Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #52: February 14th 1985 – British People React To REO Speedwagon

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: if The Smiths were still making singles today, would they have a still from Sex Lives Of The Potato Men on the cover?The latest episode – another five hour-plus plunge into the very depths of your favourite Pop TV show – lands us on the very perineum ‘twixt Band Aid and Live Aid, in a shameful era when even the Weetabix are pretending to be American street youths, and on the very cusp of the achingly slow decline of The Pops. The majority of the Zoo Wankers have been culled, the flags and balloons are being reined in, and even though it’s Valentine’s Day, the roiling sexual chemistry between Simon Bates and Janice Long has been dialled right down. Thank God.Musicwise, oof: Top Of The Pops throw the kitchen sink of Pop at us, with no less than 21 acts getting a shine, resulting in 1985 looking better than it has any right to be. This Year’s Most Lovable Bisexual puts a wrecking ball plastered with mirrors through the wall of the charts while he threatens legal action against his label for being mingebags. The Commodores don a black vinyl poppy for their fallen comrades. Bill Sharpe and Gary Numan look at a fax machine. The entire show is derailed when Jonathan King forces us to look at some chlorinated American stodge, but put firmly back on track when Jaz Coleman stares at us. Morrissey machine-guns the audience. Kool and the Gang channel the spirit of Girlyman. And there’s a load of mid-Eighties rammel.Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni wrap their Dads’ ties around their heads and join fellow Street Punk Al Needham for a rampage through the streets of 1985, veering off on such tangents as rubbish Americans not understanding Ribena, getting started on for laughing at the death of Apollo Creed, why standing on a boardroom table for a publicity shot isn’t a good idea, why sneering at girls singing a love song directly at their music teacher is a worse idea, and a revisit to the Perils of Priapic Price. You know there’s gonna be swearing.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. 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. Chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop craze youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops.

I'm your host, Al Needham, and with me today are Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price. Hello, hello. Fucking hell, Jesus and Buzz are in the house, everyone. You do sound like a very shaking Cheech and Chong. Thanks, mate. Anyway, boys, lay some of that popping interesting stuff on this arse right here now, please. Well, finally, we can announce to the Pop Craze youngsters,

relax, listeners, he's married, because I got married. Sorry, boys, he's married. You may married sorry boys he's married yeah you may remember long-term listeners remember that um i got engaged during lockdown one and at that point the date that we'd set which was the 10th of april this year it seemed a long long way off and we thought oh everything will be fine the world be back to normal by then yeah well was it fuck you know so um the thing is we've been through so many phases of kind of the tier system and sort of gradual unlocking and relocking that it's almost hard to remember what happened when but yeah um april the 10th was in this weird little in-between

phase where weddings were allowed um for six people but you weren't allowed to... I mean, there weren't even any pubs open. You couldn't have a reception or anything like that. The venue had to be outdoors, which narrows it down considerably. Luckily for us, we had booked the bandstand on Brighton Beach. Nice. Yeah, so that sort of made it fairly immune to some of the restrictions. It was just like every day we were sort of refreshing the BBC website to see what fucking new regulations they brought in.

And also the weather, because if it rained, the registrar wouldn't do it because their book gets wet. You know, literally. Seriously, that's it. Because they've got this precious book that's got everybody else's wedding signatures in it and they can't have it getting pissed on. So I downloaded every

fucking app, the Met Office and the BBC and Dark Skies and all that kind of stuff all of which contradicted each other I became absolutely obsessed with the weather from sort of like 14 days out, just counting down to it but on the day it was it was fine, it was actually

fucking freezing but it didn't rain. We were only allowed six people on the bandstand, but we kind of got around that with the help of the very kind people at Brighton & Hove Council. So essentially what happened was separate groups of our friends and family in groups of no larger than six just happened to be walking along the promenade at the appointed hour. Nice.

And they just happened to sort of dally and linger by the railings to watch what was going on. And then afterwards, down on the sort of beach bit itself, they just so happened to share some massive cooler boxes full of champagne that somebody had happily brought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was all cool. We weren't being arseholes about it.

We weren't breaking the rules. Maybe we were bending the rules slightly, but there were COVID marshals there and they were all cool with We weren't being arseholes about it. We weren't breaking the rules. Maybe we were bending the rules slightly, but there were COVID marshals there and they were all cool with what we were up to. The maddest thing was, Janie's mum, my wife, Janie's mum, brought a fucking really loud, powerful PA speaker on a trolley

because she's one of these people who's really extra about everything, which sometimes works out for the best, you know. So she brought along mainly so so that we could have music playing when the bride walks in and walks out and when we're signing the register and all that kind of stuff and so we could do our speeches we actually set it up down on the beach um so we could sort of do some speeches we weren't being noise nuisances partly because it was too cold for there to be anyone to nuisance and um we had a first dance

which really felt like a bit of a moment because yeah it was my girl by the temptations and first of all it's just me and janie a song means quite a lot to us because when we went to studio a in detroit in hitsville usa that's the song that they get you singing in the actual studio on the tour and then on that holiday janie got i got sunshine on a cloudy day tattooed on her arm so it's got meaning for us so we danced but then you know after verse one or chorus one whatever everyone else who'd come down to see us joined in and it was the first time that anyone had done any kind of dancing to amplified music wow for months and months and it just felt like a real the first

front yeah yeah it was a bit of a spine-tingling moment. I know I'm biased, it's my wedding, and I'm obviously going to feel sentimental about that. But just to see all my friends, everyone smiling and having a sing. And then after that, I stuck on a Spotify playlist that I made earlier called All Night Long 80s Groove.

Nice. That's All Night Long, the Maryane uh girls by the way not um lionel richie of course uh and yeah just having a little dance on the beach obviously distanced and all that correctly but um to you know loves in control finger on the trigger by donna summers the one i really remember and let the music play by shannon and single life by cameo ironically and uh and stuff like that so yeah we had to make the decision to sort of separate the wedding ceremony from a reception we couldn't have a reception uh we'll be having a big party later in the year when if and when they're calling it freedom day aren't

they in the in the press and i if if that ever actually comes i'm kind of skeptical about it but did a seagull nick your cake the whole fucking cake in his beak the maddest thing that happened was um there was this guy he's one of the sort of um seafront i don't know what they call them just sort of like not exactly a lifeguard but these guys are sort of patrolling down the beach in their sort of council uniforms he had this quad bike and he suddenly comes it's in the middle of like my my mother-in-law doing a speech. This quad biker, this guy in it, suddenly comes past with, you know those inflatable resuscitante doors to teach you how to resuscitate people?

One of those just sat on the back, sort of spread-eagled. It was just, I mean, what a way to have your speech upstage. It's kind of amazing. Well, congratulations, Simon, on behalf of the whole Pulp Craze universe. Yeah, bless you all. I saw the photos were so magical man it is a difficult thing this stuff but um not getting married i mean in the midst of lockdown but it looked like a beautiful day if it had come like three days later we could have all gone at least to an outdoor you know to a beer garden of a pub

but there wasn't even that option but obviously we couldn't go on honeymoon so we had what we called a homey moon which was basically just we went on a bit of a week-long rampage around brighton and sitting outside various favorite pubs and restaurants but it was fucking freezing and we just we did that british thing of putting a brave face on it so like everywhere we went we took a bag for life with blankets hot water bottles and these magical stick-on heat pads that you know you put them on your skin and somehow there's some kind of chemical reaction happens and it heats you up so we sat outside having lovely italian meals and stuff like that trying not to shiver yes this is lovely isn't it chatter chatter chatter you know it does feel like i'm not of course nothing will ever be the same

again we're not going to return to normal as such but it has been nice thinking about what simon was just saying getting back to pubs and and actually the thing that i missed the most and that i've really enjoyed in recent weeks was sitting in a pub i'm not an anti-masker but it was nice sitting with friends without a mascot but more importantly doing something I've not done, I mean, probably well before COVID, going to the bar, getting a tenner changed into quid coins and pumping the jukebox and playing it. Oh, it's such a good feeling. And so, you know, that thing that nature is healing, it does feel like it's coming back a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

What'd you put on? Oh, man. It's a really good jukebox. And I kind of resent modern jukeboxes for the dazzling kind of panoply of choice they offer you

because I think part of the joy of jukeboxes is finding the good shit in amidst loads of terrible stuff, you know. I remember one of my favourite pubs

growing up, you know, it had a load of crap on it but also do the Strand by Roxy music on it and that was the tune you went for, you know. Whereas now they just kind of give you everything you want. I was in a bit of a glam rock mode that night.

So it was all New York Dolls and Sparks and Roxy and Bowie, a bit of ACDC as well. But just being able to do that and being able to bother other people with what I wanted to listen to was just a really, really nice feeling. Because my teaching, which was previously bossing my week has entirely dropped off now I find myself at the moment kind of remembering I'm a human being and not just a walking schedule which means

kind of boredom which is great as well as the kind of anger that's engendered by social media um you know 10 minutes on twitter and you're going to be furious aren't you so that kind of dangerous combination i've inevitably been writing about a few things just off my own bat really not commissions and after an article i posted a few weeks back re overrated albums yeah i encountered a little of what pricey encountered last time we we were all together um when talking about his tweet about oasis i cobbled together a few old facebook posts about overrated albums of a morning posted them as a medium story about the 10 most overrated albums ever posted it fucked off and then i came back to it not a comparable shit storm to the one that Simon got but it was I was particularly delighted that it

was shared among various indie rock um social media groups like Radio 6 and just how much it pissed people off um did anybody tell you that you're just an old man trying to make a name for himself yes all of that stay relevant cool carnet no this is it yeah it was all that it was all um you know oh this is a very angry man desperately wants to be cool he listens to bands you've never heard of um i mean i sort of prefer the people who just come out and just say what a cunt you know just this is an atrocious piece of writing but yeah there was a lot of that i mean it it's weird because you know somebody calls me a silly man or my writing style is painful or just calls me an absolute cunt i can kind of deal with it what's shocking to me

