Hits 21 - BONUS: Top of the Pops, June 1994

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Hits 21, the show that's taking a look back at every single UK #1 hit..You can follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hits21UKYou can email us: [e-mail] 21 DOES NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY MUSIC USED IN THE EPISODES. USAGE OF ALL MUSIC USED IN THIS PODCAST FALLS UNDER SECTION 30(1) OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT 1988

Thank you. Hi there, everyone, and welcome back to HITS21, where me, Rob, me, Lizzie, and me, Ed, usually look back at every single UK number one of the 90s or the 2000s, but we're in our little mini bonus episode series while Andy's away in New Zealand, and this is the last of the Top of the Pops trilogy, which I'm now calling that. I'm now calling it the Top of the Pops trilogy, and we'll be looking back at the episode that's the closest to my... birth date, which is the 30th of June 1994.

So we will play a quick clip just to get everybody immersed in the Top of the Pops universe in 1994. I'll run down the list of performances on the episode and then we're just going to get straight into it like we did the last two times. So here's a clip. We're these animal men. See us later on Top of the Pops. And it's number one TV music leader

And it's top of the park We can be with Julian Robbins now And Gordon the little Yeah And it's good old What's his face again Bruno He's still

He's still hanging around So when it's not Bruno These are the performances from this episode And there are a lot of mind performances on this episode, only one music video and one live performance, which wasn't done in the studio, but we have. So, caught in the middle by Juliet Roberts. Crazy for you by Let Loose. Go On Move by Real to Real featuring the Mad Stunt Man. I don't like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, which is a music video. Shaker Maker by Oasis, Ghetto Day by Crystal

Waters, Speed King by these animal men, swamp thing by the grid, Love is All Around by Wet, Wet, which is a live performance from Wembley. And living in the sunshine by a clubhouse featuring Carl closes the episode. So usually I would kick to Ed and Lizzie to see what they thought of the episode, because it's the episode that was nearest to their birthday. But it's the nearest to my birthday, and yet I still feel like I can't because I've been talking for too long. So, Ed, what did you make of this 30th of June 1994 episode of T-O-T-P? Yeah, this is about the time I was watching the show.

I remember this intro. I remember that being the theme music for Top of the Pops, just like I remember the less famous second Grange Hill theme better than I remember the first. But yeah, that said, I think. I think I watched this episode, because I remember one of the performances will come to, like, acutely. However, the rest of it, not so much. I think there are things on this episode that do freshen it up a bit, that we've not ended in the previous couple. I think on the whole, the actual using the recording of the band, but doing the live vocal works on the whole, in the way it didn't with the one example we had in the 91 episode but I get the impression and you can go as I'm not as

harsh on this episode as you folk are nonetheless as I was just saying to Lizzie before the show not big on peaks is it even the top even the top 40 seems a bit barren

there's nothing I actively am like aghast at what I'll say in advance is I think it doesn't have quite the lows of the 1986 episode doesn't have you know insane hawkman and his bizarre

like synthy soul experiment or whisper was it whisper whistle what were they called whistle whistle whistle well they left a whisper of an impression on the national consciousness anyway but as I say they were fascinatingly shite weren't they it was something slightly bizarre

and off putting about them Yeah. But whereas here, there is some crap on this episode, but it's kind of dull crap. One thing I'll say about this, though, is that this is a little bit less cut and dry than the past two episodes for me, where there are some songs where I'm like, the performance is good, the song itself is ass, and I think we'll come to it. There is one point in the show that it's like, why is this here? Why is this taking so much time? Why is this taken up so much time in my life? Yeah, I can't offer that much of a different assessment, to be honest.

Lizzie, what about you? I feel like we should have introed this episode like, We're Robert and Lizzie, hear us later on It's 21. We'll be playing football girl. So a new single football girl. We're Steve, Steve, Steve and Steve. Here is later on top of that. The main things I took away from this episode, I completely agree with the U.S.

like this is an episode low on peaks there is one trough but i guess it's not a product of 94 as it's just a crap song but we'll come to that anyway i would say that from what i can glean pop soul is very big at this point and throughout the mid 90s but it's already settled into kind of a holding pattern by this point so there's nothing really that raises above like Ech, I guess, it's a relief to not see the lighthouse family on this episode, because I know they were knocking about. I think more interestingly, it kind of shows both the real future of British rock music in Oasis, but also the alternative future of British rock music that never quite came to pass in these animal men. Like, clearly the BBC thought the latter would go on to bigger and better. things since they gave them a feature spot at the start of the episode that they usually

reserve for like the number one artist and even later on bruno brooks kind of brushed off oasis a bit with his indie or not comment i think there's a sense that the bbc or top of the pops don't really know where pop is heading so it's just kind of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks but it's not going in the direction it seems to think it's going Yeah, with these animal men and Oasis being put side by side like this, it's kind of like the BBC having to make a call about what the second wave of Britpop is going to look like after the first wave is kind of over. And they think that it's going to be this new wave of new wave lot that are coming through. like these animal men and smash and I mean

Sheds ever made a good go of it but instead it's more oasis who are there and they get a good feature but yeah they don't get what animal flan animals get at the start of the episode I do not think I don't think this is a good episode

at all I think this finds the 90s and top of the pops in a very funny place where it feels like stasis is set in a bit the episode feels like it's defined by lots of pedestrian and forgettable songs that remind me of the worst of 90s pop where the gimmicks are louder than the actual genre. A lot of interesting developments from the 80s are flattened out and where the songs seem to rely on artificiality so much that they start to sound fake. And

like I have no issue with artificiality in pop in principle or things sounding fake. Like I love heavy auto tune and PC music and all that stuff. But I mean fake in the sense that some of these songs just sound like stock music. Even the house entries, which take a bit from soul and rap, they offer very little. Everything's very chintzy. Everything feels very false. And the only thing you've really

got to break that atmosphere is Oasis doing what is probably the worst song from Definitely Maybe. I would say definitely the worst song from Definitely Maybe, in my opinion. I still don't mind Shaker Maker even if it is The Seekers but gnarly via John Lennon

style nonsense non-secretary. but then you've got the man animals, oh my God, when they appeared at the start of the episode, I immediately Googled them and like, yep, Top of the Pops is in a weird period now where they're prominently featuring bands who have never, even to this day, have never had a top 40 single,

even after appearing on top of the Pops. You can imagine the meetings like, yeah, this is what the kids want, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then nobody buys their records. Yeah. And it's like, oh, dear. There are highish points for me, not major peaks, but we'll talk about it more in a bit. But it's, I guess, like, hearing love is all around in the context that it maybe was designed to be heard is fine.

You know, Liam Gallagher's voice penetrating through the sheen of everything else in 94 is worth it, even if it's not lived forever or cigarettes and alcohol. But I think this is a major step down from last week, and I'd say even a step down. down from the 86 episode, which itself was pretty middling. I think this is a bad episode, purely because it is boring. It is middle of the road. I've been left with very little to say about a few things in this, where even stuff like Whistle, we had a load of fun with that. We even, to be honest, had a load of fun with Brian Adams last week.

