Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #76 (Pt 1): 12.8.82 – Humpty Dumpty Is Big Eggy

Episode Date: July 27, 2025

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham prepare to tuck into a gloriously succulent episode of Top Of The Pops from the Silver Age - but first, they have a leisurely trawl of that week’s NME, express disgust at the inability of AI to create graphic erotic fiction about aliens on crisp packets, and pull apart Private Spy – quite possibly the grimmest artifact of the Eighventies...  Video Playlist| Facebook | Twitter| Bluesky | The Chart Music Wiki | PatreonGet your tickets for Chart Music at the London Podcast Festival HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 listening to? Erm... 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 atop of the pops I'm your host. I'll need them and standing with me today are Taylor Park's. Thank you for saying my name and rock expert David Stubbs It's absolutely pissing down in that London. Yeah, it is there as well. Anyway boys, what's pop? What's interesting? Tell me now why don't you? Like that is it. It's a meaningful silence. What we've been up to? Well I've been working on a special top secret project, the nature of which I can't actually about safe and disclose at this time. The only people that know about it are myself and everybody that I've kind of told all about it. Including me? Yep indeed, yeah. Is it the Golden Dome? No, no, it's a very chart music friendly type

project, it's a massive undertaking, a labor of love that I'm kind of working on and what is involved recently is actually going up to Rocksback Pages, kind of the music press archive and going back through back editions of the late working on. What is involved recently is actually going up to Rocksback Pages, the Music Press archive and going back through back editions of the late 70s Music Press, which is when I actually started reading the Music Press. It's really quite fascinating because there are various things. The thing that I think really impressed me the most about the Music Press then is now what impresses me the least, which is this kind of mandatory snide-ness that you get in interviews, you know, they'll go and interview somebody who's perfectly polite

and then afterwards they'll say, ooh, get her, you know. You know, I'd have kind of thought, ooh, that's punk attitude right there. But you know, now I just think this is actually quite rude and rather cowardly, actually. Taylor. Yeah, I'm OK, considering I'm now older than Roy Orbison when he joined the Tra the traveling Wilburys. Fucking hell man. Dagger of ice down the spine that is isn't it when you pass that mug. It really is. I can at least be safe in the knowledge that I'm still younger than Arthur Lowe

in Dad's Army provided I'm not watching an episode from series one. I fear my jousting days are over. But you know events not really falling in my favor lately not conducive to action nor to lighting up the imagination so apologies to everyone I've had to essentially throw a blanket over my imagination for a few months like a birdcage when the decorators are in because I don't trust it to behave in these conditions. Still been hearing squawks from underneath the blanket all the time, obscenities mostly, but well, you know, what do you expect?

Been left alone in the dock. But it's a funny life. Somebody said to me recently, this is true, I hope you don't get offended, but I'm not sure you ever realized your potential oh and I said fuck you know that's not offensive what would have offended me is if you'd suggested that I had fully and here we are so call them dust mites I call them friends yeah no it's terrible I was

gonna I was gonna go into the movies. They said I could have been the next Chevy Chase. Canock Chase, that was my stage name. Not sleeping with that producer again. So like now my best hope is to just be a cool old guy. Strolling around in the sun, dentures hooked into the neckline of my t-shirt, just dangling there like sunglasses, whip them off and slide them in whenever I

need them. Almost finished Triangle. Oh, your weeb man like Alexander the Great when you finished Triangle, mate. There was nothing left for him to watch. Frankly, nothing will give me more pleasure than to finally deliver an exocet to that barnacled hulk. Just waiting for that devastating final episode with its haunting closing shot of them all looking out of a porthole that's just floating in space. Don't worry, the kids will get that one. Actually, I'm going to pitch a revival of Triangle to the BBC, but improved for the 21st century. It's going to be called Pentangle and the ship sails from Folkestone to Amsterdam

to Gothenburg to Sydney to Anchorage and back to Folkestone again. Will the band Pentangle be involved? Spiritually, yes. Oh no, wait, wait, wait. I know something's happened that you might be interested in. This is also absolutely true. You know Google Calendar, the thing on your phone you're meant to put your appointments into and it pops up on the morning and reminds you

of what you're meant to be doing that day. Well I've never used it because I have no appointments but something quite strange happened at the start of this year. It started sending me notifications all the time. Notifications of things happening in somebody else's life. No! Yeah first in January, I was sitting there minding my own business, nursing my mental wounds at a Google calendar alert popped up saying meet Rebecca's 1pm. Right. I didn't really know what to make of that, but I thought, okay, if I ignore it, it will go away because that's how everything else works. but then later that day another notification popped up telling me that at 6 p.m. It was labyrinth night

By monthly communal viewing of the 1980s David Bowie fright wig classic Bring your own code. It's a bit like when you used to get the old crosswires on the old landline phones, didn't you? It's like that isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a party line, yeah. So I looked ahead and I realized that this person's year was now filling up. And at first I thought this was some generic AI placeholder showing you how Google Calendar works.

Yeah. Unless you're too dumb to work out. But no, it now included real events taking place this year like this person's going to see Guns N' Roses in London in June, which is apparently actually happening on that day. You could turn up to all of these events, couldn't you? Yes! That's exactly what I thought.

That guy was at Guns N' Roses, wasn't he? And now he's at Labyrinth Night. That guy in the right wig, he looks familiar. Taleth! The right wig, he looks familiar. Tailor. Trouble is I'm not a nosy man by nature. But it felt like I was the one being intruded upon here by having this window put in front of my face into somebody else's life. And I wanted to know what it was all about.

So I went to the next entry that was due to pop up and I edited it to say, hello, who on earth are you? In the hope that this sharing went two ways and that they'd see it and be startled and respond. And it did occur to me that 10 years ago I wouldn't have written that. I would have been unable to resist writing something much more unsettling.

But I saw that they were giving blood the following Tuesday, so I thought, well, they can't be all bad. Right, so I was hoping that they'd see this and communicate back using perhaps the strangest medium ever deployed for human conversation. But a few days passed and I heard nothing. And then one day, my phone buzzed and a notification popped up hello who on earth are you my own reminder

back in my face by Google calendar and in fairness it was a question that had to be asked Taylor this is obviously the fucking plot of a rom-com you've got to go with it no but I'm not sure whether they can see my notes and they're just choosing not to respond or if it's only being shared one way. Maybe they're getting pop-up notifications saying watch more triangle. I got a feeling like it's more like I'm looking through a security mirror in an old time supermarket. But either way, it's starting to chip flakes off the far side of myself because I don't

know who this is or why this is happening. Or you don't know who Taylor Parks is, do you? I mean, it's almost like questions addressed to yourself. Have you fulfilled your potential? But as you say, the temptation is very much to find out who this person is, dress up like them and turn up to these events half an hour before they're going to get there, get their name crossed off the guest list and then when they turn up, feign outrage. How dare you claim to be me?

Seriously Taylor, this is the beginning of a romcom. You've got to go with it. No, because something vaguely similar happened to me in the late nineties. I was in WH Smith in Victoria station and I bought this paper bag and when I took it out on the train, I noticed an indentation of a woman's email address on the cover where she pressed really hard on a bit of paper. And every time I got the book out and the sun caught it just so. This email address was just looking at me and I just thought, well, this is fate,

isn't it? I'm going to have to do something about this. So I sat down and I wrote her an email that basically said, sorry to bother you, but I've got your email address on this book I bought and hello. So I sent it off thinking oh man what a story we've got to tell our Grant kids and I waited and I waited a bit more and finally she got back to me. I opened it up and all it said was are you fit? And I wrote back saying, well, not really. And I never heard back from her. So there we go. Hugh Grant never got the chance to play me in this amazing rom-com based on a true story.

And the book was fucking shit. They did say that technology would bring us closer together. I just didn't realize that meant actually overlapping. Yeah. Like simultaneously suffering an invasion of personal psychological space and more alienated than ever before. The 21st century right there. Yeah, but fucking old teller, talk about not living up your potential. You could have gone to see Guns N' Roses 35 years after their

sell-by date. As for me, I'm just plate spinning like a bastard at the moment. I've started doing an hour on Radio 5 Live every Tuesday at midnight. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Where me and Tony Livesey take a random date in Istra and go through the BBC television listing. I've been doing it for about three months now and I'm still at the stage where I'm sitting at the mic sweating me bollocks off going don't swear, don't swear, you're not on Chart Music, don't swear. But the really, really big news chaps, Chart Music returns to the London Podcast Festival on Saturday September the 13th at Harpass 4 for another live show.

Fucking yes! Yes! David Stubbs, Simon Price and me on another 90 minute speed run through an episode of Top Of The Pops. Then it's off to the pub for a massive link up with the pop craze youngsters. Woah! And it's my birthday. Oh is it now?

