 12 in june of this year but they'd close out 1975 with julianne getting to number 10 in august but their debut lp the sound of super k only got to number 56 in the album charts and coulter and martin switched their attention to slick who were given forever and ever from kenny's lp and took it to number one in january of 1976 a few months later kenny went to court to sever their ties with culture and martin and signed a new deal with polydor but they never had a hit

in the uk again and after guitarist yan style was seriously injured in a car crash, they eventually split up in 1979. My name's Jason Fleming. The More Than My Past podcast will see me talking to a wide range of inspiring people. People who have confronted and overcome addiction or imprisonment or both and turn their lives around. I did mad things that was hurting myself and hurting other people. Everybody grows up in a house called normal. Heroin addiction and chaos was my normal. Some people don't understand the word moderation, and I was definitely one of those people. The More Than My Past podcast.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. That's Kenny and a number called Fancy Pants. We've got a very varied show for you tonight, so I hope you'll be able to stay tuned and watch Top of the Pops. And last time I was here, I was saying that this group were going to be an absolute sensation.

And what do you know, their record at that time wasn't in the charts, but I thought it was going to be a big hit. Must be honest, I didn't think it was going to be quite as big as this, but what do you know, they've gone to number four this week. There's a whole lot of loving, and to sing all about it here are guys there's a whole lot of love and going on in my heart It's a feeling I'm feeling through and through. Tony, still on his own, thinks that last song was lovely

and then tells us, we've got a very, very cheer for you tonight. So we hope you'll be able to stay tuned and watch Top of the Pops. He knows he's fucked up, but he breezes on, claiming total responsibility for the next single being a hit.

But not even him, the Nostradamus of pop, could have predicted it would be this much of a hit. It's There's a Whole Lotta Lovin' by Guys and Dolls. Formed in London via an advert in Melody Maker in 1974, Guys and Dolls were a three-man, three-woman group

which consisted of solo singer Dominic Grant, Paul Griggs, the former lead singer of the prog band Octopus before half the band left to join Mungo Jere, the actress Teresa Bazar, and three graduates of the Italia Conti Stage School, Martine Howard, Bruce Forsyth's daughter Jule and David Van Day. At their first band meeting they were given copies of the first single they were going to record. This one, a rewrite of a jingle currently used in an advert for McVitie's Digestive Biscuits

that had been demoed by session singers, including Tony Burrows of Edison Lighthouse and the Pipkins fame and Claire Torre, who did the screamy bit on Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky. But when they asked when they were going to record it, they were told that the label were putting out the demo and their job, for now, was to look nice on the telly miming to it. A week before it was released, Tony Blackburn played it on his mid-morning show on Radio 1 and was so taken by it, he decided to play it again at the end of his shift. It entered the top 40 at number 26 two weeks ago, and an instant appearance on top of the pops kicked it all the way up to number nine.

And this week, it's gone up five places to number four. Well, panel, we are two days away from Eurovision, and the shadows are about to die on their arse. And you just look at this and just think, fucking hell, why didn't you go with this one? Were it not for its sinister, biscuity connotations, this would have smashed it on the continent, I feel. Yeah, it's weird because from the title,

I didn't think I knew this record. Yeah. And it came out too early for me to really have any memory of it as a hit. Then when it began, I realised it was more familiar to me than my mother's face. And it was like, what? And I realised what I remember is the Chocolate Digestives advert.

Right, yeah, as sung by the Edison Lighthouse himself. And yeah, Whaley Lady. And I associate this song at a very deep psychological level with two things, curling up in front of the telly as a preschooler and chocolate digestives. And so for a man in his 40s with pre-diabetes, this is quite the double whammy of keening nostalgia,

not that there's any other kind of nostalgia. So that means i can't dislike this song any more than i could dislike the memory of 1970s kidderminster and that was a load of crap and all you know um except that unlike 1970s kidderminster this song does have a sort of elementary grandeur to it um and it feels like a warm inclusive space also unlike 1970s guillemets even if it only achieves those things through hat work and you know lazy solutions like obviously it wants to be i'd like to teach the world to sing except indoors and uh with just white people um but you know that message of of universal blind hope soaring through the trunk of reality it seems a bit quaint you know in

in our current global predicament but yes i can't i can't dislike this record when you when you consider the requirements of a commercial like in both senses a commercial song uh written to order like this one and the limitations that are placed on anyone writing one this is about as good as it can be realistically expected to get um and that's not nothing as a piece of middle of the road songwriting uh this is nice work there's a nice sort of brian wilson-ish intro some clever modulations in it um and the lyrics are i mean it's a load of faff you know but the the lyrics are very neatly written and very cleverly put together, and they scam very well. You know, I'm richer than a 49er, mine are striking lucky. It's all based on the piano intro to Daydream Believer.