is the shock that people have i know we talked about this last time but this shock that people have and how unprepared for kind of piss takey writing um you know music fans aren't i mean we were all raised on it with the music press um but i mean i remember simon reynolds hiring me pricey and taylor to write for spin magazine yeah and american readers just being incapable of coping with it even the mildest kind of piss taking about serious bands yeah i think that habit's kind of you know sunk in here too and it's really dangerous yeah it gets worse doesn't it yeah yeah because it's like i remember when i used to read the enemy and that in the early 80s and people like bieber kopf

used to slag off the jam and i fucking hated him and i refused to read anything by him because he didn't like the music i liked yeah and that's fucking thick i grew out of that pretty quickly well i mean part of me when I start arguing about this stuff with these people, part of me thinks we're just talking different languages now. You know, it's dangerous for me, this idea that the job of critique is just to cheerlead. Yeah. You know, so when you write anything critical,

somebody has to ask you, you know, why are you so angry? Yeah. You know, really revealing their own kind of infantile, infuriated incapability of reading opinions that they disagree with. And you also get dismissed as well as writing for clicks, trying to make a name for yourself. But if critique is doing little more than conferring approval of choices and helping with filing and confirming the canon or regurgitating or, you know, sort of PR or lubricating commerce, it's a pretty shit lookout. And the idea that anything other than cultural cheerleading, I i mean another thing i've been called is edgelord you know because you're an edgelord you're attention seeking it's an incredibly dangerous

idea that that you know if you apply the same logic to non yeah sort of music journalism if you like non-cultural journalism see how that works oh you're criticizing the government you know you've got a problem yeah what was gratifying about all of this is that whenever i read anyone calling me a cunt or saying you know you're an old man or any of that i would consider it a dereliction of duty really if i didn't fucking annoy these people what what annoyed me the most was being compared to that racist transphobic bitch julie birchall yeah um really god i'm not having that man no she's a fucking a truck i mean as has been revealed our whenever you've read out virtual reviews or parsons reviews um from old enemies they were two of the worst music writers

ever yeah and what's been gratifying actually whenever i've posted about birchall actually is hearing people who were there like you know Savage, tell me that he hated them from the off. And, you know, Caroline Coon and writers that I do respect from the enemy of that period hated them from the off as well. So, yeah, not exactly pop and interesting, but mainly I've been winding up precisely the people I've been wanting to wind up. I suspect this will increasingly happen over summer. I have very little else to do music journalism nowadays is essentially applauding people for reaching a standard yeah yeah it's like saying you know if uh i don't know if england get absolutely fucking battered

in the euros we're supposed to applaud them anyway for the proficiency of their yeah for the effort at least they're trying fucking thick i mean yeah these people are just fucking thick they're not used to music writing like that but more importantly i just think that the line between pr and journalism has been blurred for so long now that it's a category error it's the same reason that young prs ask me for copy approval they just don't understand the process and to them these things are equivalent so you know that part of me gets really furious about this stuff part of me just thinks we're talking different languages yeah there's a whole generation of people who just cannot understand critique or anything being criticized basically because for years and years and years now and this is something i spotted even

in the magazines that i write for you know editors don't send you stuff that they think you're going to slag off. They put writers together with albums that they'll like. Because nobody wants to piss off the PR man. Nobody wants to piss off the record company or in any way imperil that relationship. So consequently, you know, there's going to be less and less true criticism being printed. And every time you do print anything or publish anything, self-publish anything, you're going to get this. Oh, you know, what's going to be less and less true criticism being printed. And every time you do print anything or publish anything, self-publish anything, you're going to get this. Oh, you know, what are you doing?

This is not the point of... It blows their minds. It just doesn't compute, does it? They don't know what the fuck you're doing. It is, yeah. And it staggers me because the reaction, I mean, as Pricey was saying about the Oasis tweet that he did, I mean, fucking hell, they need to listen to chart music, don't they?

Because, yeah, this stuff is still happening, but these people are massively untutored in it. Whereas all of us, of course, are raised on this kind of stuff. I went to the pub for the first time this week, and, yeah, it was fucking mint. I was asked at very short notice to do a pub quiz at one of my regular places. I was more than happy to do that,

and even more than happy to get loads of free drink down my neck. It was more than happy to do that and even more than happy to um get loads of free drink down my neck it was fucking amazing really enjoyed it pulled out all the stops i did the picture round one of my favorites is uh name name the title of the gay porn dvd yeah yeah where i blank out some words with asterisks and you're invited to fill in the blanks i fucking love that round there's a table full of brick shithouses earnestly discussing what the sexual practice is amazing there was one bloke who just suddenly turned around to his mate and shouted it smashed my fucking hole okay so yeah i like that i feel i'm i'm achieving something in life when i've done that these drinks right that you're having in the pub,

were they bought to you? Did you just sit there and these drinks were bought to you? I sat at the bar and they... Ah, I see. Yeah, it was all table service and that, but... Yeah, because, you know, table service, I know it's a pain in the arse for bar staff, but I quite like it.

I'm not sure I'm missing much, the standing at the bar with loads of people waiting. No. If that doesn't come back, I'm not that fussed. But yeah, sitting in a pub with a pint in your hand, it's just fucking glorious. Lovely. It's frightening, is it?

Because I'm very arsey about people banging on about fucking Freedom Day. I mean, as far as I can recall, Special AKA didn't sing 21 years in captivity gagging for a pint in a carvery. But I did get that, that oh yeah this is nice nature actually is healing a bit and i'm getting absolutely fucking k-lied so yeah i mean i feel rough as assholes the day after and uh still i'm now started smoking again like a twat

because i've been a bit stressed out about a thing or two. So if I'm a bit throaty today, that's why. So don't worry about me. I ain't got COVID. Touch every single bit of wood in the house. It's kind of sexy, Al. Don't worry about it. Yeah.

Got a big Sports Direct mug full of honey and lemon and ginger. There really should have been a lad rock band called Sports Direct mug. Yes. There's still time. Anyway, let us move on and let us do as we always do at this time in the episode, bowing the knee, and if you fucking boo me for doing this,

you can fuck off, to all the pop craze Patreons who've come and joined us this month. And this month, those people are in the $5 section. Jane Webber, Wang Chung-Lung, Alex Batt, Michael Grogan, Tony, Philip, Ming Hawk, Paul Devlin, Connor Brennan, Gavin Hogg, John Rafferty, Emily Jim Clear and Justin Dodsworth thank you babies

cheers thank you so much and in the three dollar section we have Antner, Old Paul Paul O'Donnell Michael Avery and Stephen May oh and Darren Lamb you get a special shake of the-shake of the arse

for putting your donation up and beyond and over and away. Oh, lovely. Thank you. And of course, one of the things that those pop craze Patreons got to do this month is tinker and a tanker and fiddle and a faddle with the latest chart music top ten.

Shall we, boys? Yes, please. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Barry the Sexy Lion, Christopher Lilliput, and Mario Cunt, which means one up, four down, two non-movers,

and three new entries. Four down, two non-movers and three new entries. No move at number 10 for Taylor Parks' 20 romantic moments. Down one place from number 8 to number 9, it's CFAX Data Blast. Last week's number 2 dropped six places to number eight, Nolan Tentacle Porn. A former number one now down four places to number seven, Jesus Price. And down two places from number four to number six, I'm not even going to try and attempt it, Rock Expert David Stubbs.

Into the top five and up from seven to five is Bummer Dog. A new entry at number four. Here comes Jizzum. Whoa. Back. Into the top three and straight in at number three, Tandori Elephant. Oh, get in. The highest new entry this week, straight in at number

two, Fucks Biz, which means Britain's number one. They're still there, riding high at the top of the chart music top ten, the bent cunts who aren't fucking real.

Oh, what a chart! What a chart. To be honest with you, I was expecting that to stay at number one, but I'm gladdened in the heart to hear that Here Comes Jism is back. Yeah. Back where it belongs, to be honest with you. I was shocked by it leaving the top ten. Yeah. I'm fascinated by the kind

of ups and downs of these things. Has it somehow gone viral? Was Here Comes JISM used on a video game? Is it now a meme? Has it been used in a Hollywood blockbuster in the last month or so? Just to sort of push it back up there. Tandoori Elephant, though. Fucking hell.

In with a bullet. Obvious early 70s rock behemoth. Australian, I think, with a touch of psychedelia aboutphant, though. Fucking hell. In with a bullet. Obvious early 70s rock behemoth. Yeah, Australian, I think, with a touch of psychedelia about them, definitely. Yeah. Heavy psych. I think I used to play one of their tunes on Sitar Hero. And, you know, it's about time that fucksbiz

were admitted to the Chart Music Top Ten. It's been too long for them. So, if you've been holding back on us so far, Pop Craze Youngsters, now is the time to support chart music get them fingers throw them at your keyboard mash out patreon.com slash chart music and pad out this here g string just remember you make chart music what it is so it's all your fault anyway this episode pop craze youngsters takes us all the way back to april the 7th 1983 and chaps i don't know about you but after doing that seven hour behemoth on the 1983 christmas special last december

my interest was peaked in 1983 and i was really up for reinvestigating what i'd previously seen as quite a fallow year for pop music yeah it's traditionally i mean including in chart music 83 is seen as a slight falling off from the high points of 81 and 82. Yeah. Although that never quite matched up with my memories of 83, because I remembered 83 always being a great year for singles. I suspect 83 starts looking like a fall off when you think about albums. But as this episode proves, I think, it's a cracking year for singles. Yeah. 83, it's not a bad year at all.

Yeah. I believe that my snuffling about the crotch of 1983 has unearthed a particularly choice episode. I mean, spoiler alert, Pop Craze youngsters, if you've come here for some coat downs, I think you're going to be massively disappointed because there's very little in the way of cat shit in this one, is there? True.

In fact, I would go as far to say that, pound for pound, this might well be one of the best episodes of Top of the Pops we've ever covered. If not the best, fuck it, I'm going to say it. I'm going to put it out there. It's right up there. It's got a consistently high level, I would say. You know, not much filler. Yeah, it has got a high level.