Whereas with this, I'm like, I wonder where the conversations are going to go. So strap in everyone. Well, to be fair, I'll put you up on that. We didn't have a load of fun with Brian Adams last week, did we? We had a load of fun about everything else except. Except for Brian Adams. At least Brian Adams inspired the discussion. But I guess with that, maybe there's proof that we can get blood out of any stone.

Check out this man from Brighton. These animal men like this. try and she's not my friend She's a groovy teenage girl She's doing all right by me I'm so right She's starting on But if you get a river in a car

It's a long long ride smashed up by stale skating out of her mind I'll skip for my hunger I'm 22 at a corner Ed, I'm going to come to you That's part of That's a different thing

Because this is the dichotomy I was never an oasis kid I didn't really get them I wasn't really much of a rock kid anyway I was all about blur I mean you can read a bunch into that about you know fucking middle class Midlands kid yeah

of course I'm blur but at the same time I'm like I did grow an appreciation later on for the Oasis debut in particular that is a real it's got it's potently swaggering and it sounds fantastic even if they do stretch a little, a long, long way.

They have sufficient cockiness that it actually works. The exception to that, for me, as I've already intimated, is that it is Shaker Maker, which I just find colossally dull. And they were repeating themselves already, because basically it uses the same turnaround hook as rock and roll star but it is tied again to fucking I'd like to teach the world to sing

but just done at half the speed of molasses and coastal erosion and it's fucking I've never liked it I've never understood it but the odd thing is and I feel comfortable saying this they are

in terms of presence the most interesting thing on the episode because they are so... It's interesting, as you say, putting them back to back with they might be marble men. They might be men.

I don't fucking know. What are they called? Just normal men. Just innocent men. Just innocent men with football girl. Yeah. Putting them back to back. It's like, in theory,

ordinary men should be stealing the show. Because there's a lot more... There's a lot more... technically speed tempo to the song. They're moving around a lot more. They've got their umbrot tops on. It's like, yeah, we're young, full of life.

But it all seems so surface level. And like they've just, you know, it's just an act that's been put on them. And it's like, well, play into this. Just pretend to be young kids who love football and girls. And that's what your song's about. And it's the same old shit that were like early blur singles were about. Like, she's so high. It's like, oh, she's running around my head.

She's making me dizzy. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, she's a magic girl. Evasive girl. Fuck off. It doesn't even sound very new wavy, so I don't know where the piss that's coming from. The first note I put down for them is adequate grass.

If you get where I'm coming from, it's like the tinsely, flippant lightweight exterior of supergrass, except not good. And the weird thing is, all of this energy and tinsel and this symbolism of movement and youth, Oasis

are fucking stock still pretty much. They're arranged like the front of a battleship for some reason. I think that's great though. I said it's like it's really menacing. There's something wrong. That's such a cool description though. But it is. And they're like, the drummer

forcing his way into the front of the frame and the lighting seems darker and there's just this, it's like a massive middle finger, even the way that they're arranged on the stage, like probing into your space, whether you like it or not. And there is such

a fucking, we are too big for this. You're going to fucking like us if we play the slowest, most boring dirge ever. And they somehow get away with it. Now, don't get me wrong, I sufficiently hate the song that I did skip through it. But just the confidence, however manufactured

at this point, that Liam particularly exudes, Liam's presence, even the way he's fucking dressed. It's like, oh, he's, say what you will about the group of their music. This guy had something. There's something magnetic and repellent, which is irresistible in rock and roll terms. You know, that's classic Mick Jagger stuff, isn't it? Something kind of off-putting, but also incredibly enticing.

And, you know, there's something slightly sacrilegious and holier than thou about them at the same time. And it's amazing that they, they are, in retrospect, the most interesting thing here. And that includes the fucking grid going wacky near the end. But we, should I mention that now? Because it's not really going to come up in my, my high light either. Yeah. Yeah, I, this performance, I completely forgot it was on this episode. This performance, I think, caused me to get by my first ever single on cassette when I was eight with my pocket money. Oh, wow. From Asda.

This? Because to an eight-year-old who had seen a video of Kraftwerk on Tomorrow's World when I was a kid and was like, who were these people looking really serious playing on an oven? And I was like, transfixed. And I remember it was a clip on it was on Sounds of the 70s, which I recorded off the telly when I was five. I loved Sounds at the 70s, sounds of the 60s, sounds of the 80s. I was a weird kid, but I used to watch him on loop, and so I had a very select experience of music of the past.

But they had this fascinating minute and a half clip from the 70s of Kraftwerk, as I say, Tomorrow's World, of them doing Autobahn, a live performance, and it looked like they were playing on baking foil on the top of McGrans' oven, and I was struggling to process what it is, but they were fascinating to me. And then I saw the grid, and it was like,

there was some of that same wackiness. It's like it had all been modernised, but obviously, I mean, the craft work debt is really hard to look past. And it is the most shallow thing in the world. But for a young kid, it's like, this is like Kraftwerk, except there's someone underneath an industrial hair dryer playing a banjo

and looking like the most serious person in the world. Now, to be fair, in an episode full of like boring, frilly, loungey shit, this is at least something. It's at least visually interesting. and it is probably on a surface level the most visually interesting thing in the show but I yeah looking back now it's like you don't really need more than 45 seconds

but when you're eight years old you can listen to the same 45 seconds multiple time and convince yourself you're having a good time I'll probably listen to the B sides as well to get my money's worth Jesus Christ I must have done but yeah that the grid swamp thing was my first ever single

and I remember this performance triggering it off so yeah but that's not my pick for the best it's not my pick for the worst it's there it's wacky and it's a phase so Lizzie what about you

it feels like from something you said earlier that this is maybe your your least favourite bit of the episode is the bit that wasn't really part of the episode it was just inserted rather than performed live am I barking up the right tree Yeah, I mean, I did go back and forth on some options, like, let loose.

The singer's cute, the little dance really fucking piss me off. Real to real doing not I like to move it, move it. Poor Crystal Waters having to be shipped in from America to perform the most boring song known to man. They were no longer these animal boys. They were these animal men. And animal men with broken necks at the start. I was like, are they all right? Because they've all got their heads or what, so.

And, yeah, the grid doing their fucking deliverance dance, like, it's horrible. But yeah, I have gone with, I don't like Mondays, by the Boomtown Rats. The more I've listened to it, the more problems I seem to have with it. I don't have a problem with the subject matter. I think it's entirely possible to write an engaging piece of music. about an uncomfortable subject, something like The Boiler by Rhoda Dachar springs to mind. The problem was with the execution of it. I found a quote from Tom Ewing, who runs the popular series on Freaky Trigger,

who describes the angle of this song as rubbernecking, which I think is a perfect description. Deep down, I don't think Geldof really cares about Brenda Spencer or school shootings or anything like that. It's just a morbid curiosity or, worse still, an excuse to make himself look intelligent. It reminds me of those Facebook memes. You know, like, I don't know, a couple in bed and they're both on opposite sides, like, staring at a screen. And it's just like, makes you think, doesn't it? Like, about what? What's your point?