But the thing is, they're written by an Englishman, and apparently this whole lot of loving going on around the world, it's all in America, according to this song. I have a little fucking pride, right? It only mentions American place names. In a song for the english market what's he doing yeah also i have it on good authority that this line bigger than the mississippi river near the ocean uh is bollocks because the mississippi actually narrows quite pronouncedly as it nears the ocean uh boy i bet their faces were red when they found that out. No wonder Van Day got pissed off

having to sing misleading rubbish like that. Well, obviously, this is a very early sighting of David Van Day, a very non-blonde David Van Day, but judging by this performance, it's clear that he spent his time literally learning at the feet of a master. Dominic Grant, fucking hell, if they ever did a musical of Thundercats, he'd be fucking nailed on for Lion-O, wouldn't he?

What a mane of tumbling blonde locks. Yeah, it's strange, really, because he does have that kind of... I mean, his name hasn't... Unless I've been kind of missing a key component of popular culture over these decades, I don't think his name has exactly resounded down the decades, but know, unless I've been kind of, you know, missing a key component of popular culture over these decades, I don't think his name has exactly resounded down the decades. But there, he looks every inch the alpha male, doesn't he? Like you say, kind of tall, leonized.

Oh, gorgeous. And the idea that, like, you know, I mean, clearly sort of, you must sort of regard the way that a sort of fifth former would regard a first former, you know, the way you look down on that little squirt like David Van Day or whatever, and then, you know, look at you, you little twat, you're going to end up running an ice cream van or something like know, the way you look down on that little squirt like David Van Day or whatever, and then you know, look at you, you little twat, you're going to end up running an ice cream van or something like that, aren't you?

You'll be in care homes before too long. He does undercut their wholesomeness a little bit because he looks like an untrustworthy man. Do you know what I mean? For a start he doesn't look human.

He'd be the kind of person who'd sashay into the Crossroads Motel and you'd know something's going to happen. A steamy plot line was in the off. Yeah, many old widows have signed over their money to this. For a start, he doesn't look human. He looks like a piece of clip art. Or he looks like the new million pound playboy striker set to disrupt team chemistry in one of the black and white yes um yeah it's been in in crossroads benny would have had to punched him out at some point yes just occasionally benny just show what our varsity was yes yeah i think that's what i mean

what i can say for him... Right, OK. Because Guys and Dolls are considered a group of singers, unlike Kenny, right, they don't get to mime to the record. They have to sing it live with the Top of the Pops orchestra. Now, what's obviously the funniest thing there is that as soon as they open their mouths,

it's immediately obvious that these are not the people singing on the record it doesn't sound anything like them uh but the fact is this is better they're better than the people singing on the record and the top of the pops orchestra who are on their best behavior here because they're exactly they sound better than the record too much fresher and less mushy. And a song like this benefits from a bit of fresh air. And it's quite early on in the night as well. So the booze hasn't kicked in just yet. Precisely, yes.

So this is vastly preferable to listening to the record, I have to say. The only problem is that when you see Dominic Grant getting really into this, and when the others are singing, he's doing sort of ad-libs of like, whoa, and stuff like that because he's the boss. What lets it down is that he's not coming to this place of pop stardom from a position of fury and resentment like pop singers should, right? You feel like nothing has ever frustrated this man. He looks like he was captain of the football team, you know, went out with the best-looking girl at school. All of this to the point where he never had to worry about being agonisingly cheesy, you know,

or the fact that in the grand scheme of things he brings nothing to the table except for a sort of bland facial symmetry and a 40-minute grooming regime, you know. It's very undercut with irony, you know, the fact you've got these, you know, like say you've got David Vandey and like Teresa Bazaar on either end there.

Yes. You know, like almost like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're not in the picture, don't worry, just bungle on the end, you know. Well, yeah. I mean, David Vand Day's off to the side. And as we all know from that Bucks Fizz documentary, nobody puts David Van Day to the side.

Yeah, yeah. As he said himself, I would go out of my way to make sure people watch me perform well. I would want everyone to look at me on the stage and I'm going to show you how to perform you're going to learn something about charisma and how these things work in a way I suppose there's an equipment like Brian Eno sort of bridling you know with Brian Ferry I was thinking of Roxy music while I was watching this as well David yeah just like yes definitely yeah I mean I I mean I can understand Taylor for

you know perhaps all slightly kind of proustian type reasons you know liking this i would i would have hated this i mean i do remember at the time i remember having to sit through it and live through it and um um you know these precious minutes ticking by of like the one half hour or 30 or 5 40 minutes whatever it is of the week for a biscuit yeah exactly for a biscuit that was a cod to me i was outraged by the point that in the world of advertising you know i mean people could find whole worlds in digested biscuits i mean it's um you know that's i i do kind of understand that i don't think digested biscuits are advertised at all now as such as they don't get no big sort of like you know advertising

campaigns you know put behind them i think they're just kind of a given, really. You know, the great era of, like, biscuits actually being advertised is clearly long behind us. But I wouldn't have understood who this music was for. You know, when I was 12, you know, and I was a young lad, I demanded substance, thrust, velocity, all those kind of things. You know, music that you could, like, really put your thumbs and your belt loops in and really kind of go antler to antler with your mouth.

And this was like, why do you have to eat your greens or whatever? Except that there's nothing remotely nutritious about this. I mean, it was mum music, it was big sister music. It was almost like having to put the brakes on pleasure for a few minutes because otherwise we might get a bit over-aerated. I remember being outraged by this song because I already knew it as the McVitie's advert music. If I ever heard it on the radio, I'd think, don't they know?