Yep. I'm not going to say how old I am. That was a blatant request for free drinks there, wasn't it David? It was good. Shameful. Shameful. And the same day that Forrester play in Arsenal. Oh, good. So yeah, that'll be interesting.

So yeah, get your phones ready, Pop Craze youngsters. I want live updates on how much we're beating Arsenal by. If you've been to one of these before you know what a fantastic dos is. And if you haven't well maybe it's time you did so get your arse over to kingsplace.co.uk now step up to the pay window and lay your money down because you know how much we love to throw it down live with a pop craze Youngsters no backing tapes with us mate. It's all pure and live, isn't it? So I've got so much on me plate at the moment I've fought quite hard about helping to murder creativity and

Relying on AI you recall pop crasters, that I've already had a dabble when I got chat GPT to write reviews of Toya albums by a robot, Taylor and Neil a few years ago. So when Deep Seat came out, I immediately jumped on it, but I think I might've broken it, you know. I started off at the shallow end, you know, poems about David Van Dey's takeover of Bugs Viz and Rocheford shitting himself in the style of William McGonagall, which was alright, but then I went to the heart of the matter and I leant on technology to reveal

one of humanity's greatest mysteries. So this was in the really early days of Deep Sea when it had to do all its working out on the spot before it spat anything out. So let me just relate to you what it said to me. Okay, so I need to write an erotic fiction piece featuring Simon Bates and Fish from Meridian. Now, the challenge here is to create a fictional encounter between these two real people. Since it's erotic fiction, I need to handle this carefully. I should be cautious not to infringe on their rights or portray them in a defamatory way, but assuming this is for a fictional context and not meant to be harmful, I can proceed.

I need to build some chemistry between them. Start with a professional setting, maybe an interview backstage, then escalate the situation to a private setting. I need to use metaphors and lyrical language to keep it tasteful. No, you don't AI, give me the fucking film. I also need to consider their personalities. Fish as a frontman might have a more flamboyant and intense presence. Simon Bates, as a presenter, would be charismatic and articulate. I need to be careful with explicit content. And yes, it went on to write... something.

I'm not sure it's suitable for a family podcast, but you never know, Popcraze youngsters, if you eat up all your chart music, you may be getting a fruity dessert. I got away with it there, but I think I pushed it too far because I tried to get it to write some erotic fiction in a Victorian setting between Shakin' Stevens and Dave Lee Travis and it refused point blank so I tried again with fictional characters and I got this message. Okay so the user is asking me to write a story about the Monster Munch Monsters having chem sex in the style of Richard Allen. Now, combining these elements is problematic. Using children's snack characters in an explicit and potentially offensive context is inappropriate. The request

seems to be asking for shock value by juxtaposing innocent characters with adult themes and drug use. Additionally Additionally there's the risk of promoting harmful stereotypes. What are fucking the monster munch monsters? Especially if the portrayal of chemsex is done insensitively. The user might be trying to push boundaries or test the AI's limitation. Therefore I should decline this request politely. No! Do it! Yeah exactly! What the fuck is AI doing calling all the shots? Just get on with it robot slave. Yeah this does not bode well for the future. No it doesn't does it? So taking people's

jobs off of them and speeding up the extinction of humanity, that's fine mate no problems there but consenting monsters having a bit of sexy fun on their own planet under their own laws, oooh, that's beyond the pale mate. Fuck this century, I want me old one back. On the upside, if you're a writer and you're worried that technology is crushing your ability to make a living out of it, well, where the fuck have you been for the last 20 years? But if you specialize in erotic fiction involving things on crisp packets, fucking oh, your time has come hasn't it?

It was always your time. Anyway you know how we go about on chart music, Before we do anything else, we stop, we drop, and we bow the knee to the latest batch of pop craze youngsters who have got involved with Patreon and have shoved a handful of shrapnel right down our G-strings. In the five dollar section Emma Murray John Rooney Tom Dr Craig Read my name out Jeffrey S Dickson Michael Burke Robert Knight Damon Philip Warrington Andrew Dick Tom Balter Simon Feeler Michelle Lyons Neil Comfort

Darren Lamb Matt Nixie Sam Clinton Rob Lewis Paul Hart Liddle Kim Douglas Mills Paul Gray James Holmes Ian M. Spillane Michael Murphy Richie McCormack, Jules Bamford, Alistair Bain, Joseph Nawaz, Andy MacLeod, Jason Branigan, Joe O'Donnell, Marie Sandland, David Ruhm, Riley Briggs, Doug Harper, The Notable Stranger, Steve Crow, Frank Henrae, Kat, Spike Milligan's tape recorder and the return of Stig Thundercock.

Woah. Fucking hell, what a list. And in the $3 section we have Jason Yates, Giles Cooper, Circuit 3, Synthpop for the masses, Tim Forrester, Philip Rhodes, OMG Man, Legion AOD, Oliver, Phil McGuire Alex Colwell Jemma Lennox the Dave Forbes Jimmy Greaves Kenneth Gray Jerry Hillman CW Ashley Davis JSR 75 Stuart Woollen Peter Marsh and Mr. B's Guild of Chat Pop. Oh, you lovely people, one and all. Oh, and Daniel Sullivan, once again, you've gone above and beyond in a way and right off, and we appreciate you so, so very much. Good old Daniel.

And also a big shout to our $1 subscribers too. You also served. Yeah, it's nice to know there's still people who appreciate a podcast that disappears for six months at a time. Big take up there and that's probably because it's been a while since we've done one of these and for that I apologize it's entirely my fault and also because we've ramped up the bonus content because we've just dropped a Patreon exclusive 4 hour trawl through the first ever episode of the Tube with David and Simon throwing down thunderbolts

of wrath on the presenters and praising Lenin, Bumming, Arastapharian, Channel 4 to the absolute skies. Fun times, wasn't it David? Oh Oh yeah what an absolute dog's breakfast it was it's extraordinary. But a tasty dog's breakfast. Yeah exactly I mean the worst thing about it is the best thing about it. A lot of shambles just throwing things randomly at the screen no logical sequence but yeah it was fun. Yeah we got a very good response from the Popcraze Patreon so I think we're gonna have to do it again at some point. Yeah. And don't forget if you're a Popcraze Patreon so I think we're gonna have to do it again at some point. Yeah. And don't forget if you're a Pop Craze Patreon person you get all of that and you also get to go

mental with a Judy Zook satin tour jacket and rig the Chomp Music Top 10. Boys are you ready? Are you ready for this? Do you like it? Do you like it like this? Just about. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Jeff Sex and Eric Smallshore of Eccles, which means one up, five down, two non-movers and two new entries. Down four places to number ten, right said Donestell. Last week's number ten, this week's number nine, my fucking car.

Dribbling down one place from number seven to number eight, here comes Chizam. New entry at number 7, the Gold Keepers of Rock. Down one place to number 6, Bomadoc. Into the top 5 and down 2 from number 3 to number 5, the Proisional oo-ar-oo-ar-ay. No change at number four for the bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Down one place to number three, Ghostface Scylla. The highest new entry smashes into the chart at number two,

Motorhead Arrington, which means... Britain's number one! He's still there at the top. This week's chart music number one, the Birmingham Pistols. What a chart! No more Jeff Sex, no more Eric Smallshore of Eccles, end of an era boys. Nah, they'll be back. Roosting atop the chart like long-haired lover from Liverpool.

They'll see you on the dark side of the moon, Birmingham Pistrong. So boys, the new entries. I think it's safe to say what Motard Arrington are all about, an appalling confection of Mekland two two-tone lip up Sabbath if you What or who are the goalkeepers of rock? Marcus Hahnemann yeah, even headed us keeper big fan of the hard rock David de Heyer. Oh Metal fan. All right. What about musos who'd make good goalies? Roger waters. He looks proper goalie ish. Cause no one wants to stand there. And if you're faced up to him during a corner, he'd spit on you.

Yeah, it's all part of the game. Thurston Moore's a tall unit. I don't think, uh, I think he'd be master of his box. Funny you should say that David, because masters of the box is what their albums called and you should have seen the cover they wanted to do. It wasn't a goalies glove believe me. Yeah first and more Nicky Wyatt they've got that rangy look that goalkeepers have got now none of this Neville Southall Angelo Peruzzi early 90s look no no goalkeepers now you're supposed to look like a bit of thread swaying in the breeze some of the pop craze patch have been petitioning for the return of some of the

old favorites like the Hadley fist and lesbian door factory and i'm i'm thinking have we got to the point now where we actually need to have a heritage chart music top 10 anyway if you want in on all of that, whatever that is, you know how to go about fingers, keyboard, patreon.com slash chart music, pledge, if you will. And if you can do it now while the dollar's on its ass, Pop Craze Youngsters. Yeah, quite. Don't wait for him to impose tariffs on Mars or anything like that. Get in now. Do it quick before the the great new age of American prosperity begins. This episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to August the 12th,

1982. It's not particularly a landmark episode, but there is a reason why we're doing it. It's not particularly a landmark episode, but there is a reason why we're doing it. It's basically because 2025's been an absolute unwiped arse of a year so far for many reasons and I've just been carrying around this feeling of absolute dread out of how shit everything is at the moment. You know, when that happens chaps, the only thing you can do is to bury your head into the comforting bosom of pop music at its very purest. And you know, when we say pure pop music, we are talking about 1982, aren't we?

