Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #76: August 12th 1982 – Humpty Dumpty Is Big Eggy

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; do we really need a Chart Music Heritage Chart?Never have we needed Simon Bates at the top of the show warning of explicit content as much as we do for this episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, for it pains us to say that this one is absolutely sopping with the musk of Percy Filth. We’re combing through the grot-encrusted underbelly of the last days of the Eighventies here, and this episode is an uncompromising stare at it. You might want to finish your tea before you start on it.We’re in the Summer of 1982, and this instalment of our Favourite Thursday Evening Fizzy Pop Treat, and everything – even the rubbish bits – sparkles and wobbles like deeleyboppers in the breeze. Even John Peel gets into the spirit by putting on a bin liner, managing not to punch any City Farm wankers, and keeping the barbs to a minimum, unaware that Noel Edmonds is about to attempt to decapitate him over a year from now.Musicwise, it’s a textbook example of Silver Age Top Of The Pops, the programme that everyone moans about, but everyone watches. David Essex gifts us a slab of flesh-eating sensuality and some blokes arsing about in a posh bar. Yazoo continue their upward trajectory. We get some Red Hot Dutch Gay Filth lobbed at us, and then – YESSSS! – two chocolate guitars. Sheena Easton deigns to make an appearance, and then SIMULATED BUMSEX. Zoo get absolutely ignored because even Michael Hurll’s had enough of ‘em by now, the Fun Boy Three Puppet Show rolls into town, George Cole gets lionised, and you already know what the Number One is, so put that buffet plate down and pile onto the dancefloor, and DEAL WITH IT.David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham, the Dancing Fool for a glorious rampage through the summer of ‘82, veering off into tangents such as getting someone else’s calendar foisted upon you, the horrific tawdriness of Private Spy, the joys of old mens’ urine-soaked trousers, trying to get The Old Uns to buy records about being bummed by the police while a prostitute cheers them on, David Essex Apostrophe Showcase, and a doomed attempt to make some aliens have sex. FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!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 to? Um, chart music. Chart music. Hey, up, you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chalk Music, the podcast that gets his hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing with me today are Taylor Parks.

Thank you for saying my name. And rock expert David Stubbs. It's absolutely pissing down in that London. Yeah, it is there as well. Anyway, boys, what's pop? What's interesting? Tell me now, why don't you? Like that, is it?

It's a meaningful silence. What have we been up to? Well, I've been working on a special top secret project, the nature of which I can't actually be out of safe and disclose at this time. The only people that know about it are myself and everybody that I've kind of told all about it. Including me. Yep, indeed, yeah.

Is it the Golden Dome? No, no. It's a very sharp music-friendly-type project. It's a massive undertaking, a labour of love that I'm kind of working on. And what it's involved recently is actually going up to Rocksback Pages, the kind of the music press archive, and going back through back editions of the late 70s music press, which is when I kind of actually started reading the music press.

And it's really quite fascinating because, I mean, there are various things. The thing that I think really impressed me the most about the music press then is now what impresses me the least, which is this kind of mandatory snideness that you get in interviews. You know, they'll go and interview somebody who's perfectly polite then afterwards and say, ooh, get her, you know. You know, I kind of thought, oh, that's punk attitude right there. But, you know, now I just think this is actually quite rude

and rather cowardly, actually. Taylor. Yeah, I'm okay. Considering I'm now older than Roy Orbison when he joined the travelling Wilburys. Fucking hell, man. Dagger of ice down the spine, that is, isn't it, when you pass that mong? It really is. I can at least be safe in the knowledge that I'm still younger than Arthur Lowe in Dad's Army,

provided I'm not watching an episode from series one. I fear my jousting days are over. But, you know, events not really falling in my favour lately, not conducive to action, nor to lighting up the imagination. So apologies to everyone. I've had to essentially throw a blanket over my imagination for a few months, like a bird cage when the decorators are in. Because I don't trust it to behave in these conditions.

Still been hearing squawks from underneath the blanket all the time. Obscen it is mostly. But, well, you know, what do you expect? I've been left alone in the dark. But it's a funny life. Somebody said to me recently, this is true. I hope you don't get offended, but I'm not. not sure you ever realized

your potential. And I said fuck, you know, that's not offensive. What would have offended me is if you suggested that I had fully realized my potential. And here we are. Some call them dust mites. I call them friends. No,

it's terrible. I was going to go out in the movies. They said I could have been the next Chevy Chase. Canock Chase. That was my stage. Not sleeping with that producer again. so like now my best hope is to just be a cool old guy you know strolling round in the sun dentures hooked into the neckline of my t-shirt just dangling there like sunglasses

whip them off and slide them in whenever I need them almost finished triangle oh you'll weep man like um Alexander the Great when you finished triangle there was nothing left for him to watch Frankly, nothing will give me more pleasure than to finally deliver an exocet So that barna called Hulk Just waiting for that devastating final episode With its haunting closing shot Of them all looking out of a porthole

That's just floating in space Don't worry, the kids will get that one Actually, I'm going to pitch a revival of Triangle To the BBC But improved for the 21st century It's going to be called Pentangle and the ship sails from Fokston to Amsterdam to Gothenburg to Sydney to Anchorage and back to Fokston again.

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

and reminds you of what you're meant to be doing that day. Well, I've never used it because I have no appointments. But something quite strange happened at the start of this year. It started sending me notifications all the time. Notifications of things happening in somebody else's life. No! Yeah, first week in January, I was sitting there, mind of my own business, nursing my mental wounds,

at a Google Calendar Alert popped up saying, Meet Rebecca's 1pm. Right. I didn't really know what to make of that, but I thought, okay, if I ignore it, it will go away because that's how everything else works. But then later that day, another notification popped up telling me that at 6pm,

it was Labyrinth Night. Presumably by monthly communal viewing of the 1980s, David Bowie Frightwig Classic. Bring your own codeine. It's a bit like when you used to get the old crosswired on the old landline phones, didn't you? It's like that, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a party line. Yeah. So I looked ahead and I realised that this person's year was now filling up. And at first I thought this was some generic AI placeholder, showing you how Google Calendar works in place you're too dumb to work out. But no, it now included real events taking place this year. Like this person's going to see Guns and Roses in London in June, which apparently actually happened.

on that day you could turn up to all of these events couldn't you yes that's exactly what I thought that guy was at guns and roses wasn't he and now he's at the labyrinth night that guy in the bright wig he looks familiar taileth trouble is I'm not a nosy man by nature but it felt like I was the one being intruded upon here yeah by having this window put in front of my face into somebody else's life and I wanted to know what it was all about so I went to to the next entry that was due to pop up and I edited it to say hello who on earth are you

in the hope that this sharing went two ways and that they'd see it and be startled and respond and it did occur to me that 10 years ago I wouldn't have written that I would have been unable to resist writing something much more unsettling but I saw that they were giving blood the following Tuesday so I thought well they can't be all bad Right. So I was hoping that they'd see this and communicate back using perhaps the strangest medium ever deployed for human conversation.

But a few days passed and I heard nothing. And then one day my phone buzzed and a notification popped up. Hello, who on earth are you? My own reminder flung back in my face by Google Calendar. And in fairness, it was a question that had to be asked. Taylor, this is obviously the plot of a rom-com. You've got to go with it.

I know. But I'm not sure whether they can see my notes and they're just choosing not to respond or if it's only being shared one way. Maybe they're getting pop-up notification saying, watch more triangle. I've got to feel like it's more like

I'm looking through a security mirror in an old-time supermarket. But either way, it's starting to chip flakes off the far side of myself because I don't know who this is or why this is happening. Or you don't know who Taylor Parks is, do you? I mean, you know, it's almost like questions addressed to yourself.

Have you fulfilled your potential? But as you say, the temptation is very much to find out who this person is, dress up like them, and turn up to these events half an hour before they're going to get there, get their name crossed off the guest list. And then when they turn up, feign outrage. How dare you claim to be me?

Seriously, Taylor, this is the beginning of a rom-com. You've got to go with it. No, because something vaguely similar happened to me in the late 90s. I was in W.8 Smith in Victoria Station, and I bought this paper bag. And when I took it out on the train, I noticed an indentation of a woman's email address on the cover, where she pressed really hard on a bit of paper. And every time I got the book out, and the son caught it just so.

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

They did say that technology would bring us closer together. I just didn't realize that meant actually overlapping. Yeah. simultaneously suffering an invasion of personal psychological space and more alienated than ever before the 21st century right there. Yeah, but fucking Elteller. Talk about not living up your potential. You could have gone to see Guns and Roses

35 years after their sell-by date. As for me, I'm just plate spinning like a bastard at the moment. I've started doing an hour on Radio 5 live every Tuesday at midnight. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Where me and Tony Livesy take a random date in Istra and go through the BBC television list. I've been doing it for about three months now

and I'm still at the stage where I'm sitting at the mic sweating me bollocks off going, don't swear, don't swear, you're not on chart music, don't swear. But the really, really big news chaps, chart music returns to the London podcast festival on Saturday, September the 13th at half-past four. for another live show. Fucking yes.

David Stubbs, Simon Price, and me on another 90 minute speed run through an episode of Top of the Pops. Then it's off to the pub for a massive link up with the pop craze youngsters. And it's my birthday. Oh, is it now? Yep. I'm not going to say I'll hear. That was a blatant request for free drinks there, wasn't it, David?

Shameful, shameful. And the same day that Forrest a place. playing Arsenal. Oh, good. So, yeah, that would be interesting. So, yeah, get your phones ready, Polk Crazy and says, I want live updates on how much

we're beating Arsenal by. If you've been to one of these before, you know what a fantastic dossier is. And if you haven't, well, maybe it's time you did. So get your arse over to kingsplace.co. Now, step up to the pay window

and lay your money down because you know how much we love to throw it down. live with the pop craze youngsters. No backing tapes with us, mate. It's all pure and live, isn't it? So I've got so much on my plate at the moment. I've thought quite hard about helping to murder creativity and relying on AI. You recall pop craze youngsters that I've already had a dabble when I got chat GPT to write reviews of Toyer albums by a robot Taylor and Neil a few years ago. So when Deep Seat came out, I immediately jumped on it, but I think I might have broken it, you know. I started off at the shallow end, you know, poems about David Van Day's takeover of

Bugsfiz and Rochford shitting himself in the style of William McGonagall, which was all right. But then I went to the heart of the matter, and I lent on technology to reveal one of humanity's greatest mysteries. So this was in the really early days of Deep Seat when it had to do all it's working out on the spot before it spat anything out so let me just relate to you what it's said to me okay so i need to write an erotic fiction piece featuring simon bates and fish from marillion now the challenge here is to create a fictional encounter between these two real people since it's erotic fiction i need to handle this carefully i should be cautious not to infringe on their rights or portray them in a defamatory way, but assuming this is for a fictional

context and not meant to be harmful, I can proceed. I need to build some chemistry between them. Start with a professional setting, maybe an interview backstage, then escalate the situation to a private setting. I need to use metaphors and lyrical language to keep it tasteful. No, you don't, AI. Give me the fucking film. also need to consider their personalities.

No, no, no. Fish, as a frontman, might have a more flamboyant and intense presence. Simon Bates, as a presenter, would be charismatic and articulate. I need to be careful with explicit content. And yes, it went on to write something. I'm not sure it's suitable for a family podcast, but you never know Pop Craze youngsters if you're easy. up all your chart music you may be getting a fruity dessert i got away with it there but i think

i pushed it too far because i tried to get it to write some erotic fiction in a victorian setting between shaking stevens and davely trabbas and it refused point blank so i tried again with fictional characters and i got this message okay so the user is asking me to write a story about the monster-munch monsters having chem sex in the style of Richard Allen. Now, combining these elements is problematic.

Using children's snack characters in an explicit and potentially offensive context is inappropriate. The request seems to be asking for shock value by juxtaposing innocent characters with adult themes and drug use.

Additionally, there's the risk of promoting harmful stereotypes What are fucking the monster-munch monsters? Especially if the portrayal of chemsex is done insensitively. The user might be trying to push boundaries or test the AI's limitation. No. Therefore, I should decline this request politely. No, do it.

Yeah, exactly. What the fuck is AI doing, calling all the shots. Just get on with it, robot slave. Yeah. Yeah, this does not bode well for the future. No, it doesn't, does it? No. So taking people's jobs off of them

And speeding up the extinction of humanity That's fine, mate, no problems there But consenting monsters Having a bit of sexy fun On their own planet, under their own laws Oh, that's beyond the pale, mate. Fuck this century, I want me old one back. On the upside, if you're a writer

And you're worried that technology is crushing your ability To make a living out of it, well, where the fuck have you been for the last 20 years? But if you specialise in erotic fiction involving things on Chris Packers, fucking out, your time has come, hasn't it? It was always your time. Anyway, you know how we go about on chart music. Before we do anything else, we stop, we drop,

and we bow the need to the latest batch of pop craze youngsters who have got involved with Patreon and have shoved a handful of shrapnel right down, Now G-strings, and this time those people are in the $5 section. Emma Murray, John Rune, Tom, Dr. Craig, read my name out, Jeffrey S. Dixon, Michael Burke, Robert Knight, Damon, Philip Warrington, Andrew Dick, Tom Bolter, Simon, Tom Bolter, Simon, Simon, Balter, Simon Feele, Michelle Lyons, Neil Comfort, Darren Lamb, Matt Nixie, Sam Clinton, Rob Lewis, Paul Hart, Lidl Kim, Douglas Mills, Paul Gray, James Holmes, Ian M. Spillane, Michael Murphy, Richie McCormack, George Bamford, Alastair, Joseph Bayne, Joseph, and Joseph. if Narwas, Andy

McLeod, Jason Brannigan, Joe O'Donnell, Marie Sandland, David Room, Riley Briggs, Doug Harper, The Notable Stranger, Steve Crow,

Frank Henre, Cat, Spike Milligan's tape recorder, and the return of Stig Thundercock. Whoa. Fucking how, what a list. And in the $3 section we have Jason Yates, Giles Cooper, Circuit 3, Synth Pop for the Masses, Tim Forrester, Philip Rhodes, OMG Man, Legion AOD, Oliver, Phil McGuire, Alex Colwell, Gemma Lennox, The Dave Forbes, Jimmy Greaves, Kenneth Gray, Jerry Hillman, C.W. Ashley Davis, J.S.R. 75, Stuart Wullen, Peter Marsh, and Mr. B's Guild of Chapop.

Oh, you lovely people, one and all. Oh, and Daniel Sullivan, once again, you've gone above and beyond it away and right off, and we appreciate you so, so very much. Good old Daniel. And also a big shout to our $1 subscribers to you also served. Yeah, it's nice to know there's still people who appreciate a podcast that disappears for six months at a time. Big take up there. And that's probably because it's been a while since we've done one of these. And for that, I apologise. It's entirely my fault.

And also because we've ramped up the bonus content, because we've just dropped a Patreon exclusive for our trawl through the first. ever episode of the Tube with David and Simon thrown down thunderbolts of wrath on the presenters and praising Lenin bumming a Rastafarian Channel 4

to the absolute skies fun times wasn't it David? Oh yeah, what an absolute dog's breakfast it was it's extraordinary. But a tasty dog's breakfast. Yeah, exactly. I mean the worst thing about it

is the best thing about it. That's a shambles, just throwing things randomly at the screen, no logical sequence. But yeah, It was fun. Yeah, we got a very good response from the Pop Craze Patreon. So I think we're going to have to do it again at some point.

Yeah. And don't forget, if you're a Pop Craze Patreon person, you get all of that. And you also get to go Menkel with a Judy Zook satin tour jackets and rig the Chalk Music Top 10. Boys, are you ready? Are you ready for this? Do you like it?

Do you like it like this? Just about... Hit the fuck. We've said goodbye to Jeff Sex and Eric small shawl of echoes, which means one up, five down, two non-movers and two new entries. Down four places to number ten, right said Don Estelle. Last week's number ten, this week's number nine, my fucking car. dribbling down one place from number seven to number eight here comes

new entry at number seven the goalkeepers of rock down one place to number six Bomber dock into the top five and down two from number three to number five the provisional O'R UR A No change at number four for the bent cunts who aren't fucking real Down one place to number three

Ghost Face Siller The highest new entry Smashes into the chart at number two Motorhead Arrington which means He's still there at the top This week's chart music number one the Birmingham Pistroth. What a chart.

Represent. No more Jeff Sext. No more Eric Smallshore of Eccles. End of an era boys. They'll be back. Roosting atop the chart like long-haired lover from Liverpool. They'll see you on the dark side of the move, Birmingham Pistron. So, boys, the new entries.

I think it's safe to say what Motet Arrington are all about. An appalling confection of Meckle and two. tone, lip-up Sabbath, if you but what or who are the goalkeepers of rock? Marcus Harnaman. She's not even headed US keeper. Big fan of the hard rock.

David DeHia. Oh, he's a metal fan. All right, what about Musos who'd make good goalies? Roger Waters. He looks proper goalie-ish. Because no one wants to stand there. And if you're faced up to him,

in a corner, it'd spit on you. Yeah, it's all part of the game. Thirst and Moore's a tall unit. I don't think he'd be master of his box. Funny you should say that, David, because masters of the box is what their albums called. And you should have seen the cover they wanted to do. It wasn't a goalie's glove, believe me.

Yeah, Thirst and Moore, Nicky Wyatt, they've got that rangey look that goalkeepers have got. Now, none of this Neville, Southall, Angelo Perruzzi, early 90s look. No, the goalkeepers now. It's supposed to look like a bit of thread swaying in the breeze. Some of the pop craze patch out have been petitioning for the return of some of the old favourers

like the Hadley Fist and Lesbian Door Factory. And I'm thinking, have we got to the point now where we actually need to have a heritage chart music type of. Anyway, if you want in on all of that, whatever that is, you know how to go about. fingers, keyboard, Patreon.com slash chart music pledge, if you will,

and if you can. Do it now while the dollar's on its ass, pop craze youngsters. Yeah, quite. Don't wait for him to impose tariffs on Mars or anything like that. Get in now. Do it quick before the great new age

of American prosperity begins. This episode, pop craze youngsters, takes us all the way back to August the 12th. 1982. It's not particularly a landmark episode, but there is a reason why we're doing it. It's basically because 2025 has been an absolute unwiped horse of a year so far for many reasons. And I've just been carrying around this feeling of absolute dread out of how shit everything is at the moment.

And you know, when that happens, chaps, the only thing you can do is to bury your head into the comfort. bosom of pop music at its very purest. And, you know, when we say pure pop music, we are talking about 1982, aren't we? Yeah, and anything sick at this time, I think so, yeah. I'm not saying that this episode's the best we've ever covered, far from it, but if you were to stick a pin into this episode, it would go pop. If you were to put it in a bowl and pull milk over it and put your ear to it, it would go pop, pop, and pop.

And if you were to stick a straw into it and suck deeply, well, you know what it would taste of, A, Taylor. Oh, yeah. Because this episode just goes up your nose, doesn't it, in the nicest possible way? Yeah. Well, it's quite an interesting time, isn't it? It's like it's summer in England, but this is the late autumn of the Aventies. Yeah, I was trying to think, what are my main memories of 1982? And I ended up lying in bed awake for five hours.

tormented by the words Gordon Astley zombie tiz was going round my head to the tune of teenage mutant ninja turtles. But it's that in the 1982 World Cup in Spain, which has just happened, with its adorable mascot Naranjito, an orange in a football kit officially referred to on merchandise as Narangito the Little Orange, which is odd as going on the pictures I've seen of him standing next. of things, I would estimate his height at about 5 foot 4, which is not very large for a human being, but I have seen littler oranges. What a fraud. Made himself scarce at half time, I hear. Yes.

But look, this is an interesting time in terms of pop music and pop culture. It's like when your milk is right on the best before date. You take the lid off and sniff it, and it's fine. So you put it in your tea. and it's okay but there's still something in your head nagging that it's not right even though it is it's that feeling in reverse like the charts are actually on the turn at this point yes but it doesn't feel like it because there's so much crazy stuff going on so what is so amazing about this episode is that it's an almost perfect split between on one hand the last flowering of the new pop and on the other these bizarre cash-ins and novelty records but the one thing you're going to be don't see is straight-faced corrosive cynicism as you did before this and would again slightly later because at this point even if you're going for a quick clean kill exploitation hit you can't just dress up a pretty boy and push him onto the stage you have to do

something bizarre and unexpected and use your imagination for better or for worse just to get attention because the best of the new pop groups have reset things. So in 1982, the current commercial conception of generic pop music is not the Osmans or the rollers. It's something that's more obviously weird and has been thought about at least a little bit and some sort of effort has been made on some level. And the results are variable, but variable can include good because the quality of the cash in always reflects the quality of the thing it's cashing in on to some extent. So like, look, not to spoiler, let's take some groups who aren't on this program. So shortly before this, orange juice became moderately popular, doing something really,

you know, unusual and individually, like explicitly and a bit comically anti-rockist, slightly preppy so the industry's response to orange juice is haircut 100 or as i would call them orange squash and they're doing everything that orange juice did without the uncommercial bits and without the perversity and the the teas and no rough edges but haircut 100 are brilliant yeah they're just not as brilliant as orange juice but we still ended up with some great hits that wouldn't have been there if they hadn't have been patterned on something so full of potential and imagination. Because if what you're aping is boy's own, you get Westlife. But if people understand that they have to try, they will try.

