The disappeared: 22/12/77

A forty minute show three days before Christmas, because that's what they did back then. Why not play Fantasy BBC4 Editing? Again provided by Neil Barker, who taped it onto VHS in the Sky analogue days so quality is less than perfect:



How serious Osibisa's singer seems compared to the rest of the band, and indeed Jimmy, who seems to have worn that unique vest on special occasions for about a decade and a half in total. They're one of three studio performers whose song won't appear again, as with Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley plus friends and a debuting... well, it was released as 'Lol Creme & Kevin Godley' but Jimmy's taken the less associative elements, plus the songs by Yannis Markopoulos and Donna Summer, to whom Legs & Co pay tribute by inventing Tetris. Sadly Jimmy doesn't stop to explain who the men in matching jumpers behind him before Gordon Giltrap's Holiday theme are, nor why the one second from left is the spit of Stewpot. And at the last link, before the Muppets' version of Don't Dilly Dally On The Way, the bloke to Jim's right - we've seen him before, haven't we? He's not Irresistible Dennis, I know that.

The disappeared: 17/11/77

By sheerest coincidence, because the cycle hasn't changed, all the lost/skipped shows this year (so far) have coincided with Thursdays off. Unlike the last two this one was on UK Gold many moons ago though, so (cheers, Neil) we have this, enter at your own risk etc...



Brighouse and Rastrick represent! Imagine if you were watching at the time and previously had no idea what that was. The only songs we won't see anyway are the Boomtown Rats - luckily given that ever-popular 'present climate', one might argue - and Noosha Fox. Note also a different edit of Live In Trouble, this time in "loose heel"/"chip shop in Walthamshow" mode. For the record Fox had gone their seperate ways at the start of 1977, a couple turning up in 1978 as the prime of Yellow Dog, one joining Whitesnake and Noosha inevitably going solo with a song written and produced by Fox majordomo Kenny Young - and before you say it Andrew Sachs' targeted granddaughter is Georgina Baillie, this is Georgina Bailey, wide difference - which seems to be a pastoral companion piece to big recentish hit The Killing Of Georgie (without the murder, admittedly) and a band who seem in a cartoonish way to have taken the French element of the lyric to heart. Noosha meanwhile has gone that oh so common fashionista route, the country headmistress. It made number 31 but that wasn't good enough for the label to persevere and Noosha never got to do an impromptu knee raise again. By the way, I wonder wonder what Legs & Co's theme is supposed to be. Stone Age, you'd guess from song selection and general setting, but if so that's really not much effort on the costumes. Or set. Or set stability.

You'll also notice Jimmy didn't say Showaddywaddy much differently from anybody else. YOU HAVE LIED TO US, HUGH DENNIS.


**THERE NOW FOLLOWS INFORMATION ABOUT CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR SCHEDULING. IF YOU WANT TO KEEP EVERYTHING A SURPRISE UNTIL THE RELEASE OF THE CHRISTMAS RADIO TIMES (OTHER LISTINGS MAGAZINES ARE AVAILABLE) THIS WEEKEND PLEASE STOP READING**

While we're all gathered here, let's get in order the run of things from here until Epiphany. As expected the one remaining DLT-fronted show is being skipped so there's three normal TOTPs left in 1977 - one next week, two in a row from 8pm the week after. Boxing Day, being DLT-heavy, has also gone for a burton so just the one Christmas show is being repeated, 7pm on Christmas Eve, followed by a ten minute filler up to the hour only listed at present as 'Top Of The Pops: A Christmas Cracker'. Your guess is as good as mine. The programme gets a Christmas Day repeat at 10.15pm.

In further BBC archive ransacking there's ...Sings James Bond (BBC4, 14th, 10.30pm), The Christmas No.1 Story (BBC2, 19th, 9pm), Slade At The BBC (BBC4, 21st, 9.50pm), ...Sings Disney (BBC4, 31st, 8pm) and the annual even though you'd imagine they'd have run out by now TOTP2 (BBC2, 22nd, 8pm). They haven't shown Dennis Waterman and George Cole's run through What Are We Gonna Get For Er Indoors? yet. Just dropping that in there. Normal TOTP 2pm Christmas Day as per and a New Year's Eve companion programme complete the set.

And then... Friday 4th January, 9pm, The Story Of 1978! Followed at 9.50pm (don't ask me) by Big Hits 1978! Followed by... oh. I do know that the official line from the channel as recently as Monday just gone was no decision on scheduling 1978 had yet been made but you'd have to imagine they haven't commissioned, made and scheduled these for the hell of it.

The disappeared: 13/10/77

Rokotto – Boogie On Up
First of three (not counting the dance) we won't see again are Dundee's own contribution to funk - sounds like some comedy concept, but remember Average White Band - grooving up a storm yet a couple of weeks after Rose Royce had taken the opening spot seeming a little undercooked. Does it look to you like there's a couple of ringers here? Also note TOTP2's usual rigorous caption research.



Rod Stewart – You’re In My Heart
The video, obviously, to the first single from Foot Loose & Fancy Free, which we'll see in a couple of weeks.

Brotherhood Of Man – Highwayman
There can't be many bands who sandwiched a complete, top 50-missing flop between number ones, but even at their greatest moment of consistency BoM managed it. This isn't the performance - it's from Top Pops, in fact - but I can't imagine what was shown was too different. The uploader indignantly comments underneath that they can't be an Abba ripoff because they'd been together since 1973. The sound, the look, even the stances must be sheer coincidence, then.



Rose Royce – Do Your Dance
Repeat of their bravura turn from a couple of weeks before.

Mary Mason – Angel Of The Morning/Any Way That You Want Me
To be reshown in a couple of weeks when the first three songs on the show are all technically medleys.

Nazareth – Love Hurts
Pained rock balladeering as seen the other week.

George Benson – The Greatest Love Of All
As always archived by One For The Dads, featuring no Pauline again and rather too much arm waving in big sheets to count as proper dancing as such. Well, how much better would you have done with the source materials?

Ram Jam – Black Betty
Really, what was that bloke's business being there?

John Forde – Stardance
This has already attracted some debate in the comments about where Forde came from and whether Judge Dread was involved somehow. It's another example of something I referred to last week about the rise of space disco, sounding a good few years ahead of its time in places - maybe it got on because someone thought there was a British Space in the offing? - and it's turned up since in the playlists of the likes of 2manyDJs. No sign of the TOTP performance unfortunately, or even a single edit, though there is the extended 12" version.

David Soul – Silver Lady
David stays atop, his dream machine stays running.