What are you trying to say? Because you've got nothing to say. Even the delivery of it. You know, I think he's going for like an Elton John. parody type thing, but it just comes off sounding like Tim Minchin or like a really bad Victoria Wood impersonation. And the way he enunciates on this like the silicon chip inside her head. Because that's all he has. He has nothing to say about what can make a child do something like this. All he's got is like silicon chips and telex machines. It's stuff that

sounds really fucking important and intelligent to him. But doesn't. mean anything and because it means nothing he can apply it to live context as we've discussed when we discussed Band-Aid he can go on live aid in 1985 and 2005 and he can stop the entire show by doing this horrible little and the lesson today is how today and fucking holding his handle like his Freddie Merck piss off you've got you can't this is a song about a real person who has real victims and dare I say she's still alive and so are the victims and so are their families and the goal of him to take this and use it as some sort of is it supposed to be a point about famine like the lesson today is how to die

how does that apply I think the fact that they even him taking boom to Rats onto Live Aid among like some of the biggest bands in the world that have ever. You know, your Queens, your Pink Floyds, your Duranjurans, your status quoes. Boomtown rats. The Boomtown Rats were a fifth-rate punk band. They're not the pistols. They're not the clash. I've no idea what they're doing on this.

The only thing I could think is like, top of the pops two was about three months away at this point. So someone really wanted to get this on the show, but they didn't really have an excuse, so here you go, we've got to fill some time. Oh, Alia's in the charts with a debut single, is she? Never mind. We'll just put this on instead, because who fucking cares? Yeah, I don't like this song. I think it's a horrible piece of music. Yeah, I can't, I can't believe they devoted three minutes to this. What are they doing? It's 1994. Just hearing the whole thing, I think, is just, it feels very odd. And just the fact that Jesus

Christ, I mean, I would rather have even just seen, like, footage of them, playing it live with the tape playing in the background because, and it is symptomatic. It's not just them. It's symptomatic of videos of the time, that very early turn of the 80s period where it was just something you did in an afternoon in a room with like a cameraman and it was just a fucking dos. All of the early police videos are like that as well. But with the subject matter of the song, as you say, Lizzie, the video in particularly just seems so fucking flippant and stupid. Like the, when you have the, which always felt completely daff to me, the bloody airport kind of, tell me why, thing coming in

from the side. And every time, like, Bob Geldof's like acting like, whoa, where did these guys come from and falling back in a seat? Yeah, the camera like, fuck off. Are they having so much wacky fun with this song about school shootings? And it's just, he just fails to cultivate any individual charisma. And the thing is, I've, I've never really listened to the lyrics much. It's just the whole song seems so melodramatic. You don't need to listen to the lyrics because they don't mean anything.

There are no reasons. Maybe that's the point. Makes you think, didn't it, Lizzie? Yeah, makes you think. Like and subscribe. Oh, God, no. You can't criticize it

because there are no reasons. That's the point. That's why the song's meaning. Listen, this is totally tonally incongruous and fucking... Anyway, The thing that's always got me

about this track is that it just sounds like the, I think, the boom town ruts probably were, like a slightly nath co-option of lots of popular things from the time. For me, this sounds like if kind of, he's doing a bad Bob Dylan impression

over what is basically a shitter version of Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello. Yeah, I was thinking Elvis Costello as well, yeah. And he's just kind of mushed that together with some vague sort of Springsteenisms and changes by David Bowie as well. That's pretty much what the verses are. And it's like, there is no,

This song has no feeling in terms of there's no tone to it. It's not like it's an inappropriate tone. As you say, it just, it feels like, oh, you know, all the penis has got this cool idea for a song. Why don't I just sing over the top of it, even if it's not appropriate. Yeah, it's less like Elvis Costello and more like Toya. It's got this real musical theatre aspect to it. It does. It does.

I can't stand. Except he's slightly duller a presence than Toya to give Toya a dew. Yeah. If I must give toy, I heard you. But, do you know what? What always gets me about this, as I say, I never really notice the lyrics often until people point them out to me. Often they're just syllables that fit the tone and the mood,

with occasional words that spring out, and then ones that hit flat with the music. And this is full of really awkward phrasing. Like, I realize, and I've realized with time and with writing some stuff of my own, that I love and feel most comfortable writing and listening to tracks, that have a sort of conversational meter. I think I've raised this before on the podcast.

Yeah. So the way that the, you know, the lyrics spill out. There's an organic... There is nothing organic about this. It does sound like someone's just stretched a melody that stretch words around a kind of a piano instrumental. And the thing that always gets me is that... Shoot, ooh, the whole day...

Down, down, down. It's like... That is a terrible end to a chorus. It's only memorable because it's so obtrusive. It's wank. And the rest is kind of just some, you know, quasi-jazz, quasi-showtune kind of gestures. He's no fucking Steve naive,

whoever the bloody pianist was for the Boomtown Rats. But they are like the... You're right. A fifth-tier punk band. Or, to be fair, I would say they're like a two-and-a-half-tier new wave group. because they borrow so much from the new wave scene without having any individual flavour. Sorry, Rob, I'm rubbing your time

because to be quite honest, Lizzie, I've never liked this song and I'm glad someone else has stood up and concur with me because I think it's crap. I have one more thing to say just really briefly. The bit where he does a high red, it's like, shoo, ooh,

it just reminds me of like Stewie Griffin. Yes. Sounds awful. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. The whole day. down and shoot you down um to be honest with me

it was a top up it was a toss up between um that these angry geese and um that let loose group um the let loose song I think it's it's shit because of course it is like you hear the first 10 seconds you know what it is who it's for why those men in particular

are performing it that singer is I find him very pitchy. I can't believe it apparently took five people to put this song together. I feel like I can guess every movement, every lyric, every decision. When there's like, I'm crazy, when he says crazy for you, I'm like,

okay, so the next line is either, there's nothing I can do, there's nothing I won't do, or I've got to get to you, or so it's just, you know exactly where it's going. There's a big focus on the people in the audience in this episode. The camera gets turned around,

a lot during these 30 minutes and it feels like a stage manager is holding up signs saying cheer, scream, look shocked, faint a bit. They're not even really acting like pop stars, the members of the group. I think they're acting like catwalk models who happen to be performing a song. It's, I don't know. That's one of them. A special mention has to go to that fucking real to real guy, go on move. Oh God. Feels like a dry run for I like to move it. Sounds like we wanted another out here brothers in the charts, thank God we didn't have to cover anything by that guy. But I don't know, let loose is probably my least favorite song. I'm not sure, but I think I've kind of settled on at the animal factory lot. They curse these animal hands.