And the end result may be the same commercially, but it will be different culturally. What's great about it, as you like, all great pop years, I think you've got that wonderful balance that it fairly soon became extinct between sublime and the ridiculous. And you get both of those night with the sublime being thrown into religious. by the ridiculous. I mean, I think that was always a kind of vital component for me of, like, top of the pops at its finest. I mean, as Taylor mentioned, it is the sort of, very much

the tail end. It's the sort of golden Eden song of new pop and Howard Jones and Nick Kershaw are just waiting around the corner with their kind of very cynical, codified, peroxided version of a new pop. So all of that is ending in a lot of people, like one or two, the groups of CET and I are kind of reaching a zenith from which there's not really any kind of comeback. We've gone back to 1982 street many a timing off during a child music odyssey and for good reason because, you know, it's a year where diversity and tribalism is broad and deep. It's a year where crazers flare up and die down. It's a year where acts come out of nowhere and land enormous hits. And most importantly, like you've mentioned, Taylor, it's a year where chances of all shapes and sizes try to make the big score.

I mean, there are 11 acts on this episode, and not to do any spoilers, but we've only covered four of them. So, fucking out, we've got a long day ahead of us. Also, remember that what we're seeing here is really the tip of the javelin, because everyday life in Britain in 1982 was still really old-fashioned. Yes. We've said this before. In a lot of ways, it's not that different from 1962 in terms of tech and living standards, even if it's culturally unrecognisable.

Like advertisers were not yet selling products with a suggestion that you can aspire to everything that you see around you, which is what they do in boom times, which is what they did in the 60s and would do again in the yuppie years. Like at this point, aspirational adverts are all make-believe. Like you can only aspire to a fantasy.

You know, like if you buy this shampoo, a sex will happen in the mist, in a forest, in a forest. you know, with a gypsy. And you had to say that because Gypsy was a compliment in 1982. Whereas Romani was seemingly an insult, and I'm not sure precisely when that flipped. But here's an example of how half and half 1982 feels, right? I watched an episode of Summertime Special recently.

Oh, yes. The televised old-fashioned end of the peer variety show, which was shown on BBC 1 a month before this episode of Top of the Pops. And it was the first episode of series two. And it's hosted by Les Dawson. And Les Dawson comes on, walks up to the mic. And the first joke of the series is, hello and welcome to Summertime Special,

the program that is to Entertainment, what Julie Andrews was to Deep Throat. Fucking hell. Daring opener, Les. Jesus. But you see, we're in a post-Linda Lovelace world of experience. and yet still suspended in innocence in that you say the words deep throat. It's just a half-recognised signifier for something exotic and naughty

rather than putting actual pictures into anybody's head. Wasn't Julie Andrews getting a bit deep throat at this point? Wasn't she trying to go all porny? Well, she's got a tits out in a film. It was integral to the plot, David. Yeah. The idea that Les Dawson knows about giving someone a notch, that don't sit well with me.

that makes me want to purse my lips and push an imaginary breast off. Yeah, indeed. So a time special is a great show though. Once you get past the European knife thrower or acrobat that's always on, and there's a crap major label pop act

and past that there is some really interesting tail end of the working man's club circuit folk who show up on there. I don't know who did the book him, but it's always hosted by a proper star and there'll be one other bigish name on there and everyone else is like hope-grown club acts

like the prison radiator vodka of primetime television you get some desiccated conjurer long since divorced from two different showgirls like the sort of bloke where if an enthusiastic eight-year-old in a top hat and a glittery bowtie went up to him and said hey mister will you look at my trick he'd just look the other way and go I've seen it, son.

There's people like that. Or, you know, like Johnny Jiggly Jenkins, whose whole actor, he just stands there while his glamorous assistant kicks him in the bollocks over and over again. Do you remember him? Who could forget his hilarious catchphrase. Ow, my bollocks.

What a hero. Onward! In the news this week, Mexico has announced that it's properly Bernie Flint, unable to pay its foreign debt off, starting a domino effect across Latin America. The QE2 has departed from Southampton at the start of its first cruise after being used in the Falklands War. The Cray twins have been reunited for the first time since they were sent down 13 years ago when they're permitted to stand next to each other.

at the funeral of their dear old ma'am in Chingford. John Knight, the man with two wives and 20 kids and is known in the tabloids as Super Dad, has finally got a job as a sexpert. Knight, whose family's in two houses on Bob Minmore currently receive £270 a week in benefits, will feature in a new monthly video magazine called Private Spy, dispensing advice.

I am determined to stand up for traditional values against moral corruption, he said. Oh, fucking old, Taylor, private spy, you've shown me that. Fucking hell. Yeah. Where to begin? Right, Private Spy was the name of a series of video cassettes

released in the early 80s when video players were new and the major movie studios all refused to release their stuff. on video because they also owned or had shares in the cinema chains and they thought video would kill cinema so that plus the lack of any certification or rating system for videotapes at the time is what gave us the first golden age of home video when you walked into a video rental shop and 90% of what was on the shelves was cheap independently released crap which is why everyone my age is ultra familiar with the few good films which did come out on

video at this time like Airplane and Life of Brian which you'd just get out over and over again because apart from that it was just whatever some Arthur Daily chances could afford the rights to and just put out cheap like video nasties and edited

soft porn and all this. Yeah electric blue. Yeah and it was a weird and wonderful and crappy new world of cultural experience going on video shop in the 80s. So one of the few things that you could get on video were very cheaply made

video magazines which were kind of like early websites you know like amateurish stuff for enthusiasts which usually look fucking horrible and one of these was called private spy largely the brainchild of

Ian Cutler a bloke used to work for the news of the world in its glory days like absolute old school fleet street filth. This bloke wrote a kind of autobiography distributed online called Camera Assassin.

One of the few books I've ever seen with typos on its front cover. Where he basically admits that everything, and this is going to shock you, that everything in the news of the world in the 70s and 80s was complete lies, which they

just made up. Yeah, including British Leyland workers sleeping on the job. Yes, sleeping on the job. Yeah, it was just their mates, like, lying down with her eyes closed, going, look at these British, like, yeah, I know. And it was all with the full knowledge of Murdoch and all that. And it's a great read, as long as you've got a packet of antibacterial mind wipes handy.

It's not a surprise to learn that a lot of the contents of the news of the world were, let's say, erroneous, or the hacks and photographers sent out to expose vice. Actually, partook in that vice. Who'd have thought? Yeah, they made their excuse. and stayed. They did, indeed.

This is just wall-to-wall, mind-scorching, slees and horror, like worse than you could possibly imagine. Like, look, hang on a minute. Forgive me, I've got a quote from this. Go ahead. This is virtually the first page.

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

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

I said I would pay for the soup as long as the shop owner paid for the ruined suit. I was then karate chopped to the ground. I again attempted to leave but was kung food to the floor, on a number of occasions. When I eventually managed to get out, I vowed that the restaurant would have to go. So I paid someone to burn the restaurant down in the early hours of the following morning.

As I had threatened to burn it down during the hot soup incident the previous evening, the police managed to convict me of arson. That's how they get you. I was not a model prisoner and ended up serving two extra years. Yeah, I've seen that Laurel and Hardy film. There's another fine, messy gutties.

Yeah, they pay James Finlayson to firebom someone's restaurant while he's asleep upstairs with his family. I think it was called Thaw Hardy Fire Bugs. But, you know, post-Hall Roach. Anyway, however bleak and sordid, you thought, goings on at the old school tabloids were you were wrong they were 90,000 times worse

which is why this is the best book I've ever read in my life everyone should track it down even though most of it is probably bollocks considering he can't even arrange his own life story into a coherent chronological order and remembers nothing correctly

anyway private spy is presented as a kind of news of the world for your television right like like a scurrilous investigative journalism. I think they put out four of them before it went tits up, all produced from a video pirating duplication facility in a flat in Tottenham. And inevitably, it's one of the most profoundly depressing

and amazing things you'll ever see in your sorry little life. There were four of them, but really episode two is the greatest, right? they persuaded the former ITN newsreader Reginald Bosenkate to host it. Oh, God, yes. Oh, Reggie. Yeah, fresh from cutting his single dance with me. Dance to whoopoo-wapoo-wee. Yeah, so that was a smash hit. I'm sorry, I'll read that again.

That was mashed shit. And I think the persuasion probably took the form of a crate of Johnny Walker because Reggie was at this point, puffball alcoholic and he needed both the work and the booze. So he sat there behind the desk all florid and confused like he thinks

he's still reading the news but filmed on a shit early eight is camcorder so it's really dark with this smeary picture and the sound is incomprehensible like it comes on and all you can hear is like it's been filmed in a boiler

room and he can barely speak and he's got no idea where is and he introduces what purports to be investigative journalism but mostly seems to be just a carload of horrible B.O. riddled wankers driving round Kings Cross with their camcorder harassing sex workers on the street and pulling into car parks where they're doing their business shining a very bright light into the car and loudly interrogating the punters as they frantically do their trousers out. Oh, isn't that the one you showed me

where there was a massive argument between the locals? Yeah. And then they cut to an extreme close-up of a used Johnny on the floor. Yeah, it's a self-stalled residence action committee in King's Christ who are sick about all the soliciting on their doorstep. Another fun evening around Taylor's house. The Vesbit is one of the ladies

is complaining about all they used Jurex on the front. floor. Yes. And it says, we saw one child pick one up and it was all over her hands. And her mother was trying to get it away from her. And she didn't want to part with it because she thinks it's a balloon and it's going everywhere. Which is a genuinely unpleasant story. But the image of a kid swinging a Johnny around screaming, don't take my balloon, showering her family with Harry Monk. Oh my God. This is the level that we're exploring it. surely it would take a heart of polyurethi not to laugh. Oh man, I'm sure they have a good laugh about it now, though.

And you know that story gets dragged out every Christmas dinner. No, yeah, like when it was a birthday dinner, a cake with special icing on it. They're like, oh, you are a one. Yeah, Ian Cutler, I don't know if Ian Cutler is the bloke who appears on camera with a mic interviewing people in this. but if so, he looks like a less salubrious Lester bangs. They pull into this car park and there's a bloke in a car

with a lady of the night and he shouts at him, how much do you pay her? And he says, 20 quid. And they shout back, 20 quid, you could have spent that on your car. Got some nice orange go-faster strikes. I mean, the whole thing is just sleaze at depths so profound, your submersible would implode. in seconds.

It's genuinely the bleakest and grubbiest and slimyest artefact of the early 80s I've ever seen. And my God, I've seen a few of them. But how does Super Dad get on? Yeah. So this bloke John Knight, who was a fell runner and

or a millionaire with, yeah, several wives or a wife and a common law wife. And I think eventually 26 kids who, despite being a fitness fanatic, apparently died at the age of just 58 after developing a blood clot

in his leg after being injured playing football possibly against Danny Baker Don't worry the kids will get that one He turns up at the end of a couple of these tapes as the resident sexpert as they weren't called in those days or indeed these days

just the in between days and he comes on with this thinning silky Scandinavian hair and colossal pubes beard. Yeah, it's horrible. He gives us mostly some fairly progressive sex positive stuff about

how, you know, it's all normal and natural in it. And then he answers some 99% certainly made up readers letters. And immediately incriminates himself by explaining to a woman who supposedly wrote in to complain that

she and her boyfriend couldn't have sex properly because his dick was too big for her. And he starts saying, well, in fact, when the woman becomes aroused, she expands and lengthens and can easily mould herself around any size of man. So it's not because he's such a wonderful stallion with a gigantic dong. The odds are, he's a selfish or ignorant lover who simply doesn't know how to arouse you properly. Like, yeah, all delivered in that low, creepy cult leader tone of the,

the great British wronging. And the thing is, this is not true. They're genuinely are people who are awkwardly mismatched in this respect. So even though this is almost certainly not a real complaint from a real person, and it's just the first dirty thing that came to mind for whoever made the letters up,

he's still trying to manoeuvre creepily, right? The subtext being, hey, Alison from Reading, come to my lair. and I'll show you what it's all about. I'll get you all expanded. Yeah, I'll promise you one thing. You certainly won't have that problem with me. Yeah, yeah.

And there won't be any Johnny's left on the floor either. No. Or indeed anywhere. Yeah, it's no wonder Britain was so sexually repressed for so long when this was the vanguard of the liberation movement. It's some eerie Viking Bill Oddy with hair in places that you never knew existed. putting on a pseudo-reasonable voice to get his little end away.

Just the perfect mascot for a hypocritical shitbag enterprise like the amazing private spy, which is worth a watch because you'll never be the same again, however many times you shall. Anyway, John Knight's Superdad, quite the tabloid figure of the era. And Private Spy No. 1 gives us a privilege. of dropping in on him at home as he introduces us to his family, plays a bit of guitar, and reads out all his lovely fan mail, including, get sterilised, you, cunt, I'll kill you, get rid of rubbish that keeps England poor,

rate payers burden, filthy cunt, beasts of the field are above you, your future killer, Jake. And then he shows us a front page article about him, in The Daily Mirror, where a fan has sent it to him and written hairy ponds on his forehead, as well as dirty, filthy bastard, you lazy, dirty bastard, you cunt sucker,

cunt for breakfast, dinner and tea, and the cunt beast of bodmin. Also, chaps, I found the following article from January of 1983, you know, what are two of you might find interesting? Allow me to read it. Yes.

Superdad John Knight's new neighbours are to ask their local council for a rates cut. The demand follows a decision by Carradon District Council in Cornwall to buy a 30,000 pound house for Mr Knight, his wife, Carol and 10 of their 11 children.

One unhappy neighbour in the hamlet of double boire, David Stubbs. Plans to seek a substantial jump cut in his 386 a year rates bill. Mr Stubb said, I don't bear them any ill will, but we already have several problem families here, and enough is enough.

Oh, David. It's bogus. What a nimbie you are, man. I know, I know. No nobbing in my backyard. It sounds like me, I'll admit. Yeah, definitely. I think probably I would have probably lodged an objection.

It's really, really depressing. It's like when Internet arrives and put your own name into the search engine, And it's like, really, you know, I always felt that David Stubbs was quite an idiosyncratic name. You know, there might be one, maybe two other David Stubbs in this world. And there's like 50 or 60, and you'd feel like Dolly the fucking sheep. You know, it's just really, really depressing. Well, when I got a subscription to the British newspaper archive, obviously the first thing I did was look for Al-Needham's. And I was delighted to learn that in my own area in the 80s, there was an Al-Nidom jazz band.

But even better, because in the 30s, There was an impresario called Al-Needam who put on follies in the provinces and whatnot and was known as Al-Nidam, the dancing fool. No murderers or people who got locked in the stocks for wanking off dogs in the market square and relieved to report. So well done, the Al-Nidams of yours.

I will do my very best not to let you down. Yeah. There was a young footballer called Rahim Taylor Parks, like hyphen-o. who, I believe, had a trial at Arsenal, and I was just willing him to fail so badly. It's really unfortunate. I have to ask, Taylor.

How did you feel about 10 years ago when there was an R&B artist called Taylor Parks knocking about? Spelt T-A-Y-L-A-P-A-R-X? Yeah, I mean, aside from, again, the desperate will for somebody else to fail. I mean, the first time somebody sent me a list, to her, I was like, oh, I say, then about after the 219th time, someone did it. I was just sort of like, yeah, just off the shoulder.

Oh, yeah, news, that's what we were talking about, weren't we? The first ever compact discs are made in Germinate and sit there for a while because the actual players don't go on sale for another two months. Rod Stewart is suing his former manager, Billy Gaff, for 41 million pounds, as a counterclaimed to a £3 million lawsuit taken out by Gaff for compensation and damages. According to Gaff, the splitter could when Rod's wife Alana started pushing him to start making films instead of records. Can I imagine Rod Stewart doing very well in the Hollywood of the early 80s. In other pop-related court activity, Sting is suing three publishing companies, including his own label Virgin Music,

for breach of contract and copyright infringement after a re-recording of Don't Stand So Close to Me has been used in an advert for body mist too. The lady deodorant has taken out some of the perfume and put in even more of the power that keeps you dry. Jimmy Hill has been told by the BBC that he will not be fired from his presenting job on match of the day after issuing an apology for organising a rebel tour of South Africa last month.

But Cyril Fletcher has walked out on that's life after being told he was going to have a smaller role in the new series. Here comes Doc Cox, everyone. Kevin Keegan has announced he's leaving Southampton after two seasons with Man United leading the charge to land his signature after talks between Ron Atkinson and Laurie McMename. Chelsea and Leeds United have also expressed an interest, but he eventually signs for Newcastle United.

In other transfer news, Peter Shelton has left Forrest for Southampton. But the big news this week, Tommy Cannon has revealed that he's patched up the split with his wife after he'd been bombarded with letters dripping with filth from his lady fans. Oh. I'm the one who gets the really sexy letters, he said to the Sunday mirror.

Girls write to me saying the most outrageous things. When the first letter arrived, I was so surprised I laughed and showed it to my wife, Margaret. I thought by being honest and open about it, I was doing the right thing. I told her I treated the letter as a joke, but I'm afraid she didn't see the funny side.

She was wild with anger. Now, when these letters arrive, I get rid of them and don't bother showing them to her. Meanwhile, Bobby says all he gets is letters from non-aurs who want to mother him. Oh, man. That's it. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, Susie Sue. On the cover of smash hits, the associates. On the cover of Record Mirror, Blamonge. The number one LP in the UK at the moment is The Kids from Fame by the Kids from Fame. And over in America, the number one single is Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

and the number one LP is Mirage by Fleetwood Max. So boys what were we doing in August of 1982? Right, well I was still at university but obviously these were the holidays and I managed to bag a job

as a pharmacy storekeeper I think I've mentioned before how every week this was at Leeds General Infirmary LGI. Once a week there was his consignment of heroin It was like the size of a kind of bag of home pried flower They've just left in a sort of loading bay There was no security whatsoever

I mean it's the easiest black in the world If I'd have, you know, had contacts in the demi-monde or whatever But now I just went and card it in Put it beyond the counter Smart Expert David Stubbs Did it have a big label on it? Well, I think it would mention it somewhere, yeah Yeah, I mean it was very, very lax on the security front

You know, we northern folk, we trusted each other You know, it was a simpler time. Not like these sleety southern capers that you were talking about earlier on, you know. Just have one of those dino labels on it, just saying scag. But the great thing was, every summer, I mean, jobs, you know, it was the early 80s. Jobs were hard to come by. But my mum worked at the job centre. My mum's mate at the job centre, who was a bit more kind of, I don't know,

a little bit less kind of pious and scrupulous than my mum. She fixed it for me to get these kind of really. plumb holiday jobs. And what you do is, like, they, you know, they're putting a note to whatever, but they'd say, look, we want five or six applicants. And so every year I turn up, and I do a little interview with them and say, well, well, thank you there, Mr. Stubbs. Of course, there'll be four or five other applicants, but, you know,

we can let you know. And, you know, I'd just sit around, you know, like, and they'd be expecting someone in. And, of course, no one else turned up because they're all made up, you know, M-Mouse, D-Duck, etc. And so they come out into the kind of waiting rooms, well, no one else has turned up. So you've got the job. Fucking out.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's funny all that, yeah. And then they'd have to sort of listen to them, deliver a kind of a sermon on the kind of fetelessness of, um, what, and youth or whatever, I mean, a pretty decent job. They don't even have to, you know, manners, the grace to turn up.

Um, well, yeah, there's not many of us left, you know, there's not many of us left, you know, there's not many of us left with those kind of, that work ethic. Yeah, the problem with Mickey Mouse is he doesn't want to work. They want to, oh, I don't I play it, don't they? Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'll find I've got, I've got the fibre, I've got what it takes.

Yes, I managed to get the landlantic kind of jobs. And it was nice money. I mean, it was 90 quid a week. I mean, 1982, that's about 900 quid a week, whatever these days. So basically, I was able to spend, you know, this bounteous weekly sum on my twin passions, which were still music, very much, keeping up with the 23 skittos and people like that. But trousers, this was the people here of semiotic trousers. Seriously, it was. you know, Africa Van Barter was looking for the perfect

beat and I was looking for the perfect trousers because the thing is, if you went to like, I don't know, Burton's or tops or wear the men's trousers in there's slack you felt like you were like dressing like an Ipswich town fullback of beauty. It was just, they're just rubbed, they're horribly cut, tight at the top

and there's a sort of, you know, I'm wanting something like baggy at the top, slightly tapered, you know, that kind of ultra cool. And it was really hard to come by their trousers and he ended up having to resort to like charity shops and he'd get these basically consignments of recently deceased old men in which it costs more to get their pistains dry cleaned out than the trousers themselves cost. And ultimately, I found my kind of dream suit. And I actually look, it was like

the spit of, I don't know, say Billy McKenzie, something like that. The trousers were perfectly tapered. It was absolutely ragging the thread. My mom was absolutely horrified. And it's just like, you paid three pounds for that. Yeah. Cheap at the price. And I wore that suit until it just literally disappeared through kind of, you know, the phrase just dying away. But yeah, it was all about trousers. For me, trousers were a moral issue. I actually wrote a piece of this Oxford magazine called Morality can be measured by the width of one's trousers. You know, that's what you meant it, because of all the, you know, the semiotics, the signification,

the rejection of this kind of horrible early Thacherite banality and wearing trousers like McMills or whatever and the kind of the horrible, mediocre. People who wore red jeans as well. I mean, that was disgusting. You know, you know, trousers need to be grey, brown, tapered at the bottom, claseless. or whatever, because that's what the times demanded. So, yeah, that's what I was doing in August of 1982. Wasn't watching telly or the video, the video age, hadn't happened for me yet.