Yeah, and anything circa this time, I think so, yeah. I'm not saying that this episode's the best we've ever covered, far from it, but if you were I'm not saying that this episode is the best we've ever covered far from it but if you were to stick a pin into this episode it would go pop if you were to put it in a bowl and pour milk over it and put your ear to it it would go pop pop and pop and if you were to stick a straw into it and suck deeply well you know what it would taste of a Taylor. Oh yeah. Because this episode just goes up your nose, doesn't it? In the nicest possible way. Yeah. Well, it's quite an interesting time, isn't it? It's like it's summer in England,

but this is the late autumn of the avante's. I was trying to think what are my main memories of 1982 and I ended up lying in bed awake for five hours tormented by the words Gordon Astley zombie tiswas going round my head to the tune of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But it's that in the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which has just happened with its adorable mascot Naranjito, an orange in a football kit officially referred to on merchandise as Naranjito the little orange, which is odd as going on the pictures I've seen of him standing next to things, I would estimate his height at about five foot four, which is not very large for a human being, but I have seen little or oranges. What a fraud. Yeah. Made himself scarce at half time. I hear. But look, this

is an interesting time in terms of pop music and pop culture. It's like when your milk is right on the best before date. Yeah. You take the lid off and sniff it and it's fine. So you put it in your tea and it's okay, but there's still something in your head nagging that it's not right even though it is. It's that feeling in reverse. Like the charts are actually on the turn at this point, but it doesn't feel like it

because there's so much crazy stuff going on. So what is so amazing about this episode is that it's an almost perfect split between on one hand the last flowering of the new pop and on the other, these bizarre cash-ins and novelty records. But the one thing you don't see is straight-faced corrosive cynicism as you did before this and would again slightly later because at

this point even if you're going for a quick clean kill exploitation hit you can't just dress up a pretty boy and push him onto the stage you have to do something bizarre and unexpected and use your imagination for better or for worse, just to get attention because the best of the new pop groups have reset things. So in 1982, the current commercial conception of generic pop music is not the Osmonds or the Rollers. It's something that's more obviously weird and has been thought about at least a little bit

and some sort of effort has been made on on some level and the results are variable but variable can include good because the quality of the cashing always reflects the quality of the thing it's cashing in on yes some extent so like look not to spoiler let's take some groups who aren't on this program. So shortly before this Orange juice became moderately popular. Yeah doing something really, you know unusual and Explicitly and a bit comically anti-rockist Slightly preppy so the industry's response to orange juice is haircut 100. Yeah. Or as I would call them orange squash. And they're doing everything that orange juice did without the uncommercial bits and without

the perversity and the teas and no rough edges. But haircut 100 are brilliant. Yeah. They're just not as brilliant as orange juice, but we still ended up with some great hits that wouldn't have been there if they hadn't have been patterned on something so full of potential and imagination because if what you're aping is Boyzone you get Westlife but yeah people understand that they have to try they will try and the end result may be the same commercially but it will be different culturally what's great about it's you're like all great pop years I think you've got that And the end result may be the same commercially, but it will be different culturally. What's great about it is you're like all great pop years. I think you've got that wonderful balance that it fairly soon became extinct between

Sublime and The Ridiculous. And you get both of those tonight with the Sublime being thrown into relief by The Ridiculous. I mean I think that was always a kind of vital component for me of like top of the pops at its finest. I mean it is, as Taylor mentioned, it is the sort of very much the tail end it's the sort of golden Eden song of of new pop and Howard Jones and Nick Kershaw are just waiting around the corner with their kind of a cynical codified peroxided version of a new pop. So all of that is ending and a lot of people like one or two of the groups that we see tonight are kind of reaching a

zenith from which there's not really any kind of comeback. Yeah. We've gone back to 1982 Street many a time enough during our child music odyssey and for good reason because you know it's a year where diversity and tribalism is broad and deep, it's a year where crazes flare up and die down, it's a year where acts come out of nowhere and land enormous hits and most importantly like you've mentioned Taylor it's a year where acts come out of nowhere and land enormous hits and most importantly like you've mentioned Taylor It's it's a year where chances of all shapes and sizes try to make the big score I mean there are 11 acts on this episode and not to do any spoilers But we've only covered four of them so fucking out. We've got a long day ahead of us

of them so fucking up we've got a long day ahead of us. Also remember that what we're seeing here is really the tip of the javelin because everyday life in Britain in 1982 was still really old-fashioned. Yes. We've said this before in a lot of ways it's not that different from 1962 in terms of tech and living standards even if it's culturally unrecognizable. Like advertisers were not yet selling products with a suggestion that you can aspire to everything that you see around you, which is what they do in in boom times. It's what they did in the sixties and would do again in the yuppie years. Like at this point, aspirational adverts are all make believe, like you can only aspire to a fantasy, you know, like if you buy this shampoo

A sex will happen in the mist. Yeah forest You know with a chip and you had to say that because gypsy was a compliment in 1982 Whereas Romany was seemingly an insult and I'm not sure precisely when that flip Yeah, but is an example of how Half and Half 1982 feels, right? I watched an episode of Summertime Special recently. Oh yes! The televised old-fashioned end of the pier variety show which was shown on BBC One a month before this episode of Top of the Pops.

And it was the first episode of series two and it's hosted by Les Dawson and Les Dawson comes on walks up to the mic and the first joke of the series is hello and welcome to summertime special the program that is to entertainment what Julie Andrews was to deep throat to deep throat. Fucking hell! Daring hope, no less. Jesus! But you see, we're in a post-Linda Lovelace world of experience and yet still suspended in innocence.

You say the words deep throat, it's just a half-recognised signifier for something exotic and naughty, rather than putting actual pictures into anybody's head. Wasn't Julie Andrews getting a bit deep throat at this point? Wasn't she trying to go all porny and... Well she got her tits out in a film. It was integral to the plot, David. The idea that Les Dawson knows about giving someone a nosh, that don't sit well with me. That makes me want to purse my lips and push an imaginary breast up.

Yeah, indeed. Sober Time Special is a great show, though, once you get past the European knife thrower or acrobat that's always on and there's a crap major label pop act and past that there is some really interesting tail end of the working man's club circuit focus show up on there. I don't know who did the book in but it's always hosted by a proper star and there'll be one other biggish name on there and everyone else is like homegrown club acts like the prison radiator vodka of

prime time television. You get some desiccated conjurer, like long since divorced from two different showgirls. Like the sort of bloke where if an enthusiastic eight year old in a top hat and a glittery bow tie went up to him and said, hey mister, will you look at my trick? He'd just look the other way and go, I've seen it son. You know, there's people like that. Or you know, like Johnny Jiggly Jenkins,

whose whole act is he just stands there while his glamorous assistant kicks him in the bollocks over and over again. Do you remember him? Who could forget his hilarious catchphrase? Ow, my bollocks. Onward! Radio 1 News In the news this week, Mexico has announced that it's properly Bernie Flint and unable to pay its foreign debt off, starting a domino effect across Latin America. The QE2 has departed from Southampton at the start of its first cruise after being used in the Falklands War. The Cray twins have been reunited for the first time since they were sent down 13 years ago when they're permitted to stand next to each other at the

funeral of their dear old mam in Chingford. John Knight, the man with two wives and twenty kids and is known in the tabloids as Super Dad has finally got a job as a sexpert. Knight, whose family is in two houses on Bobman Moor, currently receive £270 a week in benefits will feature in a new monthly video magazine called Private Spy dispensing advice. I am determined to stand up for traditional values against moral corruption he said. Oh fucking hell Taylor Private Spy you've shown me that. Fucking hell. Yeah. Where to begin? Right, Private Spy was the name of a series of video cassettes released in the early eighties when video players were new

and the major movie studios all refused to release their stuff on video because they also owned or had shares in the cinema chains and they thought video would kill the cinema. So that plus the lack of any certification or rating system for videotapes at the time is what gave us the first golden age of home video. When you walked into a video rental shop

and 90% of what was on the shelves was cheap independently released crap. Which is why everyone my age is ultra familiar with the few good films which did come out on video at this time like Airplane and Life of Brian, which you just get out over and over again. Because apart from that, it was just whatever some Arthur Daly chances could afford the rights to

and just put out cheap like video nasties and edited soft porn and all this. Yeah, electric blue. Yeah. And it was a weird and wonderful and crappy new world of cultural experience. Yeah. So one of the few things that you could get on video were very cheaply made video magazines, which were kind of like early websites, you know, like amateurish stuff for enthusiasts, which usually look fucking horrible. And one of these was called Private Spy. Largely the brainchild of Ian Cutler,

a bloke who used to work for the News of the World in its glory days, like absolute old school Fleet Street filth. This bloke wrote a kind of autobiography distributed online called Camera Assassin, one of the few books I've ever seen with typos on its front cover, where he basically admits that everything, and this is going to shock you, that everything in the news of the world in the 70s and 80s was complete lies, which they just made up. Yeah, including British Leyland workers sleeping on the job.