I mean, the question is, are the high points of 83 as good as the high points of 82 and 81? I'm not entirely convinced they are, but there's a couple of real fucking corkers in this episode. Yes. And there's no, for me, there's not a moment in this episode which I associate normally with Top of the Pops of, you know, where your soul just sinks because something really awful comes on. I haven't quite got one of those moments with this episode.

Right. No, and I just think in general, 83 is a year that feels kind of comfortable in its own skin it feels like the 80s have kind of found found their groove you know and things haven't started going wrong yet it's definitely not the aventies we're definitely in the 80s now oh we're in the 80s now in In fact, you probably got the stats at your fingertips out. How often have we revisited 1983 so far on Chart Music? Twice before.

Only twice? The Christmas episode and the one with Long Hot Weller in it. I guess I'm conflating it with 82 a little bit, but this kind of era does feel like there's a certain familiarity and comfort in going back there. It's a bit like going to visit a favorite cousin or beloved aunt yes um there's there's that thing you know you don't live there but when you when you get there you think i know my way around yes yeah i'm happy here um yeah i'm very much in sort of my comfort zone in a comfortable element in 83 there's

nothing about it that sort of makes me feel uneasy i i know the year inside out i know how it works i mean when i watched this for the first time after 38 years i can't deny i was hadley fisting it all the way through almost all the way through anyway um because it was just like number one oh fucking hell there's lots to talk about in this episode you know i have my chart music head on, obviously. But the other part of me was just going, fucking yes! Do you remember watching it at the time, this episode? I was like, Beavis and Butthead, yes!

Because I actually do recall watching this episode at the time, which isn't always the case with these, but I do remember this one. It really put me in a time and place watching this episode. And, you know, it got me thinking, is there such a thing somewhere out there as the perfect Top of the Pops episode? Because, I mean, let me say right now, this one isn't. There's one song in particular that would have enraged

the pop-crazy youngsters of the time. But, you know, this one comes very, very close to ringing all the bells for me. It does. But, you know, as ever, very, very close to ringing all the bells for me. It does. But, you know, as ever, I mean, it's a good episode. But, of course, the inevitable habit is to look at the chart and what could have been on it. And it could have even been improved. The bully factor, if you will, is what you could have won.

But, of course, the question is, is a perfect episode Top of the Pops one where you like everything on it? Or is part of the essential nature of Top of the Pops that there is at least one tune that gives you a chance to flex your hatred? A little bit of hate watch, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think to me, the perfect Top of the Pops combines the two perhaps, rather than it just being a kind of a load of great records. But as ever, you look at the chart and you look at the episode and there's there's plenty in the chart that you just think oh that would have been fucking amazing and just on the outskirts of the top 40 as well there's a lot of fucking yeah there's the right waiting to enter yeah yeah i had a little look at that there's some great stuff yeah i mean there's an example on this episode of a of a single that i fucking hated but but a performance I loved then, and even more so now.

But, you know, let's not get ahead of ourselves. But let's get stuck in! Hello there! Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Quickly, quickly, we haven't got long. Please listen to the all-new Angel of Sandberry podcast.

It's a funny one. Oh, my God, it's hilarious. There's so much muck in it. Radio 1 News In the news, depending on who you talk to, the police or the organisers, between 40,000 and 70,000 people attempt to form a human chain around the Greenham Common Air Base. An Irish radio station received an anonymous phone call from someone with a middle-class English accent claiming that if a 1.5 million ransom wasn't paid by the next morning the head of Shergar,

the 1981 derby winner who'd been kidnapped two months ago, would be left at the Phoenix Park race course in Dublin. The National Union of Teachers Conference in Jersey is dominated by a move by the Gay Teachers Group and the Socialist Alliance of Teachers to stock books on homosexuality in school libraries and put over the message that homosexuality is normal. NUT General Secretary Fred Jarvis says they would support any of their members if they were prejudiced against due to What a fucking place to hold the conference. It's mad that seven million pound in banknotes have been stolen from a security company in shoreditch after a raid involving ronnie knight who is currently mr barbara windsor he's eventually jailed for seven years for his involvement in 1995 while the

argument over shirt advertising in televised football games drags on, a video company called Telejecta has offered the Football League £8 million for the right to show live games in pubs on Monday nights, leading MPs to demand that the government lean on the BBC and ITV to end their shirt ad ban. TVAM, which is only drawing 400,000 viewers compared to BBC Breakfast Times' 1.8 million, have announced David Frost's replacement as the host of Good Morning Britain. It's their sports correspondent, Nick Owen, who is relocating permanently to Camden Lock from Central East Midlands and will soon drag his co-host Anne Diamond with him. Elton John, who has recently announced

that he hopes to withdraw from his music career and become a film actor, has been photographed stripping down to his pants in a party in Tunisia. One onlooker said, it was very artistic. He had great style. Everyone enjoyed it. But the big news this week is that the Style Council were caught in the act setting up their gear for an impromptu gig outside the Berlin Wall and told to get back in the van by West German border guards.

They went on to be denied entry into East Berlin where they were due to play for East German punks. The wall, sadly, did not come tumbling down. Oh, Paul. I love them for their kind of engagement with

the communist world, the Style Council. They were really into it, weren't they? They went over to Poland, didn't they, later on to record the video, Four Walls Come Tumbling Down. They really wanted to dialogue with the Eastern Bloc and really appreciated that. Where all the kids are going, this isn't Elton John, what the fuck's going on?

They're going, play Going Underground, play it in rifles. About that Shergar story, right? Have you seen what's happened? This is one of the maddest things I've ever seen. There's a documentary, a radio documentary on the BBC about the whole Shergar kidnapping disappearance made by, and this sounds like I'm making it up, made by Vanilla Ice.

No! Fuck off! I've heard that as well, but I thought it was a joke. Is that really true? No, it's not a joke. It's real. Yeah, it sounds like one of those Alan Partridge monkey tennis kind of things, doesn't it? It's like, you know, Inner City Sumo with Chas and Dave

or Youth Hustling with Chris Eubank. But it really is the Shergard story by, what's his name, Robert Van Winkle? Yes. No, but he's trading as Vanilla Ice. Yeah, it's just one of the maddest things I've ever heard. But yeah, apparently he's really obsessed with that story and wanted to make a pod about it and he has i can't report whether it's any good or not but it's real on the cover of melody maker this week fish on the cover of smash hits claire grogan the number one lp in the uk at the moment is The Final Cut by Pink Floyd.

And over in America, the number one single is Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. And the number one LP, of course, Thriller by Michael Jackson. So, boys, what were we doing in April of 1983? Well, I was getting sort of, well, I would have been about two-thirds through my first year at senior school. So, you know, I was just sort of becoming acquainted with the strange rubric of demented rules and sadism and general squalidness that went on at my school. And getting used to the daft rituals that my school had,

as a school that was aspiring to look like a public school in a way we had houses we had house assemblies i mean what's the fucking point of those school assemblies for the whole school and also year assemblies for just us as first years and by the way if anyone is confused about the year system of schools at the moment, you know, when a kid says they're in year 10, what does that mean? No fucking idea. Yeah, yeah. I haven't got a fucking clue either, and I've been teaching it. And I don't know what the new GCSE grades mean either, by the way.

But, you know, the thing is, as first years, we were encouraged to put on assemblies, right, for other first year forms. Right. So I remember in 83, oh, such a precocious little cunt. I wrote plays. I was a playwright in 1983. I wrote two plays that got performed because I was a wannabe little writer. One was a dramatic reenactment of the royal wedding scene from Adrian Mole.

Yeah, and I played Bt baxter as i recall don't really remember much else about that the one i really want to remember um which i wish i could remember more about was that i wrote a contemporary updating of the jesus story replete with an electric chair instead of crucifixion and And we did this in front of the first years. And I remember it being a bit demented and being quite rushed in a sense. A lot of people just didn't know what the fuck was going on in it.

But Christ, I wish I remembered more about this. So if anyone went to King Henry VIII in Coventry in about 1982, 83, and remembers that play, please get in touch. I want to remember more about it. I don't know to remember more about it I don't know why I wrote it I don't know why I put him in an electric chair there was

an interrogation scene as well as I recall but yeah I was a horribly precocious fuck but yeah I'm finding ways to basically you wrote the mercy seat by Nick Cave ahead of time I was really hoping you're going to say that you've got an old reel to reel audio tape.

No. No, God, I wish I did. I mean, that was what was so delightful after the last chart music that somebody on Twitter, I think, said to Al that horrible gnome story that I remembered reading, they'd got a tape of it. They'd kind of done a little play of it themselves.

Oh, my God. But this is what happens with time on your hands and boredom and no internet obviously you know you you i mean i was always into writing even as a very little kid um but i had progressed on by this point yeah from just writing disgusting shit to writing meaningful shit like um it's a contemporary retelling of the jesus myth amazing oh man why didn't you get him floating around in a world of piss and shit and spunk i know i should have accepted my hindu disgraceful hellish route yeah you should have told that story neil you could have educated the youth i know i think it was around easter or something like that um and they just started lumbering me with this

shit because i was willing to do it. I wasn't a director or anything. Oh, man, if you'd have done a play like that and said, yeah, you think your religion's mad, fucking get a load of this, you'd have brought the creeds together. I would have. Just a young man trying to make a name for himself.