I didn't get other video player until about 1985. So, yeah, missed out on all these boons that Taylor was describing earlier on. Well, we never had a video either. My mate down the road had, because his dad was a plasterer. And he had that more sort of straight down the line working class approach. If you've got money, you fucking spend it. Yes. And so they had everything, right?

And we didn't have anything because my mum and dad being sort of lower middle class up that. Well, first of all, it meant they had less money because they weren't going off doing foreign plastered jobs and stuff in the 80s. And secondly, they had this idea, oh, no, no, no, you've got a scrimp and save. And gadgets are vulgar. So didn't get a breville sandwich toaster. No. Soda stream. Didn't get a fucking CB radio.

Didn't get an Atari. My mate down the road, I had all of these things, all of them. So, yeah, that was where I went for my access to 1982. I had exactly the same thing. I came from a low-class family, and we were poorer than the working-class folk. Yeah, besides the kind of reasons that you talk about. Breaks your fucking art, man. Yeah, they had fishing chips once a week.

You know, fish and chips was like a twice a year treat for us. Right about this time, we had a chip van that came down our street and popped right outside my ass every Saturday dinner time. and all I'd have to do is open the door, walk down the drive and fish, chips, mushy peas and two fritters was my reward. Oh my God. Other than that, I think 9.82, I was just mostly being the most precocious little shit. No.

You could imagine. Well, not you. No, but it's weird because, like, you know, when I was young at school, like, because I was obviously like a crappy state school in the Midlands, whenever they got a pupil who was bright and it happened to another kid in my year as well they tried to sort of make a thing out of it they'd bring in these educationalists

from the county was me there was a me and actually a couple of other kids in my year would get sent off when it was like spelling lessons or something like that it was like no no no you you don't have to do this you go and sit with Mrs whatever a name was from you know and read a proper book and talk about you know it's like they were trying to

to prepare you for like this great life in academia or something and it was bollocks and I didn't take it seriously at the time but it just messes with your head you know at that age you end up spending the next 40 years catching up with yourself because it's like well hang on why is my life so shit why am i not getting anywhere i thought i was supposed to be fucking smart yeah why aren't i on top of the form yeah besides so it's just why i ended up being a late bloomer as a as a writer and as a human being. I'm 14 and it's the summer holidays so I'm probably my non-or and grandpas

and they are not top of the pop's people. They would only watch it on Christmas Day because they had to with a look of absolute disgust on their face. But luckily for me there's a portable upstairs a colour portable I'm afraid to say chaps so yeah don't worry

about me I'm not going to miss out on my Thursday evening pop treat so shall we do what we always do at this time the proceedings chaps and peruse a copy of the music press from this very week. This time I've gone for the NME 14th of August, 1982. On the cover, Alfred Hitchcock. That was a great thing that NME were doing at that time.

So three NME covers, yeah, so there's like Alfred Hitchcock on the cover, Coronation Street. I think U.PEN went up and interviewed Elsie and Sunraf. It just absolutely spoke to me. that, you know, but especially, you know, I just love the idea that you could have the sensibility that you approached music with. You could also approach things in that film, TV, etc., etc. Yeah, that's like in my last days at Melodymaker, when they sent me off to interview Matthew Corbett.

Campaign for that to be on the cover, but I think it's a good idea. That's a joke, isn't it, Taylor? You are? Did you really interview Matthew Corbett? Yeah. No, serious. I just want to... Hang on.

Stop the podcast. You're seriously telling me that you interviewed Matthew Corbett, yes or no? It was one of my best interviews, yeah. Fucking hell. And that bloke had the brass neck to say you hadn't fulfilled your potential. Listen, mate, wherever you are, he's interviewed Matthew Corbett. What have you done? Fucking out.

So what was he like? A bit of a cunt. No, you're making it all. No, okay. In a podcast where we've been discussing figures such as Ian Cutler, I think it would be probably unfair to describe Matthew Corbett as a cunt. He was more like sort of, he was like a partridge type bloke. Right.

He had a blazer on and was a, you know, a bit clipped. Right. But it was all right. He was the one that turned sutty disco in 1977, wasn't he? Yes. He took over it. Someone had to, yeah. In the news, the top story is the fallout from the Harrogate Festival,

caused by the poetry performance by seething wells, the yet to be NME correspondent. In a front-page article in the Harriga advertiser entitled Festival Storm Over Fringe Poet Sex Act, it was reported that Swell simulated masturbation on stage, which a 21-year-old secretary in the audience called revolting and disgusting. The article notes that out of the five people who protested it in putting his hands down his trousers during the performance, only one of them was actually there, and one of the others, the Reverend Don Tordoff, was already well known in the area for calling Harrogut,

the Sin City of the North. The Jam have announced a mini tour of seven dates, taken in Shepton Mallet, Brighton, Leicester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Whitley Bay and Stafford at £5 a ticket. We don't know this yet, but it's supposed to be their farewell tour, as Paul has already told Bruce and Rick that he's doing one just before they were about to record the bitterest pill.

They do a proper farewell tour at the end of the year. Yeah, nobody's farewell tour is complete without a gig in Shepton Mallet. I'm just going to say the same thing, yeah. I'm guessing that must have been a festival or something, because having been there, I cannot imagine being a mod in Shepton Mallet. No.

Like just driving around with 30 wingmen. mirrors on your tractor. Clee living under difficult circumstances. The difficult circumstances being four inches of cow shit underneath the desert boot. In other gig news, the Who, who have just finished recording their next LP, It's Hard, have announced their only gigs of the year in the UK. They'll be playing two nights of the NEC in October, with tickets priced at £8 and £7.5th, there before pissing off to

America for most of the rest of the year and rumours are abounding this could be the last time for the Who we'll never see them live again but bad news for Echo and the Bunny Men fans their UK tour which was supposed to start in

three weeks time is off no reason has been given but it's probably down to the fact that their label WEA has just told them their next LP is not commercially enough and they've got to re-rerequered. record it. There's a new Brit funk artist in town about to release his debut single, David Steele, the current leader of the Liberal Party. Over a funky rhythm, he can be heard rapping

slogans like, You Can Help Me Change the Face of British Politics, while the backing vocals urged listeners to vote for the dapper Scott, says the article. Turns out it's been put together by hero of sharp music Jesse Ray the author of Odyssey's Inside Out which is still in the chart

at number 38 who's also just put out a disco version of Andy Stewart's Donald where's your trusers I think David's

wearing them at the minute Have you heard this record by the way? Yes it's not bad it's not bad it's called I feel liberal

all right he's got these backing singers going David Steele it could have been the theme tune if they'd made Sapphire and steel

but it was David Steele that would have been really good by the way like co-star in Shirley Williams and David Owen as silver don't worry the kids are going The strangest thing about Jesse Ray by the way is that you would deduce from his kilt, broadsword and helmet look

and his support for capital L political politics that he hailed from the Highlands and Ireland. But in fact, he's from right down by the English border. Like practically Berwick upon Tweed. It's what fraud. Well, that's the thing. If he was a football team, he'd be playing in the English league against Blythe Spartan. You're saying he lived at Cross Patch, where the Jocks and the Jordy's fought it out.

Meanwhile, there's been mass hysteria at the opening of HMV in Sheffield, where the site of opening the store by cutting a length of videotape strewn across the entrance caused such pandemonium that David Van Day leapt into the fray to rescue children trapped in the crush and police reinforcements were called in to cackle the pop craze youth of South Yorkshire as they fought for a good vantage point to see an in-store performance by Dex's Midnight Runners. There we go. David Van Day, finally a hero in the eyes of Choms. Unless he just jumped him for the publicity. Would you pay to watch David Van Day's Dex's Midnight Run?

Oh, God, yes. On their tour, the intense lack of emotion. In teasers, the gossip column, Paul McCartney has been spotted in a barbershop in Sussex asking for a short back and sides. Do you remember that bloke, Paul McCartney? They used to call him the fifth beetle. I was thought Paul McCartney's solo stuff

He should have called himself wing Just flying round in circle The cassette magazine SFX is about to go into receivership Southern Deathcourt had all their gear nicked from a van in Brixton While they were supporting the clash of the fair deal And Nick Haywood has been papped Squiring a lady round Regent's Park Anita Harris

Oh, I remember this This may have been around the time I saw Anita Harris in Pantamime in Birmingham. I had not the faintest idea who she was, and I don't think any of the other kids in the audience did either. So they should have saved their money and cast a drama student for five quid a night and let Anita Harris just hunk her down in a yurt somewhere with Nick Aywood. Yeah. Still dressed as principal boy.

Nick as buttons, naturally. Of course, yes. He's behind you. In the interview section, well, Lynn Hannah swings through Brixton to find out what Vib Alveteen is up to in the wake of the split of the slits earlier this year, and it turns out she's now an over-50s aerobics instructor at the fridge. I started to do aerobics to give me a break from everything else,

and when the slit split up, I worked on the reception at Pineapple Studios for a couple of months. The rest of the band felt they had to go away, while I felt I had to stay and work through the feeling of depression. The feeling that your whole life had turned upside down, and you'd split up with five husbands or something. A whole family, a whole network, just gone. It must be so hard to be that person in that band

and not be that person in that band anymore. Particularly back then when being in a band meant something. Apparently, I was just rereading her memoir. Apparently she was doing an interview at one point, some journalists. You know, they're talking about, you know, and then a journalist just says to a, you know, island have dropped to you. She goes, what? Yeah, you know, I was just talking to somebody letter to dead. They're saying thing, you're rubbish, so they've dropped to you.

Fucking out. That's just a weird situation. Yeah. She turned up an interview and not be briefed by somebody that they've actually just been dropped by Ireland. And that a journalist would get to know by her and very callously. kind of drop it into conversation like that. So, if you're interested in shaping up and dancing while being shouted out by a slit, make your way to danceaterium at the fridge on Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays,

one pound 50 per 90 minute session as long as you're over 50. Hey, hey, that's us. Fucking out, let's go. Into the time machine, lads. I'm not convinced the over 50s would be able to relate to these feelings of depression and emptiness that she's talking about. Or that sense of a social network disappearing. I think they'd all be too busy yucking it up out and about with all their pals. But imagine being over 50 and one of the slits shouting,

do a runner! Do runner! But this was her salvation, you know, was to turn into the postpunger leaving Newton John. I mean, this did actually happen. Richard Grable, enemies man in New York, witnesses of the latest wave of the new British invasion burst out of the landing craft, brandishing their guitars like Sten Rifles, Haircut 100.

At first he doubts their chances when he learns from a friend working in one of the biggest radio stations in the city that the haircuts have been excluded from their playlist because they sound too black. But on the flight to Boston, he encounters a group who refused

to let their instant success go to their heads, who are the only group in the world who sell official band jumpers at their merch stand, who are constantly bombarded by fans who are too young to get into their gigs and who actually enjoy the prospect of slogging through America because it means they have to win over older audience members at smaller venues. Grable concedes that he's finally been won over at the Boston gig, unaware that Nick Haywood is about three months away from leaving the band.

Yeah, you see, that's why Paul Nicholas didn't make it in America, he just sounded too black. Cynthia Rose nips out to a cafe in London for a catch-up with Lena Lovich who's been on a break since her last tour in January of 1981 we learned that she was in the running for a supporting role in breaking glass and impressed the producers so much

that they rewrote the entire film to make the lead role a woman but they employed so much horrible emotional blackmail to get her to do it she backed out and they gave it to Hazel O'Connor instead. She talks about her new project, a musical about Matahari,

co-written with Chris Judge Smith and Vandagraph Generator, but she doesn't say much about it. And Monty Smith gets two and a half pages to champion New Pop Sensation Alfred Hitchcock, Roy Carr and Fred Della get two pages to whang on about Bebop, and the centre spread is given over to an essay by Barney Hoskins about tragedy and pop or something that I gave up on a couple of paragraphs in. Back to smash it's for me, I think.

I would have got all through that, no doubt. Yeah, of course you would, David. Single reviews. Charles Charmurray is in the chair this week, and his single of the week is Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs. Isaacs is a great singer like Bobby Bland and Curtis Mayfield, not necessarily tricky or show air. but his voice just does something to people.

After moving, almost release by release around countless labels, none of whom were particularly impressive in the publicity and promotion departments, he's now ended up on Ireland and making his bow with a single with a cool but authoritative stepers beat and a synth motif that will follow you around for weeks. Just what makes today's pop star so different, So appealing, Musa's CSM in his twin review of Watt by Soft Cell, and Nobody's Fool by Haircut 100.

Both Mark Olman and Nick Haywood are boys next door, and their essential niceness is what makes them effective in their roles. The weirder Olman attempts to be, the more sordid the context he fetishisises, the more fetish-stic the outfits in which he drapes his pale-runtish form, the more utterer, sweetly, safely ordinary, he appears to be. What is a song composed by H.B. Barnum, who never said anything about one being born every minute, and in the hands of Olmond and his now clean-shaven colleague has become a great swirling, icy thing

that could almost, with different words, be a Christmas record. Hair cut, on the other hand, looked like the young, members of the royal family would look like if any of them had any style. They appear on the sleeve as a last word in rural opulence. This time, they are being exceptionally careful to be nobody's fool, accompanied by earnestly boyish 60s guitars. Pretty tame stuff compared to the dynamic, exciting days of favourite shirts and love plus one. But it's a coat down for save a pretty,

by Duran Duran. Here's what I'd like you to do. Get yourself into the most soppy lugubrious mood possible and pretend you can hear something medium and ploddy with too many acoustic guitars, a tear-jurking synth line, and a song equally remarkable for its potentiousness, its blandness and its utter vacuity.

You have just imagined the new Duran-Juran single. You know what would be a good comeback to that? Hey, Charlie, don't beat around the bush. Tell us what you really think. It's good to get it. I know. I've had to raise a weak smile every now and again when somebody puts that on the face. Joe Jackson, in Selvis Costello himself,

is keen to capitalise on his return to charty prominence with stepping out, but CSM slightly doesn't reckon the follow-up breaking us in two. This one is pleasant rather than stirring, a medium-paced toe-tapper with suitably anguished lyrics and some fairly stylish piano playing. I was all set to like it until a voice in my head murmured, Bad Stevie Wonder, and I couldn't think of a snappy retort. Yeah, that's a critics complaint, if ever I heard one.

I was enjoying this until my brain spontaneously generated a reason why it's shit. And now I am unable to get any pleasure from it at all. It can happen. But it's the price that we critics pay for our luxurious lifestyle. As seen in the film Theatre of Blood. Yes. Punk's still not dead, but neither is it any good anymore. As Murray notes in his lumped together reviews of Fuck the Tories by Riot Squad,

total assault by Riot Squad S.A. And charged by GBA. Judging by their title, Riot Squad are lads of extremely sound political judgment, but sadly limited musical skills. Their essay counterparts can claim to be no better of the crafts of playing instruments and composing tunes, but I would say that the amount of personal courage necessary to be a noisily dissident punk rocker in South Africa is quite considerable. GBAH, on the other hand, of virtually nothing to say. If you were a punk in 1982, you were an idiot.

What, you're calling June Whitfield an idiot? Calling the gang are back with big fun, and Murray pegs it as the best of its breed and a review that also lumps in Love Come Down by Evelyn King. Give me by eye level. Take your time by Roy Hamilton and Summer Lady by Narada Michael Walden. That is his name, isn't it, Narada Michael Walden?

I'm thinking of the bloke of Weekend World. Narada Brian Walden, yeah. It's casual and chatter, full of laughter and conversational interventions, an instant party and comes with six minutes, 48 seconds of get down on it on the B-side, in case you missed it first time round. So that settles that. CSM also finds time to pause scorn upon keeps me wondering why by the Steve M. Miller band, claiming that even a nation besotted with abracadabra or cocked their nose up at this,

doesn't think much of Greece 2's chances, judging by the first single from the soundtrack, Cool Rider by Michelle Pfeiffer, calls I'm a survivor by the Duke's US-orientated me generation slop, but has a kind word for cry, baby cry by BHM, the rebranded an 80s-style brotherhood of man. They were the four-runners of today's real pop heroes like Bucks Fizz and the Gumbay dance band And I can't wait to hear them with a Trevor Horn production B-HM man, that sounds like the shop that you man buys school jumpers from And you get coated down for by some cunt wearing a hooky lacos jumper LP reviews

It's a barren week for new albums with a mere two pages devoted to to them, and the main review is given over to Mirage. Fleetwood Mac's follow-up to Tusk, which is already number one in America. Richard Cook gets made to listen to it and concludes that he'd rather Jack, were it not, for the fact that it's 1982, and no one yet knows what a Jack actually is. What's missing here is not provocative lyricism, original conception, and the search for the altered states of musical being. That's not Max territory.

they can only make this wispy nonsense. Mirage is about as perfect as they will ever get. It has no problems, no queer side turnings, just the beckoning siren of rapture without end. Aretha Franklin is on the comeback trail after leaving Atlantic for Arista two years ago and has drafted in Luther Van Dross to produce her new LP, jump to it.

But Graham Block's feet stay firmly planted. Aritha, as ever, sings brilliantly when she's allowed the room, but the songs are pretty dire, and whatever the merits of Vandross's production, I can't help feeling that a simple, hard, funky bass would suit the Franklin voice better than anything here. Turning down that R&B LP with Sheik was probably her biggest mistake in years. That's really weird, that. It's a good album,

it's not least because of its hard funky bass. Nile and Bernard, Adrian Furrell's reckons that feeling lucky by the New York trio high fashion is the best disco LP that Sheik never made. And he can't understand why they're getting zero airplay in the UK while

the mug masses lap up the sweet, sweet pap of Irene Cara. Steve Windwood has put out the follow-up to arc of a diver taking back the night. And Richard Cook compares him to Pete Townsend for being

a 60s titan, quietly trying to find his feet in a new era, and Jerry Rafferite for doing those sorts of songs that Jerry Rafferty does. This is an old Romantics record, a footnote or an addendum to a long career, even though the bindings have a contemporary gleam. Over in Hamburg, post-and-punk is Nicton-Tort, and Avvarts, one of the first German post-punk bands, have put out their second LP de Western Ist Einzam and Chris Bone reckons it big style At Varts begin every day prepared to die

stabbing themselves gleefully to check that they're awake It's not for nothing that their sleeve depicts cheering sailors Waving off Kamakazi pilots who fly into the sun Ad Varts invoke the presence of death to remind themselves

just how valuable life is. Tickets still available at the Dublin Castle. £2.50 concessions, which is the only concession advance will ever make. Gig guide. David could have seen Prince Lincoln and the Royal Rassers at the venue.

Gene loves Jezebel at Le Beech Root. Oxi and the Morans at the Pied Bull in Islington, matchbox and coast to coast at the venue. The truth at Canningtown Bridge House, Kelly Marie at Spats in Oxford Street, Joe Jackson at Hammersmith Odian, all the undertones at Hammersmith Odian, but probably didn't.

Not even Matchbox and coast to coast at the Vengee. What a sound clash that would have been. Yeah, I'd have been down at Kelly Marie myself. Taylor could have treated himself to Osprey at the barrel organ, chainsore at the railway hotel, Otto's Bazaar at the Bowerl organ, handsome beasts at the Marekat Cross, or head-bombed at the Pelican Hotel. Neil could have seen streetlight at the right and bridge and fuck all else. Sarah could have taken herself to Sheffield to see Bob Gilpin's inheritance,

Vincent Tate and the Irisons, and the fighting tickers at the Hanover in Sheffield, or gone to Leeds for a four-night. stand by liquid goal at Barcelona or classy event how could have seen Blue Rondo Alertuk and the dainties at the Adlib club

Grand Prix at the Repford Porterhouse Ray Gunn and the lasers at the hearty good fellow Ormarillion at Rock City jealous Taylor moderately and Simon's got

absolutely no fucking chance and will have to make do with going to the Crop Ready Festival with his dad to see the Fairport Convention reunion with support by Dana Bross and Nacca's Yard. Letters! Wow! Adrian Thrills is running the show at Gas Bag and it's the usual shower of moaning cunts trying to spoil everyone's fun

by criticising all the lovely pop music that's going about at the moment. What a load of pretzel! Potentious junk, top of the pops is, writes Willy Wonka from the Chocolate Factory. If those anonymous drongos who rig the charts and radio playlist think they're doing as a favour by serving up this bunch of barrel scrapings with glossy dancers and soft focus close-ups, then they need their heads examined. Midgior, posing as an SS officer.