The disappeared: 15/9/77

Well, sort of. You know the circumstances, let's just get to this one and try to ride out the inevitable flamewar together, shall we?

Dr Feelgood – She's A Wind Up
Despite their previous album success we'll have to wait until 1979 before they crack the top 30 but they'll make a good handful of appearances before then. Lee's bought a new, specially patterned jacket for the occasion.



Yvonne Elliman – I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind
The video again.

The Dooleys – Think I’m Gonna Fall In Love With You
Don't know whether this is a repeat or not, but if the latter I can't imagine it's going to look or sound all that different.

David Soul – Silver Lady
Video, repeated in time.

Donna Summer – Down Deep Inside (Theme From The Deep)
This Legs & Co routine was on YouTube literally days ago but the account has been closed. Hmm. I can tell you it's Sue's turn for a holiday and the standard seems to be "floaty dresses".

Danny Mirror – I Remember Elvis Presley
Philips, the label which put this out, must have put all leave on hold, Elvis died on August 16th and this entered the top 50 for week beginning 11th September. Mirror was actually a Dutchman by the name of Eddy Ouwens and had co-written 1975 Eurovision winner Ding A Dong. Unfortunately this will be on again.

Elkie Brooks – Sunshine After The Rain
Repeat.

Generation X – Your Generation
Another sole appearance for the song, but far from Billy Idol's only visit (or the band's, come to that) Would the lighting effects here clash with modern strobe/epilepsy warnings?



Patsy Gallant – From New York To L.A.
It seems this is pretty much a French-Canadian equivalent of Cliff going disco. It's said Gallant turned up to introduce this herself, which seems sporting to give someone such a lift on their first and only hit the week it entered the top 30, though it's possible she arrived at the studio and only then found her work permit didn't allow her to perform. She can't have made much of an impression as despite peaking at number 6 we don't see it again. I don't think this is the actual video but it's the best YouTube can do.



Elvis Presley – Way Down
Via One For The Dads. For some reason they're wearing their Roadrunner outfits.

The disappeared: 4/8/77

Funny how it looks like, by the sheerest of coincidences, all four wiped TOTPs from 1977, the last four wiped shows in its history, will all fall on Sky At Night weeks. This is the Savile-helmed penultimate, with...

The Jam – All Around The World
Again, and it'll come back round one further time.

The Rah Band – The Crunch
For the third time. One dreads to think of Jimmy's intro.

Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
For the fourth time. You'd better grow to like this.

Billy Paul – Your Song
Last time Paul was on he was rewriting a 70s hit for politicised means. Taupin's lyrics remain the same this time and lacking the room to elucidate it seems more Jesse Green-like than the classic big hearted soul man in a hat. The Ladybirds would have ruined it anyway.

Candi Staton – Nights On Broadway
We'll see the video to this Bee Gees-penned light groove a couple more times but this is a Legs & Co spot, and you can probably imagine there'll be back projections and possibly some sort of top-hat-and-tails costume?

The Dooleys – Think I’m Gonna Fall In Love With You
Their debut. You'll see this again, and you'll see them again a lot, another seventeen times down the years.

Television – Prove It
Oh, BBC. The celebrated New York punk-but-more-technically-gifted pioneers had already gone top 30 once this year and this spent three weeks on the chart countdown, the band were in the country and willing to appear on the show, and the Corporation copied over the tape. On such fate do innumerable future BBC4 showings hang. Hardly anybody online even seems to remember it going out. Imagine what a nation would have made of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd on their screens. Imagine what sort of band name-related link Jimmy would have come up with.

The Stranglers – Straighten Out
The video for half of the double A-side with Something Better Change, though unlike Peaches the show doesn't pretend the other half never existed. Strange that they weren't making themselves available after all the play Go Buddy Go got.

Deneice Williams – That’s What Friends Are For
Another video you'll come to see again.

Smokie – It’s Your Life
Third and last showing for this single by the virtual TOTP house band.

The Floaters – Float On
Scorpio, and his name is Jimmy. Now if you like a song that loves its sweet talk, and like a song that chartwise can hold its own, this fits that description so watch the video.

Donna Summer – I Feel Love
As I say, Flick had to come up with a new routine every week it was at number one. It was already getting a little two weeks in.

TOTP 23/6/77 (tx 18/7/12): I knew Irresistible Dennis when he used to rock and roll

We're now into a run of half hour originals from now til the end of August '77, bar a couple that are slightly longer. The reason? A re-run of Max Bygraves Says I Want To Tell You A Story. Next week's was 25 minutes in its original form, which would have to lead to a hell of an extended outro.

If you've got time you want to kill this week, look through the catalogue for the auction of Jimmy's personal belongings taking place in Leeds at the end of the month, including the Jim'll Fix It magic chair, the pottery likeness of himself wearing a kaftan and the mounted Brazil nut presented to him by a patient at Broadmoor. His turn at hosting this week, which he commemorates with a none more timely (for 2012) Union Flag embroidered tracksuit top, alongside the flags of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Not a cross of St George? Consistency, please.

Dave Edmunds – I Knew The Bride
Rockpile, really, so on bass and songwriting a man deeply embedded in punk already, Nick Lowe, makes his Pops bow. It's still the shaggy/Shaggy-from-Scooby Doo-haired Edmunds front and centre, or in this case front and above, the camera shooting right up his nose for the vast majority of the song. Few cutaways, little relief. Barely a sight of Billy 'not that one' Bremner's cowboy hat. By the end Lowe, presumably thinking he's more than likely off camera, has stopped playing with his left hand, only picking up a chord shape with the very last note. "Got my feet tapping down here" Jimmy exudes as much as he's capable of.

Tony Etoria – I Can Prove It
Long time since we've seen Jimmy dancing. Having pretty much used his guitar as decoration alone last time he was on, Etoria has abandoned it this time, meaning with no other idea of what to do he starts with his hands on his hips. He's also tightened his afro especially, which doesn't quite gel with his yellow neckerchief and extravagantly patterend shirt, like you'd find in the tiling of a kitchen at the time. A little wink on "ain't no way I can treat you like a queen" is surely transmitting mixed messages. As Etoria exhibits a kind of running action from the elbows when not singing the camera trolley goes on another maiming spree. One woman is visually manhandled out of the way by her partner, another in a 1930s errand boy's cloth cap checks on his friends' safety before realising he himself is in the firing line. People are, perhaps wisely, leaving the stage well before the end. "Yowee!" is Jimmy's appraisal.