That's a biscuit advert and they're doing it on the... That's not right. Of course I look back now and go, oh, fucking hell, why weren't all their songs adverts? Why didn't they follow this up with, if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club? It's interesting, perhaps it's a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club? It's interesting. Perhaps it's a sign of the weakness of pop at this point

that a lot of stuff that's kind of coming into the charts is like stuff from TV, stuff that you're familiar with via TV, whether it's theme tunes or adverts and things like that. I mean, what else do you have? Yes. Was it David Dundas around this time, didn't you? Was it with the Brutus G? Yes.

Lord David Dundas to you, mate. Yeah. And various things. time didn't you was it with the brutus g yes yeah lord david dundas to you mate yeah and um and various things you know i mean like i said this the simon park orchestra was it weeks and weeks you know the theme to van der valk you know and stuff like that it was just the whistleblower stuff that was initially intended for other purposes for tv or whatever is now becoming so much of the stuff of pop but you've got to say that this song is better than nobody makes them quite like mcvitties do nobody bakes them like you that was shit yeah i don't know i'm i'm listening to you and i do i detect just a little bit of jealousy towards dominic grant yeah clearly obviously dominic grant is yes i know i met i met yeah yes i've stood in the shadow of many a dominic grant

in my time yes and uh yeah flinging a nervous two fingers at him, you know, when he's well out of sight. I mean, the problem with guys and dolls is they've only just started up. They're a six-handed monstrosity. But a pecking order has been established. Oh, yes. And the way they're presented, they might as well just be a male-female duo. I mean, absolutely.

I mean, you say they're pecking, you know, on those sort of stairs or whatever, with, like, Grant, you know, the Lion King right at the top, you know. Yes. About to hold up his first child to look at the moon or something. He's already about a foot taller than everybody else in the band. He's a real fucking giraffe dentist. And he's there on a podium as well. So, I mean, you know, eventually you can think, like,

what does Dominic Grant, you know, as Dollar come to sort of, like, dominate the 80 I mean you know eventually you can think like what does Dominic Grant you know as dollar come to sort of like dominate the 80s you know Dominic Grant's thinking what happened? Yeah. But come on he looks like he's having a fucking great 1970s doesn't he? Yeah. This is the decade he was born to. I mean he's

driving his TR7 to a bistro for some goulash you know what I mean? And then he's going home and watching one of those TVs that's white and spherical with his girlfriend in a kimono in one of those round wicker chairs dangling from the ceiling on a chain,

nibbling on a riveena. He's got a bottle of bull's blood and it's, yeah, then a little later onto a waterbed that's clear with tropical fish in it. It's a fucking success story, this part. Yeah, it is. Don't be a player hater.

Be a player celebrator. It's Paul Gregg's I feel sorry for, man. He was in a prog band a year ago, and now he's doing this. You wouldn't feel sorry for them if you'd heard their version of I Am The Walrus. Oh, really? Yeah, put it this way. It's only better than russell brown's version oh i was just about dominic grant his eventual fate i just sort of went into wiki and um they've all got um wikipedia entry individual wikipedia except dominic grant really i can fill you in okay yeah um

the terrible thing is i went on an eight-hour G&D deep dive, and now I'm an inadvertent authority on their stupid fucking career. So I'm going to talk about this for fucking ages, all right? Wait till the documentaries start on TV. You'll be fucking rolling in it. Right, first of all, I sat and watched their 1976 TV special, which is on YouTube, uploaded by Paul Griggs, the curly-haired middle child on the male half of the group.

Yeah, the Ian Sludge-Lees lookalike. Yeah, and very much the band historian. He runs the website paulgriggs.com, which looks like it was built with Yahoo GeoCities. It's got massive link buttons. And there's a star field as the backdrop of the main menu. And it's got a guest book, which I somehow managed to leave unmolested. Oh, Taylor.

I thought if I mentioned it on here, people might go in and think, who's this who's just left a comment that just says, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. this he's just he's just left a comment that just says aids aids aids aids um and it but it's a veritable arc of precious memories right and there's a loads of detail about guys have loads of photos um including a lovely picture from 1980 of the band next to a military plane with the caption at raf wildenrath in germany guys and dolls get ready to bomb iraq what that's what it says no yeah yeah it's a bit baffling it does give you a clue as to what sort of gigs g and d were playing by this point um i also found out from this website that griggs still writes and performs.

I wonder if he ever came across books fizzed with David Van Day in the Falklands. Can you imagine? Yeah, Falklands War II. Yes. I also found out from this website that Griggs still writes and performs

to this day. And you can hear a selection of his more recent work there, including Take the Money and Run, a raunchy rocker, a bittersweet take on the music business, and The Haunting Out of Love. But look, they're TV special, right?

Anyone who's younger than 45, who's looking for a portal into the true reality of mid-70s British mainstream entertainment. Basically, if you want to understand the true reality of the English mid-70s, first watch the clip that's on YouTube from Wish You Were Here in 1974 about holiday camps in Hailing Island. Oh, God, yes. Oh, yes.