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

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

expecting to hear brilliant music and profound musicianship, you get nothing, sir! Good day! Thrills agrees as he saw that episode of Top of the Pops and deemed it embarrassingly abysmal. If you put aside Junior and Kid Creole,

reserve in particular ire for Jonathan King's Cuntertainment USA I love that bit about rigging the charts because I'm fascinated by the way that angry idiots always claim that things that they don't like are rigged or corrupt right yeah like football fans online like if their team concedes a soft penalty

they would say when are we going to do something about the obvious corruption among referees Like, it's genuinely incredible that in this age of all ages, people blithely write off stupidity and incompetence as candid explanations for imperfection. Just start then. Dex's Midnight Runners are back with their new album, and Phil McNeil's recent piece on the band

seems to have left the readership confused and upset. So, Phil McNeil, how do you follow up a static? soul revival album. Answer, you spent two years listening to Van Morrison Records and plagiarise what you hear pretty blatantly for the next album, says Brian Savage of Battersea. Sorry, that's unfair. Kevin Roland is obviously a creep with an inflated view of his own talent, yet a few of his songs are fine, passionate performances. But can't we keep such talent in perspective? Me, I'll stick to the best of Otis Redding

in early 70s, Van Morrison, thanks. Meanwhile, S. Piper of Brampton Park Road, London, writes, at the start of his review of the new Dex's Midnight Runner's LP, Jig a jig-a-jig. That was a bit sharp. Phil McNeil tells us that all Roland's music is extricably linked and the new LP takes this to an extreme. But later he writes that this is no LP, this is an album.

Yet, in his essay on the sleeve of the show me single, the Lisping Lemon himself tells us that Dex is a not a band. We don't do gigs and we don't make albums. I'm confused. Who, apart from Neil Spencer, gives a fuck about John Leiden, At Svick the Moron of No Fixed Address Referring to the cover interview the other week All this and 5P extra two

It really pisses me off Also upset about the price rise Is sincere of Stockwell Your review of Urban Shakedown Was great reading But what I cannot understand Is how you can print the review Not with a photo of Urban Shakedown

But with a photo of Saxon Did you think we might not notice the difference? Was it a mistake or a bad NME joke? Whatever the reason, your readers are not so flippant. We deserve better than this for our 30p every week. Wendy Times writer Victoria asked for more coverage of Australian bands and reels off a list of groups that doesn't include men at work. Steve Burnett of Shorebridge with hearts sends the NMP as stamped address.

envelope in the hope that they can send him the lyrics to every Elvis Costello L.P. And Paul Lynch of London, Dere, his words not mine, tells the enemy that he really likes their recent compilation tape jive wire, but now wants to know how to remove a foot of unspooled tape from his cassette player. 48 pages, 30p, I never knew there was so much in it. So much non-recent pop as well. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One gets the party started at 20 to 7

with a three-pronged attack by the Open University featuring the Barber Yates are four colours sufficient and engineering energy before closing down for an hour and 20 minutes. Then it's Hong Kong Fuere, Jack and Orere and then Paddington asses about on the underground. After the youth of Belfast tell you that telly is for cunts and you should get off your ass and do something less boring instead

in why don't you? It's think backwards with Johnny Ball before they close down for a 25-minute power nap. Then it's over to Law to the first day of the second test between England and Pakistan for two hours and ten minutes. And then at five past one it's news afternoon and regional news in your area then Mr. Ben, then another closed down for an hour and 55 minutes, coming back hard with Pobberlacum, regional news in your area,

play school, the all-new i.e. shit, Popeye show, and John Craven's News Round. Then Suzanne Dando and Nigel Starmus Sniff get involved in a raft race on the River Tay in Stop Watch. After the evening news and regional news in your area, Daffy Duck deals with Elma Fudd and a fox called Faultiskew. Then David Bellamy gets shrunk down to the size of a titmouse and journeys through a garden lawn in Bellamy's backyard safare. And we've just had to sit through Chris Searle and Diane Harron banging on about diets and slimming and all that boring shit in Medical Express.

BBC 2 also starts at 20 to 7 with the origin of oil inner city store air and geology of the Red Sea in Open University then closes down for two and a half hours. At half past ten they spring back to life with play school and then close down for another two hours. Then it's nearly five hours of the fucking cricket followed by Laurel and Hardy in the 1931 film Chickens come home and burn down a Chinese restaurant.

Sally James and David Saul continue with their already doomed chat show 655 special then it's a new summer air and they're 10 minutes into the final part of the documentary series about three generations of Sikhs who've settled in Britain

the promised land with a question mark on the end ITV commences at half past night within rock pools followed by an animated version of kidnapped then we focus on James Hunt's 1976 championship season

in history of the Grand Prix. After Adventures of Nico, a series where a Greek lad in his American cousin asked about some islands, it's paint along with Nancy. The Adventures of Nico. Yes.

It's supposedly just flopping on a velvet bedspread full of smack in Manchester. Then it's paint along with Nancy, Gideon, and get up and go. After the Sullivan's, it's a news at one, regional news in your area, a repeat of Emmerdell Farm, the magazine show here today, the documentary series Women of Courage, which today looks at the French Resistance Nurse Mary Lindell, then it's a repeat of the sitcom The Glamour Girls, where Dougie Brown runs a crumpet agency. Watch it gives us Dr Snuggles, Sport Billair, and Father Murfair, Then after the news at 545, Benny appears to have gone well emo in Crossroads

and Sid Hooper resolves to do something about it. Then it's regional news in your area and they're 20 minutes into the Paul Squire show where The Search for a Star winner is supported by Anna Dawson, Bobby Nut and Wall Street Crash. Oh, golden age of television, don't think? All right then pop-craze youngsters, it is now time to go all the way back to August of 1982. Always remember, we made Coat Dan your favourite band or artist, but we never forget.

They've been on top of the pops more than we have. It's 25 minutes to 8 on Thursday, August 12th, 1982, and top of the pops, now almost two years to the day into the reign of Michael Hurl, appears to be in the rudest of health, and is reaping the benefits of a pop renaissance. In an era where ITV is clobbering the BBC, in the ratings and factoring in the annual drop in the summertime. It pulled down just over seven and a half million viewers last week,

but that made it the fifth BBC show that week. One above summertime special, one below task force south. And chaps, it's fair to say that we are now in the silver age of top of the pops, don't you think? Assuming the golden age atop the top of the pops is the glam rock years. Then it was being made with a certain level of professional. Like when you watch it, the graphics, like somebody spent some time on it, the studio direction is very professional, stuff's actually arranged like it's a show. Whereas by this point, it really has become conveyor belt television to the point where, as we'll see in this episode, some quite important details get completely missed by the studio camera.

And nobody cares. The only important thing is get the program out. get the program out. But we're also reaching the end of that glorious period where Top of the Pops has complete ownership of pop on television because no Channel 4 is yet

no video recorders in every home, no satellite music channels and virtually no competition from ITV bar fucking Rasmataz and with new acts popping up on a regular basis I contend that it's never been more essential for the pop craze youngsters to be tuning in if they want anyone to talk to them in the playground tomorrow morning.

But unbelievably, even in this glorious period, people are still moaning about Top of the Pops because they don't know they're fucking born. Earlier this summer, Smashits decided to hold an essay writing competition. One of the subjects was the question, what is wrong with Top of the Pops? The winner turned out to be a 16-year-old from Cheshire called Susanna Walker, whose interests at the time included computers, Brian Ferre, Japan and ABC, and if you'll allow me, chaps,

I'd like to quote from it. Would you mind? Go ahead. On the face of it, this appears to be a positively stupid question. Everyone agrees that Top of the Pops should be rearranged, preferably with a sledgehammer.

But pause and consider. Top of the Pops is the most popular program on the BBC. And how many mornings, does the conversation begin? Did you see Top of the Pops? Unfortunately, the format, or the glaring lack of it, needs improvement. The attempts at getting a party atmosphere going are a joke because of the way the groups are performing.

Instead of the current uneasy compromise, they ought to decide whether they want an authentic live performance or a video-style show. Certainly the videos are entertaining, but there would be cries of protest if groups were removed totally. The problem here begs a video programme to prevent needless wastage because so many good videos are missed on top of the pops because they aren't for a chart song.

Then we have the campaigners for live, warts and all music because of the resulting atmosphere. The major foul-up with this argument is a decided lack of any atmosphere when watching it on a 10-inch black-and-white portable with lousy reception. Television is a totally different medium. Music presentation must realize this and stop aping stage shows. Annihilation of the current mutation of Flick Colby's dancers should be a high priority. Here here!

The cluttering up of groups with fairly pathetic dancers is annoying, and at odds with the give the people what they buy policy. Modernising the currently unflattering and unoriginal and unoriginal appearance of the show would also help. High-tech sets and bright lighting, perhaps. Keep the audience, certainly, but make them a feature rather than the current faceless grey mass. A bit more innovation, modernity and aesthetic appeal

would not go amiss, but everything could be a lot worse. people really should stop carping about Top of the Pops No other show has so many good bands Particularly in the current chart climate And it pleases over 12 million people So it can't be all awful When you consider its problems The varied audience and some of the garbage

That crawls into the charts They really are doing rather well A little tidying up And it might be brilliant and once again chaps I do believe that the voice of youth speaks the truth as it always does got a little bit conciliatory towards the end

yeah it's a bit straight as a sort of sudden shift you know she spends about 10 minutes carping about top of the pots and then says people should stop carping about top of the pots yeah no no fair enough that's how I'd be oh the top of the pops is shit and I'm going to watch it next week the thing is if you brought in all of these

innovation and modernity and aesthetic improvement Well, we'd be out of the job for a start. Yeah, I mean, you should have seen Top of the Pops' essay, what's wrong with Susanna Walker from Cheshire? They did not pull any punches in that. She won a typewriter for that. And I do believe she went on to knock out a career as a writer. If she's the Susanna Walker,

my online stalking abilities have told me is Susanna Walker. Yeah, she knocked out a load of books about clearing up clutter and design and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, good for you, Doug. The last chapter of the book was actually about how clutter was all right, really. You should stop carping about it. Meow! Hello and welcome to Toller the Books.

Who sold out then? Your host for this evening is John Peel, who is holding down the John Peel slot, as he has since 1975, and is now in his 15th year at Radio One. At this point, he, Tony Blackburn, and jingle non-so-be are the only original Radio 1 DJ still at the station. Not bad going, since he was only booked in for seven episodes of Top Gear, and the suits upstairs wanted him gone as soon as the seventh episode was done. This week, he's had Tears for Fears, Cherry Boys, Short Commercial Break,

and Christians in search of filth in session. His relationship with Top of the Pops has been a very checkered one, starting in 1968 when he was given a goal on the February 1st episode with Jingle Nons, when he opened the show by moaning about the lack of Captain Beef Art and Tyrannosaurus Rex, and then forgot Amen Corner's name, and he wasn't asked back. With his only Top of the Pops adjacent performance of the 70s being an impersonation of Jingle Nons in the Superstar episode of The Goodies, in 1973. However, he made an appearance on the 1981 Christmas Day episode Atop of the Pops, along with all the other Radio 1 DJs on the roster, and something about his demeanour tickled Michael Hurl. And on February the 4th of this year,

the pop-crazed youngsters were astonished to see him in a suit and a Liverpool scarf, saying, in case you're thinking to yourself, who is that twirp? I'm the bloke who comes on radio late at night and plays records by lots of sulky Belgians. These people are not Belgian theatre of hate. This is his six appearance hosting our favourite Thursday evening, Pop Treat, his fifth this year. And Chaps, it's been quite a 15-year journey from the perfume garden of Radio London to the neon jungle of Top of the Pops. And David, I'm guessing you would be listening to John Peel of an evening round about this time yet?

No, actually. I probably just have stopped because I was, again, I was getting into this kind of whole new pop thing. And I think that's something, as Paul Morley observed at the time, that kind of passed John Peel by. I mean, you know, he normally didn't really miss much, but I think he kind of missed this development. And so I suppose to me at this point, John Peel was kind of, the actual show was sliding into irrelevancy. And I'd be more likely to see him presenting top of the pops than actually listening to him. on the radio this time. And if Paul Morley told you to put your hand in the fire.

Taylor, what would you have known of John Peel at the time? With a free children's zoo ticket. I didn't start listening to John Peel until 1985, which was fairly precocious because I was only 13 at the time. But, yeah, in 1982, he was just this guy, like off top of the pop and the late, late breakfast show. Yeah, because we don't know this yet, top of the pops is going to be the beginning of peel tentatively dipping a nose into the trough of the television bucket and following the path of wogan edmunds and reeds i mean the trio advert voiceovers are not far off and what a magical thing they were and the gigas narrator of a life of grime is very far off in the distance but the journey will start in a month's time when yes he becomes part of our saturday tea times popping up as a roving reporter and chegger's

substitute on the late late breakfast show with no lens but it ends badly doesn't it taylor yeah for anyone who doesn't remember this or who was resigned to watching game for a laugh instead the late late breakfast show was a saturday tea time magazine show presented by the bearded disc jockey noel edmunds and it blended the deliberate sofa and knitwear blandness of breakfast television with the sour tiny man overcompensation vibe of his old radio show where he'd do prank phone calls and try to embarrass people always the joke on somebody else with Noel the faux jolly prankster tipping the bucket over their head

and sniggering to camera but this time with the added element of danger because it was a live show so a big part of the supposed thrill of it was going to be people doing stuff and putting themselves in actual mortal danger. People who were not Noel Edmunds, obviously. Preferably, his usual whipping boys, the general public,

who he'd always used as props, but was now also going to use as special effect. And that ended badly. Not just a bit. But before it ended really badly, it ended quite badly for John Peel. Yes. This is quite a notorious episode of the Late Late Late Breakfast. show, but for anyone who hasn't seen it, right, let me set this scene.

Lately Breakfast's show begins with one of those 80s theme tunes that has got notes in it rather than a melody. Yeah. Exciting split-screen images of people doing dangerous things. Intercut with Noel in tinted specs driving a speedboat and Noel in a windcheater on the phone in a phone box like something important's happening. And Noel driving a red sports car with the registration number, old one because yes of course he's that kind of prick

all shot on videotape in the good old bleak and dim British winter the actual show in among the celebrity interviews preferably done via transatlantic satellite link for the early 80s tech thrill of it and Frigg the six second delay and lots of ritual public humiliation of worthless nobodies in the sort of subcandid camera style cunted camera the centrepiece of the show

is always a stunt and this week John Peel who has incredibly agreed to be second banana to Edmunds on this programme and he was actually quite witty and charming in his appearances. Yes. Qualities which

die like starved dogs in the dead-eyed St Michael clad ambience of this particular programme. This week he's at Santa Pod Raceway, watching people drive old cars up a ramp, fly into the air and leap over a row of other cars, which younger listeners, if any, will be startled to hear was once a popular spectator sport.

And there are quite a lot of people in padded anorax here to watch this in the autumn drizzle, but the row of cars is very long and the sign which signals the world record distance jumped is about two-thirds of the way down the line. Yeah, they're not attempting to jump over all the cars. They're just trying to jump as far as possible. Yeah, see how many cars you can jump over before you hit them. Yes. There's no ramp on the other side to land on.

No, no, no, no. You're just crashing down onto the cars underneath when your hang time reaches its inescapable conclusion. Yeah. So John Peel, in New Wave Turned Up jeans and Kickers, in this perfectly English damp late afternoon murk gives us a running commentary of these jumps with no old cackling along in the studio

until with crushing inevitability a car going much too fast nose dives into the row of old bangers spins over and is catapulted into the crowd at high speed so after the screen goes blank for a second because the flying car destroyed the camera that was filming. They cut to a different camera, so we get a shot of the ambulance and fire engines speeding to the accident site

and medics and technicians sprinting towards it. And John Peel evidently blessed with the gift of clairvoyance says, the car went into the crowd, but nobody's hurt. Pause, nobody's hurt. Yes. instant cut back to the studio where a visibly nervous Noel makes a joke about the fact

that Peel just said nobody was heard because human suffering means literally nothing to him and links into the next item it's George Benson live isn't it by satellite but yeah it later transpires that this was true nobody was hurt

except the driver who apparently has, I quote, got his knees hurt. Yes. But emboldened by the lack of carnage, they decide to bring the show to a climax by going back to the life team for Sanford for more jumps. This time, they watched someone drive an old Jensen. Yes.

A famously heavy car. Even faster up the wet ramp. And this time, smash nose down into the car turned several somersaults before smacking down onto the tarmac. It's absolutely flattened, isn't it? You hear old ladies in the studio audience

giggling at the slapstick and people who actually know anything about cars or physics or the human body gasping audibly in horror. And then we actually get a close-up of what's left of this car. Yes! Which now looks like a coat can

that's been stamped on surrounded by blokes in overalls trying to haul whatever's left of the driver out of the wreckage and this time very noticeably Peel keeps his gobshot Yeah, presumably because he nearly had his fucking head took off by it

Precisely, yeah, yeah fucking Noel Edmunds could have killed the alternative music scene at a fucking stroke man So we cut straight back to a frowning Noel in the studio who, with the edgy smoothness of a narcissistic psychopath worried about losing his job says well we'll keep you posted on what happened there and then smoothly trails the following week's program albeit with a huge

and very noticeable dry-mouthed gulp in the middle of a sentence possibly the only time that ever happened to him in his entire broadcasting career and then the chintzy theme tune plays the studio audience applauds, the lights flash, and the credits roll over a shot of Noel staring intently at the TV he used as a monitor for the outside broadcast, which is showing a smoking pile of tangled metal. Faces of death on BBC One on Saturday Tea Time, everyone.

It really was. And the absolutely incredible thing is that the bloke actually survived, which is why we're having a good old fucking chuckle about it now, with injuries, only moderate injuries, which was really good news for Noel and the team, perhaps instilling a sense of invincibility or divine protection, which soon led to the breaking a woman's shoulder after firing her out of a cannon.

The quote she gave to the press, the BBC don't give a damn, they just want the viewers. And then ultimately killing audience member Michael Lush by setting up his very dangerous bungee jump out of an exploding box hundreds of feet over concrete with exactly the same care and attention that was on display at Santa Pod Raceway. And much to Noel's relief, that didn't actually happen live on the programme. I realize I'm talking to a generation here that are not listening to us. Everybody knows about this.

He's good. But it happened in rehearsals. But when you read the findings of the inquest, which you can find on the late late breakfast show Wikipedia, page. It's genuinely miraculous that nothing like this had happened beforehand. Because this was health and safety the way Richard Little John

would want it. And John Peel was long gone by this point because apparently John Peel was basically fired from the show after the incident with the crashing Jensen as though it was somehow his fault. Yeah. It's just... Anyway, for anyone who

wants now this story ends, Noel suitably chastened by the fact that his irresponsible fucking shit show had actually taken an innocent human life cancelled the programme, took the opportunity to appear on Wogan in a suit looking solemn centre of attention suggested he may retire from television

disappeared for a very short time then returned with Noel Edmund's Saturday Roadshow, a programme that was basically identical to the later late breakfast show, except they had a different title and no longer extended the public humiliation of audience members to the point of actually killing them. It is depressing to watch this show. It's depressing to see John Peel having to play a subordinate jester to that literally

twat-faced twat, Noel Edmonds. And let's remember, Charlie, it's not just John Peel there. Who else is he with? Sandra fucking Dickinson. Yeah, Sandra Dickinson. I know, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Put the dinner and I'll be home in 20 minutes

if this car doesn't decapitate me. She interviewed the drivers earlier on in the show and congratulates one of them on having the longest jump so far and he says, well, there wasn't any Russian big fighters about to shoot us down so we went a little bit further than we thought. This is just over a week since that Korean airliner

got shot down over Soviet airspace no causing World War III. Yeah. Well done, the BBC. Another winner. I remember being out on my bike after that, riding up and down the estate going, I'm going to die, and I've not even had sex yet. Actually, I was reading Marguerite of the Marshes,

you know, his autobiography. Well, it was his autobiography, but then he died after two or three chapters. And the strange thing is that his wife, Sheila, probably gives a more in-deck account of his life than he might have done, if it had just been left to him, I think he would have just sort of created

this kind of carapace that sort of dry wit or whatever and not actually said anything that was really kind of emotion of revealing. So after they're watching this, you know, in 1983, at home, and the incident occurs and she says, you know,

for some bizarre reason John seemed to get the blame for the incident and was suddenly dropped from the show, possibly he was thought to be a jinx. And she was like, it was a terrifying experience for the children and me all huddled around the television at home. The last thing we heard was John shouting,

Oh, my God, oh my God. Suddenly the screen went white, and the camera cut to a rather disturbed-looking Noel in the studio. It quickly covered his composure. The thought of a colleague being dead didn't throw him in front of the camera. I tried to calm the children and put them to bed. Then inside, I was in turmoil. I tucked them all in and promise them that their daddy would be home very soon,

to which Thomas replied, No, he won't. He's dead. Oh, Jesus. And he missed Liverpool beating Arsenal as well Just for this shit Poor sod Good old people I don't blame him for doing this kind of thing

I don't blame for doing the voice service It's kind of a journey from the perfume garden But he's all concurrent You know doing all of these things You know the new Montego With you know his actual show I interviewed Andy Kirschor in 1986 And he confided in me

That John Peel was getting £100 per show Fuck. I mean, 100, 100 could a show. No wonder it's got us all right, you know, bringing a bit of supplementary, you think, I'm, I did a few DJs. I did, it was an item called Talking Head on the first country melody maker.

