Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #76 (Pt 3): 12.8.82 – Humpty Dumpty Is Big Eggy

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham continue their odyssey through this massively enjoyable TOTP, and we finally get to see the Chocolate Guitar incident. Sheena Easton becomes Gertie Numan, then Haysi Fantayzee perform some ACTUAL BUMHOLE LOVE while kids are watching, before Wavelength cash in on the Falklands and throw a wet tea towel over the chip pan of Fizzy Pop Excitement. OK? YEAH! SHOWDOWN! 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 part 3 of episode 76 of Sharp Music. I'm your host Al Needham, they're Taylor Parks and David Stubbs and we are tucking into a gloriously succulent episode of Top of the Pops from August 12th,

1982 and oh man what a feast it is. We've just stopped to wipe the Boys Town gang from our mouths and we're not in the mood to fanny about, so bring on the next course. That's the Boys Town gang and the clip comes from the Dutch equivalent of Top of the Pops, Top van de Poppen as they call it in their inimitable Dutch way. Now at number 25, The Associates. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Peel, accompanied by a couple of blonde city farm ladies with some twat in a red jacket with the sleeves rolled right up to his biceps, makes a sort of joke about a Dutch top of

the pops that chart music would never stoop to. Top van der Poppen indeed, before whipping us into 18-carat love affair by The Associates. Formed in Dundee by Alan Rankin and Billy Mackenzie in 1978, Menkl Torture worked up a couple of demos before they changed their name to The Associates. A year later, frustrated that they weren't getting noticed by record labels, they decided to record a cover of David Bowie's latest single, Boys Keep Swinging, without copyright permission, released on their own label, DoubleHip Records, and after receiving airplay on the John Peel show, they were picked up by Fiction Records and put out their debut LP, The Affection of Punch, in 1980.

A year later they made the jump to Situation 2 Records and spent much of 1981 on the independent charts before moving to Situation 2's grandparent label WEA and receiving a £60,000 advance, which they immediately spent half on block booking studio time and pissed the rest right up the wall. Their first release on WEA, Party Fairs 2, put them over the top in the charts, getting to number 9 in March of this year, which they immediately followed up with their second LP, Sulk, which entered the album chart at number 10 in May and the single Club Country, which got to number 13 in June.

This is the follow up, a double A side featuring a cover of Love Hangover, which Diana Ross took to number 10 in May of 1976 and this, an expansion of the final instrumental track on Sulk which was called Nothing in Something Particular. It entered the charts last week at number 35 and this week it's moved up nine places to number 25 so here's their sixth appearance on top of the pop so far this year and as always it's quite the memorable one. David, surely you shook a pissy old man's trouser leg to sulk in the summer of 1982? Oh absolutely did,

absolutely did and that suit that he's wearing you know that grey elegance you know that just signified so much of it you know for me. By the way I was just going to say all that Toppin Van Der Poff and stuff it was a lot of his little remarks this evening John Peel it's like they could have come from like Dave Lee Travis or Mike Reed, couldn't they? They're a little bit dodgy, but that suit that he's wearing and the absolute planache and the sort of sound that comes off this record, which is like some sort of imaginary theme to a persuaders type sort of TV series from the year 1960X, this was absolutely on point for me. And the thing is, I've looked at this and felt it's more than just entryism here. The associates coming on to top of the pops at this time, it's like they're in the midst of enemy territory.

Mm. Because I always felt, you know, this time the war isn't between punk and prog or anything like that, punks and hippies or whatever. The war is now about this kind of exquisitely sort of honed new pop and zoo-wank. It's sort of people who wear their jacket sleeves rolled right up, you know. Dee-dee-boppers, idiots in horn-rimmed glasses or whatever, and puffy skirts. I mean, the Associates represented the resistance to all of that culturally. There were certain people who were on the right side and certain people on the wrong side.

So me, Duran Duran were categorically on the wrong side, and the Associates, Simple Mind, people like that, were on the right side. Because the Associates seemed to encapsulate the very spirit of 1982, don't they? You know, post-punk weirdos who go pop yet stay weird, and then they have a ton of money dropped on them and they proceed to go mad and they put out mad records and the pop craze youngsters gleefully wave it through onto the charts and onto top of the pop. I mean how would you even describe the Associates to someone who's never heard them? Yeah I think of all the new pop bands of this period the Associates are the hardest to understand for people born in this century. Yeah. Because so much of what they did doesn't make any sense in the

context of modern culture. And obviously some of this is just time moving on, right? Because the idea of introducing elements of lounge music and slick soul to a recognizably Bowie-based post-punk aesthetic really wasn't difficult to grasp for people growing up at the time and keeping up with non mainstream or semi mainstream music in the early 80s and neither was the abstract edge and neither was the self-conscious and partially sincere pretentiousness. It was all roughly understood but those things do not translate into our century no which makes them much harder to process but there's more to it than that as well

I've gone on before about how some of the best music from this time can be hard to read not hard to understand without knowing the context and the thinking behind it and the general discourse at the time because you'd read interviews with bands at the time and it wasn't just oh you just make the music we like and if anyone else likes it it's a bonus most bands were very forthcoming about what they were doing and why and even people like joy division or new order who would be diffident and deflatory in interviews. Even that had a point. That was still a chess move within this same grand game which people did consider important because there was still the concept of a

discourse and most of these bands couldn't wait to tell anyone who'd listen all about themselves and their artistic objectives. You know, like you can listen to an ABC record now out of context and you think, okay, 80s, swishy, dramatic, but at the time you'd read an interview with Martin Fry and it'd tell you exactly what it was all about and what it was intended to achieve and you'd carry that into your next listen and Even sort of relatively cerebral bands who didn't want to deal with the press like dexes or who maybe felt inadequately represented by the press like the fall would plaster their record sleeves and

adverts with reams of text telling you stuff because they were trying to do something specific yeah and they didn't mind if you just heard the record and liked it but really they wanted you to know why they were making this music and what it was for or at least they wanted to prime you and put you in the right frame of mind to appreciate it No, all of this makes zero sense to anyone who wasn't there and yeah looked into that Post-punk period because it's so alien to how people make and consume pop music or so-called Alternative music today. Mm-hmm I'd if you'd Gabby and probablyille out to DAF shortly before Gabby died actually just a few years ago and they did ask him you know what did you make of the

way that like you were written up in the English music press by papers like the NME by the pendants and the mollies and people like that and you know it didn't come back oh there's a little crazy stuff written about us we were just focused on the music you know we lived that you know didn't say that sort of thing no we loved it it was great and that's what we wanted and that is where we're coming loved it, it was great. And that's what we wanted, and that is where we're coming from. That was really heartening to hear. I think the one thing that is still current

about what the associates did, that you do sometimes still get, is that playfulness with image. There's been a slight return of people posing for pictures like in costume or in character, styled in an unusual way or dressed as North Sea fishermen or the 1920s French or something. Not to express it of him but because it it sits with the essential solipsism and

semiotic muteness of the modern concept of flange. But that's still the one link from here back to there, because this was something the Associates were really good at. Like record covers, where they're dressed as athletes on the starting blocks for the 100 meters, just because it's an arresting image, and because it's so opposed to a cliched rock image, and because it's a playful rather than an obvious reflection

of their music, because their music is not one-dimensional so it's not a picture of the clash standing in front of a tower block or Gerard Geran on a yacht in Antigua right where you would expect to see them it's more derived from Roxy music and chic to some extent and also sparks all those sparks covers where they're bound and gagged and being kidnapped on the back of a speedboat or crawling from the wreckage of a light aircraft crash in a suburban street. It's not telling you anything it's meant to be a poke in the imagination. Yeah so that

translates to the present day. But I think the actual music of the Associates mystifies a lot of modern listeners. It's very shiny and very pop, but a lot of these records don't have obvious hooks. And they're swollen up with these deliberately over-lush productions and arrangements. And it's more like a bath to bathe in