And then watch the 1976 Guys and Dolls TV special. It's... Instructive. Fascinating and chilling. It's one year on from here, so they all look one year older and one year weirder, like Dominic's hair is now, you know, a full white stallion mane, really upsetting. And it turns out his normal singing voice is actually

the most accurate impression of the young Scott Walker you'll ever hear. It's remarkable. In fact, he's got two voices. One is Scott Walker if his soul fell out the end of his cock. And the other one is Neil Diamond broken on a wheel. And he sort of goes back and forth between those two. And all sorts of stuff happens in this griggs straps on a an unplugged guitar like andrew ridgely to show that he's a real

musician but the highlight comes where look you get to see a little little glimpse into band politics here right where david and therese are sort of not quite content to be junior partners anymore, as you can imagine. Yeah. It's like a mate of mine who watched this with me by the Wonders of Modern Technology pointed out that it looks as if their part in this company is rather like that of Barry and Yvonne in Heidi Height.

Oh, yes. Just a cut above, right? Just a bit more class, just a bit brighter, and not ashamed to assert that fact right up to the point where they were asked to leave by management. So the highlight of this TV special is where David Van Dyke does a solo spot in which he steals Paul Nicholas's act.

It's true. He's got a bowler hat and a cape and a motley accent. And he hoofs around the stage, giving it his little everything. It's like a chart music lockdown anxiety dream.

But it's as real as you and me. I employ... Yeah, it's David VD copying the governor. I agree. It really happened. It really did happen. But also, yeah, so Dominic Grant married his old Julie Forsyth. Right, OK.

Well, listen, this is where it goes. It turns out, right, that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Bruce Forsyth's daughter, although I have to say, Bruce, he should have demanded a Jeremy Kyle-style DNA test here, because let's say there's not a huge family resemblance, considering Bruce, he has a fairly distinctive face, right? Yeah, well, fortunately for him, maybe he just had passive spunk i don't know you know there's a there's a clip of him also on youtube joining them on saturday night at the mill

for a rendition of love train right in which bruce can't help but the oj's love train oh yeah oh yeah fucking hell yeah yeah but unfortunately bruce can't help but make it all about him The OJs love Train. Oh, yeah. Fucking hell. Yeah, yeah. But unfortunately, Bruce can't help but make it all about him and openly tries to undermine their act so he can get laughs, which may have been the final straw for Barry and Yvonne, who look fucking furious all through it, while Dominic Grant, who knows what's good for him, just grins and bears it. Yeah. Anyway, anyway yeah so she shacked up with dominic grant um so dvd and and bizarre were

not the only couple in this band who were like basically the skimmed fleetwood mac and after the group split up they continued as a duo called grant and forsyth uh and they became household names in holland so youtube also offers countless clips of them uh on dutch tv um with dominic grant now transformed into the European cheese mountain and just living in soft focus and Julie Forsyth looking like a sort of square faced

German cowgirl. Do you know that look? Yeah and they're almost unreal you know what I mean? I was there for hours just inhaling it but I understand that that that in these hurried times every second is precious so if you don't if you just want the condensed version um you should watch the video for their song touch the moon which is like if

someone tried to remake the theme and title sequence of Home and Away because the original was just too funky. And there's also a clip of them on a Dutch TV show which appears to be called Karaoke Op 4 but is just much less classy than that title makes it sound where they perform a line dance version of Dire Straits' Walk of Life. No, no.

Outdoors on a damp evening in Groningen or some fucking place in front of some sour-faced, deeply unimpressed Dutch youth who really didn't come here for this. I don't know what they came there for, but it wasn't this. And you just feel, it's like being,

it's like drifting stranded in the cold, dead centre of the O in M.O.R. It's a really chilling experience. But you follow the timeline, and finally you reach the triumph of Guys and Dolls 2008 reunion. Yes, the

reunion, yeah. Oh yes, where first of all Dominic Grant rolls out his Scott Walker voice again, only to find that the moths have been at it. Which immediately suggests the tantalising possibility of him and Bruce Ena

tackling some of Scott's later material. It's a nice cowboy cabaret arrangement of uh clara which i would pay to hear but they never did no of course um it's also very noticeable that forsyth has been promoted over the head of the dark-haired primary school teacher looking dull, right, who's obviously the lead singer in this clip, but despite being a worse singer, right? Just in case we're in any fucking doubt about who's holding the potatoes in this group, right? You know, you marry Dominic Grant, well...

Yeah, that's the way this band works, with Griggs as a willing Smithers, by the way. If you look at his website, he's uploaded loads of Grant and Forsyth clips to his website. He doesn't have to do that, but he knows what's good for him, right? But then, the moment we've all been waiting for, yes, when Van Day and Bizarre rejoin the band for want of anything better to do.