Gary Glitter – A Little Boogie Woogie In The Back Of My Mind
ALRIGHT, SHUT UP NOW. Even if the song's not there he's far more like his old self then when we last saw him, big collar up and pomade alive, charging down the tiered stage, playing it right down the lens, overactive limbs a-flailing as lyric sign language that actually makes no sense against the lyrics, miming appallingly. But it's not the same, chiefly because where the Glitter Band used to be are an aged band of sessioneers, perhaps even plucked from the orchestra's numbers. The drummer, and there is only one, is clearly in his fifties and grins throughout as if to say, not unreasonably, that however he got to this stage in his life he's going to be on telly so he's enjoying it. This time when the camera makes its way through them young people merely turn and walk the other way, no matter how much the girl right at the front grins at them. And away from our prime-time pop sight Glitter goes for more than four years.

Carole Bayer Sager – You’re Moving Out Today
"I think we'll show some of the interesting people in town tonight" is Jimmy's cover for a third showing of this, not that any of whatever that means actually appears. Still we don't know what her ex could possibly do with bread.

Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
You know how sometimes like minds seem to gravitate towards each other?



Obviously he's not a sailor, so indeed he's "a magic disc jockey of one of the more colourful varities", one who delivers the title in comedy falsetto. You'd think a DJ would want more of a plug than that, even someone like him. Especially someone like him. The blonde is blonder and flickier, the dark-haired one is more rouge tinted, but the two blokes have guitars rather than one being on piano so THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY NOTHING LIKE ANY OTHER BAND, ALRIGHT? Something no other band definitely did is their special move for the song, namely raising their left arm, first outwards, then backwards, to each chorus piano riff. It adds a certain flourish, if perhaps not as much as they expect.

The Stranglers – Go Buddy Go
Jimmy introduces us to a hangdog middle aged man who is apparently "the world famous Irresistible Dennis". This seems to come as a surprise to him, but he does waggle his eyebrows in a quite funny way. That may be his secret. He seems less sure about the third showing of this. If only someone had found a way to edit Blue's piano from out the back of the stage, or advised Hugh Cornwell not to wear something that looks like an apron. As we cut back to Jimmy people are actually dancing to it at last. "It's a good night tonight, as it happens. Heh heh heh" is Jimmy's tart comment.

Johnny Nash – That Woman
About quartering the BPM at a stroke, Nash has the afro thing right, matching it with muted greens and cool soul. Not that it's having the same effect on everyone, one hirsute youngster turned away from the stage until the shot changes and his friend, presumably watching the monitor, has to literally point him towards Nash. Others are clearly also waiting for a signal to turn away when safe. Neither does it help that when on the second chorus we get a shot from behind Nash the girl front and centre of the audience is extravagantly chewing gum and holding a conversation while the man next to her stares off into space at a 90 degree angle to the stage. All the while Nash continues pledging his love, oblivious as he should be.

Alessi – Oh Lori
No link, strangely, and this is Legs & Co's song for the week even though the twins were in the studio just a couple of weeks ago. They're either dressed in 1930s wedding dresses or as toilet roll holders, bonnets and off the shoulder flouncily tiered dresses the attire. Inside some sort of cage of glittery decorations it's all very lovely and cosy in a one for the caring mums/daughters way. Is that what we're here for? You decide.

Paul Nicholas – Heaven On The 7th Floor
"Wowee!" Jimmy exclaims while his shoulder is being assailed by a toy Paddington Bear. Paul abandoned the hat and cane. They must have turned out to be the lucky charms as this ended his chart career - and began/ended it in America, where it somehow reached number six despite sharing its production values with his previous hits. Maybe it's because he keeps referring to an elevator. It's that transatlantic touch. Having realised Paul can't come up with anything himself for the instrumental bits a close-up of a man playing a harmonica solo is overlaid as Nicholas waves his arms about and does some frantic hopping from foot to foot, knowing that he is somehow perhaps the only one he can get a TOTP audience moving. Jimmy meanwhile has Peter Frampton with him, shirt open to the waist, grin plastered on. As befits the traditional uncomfortable chat shot the interview lasts one question - "where've you been living?" - before Jimmy waves a picture we can barely see for both being out of frame or reflecting studio lights. Luckily he does know what the number one is, unlike some. Jimmy makes a joke about making him work hard. Then he makes it again.

The Jacksons – Show You The Way To Go
Oddly, despite having been in the studio not so long ago this isn't a repeat of that but a clip from their TV series, the second series of which had run on CBS in the first three months of 1977. As soon as Michael picks up the mike the screaming takes over the soundtrack almost completely, even though there only appear to be three people going mad on camera. More notably, the mass frantic applause we hear is from somewhere else entirely, as well as seemingly dipping in and out at virtual random, and it's not visually happening when we get a shot of the whole studio audience, some of whom are standing up waving their arms about but none of whom seem to be cheering or whooping all that hard. I sense skulduggery. Jimmy has "the Bournemouth raver", who seems to be a girl completely unphased by anything, to one side and another girl held in a tight headlock to his other. As T-Connection's Jamiroquai-must-have-been-listening Do What You Wanna Do soundtracks the credits her expression gradually changes from televisual experience enjoyment to panic for her health.

TOTP 12/5/77 (tx 24/5/12): bee sharp

So this isn't a vintage run of TOTP2, but given the show numbers limit and the seeming demand to keep it fairly populist I'm not sure we'd have expected much more. Worth it for the universal horror at Claire & Friends and surely KWS' first visual media mention in nearly two decades, though.

Jimmy Savile in restrained mood. For now. And if you thought last week was cryptic...



Answers on a postcard or the back of a sealed envelope.

Honky – Join The Party
It's 1977. They called white disco-funk bands Honky without prejudice back then. They have an analogue synth, a three-man brass section in polyester plus-fours who like marching up and down, and the rest of the band are clad in white bell bottoms, and I can't work out just from that whether they're behind or ahead of the times. The instruments, mike and mike stand are all covered in tinsel and bits of party popper, as if they'd accidentally started their stage I'm-on-telly party before the floor manager had given them the go-ahead. They have a lot of stickers, which crop up on people's backs throughout the rest of the evening. The singer's trying, bless him, in his open sailor shirt and American accented baritone ad-libs, but nobody's ever going to confuse them for an American band, just another British band hoping nobody asks them where they're from. The guitarist, who 'plays' his solo without changing chord or strumming motion, and bassist both looking like they got into white funk because they didn't get into 10cc doesn't help their cause in that respect. By the ending breakdown they've got audience members to throw streamers at them, but as with all recent shows they seem to apathetic to really join in. Most of them don't so much as brush the bell bottoms. Jimmy refers to them as being "all the way from Southampton" as if that were glamour itself. "They're gonna get to number one, definitely!" he states confidently. SPOILER: they didn't.