than a pop song with handles that you can carry around with you right and it's noticeable that the singles are theirs that people remember with party fears too and to a lesser extent Club Country do have hooks and we're obviously chosen as singles for that reason but hooks did not come naturally to the associates it wasn't really their thing so by the time you get singles like this one and those first impressions waiting for the love boat it's just swirling really nicely but not very commercially so this is a very appealing record but you can't hum it

unless you've heard it in the last five minutes and that's gonna mean the end of you as a chart head. I mean if I had to describe the Associates to someone who's never heard of them I would say well they're a synth duo but there's more than two of them on stage and they don't appear to be using synths that much so you know that's why I was never a music journalist But yeah, the Associates are on a fucking crest at the moment aren't there? I mean round about this time they're living in the Holiday Inn in Swiss Cottage with Billy Mackenzie taking out an extra room exclusively for his whippets which he feeds on smoked salmon and one of his biggest

extravagances at the time was apparently going out and buying 16 cashmere jumpers, laying them all out on his bed and rolling about on them, presumably naked, which is a lot more interesting than doing loads of coke, although they did that too. Yeah, I mean Alan Rankine's arrangement, so there's actually something kind of quite enigmatic about them in terms of what they're evoking. There's a vague, sometimes they're incredibly colourful, sometimes they've got this slightly kind of Berlina monochromaticness about them. Certainly very cinematic, quite evocative, and of course, as Taylor said, this great

embrace of image of striking poses or whatever, which only three or four years earlier was absolutely verboten in New Wave music and things like that. You know, the image was something that was regarded with tremendous hostility. It was inauthentic, opportunistic, you know, feared with the sort of delivery of unvarnished, truthful content. But obviously, post-punk new pop, you know, has been on a journey and the Associates are now at the kind of, yeah, the pinnacle of this particular journey. Yeah, you're right. I mean, so let's talk about the performance because you always got maximum value out of an associate's performance on top of the box. When they first appeared with Party Fist 2,

Rankin pitched up in full samurai makeup wearing a fencing suit and playing a banjo, while McKenzie spent the performance singing at himself on the video screen while dressed as a very flamboyant Frank Spencer. But this time I feel they've outdone themselves haven't they? The performance begins with a very smiley Mackenzie in a short grey jacket and matching high-waisted trousers with an absolute bouffant plastered with hair oil which makes him look like Les McQueen halfway through his transformation into Billy the Fish Then he has a bit of interplay with a very glamorous woman on the keyboard and we all know who that is don't we? Yeah, she was the ladley more the ladley one of the Martha's in Martha and the Muffins, but not the Martha Yeah, it was she was a Martha muffin not Martha Martha

Martha too as we all know they landed a number 10 hit with Echo Beach in March of 1980. Couldn't follow it up so while the rest of the band decided to go back to Canada she stayed here and she divided her time between working on a solo music career and working part-time in a shoe shop in Covent Garden. She linked up with the local scene because it was her who gave OMD the idea to call their album Architecture and Morality. She did backing vocals for Roxy Music and she approached the Associates to play on her songs but they were too busy with their recordings and rolling about on jumpers but they asked her to be on this and here she is having a whale of a time. Absolutely having a whale of a time. I love a whale of a time. I love

the sort of interaction between her and Billy McKenzie. I mean you know she's very good looking, he's a handsome chap but it doesn't feel exactly flirtatious which of course that'd be pretty bogus as we know. It's more that they're both sort of luxuriating in the beauty of the music and the glory of being in the midst at the very epicentre of this kind of magnificent top of the pops moment. Yeah. What's really strange about her is that when you see the footage of her performing with Martha and the Muffins, she looks like a supply teacher, like really trying to fit in with the Muffins, right? And then of course as soon as she comes to Britain and starts

doing all this stuff, she just transforms into the most glamorous woman who's ever lived. Just swanning around absolutely delighted with herself, quite rightly. It's got to the point where she even released a couple of solo records. One with a weird video of her horsing around in a swimming pool in a swimsuit. Unfortunately filmed quite cheaply on a not very beautiful English day. So it sort of looks like an episode of EastEnders or something, you know what I mean? She ended up working with Robert Palmer in the late 80s and then became a designer with Peter Gabriel. And yeah, she's currently a professor of design in Ontario. So yeah, fucking good on you, Martha.

This performance and the associates themselves, they just represent elegance, this dappiness, you know, sartorially and musically in the midst of something that's completely antithetical to that, you know, the, you know, the basic, the sea of zoo wank and the crown. It's like you look at people and no one knows how to apply makeup. It's like they've had their five-year-old sisters have a go on them. We haven't really spoke about the audience in this episode yet. The one thing that hits you in the face is we're starting to see the flags on where little tiny flag being waved in the audience and yes Deeley Boppers are becoming a thing yeah this is not a Deeley Boppers song is it? No no no but there is something coming up that's even less well suited to Deeley Boppers

but we'll deal with that won't we? So we see Michael Dempsey on the bass keeping well out of it, and then we cut to Alan Rankin playing an obviously fake guitar, but we don't see enough of it to work out what it is because we've cut back to Mackenzie, and he gets under the neck of that guitar out of shot, which he sniffs. And then the next thing we know, we see Rankin offering the remainder of the guitar to the kids at the front and a girl's taken a bite out of it and the penny drops yes Alan Rankin has been playing a chocolate guitar yeah but because of the useless studio direction we miss most of this

yeah didn't know that from legend you'd never be able to work it out from actually watching the clip. With that disposed of, he picks up another guitar, and that's made from chocolate too. I mean, these guitars, they look well-thorntoned, but they're actually bespoke from Harrods. And chaps, would you care to guess how much one chocolate guitar from Harrods would have cost? I wouldn't even dare. 30p? Possibly even more than that.

50 guineas. £230. Oof. Crikey. What's the inflation calculator make of that? In today's rubbish money that is £884 for just one chocolate guitar. So that is £1,768 worth of chocolate melting under the studio lights there. And yeah, the second guitar remains intact and is presumably going to be taken back to the hotel for a midnight feast once they've got the jumpers off the

bed. Yeah. See, this is the sort of the punkishness that they're kind of infiltrating top of the pops with, you know, exposing the BULGUS nature of an unlike performance. Yeah, what a shame he didn't take that other guitar and just smash it on the floor like Paul Simon and... Yeah, and perhaps far from the cameraman accidentally missing this, perhaps he was under instructions, you know, to not film all of this, you know, less... No, I don't think so. I think Michael Ho would have gone for it. I mean, I wonder if they told him that that's what they were gonna do because top of the pops in 1982 would have been

Well up for that sort of thing. Yeah, you're probably right I mean for the next performance on top of the pops they were gonna hire a portable Turkish bath for Alan Rankin to play him But alas, this is the last top of the pops performance that the associates ever made. Yeah, what a shame what a loss Anything else to say chaps? Yeah performance that the associates ever made. Yeah. What a shame. What a loss. Anything else to say chaps? Yeah, I used to get my hair cut by a bloke who used to cut the hair of Billy Mackenzie. No! Or so he claimed.

Yeah, I mean he was from Dundee and he was about the right age so I have no reason to disbelieve him. No! He said that apparently you had to go around Billy McKenzie's house to cut his hair. Right. He was told, do not mention the fact that he's losing his hair or you will never ever come back and cut it again.

So he's there trying to cut his hair and it's sort of thinning on the top. And normally, you know, as a hairdresser, you might say, Oh, do you want me to do this? Do you want me to do that? No, you don't. You have to just act as if he had a full head of hair Oh, man broke that illusion if you if you broke that charade then that's it. You're out on your ear And the other thing he told me was that And if I knew as much as I should know about the biography of Billy Mackenzie

I would know if this was true or whether my old hairdresser was a massive bullshitter. But he told me that Billy Mackenzie's brother was one of the hardest men in Dundee. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, the reason he was allowed to walk around Dundee looking like Billy Mackenzie was that if he were to be set upon by a gang of toughs, it would not have been worth their while to do that. Now, I don't know if the haircut that Billy McKenzie has in this clip is that chap's handiwork,

but if so, it explains why I stopped going to him. Because it really is, as you say, a Billy the Fish haircut. We blow go over. This is the sort of haircut you'd have seen in a flat roof pub in Coldside in 1987. All I'm saying is, Brian Ferry would never have had that haircut.