So if you had Andy Kirschor, Janice Long, Mark Ellen, and John Peel. Oh. And, yeah, one or two bits makes sort of, kind of ironic reading. I think it was a little bit put out, but I thought that he was superior to some of the music that he played.

Right. You know, I said something like, ordinary John, he's a celebrity himself. It's a truism that are great many people listen to the show for his draw, for his draw, rather than in music, whose hopeful hopelessness generally suffers next to the Chinese wall of irony. He says, good Evans, really. I wouldn't want that to be true. Oh, come on. You mean you actually like everything you play? Well, I never play records, which I really think are

doff, but, well, it's a bit like size and eggs. You're bound to get a few wrong now and again. I must admit, there have been times, a couple of hours before a show, or had been on the phone to the pig, which he called his wife, and floods of tears, saying, if I'm meant to be such a fucking superstar, how do the only people that contact me all day have been saying, when are you going to play our bloody single then? It makes he feel like a urinal. Perhaps the most I write that is

actually the beginning at which I introduced to this. It says, John Peel has just turned 47. In spite of periodical suggestions to the contrary, I suggest he'll continue in broadcasting until he's 65 that John Peel died in 2004, age

65. Didn't write in that make you the prime suspect. Yeah. Yeah. Incidentally, David, that's a perfect impression of

John Walters. I'm sorry you want to talk to him instead. Thank you. Yeah, but the idea of John Peel being on top of the pops.

I mean, to me, who didn't listen to the John Peel show, it's like, oh, here's this bloke. He's not as much as a cunt as the other ones. So good show to that.

I didn't mind the fact that he's slightly coated down a sort of axe because I was in agreement with him. most of the time. And looking back now, you know, this top of the pops is studded with people who would have been played on the John Peel show. And if they can sell out and go on top of the pops, why can't he? Yeah, absolutely. I didn't have a property at all. You know, it was the same

principle really, you know, it was introduced in a kind of a sort of sideline element really, you know. Yeah. It's interesting, just to briefly address the elephant in the room or the calf in the room the way that Peel has been slightly desanctified since his death because people now find it hard to reconcile National Treasure with one-time liking for girls whose BCG scar was still bright red but what's really peculiar though is how with that old school sex creepiness so long as you weren't a Savile like a conscious predator if you were one of those many geezers in the old world who just didn't stop to consider that in these circumstances consent is not always a simple on-off switch you can still sort of get a pass so long as you

were up front and dickish about it and made it a part of your brand like the stones and lead zeppelin and those people's reputations survived more or less as they were because that stuff was always built into their reputations whereas peel gets strong struck off precisely because he spent most of his life doing positive stuff and having a positive effect on the world rather than just feeding his own impulses which apparently makes it worse and it is strange because as we've been saying people remember him as this late night underground guy but he was always the acceptable public face of the underground even when he was a hippie right It's how he ended up risking his neck in a hail of airborne Voxal Vivas

on the orders of Noel Edmunds, right? Millions of voiceovers for adverts, he had the cosy radio fortune. They put him on This Is Your Life, for fuck's sake, which was like the ultimate anointing for a cuddly mainstream. Exactly. If we went back and imposed modern standards on John Peel, then if you ever saw a bloke holding a binder of papers,

step out of the shadows with a camera crew and surprise him. It wouldn't have been Eamon Andrews. It would have been Chris Hanson. You remember this programme? To Catch a Predator. Oh, yes. Just goes to show some people will do anything to get on television. It was a great broadcaster.

He was a great selector, it was a great DJ. And obviously, he brought so much great music to the fall that nobody else might have done. But he wasn't really a sort of deep sort of thinker about music necessarily in the music journalism sense. And in fact, he didn't really like the sort of music journalism of enemy, people like Ian Penmans and people like that in the early 80s. Apparently didn't talk like people like Simon Reynolds

and the kind of writing that he was doing at Melodemaker in the late 80s. Yeah, a lot of those people are like that though. That's that generation and especially like the sort of public school or rich kid ones because to them their first experience of rock music was an escape from academia. Yeah. An escape from that stuff. So to them it's almost like a betrayal of the space. of rock music to intellectualize.

Hello and welcome to To Toller The Books. Who sold out then? To start the program, yet another one of those ensembles with a funny foreign name. The syndromes pound, the TV screen soars through the ionosphere and the pink vinyl shatters a thousandfold to reveal the neon top of the pop's logo. The camera pans left to reveal peel, sporting a black bin liner over his shirt, adorned with red sticky tape spelling out the initials J.P.

He welcomes us to the show, makes a reference to criticism from his radio audience that he's selling out, and introduces another act with a funny foreign name. It's A.e. Cannibals by Toto Coelho. Funny foreign. Coel, it's the Latin root of the Italian chelo and the Spanish Thielo, and the French siel. Meaning sky. Who wouldn't know that? Formed in London in 1981, Toto Coelho were a collective of dancers and actors consisting of Sheen Duran, who appeared in assorted late periods St Trinian's films, was in the original cast of the West End run of The Sound of Music and toured as a dancer with Abba, Lacey Bond, who appeared on Opportunity Knox at the age of 14, Lindsay Danvers, who'd been in Panto since the age of five months, Anita Mahadurvan, who had just had a bit more.

part in the Joan Collins film Nutcracker and Ross Holness who yes is the daughter of Bob who is currently the early morning DJ on LBC after playing their first gig at a royal wedding guard for the Welsh guards they fell into the orbit of Barry Blue the do you want a dance hit maker who had moved into production in the late 70s working with heat wave dana and the dead-end kids who got them a deal with radial choice, the label that had just hit big with Tony Basil. For their first single, Blue had lined up a tune written but discarded by the Buggles called Video Tech, but when Trevor Horn decided to give it to Dollar, it was shelved. So Blue teamed up with Paul Greedus, who had dabbled in Schlager in the 70s before branching into the UK,

writing Bitches Love for Marty Kane, jukebox Saturday Night, the B-side of Heidi High, open brackets, holiday rock, close brackets for Paul Shane in the Yellowcoats, and was about to be responsible for the English lyrics for a little piece Nicole's winning entry in this year's Eurovision song contest to write this, their debut single.

With very little radio play, the single was going nowhere, But then, in early July, they landed a slot on David Essex's showcase. A Saturday Tea Time talent show featuring signed acts and semi-established turns at the Harrogate Centre, which also featured Talk Talk, with the winners selected by the audience. They didn't win, a Covent Garden Street entertainer called JJ Waller did, but it got them on the radar. A week ago, I.E. Cannibals entered the chart at number seven, and this week it's sought 36 places

to number 34 and here they are bursting onto the studio floor saying we're Toto Coelho's son and we haven't had any dinner and once again I feel like I'm reading out my essay

to Sir knowing full well that I'm in the presence of the leader of the Toto Coelho Ultras. Taylor did I do him justice? Yeah I am the top boy in the totoe I'm also the bloat with the megaphone facing the crowd with his back

to the performance but you missed one interesting fact which is that Anita was a member of the last ever lineup of legs and coach Of course she was fucking out oh man I'm ashamed

so you should be but anyway chaps dancers wanting to be singers there's been a lot of it about in the 80s and hot gossips I lost my heart to a starship trooper being the obvious template. The current incarnation of Hot Gossip have teamed up with the British Electric Foundation

for the LP Geisha Boys and Temple Girls. Pan's people had a go in the late 70s and as we all know, a couple of zoo-wankers would go on to have hits as solo artist. This lot aren't technically a dance troupe, but it's clear that they're putting themselves over as one. And when you watch this performance,

you're basically watching the missing link between Hills Angels and the spy schools, aren't you? If only one of them had gone out with Paul Mariner and they're putting about that Margaret Thatcher was the original Coelho, they could have been absolutely massive. I was watching as I just think, you know, did Toya die for this? Robotitism, colourisation, primitism, all these like weird elements flung together,

which are sort of in the air, in the kind of part of the aesthetic of the early 80s, but put together by people have absolutely zero sense of like, you know, the dialectics and the aesthetics. pop music with predictably calamitous consequences. And I guess, you know, Bob Elmose, who's watching this, he can't really tell the difference, you know, it's all pop, it's all undifferentiated.

This, Kate Bush, Kid Creole, you know, but there is this critical mass of difference. They look like they're to be trained dancers, you know, but it's just like five fountains of pure multicolored zoo wank. If you dance that well, it's like Sidfish has never happened. You were never punk. I mean, look at Bananorama. You're not supposed to be able to dance.

It's crass areas like that, which means that they're not doing the Toto Coelho Reunion Tour in 2025. I mean, who is this aimed at, though? Because, I mean, obviously the Spice Girls hit big because they were actually aimed at teenage girls, young teenage girls and even pre-teenage girls. And the fact that loads of blokes fancied them was a byproduct. Who are they aimed at? I just think they've been kind of flung out more in hope than expectation, really. Yeah, I suspect young girls because they look crazy rather than soul.

And in those days, that was like nowadays, if somebody concocted an equivalent of this record and this group, they'd have to be painfully gorgeous and dressed like lingerie models. And the lyrics would be about how they like giving blow jobs or something, which is brilliant if that's what you want to do. If you're like Sabrina Carpenter or something, great. But it doesn't feel so great to live in a time when pop singing women are pretty much obliged to do that, whether they feel like it or not. And also it's a bit of a relief not to have that Because nowadays that tends to be just another intrusion into your day Like this modern cash-in sex music, right? It's not an actual expression of anything sexual

It's just, oh, here comes another reminder that forms of paradise exist Which they want you to know about, but never to experience Because for as long as you're madly chasing the carrot on the stick That's sell a tape to the top of your own head or onto the end of your own dick someone somewhere is profiting from your desperation because as everyone knows hard cocks prop pockets

whereas Toto Coelho, whatever their provenance aren't like that they give off the air of a dress-up sleepover where boys are never even mentioned except that it's a dress-up sleepover for women about 30 which makes it a bit weirder and therefore more interesting, possibly. The reason that John Peel's dressed in a bin liner is because that was the USP of Toto Coelho at the time.

They're dressed up in bin liners, but different colour bin liners, they definitely want to put over the fact that these are five individual women who've come together. So we have Sheen Duran, who's in black, and I dub her posh Coelho. Ross Holness is in Greek,

obviously Ginger Coelho. Anita Mahadevan, red, scary Coelho, Lacey Bond, blue, baby Coelho, and Lindsay Danvers in yellow, and she has to be sporty Coelho because that's the only one that's left. So there's my Spice Girls and Toto Coelho Comparison, completely gone for a toss. And it wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind.

The idea that young girls would be interested in anything other than nice young lads, it just didn't occur to the music biz at the time, did it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is partly what's like, great about them and they are great look I'm aware that there have been better records made yes whatever your criteria

but I would agree with that I do wonder why anyone would take against this considering it makes so few demands of you while making your world a little bit stranger if I were being uncharitable oh tale of pogs being uncharitable

perish the thought it's not going to happen but if it did I would say well I suppose the professionals had stopped filming by this point so these ladies needed some work but they fell on their feet and their faces simultaneously but that's the point because this is possibly the all-time ultimate good bad record right it's not so bad it's good which is something totally different or indeed so good it's bad like those people who are so handsome they come out the other side and are ugly, like Ted Danson

or Declan Rice. It's not that. It's good, bad, which is a separate category. You could think of this as a musical equivalent to one of those old-time, low-budget films, the type I like, right? Which are not always wholly artistic endeavours. They're exploitation films.

They're designed to rake in cash by pushing obvious buttons on the audience. But the concomitant, looseness and lack of pomposity coupled with the obvious need for impact and cheap sensation freeze everyone up to make outrageous creative choices and they're almost forced to do stupid but fascinating things and that wouldn't work if you were making barry linden or or dark side of the moon but in the context of a beer and pizza horror film or or a shameless quasi-novelty pop record.

It can be brilliant because it's often the shortest and most reliable pathway to whatever you have to give that might actually be of any use whatsoever to anyone else. It can prize something out of not very talented people, the lowest of low art, because its only requirement and its only ambition is to not be boring. But that instantly puts it 50 feet above most,

of the bilge pumped out the pipe at the back of the entertainment industry. Yes, Toso Coelho, isn't it though? But there's one bit will be questioning it. And doesn't Kate Bush, I think she rips off that fist hammering to the left, fist hammering to the right dance bit in the video to running up that hill? As far as Michael Hurl's concerned, he must be bouncing up and down in the control booth right about now, shouting, yes, this, more!

Because he must see this as the absolute perfect. start to an episode of top of the pubs. I mean, if you just got back from the sort of holiday, the lower middle class likes of you must have had with, I don't know, two weeks of woodcraft and pony trekking and no radio or anything, and you weren't aware of Toto Coelho. You'd turn this on and see what appears to be zoo-wankers who have come from the back and onto the stage. And you'd be looking round to see where the band are and it turns out to be them. But the song chaps I mean it's obviously sodden

With the ethnic maelstrom That was the Burundi beat Which was so fashionable a year ago And plastered with lyrics That pay homage to cannibal Holocaust What I'm gonna do What? Make a meal of you What? We are what we eat

You're my kind of meat And obviously As a 14 year old stroke me and my peers automatically assumed it was about giving someone a gobble and I've dug about on the internet and discovered an opinion or two that believes that I eat cannibals means I'll give a nosh to someone who gives me one first but I see this performance and I refuse to believe that it's about anything other than innocent wholesome flesh eating yeah Bob Holdis's daughter doing that sort of thing no mate not in 1982 yeah I think so not sure it's a lyric that we're was really designed to be analysed. It's like lit crit is not really appropriate here. But the thing is, just generally speaking, when music critics talk about trashy stuff,

which this indubitably is, more indubitably than ever thought possible, they very rarely appreciate it for what it is. This is something that's always kind of slightly bug me, right? What you get is either, ah, ha, ha, it's ripping fun, shortling at these ladies, Or else it's the classically pretentious bit where people pretend to place things like,

i eat cannibals above revolver or a love supreme, which is like equating those stretched perspective goalside adverts for Bet365, which look like their 3D pop-ups when you point the TV camera out of them from the right angle, with the slanted skull in the portrait of the ambassadors by Holbein. It's just the same thing, right? Oh, get you. But yeah, they say you can't win with highbrow cultural references,

but I say give the audience a chance. The thing is, I've never understood why people can't just accept that stuff like this has got its own thing going on. It's got its own rules. And there sort of are gradations of semi-objective quality within that in as much as there ever are in pop music. So you can critique this stuff in a way, just not the same way you'd critique a 98 CD box.

set of Joanie Mitchell, right? But most people who write about music don't have the right tools in their brain to do it. The same way a 47-year-old jazz critic in 1963 didn't have the right tools to differentiate between She Loves You and I Like It by Jerry and the Pace makers, right?

It's like a failure of understanding, well, not a failure, but an absence of understanding and imagination, right? Because there have been hundreds of records, not unlike this in spirit and sort of objectively comparable in terms of artistic achievement but most of them are completely worthless

and nobody remembers them right but Toto Coelho ate cannibals and it was incredible and they've never been forgotten and there must be a reason for that real rubbish doesn't lodge in the memory and the imagination it just passes through Like when you get those lists of the worst records ever made

Of course they're not the worst records ever made Because you fucking remembered them Well obviously I mean at the time I hated this song While leering at the people who made it of course But it's burrowed into my brain over the past month You know if I was out and this got played At a club for people of a certain age

Well I do believe that some fists would have to be pumped Because this is like if a computer programmer or tried to program the Spice Girls and got one line of code wrong and it's gone haywire, right? But it's worth its own weight. It may not be worth its own weight in gold, but it's worth its own weight within the universe, right?

It's a permissible indulgence, which doesn't do anything except make life a little bit less dull. If you want proof, have you heard there other stuff? Jesus fucking Christ, it's not as good. No, it didn't really have sort of durability in the way, I don't know, Banana Armadir, for instance. And I guess the thing is about, you know, wondering why I've taken so badly to this,

I think it kind of raised ancient hackles, because I wouldn't have been watching top of the pops. To me, this would just have represented a kind of a mass of, like, artistic pop errors, good dancing being one of them. And I'd just have been screaming, stop getting the 80s wrong. For anyone who's interested, by the way,

Toto Coelho's other stuff included Dracula's Tango, Brackets, Sucker for Your Love, which, was an attempt to repeat the formula without just replicating the sound so instead of sounding mock tribal sucking's not as good as eating

speak for yourself it's set to the tune of whatever that's called in the German Nick where they hang you by your prick whatever that song is right? Streets of Cairo that is Taylor otherwise known as the Arabian Rift

our version in junior school went in old bag Dad, there's a woman wants a shag. She's the daughter of the Barba Sweeney Todd, dirty sod. And he sings to put your fanny next to mine, dirty swine.

It's a bit of a patchwork, that, isn't it? Yeah. And they also did one called Milk from the Coconut. Yes. Which is, again, they got a slightly saucy title, but it's a sort of a lift of

rapper's delight via Rapture by Blondie. While the actual sound of the record is not quite as 10th rate as you would expect from that description, only about 4th rate. Early hip-hop is a style where quite a lot of responsibility is placed on the vocals. And it's fair to say their vocals rise to the challenge about as effectively as Bon Accord in their big game against our brunt. 36 nil pop pickers. I mean, clearly they can do their thing. on top of the pops.

But what of Toto Coelho is a live act, you may be wondering. Well, they'll be going on tour a month from now, but obviously controversy is going to dog them all the way. Article in the St Andrews Citizen, Pop Group Boycott Urged. Musicians in Fife are beating the war drums, over a top 20 group making a live appearance in a Cocholdy Nightclub tonight. In an appeal for the public not to turn up for the appearance of Toto Coelho, whose A.E. Cannibals has shot them into the charts.

Musicians' union secretary, Mr. Gordon Hughes, said, we want to see a total boycott of Toto. They operate without live musicians and use backing tapes for their stage appearances. They are killing off our business, and the 120 members of the 5MU feel very strongly about it. Mr Hughes added that at a national level Both the MU and Equity were investigating the five-girl group Who made their first appearance on a David Essex television show And they didn't even eat any human flesh on stage

Keep cannibalism live But John Norton Who was sent to Gillingham by the stage to review their gig Was decidedly impressed Headline, cannibal eating sensuality. For Toto Coelho, read Total Experience. The sensual, leather and sex world of the cannibal eating girls were served up with a heavy helping of lights,

missed of professionalism, despite a disappointingly small audience. Well, no wonder they fucking eat people. We're hot gossip. It may be singing dancers, Toto are dancing singers. Despite a tape background, they also project a certain personality on stage, both as a unit and as individuals. They sizzle in the strobes like chips in a pan of oil.

Whatever their future may hold, the girls proved at Gillingham that they could handle adversity with style. Not only did people stay away in droves Probably because of Star Wars being on the tell air But two of the radio mics went on the blink And had to be replaced by the more cumbersome cable variety Remarkably, the girls only became tangled once And survived to tell the tale

Anything else to say about Toto Coelho. I really hate the fact that Casey Perry got to go into space for 40 seconds and Toto Coelho never did. How is that fair, right? Don't you think they should have sent Toto Coelho to the moon? Yes. Because like the only people who've ever walked on the moon

have been straight, white, Republican voting American men. And so what do they do when they were on the moon? They drove a car and they hit a golf ball. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't shoot in a ball. How much more exciting would it have been to send Toto Kuala? And the best thing is, it wouldn't even matter whether they came back. Just enough to see them stomping around a crater in formation, doing mad faces behind the visor.

Yeah. I mean, it would have humiliated the Russians. God, yes. Maybe it's not too late. Oh, by the way, Taylor, that fucking beer mat someone sent you on Facebook the other day. Cannibal holocaul fucking out. Oh yeah, friend of the show, Barry. Yeah, hey on, Barry?

Yeah, cannibal holocaust, beer mat. With the entrail munching savage from the pre-cert video cover of cannibal holocaust on it. Just this, cannibal holocaust, put your pint on that. Anyone want some nuts? Yes. So the following week, I eat cannibal sword. 22 places to number 12 and a fortnight later

it got to number 8 its highest position emboldened by their success in the UK, Australia South Africa and Sweden they attempted to cash in on the American market having to change their name to

Tockel Coelho to avoid thick yanks confusing them with the Africa hit makers it's only got to number 66 over there but in 90s In 1883, they appeared in the concert scenes for the film Grizzly 2, Revenge, which was only finished and released in 2020 when there was not much else going on in the film world, and someone realized it was George Clooney's first appearance on celluloid. Meanwhile, the follow-up, the AA-side, Dracula's Tango, open brackets, sucker for your love, close brackets, macho, macho, macho, only got to number 54 in November. and would be their last bite of the charty throat.

After putting out the LP Man of War in 1983, which failed to chart, Anita and Sheen left the group, the former to form the cherry bombs with the surviving members of Hanoi Rocks, the latter to join always in reception of the BBC 2 Light Entertainment Department, Wall Street Crash, and the remaining three struggled on until 1985 when they decided to become Bruce Foxton's backing singers instead. I wonder who the real cannibals are. I see a animal. Homeband.