Barbra Streisand – Love Theme From A Star Is Born (Evergreen)
"A cool-off, straight away". And back to her acting all coy and that at Kristofferson around a ribbon mike.

Blue – I'm Gonna Capture Your Heart
"A disc jockey from Leeds", one with a broad West Indies accent, is dragged on to do Jimmy's job for him. Blue seem to have been stuck away in a corner and the singer-pianist has to find the most low down angles from which his rheumy eyes can meet the camera's glare. He's already on a lower level than his bandmates. The bassist tries to make mad staring eyes on his close-up on the final go-round, but it's partly lost as he's staring out the monitor. Only audience members can make that sort of assumptive mistake, sir. A couple of big wobbles on static shots follow, perhaps old audience members returning to beat up the camera operators who ran them over last year. Or maybe it's bad workmanship, as then it seems the actual stage wobbles. Can't get the chippies these (those) days.

Trinidad Oil Company – The Calendar Song
Over without a throw back to Jim in vision, and... steel band calypso! Innumerable men in Wolverhampton Wanderers colours, half of whom don't actually seem to do anything - there's only five sets of percussion - but move from side to side and sing backing vocals, like a Trinidadian Showaddywaddy. They're even wearing drapes. And they weren't even Trinidadian, they were Dutch. With no set rhythm they have to amuse themselves, one man with a hedge of hair above a Borg headband choosing a moment on screen to get down with his bad self, twirling and shoulder shimmying just to amuse the bloke next to him. He'd make a far more convincing frontman than the actual frontman, who may well have got the job on the basis of his fine set of teeth. Surprisingly, only one stick drop is recorded.

Piero Umiliani – Mah Na Mah Na
It's at this point that television goes into a tailspin for two and a half minutes. Firstly Jim emerges in a suit and brown wig, announcing "Jimmy's had to disappear, this is his twin brother Percy". Maybe Percy's still alive. This of course is the mysterious one (who actually had quite a career if you look it up, even the bloke on lead 'vocals' was a session guitarist who played the riff on the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly), but unable to make the obvious Muppets/Benny Hill connections Flick went with... um... well... oh, just watch it.



She may well be doing all the heavy lifting routine-wise, but what BBC4 really needed at this exact moment was a picture-in-picture live feed from the home of Sue's children. Surely the highlight of this triumph of the art of CSO - and one wonders whether Sue was given strict direction or just flash notes - is the facial work of the other five from 1:53, caught between smiling for the camera and absolute terror. Apart from Lulu, who spoils it by looking at the monitor rather than the camera.

Simon May – We'll Gather Lilacs
Year of punk and all that, granted, but even TOTP acknowledges how out of contemporary pop mores this is by placing May, his piano and the surrounding leaves Elkie Brooks left behind in an oval sepia fringe for the intro. Maybe it's to make his performance seem more tolerable by the nostalgia filter. No man can look that smug and miss that many notes flat. Maybe it's the influence of the open wine bottle on the piano with glass, but on long notes he's ululating all over the shop. No wonder he gets cut off early, and apparently foreshortened in the midway solo too. It's possible they never told him.

10cc – Good Morning Judge
"How am I doing for a beginner?" The video in all its overlaid, braless, bewigged finery.

Martyn Ford Orchestra – Let Your Body Go Downtown
One assumes Martyn Ford and Johnny Pearson had a dust-up in the car park after hours. Jimmy makes sure to mention this is at number 48, which doesn't quite seem the positive he might have intended. Ford is one of the great pop arrangers and could get the De Paul/Moran axis to write this for him - unrecorded whether they did so on facing synths - but given a live group to work with, and it's unclear whether these middle aged men in matching orange jumpers are the in-house collective or Ford's mates, it all falls flat as an in-house orchestra on limited time attempting disco would, though well done to the saxophonist standing up for his solo. He knows his etiquette. Ford is wearing a white suit with a musical note brooch and huge glasses, not so much conducting as experiencing the unfortunate onset of St Vitus' dance. The floor manager has to duck out of shot at one point. And check those backing singers, possibly chosen to visually represent every facet of mid-70s pre-disco/punk night out fashion:



When we next saw them they were trying out some half-synchronised moves. The one on the left (that's not Moran, is it?) appeared not to have received that memo.

Kenny Rogers – Lucille
From behind a drumkit and surrounded by girls, proving Jim's talents for wandering and attracting run in the family, Percy introduces a video of Rogers, who we'll be seeing quite a bit of, sitting louchely sideways on a chair.

Marvin Gaye – Got To Give It Up (Pt 1)
Unusual to get two Legs & Co routines in one edit, introduced here by Percy pretending to play May's piano, but maybe it needed to be proved that Legs & Co could dance properly. Pretty standard fare for Legs '77, restored to full capacity - and isn't Patti glad she came back just in time for that first one - in visions of aquamarine, bras, ruffled shoulder pads and party dresses with cutaway fronts all the better to swing around. The routine ends with a slow zoom into Patti's crotch. "Just a little present for the lads in the pit there" Percy leers. At least be subtle about it, director.

Mud – Slow Talkin' Boy
Say this for Mud, once they got the glam explosion out of their system they never stuck to one formula for long. Rob's bought an electric mandolin and someone's found Hot Butter's synth, represented visually by Les and Ray, sporting a pink jumper and a huge acoustic bass, playing air pong. That's to mark the synthesised pips on the off-beat, each one met by a flash of the cobweb of lights above the stage. Good reaction times, techie. Les gets an uncontrollable and quite sweet fit of the giggles just by briefly tipping his darkened shades before he and Ray have more fun with alternate arm swinging and stare-out. Somewhere along the line Dave has grown a fake tache. Makes up for how underwrung the song is. Again, one assumes this is genuinely unedited from original showing but it does fade out early.