No. And as much as I love the associates, that there is the difference between talent and genius. And also the difference between 30 quid and 350 quid in 1982 money. So the following week 18 Carat Love Affair moved up four places to number 21, its highest position. But two weeks later with a UK tour on the horizon followed by an American tour which would have culminated with a deal with Sire Records, Mackenzie developed pharyngitis

and pulled out of the British leg and then the night before they were scheduled to fly to America he pulled out again, claiming that the extra musicians they'd drafted in weren't good enough, which led Alan Rankin to quit the band. A month later, Mackenzie launched a solo career under the name Mackenzie Sings Orbe Doig with the single Ice Cream Factory, but it failed to chart. Going back to the associate's name, he released a spate of singles which hovered around the lower reaches of the chart But never breached the top four tear and the name was retired in 1990 or what a loss to top of the Pops the Associates were

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Favourites with decent folk everywhere. Those are the Associates at number 25. Now, a special treat for members of the Sheena Balmy Army. Are you watching in Cardiff? Are you watching in Swansea? Sheena Easton! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Peel! Infested by zoo wankers once again, including one absolute asshole dressed as a punk and a bellend who's put a pair of sunglasses on a balloon and put it over his face and salutes while a girl kisses it, gives the associates the stamp of approval before giving a shout

out to the Sheena Barmy Armair as he introduces Machineraire by Sheena Easton. We last covered Sheena Orr in our 2022 London Podcast Festival show when she took When He Shines to number 12 in May of 1981 and since then much has changed. She immediately kicked on by landing that year's Bond theme and taking For Your Eyes only to number 8 in August of 81 which resulted in her winning a Grammy for Best New Artist and an immediate relocation to America where she's been ever since. Although Diminishing returns a setting in over here with her next single Just Another Broken Heart getting to number 33 in October of 1981, she clearly doesn't give the slightest flick of a fuck as she's flogged 5.5 million singles and 2 million LPs to the yanks so far.

This single, the follow up to You Could Have Been With Me, which only got to number 54 last December, is the lead off cut from her third LP Madness Money and Music, which comes out next month. It entered the charts for Fortnite to go at number 52, then jumped 14 places to number 38. This week it stayed where it is, but a rare visit home last week before embarking on a big American tour has given Michael Hurl the chance to get a studio appearance in the tin, and it's finally being aired tonight. Chaps, let's wheel back to that Sheena Balmy army comment because it was quite the ongoing

thing for John Peel at the time. He was genuinely taken by Sheena Easton, especially 9 to 5. After he died they found two copies of it in his record box of his most precious singles that he'd take for his gigs. And he'd play it out on his radio show and at DJ sets to the confusion of his audience, but they eventually caught on and chanted Sheena Sheena while he played it. And yes, the Sheena Barmy army was born. He'd also ask listeners voting on the Festive 50 to address their letters to Sheena Easton

so he and John Watt could sift them out from the regular mail so there we go this is a knowing wink to his radio listeners. Yeah I remember once he was actually on a sort of round table show on Radio One you know they used to have I think they used to offer opinions on the latest releases or whatever and they were both on the panel and John Peel you know he would sort of you know offer his thoughts or whatever and every time I said them at the end she'd be rather irritably assumed yes in your opinion and then he sort of do it again and then yes in your opinion and it's happened four or five times John Peel was talking about it afterwards and he was saying well she really put me in my place didn't she

and she's like it's like quite just saying of course they're my fucking opinions who do you think they are Jimmy fucking Savills? It's like, it's like, why don't you just say, of course they're my fucking opinions. Who do you think they are, Jimmy fucking Savills? They might as well have got Pamela Stevenson, a senior, cut out the middle man. There's one thing you can say about Sheena in this period, or about the people who were doing the work for her.

They knew how to nail down a trend slightly too late. Yes. So that the middle of the road audience had picked up on it. It's quite clever. Like she had originally been sold as like an unsmiling Nolan sister. Like the hostile faced girl next door. Maybe what the girl next door would look like if you were playing the tuba until 4 a.m. every night. From 9am to 5am. Indeed.

But she's been repositioned here as a kind of mainstreamed Hazel O'Connor or Lola Lovich. Yeah. But he sort of pretend sharp edges and this like perfect pastiche song title, Machinery. And it's really not bad, even though there's not much about it that you could point out as good. It's definitely a Kim Wilde B-side, isn't it, from 1981 this? Yeah. I mean, when you look at her, she looks like Julian Clary, really, but what she's actually doing is like Gary New Woman.

It's like the same eyeliner, same jerky movements and eyes darting around suspiciously. Gertie Newman, if you will. Indeed, it's the same sort of low rank spaceship operative uniform. And it's all a bit out of time because that stuff was very old by 1982. But yeah, it was recent, but not quite current.

And when you're aiming at a mainstream audience that are either too young or too old to be right on the moment, that passes as contemporary without being confusing. Like if you were making an advert, you'd do the same thing, right? Like how punk started to appear in adverts in about 1981. And I mean, the alienated coldness works better on a Glaswegian woman than a Southeastern man, I think, even if Newman maybe lived it more authentically. Although I don't know enough about Sheena

to say that for sure. She's wearing a shiny gray belted off trouser suit with an extremely high collar. It's almost like a more sober version of that top Michael Jackson wore on the cover of the Escape album. Old Susanna in Smash Hits was moaning about Top of the Pops' sets but Top of the Pops have pushed the boat right out for her here because she's performing against a backdrop of massive cogs Which surely must have been created just for this performance. Don't you think? Yeah, they've probably left over from an old Doctor Who or something I don't know if they actually built them for this. They're very good at recycling as for the lyrics

Well, sheen is clearly not the docile housewife or the modern girl anymore And she's in another shit relationship with a bloke who makes her feel like a gasket but when he feels like it he's got the power to hit it whatever that means well as the author of Mars by 1980 you know oh yeah here we go yes this is a pioneering piece of synth pop a veritable cornerstone of the movement you know the woman machine you know you can see Ralph Wood or Kraftwerk listen to this and starting to be, must cut our hair, get rid of our flares or out our guitars, I've seen the future, said David very sarcastically. In your opinion.

Yes, quite right. So you'd put Sheena Rees to look with liquid gold then wouldn't you? Yeah, I think so. As Saint Pioneers. Yeah, I think so, definitely. But actually, as Taylor says, it's not actually all not actually a battery it's not the worst thing here tonight yeah well the problem is that the song is sort of boilerplate you know I mean it's like sometimes like lately I get anxiety dreams and what upsets me is not the dreams but the fact that they're

always so hacky I'm really disappointed in myself and my imagination It's like, you know, all the police are after me for a crime. I didn't commit right? Oh, I've got a record of chart music in an hour and I have forgotten to prepare any notes Oh, what should I do? It's frustrating. I spend all my conscious time Working to evade cliche and tried as hard as I can to train my own imagination. And as soon as I go to sleep, my own subconscious is just flicking the Vs at me, doing the bare minimum, giving no effort. Have you had your teeth fall out?

I have had my teeth fall out, yeah, I have, yeah, not for a few years, but it's pathetic almost as if I'd farmed out control of my subconscious brain to Julia Downs who wrote this song. Yeah, she was a semi successful songwriter at the time. She did some writing for a mid-80s Roger Daltrey solo album Oh God late 80s Elkie Brooks album. It's that kind of level right? She released a few self penned flop singles of her own called things like Don't Talk to Strangers and Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. I'm guessing their other songs were called A Stitching Time Saves Dying. Look before you leap please take your litter home with you. I'm sort of fascinated by these career songwriters or near career songwriters who never wrote any good ones. How do you fall into this like repeatedly getting your songs placed with artists

that people have heard of when you display all the professional finesse of the stagehand who rigged up Bobby Davros pillory. The difference being that nobody wants to shake your hand. It's not a horrible record though is it not? In terms of the sound and the shape of it, it's deliberately ugly but it's not horrible. It sounds like the University of East Anglia looks, you know. So you'd rather a Cambridge quad but there are worse arrangements of stained concrete blocks and at least they try. I mean the problem that Sheena Reeson has in the UK now after For Your Eyes Only is that she's not our plucky every girl anymore.