And it's touching, except they're still stuck out on opposite ends of the line. That's right. You know, you can leave school, you can go on and do whatever you want, but if you're in the first form, you know. Once a minimus, always a minimus. Exactly. Yeah. And so they do a version of Love Train again, minus Bruce,

but in front of people eating chocolate i don't i don't speak dutch i don't know what's going on but it's they are such pros that they don't look like they want to die immediately but yeah i've seen people have a better time and that's that's one thing I did in lockdown that wasn't finally reading all those books. And as ever, Taylor, you did it so that we don't have to. We might never do, but yes. Yeah, I went there and I brought back samples. Good to see the cameraman getting involved in the audience, but with a really small camera with

practically what what constituted a handheld camera in 1975 which was just like just looked like a portable tv on a stand is that what it is i think that's what it was what else would it be it looks much too small to be a bbc color camera of the mid 70s i know what you're talking about it's like a silver box, right? Yeah, what is that then? I don't know. It's got what looks like one of those cage things. Like those sort of domed cage type plastic things you see on the end of a drain pipe.

Stuck on the top. And a bloke in headphones behind it. I don't know what it is. It might be some sort of monitor or a an auto cue for this i don't know maybe it's got the words on it for the singers karaoke style i don't know i've never seen it before on any other top of the pops and it was baffling me as well so the following week there's a whole lot of loving jumped up two places to number two where it stayed for two weeks held off the top by this week's number one.

But two days later, the cat was out of the bag when the Daily Mirror reported that Claire Torrey and Kay Gardner had claimed it was them singing on the single. There's a whole lot of rowing going on over the current number four in the pulp charts, the article read. Last night, year old Kay who claims that she was the lead singer said I am willing to have

a voice print done if guys and dolls will do the same. The follow up here I go again got to number 33 in May of this year but they scored another hit when a cover of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me got to number 33 in May of this year, but they scored another hit when a cover of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me got to number 5 in March of 1976.

However, when the next single, Stony Ground, only got to number 38 in November of 1976, David and Teresa Stewart Hargreaves started to kick off about the group's direction, and they were sacked in 1977. Now a four-piece, the group went back to basics when they nicked an Oxxo advert, changed the lyrics from Only Oxxo Does It to Only Loving Does It, and put it out as a single, but it stalled at number 42 in May of 1978, and they never troubled the charts again. Despite supporting Frank Sinatra's week-long stint

at the Royal Festival Hall in 1978, they were dropped by their label and eventually signed with EMI Holland. They took part in the 1979 Song for Europe competition that never happened due to industrial action, added Rosie out of Legs & Co to their line-up and became popular in Holland and Southeast Asia, finally calling it a day in 1985.

Lead singer Dominic Grant is now a sculptor and did the bronze bust of his father-in-law, Bruce Forsyth, which currently stands in the Cinderella bar at the London Palladium. I bet he's spent his own fucking life kissing arse to Bruce. Have you heard their other hit, their version of

You Don't Have To Say You Love Me? Long time ago. Dusty Shelbyville. LAUGHTER That's the sound of Guys and Dolls at number four, and there's a whole lot of loving. I don't know if you ever watch BBC Two television at nine o'clock, as I do. Fabulous show called The Goodies, very funny. After what they did to me last week, I think they've got a bit of a cheek showing their faces in here, but I shall forgive them.

They've got a record at number 23, it's called The Funky Gibbon. Here they are. Come on, everybody, it's Gibbon time! We're the goodies, how you do? We've just been down to the zoo. Tony, still atop the rostrum of solitude, shows a programme on BBC Two that he just happened to be in three nights ago. A fabulous show called The Goodies,

and he introduces their latest single, The Funky Gibbon. We've already covered The Goodies and this single in chart music number six, and as Blackburn points out, this is their second TV appearance this week as the sixth episode of their fifth series Scatty Safari featuring Tony Blackburn being released from their star safari park and running through a field was broadcast on BBC2. This is the follow-up to the double a side the in-between is slash Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me, which got to number seven in December of 1974. It's already been featured on top of the pops of Fortnite ago, which helped it enter the charts at number 37 last week.

And this week it's rocketed 14 places to number 23. David, your forthcoming comedy book, do the goodies feature? They will feature, yeah, but I don't think I'm exactly going to go to town on them. They were very strange. I mean, clearly I remember the goodies very, very well indeed, and much as like, you know, the pop of the day, you know, felt it was speaking directly to my 12, 13-year-old

soul, so were the goodies. But, like an awful lot of people, I mean, they disappeared completely from the culture. A bit like, you know, some others do admin and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean... You mean they went to ITV. Yeah, I suppose, you know. Same thing.

They never broadcast the goodies themselves, you know, Grimgarden, that they disowned them. They just said, look, it was just crap. In its time, obviously, it was very, very big indeed. But clearly, you can see that they were the kind of the chipper to Monty Python's chopper, as it were. It was the sort of junior version. I mean, people... I wasn't chipper to Monty Python's chopper. It was the sort of junior version. I mean, I wasn't allowed to watch Monty Python.