Billy Paul – Let 'Em In
The Pauline Quirke lookalike standing next to Percy with her tracksuit top-warmed arms stoutly folded may not have seemed to impressed with the prospect, neither the hordes of people looking hopefully up at the camera crane who don't notice until almost too late that Paul's actually behind them if they care at all, but soul business picks right up. The man in the big purple floppy felt hat and big overcoat is covering the Wings hit from 1976, replacing the namechecks for Paul's mates and heroes with references to civil rights activists and African American heroes. Pops in turn replaces Ruby Flipper looking coquettishly through novelty doors with Paul with, well, an audience member right in the centre of shot looking away into the middle distance and finding something or other amusing. The record features samples from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, but with the orchestral requirement he has to recreate them himself. The BBC's supposed to have the world's largest sound archive or something, couldn't they have put some extra research hours in? In any case, what led a downtrodden sector of US society to rise up and get behind the civil rights movement a decade earlier merely bemuses a group of pasty British teenage girls. Paul's added Great Britain to the "bloodless revolution" bit, what else could he have done? Nothing of this is really his fault, he's coursing and occasionally belting his way through it without aforethought.

Dr Feelgood – Lights Out
And round about the other end of the subtlety spectrum... just four albums, one a live number one, into their career and having already lost their talismanic guitarist, Canvey Island's own make their TOTP debut with something not far from that mythical beast punk, albeit through a cover of a 1958 US rock'n'roll hit that was actually a B-side (Wilko Johnson, for it had been he, had written the A-side, Sneakin' Suspicion - who's trying to deny him performance rights royalties now?) Lee Brilleaux stalks the stage, ducking to the floor when the director's least expecting it, sweating like a man even though it's only two minutes long, in a suit jacket that could charitably be described as off-cream, looking constantly like he's about to offer everyone out. Bassist John B Sparks, with his walrus tache, open waistcoat and distressed jeans, looks ever more like a truck driver. The audience react with pretty much absolute neutrality/boredom, one man side of stage seemingly sitting down, so the director cuts to some flashing green lights instead.

Deniece Williams – Free
Our Leodensian friend gets to introduces that staircased performance again. Jimmy takes back over for the final link with a conspicuous lack of people around him. Kaleidovision plays us out with Joe Tex and the sight of precisely three people dancing.

TOTP 14/4/77 (tx 26/4/12): should old acquaintance be forgot

You've read the camera script, right? Good. You've spoilt it for yourself, mind you.

Enter Savile. He's wearing a red, yellow and white curly wig, a paisley patterend jacket and a felt frog over his left shoulder with 'Chief Tadpole' picked out in embroidery. The tone has already been set.

Now, call me a cynic but I don't think this is quite accurate.



The single, I Wanna Get Next To You, was from the film Car Wash, which may explain things, but it's still no Cortina.

The Brothers – Beautiful
Proving that without cod-reggae written by a middle-aged couple from Exeter they might have been easily lost, the Brothers are still running with the matching outfit theme, this time powder blue ruffled shirts under navy blue bolero jackets and matching trousers with bell bottoms one could hide children under. Innovation? Well, the drummer gets to sing a post-chorus section in a strangulated whine and both guitars seem to be playing rhythm, if that all counts. Lots of Union Jack plastic hats in the audience tonight. Perhaps a shipment was expected for Lynsey and Mike the week before last but got delayed.

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jnr – You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show)
Jimmy's managed to find someone new to be in nearly every link with him tonight. Imagine him in that outfit beckoning you towards his part of the stage. You'd have to wonder what was about to happen. In this case it's some girls from Wrexham and a wider shot which reveals Chief Tadpole has a cigar in, as well as a massive breast pocket. Sets it all off nicely, I'm sure you'll agree. Same Top Pop clip as three shows ago.

Brendon – Gimme Some
Ah! Now, if you haven't read the comments you have to, both for 24/3 and last week, as it seems Brendon's bassist Dave Levy, as WeddingSuit, has joined the conversation with his insight into recording, including that script PDF up there. This week he's brought out the big stuff, a double-necked instrument. Brendon's brought his own acoustic with him, slinging it behind his back to begin like a wayfaring stranger, while one of the guitarists is sporting a Rubettes cap. Well, they didn't need them any more. Must be said, while this never got beyond number 14 the crowd are as into it as the producer evidently was, clapping the off-beat throughout and not minding when the cameraman takes several of them down at once judging by the size of the wobble.

David Soul – Going In With My Eyes Open
Jimmy has found two girls in overcoats and flat caps. He claims they're called Bill and Ben. One of them switches between broadly beaming and grimacing vaguely menacingly. In his mind this all makes perfect sense. Those who are playing along with the script at home will spot this isn't Leo Sayer or Mike Nesmith, it seems they assumed this would be number one by now and when it wasn't chose to throw this straightforward singing with occasional overlaid shots from side angles video in here instead.

The Stylistics – 7000 Dollars And You
"A nice single Yorkshire millionaire" is next on the rostrum of chance, one wearing a pinstripe suit and darkened glasses. Back for a second go in the studio Russell Thompkins Jr doesn't seem any less permanently surprised than before but his colleagues, one of whom is sporting not just a tight afro but also mighty mutton chops, seem happy enough with their matching crimson suits and synchronised hoofing. A very wobbly pan to the lights to close.

John Williams & Cleo Laine – Feelings
"It could only happen on Top Of The Pops - it's classical guitar" If you like, Jimmy. "Where could you get such class except Top Of The Pops?" rhetorically asks a man who chose to dress like that. Both parties sit, the crowd stand pensively around the perimeter of a small circular stage I don't think we've ever seen before. It's pretty much what you'd expect Feelings performed by Cleo Laine with John Williams to sound like, a reminder that throughout this decade you'd get stuff well out of the pop loop - the Shadows were regulars well into the 80s - in an attempt to paint the show as inclusive and classy. The response is appropriately Two Ronnies audience-like.

Andrew Gold – Lonely Boy
"I don't know which one to speak into, my tadpole or this microphone". Er, the electric one that's wired up, Jimmy, but he has given Chief Tadpole to one of the latest pair of girls flanking him, which is asking for trouble. Speaking of which... "Legs & Co with Floyd, no less!" Floyd! It's Floyd! Back for... well, he made a few appearances in the couple of years post-Flipper, but rarely would he get a namecheck such as this, or indeed a role such as this. His being the lonely boy in the routine, keen to show off his full repertoire of spins and star jumps, was about as literal as Flick would get this time while still dealing in some respect with the lyrical concern. In a mini-reunion of old ways Patti gets to play lead Leg as the narrator's sister, getting the sort of double act going they never did before as Patti gets variously grabbed from behind and spun right round, leapfrogged, have her pigtails pulled and have general wrestling-like not quite contacting moves performed on her, though she does get to waggle her arse at him as is her wont, which makes someone - Gill, I think - visibly corpse. The rest of the Co kind of flounce around and stand still, this not being their moment. There isn't a feelgood ending rapprochement either, unless you count the fanservice knicker crotch reveals. One close-up reveals Patti's wearing a wedding ring. Don't break it to the kids of 1977 like that!