She's a star and an American star at that. And we're not yet at that stage of the 80s where the Brits immediately power worship anyone who's sold millions of records in America. So this is coming off like an appearance from someone on the European leg of their promotional tour. You know it's nice that they're here but you know the minute the song's done it's straight off to Bremen. David you said this record's out of date which it sort of is but a more charitable way of putting it would be to say that she was ahead of her time retro. Because if you put this out now people would really like it.

Yeah she's anticipated Lady Tram. Do you know that record The Operator by Barbara Morgenstern? It's a lot like this except a lot better because it's got a tune and because she's authentically German and authentically quite talented. It's worth hearing that after this but yeah I should feel exhausted but I haven't got the energy. So I just feel nothing instead. And that fits quite nicely with the track, which I think is why I can appreciate it. Ultimately, I just can't shake the feeling that I'm listening to a jingle for an advert for some lady deodorant, you know, where robot Sheena goes through a work of day existence

until she gets home and raises a metallic arm for a good spray and then she transforms back into the winsome Scottish lassie once more and then goes out for a bop at a Bernie Inn with a lucky young man. Do you realize how much money you could have made in that alternate career? I know, I know. So the following week Machinery dropped one place to number 39. It would be the last dent she would make in the top 40 as a solo artist for seven years, although she would get to number 28 in March of 1983 when she made a television special for NBC called Sheena Eastern Act 1 and recorded We've Got Tonight with Kenny Rogers. And in December of this year, John Peel would appear on the Christmas Day episode of Top

of the Pops wearing a jumper emblazoned with the slogan Sheena Barmy Army. MUSIC PLAYS CHEERING AND APPLAUSE What an artiste! What an artiste! That's Sheena Easton, a best since 9 to 5, making their debut on Top Of the pops Hazy Fantasy. Flanked by two early 80s stunners dressed as sexy quality street toughies, praises Sheena one more time and claims that machinery is a return to the glory days of 1980. He then pushes us towards John Wayne is Big Legger by Hazy Phantasy. Formed in London in 1981, Hazy Ph-Z was a collaboration between Paul Kaplan, formerly of the new romantic band Animal Magnet, his girlfriend Kate Garner, a photographer and

model who ran away from Wigan in the early 70s to join the Children of God and then ran away to India to get away from them, and nine or so assorted randoms who would gather together and bong away on things for a lack of anything better to do. Late last year their session was joined by Jeremy Heeler who was a squat neighbor of boy George and Marilyn and had currently taken to soaking his hair in candle wax and living in a bath chair. Kaplan was so taken by his performance on the mic that he slimmed the group down to a three piece and decided to make a serious run at getting signed.

After scraping up 150 quid to make a video demo, all the better to showcase Garner and Healy's look, they were picked up by Regard Records, a new label started by the former managing director of CBS in the UK. This is their debut single, which was written by Healy after he read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the 1970 book by Dee Brown about the European colonisation of America. It entered the charts three weeks ago at number 73, soared 28 places to number 43, then soared 17 places to number 26. This week it's moved up four places to number 22, so it's time for their Top of the Pops debut. OK, yeah, showdown I mean chaps where to begin on this one song or them

because to watch this performance is to be absolutely lacerated by the stick of 1982 actually I'll go further watching this feels like someone's plunged the kids from fame sweatshirt into a tub of Quattro and he's flaying you across your back with it. Oh, fucking hell. We may well go on to discuss this performance in greater depth, but really, you can sum this up in five words,

Jeremy, but call me Jez. At the time, Taylor, he was calling himself Jeremiah. Yeah, of course he was. And I watched this and I think kids these days don't know they're born. You know, they're all looking at their phones going, oh no, I've been doxed. Yeah, well, get a load of this. We used to call it a telephone directory. It will blow your mind, but we took it on the chin.

Same as we withstood the bombardment of spaghettified nightclub toilet shit that was hazy fantasy about whom it's simply not possible to be contrarian or kind. They toiled and we suffered so that rednecks could triumph. Right. Why was, why was cotton, I Joe and international number one when this wasn't right answer number one, everyone could understand it.

It's a song about getting syphilis in the old west, something we can all relate to, as opposed to this second year at Goldsmiths bullshit. And answer number two, when you saw rednecks, you didn't immediately want to fire a rocket propelled grenade at them and then bundle whatever was left into some plastic sheeting and dispose of it down a storm drain.

Well, I know I've mentioned this before, Taylor, but round about the time we started doing chart music, I attempted to commune with the youth by watching an episode of Top of the Pulse from 1982 with me nephew, who was about 15 at the time, and this song came up and he reacted to it with gales of laughter. Not the delightful laughter of Neil's daughter when she saw Adamant for the first time, but laughter of spite and derision and pighead and ignorance from a generation who couldn't understand what their elders had been through. And I found myself getting all outraged and defensive for hazy fucking Fantasize he now spends his time going to some shit old club in Stoke-on-Trent with his mates

And they all sit around a bottle of champagne that cost him 100 quid on a VIP Table while some landfill grime twats shouts at him so he can fuck right off and he's still firmly off the will. No Judy Zook sat in tall jacket for you, Jamie. I mean yeah, gales of laughter he can afford to but I mean for us it's gales of rage because pop was inescapable in a way that it isn't these days. Love it or hate it, you can ignore it. But in the early 80s, shite like this was unignorable and inescapable. It's just horrible, isn't it? It's just vacuous eclecticism for its own sake. I mean, blitz kids, you know, they're the worst people in the world. This King's Road whimsy. And it's

so fucking Nathan Barley. I think, you know, if they'd actually thought of riding around on little tractors, they actually would have done. you know also they you know there's this Malcolm McClown-esque idea of pop alchemy you know let's mix scar with ballet let's mix jug band music with the opera let's mix ice cream with gravy you know seriously in terms of dialectical pop acumen I think hazy fantasia make Toto Quela look like Scruti Politi by comparison. We touched on earlier that the official history of so-called new pop usually pinpoints the decline to 1983, early 84 when you get people like Howard Jones and Nick Kershaw forever umbilically linked in the popular memory these two

cockatoo, quaffed, Viscounts of Prog Bubblegum. But we know that there were loads of them, just chancers who had just about adjusted to the new decade, presenting themselves differently from 70s musicians, but also just dumb and basic careerists, old jazz fusion guys and gen heads slumming it as they saw it for money. But the truth is, the grifters had moved in before that and even in the heyday of post-punk chart pop,

you had things like this, which is piggybacking on art pop and new romantic. But it's fundamentally stumpy and charmless and it stinks of fashion victims self-regard and the eternal inability of entitled but untalented people to grasp that they've got nothing to offer, just like the rest of us. And yes, mixing the weird and the

commercial was a path to becoming simultaneously popular and credible but it was only a way for talented and charismatic people to become popular and credible it's not just a formula that any old cunt can follow just so long as they have the necessary bulletproof lack of self-awareness. So hazy fantzy fantasy then, Carol Clarke pinned them down for an interview in Melody Maker this month and asked them what the fuck they think they were doing and Kate Garner said we want to be dollar with dreadlocks and it's fair to say that she got her wish but

not quite in the way she intended. That's the worst of that kind of formulation since Death Leopard saying that they were the doolies with goolies. Dola with dreadlocks. Yeah, steady on that. Remember the lesson of Icarus. This performance, man, I actually watched it with Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral director and he said it was the most disorganized thing he'd ever seen in his life. On the back, on the raised platforms, are the zoo wankers, of course, some of whom have been

toggled out like a junior school production of Song of the South. But we get to see the kids, don't we? Because for some reason Michael Hill's got them to turn round and face us instead of the group. So it looks like members of the British Legion during the state visit of Hirohito. So a golden opportunity, chaps, to witness the youth of 1982. Fucking hell, I was 14 in 1982. I never looked like this. These are avant-garde extremists of Wangtum, definitely.