I do have to make a special mention for them because, you know, I will give them credit. I think essentially what they are is a British pop punk band in the 90s, which is a bit unexpected. It's bit of a curveball. Obviously, Britain laid the foundations for pop punk in the first place in the late 70s, but through the 80s and by the early 90s, it was definitely more of an American thing. It was more of a skater thing over there. But the thing about this slot is that it starts to round me up is that you can't really imagine them learning from bad religion or the offspring, you know, they're not skaters or nerds and they're not shy little kids who play a few pop tunes about skateboards and girls at school. They come across a bit like,

poses, to be honest, like they've been told to act as mouthy as oasis will probably do, like they're cooler than top of the pops almost, which is fine when you're oasis and you want to get a bit of swagger across, but there's energy and there's gusto in the performance, but a lot of it comes from the genre they're in rather than the song they've written. I think the song itself is pretty empty calories. The slowdown into half time for the chorus, that's a nice enough touch, but that lead riff, if you, you can call it that, is nothing. It has a lot of ostensible call, but it's just two or three notes being played in the most predictable way you could possibly imagine. I think the scene

they were part of is all right, you know, Elastica, Echo Belly, that's about as good as that stuff kind of got. The other names don't conjure up much excitement in retrospect like Smash and all that. This lot seem to occupy a lower rung, even with all of this exposure. which they shouldn't be getting because they never had a top 40 single and trying to promote acts that haven't had the success feels like a rule has been broken and all forgiving,

lesser known bands, a bit of a leg up, but that's what the radio is for and that's what magazines are for. They've been getting a big hand in the press in the run up to this episode and we'll do for a few weeks afterwards, but no matter how much they were pushed,

the public didn't really take to them. Top of the Pops is meant to reflect the child, not fiddle with them. Yeah, you know, which is why you have that jarring opening where a band that no one's really heard of outside of a few London critics in the mid-90s end up introducing an entire episode of a British cultural institution

all looks very, very weird in hindsight. But I think the reason I've taken against them more than anything is something that's kind of not their fault. They remind me a lot of a band that I supported at a club academy gig in Manchester in 20. I wasn't going to name the band, but I'll just name them because I think they've, they no longer exist. They were called the Cavelles, C-O-V-E-L-E-S. And they were kind of like a, well, being in a band

during the dregs of the indie slees movement at the bottom of the pile opening for bands like the Covelles, you see a lot of stuff that looking, it's like in the first episode of The Sopranos where Tony Soprano is like, I feel like I came in at the end, you know? I feel like I missed the good stuff. And now we're left with the imprano.

imitators. They topped the bill that night and we sold more tickets than they did. We were first on the bill. It was our first gig. It was one of those, the reason it was Club Academy in Manchester, which is a pretty big venue for a guy, you know, a bunch of kids who'd never played a gig before. Yeah. It was a pay-to-play thing where we paid a promoter and then we earned the money back through tickets. Didn't make that mistake again. Although to be honest, we split up four months later. But the Cavell's topped the bill. They didn't speak to us. they didn't try to help us with anything. They didn't even look at us. They got pissed in the green room, treated the night like they couldn't be bothered, and then fucked off home as soon as they were done. Like the other three acts on the list, one of them was called Happy Daggers.

They were a lot of fun. They ended up supporting a couple of bigger acts, actually, about two or three years afterwards. Then there was this other band called The Outreach Project, I think. I've got to say Happy Daggers. That's a pretty good name. Yeah, but they were fun too. They were a funky pop group.

They were very, very different. to everything else on the bill. We were called, fuck, my Juliet. Oh, I've seen the clips of My Juliet. Yes, yeah, we're on YouTube, we're terrible. But, yeah, we're basically just like a fucking doughtry cover band, but we didn't realize this because I didn't give a shit about who doughtry were.

Were you better than these animal men? Probably not. A lot of our compositions were written by the drummer, and the drummer was a really big, Daughtry fan and he liked to sneak in and shall we say, interpolate but not so generously say

steal sequences and licks and riffs from Daughtry songs, build them and hope that we never listen to Daughtry and I remember us finding the song Over You by Daughtry and then the song September by Daughtry

and we realised that our biggest song the one that we finished all of our gigs with was a combination of September and over you by Daughtry and me and the bassist looked at each other and went well we can't perform this now we're just going to get in trouble and then thankfully we split up a few months after that

but yeah living in the dregs of the indie slees landfill indie era a load of 22 year old lads with like neck length curly hair v necks tight jeans strutting about like peacocks is one of the most dismal fucking gigs you've ever been to in your life and I get that vibe from this animal farm lot.

For the amount of noise they make, it's all a bit in one ear and out the other. It's attitude over, well, it's style over substance, isn't it? It is attitude over content. It's pushing something that refuses to be pushed, I think.

They seem like okay people who are just kind of acting the way that they've been told to act because it's like, oh, if you act like this, you'll get all the wagons well interested. And there are so many press clippings on their website. One of them were Simon Price of chart music goes to interview them in a hotel room. And when he turns up, they're all in the bath together shouting for him to come through. And he does not talk about the music at any

point in the interview, Simon Price. He just talks about his experience in the hotel room. They sound like a likely bunch of lads. Yes. Like you were saying it, is football girl by bunch of guys football girl would be a much better name for this song

Oh we should write you football Go Football girl Oh oh oh oh oh oh You're my football girl But every now and again I'm like you had with lyrics I don't

Ones that are really good or really bad Really stand out to me And everything else in between I don't really give a shit Like I write a lot of lyrics Sometimes I'll come up with something Where I think, yeah that's great And then other times I'll think of like

I just need to fill a line here. I just need to, the syllables need to be filled with something. And with this, there are moments where I'm like, my ears prick up a bit. Like, she's a groovy teenage girl, but she's not, like, she's not my type or something like that. She's not my responsibility or something like that. It's very, very strange. Like, they're driving in a car.

She's a groovy teenage girl or something. at animal farm. I'm scared for my auto. I'm 22 and a quarter. She came home again. She was drunk. She's not my friend. She's a groovy teenage girl.

She's doing all right by me. Sweet 16 ain't so peachy keen. Yes. It's a long, long ride, smashed up, buzzed out, speeding out of her mind. I'm scared for my auto. I'm 22 under quarter.

which I guess if you have a pretty thick southeast accent or a quarter okay I will knock her out I breathe Jesus Christ what is happening here it's like sound of a concussion

he's a dangerous big gert but yeah should we move on to our favourite song of the of the week yeah Swettling on On the firetick Give up

Oh Woman Sweating on I'm not doing I'm not I'm not doing I'm not doing A summer day

I'm not ratline around my head In the fire hide your children pay Sister fire They're getting nothing to tell

No I'm not doing I'm not doing I'm not doing I'm not doing it I'm not doing I'm not doing I'm going to say something

about a 40 Oh my a summer So, Lizzie, blood from a favorite song out of this episode. I mean, Jesus Christ, like, I almost gave it to these animal quackers, just because I thought, like, at least it's, it gives a glimpse of something that I didn't really know about. it did make me dig into you know the other brip hop that didn't quite happen

so I learn a bit from that but then I realized the song is catch it so I didn't give it to that I can't believe I'm saying this and it feels like I'm doing this by default but my favourite song

of the week is Shaker Maker by Oasis Oh yes this is very unexpected Yeah, I don't think it's a particularly good song. Like you, I think it's one of the, one of the weaker songs off, definitely maybe, and definitely one of the weaker singles. But when I watched this, I did get a palpable sense of like, oh, this is quite different. Like, this sort of blows all the cobwebs of 1994 out of the way.