Billy Ocean – Red Light Spells Danger
"These ladies have just come up from Upminster, would you believe!" As Jimmy embarks on some elbow-led dancing this appears to be a new orchestra-led Ladybirds far too high in the mix version with Billy richly singing live. Suit: purple. Cuffs: white, huge. Collar: wings. Just as things seem to have gone well Ocean gets faded out too early, giving it plenty to very little audible effect before someone realises almost too late.

ABBA – Knowing Me Knowing You
"High speed cameras and things, goodness gracious!" No idea where the two blokes surrounding Jimmy now are from but he says they're DJs, "taking the bread out of my mouth". One of them is wearing a T-shirt reading 'DON'T SHOOT ME, I'm only the DEE-JAY". The other one is wearing a suit, bears a resemblance to the singer from Young Knives and, credit to Bob Stanley with this not least as he's got a book and column to write and an impending album to promote yet is still taking the jeweller's eyepiece to this thing every week, is wearing a safety pin attached to another safety pin through his earlobe. It almost constitutes a watershed, that. The scowling plays out again before Boney M, again, finish a show featuring six new entries, none featured, and five songs in the top ten. Back to shows longer than thirty minutes on original screening next week. I think this tableau from the closing link about sums this week up...

The disappeared: 3/3/77

The start of this year has been about fits and starts on the show, everything coming round plenty of times. That's the case with much of this second, Savile-fronted lost show of 1977.

Showaddywaddy – When
This, for example, is on twice more. No continuity jokes with suits or drums this time, though.

Mr Big – Romeo
And this video with its classily of its time visual effects has been on before.

Maxine Nightingale – Love Hit Me
Once more in the studio, plus once danced to by Legs & Co for the Northern Soul tail-ender from the singer most famous for Right Back Where We Started From.

Boz Scaggs – What Can I Say
SNL, Jeff Porcaro, I think we're across this video clip by now.

Cliff Richard – My Kinda Life
It's Cliff. Of course he's on again.

Manhattan Transfer – Chanson D'Amour
Another video - a lot of them around this point, aren't there? - and it's about to have a number one run so it need not concern us quite yet.

David Bowie – Sound And Vision
So that's one performance in the entire show which isn't replicated and it's the most intriguing of the lot. That's largely because it's a Legs & Co routine, and we know what happened last time Flick was given Bowie to work with.

Abba – Knowing Me Knowing You
...nope, still only on tape, and this is a future number one too.

Bonnie Tyler – More Than A Lover
Yes, she's still to come back as well, starting to become huskier and more AOR anthemic with it.

Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Get your hands out of your pockets, young man. Last week at number one, and he'll have another single on the show's radar before April is out.

TOTP 26/12/76 (tx 22/12/11): farewell to all that

And as our BBC4 year began with Tony Blackburn, so it ends 33 retained shows later with Tony keeping Jimmy company. Jimmy is, of course, wearing a Santa suit, cigar in, pack of cards fascinatingly in hand. Less explicably, on the table is front of them is a Ludo game box and a large pink triangle with what seems to be a picture of a dog on. No mention at all in the intro of this being the second show. Given the Legs & Co quotient forthcoming, how late did they schedule back then?

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
Of the many studio performances, this is the one with the Union Jack design above the stage, in which everyone seems to be providing live vocals. Surely they had the option otherwise, even if they needed the practice ahead of Eurovision.

Billy Ocean – Love Really Hurts Without You
Tony finds the sight at close quarters of Jimmy pretending to be surprised hilarious. "Right over there", this is Billy at his most conservative of dress sense, which is saying something given he's wearing an all-in-one linen outfit, the jacket part of which boasts massive lapels over a pink tanktop, and in which he seems to have shoved something a little extra for the ladies' imaginations down the front. Performing in front of a glittery curtain he comes across as soul's most self-confident, not to mention optimstic, working men's club performer. Two people right down the front have the same curiously designed hat on that they were exhibiting right in front of our openers, which means these clips come from the 25th March programme, the week before BBC4 picked up on them.

Sailor – Glass Of Champagne
We join Tony struggling to open a bottle of the titular. Well, thanks to less than snappy editing we join him as he's holding the bottle at right angles as he comes to the gradual realisation that he really should be seen to be giving it all he's go if this is going to look realistic at all. You may argue that any chance of realism left the studio when Jimmy arrived, but there you go. Jimmy revels in drinking his "BBC tea", though there doesn't seem to be anything in the cup. There being anything to genuinely drink doesn't seem to have affected Sailor, who started off this crazy BBC4 ride and now turn up in its first phase's death throes, who start off by toasting us with their appropriately half-filled glasses - there's *two* champers bottles on the band's trusty Nickelodeon - and then go on to look like that was but the televisual tip of the iceberg in their day of getting sloshed. Everyone's in bow tie and flannel, drummer Grant Serpell seems to be sporting a cape, Henry Marsh (who, incidentally, recently married Dee Dee out of Pan's People) is sporting a top hat, a cane (though he carries both off with much more gravity than Paul Nicholas ever could) and an inane grin (that less so). Georg Kajanus already has streamers around his shoulders and general being. Nothing untoward has happened to Phil Pickett's appearance. The big bass drum on the side of the Nickelodeon is proved to be there for more than decoration. The second time Marsh bends down to beat it and and Nickel-oppo Pickett crouch down and do something for the camera, which is unfortunate given the camera misses it. Towards the end the balloons are released, but all uupon Serpell, who in close-up looks not unreasonably suddenly both excited and confused. Literally, when the director cuts back to a full stage shot there doesn't appear to be another balloon drop point anywhere. Before long everyone but the professional and perhaps most sober Kajanus has abandoned their station to fight the balloons off. Jimmy, who appreciates a good sailor, seems to be transfixed.