On the icing on the hip-trump. Can't stop fighting on a trap-trap. Bar-Dip-Trump. That's Toto Cuelo. It sounds like some kind of exotic skin disease. They did tell me what it meant, but in perfectly honestly, the other people are gone. Up next, the people, a duo, who've made two of the best,

singles of the year so far. Pee-Zoo! Peel, surrounded by an absolute shower of city farm wankers, and members of the public who have come dressed as city farm wankers, including one lad wearing a straw boat, a white string vest over a blue t-shirt and white shorts, which makes him look like Eddie Yates. on Blackpool Beach and a woman with a massive Frito bandito hat introduces us to, in his words, a duo who have made two of the best singles of the year so far. It's Yazoo with Don't Go.

Born in South Woodford in 1960, Vincent Martin developed an early interest in music, playing the violin and piano. After moving to Basilden, he formed a band called No Romance in China as frontman and guitarist with his fellow boys brigade member Andy Fletcher. After they split up in 1978, he joined a band called The Plan and played guitar, but his head had been turned by John Fox and Ultravox, and a year later, he started a new group with Fletcher called Composition of Sound, initially as lead singer, but when they drafted him, Martin Gore and Dave Gahan, he stepped back behind the synth.

The band changed its name to Depeche Mode, and he changed his name to Vince Clark. After making a contribution to the Sun Bazaar album, they were picked up by Mute Records, and their debut single, Dreaming of Me, got to No. 57 in April of 1981. The follow-up, New Life, went all the way to number 11 in August, and they finished off the year with just can't get enough getting to number eight in October. But already Clark was getting pissed off with the non-stop interviews and photo sessions and touring and people asking him what his preferred colour of sock was. And after one argument in the van too many, he announced his departure from Depeche Mode in November of 1981.

A month later, he was flicking through that week's melody maker when his eyes are lighted upon a classified ad which began female singer looking for a rutsy blues band. Noting how local the address was and having a new song in his pocket which he'd already offered to Depeche Mode as an inverse golden handshake that they knocked back,

he was the only person to respond to the ad as he was looking for someone at short notice to demo it. That singer turned out to be Alison Moyet who was born in Basildon in 1961 had been in the same. same six former as Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore had been in the local punk band The Vandals and was currently working as a piano tuner.

After realising they've both been in the same folk singing class at a Saturday morning music school back in the day, they worked up a demo of the song, Only You, and offered it to Daniel Miller of Mute Records. He initially didn't reckon it at all, but then changed his mind when some business associates raved about it and got back to Clark offering a deal on the condition that he kept the singer and formed a duo. After Scrabbling around for a name, which was lifted from the 60s blues label Yazoo Records, only U was put out in April of this year and got all the way up to number two, held off the summit of Mount Pop by a little piece by Nicole.

This is the follow-up, which was originally slated. as the B side of only you, but yanked at the last minute when they realised it was much too good to be wasted, and the second cut from the forthcoming LP upstairs at Erics, which comes out next week. It entered the chart at number 24, that week's highest new entry a month ago, then sawed 19 places to number 5, and this week it's spending its third week at number 3, and here they are in the student. studio and somewhere in Basilden chaps, you have to wonder if they're three lads in little bow ties watching the telly and whining softly to themselves, wondering if they've made the right decision because fucking go, you do have come roaring out of the gate, haven't they?

Yeah, absolutely. It's strange really because apparently Alison Morey was quite hostile to the idea of having a sort of synth accompaniment to a blues vocal style like hers, but obviously it was fairly quickly turned around when he persuaded. you mean Simon Price had arguments about whether suicide or sparks were really the kind of prototype for all these kind of 80s synth duos or whether it was concurrent or whether sparks were influenced by suicide which is an idea that Simon can't countenance so well he doesn't want to you know and he might well be right you know but but I guess with all of his like with suicide you've got Alan Vega and got Martin Reb and he's always got this kind of yin yang thing going on you know or soft cell similar sort of thing you know later I suppose is it at Eresia, really. Or the exception is Pet Shop Boys who were more like Yin, Yin, really.

But there you go. And I guess it's an example of that, but normally I think with these groups is that there might be kind of, you know, there might be kind of opposites or whatever, but they form a very, very strong bond. And I don't think that was really the case, perhaps, with Vince Clark and Alison Boy. And I think that's why

ultimately, you know, the group didn't quite last as long as it should really. And maybe that's to do with the character of Vince Clark. I interviewed him last year, actually, just for some press notes with this very good album he did it was a sort of ambient john fox type thing yeah he's quite a sort of wry inscrutable bloat really um sort of already very very clever on the choir but you know probably not great necessarily it's sort of i don't know kind of strong emotional human connections perhaps but you know i guess that sort of temperamental difference

is a benefit you know to a single like this going back to the vince depeche split it kind of worked out pretty well for everyone didn't it one of the rare examples where a key band member leaves and both parties go on to thrive because Mode have lost their songwriter but it forced Martin Gaw to dust off a song he wrote back in the day C-U that became their biggest hit thus far and I've got to say it's my favourite Depeche Mode single by a country mile

and they'd go on to have a very good 80s but it's Yuzu we're talking about here and yeah at this moment in time they're shitting out gold man this is a tune Oh absolutely yeah absolute bang I would have stopped around to this at Leeds Warehouse back in the day most definitely.

Although I've seen some scary things on these badly upscaled top of the pops episodes like disturbing artefacts of horribly confused AI but apart from the fragmentation and dissolution of the faces of Shakey's catalogue model friends as they skip down the path towards the old house where he lay in wait with an axe and a baseball

this might be the scariest because Vince Clark's fringe like his hair cut that is just a fringe and nothing else like the rest of his head is shown to a grizzar and he's got that curtain of hair

hanging down in front of his face as he bends over his keyboard and this inspires the baffled computer in ways which would have chilled Hieronymus Bosch it manufactures this swirl Burling digital mess where his features should be. It's like Magritte's apple-faced cunt, you know,

or the smooth-headed bloke in the bowler hat from Sapphire and steel. It's harrowing. I mean, they're being depicted in the media as the odd couple of 1982. And that's mainly because they're a synth duo, but a synth duo with an actual woman involved, which really didn't happen in the early end. I kind of wouldn't again. The women in synths, man, they just didn't go.

at the time. Absolutely, and that unlikely, not marriage, but, yeah, that unlikely coupling is a very significant factor in success. But, yeah, just absolutely cracking songs. I mean, this is the great thing about people like Yazoo and Depeche mode is their durability. I mean, I think they were just considered, you know, like flimsy, or doilies at the time, you know,

who would just be blown away by the gust of like next year's shifting trends or whatever. But they're absolutely endured. And I'm sure that at the time, People like Tigers are Pan Tang who thought they were making the kind of music that was going to last the ages. But of course, it's the other way around. It's been made clear in interviews that there is a culture clash between the two. You know, Alf clearly defines herself as a blues and jazz singer. But she also says, I prefer to be a pop singer than a non-working jazz blues singer.

Good point. And meanwhile, Vince is totally happy being the backroom boy. You know, he has the ear of the bloke who's quite happy to set up and rodee for his partner or his. his mate and let her or him have all the attention while he just fills in on keyboards. There's one bit where he actually smiles at the camera, which is probably the first time he's ever smiled ever. Yeah, no, that kind of catches his character really. I was doing this interview with him on Zoom last year.

That was his expression pretty much throughout, actually. Yeah, he's an unassuming fella. You can tell from his introverts haircut. Well, yeah, but also perhaps like a curtain across his face. That's true. That is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Alison Moyet, I feel really bad saying this because I really like Alison Moyet. She's always seemed like pretty cool to me. But I'm not the biggest fan of her voice. We talked about one of her mid-80s solo records on here before when she was doing a more obvious soul pop sound. And by then she'd developed her voice a bit. And the eventual effect was that it all came out a little bit bland and mid-80s. But the good thing about this, Her voice is still a little bit reedy, a little bit untrained, and it goes with the whistly sound of the synths, which sound like there's air blowed through them. They're being worked with bellows. But that distant hint of sort of jazz club seriousness in her voice was very noticeable at the time.

And it was seen as a very distinctive contrast with the electronic backing. But, you know, now we're looking back through a history where we've seen her doing straight versions. of that old devil with love and things like that. She seems a bit amateurish here but I quite like that. The only problem is she spends the whole time singing

in this low register because it was her trademark but it sounds almost like the notes aren't quite there like her voice isn't actually that deep and everything needs to be transposed up a couple of steps to let it ring out because being able to generate low frequencies

with your voice is not the same. same as being able to sing low notes convincingly with full resonance. Yeah. And when she goes up in pitch a little bit, there's quite a dramatic improvement. And you realize she'd be a much better singer if she didn't lean so hard on her own style, which is a tough thing to come to terms with, especially in this pop climate where you have to stand out. Yeah. And everyone needs a novelty, if not a gimmick.

But the end result is that it just sounds like the husk of a good voice. But it doesn't ruin it because it's such a good story. It's just not as good as nobody's diary, that's all. I mean, the one thing we're pretty sure about and what the media's pretty sure about is that they're not in a relationship. And the last time anyone assumed that about a male-female duo was when Donnie and Marie were knocking about.

Wasn't even quite certain then. Maybe it's down to the fact that everyone's still assuming that anyone who operates a synth is automatically a homosexual. But they come off as the slightly weird, but essentially nice modern young couple who were actually mates who just happened to live together and they've moved in next door and your dad's got a bit of a weird feeling about them

but they turn out to be really nice you know, go to CND rallies at the weekends and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it would have seemed so weird when you're a kid that idea that a bloke and a woman can just be mates. Yeah. Do you remember that? When you're a child, it's really strange.

And it's this clash between Vince's Synthiness and Alf's, as she was called at the time and didn't like bluesiness, that it throws up a brilliant contrast, and it works. It does work. I don't dislike her voice, but I really do essentially like the song for, you know, the electronic, you know, the bat beat, really. Her vocal is just running through, so I didn't have any interest at all when she went solo. But could you imagine Dave Gayan singing this?

No, no, absolutely, yeah. But ultimately, like, I can listen to pretty much any record that's got those synthesizers on it that sound like they were built at a time when people believed that man will never be able to travel faster than 25 miles per hour or he will surely perish. It's just it was a, yeah, basically the introduction

of the DX7 was a big step down for 80s synth music. So the following week, don't go, dropped one place to number four, but upstairs at Eric smashed into the LP chart at number two and would stay there for three weeks. held off number one by the kids from fame the follow-up the other side of love got to number 13 in early December but once again clock was feeling trapped on the giddy carousel of pop and being prodded by mute

to rush out another LP when he considered Yazoo as a one album project at the same time Moyet was getting the right ass about being pushed to the front and handling all the promotional work So a week after the next single, Nobody's Diary was released, they announced that they were splitting up, leaving us with the LP, you and me both, which got to number one in July of 1983. That's your zoo. On top of the pop to the European chart rundown, one of the records they showed you then.

An infuriated thing by Trio. This one was number one in Holland, the Boys Town Gang. We cut back to Peel, who is surrounded by a surprising amount of East Asian people. You never see that on top of the pop. do you? No. I mean, it's always shocking when you see a load

of black people on the top of the pops of the 70s and an Asian person, Christ, out of all the chart music we've done, I think I've counted three at most. But yeah, here they are. Yeah, and it's not even been contrived

for an intro to like Japanese boy by Hanukkah or the early 80s and horrific like that. It's just the fears to be, they're just there. This touching tableau of oriental, Occidental Harmonia is completely ruined by the

appearance of my new most hated zoo wanker, a stretch Armstrong look-alike in white vest and shorts, who puts his hands to his face and shakes it about, like a Kingscross toddler who's just found a spent condom on the floor, while smoking at the camera like an absolute cunt, while Peel introduces can't take my eyes off you by the Boys Town gang. Formed in San Francisco, obviously, in 1980 by the club DJ Bill Motley, who was looking for a village people cashing group to record a single for his new label Moby Dick Records, the Boys Town Gang was a result of a cackle call audition, which consisted of local cabaret singer Cynthia Manlair and some blokes.

That single, an extended medley of the Ashford and Simpson songs, remember me and ain't no mountain high enough, not only got to number five on the US dance charts, but also spent two weeks at number 46 on our chart, which encouraged Motley to keep it going. By this point, they've slimmed down to a three-piece with Jackson Moore taking over on vocals and Tom Morley and Bruce Colton providing the beefiness.

This is their second release, a cover of the Frankie Valley single, which got to number two in America, which was best known over here for the Andy Williams version which got to number five in May of 1968, and it's the lead off track from their next LP, Disc Charge.

Think about it, man. Before it was even released over here, it made an appearance on top of the pops eight weeks ago when Jonathan King went to Madrid in advance of the World Cup and broke down the number one singles in Europe, as he had reached the summit of Pop and Hoyville in the Netherlands.

It entered the charts of Fortnite to go at number 66 and then sought 27 places to number 39. This week it's sword 18 places to number 21 and here's another chance to see the video which as the captions tellers has been sought from the Dutch TV show Top Pop and where the fuck do we begin on this boys? fucking out. It's strange to the way

she says it's number one in Holland you know it's like some sort of nudge nudge thing. You know Holland the land of dairy and homosexuals. Yeah when they tell you it's from the Dutch show Top Pop it's not so much a credit as a blame. It's like

it really feels like the BBC trying to wash their hands of this despite the fact that if you tune in at this time on Tuesday you'll get an episode of looking good feeling fit with Sarah Kennedy and Christopher Lilly crap offered without apology compared to which this is the De Cameron. At least it didn't say it's been sourced from the Dutch advert for top poppers.

I mean, there's so many clues here, you know, the Boys Town gang and you just look at them. And, you know, as far future people can instantly clock what's going on. But it's worth remembering that in 1982, Gaydars came with an optional 16K rampact. You know, as I said earlier, this was around the time I'd be watching Top of the Pops while my dad was getting ready to go out. So half the fun was keeping one eye on the screen and another eye on my dad as he wound himself up into a frenzy at the bent cunts who weren't fucking real. And I know this is going to sound completely on the nose, but I swear this happened.

When they turned up on that Euro episode of Cuntertainment USA, my dad got his keys, put them in his pocket, looked at the screen and said, fucking hell at last some real men Absolutely yeah Incredibly Seriously Oh totally yeah

Gay men don't have moustaches Gay men don't knock around with women No they can't be gay They've got moustaches Puffs can't grow moustaches They're too lint-risted No Who has moustaches

Policeman Yeah Construction workers Freddie Mercury You're saying Freddie Mercury is gay I mean this is it You know I mean there's all those angry Queen fans

Yeah you fucking said Freddy Mercury is a puff like Look at him look at him Incredibly just looked at my notes here and the first thing I've scribbled down says at last some music for real men. I'm not joking, it's

right here. It's always fascinating when you see the old school response to high camp though, right? Like nowadays you get more excessive camp than this in the mainstream of the mainstream and the response is

either, hey, jolly good or it's enough of you woke corn flakes but Back then, the response was usually uncomprehending laughter, which could be nasty, but wasn't necessarily. John Peel mocks this in his introduction, of course. But while John Peel was a man of his time in this respect, I don't think he was homophobic to any significant degree,

unlike some of the hippies, like the semi-committed lad hippies and the prototypes of the modern-day hippie-fascist anti-vaxxers and all that, you know, fetishising their idea of what was and wasn't natural. Rod adultery. Yeah, like so hooray for armpit hair and a smell of damp, you know, which spilled over into quite a prescriptive approach to sexual diversity. But whatever, the laughter that greeted stuff like this was derisive,

and that derision wasn't just aimed at the deliberate lowness of the artistic choices, it seemed to be rooted in an assumption that these people just didn't know any better, that they were 100% serious. Yeah, look at this disco rubbish that we've already had. Who needs this again? It's like the cover of singing in the rain, isn't it?

It's just like, what's the point of this? An old song with a disco beat, been done, mate. It was like you weren't meant to be amused, right? There was no understanding that the key feature of camp, of all kinds, is the inversion. of seriousness, the unintentional camp being all about a failed seriousness

and self-conscious camp being a kind of game with signifiers of seriousness, like undermining macho-tropes and the fragile architecture of heteronormativity and all that stuff. I remember Noel Edmonds

on the much-discussed vapid and ultimately lethal late-late breakfast show. I remember him repeating this clip on that program, right? Oh, really? Several times, I think, playing it, this exact clip, while doing that kind of mock-confused Tucker Carlson face and tittering along with the audience, as if these fellas in the Boys Town Gang believed that they looked hard

as fuck and were God's gift to women, right? But I honestly can't say to what extent that was homophobic, to what extent people like Noel Edmonds knew that this was a, gay club thing and were contemptuous of that and to what extent it was just cultural incomprehension. Yeah. Because as you say, 1982, the straight world was only just beginning to grasp this stuff. That's right. Yeah. I think it's either cultural comprehension on his part or an assumption of cultural incomprehension on the sort of mainstream audience, you know, and making out of these sort of idiotic disco dupes, you know, playing very ultra-lowest common denominator hat. I mean, the thing is, if my granddad, you know, seven days of jangeloads,

I mean, he'd have watched this. His only complaint would have been that they're not wearing shirts, which is obviously among multiple breaches of the RAF rule book. My mum and dad would have had no idea anything remotely unto Ward was going on here. No.

What I actually wonder is, is next time to see Alicia have to play of this and see what she makes for it because obviously this kind of signifier, you know, it's kind of a very 80s thing. You know, in 90s, 90s, it's all, you know, I don't think it really obtains anymore, does it?

It's, you know, I guess Quinn is more sublimated. Nowadays, gay-coded dress is like straight men, but better. I don't know. Tashes are coming back with the gay lads, I think. Oh, really? It's sort of like a retro thing, yeah. Yeah, you're there you are. Jackson Moore's got a nice white dress and heels on, and Tom and Bruce are wearing leather waistcuts and black jeans,

and looking quite muscular by 1982 standards. In other words, they're not fat fuckers, and they've got a hint of peck about them, haven't they? And the fact that one of them happens to look like a chuckle brother just adds to the entertainment value, doesn't it? I mean, I have a very sweet tooth for performances by female singers where the dancers providers look as gay as a trumpet. And this is obviously up here,

but the gold standard for me is Cheetah Rivera doing pretty for me on American television in 1968. Oh, yeah. And yeah, Cheetah, they are pretty all right, but just not for you. It's so weird though This strange watershed Like half a decade before this

The village people were doing their thing And obviously hip people understood what they were doing But people like Donald Trump Thought that they were authentic macho Or that in the Navy was a sincere Militristic propaganda With the famous and probably apocryphal story Being the US Navy inquired about

using it as a recruitment song. Well, they allowed them to shoot a video on a ship. That's true. They gave permission to do that. Yeah. But then eventually somebody who somehow knew advised them that this was not a good idea and that we want you as a new recruit

did not mean what they thought it meant. But then half a decade after this, you're post-Frank and post-Bronski beat and everything was understood in this country. It happened quite fast. So when Sinita sang about how her man had to be so macho over a high NRGB, I think most adults by that point could grasp that this was not an unironic celebration of unreconstructed cis-hete male power. But, yeah, we're sort of in the no-man's land here, aren't we?

I mean, I don't know how many people would have thought Boys Town Gang were straight. There's a bit of a clue in the name, isn't it, though? Yeah, but again, it's something that's going to go over a lot of people's heads. I think a lot of people kind of knew that they were gay, but they didn't know what they were doing. People thought that when it come to pop music and projecting an image, this was just the best that gay people could do. Right.

And they didn't understand that it looked silly because they were too gay. As if gay people in the music world, who had done quite a lot of the heavy lifting over the previous decades, were genuinely operating on this sort of Luxembourg Eurovision entry level, those poor, unsophisticated fools. So it's basically the same attitude that ultra-straight society had towards gay men for about half a century. It's the same dilemma.

Should we feel contempt or pity? It's our decision. I think that's what happened to. It's when high energy dropped, you know, manpowering and things like that, when that kind of flooded into the charts that, yeah, the game was up, as it were. I just wonder if Boys Town Gang, did they have to sort of, you know, was the subject broached in interviews, or did they do what the village people did? You know, which is like, is you stout denial or anything other than staunchly heterosexual?

And the into these days, like Vincent, what's the lead singer of village people, he's actually issued something recently where he's threatened that anybody that cast aspersions and on any of those village people songs that he co-wrote and implies that there's anything sort of remotely gay about them, that he was going to sue them or actually get his wife to sue them for some reason. Go, bring it on, Vince. Come on. Let's see it stand up in court.

This very month, chaps, in Record Mirror, James Hamilton's Disco page has revealed its first ever gay chart, and you won't be surprised to learn that this is at number one. Talking of which, if you want to dig deeper into this sort of thing, I direct you to the podcast record mirror disco charts put together by friend of the show and friend of me Mike Atkinson A-up Mike

your podcast is fucking skill him and his mates used to come around and piss on the face of my pub quiz on a weekly basis and the last time I saw him he was running a gay disco

at the very pub that Sue Pollard used to drink in so I nipped over to say hello and discovered I was the only person there because the rival gay pub down the road would run a massive spoiler event. So yes,

I had a gay club night all to myself and it goes without saying that I got him to play male stripper which I had a bit of a sensual cavort to and yes, there is video footage and yes, I need to locate and burn it immediately. Anyway,

record mirror disco charts wherever you get your podcast. But this song is obviously going to go down a treat at your local gay club because It's essentially the gay version of Hi-ho Silver lining or Freebird or New York, New York, you know, something that gets played at the end of the night

and everyone piles on the dance floor. It's like a joke that everyone's in on, you know what I mean? Yeah. What was number two in the gay chart? Saxon. Yes. So, boys, I believe we've established that we are living in a golden age of pop.