Well, there's two girls with dealyboppers. We're going to see a lot of dealyboppers in this episode. Yeah, I mean, I think Taylor does have a point about this being a kind of early warning of what is to come, definitely. So we've got Paul Kaplan sat at the back holding a melodica and keeping well out of it, yielding the floor to Kate Garner and Jeremiah Healy, who of course is really called Jeremiah, and they proceed to act like a couple of kids who's been allowed to go on the karaoke.

Healy falls on his ass within seven seconds, a record that not even Jimmy Percy came close to, and Kate Garner has as much finding the right camera to look at as the West Yorkshire police did with Peter Sutcliffe. I mean, Kate Garner's a lesser offender isn't she? She's locked up with a black velvet hat, distressed olive top and some brown trousers. She's not dressing as Sean Connery in Zardos just yet but she's very much the minor offender here because it's all about the appalling confection that is Jeremy Hewlett. Jesus fucking Christ. Do you remember the 90s when the word trust-a-fairy and started coming into vogue?

Yeah. Every time I heard that word, I immediately thought of Jeremy Healy in this performance. You know, if he'd have been born 10 years later, he'd have been in the park with a jester hat on failing to juggle while you were trying to have a quiet spliff and try not to fucking murder him. Yeah, yeah, it's just a thin streak of smarm. He's so delighted with himself. Fucking look

at this guy. He went for a colonoscopy but they couldn't do it because the camera was wider than he was. Again, it's that thing with aesthetics and ethics being two separate philosophical categories as we're talking about. this I think is where the crossover I think this is genuinely an immorally bad performance So you're saying this is the new pop version of Wiggins ovation doing skiing in the snow Just destroying a movement of one fell swoop. I mean I could carry on about his performance But I'm gonna leave it to a proper coat down artist

Nina Mishkoff, who's currently the gatekeeper of the Sunday People's TV column. Watch it! It was hard to watch new odd pop duo Azifantezi on top of the pops without a paper bag to hand. She is sweet, but I vote her horrible half-kick the man I would least like to be stuck in a lift with. The mere sight of him shrieks understains to me. It's not so much the plucked chicken chalk white spindly chest he displays so red-ly, although that's a terrific turn off to be sure. It's his revoltingly little pelvic routine so thrustingly

Disgusting it would put you off sex for a fortnight I longed for a bucket of antiseptic cold water to throw over him to clean him up And his nasty little act him up and his nasty little act. Thrustingly disgusting sounds like Bill Oddie's name if they had a punk band in the goodies doesn't it? Which I'm sure they did, unwisely. Because to use the parlance of short music they are trying to do a sex here aren't they? Yeah. I mean all of these things can be good and bad. Shambles can be a good shamble. Eclecticism can be good eclecticism. Sex can be good or bad. In each case it's not so much the thing, the sex, the eclecticism, the shambles. It's just that they are

fundamentally bad. So the song chaps, it's the born in the USA of new pop isn't it? Going back to that Melody Maker interview, says John Wayne big leggy is a perverted sort of thing People kept saying we were writing nonsense lyrics But we didn't explain anything because if they knew it wouldn't have got played We wrote the song after we read Hollywood Babylon We also read somewhere that John Wayne used to give money to the Ku Klux Klan somewhere that John Wayne used to give money to the Ku Klux Klan. So if we said John Wayne is a bad man, he's a fucking cunt, it wouldn't have gone on the radio.

But if we go, he stands so high, people would go, isn't it a lovely little tune? We thought it was so funny, people thinking it was a fun song. People would never understand it because they don't listen to the lyrics. The doorman at the BBC when we went on top of the pop said, oh, you're the John Wayne fans. And we said, oh, great. But the song of course is also about bum sex. And when they get to the bit about John Wayne having so many guns hanging off him that he can't get a purchase on his squaw, if you will, he suggests they have a bit of bumhole love instead.

And yes, they do that with all the actions. And the way they go on about it to Carole Clark, you'd have thought they'd have done a complete reenactment of the scene in Last Tango in Paris. As Jeremiah says, they warned us about dancing like that, but we should have gone on again and made it worse. They tried to foil us all the time. They tried to get the wacky camera angle. So in the end, we did a radio interview and explained what the song was about. When you consider the soft-porned dancers they have on that program. Their attitudes are pathetic. But in review I'm forced to relate to the Pop Craze youngsters. There are no wacky camera angles, no Ed Sullivan style cropping out of body parts and what it actually looks like is as if Kate has fallen

on the floor again and Jeremy's trying to keep them upright. It has none of the commitment and realism and passion of the two Norwich City supporters up against the gates of Carrer Road on transfer deadline day. I mean just generally, as you know with the lyric as well, it's not really much use trying to be subversive if you eliminate entirely the subversive content altogether really. You know it's like being hit over the head with a golf ball inside a sock except they haven't put the golf ball in. Yeah. Yeah People don't seem to understand this like any sufficiently disguised satire is Indistinguishable from nonsense is

Effectively the same thing and it's not even the first time we've seen the same thing. And it's not even the first time we've seen simulated bum sex on top of the pops this year, chaps, because I direct you to the April the first episode where Bardo, this year's UK entrance in the Eurovision Song Contest, commenced their routine for one step further by getting down on all fours and pretending to be bummed by invisible men or dogs or god knows what. So yeah, Bardo beat you to it, easy fantasy. They go on about how sexual they are and everything and yeah, Jeremy is thrusting away with his tongue hanging out but what he looks like more than anything else is Ronnie Barker doing Buster Blubvessel singing

I Got Bad Habits, I Don't Clean Up Me Rabbits on the two Ronnies. There's no tingling anyone's loins tonight watching this I'm afraid bad habits. I don't clean up me rabbits on the two. There's no tickling anyone's lines tonight. Watching this, I'm afraid to say, no, not that guy. He looks like the new moon. What frustrates me, right? I wouldn't expect much more than what we get from Jeremy here. So obviously just a self adoring dickhead whose greatest ever achievement was co-writing

everything starts with an E by EZ passing cheers cunt but the woman in this group Kate Garner does have quite an interesting background oh yeah as you said she ran away as a teenager and joined the children of God the creepy hippie Christian cult that ensnared people like Jeremy Spencer from Fleetwood Mac and the families of River Phoenix and Rose McGowan, well adjusted people. And anyone who ever had any connection

with that gaggle of freaks has got some kind of story to tell. Like someone I know whose family was in the British chapter when they were very young and luckily got out in time because it was a sex abuse cult primarily, they once sent me scans of some old Children of God literature that they had, which is basically an ugly porno comic instructing all the women to go flirty fishing Ah, which was your your duty as a female child of God because as well as sleeping with the leaders of the cult Obviously, you were also expected to go out and seduce men in the ordinary world as a way to

Entrap them into the organization, you know a bit like the Manson family or the revolutionary communist party. And also key to the whole thing was the reimagining of Jesus as a sexual being. So when you had sex or masturbated, you should imagine that Jesus was involved in some way. Getting nailed in more senses than one. Anyway, they also took me off to the Children of God pop songs which were used to instruct and inspire the flock because the cult was sealed off from most media and culture, lest it warp their minds, which is how you warp people's minds. So they had their own pop recordings. The most famous being, Kathy Don't

Go to the Supermarket Today, which through the medium of mid-80s sweat bands and cap sleeve t-shirt, US pop rock. This is mid-80s? Yeah. Jesus. is sweat bands and cap sleeve t-shirt US pot rock. This is mid 80s? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jesus. It explains that if you go to a supermarket, you'll get a 666 barcode on your head.