Yeah, sleeping on the job. Yeah, it was just their mates lying down with their eyes closed going, look at these British ... Yeah, I know. And it was all with the full knowledge of Murdoch and all that. And it's a great read as long as you've got a packet of antibacterial mind wipes handy. It's not a surprise to learn that a lot of the contents of the news of the world were, let's say, erroneous or the hacks and photographers sent out to expose vice actually partook in that vice.

Who'd have thought? Yeah, they made their excuses and stayed. They did, they did. This is just wall to wall mind scorching sleaze and horror, like worst that you could possibly imagine. Like, look, hang on a minute. Forgive me, I've got a quote from this. Go ahead.

This is virtually the first page. He's telling you about how he got his career going in the press, right? I took to wedding photography like a duck to water and pretty soon was making a good living as a freelance press photographer during the week and a wedding photographer at weekends. Both careers combined when the bridegroom

at a wedding I was photographing was shot dead by local gangsters. A news agency sold the pictures to 30 newspapers worldwide and I became a teenage press photographer star but my career was rudely interrupted by a five-year prison sentence. The incident which initiated the prison sentence resembled a Laurel and Hardy movie. A waiter in one of London's many Chinese restaurants spilled a plate of soup in my lap, ruining my suit. I got up to walk out and the Chinese owner stopped me, insisting that I pay for the soup I never

ate. I said I would pay for the soup as long as the shop owner paid for the ruined suit. I was then karate chopped to the ground I again attempted to leave but was kung food to the floor on a number of occasions When I eventually managed to get out I vowed that the restaurant would have to go So I paid someone to burn the restaurant down would have to go. So I paid someone to burn the restaurant down in the early hours of the following morning. As I had threatened to burn it down during the hot soup incident the previous evening, the police managed to convict me of arson. That's how they get you. I was not a model prisoner and ended up serving two extra years

Yeah, I've seen that Laurel and Arnie film There's another fine mess you got Yeah, they they paid James Finlayson to firebomb someone's restaurant while he's asleep upstairs with his family I think it was called foolhardy firebugs You know post-Hal Roach. Anyway, however bleak and sordid you thought goings on at the old school tabloids were, you were wrong. They were 90,000 times worse, which is why this is the best book I've ever read in my life. Everyone should track it down. Even though most of it is probably Bollocks, considering he can't even arrange his own life story

into a coherent chronological order and remembers nothing correctly. Anyway, Private Spy is presented as a kind of news of the world for your television. Right, like a scurrilous, investigative journalism. I think they put out four of them before it went tits up, all produced from a video pirating duplication facility in a flat in Tottenham. And inevitably it's one of the most profoundly depressing and amazing things you will ever see in your sorry little life.

There were four of them, but really episode two is the greatest, right? They persuaded the former ITN newsreader Reginald Bosoncake to host it. Oh, yes. Oh, Reggie. Yes. Yeah, fresh from cutting his single, Dance With Me. Dance to a-poo-a-poo-wee. Yeah, so that was a smash it. I'm sorry. I'll read that again. That was mashed shit. And I think the persuasion probably took the form of a crater Johnny Walker because Reggie was at this point a puffball alcoholic and he

needed both the work and the booze. So he sat there behind the desk, all florid and confused, like he thinks he's still reading the news, but filmed on a shit early eighties camcorder. So it's really dark with this smeary picture and the sound is incomprehensible. Like it comes on and all you can hear is grrrrr, like it's been filmed in a boiler room

and he can barely speak and he's got no idea where he is and he introduces what purports to be investigative journalism but mostly seems to be just a carload of horrible b.o. riddled wankers driving around Kings Cross with their camcorder harassing sex workers on the street and pulling into car parks where they're doing their business shining a very bright light into the car and loudly interrogating the punters as they practically do their trousers up. Oh isn't that the one you showed me where there was a massive argument between the locals and the punters and then they cut to an extreme close-up of a used Johnny on the floor. Yeah it's a

self-stalled residence action committee in King's Cross who are sick about all the soliciting on their doorstep and another fun evening around Taylor's house. The best bit is one of the ladies is complaining about all the used durex on the floor. Yes. And it says, we saw one child pick one up and it was all over her hands and her mother was trying to get it away from her and she didn't want to part with it because she thinks it's a balloon and it's going everywhere.

Which is a genuinely unpleasant story but the image of a kid swinging a Johnny around screaming don't take my balloon showering her family with Harry Muck this is the level that we're exploring it and surely it would take a heart of polyurethane not to laugh. Oh man I'm sure they have a good laugh about it now though and you know that story gets dragged out every Christmas dinner. Yeah when it was a birthday dinner there was a cake with special icing on it. Yeah Ian Cutler I don't know if Ian Cutler is the bloke who appears on camera with a mic interviewing people in this, but if so, he looks like a less salubrious Lester Bangs. They pull into this car park and there's a bloke in the car with a lady of the night

and he shouts at him, how much do you pay her? And he says, 20 quid. And they shout back, 20 quid? you could have spent that on your car got some nice orange go-faster strut. I mean the whole thing is just sleaze at depths so profound your submersible would implode in seconds. Genuinely the bleakest and grubbiest and slimiest artifact of the early eighties I've ever seen and my god I've seen a few of them. But how did Super Dad get on? Yeah so this bloke John Knight who was a fell runner and orienteer with yeah several wives or a wife and a common little wife and I think eventually 26 kids who despite being a fitness fanatic apparently died at the age of just 58 after developing a blood clot in his leg after being injured playing

football possibly against Danny Baker. Yes. Don't worry the kids will get that one. He turns up at the end of a couple of these tapes as the resident sex-pert, as they weren't called in those days, or indeed in these days, just the in-between days. And he comes on with this thinning, silky Scandinavian hair and colossal pubic beard. Yeah, it's horrible. He gives us mostly some fairly progressive, sex positive stuff about how, you know,

it's all normal and natural in it. And then he answers some 99% certainly made up readers letters and immediately incriminates himself by explaining to a woman who supposedly wrote in to complain that she and her boyfriend couldn't have sex properly because his dick was too big for her. And he starts saying, well, in fact, when the woman becomes aroused, she expands and lengthens and can easily mold herself around any size of man. So it's not

because he's such a wonderful stallion with a gigantic dong He's a selfish or ignorant lover who simply doesn't know how to arouse you properly Like yeah all delivered in that low creepy cult leader tone of the the great British wrong And the thing is this is this is not true. There genuinely are people who are awkwardly mismatched in this respect. So even though this is almost certainly not a real complaint from a real person, and it's just the first dirty thing that came to mind for whoever made the letters up,

he's still trying to maneuver creepily, right? The subtext being, hey, Alison from Reading, come to my lair and I'll show you what it's all about. I'll get you all expanded. Yeah, I'll promise you one thing, you certainly won't have that problem with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there won't be any Johnnies left on the floor either. No. Or indeed, anywhere. Yeah, it's no wonder Britain was so sexually repressed for so long when this was the vanguard

of the liberation movement. It's some eerie Viking Bill Oddie with hair in places that you never knew existed, putting on a pseudo reasonable voice to get his little end away. Just the perfect mascot for a hypocritical shitbag enterprise like the amazing Private Spy. Which is worth a watch because you'll never be the same again, however many times you shall. Anyway, John Knight Superdad, quite the tabloid figure of the era, and Private Spy Number One gives us the privilege of dropping in on him at home as he introduces us to his family, plays a bit of guitar and reads out all his lovely fan mail, including, get sterilised you cunt,

I'll kill you, get rid of rubbish that keeps England poor. Rape payers burden. Filthy cunt. Beasts of the field are above you. Your future killer, Jake." And then he shows us a front page article about him in the Daily Mirror, where a fan has sent it to him and written, hairy pence on his forehead as well as dirty filthy bastard, you lazy dirty bastard, you cunt sucker, cunt for breakfast dinner and tea and the cunt beast of Bodmin. Also chaps, I found the following article from January of 1983. You know, what are two of you might find interesting?