I got, I did really get the sense of like, yeah, this is a force. to be reckoned with more than I did anything else in this which, like, there's a lot in this episode that just seems kind of tired and passed its sell-by-date. You see my quandary, Lizzie, don't you? That it's like, I hate that song,

but they've got something. There's something special happening there. Exactly. I'm like, oh, stop. I don't know what to do with that song. Yeah, like, it's really hard. Like, I could have given it to Crystal Waters because I was like, I really like Gypsy Woman,

but I just didn't. think much of the new one and I'm not surprised that it fell out of the charts straight after this episode. Why wouldn't it? It doesn't sound like anything. Whereas yeah, Oasis, I came away from it with a sense of like, okay, I get why people really sort of fell hard for them towards the end of 1994 and definitely into 95. I sort of understand it a bit now. It just shows to show what the, what presence and swagger can do, really. Yeah. In terms of, yeah, the best one was tough, and I was just going off basically vibe. Now, this is, down is up today, clearly, because Jesus Christ, I had two potential picks.

Neither of them I can fully recall, but God damn it, maybe it's because I liked it at the time. Maybe there is some nostalgic buyers coming in it. One of them was fucking let loose. I struggled with it a lot, but, yeah, Ed, do, do, do, do defender. It should justify your actions. No, you can just defend the song. It doesn't have to... You're not in court, don't you like what you like.

Oh, through gritted teeth. No, look, I don't know if I can. I just, I think it's a pleasing song. It's a catchy song. It is made to order. All of the cogs are on clear display. The lead singer guy has just been picked out of a catalogue, along with his jacket where he's,

put the fucking collar up and I'm like that was just distracting to me I shouldn't be distracted by somebody putting their collar up through a performance so that's probably a demerit there but I like it and that's really yeah this probably is some bizarre nostalgia thing because Jesus Christ I really don't

have much more to say I like the I like the pre-chorus the that mean just where you want me I think that's quite effective so much so that they basically

repeat it again several times at the end like oh this is the this is the winner this is the money shot of this bland product no I like it I think it's fine and it kind of as this kind of you know mid 90s slightly rock licked um boy band stuff goes I think it's decent I think it's peppy enough there's enough vague flavor of power pop in there that I'm I'm having an ample time I listen you know, I listened to it all the way through both times, so I might be insane, but I, but that's not, I think if I'm being a little bit more objective for me, it's probably the song that started it, where the song isn't interesting, you know, what's it called, caught in the middle?

Caught in the middle of L-O-V-E love, L-O-V-E-L-V-E-L-O. But that's the thing, it's like the song is forgettable in the extreme, but as I say, it's a live vocal, she's got a fantastic voice. gives it everything. And you know what? The group gives a lot of pep, you know, even though some of it is they're miming along with synthetic elements. It's got a lot of drive.

And the show really, you know, gives it a lot of welly with a lot of dynamic camera movement and she's getting the audience involved or trying to. I'm like, oh, I like how they started the show on its fizziest moment, as in a potential for like, oh, this might be fun. This might be a little bit more than just being shown a clip show effectively. it never really delivers on that promise the rest of the episode. But, you know, as a concept of, you know, an enjoyable music experience and as something that has the energy of an enjoyable music experience, if not the song, that's my favourite.

So, oh my God, this is low fucking tanging fruit. This is fucking desperate, isn't it? I'm beginning to agree with you guys. I don't know. Is it the worst of the three episodes? Yes. I don't know. On average, per song, maybe not, but in terms of having anything to say, I mean, I'm saying that.

We are about, you know, 45, 50 minutes into the show, but I don't think there's anything I'll think back to, really, once we've done this episode, which I just, yeah, I'll think about whistle for the rest of my life. That's the thing. It's like the first, I still think the 1986 episode, you know, would they go into my head, that would be the one I would pick. Because I think it has, I think. that's had the best song for me out of the whole lot of them and the most memorable performance and it was 30 seconds long

I still just that little snatch of Kiss with that little video clip is the most fucking charismatic and best thing we've seen across all three episodes I think I agree it just it has something

and that's amazing for fucking 30 seconds of something shipped in as a bit of filler content but that said I mean as I say it was the biggest peaks biggest troughs because my Jesus, as you say, fascinatingly shit, you know, whistle and Hawkman and the soul nothings. But yeah, I can't really remember the 91 episode either. It felt

like this is a lot of the trends of the time on kind of their B tier level. It's like, oh, that band did a song I like. It's not this one. And it just had that whole feeling. It's like, Oh, it's prodigy, but it's Charlie. Oh, it's, um, 808 state, but it's the other one. No, not, not that one. The other, the other, other one. Oh, right, okay. And I say on this one, it at least had,

it felt a bit snappier than the last episode for some reason. I don't know if that was just me. Well, until it got to the end, because to be quite fucking honest, the only reason that I didn't put bloody, again, the dichotomy. The worst fucking performance for me of the lot Was bloody wet, wet, wet, wet, the end What a boring bloody waste of time

But I like the song But that fucking deadening, smirking Empty, hollow victory lap performance Has actually killed some of my admiration For what I thought was a decent song We'll get there, Redd We'll get there Fuck me though, I mean, Jesus

We're 15 minutes in We've got to get through this like Daniel Beddingfield Christ, okay I'm just waffling now because this is a real struggle This is it is meagre It's not much I hate

But it is meager To offer up something a bit Kind of more positive I'm going to defend Ghetto Day by Crystal Waters Which I wasn't like Taken with But it was on the upside of fine

You know It's a romantic You know Loving song about home life The people on your block The people on your street You know My favourite Queen Latifah

for song is just another day, which is from 93, you know, similar kind of thing. My Block by Scarface, you know, it reminded me a little bit of the very few happy slice of life scenes from like, do the right thing when all the kids are playing in the street with the fire hydrant and Phil Liottado from the Sopranos drives past and they drench him with the water. The performance on the episode isn't much, though. I think it's taken a bit less effort compared to some of the other ones we get just in terms of staging and props.

But you get the four talented dancers in the brown sweater vests. They pull them off. They do some cool moves. Crystal joins in with the choreo sometimes. She's friendly, smiley, seems at ease. She flew in from New York to do it. Okay.

Bit of a shame then that it fell immediately out of the charts, but you know the audience seem happy enough. The only thing I will say, though, is that bloke from before who was probably standing at the of the let-loose performance with those cue cards. There are people screaming at this song.