But yeah, yeah, a horribly precocious little cunt at that age. But finding ways to enjoy myself you know rather than things that were handed down to me as it were you know or doing what people wanted me to do i was i was digging into writing a little bit so i have fond memories of this time simon yeah i was 15 jailbait um still um uh living in um in barcktown in South Wales. And at that kind of phase where you're too old for toys, but too young for the pub and like no interest from girls. So you just really got, you just sort of like,

you're full of all kinds of energy, whether sexual or aggressive, and you've just got no outlet for any of it. And you're just sort of bristling with, you're crackling with all kinds of energy whether sexual or aggressive and you just got no outlet for any of it and you're just sort of bristling with you're crackling with all kinds of emotions that you don't know what to do with but um talking of being like too old for toys i did still have sabutio but um apart from that right um there was this really kind of watershed moment where me and my mate andrew who lived next door who was a metler that i think i've spoken about in previous episodes um he had an air rifle right and owning an air of course yeah because

he's into metal if you're into metal i think having an air rifle is a very little kind of toy to have yeah an air rifle is not a toy listeners um but yeah what we did was uh there was a a basement underneath his house that was just kind of a storage space full of dried up bags of concrete and stuff like that, that his dad had put there. So what we did was we got all our old toys, like action men and other action figures like, you know, Star Trek and Six Million Dollar Man and all that stuff. And we lined them all up. Which would be worth hundreds of pounds. Exactly. Don't think I haven't thought of this many, many times,

especially when eBay launched. So we kind of gave them all weapons and posed them behind bricks and stuff in kind of action poses. And then from about, you know, 10 feet away, just blew the shit out of them with the air rifle. We basically executed them it was a massacre it was like

some kind of American high school massacre I think sadly the silicon chip inside his head got switched to overload exactly so that was kind of the symbolic end of childhood and yeah I was kind of in a gang not in was kind of the symbolic end of childhood. And yeah, I was kind of in a gang,

not in the kind of modern sense of postcode wars, but in that sort of slightly pathetic, feckless way of just a bunch of ne'er-do-wells just sitting around on a wooden park bench looking out over the docks, which were still the docks in those days and had not yet been gentrified into sort of yuppie marina apartments.

And doing kind of, just tagging electricity substations with a marker pen and all that kind of business. Danger of death, King Pat, that's us. Jimmy! Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know how in every gang there's one who's kind of the whipping boy um who's not not particularly hard but they they let him kind of join in and hang around with them well that was me i was kind of like oh i was kind of whatever the opposite of an alpha male is in that gang um

i was the one you know if anyone's gonna have the piss taken out of them or have a prank put you know played on them that was usually me um so these are the same people they're usually the first one in the gang to die as well aren't they yeah yeah so um i mean i've spoken before about um the the time that um we petrol bombed a church well the thing is i was never the instigator that that wasn't me you know i was never the instigator so the two core me. I was never the instigator. So the two core members of this gang were these kids called Screwy and Pete, right? And it was Pete's dad who had the speedboat fuel. You know Pete's the hard one because he hasn't got a nickname. Yeah, yeah, right.

No one dares. When I look back, I've got an enormous amount of respect for this guy. I never got to know him that well. We sort of lost touch. I wonder if he's still out there and what he's up to. But he was a very early kind of animal rights type. He once put a brick through a butcher's window, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, yeah, I was quite in awe of him in a way.

He was quite quiet. But, yeah, it was his dad who had the petrol for the Molotov cocktails and all of that. the petrol for the Molotov cocktails and all of that. So there was this one night that with Screwy and Pete and a couple of others, we snuck out of our houses at

midnight without telling our parents and tried to not make the door make any noise and just very quietly went to preordained meeting place. And we went this kind of rampage around the town and uh it's really bad i was always the voice of caution saying uh are you sure we should do this but you know i was still there and um so basically it was nothing when you look back it was it was

pretty harmless the first thing i remember was going hedge hopping, like doing a sort of, there was this one street, I think it was Windsor Road in Barry, where the terraced houses were set up in such a way that they all had quite high hedges between each garden. And they all went down a sort of fairly gentle slope. So if you started at the top and just ran at it, you could sort of do a steeplechase. You sort of, it was like the Grand National.

You just sort of jump over these hedges. And the danger was, of course, you didn't know what was waiting for you on the other side. It could be a nettle patch. It could be the sort of comedy thing of standing on a rake and it twats you in the face, you know, anything like that. So that was the first bit where the only thing we were really harming was ourselves.

Then I remember this bit where somebody had brought along a very fine pointed marker pen and started going up to people's living room windows and drawing thin lines or cracks on the window to make oh that's evil yeah it's quite quite inventive that is evil that's worse than a spunking cock. Yeah. What a window that is. Yeah, yeah. And then I remember we went down to the nap in Barry. I hope there's a statute of limitations on this and I can't be put in prison for it now.

Basically, there were lovely ornamental flower beds there and like complete arseholes, we ran around kicking all the flowers over. Oh, Simon, I can't approve of that. Even so, you know, I probably was stood on the edge of it simon i can't approve but even even so you know i i i probably was stood on the edge of it going i don't want to do that yeah pete what about fucking flowers right and i i remember standing around wondering what we could do next and we were on this corner um of the causeway over to barry island and it was butlin's barry island at that point and somebody from our

gang thought let's go over and meet some girls, there'll be girls staying in there. I don't know how the hell we thought there were going to be girls knocking around on what was probably like a Tuesday night, you know well past midnight but yeah that was the plan but at that moment a police car came screeching around the corner and picked us

up and took us in, right? Didn't take us to the police station but but gave us all a severe talking to. And what has happened was they couldn't prove that we'd done any of this vandalism around the town. They couldn't tie us to any of it. I'm not sure they could if they fucking searched us for marker pens and all that. Instead...

Pre-DNA, isn't it? The reason that they came looking for us, and I never lived this down, is that my mum heard the click of the door when I left the house. She knew where her lad was tonight. Yeah, and she figured out that I wasn't in my room. And she must have actually had to walk all the way down the hill to a phone box because we did have a phone to phone the police. And, yeah, the police came, us found us picked us up and took us to our respective homes and after that

whenever i met up with that little gang they would taunt me by singing no more heroes by the stranglers but with the words changed to no more heroes anymore pricey's mum phoned up the law so yeah that's one of my memories of being 15 and sort of being on the edge of getting into trouble really and always being the kind of wuss who was like can't we just play football? Did you get a massive bollocking when you got home?

Yeah of course You're like Adrian Mole again another Adrian Mole reference when he's when he starts hanging around with barry kent and his gang and they spend their time throwing chips at each other in the shopping precinct and he writes i used to write about life now i'm living it well right about this time i have a sore heart and a sore forehead. I mean, I was full into the fucking Style Council. So right about this time, I am absolutely incandescently enraged

that Speak Like a Child has been stuck at number four for the third week running this week. Did my fucking head in. It's like, why didn't everyone buy it on the first week like I did? On the first fucking day like I did. Like they did with jam records yes and this might have been the week that i decided to get paul weller's latest haircut i'd had massive success with the steve marriott toblerone cut the year before so when i saw he

changed his look again it's like yeah i'm rolling with'm rolling with it. Now, I don't know where Paul Weller got his hair done, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Haircut Sir in Bulwark where I got mine. I blame myself for not doing the obvious thing and taking in a photo and pointing at it to the bloke in the white coat. And I just said, no, just off here, a bit off here at the sides. Just doing it off memory, basically. And when he'd finished, I looked at the fringe and I thought, oh, that fringe isn't right.

It needs to be a bit more sort of rounded and up a little bit more. So I just drew a fucking arc across my forehead. Oh, my God. Yeah, big mistake. Because if you remember, this was the time that the T-Fol adverts were out by the scientists with the massive foreheads. And yeah, that was me for a while. One of the most traumatic moments in my time at secondary school,

I think it's one stage below being debagged on the school field and being called maggot man was walking in that monday morning about five minutes late to registration just opening the door and walking in and just being hit by a wall of screaming and laughter and just abuse and uh yeah for the next month or so until it grew out um it was open season on my forehead i'd just be sitting there and some fucking fifth year youth had just walked past and just slapped me on the forehead talking about kind of fashion choices at that time this episode of top of the pops i really believe changed my dress sense specifically there are a couple of things that happen in this episode that did change how i dress

because at this point i was still it was was very much the burgundy and grey era. You know, it was burgundy cardigans with a big Y on it. It was tight jeans. It was canvas baseball boots. They weren't converse Chuck Taylors. They were knockoff ones. But those ones that had like a rubber disc on the ankle bone, you know the ones.

Yes. And yeah, I had the bad skin that I've talked about before because I thought the way to remedy it was with neat Dettol, not diluted. And it was that, you know, I've talked about that before. But yeah, this episode of Top The Pops did sort of make me sort of change things up a little bit. And I'm looking forward to telling you all about that. The good news, and there's quite a lot of good news round about this time,

is I've finally crossed the line and felt brave enough to start shopping at the record shop in town. And in Nottingham, that record shop was Selected Disc. Great shop. Great shop. Which seemed fucking massive and intimidating at the time. It was just the place you walk past and you just think, I'm not old enough to go in there yet. I might get cussed down or they might chuck me out but no me and my mate steeled ourselves and we went in and i can still remember my first

purchase from it would have been about the month before it was a monsters t-shirt the one where they're the beat combo you know that one and my mate daz clark he bought a set of badges with all five Doctor Whos. Yeah, Selected is a big part of my life for many years afterwards. I mean, when I worked in Soho at the turn of the century, there was still that Selected-esque on... Berwick Street? Yeah. Yes.

And when I felt homesick for Nottingham, which I did quite a lot around about that time, I'd spend my dinner hour in Selected-esque and pretend Iick for Nottingham, which I did quite a lot around about that time, I'd spend my dinner hour in Selected Esk and pretend I was in Nottingham because they had the same T-shirts hung up on the walls. They had the same labeling on the record racks. It was just like, oh, I'm in Nottingham. Everything's all right. Yeah.

They were great for T-shirts, that London branch, I remember. Stuff you wouldn't see anywhere else. You do have to hit a certain age, I think, before, not that you necessarily feel comfortable in record shops, but record shops actually become these things where you realise, oh, actually, I can just stay in here. Yes. You know, for like 40 minutes or an hour.

You know, and I don't have to buy anything. I can just browse and fantasise. It's part of your education, isn't it? Yes. Like reading the small print on the back of sleeves and wondering who the hell these engineers or keyboardists or whatever might be. They'll let anyone into SelectaDisc.

For years, SelectaDisc had its own tramp. Oh, nice. There was this one bloke who was known as Mr Pope, and he was this huge bloke with a massive white Santa beard, and he'd just come in when it was raining and just sit up against one of the record racks and fall asleep for about three hours. Yeah, he fucking stank as well, man.