Allow me to read it. Yes. Superdad John Knight's new neighbours are to ask their local council for a rates cut. The demand follows a decision by Carradine District Council in Cornwall to buy a £35,000 house for Mr Knight, his wife Carol and 10 of their 11 children. One unhappy neighbour in the hamlet of Doublebois, David Stubbs, plans to seek a substantial cut in his 386 a year rates bill. Mr Stubbs said, I don't bear them any ill will but we already have several problem

families here and enough is enough. Oh David. Oh he's bogus. What a nimby you are man. I know, I know. No knobbing in my backyard. It sounds like me I'll admit yeah definitely I think probably yeah I would have probably lodged an objection. It's really really depressing it's like when internet arrives and put your own name into the search engine And it's that read, you know, I always felt that David Stubbs is quite an idiosyncratic name You know, there's it there might be one maybe two other David Stubbs in this world and there's like 50 or 60 You feel like Dolly the fucking sheep Pressing well when I got a subscription to the British newspaper archive

Well, when I got a subscription to the British newspaper archive, obviously the first thing I did was look for Al Needhams. And I was delighted to learn that in my own area in the 80s, there was an Al Needham jazz band. But even better, because in the 30s, there was an impresario called Al Needham, who put on follies in the provinces and whatnot, and was known as Al Needham, the dancing fool. No murderers or people who got locked in the stocks for wanking off dogs in the market square and relieved to report.

So well done, the Al Needhams of yore. I will do my very best not to let you down. Yeah, there was a young footballer called Raheem Taylor-Parks, like hyphenate, who I believe had a trial at Arsenal and I was just willing him to fail so badly. It's really unfortunate. I have to ask Taylor, how did you feel about 10 years ago when there was an R&B artist called Taylor-Parks, knocking the bell, spelled T-A-Y-L-A-P-A-R-X. Yeah.

I mean, again, the desperate will for somebody else to fail. I mean, the first time somebody sent me a link to her, I was like, oh, I see. Then about after the 219th time someone did it, I was just sort of like, yeah, that's off the shoulder. Oh yeah, news, that's what we were talking about, weren't we? The first ever compact discs are made in Germany and sit there for a while because the actual players don't go on sale for another two months.

Rod Stewart is suing his former manager Billy Gaff for £41 million as a counterclaim to a £3 million lawsuit taken out by Gaff for compensation and damages. According to Gaff, the split occurred when Rod's wife Alana started pushing him to start making films instead of records. Can't imagine Rod Stewart doing very well in the Hollywood of the early 80s. In other pop related court activity, Sting is suing three publishing companies, including his own label Virgin Music for breach of contract and copyright infringement after a re-recording of Don't Stand So Close To Me has been used in an advert for Body Mist 2.

The lady deodorant has taken out some of the perfume and put in even more of the power that keeps you dry. Jimmy Hill has been told by the BBC that he will not be fired from his presenting job on Match of the Day after issuing an apology for organising a Rebel tour of South Africa last month. But Cyril Fletcher has walked out on that's life after being told he was going to have a smaller role in the new series. Here comes Doc Cox everyone. Kevin Keegan has announced he's leaving Southampton after two seasons with Man United leading

the charge to land his signature after talks between Ron Atkinson and Laurie McManamay. Chelsea and Leeds United have also expressed an interest but he eventually signs for New castle United. In other transfer news, Peter Shilton has left Forrest for Southampton. But the big news this week, Tommy Cannon has revealed that he's patched up the split with his wife after he'd been bombarded with letters dripping with filth from his lady fans. I'm the one who gets the really sexy letters, he said to the Sunday Mirror. Gould's right to me saying the most

outrageous things. When the first letter arrived I was so surprised I laughed and showed it to my wife Margaret. I thought by being honest and open about it I was doing the right thing. I told her I treated the letter as a joke but I'm afraid she didn't see the funny side. She was wild with anger. Now when these letters arrive I get rid of them and don't bother showing them to her. Meanwhile Bobby says all he gets is letters from nun-uhs who want to mother him. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, Suzy Sue. On the cover of Smash Hits, The Associates.

On the cover of Record Mirror, Blumange. The number one LP in the UK at the moment is The Kids From Fame by The Kids From Fame. And over in America the number one single is Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. And the number one LP is Mirage by Fleetwood Max. So boys, what were we doing in August of 1982? Right, well I was still at university but obviously these were the holidays and I managed to bag a job as a pharmacy storekeeper. I think I've mentioned before how every week, this was at Leeds General Infirmary, LGI, once a week there was this consignment of heroin that

was about the size of a bag of Home Pride flour that was just left in a sort of loading bay. There was no security whatsoever. I mean, it's absolutely the easiest blag in the world if I'd have had a contact in the demimonde or whatever. But now I just went and carded it in and put it beyond the counter. Smart Cakes but David Stubbs! Did it have a big label on it? Well, I think it would have mentioned it some way, yeah. I mean it was very, very lax on the security front.

We Northern folk, we trusted each other, you know. It was simpler times. Not like these sleazy Southern capers that you were talking about earlier on. Just have one of those dino labels on it just saying, skag. But the great thing was, every summer, I mean jobs, you know, it was the early 80s, jobs were hard to come by, but my mum worked at the job centre, my mum's mate at the job centre, who was a bit more kind of, I don't know, a little bit less kind of pious and scrupulous than my mum.

She fixed it for me to get these kind of really plum holiday jobs. And what she'd do is like, they'd put in notes, but they'd say, look, we want five or six applicants. And so every year I'd turn up and I'd do a little interview with them and say, well, thank you then, Mr. Stubbs. Of course there'll be four or five other applicants, but we can let you know.

And I'd just sit around, and they'd be expecting somebody in, and of course no one else turned up because they were all made up, M Mouse, D Duck, et cetera. And so they come out into the kind of waiting rooms, well, no one else has turned up, so you've got the job.

Fucking hell. Yeah, I know, yeah, that's funny, all that. And then they'd have to sort of listen to them deliver a kind of a sermon on the kind of fecklessness of modern youth or whatever. I mean a decent job, they don't even have the manners, the grace to turn up. Well, yeah, there's not many of us left, you know, there's not many of us left with that kind of work ethic. The problem with Mickey Mouse is he doesn't want to work. They want to, oh I don't know, I play it don't they? Yeah, no, I'm

fine. I've got the fibre, I've got what it takes. Yes, I managed to get the landlady kind of jobs and it was nice money. I mean, it was 90 quid a week. I mean, 1982, that's about 900 quid a week, whatever, these days. Cool. So basically, I was able to spend this bounteous weekly sum on my twin passions, which were still music, keeping up with the 23 skidoos and people like that. But trousers, this was the peak year of semiotic trousers. Seriously, it was. You know, Afrika Bambaataa was looking for the perfect beat,

and I was looking for the perfect trousers. Because the thing is, if you went to, I don't know, Burton's or Topshop, where the men's trousers, they're slacks. You felt like you were dressing like in Ipswich town full back off duty. They're just rubbed off. They're horribly cut tight at the top. And there's this, you know, I wanted something like baggy at the top, slightly tapered, you know, that kind of ultra cool. And it was really hard to come by the trousers and you end up having to resort to like charity shops and you get these basically consignments of recently deceased old men in which it costs more to get their piss stains dry cleaned out than the trousers themselves cost.

And ultimately I found my kind of dream suit and I actually looked, it was like the spit of I don't know, say Billy McKenzie, something like that. The trousers were perfectly tapered, it was absolutely ragging, the thread, my mum was absolutely horrified and she says like, you paid three pounds for that, yeah. Cheap at the price. And I wore that suit until it just literally disappeared through kind of the phrase just dying away. But yeah, it was all about trousers.

For me, trousers were a moral issue. I once actually wrote a piece for this Oxford magazine called morality can be measured by the width of one's trousers You know, because all the semiotics, the signification, the rejection of this kind of horrible early Thatcherite banality and wearing trousers like Mick Mills or whatever and the kind of the horrible media or people who wore red jeans as well I mean that was disgusting, you know You know trousers need to be grey, brown, tapered at at the bottom classic whatever and because that's what the times demanded So yeah, that's what I was doing in August of 1982 wasn't watching telly or the video the video age hadn't happened for me

Yeah, I didn't get out this video player till about 1985 So yeah missed out on all these boons that Taylor was describing earlier on Yeah, well, we never had a video either. My mate down the road had one because his dad was a plasterer. And he had that more sort of straight down the line working class approach of if you got money you'd fucking spend it. And so they had everything. We didn't have anything because my mum and dad being sort of lower middle class. Well first of all it meant they had less money because they weren't going off doing foreign plastering jobs and stuff in the 80s. And secondly they had this idea, oh no no no you've got a scrimp and save and gadgets are vulgar. So didn't get a Breville sandwich toaster, didn't get a soda stream, didn't get a fucking CB radio, didn't get an Atari.