I don't think this is a song you scream at. I think this is something they're doing in the TV studio. Like, come on, just jazz it up a bit. Shout. Scream. They'll grab someone out of the audience and just yell. You know, just yell. And yeah, it's a bit like, oh, okay.

You kind of, you feel like this episode is trying to force things maybe that aren't there, which is probably shown up, I think, with the fact that, you know, maybe the most memorable performances are things like Swamp Thing because they haven't, they're not really pushing anything at all. If anything, they're doing the kind of orb playing chess,

Navana playing their instruments backwards kind of thing where they're just kind of like set up like the most disconnected group but they all happen to be wearing white jumpsuits. Like, you know, it's, I think that's maybe the most arresting image apart from Oasis's drummer being at the front. One little thing I will say is that Crystal Waters has one more top 10 hit after this in 2007.

What? She is the featured vocalist on Destination Collaboria by Alex Galdino. The one with the music video with the women in the skimpy green military outfits playing brass instruments. Euphemism there in case you'd miss the subtlety. Right. Okay. Yeah. The destination.

With all of the... Oh, shit. Again, with all of the subtlety of mid-2000s... Oh, yeah. F-H-M pop, which I'll call it. But yeah, should we move on to... Well, I say something more positive. Should we complain about good things

that weren't in the episode that could have been? Yes, please. While we do that, we will play down the song which I have honestly forgotten whichever one it was. They were putting the charts over. Don't like Mondays. No, it's don't like Mondays, yeah. Yeah, it was the line one big one.

Okay, whoever thought that the boomtown rats be back at the top 40, did you buy this record 15 years ago? And nobody's going to go to school today, she's going to make them stay at home. Daddy doesn't understand it He always said she was good as gold And he can see no reasons Because there are no reasons What reason do you need to be shown Tell me what

I don't like Mondays Tell me what I don't like Mondays Tell me what I don't like Mondays I want to shoot So now we move on to our Something in the Charts section.

So Lizzie, what did you look at in the top 40 of this week, June 30th, 94, and then go, this could have been on top of the pops. It didn't break any rules, but they didn't fucking put it on. What are you not happy that they left out? A couple of things. No Good by the Prodigy and No No by Dawn Penn would have made my favorite song choice a lot easier, but they're going down in the charts,

so as per the rules, they wouldn't be eligible. So I will go with something that was eligible and was about 15 places higher than I don't like Mondays, but they just didn't bother to play it, which is back and forth by Alia. There's a real lack of hip-hop and R&B yet again, like the closest we get to it, is real to real, which seems kind of dated by 1994, I think.

Yeah. And, yeah, instead of playing out the Boomtown Rats video in its entirety, why couldn't we have had this? Not only is it a brand-new entry, but it's Alia's debut single. She's 15 years old, and she's given us a glimpse of the next five or six years in American R&B with a much stronger hip-hop influence than a lot of what's called. come before it. It's a real shame this isn't on the episode.

It's a massive missed opportunity, I think. Yeah, I think a bit of a showcase for it would have been nice, even if it was just the video. You know, I guess, like, maybe not getting her in the studio. I kind of started looking up reasons why they wouldn't have brought her over. You know, because maybe, like, you know, the video must have been ready and maybe they could have played that. But maybe I was wondering if you had something to do with her only being 15 at the time,

because apparently this isn't verified, this is just anecdotal from people who were in the crowd on some episodes of Top of the Pops in the past, where apparently they did start to put age limits on audience members. They had to be 16 or over in order to get in. And then I started thinking, well, no, because they've had Jimmy Osmond on Top of the Pops in the past and the St. Winifred School choir and Billy Piper. She's only 15 when she does her first performance of because we want to about four years after this but so I don't know maybe there's something like maybe the special dispensation

if you're like at the top of the charts or something and maybe like Aaliyah she's in the top 10 at the moment isn't she but she's that's about as high as it gets she's like number 16 or 17 yeah top 20 so like not making major moves and so because she's 15 and American and it'd be a lot to fly her in

I don't know if there's an insurer thing because she's under 16. I don't know, but maybe that's why they didn't get her in the studio, but then maybe the music video, but then I'm starting to think like, was the music video ready? But it probably was, because in those days, you know, you do video

on single lunch, definitely at the same time. The only other thing I was sort of wondering is that obviously Alia was under the management of R. Kelly at the time, and I'm not going to say that anybody in the industry was like, maybe we don't want to associate with him, because I'm sure R. Kelly was on top of the pops lots of times.

after this point. Yeah. But maybe, maybe R. Kelly said no. Maybe it was his decision. Maybe they did reach out to R. Kelly. And then he was like, no, we're going to get an American spot instead. We're going to try and get an American TV spot. Or it's, yeah, celebrating.

Again, maybe this little bit of like celebrating the past a little bit too much and not going with something current. But Lizzie, yeah, go on. I mean, I thought of had like, I obviously wouldn't want to allege. anybody of actually sort of doing this, but there was a thought that popped into my head of like, did they see real to real and think, oh, we've already got a hip-hop act

on this episode, so we can't have two. It's possible. Because, like, we're in 1994 and they've still not caught with hip-hop, I don't think, which is baffling. Like, 1986, you can make an excuse, but 1994, like, it just seems out of date by this point. I mean, we've said it before.

I think it is Cooleo that's the watershed in this country. Yeah, must be. Ed, what about you for something in the charts that should have been on top of the pops? Like, what do you think? Beautiful, it scans better than the Boontown, right? Yeah, I actually pretty much just going to mirror what Lizzie said there. Dawn Penn was definitely going to be a pick of mine.

I always liked you, don't love me, no, no, no. One of the better examples of kind of, you know, reggae influence stuff in the charts. It's actually got, you know, proper... Yeah, I love, no, no, no. groove it's got a groove it's got confidence i dig it um i lea yeah it would it's a show i was i was shocked to see her in the charts i'm like oh shit i just didn't realize she had any presence on her first album in this country because i just associate it with like the the massive singles both before and after a death you know the turn of the millennium but um but yeah no that would have been interesting

so yeah i'll be honest there's not a lot in there that's fantastic there's a lot of stuff i'm like well thank God, we didn't have that. Like, fucking big mountain. Jesus Christ. Yeah. But, yeah, so I've got a default to, you know, I like it. I think it's a good track and two good singers. Seven seconds by Nina Cherry and Yuso and Door.

I like it. I think they've both done more interesting stuff, but I think it's a good song. Yeah, as I say, it is unfortunately sort of slim pickings for real lightning. So now we have the song that was all the way. at the top of the charts, which we're going to play a little bit of a clip of, their live performance from Wembley Arena, I presume. I presume it was Wembley Arena rather than Wembley Stadium. What's the difference?