Of course, yes. Or some microchip in your skin so you can be controlled by Satan or something. And it's on YouTube with a load of comments underneath from modern American evangelical Christians Who don't know what it is all saying wow, how did these people from 1985 already know what was going to happen in our time? Because the world is is not getting better also on YouTube are

the surviving episodes of the children of God kids puppet show life with grandpa It's a dramatization of the home life of the cult leader David Berg Which when it comes to hiding in plain sight makes Savile look positively stealthy Uh, and I mean all christian media for has an uncomfortable, creepy edge on it, right? He's fucking having a go at the Sunday gang now. But if we're being charitable, that is sometimes accidental. But this is basically just explicit grooming material, as if the tottering wooden head

puppets on strings were not nightmarish enough by themselves. And so you watch this stuff and it's a very strange but very obvious illustration of how the religious mindset given free rein turns everything into a living hell for women and children every time. That's the inevitable endpoint, the inevitable midway point of any religion, however superficially benign, right?

Like in the early days of Christianity, all the early Christians, including the great heroes like Saint Benedictine and Saint Martin, used to go out with mobs of true believers and systematically and very self-righteously destroy most of the great artistic architectural and literary treasures of the classical world for being unchristian. And what always came in for the worst treatment were the

statues of beautiful naked women like Aphrodite which weren't just decapitated and dismembered like the others but were often sexually mutilated with rocks and chisels because that's always what religion is. It's always toxic masculinity sanctifying itself to make itself untouchable. Now I'm not saying that this record should have been a fucking protest song about the children of God. And I can see that when you've managed to extricate yourself from a cult like that,

you might want to forget it. And it might be quite a relief to concentrate solely on whether John Wayne was or was not big leggy, which in effect is all that this song is about. All I'm saying is it would have been really helpful for this music to contain some acknowledgement of the real weirdness in this world as experienced by at least half of hazy fantasy rather than just smirking, preening, look at me, bullshit.

That's all, would have been nice. And failing that, just do Cathy, don't go to the supermarket today, because that would have been a fucking great. Actually, it would have been good to have had more cult survivors in shit 80s pop groups. Yeah. That's a much needed intrigue to Kajagoogoo.

If Nick Beggs had escaped from Jonestown. At this point I was gonna tell you a Reverend Jim Jones joke, but the punchline is too long. Well, all I can say is that I didn't have sex for a fortnight after. Well, all I can say is that I didn't have sex for a fortnight after... No, me neither. All the fortnights after that and so on and so forth. Whether that's on Hay to Fantasia, I don't know.

And watching this, chaps, it's easy to assume that someone else is watching this at home when he went out laughing to himself and thinking, just wait till they get a load of me. Boy George, because yes, he was Jeremy Healy's former neighbour during the squat years, and they spent three weeks working together at Chingford Fruit Packers in 1976, but they both walked out on the job when they were told they weren't allowed to clock off early

to see Patti Smith at the Roundhouse. But no, because things weren't going too well for Culture Club in the late summer of 1982. Three singles put out, three flops, record label on their backs, and he was on the verge of turning his back on the music scene to the extent that he was angling for a presenting gig on the Tube round about this time. Quote from his first autobiography. To add to the depression, Hazy Fantasys debut single, John Wayne's Big Leg Air, was being played on Radio 1. It became the soundtrack to my despair, slowly climbing the charts and staying there for 10 weeks niggling at my psyche I knew it was a good record to clever Original and very annoying. I wanted to retire when I saw the video on Saturday morning kids TV

I couldn't believe they had a video and we didn't so yeah, there you go They almost achieved something Look we can coat this down all day long But even this sort of thing demonstrates how brilliant pop music was in the early 80s Because here come another load of weirdo chances trying to cash in and the pop craze youngsters of the day Happily wave it through into the charts because all chances trying to cash in and the pop crazy youngsters of the day happily wave it through into the charts because all you have to do in 1982 is to be new and different and you'll be given a fair go. If you're a boy George you get a career out of it and

if you're hazy fantasia you get a chance to fall over on national television whilst pretending to be a Dickensian rasta, Paul Nicholas Nickel Bear if you will. But oh god things were so much better then. Yeah ultimately what's really infuriating is that this could have been a much better record with not that much tweaking because it's not just lazy cliche know, it is a chaos of suggestion and it is Lively and unhinged and it has some of the superficial characteristics of an interesting record And you know that more thought has gone into this than went into I eat cannibals. Yes, but it's poisoned by its own Smug narcissism, which is why it's not even half the record that that is. And I remember this song very well indeed when it was out,

but if you'd never heard of these people and you just saw the song title and you heard the first few bars, you'd think, oh, what's this freaky early eighties hit? I bet this is great. And it lets you down in just the most horrifying way imaginable it's like if one day you were strolling past a wall

and you saw Humpty Dumpty and you thought oh it's Humpty Dumpty great you started chatting delightedly to him and then suddenly hatched like his face tore open mid sentence and a lizard with a flicking tongue crawled from the glute that came pouring out of his half egg body. Although that would at least be an interesting experience. If that happened to you, would you take a bit of his shell home with you to prove that you'd seen it happen or would you not have the heart? Like even if it was a bit with some of his face on it. Oh or even more valuable.

Yeah also his clothes hanging off like a bit of his trousers. He did have trousers on didn't he? Sort of yeah. I can't remember. I don't actually know if Humpty Dumpty's legs are part of the oval structure or just growths, just floppy offshoots you know. No well Humtay in play school had legs. That's true but it's hard to determine. He had some very semiotic trousers. Yes. Well didn't he David? Yes yes as I recall. Yeah they're quite small though. Like no wonder he sat on a wall his knees would be

fucked in two minutes if he actually tried to walk anyway. I hate him, he's a wankerly Humpty Dumpty. Oh man! No, no, no, I never trusted him. Who does he think he is? Fucking Egg trying to tell me what to do. Big hazy fantaisey fan as well, he loved them. Humpty fan Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty is Big Egg. As anyone who's had a cursory glance at the music press will know chaps, Kate Garner is responsible for the band's distinctive look. And yes, she's very keen to put over the fact that she makes her rig out herself using old clothes or jazzing up items from Topshop. You know, a very make do and mend ethos.

So she must be delighted to hear that their label, Regard Records, have already taken the money that Hazy Phantasy are currently making and ploughed it into a shirt that cost £1000 for the lead singer of their latest signing, Savar Savar. You must remember them. Oh, God, yeah. They make Kajagoogoo look like a ghetto boys and singer who looks like the little brother that Brian Setzer doesn't like talking about he's going to be wearing that shirt pretty much non-stop as they

promote their debut single where's Romeo but it only got to number 49 in October and yeah that shirt must have funged. Yeah that shirt was his combined birthday and Christmas present. £1000! Yeah. So the following week John weighing his big leg he jumped six places to number 16 and a week later it began a two-week stint at number 11. The follow-up, Holy Joe, only got to number 51 in November, but the ship was righted somewhat when Shiny Shiny got to number 16 in February of 1983, released as the lead-off single for their debut LP, Battle Hymns for Children

Singing. But that only got to number 53 in the album chart that month and when the follow-up single Sister Friction struggled to number 62 that June, Hayes Air realised they'd had their days there and split up. Both Garner and Healy released solo singles in the aftermath of the split and both flopped. Paul Kaplan went off to manage and co-write songs for another former neighbor, Marilyn, including Calling Your Name, before giving up music and launching the Kaplan Cybernetics Corporation,

which developed hardware and peripherals and whatnot. Garner went back into photography and as mentioned, Healy became a club DJ and a member of the EZ posse, which took Everything Starts with an E to number 15 in March of 1990, as well as being the person behind HWA, Hedgehog with Attitude, which put out the Sega cash-in single Super Sonic in December of 1992. He also married Patsy Kensett for about six months in the 2000s. Poor old Patsy. I know.

I suppose when you're used to eating decomposed rat slurry, drinking piss with scabs in it seems pretty good by comparison. Kate Garner had a pretty good career post-hazy when she actually left the music business. Yeah. I was trying to think who she looked like and then the penny suddenly dropped. In her actual face bones she looks really a lot like somebody I matched with on a dating app once who then drifted away evidently bored by my dreary conversation skills so much that I went back to the abandoned chat thinking okay I'll ask her are you related to the

woman out of hazy fantasy whichever way that answer goes it should at least wake her up a bit but she'd block me so we'll never know Get in touch if you listen Oh, no, Vins doesn't make you spit. That's Hazy Fantasy at number 22, John Wayne, his big leggy. I've always thought so myself. These are other fine people over here, our Wavelength. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Peel comments on the malnourishment of Azifanteza before introducing us to some rather fine people.