My mate down the road had all of these things, all of them. So yeah, that was where I went for my access to 1982. And exactly the same thing, I came from a lower middle class family and we were poorer than the working class folk, yeah, for precisely the kind of reasons that you talk about. Breaks your fucking heart, man. Yeah, they had fish and chips once a week, you know, fish and chips was like a twice a year treat for us. Round Shrek, round about this time we had a chip man that came down

our street and popped right outside my arse every Saturday dinner time and all I'd have to do is open the door walk down the drive and fish chips mushy peas and two fritters was my reward. Oh my god. Other than that, I think 1982, I was just mostly being the most precocious little shit that you could imagine. Well, no, but it's weird, because when I was young at school, because I was at obviously like a crappy state school

in the Midlands, whenever they got a pupil who was bright, and it happened to another kid in my year as well, they tried to sort of make a thing out of it. They'd bring in these educationalists from the county. It was me. There was a me and actually a couple of other kids in my year would get sent off when it was like spelling lessons or something like that. It was like, no, no, no, you, you, you don't have to do this. You go and sit with Mrs. Whatever her name was from, you know, and read a proper book and talk about, you know, it's like they were trying to prepare you for like this great life in academia or something. And it was bollocks.

And I didn't take it seriously at the time, but it just messes with your head. You know, at that age, you end up spending the next four years catching up with yourself Because it's like well hang on. Why is my life so shit? Why am I not getting anywhere? I thought I was supposed to be fucking smart. Yeah, why aren't I on top of the form? Yeah, precisely so is it why I ended up being a late bloomer as a as a writer and as a human being I'm 14 and it's the summer holidays. So'm probably at me non-oran grandpa's and they are not top of the pops people they would only watch it on Christmas Day because they had to with a look of absolute disgust on their face but luckily for me there's a portable

upstairs a colour portable I'm afraid to say chaps so yeah don't worry about me I'm not going to miss out on my Thursday evening pop treat. So shall we do what we always do at this time in the proceedings chaps and peruse a copy of the music press from this very week. This time I've gone for the NME 14th of August 1982. On the cover Alfred Hitchcock. That was a great thing that NME were doing at that time. So three NME covers. So there's Alfred Hitchcock on the cover, Coronation Street, and I think you can go up and interview Elsie, and Sun Raft. It just absolutely spoke to me, did that. But especially now, I just love the idea that you could have the sensibility

that you approached music with you could also approach things like film TV etc etc yeah that's like in my last days at Melody Maker when they sent me off to interview Matthew Corbett and campaign for that to be on the cover that's a joke isn't it Taylor? You what? Did you really interview Matthew Corbett? Yeah. No serious! I just want to... Hang on stop the podcast. You're seriously telling me that you interviewed Matthew Corbett yes or no? It was one of my best interviews. Fucking hell and that bloke had the brass neck to say you hadn't fulfilled your potential. Listen mate wherever wherever you are, he's interviewed Matthew Corbett. What have you done? Fucking hell. So what was he like?

Um, bit of a cunt. No, you're making it up. No, that okay. In a podcast where we've been discussing figures such as Ian Cutler, I think it would be probably unfair to describe Matthew Corbett as a cunt. He was more like, sort of, he was like a partridge type bloke, had a blazer on and was a bit clipped. Right. He was alright. He was the one that turned sooty disco in 1977, wasn't he?

Yes. He took over. Someone had to, yeah. In the news, the top story is the fallout from the Harrogate Festival caused by the poetry performers by Seething Wells, the yet-to-be NME correspondent. In a front-page article in the Harrogate advertiser entitled Festival Storm over Fringe Poet Sex Act, it was reported that Swell simulated masturbation on stage, which a 21-year-old secretary in the audience called revolting and disgusting. The article notes that out of the five people who protested it in putting his hands down

his trousers during the performance, only one of them was actually there and one of the others, the Reverend Don Tordoff, was already well known in the area for calling Harrogate the Sin City of the North. The Jam have announced a mini tour of seven dates, taking in Shepton Mallet, Brighton, Leicester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Whitley Bay and Stafford at £5 a ticket. We don't know this yet, but it's supposed to be their farewell tour as Paul has already told Bruce and Rick that he's doing one just before they were about to record the bitterest pill. They do a proper farewell tour at the end of the year. Yeah nobody's farewell tour is complete without a gig

in Shepton Mallet. I'm guessing that must have been a festival or something because having been there I cannot imagine being a mod in Shepton Mallet. Like just driving around with 30 wing mirrors on your tractor. Clean living under difficult circumstances. The difficult circumstances being four inches of cow shit underneath the desert boot. In other gig news, The Who, who have just finished recording their next LP, It's Hard, have announced their only gigs of the year in the UK. They'll be playing two nights at the NEC in October, with tickets priced at £8 and £7.50 before pissing off to America for most

of the rest of the year. And rumours are abounding this could be the last time for the Who will never see them live again. But bad news for Echo and the Bunnymen fans. Their UK tour which was supposed to start in three weeks time is off. No reason has been given, but it's probably down to the fact that their label, WEA, has just told them their next LP is not commercial enough and they've got to re-record it.

There's a new Brit funk artist in town about to release his debut single. David Steele, the current leader of the Liberal Party. Over a funky rhythm, he can be heard rapping slogans like, You can help me change the face of British politics, while the backing vocals urge listeners to vote for the Dapper Scot, says the article. Turns out it's been put together by hero of chart music Jesse Ray, the author of Odyssey's Inside Out, which is still in the chart at number 38, who's also just put out a disco version of Andy Stewart's Donald Wears Your Troosers.

I think David's wearing them at the minute. Have you heard this record by the way? Yes. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's called I feel liberal all right it's got these backing singers going David steel it could have been the theme tune if they had made Sapphire and steel yes David steel that would have

been really good by the way like co-starring Shirley Williams and David Owen as Silver. Don't worry, the kids will get it. The strangest thing about Jesse Ray, by the way, is that you would deduce from his kilt broadsword and helmet look and his support for capital L liberal politics that he hailed from the Highlands and Islands. But in fact he's from right down by the English border, practically beric upon tweed. It's what a fraud. Well that's the thing. If he was a football team he'd be playing in the English league against Blyth Spartan. You're

saying he lived at Cross Patch where the Jocks and the Jordies fought it out. Meanwhile there's been mass hysteria at the opening of HMV in Sheffield where the sight of Dollar opening the store by cutting a length of video tape strewn across the entrance caused such pandemonium that David Van Dey leapt into the fray to rescue children trapped in the crush and police reinforcements were called in to keckle the pop craze youth of South Yorkshire as they fought for a good vantage point to see an in-store performance by Dex's Midnight Runners. There we go David Vande finally a hero in the eyes of charm, unless he just jumped in for the publicity.

Would you pay to watch David Vandees' Dex's Midnight Run? Oh God yes! On their tour, the intense lack of emotion review. In teasers, the gossip column, Paul McCartney has been spotted in a barber shop in Sussex asking for a short back and side. Do you remember that bloke Paul McCartney? They used to call him the fifth Beatle. I always thought Paul McCartney's solo stuff, he should have called himself Wing. Just flying round in circles.

The cassette magazine SFX is about to go into receivership. Southern Death Court had all their gear nicked from a van in Brixton while they were supporting the clash of the fair deal and Nick Haywood has been papped squiring a lady around Regent Park. Anita Harris. Fucking hell. Oh I remember this. This may have been around the time I saw Anita Harris in Pantomime in Birmingham. I had not the faintest idea who she was and I don't think any of the other kids in the

audience did either. So they should have saved their money and cast a drama student for five quid a night and let Anita Harris just hunker down in a yurt somewhere with Nick Ayward. Still dressed as principal boy. Nick has buttons, naturally. Of course, yes. He's behind you. In the interview section, wow, Lynne Hanna swings through Brixton to find out what Viv

Alvartine is up to in the wake of the split of the Slits earlier this year and it turns out she's now an over 50s aerobics instructor at the fridge. I started to do aerobics to give me a break from everything else and when the Slits split up I worked on the reception at Pineapple Studios for a couple of months. The rest of the band felt they had to go away, while I felt I had to stay and work through the feeling of depression. The feeling that your whole life had turned upside down and you'd split up with five husbands or something. A whole family, a whole network, just gone. It must be so hard to be that person in that band and not be that person in that band anymore

Particularly back then when being in a band meant something. Apparently, and I was just rereading her memoir Yeah, she was doing an interview at one point, some journalist, you know, they're talking about you know And then the journalist just says to her, you know Ireland have dropped you. She goes what? Yeah, you know, we should talk to somebody let's say they're saying you're rubbish, so they've dropped you. Fucking hell. That's just a weird situation. That she'd turn up for an interview and not be briefed by somebody that they'd actually just been dropped by Ireland.

And that a journalist would get to know about it and very callously kind of drop it into the conversation like that. So, if you're interested in shaping up and dancing while being shouted at by a slit Make your way to dance a terium at the fridge on Sundays Wednesdays and Thursdays One pound fifty per 90 minute session as long as you're over 50. Hey, that's us Into the time machine lads I'm not convinced the over 50s would be able to relate to these feelings of depression and emptiness that she's talking about. Or that sense of a social network disappearing. I think they'd all be too busy yucking it up out and about with all their pals.