Who fucking knows, yeah. Who cares? Honestly. He says Wembley, but doesn't, you know, to be fair, they could be playing in the market in Wembley for all the, you know, Mardi Pello describes it, but yes, we will, yeah, we'll play a bit of lovers all around, and then we'll come back to see what it is and things. Welcome to us, Wet, Wet, Who are we calling for us, especially now,

for Wembley this week. Love is all around. Feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes. Love is all around me, and so the feeling grows. All the wind, it's everywhere I go. So if you really love me, come on a let it show.

All right, so obviously, me and have discussed this on our main episode for Love is All Around in 1994. So, Lizzie, we had a big long-running blockbuster number one in 1991, and we've got a big long-running blockbuster number one again in 1994. So how do we feel about Love is all around? I've got barely anything to say about it, to be honest. It just, there's a kind of pomposity to it that I really don't like, like a sort of knowingness and pride in what it is but I just don't think it actually does anything to earn that

and I can't even talk about Hollywood blockbusters with this because there's just nothing like I don't know um the one comment I did make is that I've always kind of resented the intro to this song because whenever I first hear it I always instinctively think it's a meatloaf song and then it kicks in it's like oh it's just wet wet wet never mind like that's about all I have I don't like it very much and the fact that they're showing this live performance as opposed to

a video or a repeat studio performance suggests to me that Top of the Pops are already getting quite sick of it and it's only been like three weeks just you wait lads just you wait we have two more

months yes I don't mind seeing it in a live setting I think Marty Pello you know he does a stand-up job of performing it and delivering it and stuff but I do get this kind of oh aren't we great kind of feeling with it but I guess you know live performance maybe you just do that to get through it I don't know but Ed what did what do you make of the performance because I mean obviously you vaulted the song um yeah I'm sorry to wonder why

I think I think you were very very much entitled to what you said um you're like what you like i know very well have been very very wrong honestly something about it just clicked to this performance it's like my god never have i seen the life extracted from something so wholeheartedly and it was on a knife edge originally because let's be honest it's not it's not the most full-bodied and human recording in the world to begin with. I mean, none of their stuff really is. But just to see this sort of, I don't know, there's something remarkably perfunctory and bare bones about it, not in a cool kind of punk DIY way, but it's like, it's amazing how you can be on stage in front of screaming fans at Wembley and

just look like you're just having a bit of a dance in the pub. It's like, I don't know. There's something about them that's really, really, really put me off everything I've ever known about this group. Look, I like the song, but fuck me, this is just a big old jumper of a fucking performance. It's just, it's worthless and it kind of sits there. That's, that. I wish I didn't have to see it. I don't want to see Wet Wet Wet Live. I think what we should talk about instead is four weddings and a funeral. Have we all seen it? Yes. Well, I was actually going to talk about Love Actually, which has ruined this song forever for me. Yes, because of course it's Richard Curtis doing a little poke at his own, a poke of fun at his own creation, sort of.

Yes, the Christmas is all around me. I thought it was always like Christmas is all around me. Like, yeah, which charted in like 2003, but they only released it after Christmas, so it charted on like the 27th. Yes. really weird. Oh dear, good old Billy Mac. Yeah. He's the best character in that film, I think.

I would watch... The thing we'd love actually, it's got so many fucking plot lines. Half of them are fine and half of them maybe want to strangle everybody involved in it. And I often think, like, would I watch this if it was a film

on its own? And the Billy Mac one is the only one I think of that makes me go unequivocally without question, yes. The only one that comes close is Chris Marshall, Colin, going off to America. That's like the only, those are the only two. The Colin, no, Colin Fristols going to America there. And he's got a big knob.

That's great. That's great comedy. And Chris Marshall's a very funny actor. Those are the only two in the film that I genuinely really fall in love with. I find the Martin McCutcheon and Hugh Grant stuff to be fine, if a little dated, but still fine. Martin Freeman and you're on from Gavin and Stacey being the porn body doubles

that's fine that's quite nice the kind of workplace romance thing but the Colin Firth stuff with the Portuguese woman fucking hell and the stuff with what's his face

Andrew Lincoln from Walking Dead with Kira Knightley a 17 year old Kira Knightley very fucking weird that would not be in the film and we're supposed to feel sorry for him.

I just, oh, no, no, can't do it, can't do it. Whereas Four Weddings, I think Four Weddings is a good movie. Not a great movie, not a great movie. But it is an interesting movie, given where it's pitched in history. You know, like how it kind of seems to occur on the cusp of two worlds. You know, one of the aristocratic kind of British Christian kind of tradition that provides the church backdrops and the hymns and the songs and all the formal. language of nuptials that you get. And then you've got one of modernity and subversion that provides

all the one-night stand and the drunken behaviour and the casual swearing and the culture clashes between like awkward Brits and classy yanks and Hugh Grant's desire to not be married at all. And the film itself is so focused on marriage, but it seems to devalue and undermine the commitment of marriage at every single turn. So many vows are reneged on, you know, divorces, rushed ceremonies, hasty proposals. I think, you know, the film does ultimately argue that love and all of its chaos and unpredictability will endure beyond society's need for weddings

or whatever formal occasions we come up with in the distant future. I think it's incredibly cruel to some characters who seem to commit the crimes of just not being Hugh Grant or Andy McDowell. That's their only crime in the film. That woman, that duck face, that they call a duck face in the film.

She's the one that Hugh Grant's going to get married to at the end. She's jilted just because she's not Andy McDowell. We don't get any chance to know her. We don't get any chance to see the inside of her heart. We just see her be a wife. Well, no, a bride who doesn't become a wife. But that's Hollywood, Rob. Yes.

She's not in the script anymore. Nobody cares. Yeah, 90s rom-coms in it. But there's a very, very interesting image in that film where I think it's the funeral. in the film is held at that chapel and behind the chapel is a massive fuck-off gas pumping

factory on the edge of an industrial estate that towers over the chapel and that to me is the film kind of summed up there where it's like the modern world of industry and consumerism and alcohol is going to trample the old world

of religious kind of kind of quaint buildings and religion and old England and stuff, you know? It's, there are things in that movie that when it was sold to me, I didn't realize that it had that in its mind. Uh, but it seems to do, it does seem to have it in its mind. And whenever I think of this song, I do think, you know, in the run-up to us doing for, um, uh, Love is All Around. And that's when I watched Four Weddings for the first time. And I was a bit taken aback by him. to be honest. I don't think it's great, but I was a bit surprised at how much it had on the brain, given how it's been sold to me over the years. I immediately, basically, the next day or the

week after, I watched Notting Hill. That's not a good film. I think Notting Hill's borderline rubbish, actually. I think that's a really shit kind of like postcard London, but offers no actual real look at London. How can you call a film Notting Hill and have no black people in it? it doesn't make any sense to me and that's not like oh richard curtis that's not me saying that it's like you are calling your film Notting Hill you have to give it some you have to give Notting Hill itself some sense of being center stage and it's just window dressing it's just the name of the film I remember when I saw it at the time I was like you could have called this Herne Hill primrose Hill Ludgate Hill you could have called it fucking Henman Hill and it would

not have made the slightest bit of difference to what actually happens in the movie. And it's your title? No. Reese Ifance is worth the entry fee, though. I think, have we all seen Notting Hill as well, or have we avoided that over the years? I have. I can't remember it. I've never seen Love Actually. I'll be honest. That feels like something remarkable. It's like when I managed not to hear let it go for two years after Frozen came out, but I still haven't seen Love Actually. I have to go back to love actually because we failed to mention both the intro monologue about 9-11

and then later on in film Thomas Brody Sangster sprinting through an airport Yes What a weird cusp of history That also I know Presents there Yes post 9-11

Post like you know Planes only just post like planes Smashing into buildings and thousands of people dying and the ramp up of airports security, but still being just close enough to the 90s so that, yes, a 10-year-old boy can just be allowed to run through an airport, while some too dopey policemen go, oh, I can't catch him. He's a 10-year-old. He's too fast for me.