Their wavelength with Hurry Home. Formed in London in 1980, Wavelength was signed to Arista Records in 1981 and had this song, written by Steve Thompson, who had worked with Venom and Tigers of Pantang, lined up as their debut single after it was originally offered to Sheena Eastern, who fucking hated it. It was slated for release in late 1981, but Arista got cold feet when they realised it would be lost in the Christmas deluge of releases, so their actual debut, Rio, no not that one, came out earlier this year and failed to chart. But then, on March 19th, a party of Argentinian scrap metal workers with a group of Marines disguised as scientists landed on the Falkland Islands, established a camp, ran up an Argentinian flag and started going

about as if they owned the place, which led to a full invasion two weeks later, round about the time Arista decided to line this up for release. After a very slow build, picking up airplay on local radio, the band were drafted onto David Essex's showcase on the last Saturday of June where they went up against Pookie Snackenburger, Harry Dickman and the Bell Stars. They didn't win but a connection was made between the song and the return of Our Boys. It finally entered the charts of Fortnite later later at number 68, by which time Mike Reed, the fourth incarnation of the Radio 1 Breakfast show host, started playing it to death and

it began an intensive yomp of the charts. This week it's a non-mover at number 27, but we urgently need something a bit less bumsexualer, so here they are in the studio and all of a sudden boys we've been pitched back to 1978, both in song and presentation don't you think? Yeah, there's a sort of dilute element of Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are I suppose about this in some respects. Yeah, in terms of the kind of look yeah, the look, the sound, that

kind of, it's a dirts, that dismal semolina of harmonies and soft as shite electric keyboards. It's the anti relax, isn't it? You know, as far as Mike Reed picked up on it. Yeah. It's tense up. Yeah. First of all, we've got to describe the presentation. Of course, yes. Now, I'm generally strongly in favour of videos and TV performances where the members of the group play roles and dress up as characters. And I like it when Top of the Pops creates a little set for them to inhabit. Yes. Like Driver 67 in his pretend taxi or a...

Toast. Yeah, toast. Or the brat dressed up as John McEnroe doing chalk dust the umpire strikes back in a mock-up tennis court. But this creation of a smoky late night bar room scene on the top of the pop stage is so half-assed with that civil servant faced charisma vacuum singer as the lonely guy in a raincoat. And they can't even get that right because he should be leaning on the bar confiding in

the barman as the barman dries the glasses with a teatime set him up Joe yeah yeah not standing next to the bar staring in a space and singing to nobody because you'd get thrown out get a pint in man you'd be standing there doing that this is a skewer i think you've had enough sir also why is he wearing his raincoat indoors yes it's a bit of a tone deaf stage setting isn't it? Because you know, if you're pining for your partner to come home, where should you be? At fucking home waiting for them. The overall effect here is that some bloke's missus has gone back to her mother's and he

refuses to touch anything in the kitchen and is now living on cheese cobs in the pub but the setting's so kind of like ornate that I don't think they do cheese cobs in this bar. No no no triangular white bread cheese sandwich. And what if his Mrs. decides to come home and she's on the bus back and she happens to look through the window and she sees her husband standing in the middle of that wine bar that's just up and that people are having the doubts about singing with a load of blokes she's gonna turn right round start roaring to a mam and you know there's gonna be a phone call to the solicitors in the morning yeah bad form mate bad form yeah and not a very original look for a man singing an

overdramatized early eighties ballad either. I looked it up, this is actually before the Bitterest Pill video and before the All of My Heart video. Yes. But it is two years after Vienna, which I suspect was something of an influence here. It's like you've heard of Ultravox, well here's ordinary vox.

Somebody thought, oh that Ultra Vox video was cool, but mid-year was just a bit too charismatic. Let's get John Kirby to stand there in his dirty Mac, looking like he'd be alone even with a strand. Yes. At the end of the song, he should have flashed because it couldn't have made it any worse. Yes.

So the singer is the lonely guy in a raincoat, the pianist is the pianist and I can't believe they put the one black guy in the band in the service role. Come on chaps you made him the barman. Think of the optics. And yeah the profusion of dealyboppers down the front is not exactly Whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a-whack-a is so uncharismatically bedraggled. He looks like he's Yugoslavia's biggest rock star. You know what I mean? Just not quite right. He's got that haircut which is so incredibly 1982. The contemporaneous Phil Collins cut is what it is. Like a thinning parting at the front and then a mini mullet.

Like not long enough at the back to be flamboyant, just enough to look shit. And people forget this was the standard haircut for men between 25 and 45. Quite a large section of the 80s, wasn't it? Like usually with cheap knitwear and gray slacks or pale blue jeans on Saturdays. It was what you had if you didn't have enough hair

for the swept over, hair sprayed down, blonde side parting like Kid Jensen. You know what I mean? The David Soul Russian doll, right? Is David Soul, then inside him is Kid Jensen, then inside him is Manimal, then inside him is Kelly Monteith, and inside him is face from the a-team

Well, we don't know what's beyond that because all survivors turn back at this point But you either had that hair or you had the rounded side parting that's bigger at the sides than the top like Wogan Half covering years like a big flap of hair over the top half of the ear and with the bottom half of the ear exposed. So it looks like a kind of gill. Do you know what I mean? If you didn't have enough hair left for those terrible haircuts, you had this terrible haircut if you were a CNA zilch, you know. But at least he doesn't actually look like the homemade AI upscale on this episode when it gets horribly confused by the dry ice drifting in front of his face and

reshapes it into the face of Johan De Witt in the corpses of the Devitt brothers by Yandabahn Some people say you can't win with highbrow cultural references, but I say give the audience a chance. But in the actual event what he really looks like is a non-league football manager just stood on the sidelines in his raincoat, hands in pockets, staring blankly into the fray, bereft of ideas. Yeah, this is 80s man in all his blankness. Around this time I actually had a Mohican. No!

Precisely in protest of all of the haircuts that Taylor... Fucking hell, I never knew this! I certainly did and it was well semiotic, yeah. That's literally the opposite of the haircut you've got now. Yes, absolutely. A shirt and tie, an overcoat and a Mohican. It was all a-touching congruous. How wide was it?

Was it like a Joe Strummer one? It wasn't right to the top. It wasn't like a kind of sort of bicycle tyre type job. It was absolutely right at the sides and at the back with a big sort of Morrissey type quiff, you know, semi perched atop. What did your grandad say? Oh, he'd long passed by that point. Just as well.

I mean, you know, he'd probably be turning in his grave at at his urn definitely. When did you get rid of that haircut? Was it when the real rain did finally come and washed all the scum off his face? Yes. Do you know what actually that is about the newest yes yes if you think of the De Niro Mohican it was very much like that. But anyway this song it was made for extremely early morning radio wasn't it you know the kind of thing that would be slotted in between Chicago and Randy Van Warmo very late night minicab FM produced by Christopher Neal renaissance man of worthless British bilge yes star of the sex thief and adventures of a plumber's mate and I mean one thing you can say for this is that it's a fairly authentic facsimile of itself

You know bell like electric piano sound and the processed harmonies They are late 70s sounds really but at the same time of all the records on this top of the pops This one is the harbinger. Yeah, you know the least forward looking track on the episode is the best representation of what was to come in the next few years in terms of the normalization of dad-friendly AOR, you know, aging guys who look like office plankton thinking that they can perform, you know. After a thrilling false start the 80s were only gonna get more like this.