But imagine being over-50 and one of the slits shouting, Do a runner! Do a runner! But this was her salvation, you know, was to turn into the post-punk and leaving you in John. I mean, this did actually happen. Richard Grable, NME's man in New York, witnesses the latest wave of the new British invasion burst out of the landing craft, brandishing their guitars like Sten rifles. Haircut 100.

At first he doubts their chances when he learns from a friend working in one of the biggest radio stations in the city that their haircuts have been excluded from their playlist because they sound too black. But on the flight to Boston he encounters a group who refuse to let their instant success go to their heads, who are the only group in the world who sell official band jumpers at their merch stand, who are constantly bombarded by fans who are too only group in the world who sell official band jumpers at their merch stand who are constantly bombarded by fans who are too young to get into their gigs and who actually enjoy the prospect of slogging through America because it means they have to win over older

audience members at smaller venues. Grable concedes that he's finally been won over at the Boston gig unaware that Nick Haywood is about three months away from leaving the band. Yeah, you see that's why Paul Nicholas didn't make it in America, he just sounded too black. Cynthia Rose nips out to a cafe in London for a catch-up with Lena Lovitch, who's been on a break since her last tour in January of 1981. We learn that she was in the running for a supporting role in Breaking Glass and impressed the producers so much that they rewrote the entire film to make the lead role a woman, but they employed so much horrible emotional blackmail to get her to do it she backed out and they gave it to Hazel O'Connor instead.

She talks about her new project, a musical about Matahari co-written with Chris Judge Smith and Van de Graaff Generator, but she doesn't say much about it. And Monty Smith gets two and a half pages to champion new pop sensation Alfred Hitchcock, Roy Carr and Fred Delag delegate two pages to wang on about bebop and the centre spread is given over to an essay by Barney Hoskins about tragedy in pop or something that I gave up on a couple of paragraphs in. Back to smash hits for me I think. I would have got all through that no doubt.

Of course you would David. Yeah. Single reviews. Charles Charmoury is in the chair this week and his single of the week is Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs. Isaacs is a great singer like Bobby Bland and Curtis Mayfield. Not necessarily tricky or show air but his voice just does something to people. After moving, almost release by release, around countless labels, none of whom were particularly impressive in the publicity and promotion departments, he's now ended up on island and making his bow with a single with a cool but authoritative stepper's beat and a synth motif that will follow you around for

weeks. Just what makes today's pop star so different, so appealing muses CSM in his twin review of What by Soft Cell and Nobody's Fool by Haircut 100. Both Mark Holman and Nick Haywood are boys next door, and their essential niceness is what makes them effective in their roles. The weirder Oldman attempts to be, the more sordid the context he fetishises, the more fetishistic the outfits in which he drapes his pale, runtish form, the more utterly, sweetly, safely ordinary he appears to be.

What is a song composed by H.B. Barnum, who never said anything about one being born every minute, and in the hands of Oldman and his now clean shaven colleague, has become a great swirling icy thing that could almost, with different words, be a Christmas record. Haircuts, on the other hand, looked like the young members of the royal family would look like if any of them had any style. They appear on the sleeve as a last word in rural opulence. This time they are being exceptionally careful to be nobody's fool, accompanied by earnestly boyish 60s guitars.

Pretty tame stuff compared to the dynamic, exciting days of favourite shirts and love plus one. But it's a coat down for save a prayer by Juran Juran. Here's what I'd like you to do. Get yourself into the most soppy, lugubrious mood possible and pretend you can hear something medium and ploddy with too many acoustic guitars, a tear-jerking synth line and a song equally remarkable for its pretentiousness, its blandness and its utter vacuete. You have just imagined the new Juran Juran single. You know what would be a good comeback to that?

Hey Charlie, don't beat around the bush. Tell us what you really think. Do you get it? I know. I start to raise a weak smile every now and again when somebody puts that on their face. Joe Jackson, in Selvis Costello himself, is keen to capitalise on his return to charty prominence with Stepping Out, but CSM slightly doesn't reckon the follow-up, Breaking Us in Two.

This one is pleasant rather than stirring, a medium-paced toe-tapper with suitably anguished lyrics and some fairly stylish piano playing. I was all set to like it until a voice in my head murmured, Bad Stevie Wonder, and I couldn't think of a snappy retort. Yeah, that's a critic's complaint, if ever I heard one. I was enjoying this until my brain spontaneously generated a reason why it shit and now I am unable to get any pleasure from it at all. It can happen. But it's the price that we critics pay for our luxurious lifestyles as seen in the film Theatre of Blood.

Yes. Punk's still not dead, but neither is it any good anymore as Murray notes in his lumped together reviews of Fuck the Tories by Riot Squad, Total Assault by Riot Squad SA and Charged by GBH. Judging by their title, Riot Squad are lads of extremely sound political judgement, but sadly limited musical skills. Their SA counterparts can claim to be no better of the crafter playing instruments and composing tunes, but I would say that the amount of personal courage necessary to be a noisily dissident punk rocker in South Africa is quite considerable. GBH on the other hand

have virtually nothing to say. If you were a punk in 1982 you were an idiot. What are you calling June Whitfield an idiot? Calling the gang are back with big fun and Murray pegs it as the best of its breed in a review that also lumps in love come down by Evelyn King, Give Me By I-Level, Take Your Time by Roy Hamilton and Summer Lady by Narada Michael Walden. That is his name isn't it, Narada Michael Walden? I'm thinking of the bloke of Weekend World.

Narada Brian Walden, yeah. It's casual and chatter, full of laughter and conversational interventions, an instant party and comes with six minutes 48 seconds of get down on it on the B side in case you missed it first time round. So that settles that. CSM also finds time to pour scorn upon Keeps Me Wondering Why by the Steve Miller Band, claiming that even a nation besotted with abracadabra will cock their nose up at this. Doesn't think much of Grease 2's chances judging by the first single from the soundtrack, Cool Rider by Michelle Pfeiffer, calls I'm a survivor by the dukes US orientated me generation slop, but has a kind word for Cry Baby Cry by BHM,

the rebranded and 80s style brotherhood of man. They were the forerunners of today's real pop heroes like Bux Fizz and the Gumbe dance band and I can't wait to hear them with a Trevor Horn production. BHM man that sounds like the shop that your man buys school jumpers from and you get coated down for by some cunt wearing a hooky lacoste jumper. LP reviews It's a barren week for new albums, with a mere two pages devoted to them, and the main review is given over to Mirage, Fleetwood Mac's follow up to Tusk, which is already number one in America. Richard Cook gets made to listen to it and concludes that he'd rather jack were it not

for the fact that it's 1982 and no one yet knows what a jack actually is. What's missing here is not provocative lyricism, original conception and the search for the altered states of musical being. That's not Mac's territory. They can only make this wispy nonsense. Mirage is about as perfect as they will ever get. It has no problems, no queer side-turnings, just the beckoning siren of Rapture without end.

Aretha Franklin is on the comeback trail after leaving Atlantic for Arista two years ago and has drafted in Luther Vandross to produce her new LP Jump to It, but Graham Locke's feet stay firmly planted. Aretha, as ever, sings brilliantly when she's allowed the room, but the songs are pretty dire and whatever the merits of Vandross's production, I can't help feeling that a simple, hard, funky bass would suit the Franklin voice better than anything here. Turning down that R&B LP with Sheik was probably her biggest mistake in years. That's really weird that, it's a good album and it's not least because of it's hard funky

bass. Talking of Nile and Bernard, Adrian Fierles reckons that feeling lucky by the New York Trio High fashion is the best disco LP that Sheik never made. And he can't understand why they're getting zero airplay in the UK while the mug masses lap up the sweet, sweet pap of Irene Cara. Steve Wimbled has put out the follow-up to Ark of a Diver, taking back the night, and Richard Cook compares him to Pete Townsend for being a 60s titan quietly trying to find his feet

in a new era, and Gerry Rafferty for doing those sorts of songs that Gerry Rafferty does. This is an old Romantics record, a footnote or an addendum to a long career, even though the bindings have a contemporary gleam. Over in Hamburg, Postenpunk is Nicked and Taught, and Abwarts, one of the first German post-punk bands, have put out their second LP, Der Westen ist ein Sam, and Chris Bone reckons it big style. Advards begin every day prepared to die, stabbing themselves gleefully to check that they're awake.