Well, that sounds like a riot. It's a decent movie. Yeah, Pote's 9-11 pre-John Charles. Like, not good. Yeah. I think Love Actually is a decent movie. My mom rolls out the same five films every Christmas. we do love actually elf

Bridget Jones's diary it's a wonderful life and more in more recent years she has rolled in Miracle on 34th Street the original Miracle on 34th Street I think Elf is fucking brilliant if you want a film that's about 9-11 that never references 9-11

elf is a fucking 9-11 movie and I will take that argument to my grave the climax of the film without giving much away the climax of the film is a bunch of people in New York City watching the same event on television as news reports cover it live. It is people glued to televisions,

watching something unknown at the beginning, watching something unknown happen right in the center of New York and everybody's glued to the television in order to find out what's happening. And I thought this and then I googled Elf 9-11 and there are interviews with John Favreau and Will Ferrell both saying that the film is a tribute as much as it is a tribute to Christmas and being all nice and stuff.

It is a tribute to New York City because they felt like they needed to make a film about how much they loved New York. And Manhattan is as much of a character in Elf as it is in like fucking Annie Hall. Or like, and it is just as good, just as warm, just as quotable. It's just that you don't have Woody Allen squawls

squirming through the middle of it, basically. I mean, I love Annie Hall, but, like, elf is just as great, but for different reasons, I love elf. I also love it. It's a wonderful life as well, but everybody says that it's a wonderful life is an amazing film,

and I don't feel the need to defend it. Have you guys seen Elf? Yeah, I've seen Elf. Do you not like it as much? It's pretty good. As far as, like, the Christmas classics go, I'd put it up there, but it's not a big Christmas person,

so there you go. Ed, what about you? I've not seen Elf, but, but okay, like, where would you put it on your canon of 9-11 movies, though? Ooh. I would put it above World Trade Centre and miles and miles and miles above that one Robert Pattinson film, which has fuck all to do with 9-11, but at the end of the film, it is revealed that he has just walked into the World Trade Center on September 11th. Has absolutely nothing to do with the film, and then the, literally the last, shot of the film is him in an office building, the camera zooms out all the way, and it's

the World Trade Center. Did Ian McEwen write it or something? And then, no, and then, where is my mind starts playing? The slow piano version. Yes, the film was called Remember Me, it was from 2010. I seem to remember that in the film there's like a newspaper clipping that shows it's September 11th and then he walked into that office building. Directed by

Alan Coulter and written by Will Fetters, it made $56 million on a $16 million budget. Rotten Tomatoes rating of 26%. And the Rotten Tomatoes consensus is, its leads are

likable, but remember me, suffers from an overly mordling script and a borderline offensive final twist. Yes, I think it was too soon is the word you're looking for there. But it just sounds pointless. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, whoa.

You might remember this fucking mediocre movie now, and yet evidently people do not. Poor Robert Pattinson. I'm glad he got to do Good Time and The Lighthouse. Like, he doesn't live better than that shit. Yeah, and I would even say that at least four of the Twilight films are good. I would say that two of them are good. great. I love the first one and I think the fourth one is insane and how they managed to sneak

that kind of film into a like a young adult kids fantasy thing. I've no idea. Second and third films are fine. Last film is a big stinking pile of shit but it doesn't matter. Like the first one is the important one and that's the best one I think. That's being re-released in cinemas next week. I'm going to go and see it on the big screen. I never saw it on the big screen. I saw New Moon on the big screen. I got taken to see New Moon, but I didn't see Twilight. Do we have anything more to say about this episode of Top of the Pops? Is there anything else that came to mind? There's just a couple of odd little bits that weren't in the other two episodes.

I don't think they're beneficial. I mean, as you were saying, Lizzie, before the show, it's like these bizarre little bits of trivia and facts about the song. Like, oh, you know, new entry, upcoming group, all of this. At one point, it's just like randomly flashing the words album performance. I'm like, what does that mean? Are they going to play the whole album? Or it's like, well, what does that mean?

There's no context to it. No kids watching. What the fuck that means? And then some boring shit. If it was a single, that makes even less sense. What does that mean? Anyway, and the last bit was, can we just talk about the kind of, oh, what good times we've had tonight final montage over at the end.

We're just clips of all the act you've done over that kind of, you know, second rate, like, Red Book audio. shash we've got going on there and that clip of just fucking Bruno Brooks with a cardboard sign that says basically saying sorry take that weren't on the episode

it's like oh remember they did they do that why like if you do that at the end of the show fine but like I guarantee about 10,000 people probably tuned out that exact moment it's like oh yeah that's my favourite bit where he basically just said place

Holder and then watch something else We don't have tape that but we have this act You've never fucking heard of He sold more than one and a half thousand records In New York

We've got let Let loose and basically shake that So Shake that Oh that's good Oh god Yeah I guess I like me some shake that more than others

One thing I'll say Before we go Is that for these three episodes Lizzie it's been wonderful Having you back As part of the team Thank you weeks, just while we were discussing these

TOTP episodes. It won't be the last we hear from you on this podcast. I'm absolutely sure about that. Absolutely not. Maybe we'll dish one of these out again. We'll bring one out of the cupboard top of the box episode. I've had a lot of fun. I feel like we should do this again

sometime. Yeah, and we'll do... Glare's in Rob's direction. Yes, and well, maybe we'll do one. When Andy returns, we can get all four of us on and we can do one from night. Yeah, I think that would be the perfect cap off to this because it feels a little fair missing Andy because he

quote unquote went to New Zealand just the same as Mike Herman Trout's trip to Belize Oh yeah Yeah going to New Zealand is slant Like to think we got this and like Andy's in New Zealand And he gets to come back and talk about the spice girls What a holiday

We've had a rough go of it haven't we That's the end point Yeah forget the 24 hours in the air That he's going to spend it's wannabe that's the real end of the holiday so thank you all very much for listening to this this little series will be

normal service resuming next week or the week after whenever Andy's back and we can get round to it but yes we'll be back very soon with normal stuff so thank you very much for this yeah for listening to this top of the pop series and we'll see you soon see you bye

To a paradise of love and joy A destination unknown