Wings – Let 'Em In
The Real Thing are setting up on the Quantel-fied screen behind them, as if this were real time. Instead it's Legs & Co and that delayed attempt at one-upping their predecessors. Problem is, being as they're still bedding in there's little sense of fun, spontaneity or character about Legs yet, so presented with some doors in a circle all they can come up with to do is walk through them in dressing gowns, the full coverage presumably the leverage for being in their pants for the other three new routines. And yeah, sure, there's opening and closing of doors in sequence, but there's no sticking their head through and making an amusing face and/or wave. There's no gratuitious arse-waggling. Nobody claims to be Martin Luther. There's no way of getting round it, this routine is just walking. A little eavesdropping and waiting enters later on, but that's to fill out breaks as much as anything.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
Tony proffers a box of Terry's All Gold, which Jimmy doesn't give a second look. If Billy was holding back on the colour clashing, the Real Thing have gone all out on their return, the open-fronted mustard coloured fringed jacket still losing out to whichever Amoo brother it is in the time honoured silver dungarees off one shoulder/neckerchief/glittery hat combination, and just for emphasis both of outfit and place in the band he's on a raised stage-within-a-stage. There's a girl in the audience in a sailor's hat. Her luck was in earlier in the night right enough.

Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
The multi-layered beard and latent homoeroticism of the video. Jimmy in introduction chooses to hide behind a balloon. Fair comment.

ABBA – Fernando
Again. Jimmy uses "as it 'appens" twice in a sentence, as if he has a reputation to keep up or something. "I can't stop eating these nuts, Jim" is Tony's straightforward reponse. Even though there's a studio performance they could have shown it's fireside wistfulness of the video.

Rod Stewart – The Killing Of Georgie
Ah, Diddy's favourite. For the third song in a row it's the video, Rod perhaps unwisely given the subject matter flouncing about on a great big stage with only a microphone and big blouse for company. "I would like to tell you a horrific story about him (Tony)" Jimmy starts the link out of a song about homophobic murder.

Our Kid – You Just Might See Me Cry
After three videos, a repeat of the massive buttonhole flower-enhanced studio performance of "one of the youngest groups to make it this year", suggesting there were younger groups who've fooled us plebs but not the pros. Perhaps my favourite wrongheaded #totp tweet this year, even ahead of the weekly "why are BBC4 showing 1976 again?", is the person who moaned "was there a TOTP in 1976 Our Kid weren't on?" Yes, all but three of them, and one of those has been wiped and one was months later.

Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born
"Don't know if you know him or not", Jim? Haven't we all seen this enough by now? Three Pops-programming appearances in four days. TOTP2 captioned it as being from 1977, which shows how much departments observe what each other is doing.

The Four Seasons – December '63 (Oh What A Night)
At last, something new! Even if it is just Legs & Co, and a Legs without Patti at that. There is speculation that they recorded the other three dances for one show and then had to make up the numbers (or possibly they were set to fill in for an act that became available and had to make a late change) only for Patti to fall ill, which makes sense. Small bra and pants all round again, each in different colours and augmented with glittery headdresses and a bit of chiffon in the back so you can't ogle them from behind. The director's solution is to shoot all the close-ups from below to even less subtle result. The five are on stages around the audience in the middle, whose job is to wave strands of tinsel around to no discernible atmospheric effect.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
"One of my favourite records of the moment" says Tony ahead of another video. Me? I'd rather see Terry Kath's Mississippi dance again.

Showaddywaddy – Under The Moon Of Love
The problem with the 'waddy... well, more than one, but for the purpose it was that with the overmanning two members often seemed to have little to do. That's been solved by giving them miniature guitars of little potential resonance, so that's that sorted and them happy. Once again it's the black/white switcheroo, but this time mixed in is a perspective joke as drums and timpani subtly shift between the front and back of the stage, the consistently pissed off looking Romeo Challenger to the forefront in the black. Oddly Dave Bartram doesn't get to change at all, but there's a reason for that. When he gets down on his knees at the lip of the stage for the first "I wanna talk sweet talk..." bridge he grabs a young lady's hand - maybe the young lady at the front of the previous shot from the back of the stage seen holding a 7" record - and then, the old charmer, brings out a sprig of mistletoe, albeit very ragged and battered looking mistletoe. The expected is elected not to be carried out. Understandably, everyone makes a large gap at the front when he tries for the second time. A few streamers thrown around, back in the studio Jimmy puts out his cigar and then uses it to burst a balloon by Tony's head. "And it's goodbye from him!" And it's goodbye from 1976, as a time entity then and as a concept now.

Top Of The Pops will return in 1977, on 6th January 2012. The blog has one more post before the end of the year.

Whichever year you want to read that as.

TOTP 25/11/76 (tx 1/12/11): in which Jimmy Savile unites Glasgow

I made a mess of this in the comments box the other day so let's get this straight - now all the schedules are out, here's how BBC4's 1976 commitment comes to its thrilling conclusion, namely by still taking a Sky At Night week off and then having to compress the denouement into four days:

Thursday 15th, 7.30pm - 9/12/76
Monday 19th, 8pm - 23/12/76
Tuesday 20th, 8pm - 25/12/76
Thursday 22nd, 8pm - 26/12/76

Both the Christmas shows are in hour long slots, though originally they were 50 minutes long, and are being repeated back to back on Christmas Day from 10.40pm. Seems a bit odd to keep the Sky At Night slot next week when that means having to cram an extra show in out of time on a Monday, but there you go. And then last I heard The Story Of 1977 is being shown on New Year's Eve, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. (EDIT: the reason why there's nothing on Wednesday is that's when BBC2 are screening the annual TOTP2 Christmas special, at 7.30pm)

It's our first Jimmy Savile show since his passing, and immediately we get a taste of the man's work as he pretends he can't work out whether to talk into the mike or a stick of rock. A cheap gag, but the visual comedy of Jimmy's rapid double take just about keeps the idea afloat.

The Kursaal Flyers – Little Does She Know
There's something very Southend about the construction of the name in lights sign above them, and not just because it says 'KURSAALS'. The band, meanwhile, are all over the shop. Paul Shuttleworth is about an alarming a frontman as we've seen in 1976, sporting the kind of tousled, short at the sides cartoon Teddy Boy pompadour that wouldn't be seen again this side of the Stray Cats, a spiv's pencil moustache and the sort of teeth that explains all those jokes Americans make, particularly noticeable in his instance from his insistence on singing held notes through them as much as they'll meet in the middle. Whether his choice of shiny blue suit and matching cummerbund was meant to somehow offset all this isn't clear, but standing next to Richie Bull in a Hawaiian shirt with garland of what may be daffodils, crimped hair and what seems to be a developmental version of a Zapata/David Crosby tache it seems as if he couldn't quite go the full sartorial distance. As for the rest of the band there's a white suit jacket like their mentor Lee Brilleaux's, a Panama hat like Geoffrey Boycott's offset with second hand car dealer chic and a prominently placed drummer in shorts who plays entirely in double whacks and looks a bit bored of it by the last verse. Behind them a washing machine spews constant bubbles. What sort of image is this? It's like a workaday Camden Britpop band gone back to late period rationing. The song's laundrette love given the full Spector by Mike Batt, here with what seems to be castanets and cymbals at the front of the mix, is reflected in a mighty set of Shuttleworth body language gestures and full-throated singing, which just means more unflattering closeups. Jimmy calls them the Kursaals as well for some reason. Maybe he wasn't sure about the full name either. It was they that brought the stocks "as it happens, do you see", but all they get from him is a "that one is going to go up the charts". It'd be a different story had Noel been around.