There was like entire chunks of the alphabet that you just couldn't go and delve into. But he became part of the third year. Selected, he was brilliant. When it shut down, that was the beginning of the end for Nottingham City Centre, I'd say. It's a sad thing. I mean, all the ones I remember from Cov,

they're all gone now, of course, all of them. We used to have a Virgin shop, Spinner Disc, where I saw the fantastic sight of a pigeon flying in, shitting behind the counter and flying straight out again in one fluid movement. Way ahead record. No manners, but what a critic. No manners, but what a critic.

It must have been the same pigeon that shat in that Kings of Leon guy's mouth. But yeah, there were three or four, and Coffs is not a big town, 300,000 people, but three or four really ace record shops all gone. I should give a shout out for this website that I discovered. I say discovered because it seems to be semi-dormant,

but I think it's called Britishish record shop archive.org somebody 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. 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. Obviously more time on their hands than would be desirable. A couple of years ago, obviously built this. And it's kind of an open thing where you can just join in and add a record shop from your local town and do a little kind of, you know, reminiscence thing about it. And if you've got photos of it, put photos in. And just potentially, it's such a great website. It's still a bit half formed.

There are huge gaps in it. Annoyingly, some of the towns are placed in the wrong county and all of that. But it's just something that, you know, anybody who's got fond memories of record shops, go on there and like make it happen because it's potentially a really beautiful thing. I put Christopher's records from Barry on there.

Didn't have a photo of it, but just wrote down everything I could remember about that shot. Nice. But even more importantly, this is the week that I purchased my very first gig ticket. Trent Polley, Friday, April the 29th, which would have been two days before my 15th birthday,

to see people who are actually in this episode of Top of the Pops. Ooh. There's a teaser. Oh, my word. So, dear boys, I do believe it's time

that we rip open a cardboard box or two and have a bit of a ruffle through our back catalogue of magazines and pull out an issue of the music press from this very week. And this time I've gone for the NME, April the 9th, 1983. Shall we? Yes, please.

On the cover, Tracy Young. In the news, the main news this week is David Bowie's summer tour and the location of his projected open-air gig, which has recently announced to mop up the overspill of ticket applications for his gigs at Wembley Arena and the Birmingham NEC. Harvey Goldsmith has been dispatched to source a location and has so far narrowed it down to Nebworth, Blackbush and the Milton Keynes Bowl.

The latter venue would win out with not one but three gigs held over the first weekend in July. A spokesperson for Goldsmith claims that practically every band in the country has been asking to get on the bill with Icehouse and the beat getting picked out that was uh the beats final gig yeah uh yeah yeah and i think we've spoken before that famous story about how their elderly saxophonist well i say elderly he's probably about the age i am now

you know he was in his early 50s yeah yeah saxo um met met david bowie uh when bowie i think wearing a white shirt and a black waistcoat came into the beats trailer and just said you know you're okay guys anything i can do for you and saxer sent him off to get some red stripes because he just thought he was just some kind of waiter you know but um the thing with that gig is i i interviewed dave wakeling from the beat um a little while ago for Record Collector. And one story he told me that did make it into the finished piece, Bowie had offered them the American tour because he really liked The Beat.

A lot of the band were into it, but Wakeling was not feeling it, just didn't want to go. And he thought, right, I've got to do it. I've got to split the band. So what he did was, because the gigs as you say were over a weekend um in between wakeling went back drafted his letter of resignation

and posted it through the door of their record company office go feet there's a management record company thing and then the final final gig went so well that he really regretted it and he thought oh no i've got to unresign so he went back and i think it was like a sunday night or something and he thought shit if when when you know the the pa opens the door on monday morning they're going to find this letter and that's it the game's up so he went back there at the dead of night you know one in the morning on sunday night and was sort of going through the letterbox with a stick, trying to sort of grab, trying to sort of shoo the letter back under the door

so he could just tear it up and resign. But he couldn't do it. So eventually he just thought, oh, that's just fate. That's fate telling me I've just got to accept it and quit the band. Blimey. Just a longer stick and the beat would have been with us. Yeah. Simon, I'm guessing you were still massively into the beat at the time

oh yeah they were fantastic if you'd have known this was the last time you'd get the chance to see them you'd have been up for going wouldn't you I mean I couldn't afford a trip to Milton Keynes from Wales but yeah it certainly would have been tugging at my heart strings it would have been kicking down the doors of my heart yeah I absolutely loved them this would have been theging at my heartstrings. It would have been kicking down the doors of my heart. Yeah, I absolutely loved them.

With a stick. This would have been the time that they were basically touring their final album, Special Beat Service, which is, you know, if people ask what you think of the kind of underrated or forgotten masterpieces of the 80s, to me that's one of them because it did fuck all in the charts. They were pretty much forgotten about.

It did quite well in America, actually, Special Beat beat service it was the one that relatedly sort of sort of take off a little bit um over there but yeah i i completely love love that album it's one of those things that because you're aware that nobody else is into it and even your mates who were previously rude boys or ever were not into this it just makes it even more special to you think this is my album so i would have dearly loved to see them play that set and then funnily enough i think the beat dave wakely's version of course because rankin rogers sadly no longer with us um are playing bright and soon and it may be my first gig back in the world when gigs start happening meanwhile with a week to go before the release

of the let's dance lp emi have launched a massive promotional campaign as well as the usual shop window and music press ads they're running adverts on channel 4 and local radio and even backlit adverts on the tube you didn't see that at all did you back then the only albums that got advertised on the telly were compilations as i recall yeah big on you know k-tel compilations and stuff yeah that's that's a crazy promotional push yeah i don't think bus shelters even where i came from had adverts on just yet at this point yeah in other gig news the jacksons who have already cancelled plans to play in the uk earlier this year look look set to play a string of gigs in London in September, probably Wembley Arena.

The reason for the delay is that they're currently in the studio working on the LP Victory, which in itself is being delayed due to Michael working with Paul McCartney in the E.T. soundtrack, and they're currently working on the single State of Shock with Freddie Mercury, which falls through and results in Mick Jagger stepping into the breach. The dates don't come off due to infighting. State of Shock is a fucking tune.

Yeah, and now I'm sort of imagining this counterfactual universe where it's Freddie Mercury on vocals. That could have been amazing. I don't think it'd be as good as the Jagger version. Yeah, great single. I don't know, because at the end, it does sound like Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson are having bum sex.

The last five seconds. Which is, let's face it, what the world wanted to see. Yeah. Yeah. And Crosby, Stills and Nash have announced plans to play their first dates in the UK since they played Wembley Stadium in 1974. Although they intend to headline a major open-air gig, they eventually settle for two shows at Wembley Arena and one at the NEC.

And Channel 4 have announced a new chat show for young adults, Loose Talk, which begins transmission from next Monday at half past five. Naturally, it'll have guest performances from the likes of Sade, Grace Jones, Squeeze and Robert Wyatt. It is best known today as the programme that gave a break to Ian Hislop and Jonathan Ross, who worked on the show as a co-presenter, a researcher, respectively. Christ, Ian Hislop appealing to young people. What do you think?

In the interview section, David Durrell skulks about on the set of the Channel 4 show Switch to find out more about Respond, Paul Weller's recently new label. He begins with a sit-down with Weller in a nearby hotel, who tells him that he likes the idea of someone going into a record shop and automatically buying the latest Respond release, like people used to do with Motown and Stax. Still obsessed with the young idea, he says that he wants the music biz to get back to

bands and audience being the same age again and points out that he's younger than most of kajagoogoo i love that fact that's a great fact he's 24 at this time isn't he was so fucking young when he was having all his number ones with a jam it's just mind-boggling really yeah he also finds out that tracy young likes john mackinrow gary kemp and squirrels she isn't very political she's already argued with weller about what she should look like she worries about using him as a walking stick and she's only had three fan letters so far she is not the girl next door contends Durrell, although she's maybe the girl in the window opposite, or maybe the girl about town that you've heard of. And he spends five minutes with the questions,

who talk about being called puffs at school for buying sheet records and are enjoying having Uncle Paul for a boss. Response seemed pretty important at the time, didn't it, Simon? Yeah, I really bought into it. You know, I suppose I was looking around for a label to believe in after the kind of demise of Two-Tone. And it seemed like a similar idea, really, that you've got this one band, the Style Council,

who were in the kind of specials role of being at the centre of it, even though they weren't themselves on Respond, but, you know. And Weller being the kind of specials role of being at the centre of it, even though they weren't themselves on Respawn, but, you know. And Weller being the kind of Jerry Damers figure, the kind of Svengali behind it all. I was really into the idea of socialism, of, you know, 60s soul-influenced modern pop being used as a Trojan horse for left-wing political ideas. And there's obviously loads of that about in the 80s,

not just the Style Council, but people like the Cane Gang and Fine Young Cannibals and all that kind of stuff. And Respond just had so much promise at first. I really thought it was going to be a huge thing. But for some reason, and possibly it's just purely down to the quality of the bands, it never really took off. I really liked The Questions. I thought they were a great band and uh i i got the um i got the respond compilation album love the

reason yes you know how on style council records they always had these kind of slightly embarrassing now passages of of kind of beat prose on the back yes by the cappuccino kid who was, of course, Paolo Hewitt. Well, On Love, The Reason, it's actually written by Weller himself. Yes. And I've got the LP here. Can I read it? Please. All right.

This is Weller's little explanation for the label under the headline. Ours is to reason why. Big 16 and straight out of school to clock in at the DHSS and live the Teenerama myth on a street corner. Chewing nails, gum and getting bored or hostile. If only those in command could see. People need pride, capital letters, not party politics.

But alas, their vision is warped, their minds hopelessly out of touch and their lust is for power not body heat i'm glad i ain't 16 to be so young so beautiful and so strong and not to be heard is criminal give up bow down surrender never should you say people get uncomfortable and start wriggling apostrophe in their seats when you talk about pop music having a consciousness or ideals I can understand it really when I have to deal with the big boys

in various big boys record companies I'm subjected to words like markets product, units their own curious vernacular for records, yes, and people they may have a point you do have to sell records to carry on making them sick, isn't it?