It was on too late. It was a bit lewd. There was all this kind of issues that meant I couldn't actually access Monty Python. And so for the likes of me, the goodies was very much the next best thing, although as far as we were concerned, it was the best thing. I mean clearly you mentioned the Safari episode and it's got

kind of, you know, guys dressed as black and white minstrels crawling about as monkeys, you know, there was this kind of, you know, unfortunate fixation with blackness at a time when like Ali and Frasier the kind of great warrior heroes of the era or

whatever slugging it out and Ali's the most famous person on the planet they reflect that um but in the Eckie Thumb episode by I think having I think it's Graham Gardner all blacked up and going Aluda well have you seen Timbrook Taylor's impersonation of Little Richard yeah yeah yes yeah and uh let's not forget uh Bill Oddie's lovable blacked up-up, satirical, anti-racist character. It comes on and says, Hello, Mon, I am Rustus Watermelon. Yes. Yes, it is.

Time's a funny thing. Different times. To be honest, I'm not at the stage in the book where I've really fully got my head around them because I think that it requires a great deal of analysis. As for this single, I mean, I remember at the time, the funny thing about Funky Gibbon is that when people parodied funk sometimes, they accidentally did some pretty good funk.

I mean, it's actually a pretty funky track. Yes. You know, it's Schmendley and everything like that. You know, it's not bad. I remember there was another thing that I remember hearing, it was a Yorkshire man doing this Yorkshire funk thing called Barnsley Bill. Right.

And it was a dreadful lyric about if you go to the movements, you know, not like that. If you twist your arm, it says, I promise you, you'll look reek daft and you're liable to pull a muscle and all, you know. But actually the backing track to it was marvellous. It was almost like the funk that David Bowie was dreaming of but didn't quite get on fame, you know. It's funny how quite often people do these dreadful parodies

and actually end up, you know, maybe it's the nature of funk that, you know. Yeah. You know, it's odd. So it comes into that category, I suppose, for me. The other thing about this single is there's this great avant-garde British artist, Cornelius Cardew, who works with Stockhausen. Yeah. But eventually he kind of disavowed Stockhausen. But eventually he kind of disavowed Stockhausen. He felt

that the whole world of electronic avant-garde was too abstruse and elitist or whatever. And he wrote a tract called Stockhausen Serves Imperialism. I don't think imperialism was aware of this at the time. They had a servant by the name of Karl Heinz. So he decided that, as a

kind of committed socialist and revolutionary as he was, he decided that what he was going to do, he was going, as a kind of committed socialist and revolutionary as he was, he decided that what he was going to do, he was going to write a kind of sort of ruffian version of pop music, songs that could be bashed out at working men's clubs up and down the land on sort of slightly out-of-tune pianos. And that's what we're doing. One of the songs that he composed, you've actually mentioned the social contract earlier on, Al,

when Tony Blackburn, remember, you know yeah we wrote to Michael Footwell um Cornelius Cardew wrote a track called smash the social contract um I mean it's got ironic whatever and unfortunately the chorus goes smash smash smash the social contract social contract and it's like oh Cornel, I think you might just have accidentally heard some pop music. Not that that's much evident in the rest of your version of pop music that you were trying to kind of peddle at the time. So, yes, yes, there is that. He'd already bought his dungarees with a big C on the front.

The social contract needs to be smashed because it's a crutch for capitalism and a bulwark against revolution. Ah, OK. Take away the social contract, people get angry. Yes. Because they haven't got any money. Right, yes.

Fair point. No, no, fair point. Yes, that's it. So basically what he's saying is starve, starve, starve the working classes. Well, working classes. Yeah, yeah. It's all work out for the best in the end.

Don't you worry about that. Yeah. I mean, I loved the goodies at the time. I mean, to me, they just leapt out of the pages of the Beano. They were comic strip characters brought to life. I fucking love this. And I've still got residual love for the goodies. The first few weeks of lockdown, I reached for comfort viewing,

just like I reached for comfort food and i came to a couple of series of the goodies right it was like yeah okay so this is really out of date but you know fucking hell much rather that date than this date yeah so the kids are well into this so aren't that i mean this is a this is a repeat of their previous showing and it will be shown again a few three weeks later in the episode that we covered in Chop Music No. 6. So they've got their gangster feminist dungarees on. And having a fucking ball, man. I just look at this and all I can think is poor Timbo.

Because of all the fucking people. Do you know what I mean? Of all the 60 plus shitbags stomping around, you know, he's the one, well, he's not the one, but he is one who gets whacked by the little fucking tiny bastard. Just one of the loveliest. Yeah, that fucking hurt that day. Yeah, the least objectionable people in light entertainment,

you know, by all accounts. And you look at him here with his steven stills haircut um committing almost totally to something which is making him look completely ridiculous yeah but keeping just enough back that it's clear that he knows exactly what he's doing and he's aware of what's happening because the dynamic here is painfully obvious, right? Bill Oddie is away, lost in his crazy wish-fulfilment trip. Yeah. A hundred percent. Randy Pandy lives. Oh, God.

He is subsumed into the dream that this is somehow the same thing as being a pop star. And the other two are indulging him and very conscious that they're dancing clowns singing a song for children, which is how they managed to remain cool. Right. Even in the worst dungarees. And they do it all. They managed to remain above it without breaking that spell. Right. Tim and also Graham, who's really my favourite.