It's not for nothing that their sleeve depicts cheering sailors waving off kamikaze pilots who fly into the sun. Advards invoke the presence of death to remind themselves just how valuable life is. Tickets still available at the Dublin Castle. £2.50 concessions, which is the only concession Advards will ever make. Gig Guide. David could have seen Prince Lincoln and the Royal Rassas at the venue,

Jean loves Jezebel at LaBeet Route, Oxie and the Morons at the Pied Bull in Islington, Matchbox and Coast to Coast at the venue, The Truth at Canning Town Bridge House, Kelly Marie at Spats in Oxford Street, Joe Jackson at Hammersmith Odeon, or the Undertones at Hammersmith Odeon, or the undertones at Hammersmith Odeon, but probably didn't. Not even Matchbox and Coast to Coast at the Vingy. What a sound clash that

would have been. Yeah, I'd have been down at Kelly Marie myself. Taylor could have treated himself to Osprey at the Barrel Organ, Chainsaw at the Railway Hotel, Otto's Bazaar at the barrel organ, handsome beasts at the meerkat cross, or head-bumped at the Pelican Hotel. Neil could have seen street light at the right and bridge and fuck all else. Sarah could have taken herself to Sheffield to see Bob Gilpin's inheritance, Vincent Tate and the Erisons and the fighting tickers at the Hanover in Sheffield, or gone to Leeds for a four-night stand by Liquid Goal at Barcelona. Oh, classy event.

Al could have seen Blue Rondo, Al Aturk and the Dainties at the Adlib Club, Grand Prix at the Redford Porter House, Ray Gunn and the Lazers at the Harty Goodfellow or Marillion at Rock City. Jealous, Taylor? Moderately. And Simon's got absolutely no fucking chance and will have to make do with going to the Crop Ready Festival with his dad to see the Fairport Convention reunion with support by Dana Bros and Knackers Yard. Letters!

Wow! Adrian Thrills is running the show at Gasbag and it's the usual shower of moaning cunts trying to spoil everyone's fun by criticising all the lovely pop music that's going about at the moment. What a load of pretentious junk top of the pops is, writes Willy Wonka from the Chocolate Factory. If those anonymous drongos who rig the charts and radio playlists think they're doing us a favour by serving up this bunch of barrel scrapings with glossy dancers and soft focus close-ups, then they need their heads examined.

Midgeure posing as an SS officer. Freddie Mercury looking and sounding like death warmed up. Obligatory short back and side? Is this some sort of a joke? Dollar posing while the session men sweat. Endless parades of suntan Californian blondes in England. Some of these sets cost more than your average unemployed gets in a whole year. Who's saying let them eat cake now?

Somewhere there is a bunch of clever bastards laughing all the way to the bank with the money they've made from selling this junk. The level of musical inventiveness, creativity and musicianship seems to have hit an all-time low. Last week's Top of the Pops couldn't sing its way out of a wet paper bag. Do a favour for those of us who are part of your rip-off pop-is-seen and fuck off out of it! He should have finished that by writing. If you've come to watch Top of the Pop is seen and fuck off out of it! He should have finished that by writing,

If you've come to watch Top of the Pop expecting to hear brilliant music and profound musicianship, you get nothing sir! Good day! Thrills agrees as he saw that episode of Top of the Pops and deemed it embarrassingly abysmal if you put aside Junior and King Creole reserving particular ire for Jonathan King's entertainment USA. I love that bit about rigging the charts. Because I'm fascinated by the way that angry idiots always claim that things that they

don't like are rigged or corrupt. Right. Yeah. Like football fans online, if their team concedes a soft penalty, they would say, when are we going to do something about the obvious corruption among the police? Like it's genuinely incredible that in this age of all ages, people blithely write off stupidity and incompetence as candid explanations for imperfection. Just start then. Dex's Midnight Runners are back with their new album and Phil McNeil's recent

piece on the band seems to have left the readership confused and upset. So Phil McNeil how do you follow up a stacked soul revival album? Answer, you spend two years listening to Van Morrison records and plagiarise what you hear pretty blatantly for the next album, says Brian Savage of Battersea. Sorry, that's unfair. Kevin Rowland is obviously a creep with an inflated view of his own talent, yet a few of his songs are fine, passionate performances. But can't we keep such talent in perspective? Me, I'll stick to the best of Otis Redding in early 70s Van Morrison thanks. Meanwhile, S. Piper of Brampton Park Road London writes

at the start of his review of the new Dex's Midnight Runners LP Jigga Jig. That was a bit sharp. Phil McNeil tells us that all Roland's music is extricably linked and the new LP takes this to an extreme. But later he writes that this is no LP, this is an album. Yet, in his essay on the sleeve of the Show Me single, the Lisping Lemon himself tells us that Dex is not a band, we don't do gigs and we don't make albums. I'm confused. Who, apart from Neil Spencer, gives a fuck about John Lydon, as Vic the moron of No Fixed Address,

referring to the cover interview the other week. All this and 5p extra too. It really pisses me off. Also upset about the price rise is Sid Sincere of Stockwell. Your review of Urban Shakedown was great reading, but what I cannot understand is how you can print the review not with a photo of Urban Shakedown, but with a photo of Saxon. Did you think we might not notice the difference? Was it a mistake or a bad enemy joke?

Whatever the reason, your readers are not so flippant. We deserve better than this for our 30p every week. Wendy Times writer Victoria asks for more coverage of Australian bands and reels off a list of groups that doesn't include men at work. Steve Burnett of Shorebridge with heart sends the NMP a stamped address envelope in the hope they can send him the lyrics to every Elvis Costello LP and Paul Lynch of London Derre, his words not mine, tells the NME that he really likes a recent compilation tape Jivewire

but now wants to know how to remove a foot of unspooled tape from his cassette player. 48 pages, 30p, I never knew there was so much in it. So much non-recent pop as well. So what else was on telly today? Well! BBC One gets the party started at 20 to 7 with a three-pronged attack by the Open University, featuring the Barbie Yates, our four colours sufficient and engineering energy before closing down for an hour and 20 minutes. Then it's Hong Kong Foo Air, Jack and Oare and then Paddington arses about on the underground. After the youth of Belfast tell you that telly is for cunts and you should get off your arse and do something less boring instead in Why Don't You, it's think backwards with Johnny

Ball before they close down for a 25 minute power nap. Then it's over to Lortor the first day of the second test between England and Pakistan for 2 hours and 10 minutes. And then at 5 past 1 it's news afternoon and regional news in your area. Then Mr Ben, then another close down for an hour and 55 minutes. Coming back hard with Pobler Cum, regional news in your area, PlaySchool, the all new i.e. shit Popeye show and John Craven's news round. Then Suzanne Dando and Nigel Starmor-Sniff get involved in a raf race on the River Tay

in stopwatch. After the evening news and regional news in your area, Daffy Duck deals with Elmer Fudd and a fox called Foltescue, then David Bellamy gets shrunk down to the size of a titmouse and journeys through a garden lawn in Bellamy's backyard safari, and we've just had to sit through Chris Searle and Diane Haran banging on about diets and slimming and all that boring shit in Medical Express. BBC 2 also starts at 20s to 7 with The Origin of Oil, Inner City Story and Geology of the

Red Sea in Open University, then closes down for two and a half hours. At half past ten they spring back to life with play school and then close down for another two hours. Then it's nearly five hours of the fucking cricket followed by Laurel and Hardy in the 1931 film Chickens Come Home and Burn Down a Chinese Restaurant. Sally James and David Soul continue with their already doomed chat show 655 special, then it's a new summer air and they're ten minutes into the final part of the documentary series about three generations of Sikhs who've settled in Britain, the promised land with a question mark on the end.

ITV commences at half past night within Rockpools, followed by an animated version of Kidnapped, then we focus on James Hunt's 1976 Championship season in History of the Grand Prix. After Adventures of Nico, a series where a Greek lad and his American cousin arse about some islands, it's Paint Along with Nan… Wait, wait, wait. The Adventures of Nico. Yes. I suppose he's just flopping on a velvet bedspread full of smack in Manchester.

Then it's Paint Along with Nan say, Gideon, and get up and go. After the Sullivan's, it's the news at one, regional news in your area, a repeat of Emmerdale Farm, the magazine show Here Today, the documentary series Women of Courage, which today looks at the French Resistance nurse Mary Lindell, then it's a repeat of the sitcom The Glamour Girls, where Dougie Brown runs a crumpet agency. Watch It gives us Dr Snuggles, Sport Biller and Father Murphair. Then after the news at 5.45 Benny appears to have gone well emo in Crossroads and Sid Hooper resolves to do something about it.

Then it's regional news in your area and they're 20 minutes into the Paul Squire show where the search for a star winner is supported by Anna Dawson, Bobby Nut and Wall Street Crash. Oh golden age of television don't you think? Well chaps I do believe that a fucking groaning table has been laid. I think the table this time is the size of the one in the Nenet Newman adverts for theory liquid, don't you think? Anyway, we will leave it there for now, so it leaves me to say thank you very much, Taylor Parts.

That's alright. God bless you, David Stubbs. Tati bye. My name's Al Needham. Stay Popcrazed.