But there you go. Business is a polite word for dipping your hands in shit. Shit. Or so I believe. It's all coming back to me now. If you believe in goodness, art, culture and life and are strong enough to have a smile and not a sneer, you must have old what's-his-name on your side right on.

Apart from the people's faces on this respond long play there are three new faces who have something to say and want to make music that's the reason why these cats make music the justification is purely subjective we personally love the reason keep the faith hope and charity paul weller p.s don't get my haircut from haircut sir in bulwark but i think that would have fired me up at the time any kind of you know missive from the mod father which i never called him i hate myself for even bringing that up but yeah i i was i was just i was a wellerist totally a wellerist wonderfully idealistic sort of document that and and you know that obviously all these a lot of artists who start labels they want them to be like motown

and what none of them have is the ruthlessness yeah that's that's the trouble that they are a bit idealistic you know they need that very gaudy ruthlessness of telling artists what to do and artists obeying them. This kind of idyllic idea of a kind of shared experience of eventually, you know, labels to work and to last. Because Stax didn't last as long as it possibly could have because it was slightly more ill-disciplined than Motown. For these things to last, you've just got to be a ruthless bastard, haven't you? Which I don't think well I had in him. Yeah. The quality control on this album

is not the greatest, to be honest. No. There's three tracks by The Questions, two by Tracy, one by Tracy and The Questions, two by A. Craze, who were a kind of very bright soul pop

female-fronted group. They wrote Give It Some Emotion, didn't they? They did write Give It Some Emotion, which I thought was a cracking single by Tracy. And Big Sound Authority, who ended up not being on Respond, but I really liked them. I thought Julie Hadwin was just a great vocalist and I was just surprised she didn't go on to have a proper kind of career.

And then there's these things, there's this guy called N.D. Moffat, who's sort of acoustic reggae in the vein of bob marley singing um peace love and harmony and that's pretty awful and there's one um the main tko fickle public speaking which is this kind of guy with an echo box um you know yeah i do it's vaughn to lose it is S. Yeah, sort of declaiming over this fairly shit electro backbeat. And I don't think the label was ready to go. And I think, well, I love the idea of it. And there's some good stuff on there.

But it sadly didn't live up to all that exciting prose on the record sleeve. Andrew Tyler is summoned to County Hall for an interview with the runner-up in last year's Most Wonderful Person in the NME Reader's Poll, Ken Livingstone. Oh, different times. He says that he agreed to the interview because he used to be a reader, gets into an argument over whether schools should be allowed to keep animals, claiming that when he was in a school group that kept amphibians, they would occasionally breed, which is a sign that they were happy in captivity. They bred in Auschwitz as well, count as Tyler.

Fucking hell. So basically someone makes a Holocaust comparison at Ken Livingstone. Yes. Tables turned a few years later, of course, more than once. Afterwards, he discovers that livingston worked for seven years as a vivisectionist at the chester beatty cancer research labs wow fucking hell that's a bit mental yes richard cook drops in on joan armor trading who enjoyed being back on top of the pops with her recent hit drop the pilot although she wouldn't like to do

it for every single and she wouldn't ever again lloyd bradley nips over to wembley to meet east west a multi-racial group who won a contest on the channel 4 show east and i to find the country's best indie pop group that's indie without an e and will be performing on the show tomorrow they tell him that they formed a local youth club got their start by funking up the theme tunes of assorted indian films and are currently talking to cbs and arista oh man eastern eye it does seem a bit mad now thinking back to the eight years how um asian people were given a program every week, you know, like, yeah,

more than one. Yeah. But kind of in the same slot as the program for, I don't know, deaf people and things like that. It's weird. I mean, I remember with Eastern eye and also with network East later on in the

eighties, my mom and dad sort of tuning in, not with excitement exactly, but just to see what it was like, you know, only to realize that 10 minutes in, it was the usual diet of what they thought Asian people wanted to hear about Bollywood, cooking, marriage,

was all we were going to get. This group East West, do you remember this group, Neil? I don't. I don't remember them at all. I shouldn't moan, you know, that East and I existed and BBC had Asian shows as well. It's better than, you know, that East and I existed and BBC had Asian shows as well. It's better than, you know, the sole Asian representation on telly being, I don't know, the Chinese detective and jewel in the crown or whatever.

I mean, it's weird that history though, because I mean, the BBC puts on programs for Asian immigrants in like the mid-60s. Naya Zindagi, Naya Jeevan. Yeah, yeah. When I was about five, I used to sing that all the time i thought it was the best theme tune on the teller i mean because i think my dad i remember my dad telling me that there was a show in the 60s which the translation of its title was was kind of make yourself at home and it was it was genuinely a mix of kind of language lessons in everyday English and popular music from kind of Bollywood films and stuff,

sort of aiming to help Asians cope with everyday life over here. Yeah. Which, you know, there was a lot of immigration at that point, you know, and such a show should have been watched by my mum and she maybe wouldn't have gone to Boots looking for a pair of shoes, you know. But, you know, Network East, I remember as well late 80s and all only all of the people who were on those shows they're still with us some of them krishnan gurumurthy and sanjeev kohli and people like that i just wish i'd harvested a bit of the the new asian cool in the 90s but never

mind it's like i never got to be a professional welshman yeah i see other people doing it and good luck to them you know some some very good friends of mine. But I just think, if only my accent was a little bit stronger. And Gavin Martin swings by the rock garden to watch and then talk to the next big thing, Roman Holiday. He finds a group who pack all the spontaneity and exuberance that a lot of us have been missing and draws comparisons to Eddie and the Hot Rods

when they first started, while lead singer Steve Lambert goes to great pains that he can't stand Glenn Miller and is more into the black, Dixie side of swing. Their hit... Oh, they were fucking awful. Their one hit, Don't Try To Stop It, it seemed like one of those songs

that the record company released about three or four four times i might be misremembering but they were just desperate for it to be a hit and you know finally it crept in but uh and then that was the end of them wasn't it but yeah yeah i remember um one more hit i think did they right yeah stand by oh right of course yeah um yeah the singer guy he's a good-looking fella, I remember, with very big 80s hair. Nice quiff. Yeah, but they were going for that sort of big band jive sound that seemed very London, very wag club, and just a bit wank, to be honest.

Single reviews. Well, in the chair this week is Charles Shaw Murray, and his single of the week, default according to the layout is cash money by prince charles and the city beat band yes this record does not lead off this column because it is incredible but simply because it is the best of the few that isn't mediocre says moray this record certainly doesn't mess about funk spelled f o n k and the band's too tight to mention do you know that track al yes really good um i really like prince charles and the city beat yeah partly because of the name when people say what's your favorite band name of all time

i often say prince charles and the city beat band I think just a great combination of words I quite like long names for a band anyway as long as they're not too comedic so I remember another name I used to like was The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus but that was a really good name but yeah just Prince Charles and the City Beat Band it's sort of so evocative

but yeah they're from Boston weren't they and it's in a kind of I guess it's a combination of Grandmaster Melly't they and it's in a kind of um i guess it's a combination of grandmaster meli mel and the furious five kind of early um gritty rap but also a bit of um electro funk a la zap and a bit of kind of african bambato and a bit of funkadelic and that kind of stuff going on in there this guy it was his actual real name prince charles or charles alexander yeah and then he went on to fucking this mega producer for notorious big and usher and mary j blige all kinds of people but their gimmick they had this um instrument called the lyric on which was an

electric wind instrument and that's all over a lot of their records i've got the album it's called stone killers that um that this track um cash've got the album, it's called Stone Killers, that this track Cash Money comes from. And again, it's one of these things that they never had a hit in the UK. They were just one of these names you would see around occasionally. You'd see them on the tube quite a bit, wouldn't you? Stuff like that.

And it would just make it all that more special to you that if you somehow managed to grab older on their records, you'd think, none of my mates listen to this, but I'm going to fucking learn to love it. I don't want to stick my neck out too far but i think this might just be a hit says murray of beat it by michael jackson this is a touchingly anti-macho song designed to set off the new slightly more macho jackson stance as revealed in recent videos and sleeves, further compounded

by big buffalo-eating power chords and a friske squibbling solo contributed by Eddie Van Halen. The chords are revolting, but the solo's quite nice. People with extreme guitar aversion can

pretend it's a synth. Talking of things Jacksonian, Murray gives grudging respect to Candy Girl by New Edition. In a bold move designed to give America its own musical youth capability strike force, New Edition have bubbled to the surface. A quintet of youth who evidently eat, sleep, drink and breathe old jackson five records they make a debut with a sound not a million miles away from abc and should if nothing else give the repulsive mini pops someone closer to their own age to imitate but it's a coat down for temptation A Coat Down for Temptation by Heaven 17. The inability of the British Electric Foundation to do anything right, apart from the first and third Heaven 17 singles,

is one of the most bewildering mysteries that a music-obsessed person with a ridiculous amount of time could get involved in studying. Those confident boardroom smiles must be congealing round the edges by now as yet another indifferent single plops into the arena. Since one presumes that fascist Gruthang and Penthouse and Pavement were not flukes, the only answer can be that Ware and Marsh are keeping the perfect single up their sleeves and waiting for the ideal time to release it that time is now gentlemen delay no further fucking out mate oh

my god I mean all the things that we said earlier on about journalistic subjectivity notwithstanding you know because I am a radical fundamentalist believer in critical subjectivity and that there is no objective truth. You've still got to look at that and think, what the fuck? How can anyone not like Temptation by Heaven 17? That just like baffles my brain. And it is the perfect Heaven 17 single.