I'm just intrigued by this idea of it being big in the Falklands and being popular among the soldiers. It's not the soldiers that are buying it, David. I doubt there were many child return shops in Goose Green. It's for them who wait at home for them, isn't it? Because wavelength are the 1982 version of Military Wives. Well that was surprising, yeah. I imagine the grown men capable of doing a thousand press ups and lugging a 100 pound backpack across difficult terrain, weeping puddles of tears in the barracks. No, you're very wide in the mark there David. What our lads in the Falklands want is David Van Dey doing a cartwheel to a karaoke version of Ola Morgh. Yeah. It's just as well, I mean if that were the case, it's just where the Argentinian

forces didn't see them. Hey look at the little softies. I mean if they'd seen them listening to this then I think a 99 year old General Galtieri would be president of the Malvinas today. And it's an indication that wars now have fuck all impact on the charts from here on in because what did the Falklands war give us this and shipbuilding pretty much terrible and how does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead of course yes what do we get out of the Iraq war shoot the dog yeah shoot the dog that was it fucking up wars who what are they good for? say it again Al yes do you remember seeing this right like do you remember

seeing this on top of the pops because normally this stuff sticks in your memory right you always remember when there's a set and they've got costumes and they're i got no memory of this at all i remember seeing this episode but this kind of thing it's a piss break yeah by 1982 isn't it yeah or you just zone it out and don't bother to sort of file it in your memory I'd have gone downstairs to me no one asked kitchen for another handful of fun-sized Mars bars no doubt see I'm pretty sure that I would have remembered this and the fact that I don't I can only conclude this must be an example of the Mandela effect oh yes since an inexplicable tear in the fabric of reality is more

probable than me ever not knowing anything yeah having an imperfect long term memory I saw some people talking about the Mandela effect once online and I contributed the suggestion that it should actually be called the Ohulahan effect because everyone can clearly remember his name actually being Nelson Ohulahan. You don't fool me. Malignant forces tampering with our past. And another example of David Essex being the kingmaker of pop at the moment fucking hell. First Toto Koelo, now this. I mean do you remember David Essex's showcase? I'd completely forgotten about it and when the words David Essex's showcase I completely forgotten about it and when the words David Essex showcase popped up while I was doing my research for this

all I could see was rows and rows of 70s knickers stretched out on metal hoops like pinned butterflies. Yeah it is one of the most comprehensively forgotten of old primetime TV programs. Sad D sad to see time make primetime. Yeah, no memory of that either. Yeah, basically it was a talent show, yeah, hosted by David Essex with a bespoke theme tune by Jeff Wayne. Well, it's not that bespoke,

it's just a remake are going to make you a star, which of course Jeff Wayne originally produced, but anyway. And each week, yeah, the studio audience picked the winner from a sorry set of cunts. and of course they always managed to pick the worst act because they're the public and it's quite entertaining but there are a few disagreeable things about this program right one of them being the title which

is written oh David Essex showcase E S S E X apostrophe with no s after it yeah is that correct only one of us here went to Oxford David is that technically correct incorrect yeah yeah that's what I thought yeah I mean you should never get yourself into a position like that with the English language in the first place right right? No. Because the language is extensive enough. There's always a way around these things. The first rule of writing back in the days before the internet was there to help you check stuff, if you're not sure if the grammar or the punctuation or whatever it is, rephrase the sentence and bypass the problem. Right? You could call it...

The David Essex Showcase. There we go. The David Essex Showcase, or David Essex Presents, or, but no, it had to be his showcase, and therefore the possessive was imperative, and we had to wrestle with this ex-apostrophe shambles. And it's such a needless problem, because it's not even his real name. Yeah. Like, you wanna say with me, if you hadn't dishonored your father's line like that You wouldn't have to worry about these things or if you must pick a classier County

Yeah, one that doesn't have a freak letter in the end David Hereford show David County Durham then have your fucking show But the dodgy thing about this program is that it's actually quite hard to tell how many of these supposedly unknown acts, especially the singers, are actually hopeful amateurs from Clubland, which is what we're supposed to believe,

and how many of them are just new major label signings being pushed on the BBC. I suspect a mixture. Well I can help you there Taylor because in the episode that Wavelength's on David Essex says at the beginning that all the acts on tonight already have in his words a street level cult following. So if you ever heard a gang of skinheads bellow, Wavelength Army, or wonder why all those punks in the Market Square had Barbara Rosenblatt on the backs of their leather jackets in tippex.

Now you know. This is what I was gonna say. I thought I couldn't remember Wavelength, and then I realized I actually saw them about a year ago when I watched the complete run of the David Essex Showcase. But they're so unmemorable, partly because they're on a relatively star-studded episode.

As I say, it's got the Bell Stars, Boogie Snack and Burger, and the disconcertingly bombastic Barbara Rosenblatt, who had she ever progressed to top of the pops, may well have become a minor chart music icon. Video playlist. Quite the performer. It's astonishing. rest the top of the pops may well have become a minor chart music icon video playlist quite the performance astonishing but wavelength are on immediately after the low camp comedian Harry Dick man who is a hard act to follow because the silence he leaves behind him is

so thick you have to tunnel through but there But they're a wavelength doing this song, miming it, mind you, in their civies, gimmick free, which is much worse. And it helps you understand why they did this little theatrical number on top of the pops. Because the lead singer is wearing a pale blue granddad shirt and Andy Peebles specs. The tall backing singer is in a pink and blue striped short sleeved shirt, Homer Simpson cut, pleated buff chinos.

Basically if you threw in a few packs of Benson and Edges and a jacket with dandruff on the shoulders it would look like a secondary school staff room jam. So when the audience vote at the end, they vote for Ricky Patrick, the one act on this show who would never at any point become successful or amusing. It's such an anti climax that David has to quickly get the white tux on and sing nightclub it. So of course, at least some kind of finale because god bless him you know but you know what they say be nice to David Essex on the way up because you'll be in cabaret with him on the way down and the other

interesting thing is that there are six members of Wavelength on David Essex apostrophe showcase and here on top of the pops there are a mere five oh so some poor sods obviously been taken to one side between then and now and told oh sorry mate but you just haven't got the charisma to be in a band like Waverly. Anything else to say? Because if there is get it in now because this is the only time they appeared on top of the pops. Ultimately look I'll tell you an interesting fact about Jimmy Young. Jimmy Young, the Radio 2 DJ and recipe pimp who was so unnaturally straight-laced and ultra conservative in his manner, you always knew that he was a weirdo. Jimmy Young's last wish was that before he was buried his

body should be given a lethal injection. What? Presumably to make sure that he wasn't buried alive. Right. He must have thought about it a lot and stuff like that is what's always lay beneath the smooth surface of Radio 2 and its cultural descendants right and I would say the more that stuff is acknowledged and represented within middle-of-the-road culture the more worthwhile that culture is because we can all think of creepy middle-of-the- road stuff which benefits from a dark undercurrent right whereas if you wipe middle-of-the-road culture clean of neurosis and suppressed terror and

substitute in boring everyman self-pity, you just end up with brown lettuce leaves like fucking Hurry Home by Wavelength, to which I say go fish. Like the scientist in Solaris says, don't turn a scientific problem into a common love story. So, the following week, Hurry Home jumped 10 places to number 17, its highest position. The follow-up, Thank You for the Parterre, failed to do anything at all and they never troubled the chart again, splitting up in 1983. So we will never see wavelength ever again, but we may just see that bar and that piano later on, perhaps.

Oh, and I've checked online about Jimmy Young's final wish, Taylor, and I'm afraid to say it's all bollocks. In actual fact, he requested that lethal injection by ice cube just be played at his funeral so yeah that's cleared that up. Specifically asked for cave bitch as he went down the conveyor belt. And with that out of the way, we're going to step back and gird our loins for the final plunge into this outstanding episode of Top of the Pops. Just a reminder, if you want to submerge your head further into the bucket of 1982, we've put together a massive video playlist.

Everything we've listened to, everything we've seen, everything we've talked about, it's all there. Yes, there's Private Spy, yes, there's Super Dad, yes, there's Noel Edmonds trying to kill John Poo and yes there is Barbara Rosenblatt. Do not miss out on that. Fucking hell. So get your ass over to youtube.com slash chart music podcast one word and slay cure first. And oh yeah just a quick update Tickets for the live show going fast now. So if you want in,

get your thumb out your arse, mashout kingsplace.co.uk and lay your money down. Anyway, my name's Al Needham and if you're not staying pop crazed, you disgust me.