But if you're a cheeky young scamp working at a record shop in 1982, It's also a golden age of conning the oldens into buying some absolute filth. They've already had a glorious summer of foisted in damned LPs onto non-Az who like Captain Sensible, and they're going to have a lovely time next month recommending that they go and see brimstone and treacle at the pictures while the flogging and copies have spread a little happiness. But right now, the goal in every record shop across the land must surely be

to get shot of as many copies. of the Boys Town Gang's previous single on the unsuspecting old days who have come in asking for that lovely record by the nice young lads and the coloured girl. The A side, the Ashford and Simpson meddler,

that's safe enough, but on the B side is cruising the streets. A 13 minute song where the original Boys Town gang explained to the lads how to get some lovely cock of an evening. Sample

lyric you can find anything that you're looking for you might find a big old boy nine inches or more it's all true i promise you it might make you sore absolutely guaranteed it won't be a bore and it ends with a radio play of sorts which involves a couple of very camp men talking about someone else's massive knob then two more blokes discussing what can only be scat then two men actually doing it while a prostitute looks on and does some upside down DJ scratching to herself if you know what I mean and I think you do

and that's interrupted by two coppers who put them up against the wall and join in on all the sexy fun and it ends with the words stuff that big sausage in there and if anybody says there's anything gay about all this, we'll sue you. Oh, boys, what a fucking song.

You must have heard that. No. You haven't heard it? Fucking out. I suspect I will have heard this song in about an hour's time. I wanted us to do a recreation of this at the end of the episode, but sadly, Sarah's voice isn't up to it at the minute. So get well soon, Duckett.

Please hurry back. Just listen to the fucking shit we talk when there's not a woman looking over us. Anything else to say? Yeah, just, I mean, within its own genre, this is a fairly ordinary record, really. But it's memorable and it's catchy and the bit where it freaks out and goes all hands in the air,

amyl nitrate vapours billowing across the duds floor, is authentically lightheaded. Who could possibly have a problem with a Boys Town gang? Yeah. So the following week, can't take my eyes off you. Sword 15 places to number six.

and a week later it got to number four its highest position but it would get to number one in Belgium, Spain and Japan fucking out what did the Japanese make of it The follow-up A cover of Signed Seal Delivered I'm Yours would only get to number 50 in October

And after their cover of I just can't help believe In got to number 82 in July of 1983 They sprayed their musk upon the UK charts No longer carrying on until 1989. That's the boys' town gang and the clip comes from the Dutch equivalent of top of the pops,

top bunder poppin, as they call it in their inimitable Dutch way. Now at number 25, the Associates. Oh, I told you love to meet me here. 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 the sort of joke about a dutch top of the pops That chart music would never stoop to. Top van der Poppin indeed before whipping us into 18-carat love affair by the Associates. Formed in Dundee by Alan Rankin and Billy McKenzie in 1978, mental 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 double-hip records, and after receiving airplay on the John Peel show, they were picked up by fiction records and put out their debut LP, the affectionate 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 W-EA and receiving a 60,000 pound 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 Fares 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's 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 1980s? 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, it's insane. All that Top and Vandapot and stuff, it was a lot of these little remarks this evening, John Peel,

it's like, they could have come from like Dave Lee Travis or Mike Reed, couldn't they? A little bit dodgy. But that suit that is wearing and that absolute plenty of. Nash and the sort of sound that comes off this record, which is like some sort of imaginary theme to persuaders type sort of TV series from the year 1960X. This was absolutely on point for me. And the thing is, I'd have 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. Because I always felt, you know, this time, the war isn't between punk and

Prague 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 Whank The sort of people who wear their jacket sleeves rolled right up You know, Didi Boppers, idiots in horned rim 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 were 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 pops. 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. 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. early eight is 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 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 like 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 know, 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 in, view 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 press adverts with reams of text telling you stuff because they were trying to do something specific

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 and all of this makes zero sense to anyone who wasn't there and hasn't 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.

I interviewed Gabby and Robert Gillard to DAF shortly before Gabby died actually just a few years ago. And I did I assume, 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 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 set that sort of. No, we loved it.

It was great. And that's what we wanted. And that is where we're coming from. You know, 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, right? There's been a slight return of people posing for pictures like in costume or in character, you know, styled in an unusual way or dressed as North Sea fishermen or the 1920s French or something.

Not to express anything, but because it sits with the essential. solipsism and semiotic muteness of the modern concept of flashed. 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 of the starting blocks for the 100 metres, 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 Duran 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. 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 bathing 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 party fears too and to a lesser extent club country do have hooks and were 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 going to mean the end of you as a chart.

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 sims 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 McKenzie 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 Kashmir 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 at Ranger's and so this is actually something kind of quite enigmatic about them in terms of what were reboking. You know, there's a vague, sometimes they're incredibly colourful, sometimes they've got this slightly kind of

Berlin and monochromaticness about them. Certainly very, you know, cinematic, quite evocative. And of course, as Taylor said, you know, this great embrace of image of striking poses or whatever, which only three or four years earlier was absolutely verboten in, you know, new wave music and things like that.

The image was something that was served regarded with tremendous hostility, it was inauthentic, opportunistic, even feared with the sort of delivery of unvarnished, truthful content. But obviously, post-punk, new pop, you know, there's been on a journey, and the associates are now 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 Fears 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 there? The performance begins with a very smiling McKenzie in a short grey jacket and matching high-waisted trousers, with an absolute bouffant plastered with hair oil which makes him look like Les McEwen 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... Martha Ladley. Martha Ladley, one of the Martha's in Martha and the muffins. But not the Martha, yeah. She was a Martha muffin, not Martha Martha. Yeah, Martha 2. As we all know, they landed a number 10 hit with Echo Beach in March of 19.

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 Colvent Garden she linked up with the local scene because it was her who gave OMD the idea to call her 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 wail of a time absolutely having a whale of a time well i love the sort of interaction between her and bea McKenzie i mean you know she's she's very good looking easy handsome chap but it

it doesn't feel exactly flirtatious um which of course that would 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 epicenter 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 because as soon as she comes to Britain and starts doing all this stuff, it just transforms into the most glamorous woman who's ever lived, just swanning around, absolutely delighted with herself, quite rightly. Yeah. 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, sartorily and music. in the midst of something that's completely antithetical to that, you know, the basic, the sea of Zewank

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 faces, we're starting to see the flags, aren't we're a little tiny flag

being waved in the audience, and yes, dealie boppers are becoming a thing. Yeah, this is not a dealie bopper song, is it? No, no. But there is something coming up that's even less well suited to Deely Boppers. But we'll deal with that, weren't it? So we see Michael Dempsey on the base, 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 McKenzie. And he gets handed 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 game. 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 if you didn't know that from legend you'd never be able to work it out actually watching the clip with that disposed off he picks up another guitar and that's made from chocolate too I mean these guitars they look well Thornton's 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... I wouldn't dare. 30p? Possibly even more than that. 50 guineas. 230 pounds.

Oof, croaky. What's the inflation calculator, a maker, that? In today's rubbish money, that is £884 for just one chocolate guitar. So that is £1,768.000. 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. See, this is the sort of the punkishness that they're kind of like infiltrating top of the pops with. Yeah. Exposing the bogus nature of non-like performance. Yeah, what a shame he didn't take that other guitar and just smash it on the floor like Paul Simon. 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 Hoare would have gone for it. I mean, I wonder if they told him that that's what they were going to do, because Top of the Pops in 1982 would have been well up for that sort of thing. Yeah, he's probably right. I mean, for the next

performance on Top of the Pops, they were going to 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, chubs?

Yeah, I used to get my hair cut by a bloke who used to cut the hair of Billy McKenzie. 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. And 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 know, you have to just act as if he had a full head of hair. Oh, man. If you broke that illusion, if you broke that charade,

then that's it. You were 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 McKenzie I would know if this was true or whether my old hairdresser was a massive bullshitter.

But he told me that Billy McKenzie'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 McKenzie was that if he were to be set upon

by a gang of Tufts, it would not have been worth a while to do that. 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 it really is as you say a Billy the Fish air cut 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 quits 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 McKenzie 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 drafted him weren't good enough, which led Alan Rankin to quit the band. A month later,

McKenzie launched a solo career under the name McKenzie sings Orby Doig with the single ice cream factory, but it failed to chat. Going back to the associate's name, he released a spate of single which hovered round the lower reaches of the chart

but never breached the top forte and the name was retired in 1990. Oh, what a loss to top of the Pops the Associates were. Favorites with decent folk everywhere, Now, a special treat for members of the Sheena Barmy army. Are you watching in Cardiff? Are you watching in Swansea? Sheena Eastern.

Peel! Infested by Zoo Wankers once again, including one absolute arselled dressed as a punk and a bell-end who's put a pair of sunglasses on a bill. 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 Armour as he introduces machinery by Sheena Easton. We last covered Sheena Orr in our 2002 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 are 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 No. 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 of Fortnite to go at No. 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 Hull 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 Barmy Army comment Because it was quite the ongoing thing for John Peel at the time He was genuinely taken by Sheena Eastern Especially 9 to 5 After he died they found two copies of 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 asked listeners voting on the festive 50 to address their letters to Sheena Eastern. So he and John Waters could sift them out from the regular mail. So there we go. this is a knowing wink to his radio listeners. I remember once he was actually on a sort of roundtable show on Radio One, 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 offer his thoughts or whatever. And every time he said to him at the end, she was a rather irritable to say, yes, in your opinion. And then he sort of do it again. And then, yes, in your opinion. And I like this happened four or five times. John Peel was talking about it afterwards, and he was saying, well, she really pulled me in my mind.

place, and she's just like I just say, of course they're my fucking opinions. Who do you think they are? Jimmy fucking Savils. They might as well have got Pamela Stevenson, the scene is Yeah. Cut out of the middle van. 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 out and nailed down a trend slightly too late. Yes. Just 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 a 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

She's from 9 to 5 indeed but she's being repositioned here as a kind of mainstreamed Hazel O'Connor or Laman Lovitch these 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 1988. Yeah. And, I mean, the alienated coldness works better on a Glasgowian woman than a southeastern man, I think, even if Newman maybe lived it more authentically.

Yeah. Although I don't know enough about Sheena to say that for sure. She's wearing a shiny grey belt and off trousers suit with an extremely high, It's almost like a more sober version of that top Michael Jackson war on the cover of the Escape album. Ode Susanna in Smash Hits was moaning about Top of the Pops's 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, Sheena's clearly not the docile housewife or the modern girl anymore and she's in another shit relationship with a bloke who makes it 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 Hutter of Crappert, listen to this and sadly being cut our hair. get rid of our flares or out of guitars, I've seen the future, said David, very sarcastically. In your opinion. Yes. Quite right. So you put Sheena Eastern up with liquid gold then, wouldn't you? Yeah, I think so.

As cent pioneers. Yeah, I think so, definitely. But actually, as Taylor says, it's not actually a bad really. It's not the worst thing here tonight. Yeah. Well, the problem is that the song is sort of boilerplate. You know what 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, oh, the police are after me for a crime I didn't commit, right? Oh, I've got to record a chart music in an hour and I've forgotten to prepare any notes. Oh, what shall I do? It's frustrating. I spend all my conscious time

working to evade cliche and try it 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, you know, 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 had farmed out control of my subconscious brain to Julia Downs, who wrote this song. She was a semi-successful songwriter at the time. She did some writing for a mid-80s Roger Daltry solo album. Oh, God. Late 80s Elky 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 Stitch in Time saves nine. Look before you leap. Please take your litter home with it. but 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 stage hand who rigged up Bobby Davro's pillory. The difference being that nobody wants to shake your hand. it's not a horrible record though 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 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 own layer

is that she's not how 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 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 Brayman. 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. Yeah. 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. And 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 her

work-a-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 bar to Bernie in with a lucky young man. Do you realise 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 Easton Act 1, and recorded We've Got Tonight with Kenny Rogers. And in December of this year, John Peer would appear on the Christmas Day episode at Top of the Pops, wearing a jumper emblazoned with the slogan, Sheena Barmy Armour. When you're telling me the truth, I refuse to feel it.

I don't believe what he said to me. Feeling like a piece of the sheenery. What an artiste! What an artiste! That's Sheena Easton, a best since 9 to 5, making their debut on top of the pop's Hazie Fantaisi. Peel! Flanked by two early 80s' stunners dressed as sexy quality street tuffies, He 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's Big Legger by Hasey Fantase. Formed in London in 1981, Aisy Fantasy 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 Healer, who was a squat neighbour of boy George and Marilyn and had currently taken to soak in his hearing candlewax

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, sawed 28 places to number 43, that 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 pop's debut. you, okay, 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 a kid's from famed sweatshirt into a tub of quattro and is flaying you across your back with it. 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 jazz. At the time, Taylor, he was calling himself Jeremiah. Yeah, of course he was. I watch this, and I think kids these days don't know they're born. No. 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 all blow your mind but we took it on the chin same as we withstood the bombardment of spaghettified nightclub toilet shit that was hazy fantaisy 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 Cotton Eye Joe an international number one when this wasn't, right? Yeah, I know. 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 Goldsmith's bullshit. 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 around about the time we started doing chant music, I attempted to commune with the youth by watching an episode

of Top of the Pulse from 1982 with my 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 Neville. Neil's daughter when she saw Adamant for the first time, but laughter of spite and derision and pig-ed and ignorance from a generation who couldn't understand what their elders have been through. And I found myself getting all outraged and defensive for hazy fucking fantazza. He now spends his time going to some shit old club in Stoke-on-Trent with his mates, and they all sit round a bottle of champagne that cost them 100 quid on a VIP table,

while some landfill grime twat 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 I mean, it's just horrible, isn't it? It's this vacuously eclecticism for its own sake. I mean, Blitz Kids, you know, the worst people in the world, this King's Road whimsy. And it's so fucking Nathan Barley.

And I think, you know, if they'd actually thought of riding around on little tractors, they actually would have done. But, you know, also, you know, there's this Malcolm McClawn-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. Seriously, in terms of dialectical pop acumen, I think Hazie Fantasia make Toto Quela look like scruity 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 Kirchel, forever umbilically linked in the popular memory. these two cockatoo quaffed Viscounts of prog bubblegub. But we know that there were loads of them. They're 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 victim 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 it. 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 cunk can follow, just as long as they have the necessary bulletproof lack of self-awareness. So, hazy fan tasey then. Carol Clark pinned them down for an interview. 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 we goolies dollar with dreadlocks yeah steady on it remember the lesson of icarus yes this performance man I actually watched it with Ayatollah, Hermione's funeral director, and he said it was the most disorganised thing he'd ever seen in his life. On the back, on the race platforms, are the zoo wankers, of course, some of whom have been togged 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 Whankdom, definitely. Well, there's two girls with dealy boppers. We're going to see a lot of dealy boppers 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 keep him well out of it. Yielding the floor to Kate Garner and Jeremiah Healy, who of course is really called Jeremy.

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 Goner 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 it? Yeah, she's locked up with a black velvet hat,

distressed olive top and some brown trousers. She's not dressing as Sean Connery and Zardos just yet, but she's very much the minor offender here. Because it's all about the appalling confection that is Jeremy Healer. Jesus fucking Christ. Do you remember the 90s when the word trust atherian started coming into Vogue? Every time I heard that word,

I immediately thought of Jeremy Healy in this performance. Yeah. 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 trying not to fucking murder him. Yeah. Yeah, he'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 we're talking about. And this, I think, is where the crossover, I think this is genuinely and 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 going to 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 dukew.

O Aisy Fantasey 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 readily, although that's a terrific turnoff to be sure. 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. Thrustingly disgusting sounds like Bill Oddy'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 parlons 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. A shambles can be a good shambles. Ecclecticism can be good eclecticism. Sex can be good or bad. And 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, Kate 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. 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, but 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 Carol 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 porn 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 up right. It has none of the commitment and realism and passion of the two Norwich City supporters up against the gates of Carra Road on transfer deadline date. 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 simulated bombsex on top of the pops this year, chaps, because I direct you to the April 1st episode where Bardot, this year's UK entrance in the Eurovision Song Contest,

commence their routine for one step further by getting down on all fours and pretending to be bummed by, visible men or dogs or god knows what so yeah bardo beat you to it asy fantaser they go on about how sexually 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 bust a blood vessel singing I got bad habits

I don't clean up my rabbits on the two runners there's no tinkling anyone's loins tonight watching this I'm afraid to say no not that guy in profile he looks like the new moon what frustrates me right

I wouldn't expect much more than what we get from Jeremy here is so obviously just a self-adoring dickhead whose greatest ever achievement was co-writing everything starts with an ear by easy posse cheers cut 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 major and join 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. Yes. 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. Right. Which is basically an ugly porno comic instructing all the women to go flirty fishing

which was 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 order 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.

Right. Getting nailed in more senses than one. Anyway, they also tip me off to the children of God pop songs, which were... What? Yeah, 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 sweatbands and cap-sleeve t-shirt U.S. Pop-Rog. 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. Microtip 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 evangelicals. 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 not getting better. Also on YouTube are the surviving episodes of the Children of God

Kids Puppet Show, Life with Grandpa. Yeah, it's a dramatization of the home life of the cult leader David Berg, which when it comes to hiding in plain sight makes Saville look positively stealthy. Fuck. And I mean all Christian media for children 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 reign turns everything into a living hell for women and children every time that's the inevitable end point the inevitable midway point of any religion however

superficially benign right like in the early days of Christianity all the early Christians like including the great heroes like St. Benedictine and St. 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 extra 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 Kathy don't go to the supermarket today because that would have been a fucking brew. Actually, it would have been good to have had more cult survivors in shit 80s pop crates. Yeah.

Led some much needed intrigue to Kajigoo if Nick Beggs had escaped from Jones Town. At this point, I was going to 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... No, me neither.

All the fortnight after that and so on and so forth. Whether that's on Hay de Fantasia, I don't know. And watching this chaps, it's easy to assume that someone else is watching this at home when it 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 neighbor

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 Patty 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 presented gig on the tube right about this time. Quote from his first autobiography, to add to the depression, Hazie Fantase's debut single,

John Wayne's big leg air, was being played on Radio One. It became the soundtrack to M. my despair, slowly climbing the charts and staying there for ten weeks, niggling at my psyche. I knew it was a good record too. 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 And 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 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 raster, Paul Nicholas Nicolbert, 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, you 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. But it's poisoned by its own smug narcissism which is why it's not even half the record that that is. I remember this song very well indeed when it was out but if you 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 eight is 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 and you started chatting delightedly to him and then suddenly he hatched like his face tore open mid-sentence and a lizard with a flicking tongue crawled from the gloop that came pouring out of his half-egg body although that would at least be an interesting experience yeah 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 or sort of his clothes hanging off like Yeah. 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.

Do you know what I? No, well, Humpty in play school had legs. That's true. But it's hard to determine. He had some very semiotic trousers as well, didn't he, David? Yes, yes, is very cool. Yeah, they're quite small, though. Like, no wonder he sat on a wall.

His knees would be fucked in two minutes. actually tried to walk anyway. I hate him. He's a wankly Humpty Dumpty. Oh man. No, no, no. I never trusted it. Oh, who does he think he is? Fucking egg trying to tell me what to do. Big hazy fan tasey 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 their 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 Hazie Fantasia currently making and plowed it into a shirt that cost

£1,000 for the lead singer of their latest signing, Savar, Savar. must remember them. Oh, God, yeah. They made Kajagugu look like a ghetto boys. And the lead singer, who looks like the little brother that Brian Setser doesn't like talking about, is 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. A thousand pounds So the following week John Wayne's big leggy 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, Backal Hymns for Children Singing. But that only got to No. 53 in the album chart that month, and when the follow-up single, Sister Friction straggled to No. 62 that June, Hayzer realized they'd had their daysair 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-referral. write songs for another former neighbour, 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 Easy 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 caching single Supersonic in December of 1992.

He also married Patsy Kensit 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-Aisy photos when she actually left the music business. I was trying to think who she looked like and then the penny suddenly dropped. In her actual facebones, 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. Are you related to the woman out of Hasey Fantasey? Oh, you're too smooth, guys. Whichever way that answer goes, it should at least wake her up a bit. But she'd block me, so we'll never know. No. Get in touch if you're listening.