It is exactly what he said. I mean, it's interesting with Charles Sean Murray because I remember him on that Bowie doc when his review of Low was read back to him. where he completely slagged that album off um and to be fair he was slightly he wasn't contrite as such but he just kind of admitted i was i don't know yeah i was being a bit of a twat that week but he's definitely got this badly wrong hasn't he thing with the csm is that his whole raison d'etre within the NME was, in his words, to barbecue some dinosaurs. And once you've painted yourself into that corner,

you've just got to keep doing it, I suppose. Yeah. There's not one but two singles by a flock of seagulls on the block this week. Their new release, Nightmares, and a re-release of their debut single, It's Not Me Talking, from their old label. Fans can be reassured that both singles sound very much alike

and also very much like the stuff that crept out in between. This pompous drone rock always induces in me a desire for a walk or else a deep, refreshing slumber. Something alarming is happening to Cliff Richard's face, says Murray in his review of True Love Ways. It remains undeniable that those neat little features are beginning to look a trifle sunken. Neither his voice or his taste appear to have changed, though,

which is why we find him strolling through a venerable Buddy Holly tune with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to accompany him. The result is a glutinous stodge. Murray proclaims the Mental Disorder EP by Disorder the worst punk record ever, states that Mark King sounds less like a pinball machine on overload than usual on the new Level 42 release out of sight out of mind and claims that sexual rapping a hip-hop take on the marvin gaye song by t-ski valet a former member

of the erotic disco brothers is risible in the extreme and about as erotic as a bowl of six week old rice pudding with four fag ends and a bit of old chewing gum on the top. The erotic disco brothers, come on. In the LP review section, Pride of Place goes to Attitude, the third LP by Rip, Rig and Panic, and Neil Spencer still isn't sure where they're going, but he's still enjoying the journey it's a more complete more defined more thoughtful and more satisfying affair than

either of its predecessors naina cherry sings with a deftness and commitment that shows up the effort of most of the would-be chanteuses for the clumsy travesties they are. Gabby Delgado is evidently the half of Deutsch-Americanisch Freundschaft that fancied himself as a sexpot, says Gavin Martin in his review of Delgado's solo LP Mistress, which leaves him distinctly unmoist. Like DAF, Mistress is sex between the lines, the sweat and the stains, not the good

bits, not the parts worth celebrating. Barney Hoskins rounds up five import LPs by Johnny Taylor, ZZ Hill, Tyrone Davis, Sonny Charles and Tony Troutman and claims that for male singers at least,

soul is finally stepping away from the wreckage of disco and has a future in the 80s. Here are five great black male voices who have broken free of corporate shackles and are pointing us away from the disco aftermath of Quincy Jones and Lionel Richer. And Cynthia Rose reckons that the kitchen tapes by the Raincoats is dead good. Tony D lavishes praise on Let The Tribe Increase by Yeovil-based anarcho-punks The Mob.

And Halfway Across The Rainbow by Liverpool duo Shiny 2 Shiny is a promising debut, according to Kev Mac. All of us were ordinary compared to Cynthia Rose. She always stood at the back of the line, a smile beneath her nose. In the gig guy, well, David could have seen Joan Arbitradian at Wembley Arena, Mudder the Golden Lion in Fulham,

Screwdriver at the 100 Club, The Old Sailor at the dominion theater the kids from fame at wembley arena dr john at the half moon in putney or nipped out to haze for the billy fury memorial concert featuring joe brann lynn paul alvin stardust helen Shapiro, Dave Berre and Mike Reid. But probably didn't. Taylor could have seen Spandau Ballet at Birmingham Odeon, Tears for Fears at the Odeon or the Kids from Fame at the NEC.

Oh dear. He well would have gone to Kids from Fame, I reckon. And out of those David ones, sorry, although Screwdriver would have, of course, enraged him, I would have... What a shame David didn't go and see that Billy Fury memorial concert. Yeah. Neil could have seen Spandau Ballet at the Coventry Apollo or Dean Friedman at Busters. Busters.

Choices, choices. Mind-blowing decisions. Sarah could have seen The Exploited at the Palm Cove Club in Bradford, A Flock of Seagulls at Sheffield City Hall, The Undertones at Hull Dingwalls, Sisters of Mercy at Leeds Warehouse, or The James Last Orchestra at Sheffield City Hall. Al could have seen Twisted Sister at Rock City,

Cilla Black at the Royal Concert Hall, or Forest at the Sutton in Ashfield Leisure Centre. And Simon could have seen Clanad at St David's Hall in Cardiff, Bucks Fizz at St David's Hall or Spandau Ballet at St David's Hall. Oh it's all going on isn't it Simon? In St David's Hall. You were camped outside all week, you was. Yeah. I think that venue had only opened in 82, actually. We weren't spoilt for choice for gig venues down there. But it's still open now. It's a really nice theatre.

Really good acoustics and everything. And yeah, I was the age to be going to gigs there. I had seen Dexys there the previous October. Good Lord. And the following March, I would go and see Whitesnake there and then at some unspecified time not long after Spear of Destiny and Shalamar

Oh you saw Shalamar? Yeah well I sort of did, it was the arse end of the first Shalamar so it was Howard Hewitt plus two ringers I've actually seen Howard Hewitt with Geoffrey Daniel and a fake Jodie Watley more recently and that was much better

back in the 80s to be fair so I couldn't really afford gig tickets very often but my dad had just got a job with CBC the local radio station so there were free tickets flying around occasionally so yeah, Whitesnake

on their slider indoor. By the way, we were thinking of metal things because I went to that gig with my mate Andrew, he of the Air Rifle. While we've been recording this, I've just had a message from him. This is the universe working. He just messaged me to say uh he's ordered a flexi disc of motorhead train kept a roll in which came free with smash hits because he remembers me having that flexi and i've i've reminded him about about the uh the assassination

of our toys and yeah he's he is confirming it and uh he's saying, I was still finding their bodies in the basement a few years later. Amazing. In the letters page. Well, there's been some right bollocks in the letters page this week. I can't be bothered to read out. But the general theme is, your writer doesn't like the music I like. Ah, an old theme. I see it's gotten to be that time again. Slag off a Steve Hillage album time, writes Roger of Argyle.

If he had listened to you lot, he would never have made an album after Fish Rising. And then where would we be, eh? Thank God Richard Cook, and no doubt all at NME, slammed Roger Waters' The Final Cut. I would have been so upset if any of you have actually liked it, says Miss Aussie Trier of Surrey. If I thought I had anything in common with any of you ageing posers pampering to the young, trendy readership, I'd commit suicide.

Isn't that Pink Floyd's The Final Cut? What the fuck's she going on about there? It's a Floyd album, The Final Cut. It's the one with Not Now John on it, and it's why my friend James Ward always refers to Pink Floyd as the Not Now John hitmakers. How come the jam managed to monopolise the hearts and ears of your readers for four years,

when they are clearly an artless bunch of talentless sods who never smile asks s hampshire of plymouth because the readership openly encouraged by your contributors identify so easily with their heroes yeah think about it, man. Food for thought, eh? And John Connolly of New Barnet says, in Jesus' day, people were crucified for preaching to the ignorant. These days, they seem to work for music papers. You should have put that into your play, Neil. Definitely, definitely.

All of these contributors revealing something that is still with us, isn't it? That, you know, I disagree with your music opinion, but I'm absolutely not angry about it. Yeah. Yeah. Who opened the letters that were sent to the music press? It would be whoever was editing the letters page that week. Right.

I used to just get, when I did backlash for Maker, yeah, you'd just get given a big black bin liner full of these things and that'd be your job unopened unopened yeah yeah so they could have had razor blades in them and all sorts oh potentially yeah sometimes like somebody else would have opened one maybe from a previous week and they wanted it to be included in the following week's pile in which case you'd be handed an open one already but yeah mainly yeah could have had anything in them what's the worst thing you ever got inside a letter sent to melody maker i got a death threat from c18

from combat 18 but what that was i mean that wasn't to the letters page that was to me fuck um and it was just you know we've seen you come and go blah blah yeah usual stuff so that was probably the worst, which I probably should have worried about more or told somebody about. But I didn't. I didn't want to cause a fuss. So I didn't.

Just chucked it. But, you know, it's to be expected, to be honest with you. If you weren't white and you sat your head above the parapet a little bit in a white space, if you like, which is basically what the music press was, you're probably going to get that.

Deli Fidelity, I remember telling me, he used to get similar letters whenever his name appeared in print. I'm not saying the NF or anybody was being vigilant, you know, and checking and therefore firing off these missives, but it was to be expected, to be honest with you, especially in that period.

Oh, I was expecting someone's knickers or something. Sorry, that's not a very amusing response to your question, but yeah, I did get that kind of thing. Cunts. 48 pages, 35p. I never knew there was so much in it. Yeah, NME's floundering around, isn't it? There's not a lot in this issue that's going to show up on top of the pops

now or in the weeks to come, don't you think? Well, see, NME's role at this time was... I mean, NME itself was floundering around. In some ways, it was the golden age of NME because as a sort of political voice, it was really important. But in terms of what music they were covering, it's interesting that there was a review of rip rig and panic in that because they are seen as being kind of totemic of this phase of enemy being really

distant from what was going on pop wise and going into quite esoteric territory yeah willfully essentially what happened was when smash hits came on the scene enemy had a choice to make um what you know would it try and fight smash hits on its own on sort of you know pop turf or or would it just all right say smash hits can have that you can have pop and we'll go off into the kind of uh indie fringes and that's what they did and um it completely kind of backfired and smash hits this is i i love this smash hits office was on carnaby street directly opposite nme but like half a floor above so that from the smash hits office they were literally looking down on enemy looking looking constantly into their office almost sort of taunting them and i was

very much a smash hits kid at this point my dad my dad got nme and I'd sort of pick it up and look at it at his house but it was all still a bit daunting and off-putting for me. God, the idea of thinking of the NME is your dad's pain. Yeah, yeah.