Like the Mike Nesmith. Yes, my favourite too. He's the Mike Nesmith of the goodies right he's got that same knack of being able to behave absurdly while maintaining a basic dignity and I don't want to, like anyone who's spent any time with me will have heard me bashing

Bill Oddie right it's not a euphemism but I do feel for him a bit because he looks like Kiki Doo with a beard in this does he do but as David says he wasn't completely untalented

musically right or at least he had a basic understanding of funk that I suspect was rare in a Cambridge man of his generation I mean his songs aren't really very good and his voice is horrendous but what he could do is get a bunch of musicians

together and churn out these not completely dreadful plastic funk tunes which are only really upper bracket 70s porno themes or no what they really are is middle bracket 70s library music is what they sound

like you know but that's not too bad in the grand scheme. I mean, he doesn't have funky... It's not the stonk, you know. It's not Peter Kay singing, is this the way to Amarillo? It's got some... Certainly not. It's got a bit of genuine movement underneath the vocals

and you wouldn't mistake it for fucking funkadelic, but it's vastly better than it has any need to be at all yeah i think that's musically it's definitely true although as a small child uh obviously this record was around and i only ever sang the opening lines as we're the goodies how do you do we've just been out to the loo because my nan still had an outside toilet you see so um that was where i pictured this happening possibly on a special three-man toilet right like their stupid bike this is not a trivial undertaking especially those dungarees and graham would have to take that whole suit thing off that he used to wear but look talking about the goodies program right people do often

wonder like especially the goodies out loud why it's been repeated so rarely since the 70s but when yeah when you watch whole episodes now this makes sense right and it's not just that it's shit although quite a lot of it really isn't very good it's more i think that the feel of the program doesn't really fit with any modern perception of what makes acceptable television or what constitutes 70s nostalgia because it's basically a kid's show that isn't made for kids although kids loved it but it has that feel and because of that it's hard to figure out. Do you know what I mean? There isn't really anything like that now.

And I don't think modern kids would connect with it the way my generation did because it's too old-fashioned. And present-day adults feel a bit embarrassed by it. Like it's beneath them because it's all corny jokes and bad puns and loads of slapstick and people falling over and stuff. Very over-the-top performances and bits cribbed out of Looney Tunes cartoons. Horny jokes and bad puns and loads of slapstick and people falling over and so on. Very over-the-top performances and bits cribbed out of Looney Tunes cartoons. Yeah.

You know, these days people demand a certain degree of cynicism in their comedy, you know, or at least a world-weary smugness, which The Goodies absolutely does not provide. No. It's like a big lumbering man baby of a program and you know all the clever bits which are there do get lost in all of that you know um but of course that disorientating mixture of the childish and the adult was absolutely what appealed to me as a kid at the time and to most of my friends so it was perfect for me or perfect you know up to 12 13 definitely absolutely perfect so i mean i don't watch a lot of goodies now you know i get a lot more pleasure now from i'm sorry i haven't a clue like the aging fop i am but i can't put them down because they did so much for me when i was like six or seven or eight yeah it was like

they were similar to the monkeys in the sense of providing encouragement to kids that you could live in the big world without being entirely straight and narrow. But what made it weirder was that the monkeys were still about the near future. It was like the young adult dream of living a colourful and unpredictable life and being free and still being cool

whereas the goodies weren't cool they were like they were something much stranger than that it was like these these posh balding men in their 30s who looked like teachers yeah like chemistry uh maths and sociology respectively um But behaving like idiots and creating this world where chaos was the only constant. This was the fascinating thing because you'd watch the goodies and you never knew where you were because their personalities would

flip all the time. Like in practically every episode, one of them goes mad and becomes like a Nazi. Yes. Tim, I tell you, turns into a dictator in one of them, doesn't he? Taught down by Graham Garden. Yeah, or Graham becomes a mad scientist or Bill becomes a crazed animal killer

and the others have to sort them out. And you never knew which one it was going to be. And any present-day reality in which the programme was set would be distorted and stretched to breaking point all the time. Yeah. So it did for young minds what surrealism is meant to do for adult minds. It showed you that there is no arbitrary cut-off point, you know,

and also that people old enough to be your dad could be in on the cosmic joke. That was really something. that was really something that was really something and also you know when you're laughing so hard that you can't breathe and your face goes purple and you think you're going to die and you think you're going to be like that bloke watching the plant actually did yeah watching ecky thumb yeah yeah and you have to make yourself think of something miserable just to stop laughing for half a second so you can get a lung full of air. Now, this happens with decreasing frequency as you get older. But I know that the goodies have that effect on me at least five or six times as a child.

And probably the first thing that ever did. And it wasn't just by doing dumb shit. just by doing dumb shit it was by stretching my conception of reality and allowing me to think and laugh freely right and that feeling of simultaneous enlightenment and escape had a lasting effect it it pointed me if nothing else towards the understanding that laughter can provide a sort of protection against the gathering darkness and a and a stubborn refusal to take everything too seriously might be the closest thing to freedom that you can ever find so i'm not going to sit here and say bad things about the goodies because in a sense they are the people who first taught me how to survive the adult world and i suppose you can't

pay much higher tribute to a dead bloke you never met whose most celebrated work you never watch because it's not on youtube and it's not good enough to justify splashing out on the dvds the goodies was one of the few comedy shows that examined the world of pop and acknowledged the existence of pop yeah i mean off the top of my head acknowledged the existence of pop. Yeah. I mean, off the top of my head, I can think of four episodes that were devoted to it. You know, one where Timbrook Taylor becomes a disco dancer. Yeah. There was the punk episode,

which was fucking brilliant at the time because it had Michael Barrett of Nationwide saying, fuck off, or it is the fucking news. I obviously bleeped out. But that was insane watching that. Oh, yeah. That's the fucking news. I obviously bleeped out. But that was insane watching that. Oh yeah, that's the best episode I think. I think that's the best one they ever did. That and the one

with the Watership Down parody with David Bellamy getting shot with a blunderbuss. I can't yeah. Maybe I should splash out on the DVDs. Yeah, fuck it. I'm going to have to. It's that or out on the DVDs. Yeah, fuck it. I'm going to have to.

It's that or two bottles of scotch. It does my head in sometimes when I hear people go, oh, you wouldn't be able to show that today. And it's like people who created comedy in the 70s weren't sitting around going, well, how is this going to play in 50 years' time? In 2020. Yeah, no, of course. No, that's the way of the lot.

You know, this is it. It's like with musicians and a lot of things. You're really that's the way of a lot you know this is it's it's like with music and a lot of things you know you're really only speaking to your own times you know and hopefully if you if you're speaking to at least your own times at least you're not speaking to 20 or 30 years before you know like some things that are even more retrograde yeah yeah indeed and also with with comedy you're always operating on the edge right on the edge of what's except or you should be operating on the edge of what's... And you don't know which way the plate is going to shift over time, right?

So you're on the edge while you're doing it, but 30 years later, that might have shunted you so far inland that now you look completely middle of the road. Or if the plate went in the other direction, now what you were doing is completely unacceptable. But at the end of the day, it's like fucking hell. Timberlake Taylor,

you realise Timberlake Taylor wasn't really a Tory. It was just his character. He wasn't actually a right-wing maniac. They were all very nice gentlemen, very thoughtful and socially concerned. So at this time, this would have been my favourite band on this episode of Top of the Pops. Yeah.

Bless them. So the following week, the Funky Gibbons soared 15 places to number 8, then dropped to number 10, but went back up to number 4, its highest position. Four days after this episode came out, but went back up to number four, its highest position. Four days after this episode came out, the next episode of The Goodies, Kung Fu Capers, was aired. And five days after that, in the Daily Mirror, came this headline.

A jolly husband laughs himself to death. Jolly Alex Mitchell just couldn't stop laughing at his favorite tv show he was in hysterics as the goodies staged a fight between a black pudding and a set of bagpipes and even after the program ended he carried on roaring with laughter but the excitement proved too much for 50 year old alex with his wife nessie helplessly looking on he suddenly clutched his chest and slumped back in his chair a minutes later he was dead killed by heart failure by too much laughing nessie has now written to the goodies thanking them for the enjoyment they gave her husband and last night producer jim franklin said the goodies feel extremely sorry that this has happened. He's got a picture of his widow on a round-the-world cruise

just raising a champagne glass to the goodies. Also, is the word jolly there being used in its old-fashioned sense as a euphemism for 30 stone? Yes, I was wondering if there might be underlying health issues. I think if so, that would make a lot of sense. I imagine that the, yeah, I mean, it's perhaps the thing that might almost weigh any conscience as a script writer, I suppose, you know,

the goodies of this, you know, that actually laughed a man to death, you know. I don't imagine the script writers have more in Littman's agony. No. The follow-up, Black Pudding Bertha, would only get to number 19 in July and they'd have two more top 30 hits in 1975 with their cover of Wild Thing,

which got to number 21 for two weeks in October, and Make a Daft Noise for Christmas, which got to number 20 in December. 1975, very much the year of the goodies in the pop world. Alright, and pop plays, we're going to leave it there for now because rest assured, there's a whole lot of Top of the Pops going on in this episode.

So on behalf of Taylor Parks and David Stubbs, come and join us tomorrow for the next part of this episode. But until then, stay Pop Crazed. Shark music. GreatBigOwl.com Oh, hello you. My name's Tom Price. Hello, I'm Dave Cribb. You should come and join us.

Every day we do a podcast called Cabin Fever, where we talk to loads of comedians who've had to cancel everything else in their lives. So they come on our podcast instead, don't they, Dave? Yeah, it's an isolation podcast. Dave, were you yawning at the start of that sentence then? Was it just a little yawn? Yeah, it's basically the Great Big Owl isolation podcast. We'll have people on from all our podcasts,

from your Ruler 3s, your Brian and Rogers, your musicals, your bitchins. If you like any of our podcasts, if you like any of those people, chances are they'll be logging onto the Zoom call and just chatting because, let's face it, they've got nothing else to do. Also, there'll be a quiz on the bell.

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