Okay. Show now. Show down. Show down. Show down. Oh, no, thin. Doesn't it make you spit. That's Hasey Fantasi, number 20.

to John Wayne, his big leggy. I've always thought so myself. These are other fine people over here are wavelength. Lying awake. Lying awake, thinking of you, it helps to see the line. Peel comments on the malnourishment of Aisy Fantasia 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 would work with Venom and Tigers of Pantang, end up as their debut single after it was originally offered to Sheena Easton, who fucking hated it. It was slated for a 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 the 19th, a party of Argentinians, 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. Roundabout 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 showcased on the last Saturday of, June, where they went up against Pookey Snackenberger, 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 a fortnight 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 up the chart. 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 jol's just the way you are i suppose about this in some respects yeah yeah um yeah in terms of the kind of Yeah, the look, the sound, that kind of, it's a dirds, 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. It's tense up. Yeah. But first of all, we've got to describe the presentation here. Of course, yes. Now, I'm generally strongly in favour of videos and TV performances where the members of the group play role. 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... Toast. Yeah, toast. Or the brat dressed up as John McInroe doing chalk dust, the umpire strikes back in a mock-up tennis court. Yeah. 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 teetan. Yeah, set him up joan. Yeah, yeah. Not standing next to the bar

staring into space and singing to nobody because you'd get thrown out. Get a pining, man. You'd be standing there doing that. 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 misses 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, no.

Triangular white bread cheese sandwich. And what if his missus 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 going to turn right round, start roaring to a ma'am and you know there's going to be a phone call to the solicitors in the morning bad form mate, bad form and not a very original look for a man singing an over-dramatized early eight is ballad either

I looked it up this is actually before the bitterest pill video and before the all of my heart video but it is two years after Vienna which I suspect was something of an influence it's like you've heard of ultravox well it is

ordinary vox. Like somebody thought, oh, that ultra-vox video was cool. But Mijur was just a bit too charismatic. So let's get John Kirby to stand there and his dirty Mac looking like it'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.

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. Wackle, whack, oh. And, yeah, the profusion of Deely Boppers down the front

is not exactly contributing to the somber film noir. It's really not. Also, the kids visibly thinking, yeah, play it one less time, Sam. The main problem is the lead singer, right? John Kirby 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 in 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 air cut for men between 25 and 45, quite a large section of the 80s, wasn't it? Like, usually with cheap knitwear and grey 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.

The David Sol, the David Sol, then inside him is Kid Jensen, then inside him his man. animal that inside him is Kelly Monteith and inside him his face from the 18 and then well we don't know what's beyond that because all survivors turn back at this point but you either add that hair or you add the rounded side parting that's bigger at the sides than the top like wogan sort of half covering the ears like a big flap of hair over the top half of the ear over 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 air left for those terrible aircuts,

you had this terrible air cut if you were a CNA zilch, you know. But at least he doesn't actually look like the homemade AI upscale on this episode. No, good. But it gets horribly confused by the dry ice drifting in front of his face and reshapes it into the face of Johann DeVitt in the corpses of the DeVit brother. others by Yandah Barn. 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 precisely in protesting all of the hair cuts that uh taylor i never knew this i certainly did and it was well semitic yeah that's literally the opposite of the haircut you 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 tire type job but it was um absolutely right at the sides and at the back with a big sort of morrissey type quiff you know sort of semi you know perched at top. What did your granddad say? Oh, he'd long pass by that point. Just as well.

I mean, you know, he's probably turning in his, well, not his grave, but his urn, definitely. When did you get rid of that air cut? Was it when the real rain did finally come and wash all the scum? Yes. Do you know what? Actually, that is about the nearest, 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'd be slotted in between Chicago and Randy Van War. very late night minicab fm produced by christopher neal renaissance man of worthless british bilge

yeah star of the sex thief and adventures of a plumbers mate and i mean one thing you can say for this is that it's a fairly authentic facsimile of itself you know that 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 pot 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 normalisation of dad-friendly A-O-R, 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 going to get more like this. I'm just intrigued by this idea of it. I mean, you know, being big in the Falklands

and being popular among their soldiers, you know. It's not the soldiers that are buying it, David. I mean, I doubt there were many short return shops in Goose Green. It's for them who wait at home for them, isn't it? You know, because wavelength are the 1982 version of military wives. Well, I was surprised, but yeah, I imagine that grown men capable of doing, you know, a thousand press-ups and lugging a 100-pound backpack

across difficult terrain, weeping puddles of tears in the barracks. I mean, you know. No, you're very wide at the mark there. David, what our lads in the Falklands want is David Van Day doing a cartwheel to a karaoke version of Olamour. 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, and I think a 99-year-old General Galtieri would be present to the Malvina's 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 ship building pretty much terrible and how does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead of course what did we get out of the Iraq war shoot the dog yeah shoot the dog

that was it fucking a war's hurt what are they good for etc yeah 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 doing I got no memory this at all i remember seeing this episode but this kind of thing it's a piss break yeah by 982 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 nine ars kitchen for another handful of um 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 or 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 O'Hulahan effect because everyone can clearly remember his name actually being Nelson O'Hulahan. You don't fool me. You're malignant forces tampering with our past. And another example of David Essex being the kingmaker of pop at the moment. Fucking hell. First Toto Coelho, now this. Do you remember 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. did tea time make prime time 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 remakeer gonna 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 um and of course they always managed to pick the worst act because they're the public um 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 god david essex showcase e s s s e x apostrophe with no s after it yeah is that correct only one of us here went to oxford so 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? Because the language is extensive enough. There's always a way around these things. Like the first rule of writing, back in the days before the internet was there to help you check stuff, if you're not sure of 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. The David Essex or David Essex presents or, 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

like you want to say to me mate if you hadn't dishonoured your father's line like that you wouldn't have to worry about these things or if you must pick a classier county one that doesn't have a freak letter at the end David Herefordshire or a David County Durham. Then have you a fucking shock.

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 hope you there, Taylor, because in the episode that Wave wavelengths 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 bellowing wavelength armor or wonder why all those punks in the market square had Barbara Rosenblatt on the backs of their leather jackets in tip-ex, now you know. This is what I was going to 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-studied episode. As you say, it's got the Bell Stars, boogie snack and burger, and the disconcertingly bombastic Barbara Rosenblatt. Yes!

Who, had she ever progressed to top of the pubs, may well have become a minor chart music icon. Video playlist. Quite the performer. It's astonishing. But wavelength are immediately after the low camp comedian Harry Dickman who is a hard act to follow because the silence he leaves behind him

is so thick you have to tunnel through it. But they're a wavelength doing this song, miming it, mind you, in their civis, 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 Peeble's specs. The tall backing singer is in a pink and blue striped, short-sleeved shirt, Homer Simpson cut with pleated buff chinos. Basically, if you threw in a few packs of Benson and edges at a jacket with dandruff on the shoulders, it'd look like a secondary school staff room jam session. And 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 such an anti-climax that David has to quickly get the white tucks on and sing nightclubbing so there's at least some kind of finale because God bless him 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 show case and here on top of the pops there are a mere five so some poor sod's 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 wavling anything else to say yeah 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 oh right 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 laid. 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 substituting boring, every man's 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-on, Thank you for the party, 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,

Hugh just to be played at his funeral. So, yeah, that's cleared that up. Specifically asked for Cave Bitch as he went down the convey about the power. Wainblames, boys and girls, not next on top of the pubs for zoo, and as a special treat, the Hassani 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, of big fun by Cool and the Gang. With covered Robert Bell and his mates 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 14, 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 Marrakesh 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 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.

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 Sunday.

Poor guy, lost under the moving wheels of time. I just think that he's cooling a gang and I do honestly 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 faraga. It's like plate spinning to earth, wind and fire.

It wouldn't do it. It's kind of disrespectful. And he doesn't really suggest a desire to do justice. to cooling a gang with something special but they don't really give a shit about cooling again. 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 Hurl's 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 Leotods 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 Yeah, a giant Masonic symbol painted on the floor hiding in plain sight Yeah, 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 writings on the wall, because yes, the Hassani troop are doing, the same thing over and over like zoo 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 this sort of thing that you got in his ear this superfluous exuberance really I mean yeah it's cooling the guy you sashet to cool the guy you groove to cool in the gang you don't do somersaults to cool in the game

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. Yes.

I like the way this sequence is really, only there to humiliate zoo. Yes. 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 claps along with it I'll take this. Yeah you can moan about this all you want David but fucking hell imagine if Zoo were actually given the floor for this True. It's calling 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 it 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 programme because this episode it's not a funky show this week is it? Certainly not. I just think you know 1982 they've never not blanded out yet completely but we've got to that point with cool and 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's floating in the cloudy reservoir of summer 1988 so more power of their elbow more power of their solitary elbow but yeah in the in the grand scheme of things it's it's not the best calling the gang no 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 rarity really it's an unmemorable disco record it's one that hasn't lasted absolutely through

the ages you know 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'd go. And what students of music would really be studying decades down the line is the keyboard works of Tony Banks of 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 14. The follow-up, Ooh-la-la-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! The Hassani troupe from Chessington Circus, lively little blighters. Why do they all look like John McEnroe, though? I think we should be told. The charts.

Number 30, bamboo music, bamboo houses, Sylvan and Sakamoto. 29, a big favourite of Peel Acres, videotech, dollar. At 28, the Steve Miller band and Aberacadabra. 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 fantasi. And at 21, can't take my eyes off you, the Boysdown Gang. Beautifully red, now we're going to whirl you back in time and space to number 26, the Fun Boy 3. Summertime, summertime, summertime, summertime, and the living is easy. Peel throws us into the first third of the top 30, and once again, Michael Hurler's letters right down by offering mainly decent band pictures. There were a couple of standouts, though. wavelength looked like the victims of a horrific accident at the plasticine factory

and one of them has his face shared off from under the eyebrows Peel Biggs Up Dollar for folks' sake 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 which squashes all those rumours Yes We return to Peel now surrounded by a very delighted

a sarni troupe 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 Bess, which was taken to 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 places to number 26. So here they are in the studio. And chaps, it's only a year of way. 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 we've got used to seeing them we're in actual colours

we know that Neville isn't suddenly going to bark instructions at us and fucking oh look they've got women on stage with Ponzi 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 energy levels, that loush is obviously what is kind of about. But it works in the specials when you're surrounded by bloke 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 stab at tile, you know, like rope in some strings and shit. I can't imagine people buy this out of a dull habit, really, rather than being enthralled by it. I mean, it's like, 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 to. And then there's a bloody trombone solo, which is an absolutely deal. 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, It's a bit onions and custard, isn't 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 performance. is whenever 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? And 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 its 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 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. No. This is right in the middle. of Funboy 3's short flight. Yeah.

A bit of unexpected turbulence, but no harm done. Just some Diet Coke sloshed over the top of the half-sized plastic beaker onto the fold-down table. Check the stewardesses, they don't look 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 up. absolutely massive hit and we're playing it up as such and yeah it didn't really turn out like that but it's an example of how comfortable the fun boy three 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 called 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 mock 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 a 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 1982 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 large are top in the bill and oh look out toyer and adamant because eddy large is on to you

there's an unknown comedian called michael barrymore who's being tipped for future glory, but for the pop crazy 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 wanted 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's 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

Summer time, summer time That's right, that's the fun time, summer time, summer time. That's right, I've got there with the Billy Stewart and Jean Vincent versions in my estimation. That's the Fun Boy 3, 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, the 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, Love, Love,

Commonwealth Cockneys, Harper Daily, he's all right. 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 Bucks 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 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 to go and we finally get to tuck in to the second instalment of the glorious Minder trilogy that is bookended by I Could Be So Good for You and what we're going to get are indoors. Hold on here comes chisim.

And obviously it's the unofficial one, but oh, what a performance. Yeah. Can anyone think of a third group in the Rockney genre? Because you'd 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 kill two people. No, no. But I looked around for a third Rockney 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 drug courier. But you can be absolutely sure that the ITV have put repeats on this summer because fucking how Minder 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, one of the Sweden, kind of split up he actually declared his intention was to become a singer you know pop star that was down wind 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 hailing island in the seven years 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 sunlounge

shabby and fascinating 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 programme, 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 when Saturday comes for them as the dug 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 dumbedown minder

even that program was ironing out the detail and falling back on pathos and cornball horse shit 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 of 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 bloke 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 because 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 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 pro-l experience in television and media in general. 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 an exclusion. 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 80s 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 little incidental things. Like when he's getting his business cards printed up at the bottom, he said, cheap estimates, no, better make that free estimates and things like that. But also 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 the 1960s.

They're very much who are kind of still operating in the 80s. Whereas in the counterpoint, like Terry McCann, I think, he's kind of 70s bloke. Nicholas Linhurne, 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 Lindlehurst 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, through Terry McCann. You know, that wonderful scene where the kid comes around and he's buying his car and he's one of half the day these 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 um 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 celebrate thatcherism in any way at all yeah if you look at leon griffith's original proposal for minder right it's really good he goes in everything about you know what this show's going to be like he says this show's all about london but quote there will be no more shots 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 programs 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 um right the two main writers of the swiney were

Trevor preston and troy kennedy martin who later wrote edge of darkness um 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 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 is 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 of the 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 partly because it's harder to break

into that world without the right background and the right connections but also because this situation has 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 whichever way it's rolled.

Well I mean that's a kind of crisis that's occurring not just in film and TV and whatever it's in music, you know, pop up in music. Even in football, that's the strangest thing as well. Yeah. It's because all those football academies are out in the country, right? 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 now. 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 less,

just because they're the only way. 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're making 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, just even to be owning that lockup. In fact, the whole point of the show in the end was that, yeah, Arthur Daly, he's all right. 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, but he's all right,

just because Arthur was not in the habit of tying people to wooden chairs in basements and removing their eyeballs with teaspoons, like everyone else that Terry. he had ever met. But luckily for Arthur, being such a cowardly soul, he did know Terry who was apparently the hardest man in London. Yes. Like a pork pie-faced man

of average height and sloppy belt with upper arms that flapped about like beambags in a tumble dryer. It was seemingly unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. This is the least realistic element of mind. He would occasionally meet his

match. Like in 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 D.S. 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-thirties 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 round 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 site to every woman in London,

age between 18 and 60. Then again, this is a London gangland where according to all TV crime drama of the period, Boise from Only Fools and Orses and Mike Reed from Runaround were ruthless enforcers. And the undefeatable end boss was Genial Harry Grouch from Porridge. I reckon the three of us could have had a little racket going in those days. And if Noshua Powell shows up at the door,

just wait for him to take a slow motion telegraphed swing at us, duck under him. shove a fold-up chair at his midriff and have it away on air tommy. 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. It's a little bit weird. It's about when they did that song about Lorraine Chase in the Luton Airport.

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 lead singer was assassinated. But like in character, like a London, gangland style execution like what happened to Jack the Hat McVitt. Yes. When everyone got to see his smashing orangey bit in the middle.

But it works because he does look very authentically indigenous London albeit 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 this was relatively recent too you see pictures of London before a certain date and Nelson's column looks like a liquorish stick you know what I was like St Paul's Cathedral is just totally black like it was built in West Yorkshire

yeah Leeds Town Hall which is black the year Yeah, that's what this bloke's lungs look like. That's why he's 5'1 with legs that bend inwards at the knee, like so many Londoners of his generation. Trying to cure it with a fry-up every morning and a cup of tea, the colour of an antique table. 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 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 seal 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 a 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 in an annoying laugh. Anybody here? See a bra past his waist? I saw it fly off Barbara Windsor yesterday. And from the booth,

death's laughter 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 ram all. 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 Cochney sing along at home. Oh, blimey. It's incredible that this record's actually all right, isn't it? Yeah. Or for Daily, he's all right, is all right. It really is.

There's even a good joke at the end where he's going, well, we've all got something going on, aren't we? 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, 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 could be bothered.

And, yeah, a shockingly good cash in here. 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 lots, 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 she's and sing? He said, I know how half a day leave a dime. I said, how's that? He said, you'll fall on the back of a lawyer.

That's the first. That's the fore 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 girls is banana-rama and shy boy. Number nine, my girl, lollipop.

That's bad manners. At eight strange little girl from the stranglers. A number seven, Kid Creole and the coconut, stool pigeon. Up to number six, Eye of 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 a number two, Irene Carer 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 leave you with Dexis Midnight runners, Number 1 Peel Surrounded by the Dregs of City Farm One of whom has put a leg

over her part in his shoulder While he gnaws on her cough Outros 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-Otsburgh 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-fullen. He then whips us into the top 10, 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 Ryeh. As discussed in chart music number six, after the dissolution of Dex's Mark I, when five members of the band confronted Kevin Rowland

and said, close the blinds, we're 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, Roland borrowed slash nicked his violinist, Helen O'Hara,

and charged off in the same dime. 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 enter 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 sawed another 22 places to number nine. Then went all the way to number two

and a week later it tapped Irene Cora on the shoulder and said, excuse me, please, but just 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 and 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, of them in their entire lives. 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 off. And this just could not have worked out better, could it, David? Well, this is the weird thing. You know, I never like Texas.

I mean, you've got it. It's a bit like Bruce Springsteen with me as well. When people, I'm mentioning to 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 is such an utterly stern undertaking, like you're doing pull-ups or something,

or having to harden yourself for life's rigors. You know, there's a sort of joylessness and, you know, 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 conferred. For one thing, it's a trombone-free experience, which is a mercy, because there's always been far too much trombone, i.e. 8 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 in their own puddles of lager before getting up and going again because here comes Jeff Beck's high-ho silver lining. DJ, turn the sound down for the chorus. Don't go to weddings then, David.

Well, yeah. Because it's a fucking tune. Let's get that out there. 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 weddings 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 Rowland was doing a Q&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 due and come on, Eileen comes on? Rich? Yes, I suppose you're 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 cunters 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 would come out. The DJ saw them and celebrated their arrival by playing all the songs off their debut album. them 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 barren. 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 Turay 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 I was jealous of you and your talent you deserve better I hope you get what you deserve And 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. Yeah, I mean, I was going to say, that's such a deep expression of contrition. Did he express it at all in Akers, I wonder? Well, yeah, apparently there was a, 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 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. So 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, right?

For instance, the fuel for Dex's and for Kevin Rowland's crazed 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 Dexies 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 a paraligious 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 a 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 Redding 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 is 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 as I'm from knocking 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 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. They just express themselves directly, albeit self-consciously. 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 transient 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, and 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 you, tree? No, why? Well, because I hear it all the time off Bellends on Facebook. You know, He's singing, you've grown them. 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 them 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. People are letting their knowledge

of Alex Chiltern'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's time and all these girls who have been around and had to tolerate and put up with, In the meantime, we've suddenly fucking exploded into young women. And I'd be there going, oh, my God, look at her. She's fucking gorgeous.

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-ri-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 Dexies 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, they'd 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. Yes. 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 as a chart act that's the peak that Kevin Rowland was squinting upwards at the whole time that most musicians are squinting upwards at and never reach but Dexas Minut Runners did and it's this it is a very inclusive record in so far as I should say I mean it's really everybody I have 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 you often. 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'll 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. Did he know?

Yeah, and tell me when my light turns green. He says, I've 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, with this because if you're going to show all these weird corners of the early 80s charts like wavelength and hazy fucking fantasize 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 baffling 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 20, 25. 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, 2 Raya 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 sell, 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 nine o'clock news, it's the last episode of Task Force South, the Backelons, 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, Rocky, a documentary about the franchise and a big advert for Rocky 3. And after the weather, they closed down at five past midnight. BBC 2 is five minutes into Strange Bed, The 1965 film where Rock Hudson tries to patch up his marriage with Gina Lola 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, it's highlights of the cricket and they close down at five past midnight. ITV is currently 25 minutes into the jeweller. lists, 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 show in your area, regional news in your area, and the fourth part of the drama series Skin Deep, about a trainee Scottish fireman and they closed 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, hey, who wants to play wavelength? Yes, Magsie, 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 Dexley's. 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. And what does this episode tell us about August of 1982? 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. 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 Crazy Youngsters, brings us to an end of another episode of chart music. Thank you very much for you. your patience. Let's get on it properly from here on in.

Anyway, usual promotional flange, website, chart dash music.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 your arse over to kingsplace.co.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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And welcome, just after a quarter-past six on a Saturday. I hope the day has gone well for you so far. I can promise you the next 45 minutes. A lot of unexpected things are going to occur. 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 Bedfordshire. Oh, the rain looks as a bit stopped. Sandra, hello. 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 a go of 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 cars. He's going very quickly, indeed. The main problem, of course, is if he hits the dam on the ramp, he could go over the edge. That's a very much. 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 it? No, 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, and whether it remains on the strip or goes into the crowd. Well, Noel, everything was all right after that last one. Oh, very nervous, because it came down about where I was standing,

but miraculously nobody was hurt. The crowd's moved back, and so you won't be at all surprised to hear him I. Also, most importantly, driver Guy Skippen 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. Pity 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, I was for a bit of a coward. He's coming up to the route. Now he's going very, very fast indeed. Very fast. Look. I'll have to keep.

All right. We've got to use that. 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 program, 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 programme. As I mentioned, also, Kid Creole will be with me and Boy George. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of the programme, and we'll see it 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 blazer, 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 begins For 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 interest in it His Scottish brogue 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 those. risk. A shared cigarette later, they're 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 Murmuss, 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 Fischer'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. Maths Simon's spine with reverent precision. Simon's fingers

Tangle in fissuous sweat-damp hair, pulling him closer As if to fuse the space Between breaths Against the hum of the Mini Bar, they unravel A tangle of hunger A whispered truths

The world outside fades here There's only the rhythm Of shared gasps The poetry of skin On skin Skin Morning light filters through gauzy curtains. Simon stirs.

Fisher'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, Marillion'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.