It's just interesting the news section. The stories you read out. New pop really hasn't won, has it? I mean, the stories about the dinosaurs. Bowie,

Jackson's, Crosby stills a nash in the news section you know not too much has actually been swept away by what's happened in 81 and 82 these people are still there but they'll meet the new pop halfway with weller with the style council and respond and all that because at least that's got some kind of political heft to it as far as they're concerned so what else was on telly this week well bbc one starts the day at 6 30 a.m with the still new breakfast time followed by the wambles jack and ore champion the wonder horse why don't you highland pony trail and the 1977 australian film blue fire Lady about a girl who forms a bond with a mardy horse and

becomes a show jumping champion Afternoons Afternoon regional news in your area and Pebble Mill at one it's Gran and then Stop Go and then Everybody's Doing It a collection of home movies from the 20s and 30s

presumably of stockbrokers doing the Charleston on a window ledge before throwing themselves off. At 20 past two, we're whipped over to Aintree for the first day of the Grand National Killer Horse Festival. Then it's regional news in your area,

play school, the new adventures of Mighty Mouse, a repeat of the first episode of Hyde Air again, John Craven's news round, and then Simon Groom spends a day with the household cavalry and gives Sefton, the horse that survived the Hyde Park bomb,

a sugar lump or something. Then it's the news, regional news in your area, nationwide, and they've just finished you know what.bc2 gets the party started at five past six with a two hour five minute blast of red hot open university action and then closes down for nearly three hours coming back hard with play school and then closes down for over four and a half hours until it picks up the racing

from ain'tree then it shuts down for another 45 minutes eventually returning with a documentary about the north westminster community school and the brothers lionheart tucker tries to sort alan out with a bird in episode five of the first series of Tucker's Lock, then the documentary series Just Another Day hangs about Waterloo Station, and they're currently 30 minutes into A Dream of Alice, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lewis Carroll. ITV begins with Daybreak, the TVAM news update with robert key then it's good morning britain then a close down from 9 15 to 9 30 probably a bit of jingly music and a picture of a transmitter on a hill somewhere then it's sesame street science international the computer

show database then a chance to meet great chief angaaga Tongalo II of Zaire in Lost Kingdoms. After film fun, it's gammon and spinach, get up and go, the Sullivans, news at one, regional news in your area, crown court, afternoon plus,

plays for pleasure, and a repeat of survival. After another repeat of Gammon and Spinach, it's a foghorn leghorn cartoon, and then First Post, Points of View for Kids, followed by Rowan's Report, a new series about children who are already far more successful than you. This week it's a 13-year-old model. Then Mac finds a new goalie in Murphy's mob

and Arnold gets stage fright in different strokes. After the news at 5.45, it's regional news in your area, crossroads and they're halfway through Michael Knight and his talking car who are hunting a chauffeur who is trying to sabotage a political summit in knight rider channel four on the other hand can't be asked to do anything until five to three when it runs the 1946 film two sisters from boston followed by tennis that counts where a coach takes some of his students to spain to prepare them for a career of losing to foreigners after countdown it's get smart and then a master class from dancer

hanny coles in masters of tap and they're currently halfway through channel 4 news oh chaps precious memories seeping through the ages just like wine. What's jumping out at you there? That show, Rowan's Report, I'd never heard of it. Maybe it wasn't shown in our ITV area where I'm from. So I looked into it, and it's just something where they interview assorted young people, teenagers who are doing well at something. Later on, they did Annabella Lewin from Bow Wow Wow. But I had a

look at the list of other people who are on there and uh there was there was a kid who uh was one of the youngest stock market investors and this is the the cold um hand of history here can you can you guess who maybe that was a teenager at the time jacob reese mogg oh imagine being introduced to that cunt that early i know and i imagine at the time it was probably done in a spirit of novelty of you know whenever they used to have the child who is now known as uh lauren harry's yeah talking about um antiques and it was this novelty oh look this this child who knows about grown-up stuff and probably the time it all seemed very instant oh look at this slightly nerdy 13 year old who's buying and selling stocks and shares but yeah little do we know that they're gonna um be very much part of the project to

rip up britain as we know it and turn us into a casino capitalist hellhole but come on man he was investing all his money off his paper round and that. Yeah, right. And pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Nothing to do with his fucking dad. The other thing that jumped out at me, I don't know if you guys were as much into it as I was, but Tucker's look, man. Tucker's look. Oh, gorgeous. Fucking

hell, I love that. I remember the anticipation for it. Just hearing that this series was going to happen. And also, I mean, crucially, hearing that characters from Grange Hill were going to be in it beyond Tucker yeah so for people who don't know it's Tucker Jenkins played by Todd Carty later of EastEnders of course Tucker Jenkins was kind of roguish um good lad from uh Grange Hill and uh it's just him and his mate Alan and and their adventures having left school and to me it sort of hit me in two ways. First of all, at the time, it just seemed so true

to the kind of life I imagined I was living, which was, you know, a life of broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs, you know, they just don't care. You know, just that kind of gritty urban thing. Everywhere you go, everything you see. Yeah, right. So, you know, basically running scared of skinheads. Yeah, the antagonists in Griggs.

It's Passmore and his mate Brains. Passmore in a trilby and Brains in his bad manners vest who are the antagonists in Tucker's luck. And there's a famous confrontation in a skate park in which a ghetto blaster gets smashed and Tucker's lip gets cut and it's a famous confrontation in a skate park in which a ghetto blaster gets smashed and Tucker's lip gets cut and it's all very dramatic. It just seemed like a sort of heightened version of the world in which I thought I was living

when really as bad as it got was drawing my own little tag on a park bench. But I did have to run away from skinheads, mind. When I used to sort of go off to Barry Island, the way to get there quickly was to cut through the cinder track through the steam locomotive graveyard and that's where the skinheads a la tucker's luck would be their sniffing glue and they didn't like me because i used to be a rude boy but i'd kind of turn my back on it a bit and they said so yeah yeah and i

just learned to run very fast in my in my paul weller slip-on shoes but yeah this episode of tucker's luck i looked it up this series one of episode five called beau derrick the episode description is that tommy believes tucker should have a party to help alan get his friend off of suzy and then the following week it's the morning after the party the house is a disaster and there's an unknown guest, can the boys clean the place up before Mrs Jenkins gets home? Hello French polishers

Yeah exactly, it's like that isn't it? It's like that advert that Yellow Pages had but I vividly remember this episode and I did go through a deep dive re-watch phase looking at Tucker's Luck on YouTube, it's all on YouTube a few years ago. I was going to

pitch an article to The Quietus of some massive deep dive into Tucker's Luck but never got around to it. But this episode of Tucker's Luck, one thing I remember about it the house party, the record they put on when people arrive, and it's a brilliant choice of record it's Love and Dancing by the League Unlimited

Orchestra. Oh! oh yeah which is uh it's the remix album of dare by the human league and it's just a brilliant record to put on at a party and i just remember thinking you know however uh grim and shit everything's meant to be at least they had that but yeah watching it again this is how it hit me sort of second time around watching watching Tucker's Luck now. It's such an amazing document of old Britain, of 1983 Britain, because even though Grange Hill was meant to be in the fictitious North London borough of Northam, most of Tucker's Luck is filmed kind of around Westbourne Park,

Labrador Grove, kind of West London. And it's an area of London that hadn't really been gentrified. A lot of it still hasn't really and it's just this world of kind of backlit plastic shop signs and everything's covered in a bit of kind of carbon monoxide grit and it's a world of

cafes with watered down ketchup and just you know steamed up windows and it's just even the way that the British Telecom phone booths look, and it's just an incredible document to have of that world, I think. The anticipation for it was enormous because, of course, you know, Alan and Benny and Tucker and all that, they'd left Grange Hill. Grange Hill used to do that thing where the kids left.

You know, it stopped doing that after a while. It wasn't like, please, sir. Yeah, yeah. No, but it stopped doing that. sir yeah yeah no but it stopped doing that it kept people on for too long after a while but yeah you know and and for any kid watching it it was simultaneously like a good sort of extension of grangeville but also slightly not scary as such but it told you you're gonna have to do this one day you're gonna be out of school you know you're gonna have to not be a grown-up necessarily, but find your way, as it were. But yeah, it was a massive thing, took his look.

It was the era of mass unemployment, particularly among the youth, and the programme was grappling with that, this idea of just these kids being basically thrown on the scrap heap and wondering what the fuck they're going to do and ending up just doing little jobs in some mate's auto repair shop and then getting sacked. Yeah, all of that, it just seems all very real and like quite chilling in a way that this was a you know being 15 years old myself this was only just around the corner for me as well yeah i mean you've seen going out haven't you i remember that that was like i was shown really late at night yeah yeah talking of the wheat a bix i can't believe i actually haven't dropped this yet

i went for a drink on my own one night in a pub in nottingham ended up at the bar chit-chatting to this bloke who claimed to be the illustrator for the weeter bix adverts wow and i was just pushing him for information and trying to catch him out on the color of brains as hawaiian shirt in that advert where they went all American and that. He said, oh, no, I wasn't involved in it by then. But at the end, the one thing that convinced me that he could have been the illustrator for the Weetabix is that just before he left, he picked up a full bottle of Bex

and smashed it into the face of the barman. Fucking hell. Who'd be getting on his tits all night. Ah, there you go. Yeah. Fucking hell. No, be getting on his tits all night. Ah, there you go. Yeah? Fucking hell. No, he legged it out because he knew what was good for him. Okay.

Okay. And on that note, pop craze youngsters, I do believe that the table's been laid for this episode of Top of the Pops. Oh, I'm rubbing my thighs in anticipation of this one. It's going to be a fucking corking episode, this. So, we'll leave it till tomorrow and I'll say thank you very much, Neil Kulkarni.

No worries, Al. God bless you, Simon Price. God bless you too. My name's Al Needham. Stay pop crazed. Chart music. Charmed. Charmed. you're not a wizard. And I say, I am. I've got a beard. Oh, yeah, he's right. He does have a beard, actually. In this show, I chat to writers and performers from the world of sketch and character comedy. And I sort of couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Like, I couldn't believe anything could be that good. That moment of self-hatred is your rehearsal. That's what you've been doing it your whole life. Find out what made them venture into it. Yeah, I mean, just getting that DVD and then binging through those was just some of the most profound comedy joy of my life. I'd spent my whole childhood being,

I'll be honest, a dick. Talk about their characters. And it just made me really want to, like, make her move with her pelvis, basically. Maybe meet some of their characters Because she's actually only got one leg And that's why she's been hopping I don't know what to say

She's quite terrifying That is correct And generally just shoot the breeze And more importantly Have a laugh It's all an act Alex I'm horrible I'm an horrible person

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

Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts.