Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #76 (Pt 4): 12.8.82 – Humpty Dumpty Is Big Eggy

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

David Stubbs, Taylor Parkes and Al Needham – still far too young, still far too clever – finish off this outstanding episode of The Pops, and are delighted to learn that at this point even Michael Hurll has had enough of Zoo, as he’s pushed them to the side to make way for some Moroccan tumblers. The Fun Boy 3 attempt to land the summer hit of the year, The Firm put themselves onto a nice little earner, and the Number One single of the week could not be more perfect.  AINCHER GOT THE KETTLE ON YET, Pop-Crazed Youngsters?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 this in a second? Um, chart music. Chart music. It's Thursday night. It's about two minutes to eight.

It's August the 12th, 1982, and this episode at Top of the Pox is so eventful and skilled that Parliament has been recalled tonight to debate whether or not to suspend the school holiday for tomorrow morning so that the youth can have an extended talk in the playground about it because it's that fucking good. Hey, up, you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to the final part of episode 76 of charm music.

I'm Al-Nidem, and myself, David Stubbs, and Taylor Pox are gagging to run headlong into the remainder of this episode, so come with us or get out the way. Chah! That's wave-length boys and girls, not next on top of the pubs for zoo And as a special treat, The Hasani Troop of Moroccan Tumblers

I never drink from anything else. The music provided by Cool and the Gang. Peel! By now completely surrounded by the kids, immediately points us in the direction of Big Fun by Cool and the Gang. With covered Robert Bellanies makes many a time and off on chart music, and this their 10th dent upon the UK chart, is the follow-up to Take My Heart, Open Brackets,

you can have it if you want it, close brackets, which only got to number 29 in March. It's the lead-off cut from their 14th album, As One, which comes out next month, it's entered the chart last week at number 47, and this week it's soared 24 places to number 23. Sadly, they're currently in New Orleans getting ready to partake in the Budweiser Superfest

at the Louisiana Superdome, alongside Ashford and Simpson, James Ingram, Mays, Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder, so here's where the zoo-wankers usually come in. But by this point, even Michael Hurl has clearly had enough of them. So he's cashed in all his tiger tokens and got a full set of Moroccan tumblers. Otherwise known as the Hassani troop from Chessington Circus. Fucking hell.

Ali Asane was the man who put them together. And fucking hell, what a life he had. He was born in Marrakech in 1927, was already working in a baker's shop at the age of six, when he was asked by a trooper tumblers if he wanted to learn how to do it. He said, yeah, so they kidnapped him and employed him as the one at the top of the massive pyramid as they toured the Sahara.

Ended up in the UK in the early 50s in a troop that toured with Billy Smart Circus, by which time he was the one at the bottom, middle of the pyramid. He got married to Coco the Clown's daughter. He formed his own troop, did pantos and circuses all over Europe. He saved a child from a bearer to circus one time And a few years ago He set up the first Animal Free Circus in the UK

Couldn't tell you if he's here in the studio or not But he probably is I mean because even though he's 55 in 1982 He can still tumble with the best of them And they're fucking mint, aren't they? Yeah, that's performance, yeah, yeah I think Animal Free Circus I mean I suppose I'm from a generation

Where it's not really a circus If there's not a bear in a tutu Or a boxing kangaroo but yeah there you go yeah little elephant riding a bike yeah still at least when they hired these tumblers they didn't make the same mistake as culture club and end up with gay shame

blue peter flop the late michael sunding yeah poor guy lost under the moving wheels of time I just think that he's cool and the gang and I do honest to think that they're good as they are look I mean they're Moroccan they tumble they do exactly what it says in their trousers but I think they deserve better than this sort of circus tent type paragon It's like plate spinning to earth, wind and fire. He wouldn't do it.

It's kind of disrespectful, and he doesn't really suggest a desire to do justice to cool in a gang with something special, but they don't really give a shit about cooling a gang. No. But this is an indication, chaps, that the members of zoo are going to be crated up and sent to the catamete factory before too long.

Clearly, Michael Hurls had enough, and they're rapidly and literally becoming side action, you know, just like legs and co-were in their dying days. We have some of the female zoo wankers on platforms, in Leotons doing some mad Lizzie bollocks getting in the way of some Moroccan lads flinging themselves about on a suitably patterned floor which just makes them look like they're performing

on a massive plate from habitat giant Masonic symbol painted on the floor hiding in plain sight bloody BBC you know what BBC stood for British paedophile corporation I mean at the end of the show Only four of Zua mentioned in the credits. Jenny, Jule, Marcia and Bonte.

Oh, here she is, fucking Bonte. Last week, they danced in front of the video of Love is in control by Donna Summer on the big screen. And next week, they're lost in the crowd as they failed to do some ballroom dancing to cherry pink and apple blossom white by modern romance. They would strangle on, and City Farm would still provide a weekly irritant.

but the writing's on the wall because, yes, the Hassani troop are doing the same thing over and over like Zhu, but unlike Zoo, they're actually fucking good at it. There are. There'll be a lot of the youth watching this who've heard about this thing called break dancing, looking at this and going,

oh, I could cop some of these moves, I think. Yeah, it's just yet more of the sort of thing that you've got in this superfluous exuberance, really. I mean, again, it's cooling the gag. You sashet to cool the guy. You groove to cooling the gang. You don't do somersaults to cool them. I think Michael Earl's gone straight for the hook of the song here.

You know, the massive laughs, which makes calling the gang sound like they're in the studio with their hands on the bellies and throwing back their heads like Genghis Khan, the man and the Eurovision entrant, as they go, ah, ha, ha. And he thought, well, Mongolia, Morocco. It's all the same into it. Alas, we never got a top of the pop's performance by Jenghis Khan. Plenty of him on German TV, if you know what to look for.

I like the way this sequence is really only there to humiliate zoo and make them look like the frizz-haired nobodies that they are. Exactly. The least important letter of the alphabet followed by two zeros. And what could best improve a call in the gang record? Some crazy acrobatts and the humiliation of zoo. Yeah. That's it.

Some tumbling and some humbling. And because it would be unrealistic, to expect Bigfoot to lumber onto the stage, dragging Noel Edmonds in one mighty poor and Davely Travis in the other, and stand in the middle of the studio, smashing their skulls together for three minutes in time with the music, while the audience granny clapped along with it.

Yes. I'll take this. Yeah, you can moan about this all you want, David, but fucking hell, imagine if Zhu were actually given the floor for this. True. It's cooling the gang going off the boil, though, and what was I listening to by calling the gang the other day? Oh, Summer Madness with that spectacularly gross synth line,

like bursting through the smoothness, like Jack Nicholson's face coming through the bathroom door. You know what I was great. And that's what this is missing. If we're going to be hypercritical, that kind of action within the music. Because obviously, just as a groove, this is a great deal better than most of what we're hearing on this program.

Because this episode, it's not a funky show this week, is it? I just think, you know, 982, they've not blended out yet completely, but we've got to that point with Cooling the gang where the records have lost that extra bit of action, which made them stand out. It's like this track's got a whole lot of everything and not enough of the main thing, like having one arm but three shoulders, you know.

That's still a lot better than most of the headless and limbless torso I was floating in the cloudy reservoir of summer 1982. So more power of their elbow. More power of their solitary elbow. But, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, it's not the best calling the gang record is. No, but it's not fucking cherish. No, it's not. This is the thing. It's just, it's worth it just to have a little bit of a groove on this episode and just to witness fucking elbows and co. getting shown up

the way they deserve to be. Yes. It's kind of a reality. It's a really, it's an unmemorable disco record. It's one that hasn't lasted absolutely through the ages. I think at the time, everyone assumed that like records like this, you know, or even the best up by killing a gang, yeah, they'd calm and it would go. And what students of music would really be studying decades down the line is the keyboard works of Tony Banks and Genesis and stuff like that. And it's kind of the other way around. So the following week, Big Fun jumped eight places to number 15 and a week later would begin a two-week stand at number four. The follow-up,

Ooh la-l-la-la-la, let's go dancing, would chart all the way up to number six in November, and they'd have eight more top 40 hits before the decade was out. And the Hassani troop would not only return to Top of the Pops in 1983 to do a massive human pyramid to IOU by freeze, but also appear in the James Bond film Octopus Air in the same year. Ah! Ha! Ha! ha! ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Why do they all look like John McEnroe, though? I think we should be told. The charts.

Number 30, bamboo music, bamboo houses, Sylvian and Sakamoto. 29, a big favourite of Peelakers, videotech, Dolo. At 28, the Steve Miller band. and abracadabra. 27 wavelength, that's hurry home. 26, summertime, and the living is easy. The Fun Boy, Three. 25, 18-carat love affair, the Associates.

A 24, night train, visage. 23, big fun, cool in the gang. 22, John Wayne is apparently big legy, hazy fantesi. And at 21, can't take my eyes off you, the Boys Down Gang. Beautiful Red, now we're going to whirl you back in time, and space to number 26, the Fun Boy 3. Somertime, Somer Time, Summertime, Summertime, Summer Time, and the living is easy. Peel throws us into the first third of the top 30, and once again,

Michael Hill has let us write down by offering mainly decent band pictures. There were a couple of standouts, though. Wave length looked like the victims of a horrific accident at the plasticine factory. One of them has his face shared off from under the eyebrows. Peel Biggs Up Dollar, for folks' sake. Oh, yeah. It's so easy to forget that David Van Day was seen as part of the new Pop Vanguard, wasn't it? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And there's a shockingly poor photo of the Boys Town gang with an extra woman, squashes all those rumours. Yes. We return to Peel, now surrounded by a very delighted Hassani troop, who are clearly wondering whether to kidnap him or not,

as Peel grabs our collective wrists and throws us into summertime by the Fun Boy Three. We've done Neville, Linville and Terry a timer two on chart music, and this, a cover of the George Gershwin song that was written in 1934 for Paul Guy and Best,

which was taken to number number 39 by Billy Stewart in September of 1969 is the follow-up to the telephone always rings, which got to number 17 in June of this year. It's a stopgap single between their last LP, Fun Boy 3, and their next, waiting, which they've already started on.

It's entered the charts at number 56 a fortnight ago, then sought 25 places to number 31, and this week it's jumped another five place. sister number 26 so here they are in the studio and chaps it's only a year away from ghost town but with this their 11th appearance on top of the pops in nine months it's safe to say that terry and his chums have got as far away from the specials as possible by now yeah we've got used to seeing them we're in actual colours uh we know that neville isn't suddenly going to bark instructions at us and fucking oh look they've got women on stage with poncy instruments and they actually

look happy what's going on yeah i mean yeah there is a sort of contentment there but i mean i just i miss the specials and things like this really would have made me feel you know that i miss the specials yeah it just feels kind of lazy and loush i mean you know terry hall's low any to levels that loush is obviously what he's kind of about but it works in the specials when you surrounded by bloats in tight black trousers and white socks bouncing around in a scar frenzy You know, it's about that counterpoint When you bring it down to this downbeat energy level It just feels like an ill-through-stabbit tile

You know, like rope in some strings and shit I can't imagine people buying this out of a dull habit really Rather than being enthralled by it I mean it's sort of fair enough The rest of the band are sort of cavorting around To an imaginary tune in their heads But this just feels like music To put your hands in your pockets too

And then there's a bloody trombone solo Which is an absolutely dear Oh man This is one of my favourite songs and I can enjoy most versions of it and obviously I also like Fun Boy 3 but the combination of these two things is a bit onions and custard in it

at first you might think well maybe it will work because it's quite a downbeat song for a downbeat singer but the trouble is this song requires a very expressive downbeat vocal to really work which is why Janice Joplin's version is probably my favourite. And for all

the wonderfully complimentary things we could say about terry all and have said about terry all big expressive non-mumbled vocal performances were never really is forte so okay so you think well all right let's try this song with an understated mumbled vocal does it work no but here it is and it's the a side of their new single it's a shame you know what i mean is and i although i don't think this is what it was, it has the feel of a record company's suggestion. Do you know what I mean? You know, like when bands on majors would complain about this in Smash It's as they started to slide down the dumper, right? Their artistic freedom credit ran out and somebody with an office and a desk would lay down the law, usually the wrong law. It was always really funny when

record companies stepped in and started giving orders like, you know, you've not had a hit for six months so enough of your babyish creative judgment that we signed you for it's time for the people who really know what they're doing to to lean over and take the wheel and their suggestion is always like do a lennon mccartney cover or re-release that single that flopped last year or change your style to a style that lots of other people are already doing and it's completely foreign to you and everything you do well and this has something of that about it except that that's not what it was because that's not where they were

they hadn't even put out tunnel of love yet they hadn't even put out our lips are sealed this is right in the middle of Funboy 3's short flight a bit of unexpected turbulence but no harm done

just some Diet Coke sloshed over the top of the half size plastic beaker onto the fold down table check the stewardess's face is they don't have bothered, it's fine. I mean, it's disappointing, but, you know,

everyone deserves to be disappointed sometimes, especially us. Yeah. Well, the label thought this was going to be an absolutely massive hit, and we're playing it up as such, and yeah, it didn't really turn out like that. No.

But it's an example of how comfortable the Fun Boy 3 are now doing covers like this. And with other songs it did, there's a track on the next album that I'd never heard before until I started researching for this, we're having all the fun. Do you know that one?

No. It's got lyrics on it like, I live in a flat, I like Manchester United, I live with my girlfriend and my cat, we're really up here. I like watching television

wearing duffel coats and moccasins, eating crispy pancakes and having mundane haircuts. Now, if that was a special song, it would be like stereotypes, you know, a coat down of the normals, but it's actually Terry Hall going, this is me, this is what I like,

and I'm perfectly content. And each of them gets a verse. We learn that Linville likes gardening, walking his dog and spending all evening in the pub, and Neville likes getting caned and wearing leather trousers and kung fu shoes. And you just think, who are you having to go at? And it's like, no, if they're having to go at anyone,

they're having to go at themselves. I never progressed as far as that Fun Boy 3 album. It sounds good, though. Yeah. I mean, it's not the best version of summertime. My favourite is Miles Davis. Yeah, me too. But it's definitely the first time I heard the song,

and it was, oh, this is all right. Yeah, it's kind of hard to make a completely horrible record if it's a version of summertime, you know, a pretty good song, let's face it. I mean, I think summertime, I think, you know, a really good version of it has to be kind of re-weighted with a sort of bleak melancholy. Yeah, like the Booker T version.

And this is just, it's kind of mid-tempo, it's just at the wrong pace. It just doesn't have that. So, yeah, it's a stopgap single. It's just keeping them in the public eye. And, you know, from our perspective, as citizens of the far future, The Fun Boy 3 were very much the take a letter, Mr Jones, to the specials,

Are You Being Served? But it's a reminder that they were actually leaving a dent on the culture in the summer of 1980. And if you don't believe me, chaps, and you had an older sibling who was trying to get theatre work, you only had to pick up today's issue of the stage. Turn to page 19 and peruse the review of the All Laughter Show at the Blackpool Opera House. As you can imagine, little and larger top in the bill and, oh, look out Toya and Adamant, because Eddie Large is on to you. There's an unknown comedian called Michael Barrymore, who's been tipped for future glory. But for the pop craze youngsters, there's a marionette act called Pepe and Friends, who have introduced a Fun Boy Three puppet show.

Can you imagine such a thing? No, yes. The people who did it actually want to. to do the specials, but they couldn't manage the 50 puppets of skinheads who got on the stage halfway through. But yeah, one of the big bands of 1982. And, like so many big bands of

1982, not long for this world. So the following week, summertime moved up six places to number 18, its highest position. They ducked out of sight for the rest of the year and came back in early 1983 for the follow-up, the more

I see, the less I believe. which took two weeks to get up to number 68 in January and nose dived out of the charts. That's right, summer time, summer time, summer time, in my estimation. That's the fun of day. That's the fun boy three, and I think we'll go back. to the charts now that's all right with you up to 20 the excellent junior and too late 19 the brad chalked us the umpire strikes back at 18 love is in control donna summer 17 David essex me and my girl nightclubbing 16 half a daily he's all right firm at 15 take it away

paul mccartney at 14 it's cliff richard the only way out at 13 da da da da going down Down-down-Trio. At number 12, the clapping song from the Bell Stars. And at number 11, it's Japan. I second that emotion. Back to number 16, the firm, lovable cogniz. Harper Daily, he's all right. There's a guy.

When you're going to leave it out, now, as it's your skin straight up, hurry up, in a run to a night, and a man, what's the time you see, how to lose your right? The Gizuzee with the money and a troubby, yeah, record he's a gypity, I know that. Offa daily, 11 times you mind him even underneath.

He's all right. Peel takes us through part two of the chart rundown. Sadly, nothing to report on the band Pig front, but it pains me to realise that we missed out on chalk dust and me and my girl nightclub in fucking hell, man. Eventually, he introduces Arthur Daylor, E's All right, by the firm. Born in London in 1949,

John O'Connor was a job in guitarist who set up his own studio in Walthamstow in the 70s before falling back into session work with books, Fizz, Maddie Pryor and Eilacent Clear. In early 1982 with the assistance of Muso Paul Graham Lister, he knocked out a song about his favourite television show, Minder, and pitched it at the perfect act to record it, Chas and Dave. After they knocked it back and every other offer he made to other artists were similarly rebuffed, he decided to rope in some more mates, including Tony Thorpe, the original guitarist of the Rubets,

who was currently in the puncher-like club circuit band, the Gas Company, and recorded it themselves under the name The Firm, setting up their own label, Bark Records, named after O'Connor's Studio. After getting permission from Thames Television to use an image of George Cole for the cover and putting it about amongst the media that they'd written the song in Purs, prison and the Daily Mirror falling for it, it entered the charts a month ago at number 56, then jumped 17 places to number 39, and then another 11 places to number 28 when they made their top of the pop's debut. This week, it's nudged up one place to number 17, giving Michael Hill the

chance to repeat their studio performance from a fortnight ago, and we finally get to tuck in to the second installment of the glorious Minder trilogy that is bookended by I could be so good for you and what we're going to get erring doors Hold on here comes chisim And obviously it's the

unofficial one but oh what a performance Can anyone think of a third group in the Rockney genre Because you think there would have to be at least three for it to qualify as a genre in the first place Like with serial killers right you can't just

two people to go down in history but I looked around for a third Rokney artist and we have no such saint in our almanac it's a shame

good Lord no it's not a shame but Minder I mean we're over three months away from the last episode of Series 3 of Minder

which ended with Terry McCann having that splendid bungle on a double-deckered bus with a German John Corre but you can be absolutely sure that the ITV

have put repeats on this summer because fucking how Mind her in 1982. Fucking massive, mate. Yeah. Were you into Minder, David? Very much. Yeah.

Yeah. Everyone was, man. It was mint. Yeah, a complete part of the culture, a complete fan. Yeah. It's strange. Dennis Waterman, actually, when the Sweeney kind of split up, he actually declared his intention was to become a singer, you know, pop star.

That was what he was. Downwind of Angels. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor, in you come. Yeah, the other day, I was re-watching that amazing old clip of Cheapo Holiday Camps in Haling Island in the 7th. And one thing I hadn't noticed before is a reference to one of those camps having a heated sun lounge. And I thought, yeah, Minder is the perfect TV show for the country which had to come up with a concept of a heated sun lounge.

Like shabby and fascinating. And in the same way that the Sweeney is a programme about the kind of policeman who don't exist anymore, chasing the kind of criminals who don't exist anymore. And probably never did. in a London that doesn't exist anymore. Minder is also a window on a lost universe, which was not glorious in itself, but which now looks compelling and weirdly attractive.

And more than that, is there another TV show so perfectly illustrative of what we have lost culturally? But a subtle, mature, understated, humorous, morally ambiguous program, largely by and for the urban working class and lower middle class with mass appeal winning TV Times awards like it ain't no thing.

It wouldn't happen these days because some privileged people would decide that it wouldn't work these days which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And we kind of saw that cultural degeneration happening through the run of mind in real time in the 80s as it sort of lost strength. in its later seasons, especially when Waterman left.

And they replaced him with Gary Webster as Ray Daly, memorably described once on the old one, Saturday comes for him as the Doug Yule of Water Damaged Umbrellas. And it was around the same time that only fools and horses, which for all its great joys was always a broader, dumb-down minder. Even that program was ironing out the detail and falling back on pathos and cornball horseshit, you know, it's a shame. It's a disaster, really, because the bit of minder that I always think of

when I ponder the decline in subtlety and granted intelligence in popular culture is from an episode in series three, which was the series which was just gone out when this record was made. So Arthur is trying to buy what he thinks is a valuable antique fireplace for cheap off a bloke. that he thinks is a mug and he's trying to get the price down. So Arthur points at this fireplace and he says, come on, look at it. Would you want something like that in your house? And the fireplace seller says,

now I've got underfloor heating. And Arthur trying to ingratiate says, well, there you go then. Invented by the Romans, you know. And the bloat says, Ernie, funny that, I bought mine off two Greeks. And the point is, it's not a belly laugh, which nowadays is all we're meant to be able to handle.

It's a subtler laugh than that. And it is a joke that you need some very basic general knowledge to grasp in the first place. And it does show two working class characters talking to each other in a non-stereotypical way about a genuine urban working class experience even though they're both behaving as archetypes.

And it's inconceivable that you'd get that on prime time ITV these days. And you'd have to fight like hell even to get it on Channel 4 at 11 o'clock at night. It could be good. people who run TV cannot get anything outside their own upper middle class experience unless it's cartoonish because they only think of the world outside that experience in cartoon terms. And people underestimate how bad this problem is, right? Like my background is just crappy lower middle class suburbia,

like probably about 60% of the British public. But to modern media people, that's like growing up in. 1880s spittle fields like it's a terrifying mystery to them it really is they think going to a state school is like being in general population at Rikers Island

hence the lack of representation of genuine parole experience in television and media in general it says unless it's either comical in a caricatured way or focused on pure misery and degradation which is something they can fit into their imagination whereas

Minder has that subtlety to it that itself is recognisably and exclusively old school lower class in its smartness and irony and it doesn't just take the techniques of middle class sitcom writing or theatre and impose them on low rent London like a lot of stuff from that time did

it's written in the language of the working and non-working petty criminal class of eight is London but it also has an understanding of the perspective of that class where all the walls are and how the very specific freedoms and lack of freedom informs humour and behaviour and choices and priorities. It's fucking amazing.

Yeah. That's a great programme. I mean, and actually, yeah, a lot of my memories of Minder are these kind of subtle incidental things. Like when he's getting his business cards printed up at the bottom, he said, cheap estimates. Now, I better make that free estimates and things like that. But that's what's interesting when people talk about Minder is,

I remember actually somebody in NME doing an editorial decrying it and only fools and horses because they thought it was actually kind of celebrating the new entrepreneurial, dodgy, sort of ducking and diving spirit of facturism and the 80s. But I don't think it's really like that at all for various reasons. I mean, first of all, Arthur Daly is really a creature of the 1950s, much as Del Boy is a creature actually for 1960. You know, they're very much who are kind of sort of still operating in the 80s. Whereas, you know, the camp point, like Terry McCann, I think, he's kind of 70s bloke.

Nicholas Lindhernd, as Rodney, he's just like this kind of, you know, whereas Del Boy has got all that kind of like indomitable optimism of the 60s, Nicholas Lindelhurst is like an early 80s creature who feels like there's pretty much no future. So I don't think it's really, you know, about those kind of things at all, you know. And also there's kind of fundamental kindness, you know, in mind it through Terry McCann. You know, that wonderful scene where the kid comes around and he's buying his car It's one of Arthur Daly's dodgy vehicles, whatever. And he just says to him, look, you don't want to be fired a car from him.

It was your first one. Your first car should be something really, really special, you know, and sends him on his way. But, yeah, I don't think it's really about, you know, although it does say something about sort of 80s prison. I certainly don't think it's an attempt to sort of celebrate thatcherism in any way at all. Yeah, if you look at Leon Griffith's original proposal for Minder, it's really good. He goes in everything about, you know, what this show's going to be like. He says, this show is all about London, but, quote, there will be no more shops of Tower Bridge, which they held to, right?

You barely see a London postcard landmark in the whole run of the programme. And yet it couldn't have been filmed anywhere else. Exactly, yeah. And at the end of the proposal, like to head them off, he lists all the arguments for not making the show, one of which is there is the slightly worrying fact that it's never been done before. another age and the problem is

you don't get people like Leon Griffiths creating TV programmes anymore he wasn't actually a Londoner but he was not a posh lad and he had a grasp of that right same way that before it the two main writers of the Sweeney

were Trevor Preston and Troy Kennedy Martin who later wrote Edge of Darkness and their backgrounds are totally different Troy Kennedy Martin was a fairly privileged bloke originally from Scotland whereas Trevor Preston was a South London oake who literally escaped a life of crime

by developing his skill as a writer and getting work in TV. Back in the days when you could get that kind of work just by being good at it. So when you watch the Sweeney, all the Troy Kenzie Martin scripts are very witty and well-constructed and they got interesting characters.

But it's always a posh bloke writing for non-posh characters. Whereas Trevor Preston's stuff, he's horrible. Like all his stories are usually about some terrible waste of human life and human potential

and so thick with authentic London criminal slang at a period you can barely understand what anybody's talking about

but he wrote the characters as they were or as they would be like a little bit exaggerated but not stereotypical and it's lost to modern drama

and comedy because writers from that background are not coming through now It's harder to break into that world without the right background and the right connections. But also because this situation is now fed back on itself and fewer people from that background are in a position financially or practically to develop those skills in the first place.

Because this sort of cultural change has got its own momentum, you know, whichever way it's rolled. Well, I mean, that's a kind of crisis that's occurring, you know, not just in film and TV and whatever. It's in music, you know, popular music. even in football that's the strangest thing as well yeah it's because all those football academies are out in the country mostly they're out somewhere you know like if it's like a London club it'll be out in Hertfordshire right or if it's Northwest Club it'll be in Cheshire somewhere so to get there

you have to have a parent who will drive you there or you have to be able to afford a cab like 25 miles every day and a lot of kids just can't do it and if you speak to like people in football they'll tell you, like, a lot of the footballers coming through now are actually middle class, just because they're the only ones he could afford to get to the academy. But yeah, mine does. Originally set up as a vehicle for Dennis Waterman, but I don't think anyone's going to do a song about Terry McCann.

Arthur Daly became the absolute fucking star of that show. If you look at the very early episode, they'll make him just a slightly more kind of sinister, very slightly scary character. And then they sort of take that edge away as the series moves on. you know, they're making more of a comic figure. Yeah, you'd think that a man in Arthur Daly's position would have had to have had a bit of a past. Yeah.

Just even to be owning that lockup. Yeah, yeah. In fact, the whole point of the show in the end was that, yeah, Arthur Daly, he's all right. Yes. As Terry would say of Arthur, right, a man who regularly put him in mortal danger unnecessarily and then stiffed him for the money, oh, he's all right, just because Arthur was not in the habit of, tying people to wooden chairs in basement

and removing their eyeballs with teaspoons like everyone else that Terry had ever met but luckily for Arthur being such a cowardly soul he did know Terry who was apparently the hardest man in London like a pork pie-faced man of average height and sloppy build with upper arms

that flapped about like beanbags in a tumble dryer was seemingly unbeatable in hand to hand combat. This is the least realistic element of mind. He would occasionally meet his match like in the episodes you mentioned before. Yeah, you're a hard man. Fight on the bus, yeah, with Brian Cox.

Yeah. Obviously the Scottish tough guy actor Brian Cox, not the 60 year old 14 year old scientist, Brian Cox. But you can at least say that Terry was a lot harder than DS Carter in the Sweeney who was just a human punch bag

every week. To the point where you wonder how he was ever allowed into the flighting squad other than his uncanny ability to soak up a pummeling allowing the other officers to work around him but terry mcgan never got his ass kicked despite the fact that he was in his mid-30s with the ruddy knackered collapsing face of someone 20 years older he lived on a diet of light ale and undercooked bacon sandwiches and the only physical training you ever saw him do was jogging around the park in a navy track suit with a rolled up white towel draped around his mess and when he takes his shirt off he has the torso of a 55 year old man albeit a healthier 55 year old man than the one who donated his face and this is before we

even get to the fact that his hair is an optical illusion and yet he's irresistible on sight to every woman in london aged between 18 and 60. Then again, this is a London gangland where, according to all TV crime drama of the period, Boisey from Only Fools and Orses, and Mike Reed from runaround were ruthless enforcers. And the undefeatable end boss was genial Harry Grout from porridge. I reckon the three of us could have had a little racket going in those days. Then if Noshua Powell shows up at the door, just wait for him to take a slow motion telegram. swing at us, duck under it, shove a fold-up chair

at his midriff, and have it away on a tub. So the song, fucking hell. I hadn't heard it for ages, but the minute I heard it on this, I knew all the fucking lyrics. It's a brilliant song, man. It has to be said. I'll give them something. Nelson Riddle as rhyming slang for fiddle.

That's the most impressive bit about it. But it's a little bit weird. It's about when they did that. song about Lorraine Chase in the Luton Airport advert. It just feels it's a little bit superb. It's like when they used to do Frank Spencer impersonations. It doesn't feel exactly observation. It's just piggybacking on existing comedy. It's like David Brent doing a two Ronnie's joke. But I will say, yeah, listening to it again after many years, it is a bit slicker and it has a few little kind of, you know, it's studied with a few sort of memorable

little bits, I have to say. Yeah. You know what would have improved this performance is if Halfway through, the Lee Singer was assassinated. But like in character, like a London gangland style execution. Like what happened to Jack the Hatman McVitties? And everyone got to see his smashing orangey bit in the middle. But it works because he does look very authentically indigenous London. Yes. Orbeit not in a very agreeable way.

He's got that slightly gnomish, stunted look of a man who grew up. eating eels washed in boiling water you know what I mean like clouds of lead petrol fumes billowing through his playground like dry ice in London before jet washing when all the public buildings were black with accumulated smoke and soot you know what I mean

like this was relatively recent too you see pictures of London before a certain date and Nelson's column looks like a licorice stick you know what I was like St Paul's Cathedral is just totally black like it was built in west yorkshire yeah leicetown hall which is black the years yeah yeah that's what this bloke's lungs look like that's why he's five foot one with legs that bend inwards at the knee like like so many londoners of his generation yeah trying to cure it with a fry up every morning and a cup of tea the color of an antique table yeah but in fairness to

him, high speed speech miming is extremely difficult. Yes. Even if you've got a rhythm to work to. And he gets it absolutely dead on. Yeah, I was thinking that actually, it's quite virtuoso from that point of view. As far as the lyrics go, there are perfect summation of the character and the show. I mean, if an American came up to you and asked you what Minder was all about, all you'd have to do is play them this song and then spend an hour with them deciphering the lyrics because it's absolutely rammed with a sort of. of London vernacular that was both understood and spoken by the entire country in 1982. Yeah, yeah.

It's one of those records like The Seventh Seal by Scott Walker, where he just tells you everything that happens in the film, The Seventh Seas. For no particular reason. But I think it's just to demonstrate that he's been to see the Seventh Seal rather than the films everybody else was going to see in 1969. Very elitist, actually. He should have taken a more populist approach and done the same. thing with a film that people

would record, like the biggest film that the British box office in 1969 was Carry on Camping. What a better world this would be. If Scott Walker had done the song called Carry On Camping, we just told you everything. And you wouldn't have to change that much

because those two films do have a lot in common. They both make you think about the pointlessness of life and the inevitable yet inconsequential nature of your own death. And they both end with a strange procession across a bleak landscape. The rain shall wash away the painted daisies from their faces.

And as the thunder cracked, they were gone. Terry Scott's wife and an annoying laugh. Anybody here? See a bra past his face. I saw it fly off Barbara Windsor yesterday. And from the booth. Death's life still was heard. So the performance then, I mean, the BBC having committed to promoting a drama series on the other side,

they've pushed the boat right out, haven't they, as they did with Trio a few weeks ago. Wave lengths, white piano and shiny bars been brought back into service, along with loads of tables, chairs and stools, big white lamps, assorted accounting ramble, you know, all the bars stocked out. and all that kind of stuff the zoo wankers are all sitting at the tables and mugging away

and doing some cuntish hand jive the kids have turned around and staring at the camera again and the video screen is churning out the lyrics so we can all have a good old Cockney sing along at home go blind man it's incredible that this record's actually all right

in it? Yeah. Offer daily he's all right is all right. It really is. There's even a good joke at the end where he's going we've all got something going on

It's not a crime, is it? Well, it technically is a crime, but that's all right. That's quite a good line, isn't it? I mean, ultimately, I would rather listen to the version of the Minder theme tune on the Minder computer game. Yes. The one that bores directly through your cerebral cortex and pierces the outer crust of your soul. It's astonishing, isn't it? Yeah.

So, yeah, like the Trio performance, this is a prime example of what Michael Hill wanted Top of the Pops to look like. And it's a prime example of what Top of the Pops can actually do when it gets his thumb out of his ass and can be bothered. And, yeah, a shockingly good cash in hit that has not left my brain all week. Apparently the Hofmeister Bear used to play endlessly on the pub jukebox, usually by just pointing at it and saying, Hey! So the following week, Arthur Daily E's All right,

nipped up two places to number 14, its highest position. The follow-up, long-lived the National, a tribute to the Aintree Killer Horse Festival, was put out in April of 1983, but failed to chart, and the group sank into oblivion. But then, in a folk club in 1986, Lister heard a member of the sealed knot, the Civil War reenactment lot, sing their campfire song, I am the Star Trek man, which resulted in them taking Star Trek into number one. for two weeks in June of 1987. Fucking hell. You know what Chisholm said? He said, I know our half a day of a dime. I said, how's that?

He said, it'll fall on the back of a lawyer. A big straight. That's the four and all very well, but will they be at Wembley on the 21st. Don't worry about this. Just another limb transplant that went wrong. Let's go back to the charts now. Let's cover the top ten.

A number of ten boys and good. It's Bonanarama and Shy Boy. Number nine, My Girl Lollipop. That's Bad Manners. At eight, strange little girl from the stranglers. And number seven, Kid Creole and the Coconut Nuts, Stool Pigeon. Up to number six, I have the Tiger from Survivor. Number five, it started with a kiss.

That's hot chocolate. A number four, madness, driving my car. Number three, don't go, that's your zoo. And at number two, Irene Carra and fame. And that's nearly the end of this week's top of the pops. Next week's program will be introduced, as always, by Kid Jensen. Good night, and we'll leave you with Dexies Midnight Runner, still number one. Peel! Surrounded by the Dregs of City Farm,

one of whom has put a leg over his shoulder while he gnaws on a cough, Altros the firm while casting aspersions on their appearance at Wembley in a week or so. I looked into this chaps. It's actually for the charity shield when Liverpool played Tottenham Otspur because I think that he thinks they're Chas and Dave. There can be no other explanation and is very thick when you consider that Terry McCann is well fuller. He then whips us into the top ten, says goodbye,

tells us that Kid Jensen is on next week. and signs off with this week's number one, Come on Eileen, by Dex's Midnight Runners. We've done Dex's plenty, plenty time on chart music, and this, their ninth single, is the second cut from their second LP to Rye. As discussed in chart music number 60, after the dissolution of Dex's Mark I,

when five members of the band confronted Kevin Rowland and said, close the blinds, were starting up the bureau for an hour. Roland was casting around for a new direction. But then Kevin Archer, the former guitarist and co-writer of Gino and There There My Dear, who had stayed on through 1981 for Dex's boxing boots and cross-country running period, left the band Amicablair and started up a new group called the Blue Ox Babes.

And when he gave Roland a demo tape of his folk-inspired soul music, borrowed slash nicked his violinist, Helen O'Hara, and charged off in the same direction. While the Blue Ox Babes scrabbled around for a deal, Roland, who by this time had signed to Mercury Records, had recruited two more violinists who he dubbed the Emerald Express, tugged everyone out like Benny from Crossroads, and threw himself into the writing of the next LP.

The first cut, the Celtic Soul Brothers, only got to number 45 in March of this year and with the LP due for release Mercury having second thoughts about getting behind it and the music press making that Marge Simpson noise everything hinged on the next single which Mercury initially knocked back until one of their radio plug has heard it

and insisted it would be a hit forcing them to take a punt on it it came out in the last week of June entered the chart at number 63 and soared 22 places to number 41, right on the rim of the top 40. To the band and labels relief, it then jumped 10 places to number 31, and they were whisked into the top of the pop studios for a performance which sparked an absolute cacophony of granny clapping and bouncing up and down,

and the following week it soared another 22 places to number nine. then went all the way to number two and a week later it tapped Irene Corr on the shoulder and said, excuse me please, but you're standing in my space and expelled the foul stench of fame from the summit of Mount Pop. This is his second week at number one

and although they've got a perfectly serviceable video that everyone knows shot for shots, here's a repeat of their performance from a fortnight ago. Oh, boys, where do we start on this? Now, I know that in this episode, I've already said more than some people's fathers say to them in their entire life.

But forgive me, I might go on a bit here. Oh, mate, go for your life. Yeah, all through this episode, you're thinking, yeah, there's so many interesting records on it, good or not so good. I just hope there's a proper knockdown classic 80s number one to round it on. and this just could not have worked out better, could it, David?

Well, this is the weird thing, you know, I never liked Texis, never really he got it. It's a bit like Bruce Bringsley with me as well when people, I'm actually into Bruce Springston and I'm just like, what's up with you? Explain yourself and they never do. So I must appear, I've always had that kind of slight animus, you know, this sense of soul or near soul as such an utterly stern undertaking, like you're doing pull-ups or something or having to harden yourself for life's rigours. You know, there's a sort of joylessness and these horrible yelping vocal contortion to denote projected passion. But as it happens, though, I bought this at the time.

I actually bought it. I was confirmed. For one thing, it's a trombone-free experience, which is a mercy, because there's always been far too much trombone, i.e. eight seconds on these evenings top of the pops. The only problem is it's had this long continuing afterlife as a wedding disco staple, which has had a complete spoiling effect for me. And now I can only think of that stomping bit at the end.

and sweaty fat looks on parquet dance floors grasping each other around the necks in huddles and slipping their own puddles of lager before getting up and going again because here comes Jeff Beck's high-ho silver lining DJ turned the sound down for the chorus. Don't go to weddings then David. Well, yeah, yeah.

Because it's a fucking tune. Let's get that out there. But I found it genuinely hard, actually, to sort of extricate its real merits from, like I say, this very, very long, ubiquitous afterlife it's had. Yeah, but there's no point moaning about it being played at wedding. all the time because it's oh everyone this is supposed to be a celebration what should we play oh the most celebratory song we can think of which is this they could always play suicide frankie teardrop yeah they could have done but they also could have played chelsea dagger or roll with it be happy david all right i was so upset to learn that kevin roland was doing a q-and-a right here in the cradle of pop last week the day after it happened because i would have gone and asked him look how do you feel when you're at a wedding do and come on

Eileen comes on. Rich? That's the first catching, yeah. All right, let's put it this way, okay? You're a wedding DJ and you've been booked for a do and it's getting close for 10 o'clock and everything's been going

fucking skill. The dance floor's been busy all night. You're on an unlimited drinks tab including shorts. You've already been paid cash in hand. There's this one woman who's been staring at you all night and no cunt asked you for Oasis. Perfect

gig, yeah? But then you look to the back of the room and you see this bloke coming back from the buffet table and it hits you. Oh my God, that's Kevin fucking Roland. And you know what's coming soon and you know all the

backstory. What do you do? Put on the Blue Ox Babes demo tape. Like that DJ in the mod club once in the 60s where the Rolling Stones turned up just after their first album had come out. The DJ saw them and celebrated their arrival

by playing all the songs off their debut album in the same order in their original Black American version. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that stings a bit. I'd have to go over to him and say, look, mate, you're the last person's night. I want to shag up, but come on now. This is my people's fatality right.

And if I don't play this, that radiant woman over there might be Barrett. So, you know, come on, Kevin, Toulou Rye. Roland went through a period in the late 90s way. He wouldn't start an interview without expressing contrition for his nicorette of Kevin Archer's direction. From a press release put out by creation, its label at the time, he said, I experienced hollow success with Come on Eileen and Tu Raya, the musical sound of which, mixed with Tamla type soul came from Kevin Archer

and not me as I claimed the idea and Sam was his I stole it from him hurting Kevin Archer deeply in the process I conned people all over the world from the people close to me and the people I work with to the fans to the radio and TV programmers

and I made a lot of money to everyone I conned I'm sorry to my beautiful friend Kevin Archer I love you I'm sorry I hurt you you. I was jealous of you and your talent. You deserve better. I hope you get what you deserve. Well, you know, which is all well and good. But I went back and listened to some blue ox-babe stuff. And to these ears here, it sounds more like the wonder stuff than Dexie's Mark 2. Yeah, yeah. And I know that sounds like I'm coating it down. But no, Roland's apologies were so over-egged that it got to the point where some people even thought that he nicks the song, come on I lean on Kevin Archer, which he definitely didn't.

I'm going to say that's such a deep expression of contrition. Did he express it at all in ACCA's, I wonder? Well, yeah, apparently there was some kind of deal where percentages were carved out. Yeah. I don't think anybody else could do common, Eileen, but Kevin Rowland. So, first of all, this is obviously amazing and wonderful, in case anyone thinks I'm going to be contrarian or revisionist. Yes.

Not at all. I love them. But it's interesting to examine the different ways you receive. respond to different records and different aesthetics that meant a lot to you when you were young as you get older, right? Like one strange thing about getting old, you go back to pop groups, pop songs, which stirred something emotional or idealistic inside you. Inevitably, they're going to hit you differently in middle age, which they should. And it's tempting then to make judgments on the record itself and on what the hell happened to you based on the nature of that change. Let's say you're into the Style Council, which some of us were. There may be moments when you hear certain old Style Council tracks

and you think, eh, I'd have been better off listening to Curtis Mayfield while reading Gramskey and getting both parts of this in their pure and infinitely superior forms. So you could say that what's broken your direct link there is a fault with the record. Like you could say, still fond of it, I can just see through it now. because I've grown up as a person. Whereas if I listen to sometime in the morning by the monkeys, which is my favourite monkey song,

and a record which would make me quite emotional when I was 11, it still makes me emotional, but that's because I'm thinking, I can no longer be this openly and sweetly, hopeful and romantic because life and time knocked it out of me. And this is a problem with me, and if I'd stayed closer to the spirit of that record, I might be a better and a happier man

or I might have been hollowed out entirely by a world that doesn't deserve that. Now, I know that I will never be cynical about Dex's Midnight Runners. It's just, as I get older, start to find some parts of what they did a little bit sillier than I used to. And then other parts, I love more than I ever did.

For instance, the fuel for Dex's and for Kevin Rowland's crazy, commitment was always this sense that there is something about our meaningless lives that's serious and has some real worth and the brevity and the cosmic pointlessness of our life only makes it more serious and more urgent and more important and there's something quite ex-religious about it you could tell that he was a former altar boy right but i now think dexes were at their weakest when they tried to be explicit about that internal struggle

and literally describe it because you'd end up with stuff like until I believe in my soul from the album this is from which is a song that never didn't make me cringe because it's horrible the way it tries to find a paralegalious point to life

but it can't articulate anything because this stuff doesn't neatly fit into words so it ends up borrowing the logic and even the terminology of religion and strapping that to a kind of faux hysteria and selling the result to us. So it leaves Kevin sounding more like a TV evangelist than the questing secular pilgrim.

And I'm also now a bit uncomfortable with the cultural cringe to soul music. Some of the few bits of dexes that don't work now remind me of do you know the TV play Road directed by Alan Clark? Who I do like but I don't like road

it's about people in horrible poverty with empty lives in you know Thatcher's very own Britain but it has this nauseating climax where they gather in a derelict house and listen to a tape of Otis Reading and there's this attempt to construct a secular

religion out of some idealised concept of black American soul and dignity, which is so wrong-headed and patronising. It's almost racist. Similar to the mid-to-late 80s NME, right? The stuff that David and Simon Reynolds were always reacting against in Melody Maker in the later... This fetishisation of some aspects of quote-unquote soul,

which they thought could be extracted from soul music and used as spiritual and political currency by whites and they want it in on that or their perception of that which I think is where the Irish thing comes I mean aside apart from nicking it from Kevin Archer I think Kevin's like well hey my roots are Irish that's kind of a bit like which is a road that leads to the commitment

yes right so yeah I would say when I listen to Dexies now as a tired and beaten down old man through a combination of bad luck and poor mental health and my stupidity and other people's stupidity, I'm now in a position to assess Dex's in an objective way. And the only time they fail is when they do that, right? Almost a manifestation of the West Midlands inferiority complex, in fact. The idea that anyone and anything else is better and more valuable. But the majority of Dex's stuff still works brilliantly because it's like this where instead of trying to second guess the concept of soul in music whether it's black American or Irish they

just fucking do it yeah they just express themselves directly albeit self-consciously uh in this case literally just singing about wanting to fuck someone but instead of worrying about how to let everyone know that this is coming from the heart brother and they're terribly aware of the poignancy and transience and desperation. Instead of that, they just crack on them, fucking do it and use that feeling rather than talking about it. And they just make that stirring emotional, relatable number one record. Their contribution to that canon of records they love.

And when they do that, guess what? All that other stuff, the intense seriousness, It comes across more clearly for anyone who wants or needs it, right? Which not everyone does, but I did and I still do. So the performance then, it's your standard Dex's performance at the time, isn't it? You know, loads of people in distress but very pristine rural wear, charging right off in the opposite direction from everybody else at the time. And a nation absolutely fucking loving it.

Yeah. Yeah, the funniest one is the bassist who looks like a goth. It's not really into his raggle-taggle. It's like, do I have to wear this stuff? Yes, you fucking do. So he's turned up in a sort of, like a goth version of the uniform. He's got what looks like a black leather blacksmith's apron. Like he's going to a gay kink social.

But it's, you know, it's close enough. I fucking hate myself for bringing this up, but I have to because we're chart music and we never flinch from the big issues. Is this song a bit huge? tree. No, why? Well, because I hear it all the time off Bellends on Facebook. You know, he's singing, you've grown em, my thoughts verge on dirty,

oh, get your dress off, oh, what a dirty bastard. And I have to bite my fingers not to steam in there and tell him to fuck off. Because it's made clear as day in the lyrics that Kevin and Eileen are practically the same age. Yeah. Poor old Johnny Ray, our mother's cried. We can sing just like our fathers. We are far too young and clever. Fuck off.

Yeah. People are always trying to do this with 13 by Big Star as well. Despite the fact that it's very obvious that he's also 13 in that song. Yeah. People are letting their knowledge of Alex Chilton's private life intrude upon the song. And these lyrics would have made absolute perfect sense to me at the time because, you know, I'm 14. I'm at a mixed secondary school.

It's the school holidays. I'm living on the other side of town and my grandparents. So I'm going to come back to school in a month. time and all these girls who have been around and had to tolerate and put up with in the meantime have suddenly fucking exploded into young women and i'd be there going oh my god look at her she's fucking gorgeous oh but i wouldn't have asked her to take a dress off because she would have battered me in the middle of the playground but anyway this is a fucking tune one of the greatest tunes of the 80s yeah i mean this two rye a period dex is in

general. The one that most people remember and the only one that Americans remember is not my favourite. I sort of prefer the slightly more mature Dexes on Don't Stand Me Down where they're wrestling with the same concerns in a slightly more artful way. And I also prefer the younger Dexies

on searching for the young soul rebels where they're a bit more direct and less convoluted. Because it's got that sound as well. Like those early Dex's records have got that strange flat but chunky production that's like British soul music like hot chocolate. It doesn't sound anything like an American record. It's like even if

you'd beamed in the Stax house band that still have sounded like that because it's just the way that British studios sounded. I like that stuff better but this single is still their greatest record even if it's not their best piece of music and even if we've all heard it once too often. Just because it works on every relevant level

the balance of emotion and artifice is almost perfect and you know that because it appealed to ordinary people and it appealed to them in precisely the way that it wanted to and yeah nowadays it's got this cheese filter on it and people associate it with drunk encores and wedding receptions and all that stuff yeah you know doing the crossed arms dance but when it's actually playing

if you're listening to it nobody's sniggering or smirking because it's got this genuine power and emotional force, right? And yeah, it's a party record and it's a record for people to dance to when they're drunk, but while it's playing, they're really feeling something. And the way that that party,

or that booze has opened them up, has made them feel it more deeply. And that's all you can do is a chart act. That's the peak that Kevin Rowland was squinting upwards at the whole time. But most musicians are squinting upwards at and never reach. but Dexas Minot Runners did, and it's this.

It is a very inclusive record insofar as I say. I mean, it's really, you know, everybody has a capacity like it, and it reached me as well. And it's just unfortunate, it's not that I'm kind of necessarily snooty about records that get, you know, made well, but they had a wearing down effect on me kind of a long time ago, and I'm just pitying now that I can't get back to the feeling that made me want to actually go out and buy this record at the time.

We get married, David. when it comes down to it nobody's more sentimental than a misanthrope so when they start to open up a little bit yeah Kevin Rowland's family come from virtually the same town

in Ireland as my dad's family really I found out yeah part of county mayor I don't know if there was some established route for emigrants from there to the West Midlands or if it's just a coincidence but although I mean this would have been decades apart because I think Kevin was

first generation English whereas my dad was second generation and also a fair bit older although not as much older as Kevin would have you believe because he did lie about his age in song. Did he know? Yeah and tell me when my light turns green he says

He's seen quite a lot in my 23 years Yeah kev that would be because you're actually 27 Oh how the pop stars lie to us Yeah I mean to us that sounds like arguing over whether somebody's 5 foot 2 or 5 foot 3

but I mean it seemed to mean a lot at the time Anything else to say I'm just so glad that this episode ends with this because if you're going to show all these weird corners of the early 80s charts like wavelength and hazy fucking fat size it's good to show the weirdest corner of all where

genuinely bright and deranged people were toiling to make this uncontrollable art form work as a way to improve and ameliorate people's lives and to work as a channel of self-expression for people whose selves were impossible to express in other more restrictive ways all happening inside the mainstream without being too heavily filtered through the mainstream another thing which seemed completely natural and normal to our generation and in a sense we still expect it but it just sounds bad.

laughling and stupid to most people today. And I don't think still caring about that stuff is nostalgia so much as disappointment with much of what's happened since. And there's a subtle but very definite difference between those things. I don't want to be back in 1982. Most of it was shit. I just don't want to be in this particular 2025. That's all.

Yeah. So come on, Eileen would spend. two more weeks at number one before giving way to Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. Ten days after this episode was aired, Tu Rai A came out and smashed into the LP chart at number two, staying there for four weeks, unable to dislodge the kids from fame.

The single would go on to sell 1,210,000 or so copies in the UK, making it the biggest selling single of 1982, and would become the 10th biggest selling single of the 80s, one above tainted love by Soft Cell, and one below, the power of love by Jennifer Rush. Fucking British cunt. The follow-up, Jackie Wilson said,

would get to number five in October, and they ground off the year with the double A side, let's get this straight from the start slash old, becoming the Christmas number 17. and that closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on television afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with fame. And this week, Doris has got right into method acting,

which means she starts knocking about on the streets of New York, pretending to be a prostitute. Oh, family entertainment for the kids there. After the 9 o'clock news, it's the last episode of Task Force South, The Bacler of the Falklands, where our boys yump all the way to Port Stanley. Then Des O'Connor tonight sees the man himself chatting with Tom O'Connor, Angie Gold and Rick Padell, followed by an examination of the outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Philadelphia in 1976 in Horizon.

After the news headlines, they round off the night with Sylvester Stallone Rockie, a documentary about the franchise and a big advert for Rouse. Rocky 3. And after the weather, they close down at five past midnight. BBC 2 is five minutes into strange bedfellers, the 1965 film where Rock Hudson tries to patch up his marriage with Gina Lollad de Brigida so he can get that promotion he's after. Then it's the Associates, the David Lloyd sitcom about young lawyers in a stuffy firm, followed by Jimmy Perry presenting clips of ancient variety acts in turns. Afternoons night, and its highlights of the cricket, and they close down at five past midnight.

ITV is currently 25 minutes into the jewelists, the 1977 film starring David Caridine, Harvey Keitel, Edwards Fox and Albert Finner, about a big row between two Napoleonic officers. Then the medical series, The Best of Health, question mark, looks at home visits. Then it's a news at 10, regional politics showing you, area, regional news in your area, and the fourth part of the drama series skin deep about a trainee Scottish fireman, and they close down at five past midnight as well. Oh, a golden age of television. So boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow?

Fucking hell, did you see that bunch of cunts, hazy fantasy? Yes. Yeah, or, uh, hey, who wants to play wavelength? Yes. Magsy, I'm the lead singer. But that's the rose in the buttonhole of 1982, isn't it? Virtually everything on top of the pops could have been designed to be discussed in the playground, as it should be. Definitely, yeah. What we're buying on Saturday? Well, and I did.

The Associates, Yazoo, and Dexleys. Yeah, possibly the same. But most of the stuff on this episode hangs in that space where you wouldn't really have to buy it because you'll be hearing it a lot. Yeah. And what does this episode tell us about August of November? It's a curious one because I think, you know, if you look at the chart rundown, there's a lot of, like, this is what you could have had. It's, oh, fuck, you know. Oh, God, yeah.

I think that the whole sublime stroke ridiculous thing still really obtains in 1982. Yeah, I mean, I think it tells us, if you want a hit, you have to bring something to the party. Even if that thing is a dirty mac, a half-eaten cannibal or some preposterous wanker called Jeremy. And that's Pop-Craise Youngstool. brings us to an end of another episode of chart music. Thank you very much for your patience. Let's get on it properly from here on in. Anyway, usual promotional flange, website chart dashmucic.co.uk.

Facebook.com slash chart music. Reach out to us on Twitter at chart music TOTP or reach out to us on blue sky at chart music, TOTP, money down the G string, patreon.com slash chart music. And if you want to come and see us live in September, get your ass over to kingsplace.com. UK. Thank you, David Stubbs. Thank you. God bless you, Taylor Parks.

So long. My name's I'll need them. Stuff that big sausage in there. Chart music. gone well for you so far. I can promise you in the next 45 minutes. A lot of unexpected things are going to occur. And following the whirly wheel of last week, we've made it down to Santa Pod. We've got two lovely people down there. What I think is turning out to be a rather grotty day in Babychow. Oh, the rain looks as a bit stopped. Sandra, hello. Hello, Noel. Greetings from a rather

damp Santa Pod. We have a wonderful smell of cow dung around us in the field. We also have Michael King, who is going to do his first solo flight in a gyrocopter. Also, with me, I have John Peel. Yes, what's he doing there? This is the question that I've been asking myself since 10 o'clock this morning, actually, Noel. I could have been at Highbury watching Liverpool beat Arsenal 2-0. Instead of which, I'm down here at a rain-soaked Santa Pod, and we're going to be watching a bunch of local lads having to go beating the world's record for jumping cars.

Not so confident about the jump, mind you, but here he comes now. He's going very... I think he's going faster than any of the earlier car has gone. He's going very quickly, indeed. The main problem, of course, is if he hits the dam on the ramp, it could go over the air. That's a very perfect. Everybody's all right.

The car's gone. The car went into the crowd, but nobody's hurt. Nobody's hurt. Well, a reassuring assurance, or was he? John Bill, nobody was heard. I wish we would keep you posted. The hit squad do after things and that in some respects. And now let's go to Santa Pod and find out how the next live challenge is going to go, whether it remains on the strip or goes into the crowd. Well, Noel, everything was all right after that last one. All, very nervous, because it came down about where I was standing, but miraculously nobody was heard.

The crowd's moved back, and so you won't be at all surprised to hear of I. Also, most importantly, driver Guy Skippen is all right. is all right, a little shaken, and he's got his knees hurt. But now we're going to see Rich Smith, driving, of all things, a Jensen. I can't believe that, but he's going up the ramp in his Jensen. Pretty it's not Kid Jensen in a Smith, really. I'd rather like to see that. Rich Smith on his first solo flight,

I am moving backwards as I talked to him, actually, because I'm for a bit of a coward. He's coming up to the ramp, now he's going very, very fast, indeed. Very fast. Look! Well, obviously we'll keep your posters to exactly what happened with that attempt. It certainly looked remarkably frightening from the pictures I can see. They're sorting him out.

We'll keep your posters, what happens. A reminder on next week's programme, I'll be telling you about the great Paris air race. We have an absolutely magnificent aeronautical occasion when a number of teams are going to try and race between London and Paris and that will be occurring live on the program. As I mentioned, also Kid Creole will be with me and Boy George.

I hope you've enjoyed this edition of the program and we'll see at the same time next week. Bye. Okay, chaps, are you ready? Okay. Hit the fucking music Echoes of desire Setting Backstage at a Merillian concert in London

1985 The air buzzes with the aftermath Of an electrifying performance The scent of stage smoke and spilled beer lingers As Simon Bates Clad in a tailored blade Awaits fish for a post-show interview. The green room door creaks open,

revealing fish. His face still glistening under the dim lights, a towel draped over his shoulder. Simon rises, extending a hand. They grip fingers, a beat too long, before fish collapses into a velvet couch, cracking open a beer. Quite the show tonight, Simon Biggins,

voice smooth as the whiskey in his glass. The crowd was rapturous. Fish smirks, eyes glinting. Aye, but it's the quiet after the storm that's more interesting here. His Scottish bro curls around the words, deliberate. The interview flows, Music, fame, the ache of Torlife, until Simon's pen pauses.

And what of the man behind the persona? Does Derek Dick ever surface? Fish leans forward, elbows on knees. Only for those worth the risk. A shared cigarette later that perched on a fire escape, the city's hum a distant drum Fisher's sleeve brushes Simon's wrist A spark neither acknowledges

You're not what I expected Simon Murmus tracing the rim of his glass Nor you Fisher's gaze is a challenge All that polish Hide something wilder A laugh Low and unguarded

you see through everyone just the ones that want to be seen in the hallway of a dimly lit hotel keys jingle fissure's hand grazes Simon's lower back a question

Simon turns the air as thick as honey this isn't part of the interview Simon breathes though he doesn't move Nay, Fish agrees, thumb brushing a jawline. This is real.

The door shuts. No words now, just the rustle of fabric, the heat of mouths meeting like a crescendo. Fisher's hands calloused from guitar strings. Matted Simon's spine with reverent precision. Simon's fingers tangling Fisher's sweat-damp hair, pulling him closer. as if to fuse the space between breaths.

Against the hum of the minibar, they unravel. A tangle of hunger and whispered truths. The world outside fades here. There's only the rhythm of shared gasps. The poetry of skin on skin. Oh, fucking hell. Morning light filters through gauzy curtains.

Simon Sturr, Fischer's arm A heavy warmth Across his chest Regrets Fish rasps Voice sleep rough Simon studies the ceiling

A smile Playing at his lips Only that we didn't do this sooner Fish chuckles The sound vibrating Against him Aye

But some symphonies Need time to build They part with a handshake that lingers, a promise etched in secrecy. As Simon steps into the London drizzle, Marillian's encore echoes in his mind, clutching at straws,

but I'm closer now. Some encounters are fugues, brief, consuming, unforgettable. This, he thinks, is one. Yeah, I'll be leaving the podcast now. See you around the clubs.