Dr Hook – If Not You
Standard live clip, which allows us to talk about Jimmy's top, if the credits are to be believed the work of one L Rowland-Warne. Here, you'd better have a look at it yourselves.



Now, what's going on there? Rangers and Celtic did actually play the previous night and maybe Jimmy had the top lying around from a previous incident when he'd accidentally angered some Glaswegians with football/religious talk and took a broad approach to allaying their annoyance, but then he never really showed a wider interest in the game. He could have clumsily chosen it to reflect music and the show's broad church. This is all far more interesting than the song, in which someone to "patch my pants" and "kiss where it hurts" is requested before one of their million guitarists plays a smug solo.

Billy Ocean – Stop Me (If You've Heard It All Before)
Jimmy gets someone else, "a real life disc jockey" to introduce this one, someone wearing a T-shirt all of which we can read says 'Join Jim'. Self-promotion? And if so, by whom? As usual Billy has mixed and matched his attire and it's supper club night, which means the huge bow tie, grey waistcoat and tight matching trousers. You can see his religion, as they say, though Jimmy would know what trouble that can lead to. No wonder the director spends the first twenty seconds trying to tactically lose him out of the bottom of the shot and not too long later films him upwards from behind. More castanets show up. Did an extra percussionist turn up with the orchestra?

Be Bop Deluxe – Maid In Heaven
Jimmy namechecks the floor manager, and due to the lost shows here's our first naming of Legs & Co. This seems an auspicious choice of dancing material, presumably a late replacement for something else, and it's clear Flick and the girls aren't quite sure of the best movements to interpret Bill Nelson's art-prog outfit into. So it's lots of shaking, some meaningful arm movements and bobbing around, repeat. There's some brave experiments in synchronised arm circling towards the end that only succeeds in taking everyone out of tight choreography. The costume designer meanwhile must have had a bad experience in a children's art class as the Co are all wearing paper tassels attached variously around their person and to their underwear, the thinking of the lack of garments perhaps being... that they're Top Of The Pops dancers, yes, but also flashes of skin detract from whatever they're trying here. Come the end there's a tight shot of Sue heavily breathing, which I'm entirely sure was in no way meant in any other way than to suggest she got more exercise.

Cliff Richard – Hey Mr Dream Maker
Jimmy and sailors! Again! They all wanted in on those Savile and seamen (just don't) special links. Jimmy gets so animated he begins waving his arms about wildly. "We're in a hurry, you see" he explains, before linking to a ballad that seems to last years. Cliff, wearing a black T-shirt with white specks and a spider by way of HR Giger design that suggests less soulful pop long stayer and more patron of a goth clothing shop in Kilburn, is shot almost entirely in insert with some sort of meaningful film, bleached out and partly recoloured in pale red like someone wants a craft Bafta, in which a woman (it very briefly goes to normal colours at one point but not for long enough to identify her) wanders round some trees and looks around a bit, intercut with shots of branches and specks of light. It's not clear what it's supposed to represent, unless everyone who watches it will die horribly within seven days. After he's finished singing and once he's done with pointing, Cliff raises the mike cable above his head, not in victory but as if spent of life force. Maybe it got him too. Oh, no, wait, that can't be right.

ABBA – Money Money Money
"We aren't half in a hurry tonight!" Jimmy reasserts, which can't be right given how much time was taken up just then. Even with a gift of a title Jimmy's struggled with this one, asserting "many years ago everybody in the pop business was skint" but now we have a song "for all the new pop types". In the video Agnetha gets the white dress, Annifrid the black, both with glittery headbands in their colour and no sense of choreography as Agnethea struts and Annifrid... doesn't.

Elton John – Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Jimmy's found two girls in Union Flag waistcoats. Meanwhile Elton is liberated from the pretend vocal booth only to be placed in one of those studio settings where you're not quite sure whether the audience are watching him at the time, so dark is everything but man and piano in the lights. The soberness of Elton's suit is offset by the biggest tinted glasses he could find and the director reaching instinctively for his box of cascaded mirror image-based effects as seen most effectively with Joan Armatrading. Of course with Joan you had a good head shape and nothing else to get in the way, here you've got huge glasses and a great big piano so the effect is lost. By the end he gives up and points a camera at a monitor, the cheapest effect in his arsenal.

Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
Jimmy's getting brave with the setting now, absolutely surrounded by girls, one of whom chooses the very moment he starts talking to somehow lose her seating position, reacting with a jump and yelp as if she'd been electrocuted. Suspiciously, as she shifts wildly about and the camera pans ever closer to Jimmy's face we see she's holding flowers the same as our Kursaal friend was sporting and a stick of rock. So there's someone he's trying to get off with having promised them a moment on telly only for their reactions to taint it. Chicago, it transpires, is a three syllable word with every one enunciated. Just the video again. Gah. Wanted to see Terry dance to Mississippi again.

And one last note right at the end as producer turns out to be Johnnie Stewart, who created the whole enterprise but left in 1974 and must have been tempted back as a stopgap. For the occasion he's earned himself the man-on-chair-holding-jacket silhouette, which is grand of him.

Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG, 1926-2011

Bevin Boy, miner, Mecca ballroom manager and owner, Tour of Britain cyclist, professional wrestler, marathon runner, British Rail and seatbelt safety shill, self-claimed first DJ to operate dual turntables and a mike in 1947, Honorary Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games, honorary Royal Marines Commando Green Beret, cigar aficionado, pink Rolls-Royce driver, friend of royalty and Prime Minister, charity fundraiser to the estimated collective tune of more than £40m, fixer, Knight Commander of Saint Gregory the Great, honorary doctor, Knight of Malta, freeman of Scarborough, Radio Luxembourg DJ 1958-1967, Radio 1 DJ 1968-1987, active DJ until 1997 and man synonymous with the greatest chart music show of all. Hosted Top Of The Pops 279 times in all, from the very first to the very last, though his last regular appearance was a one-off in July 1984 and helping The Top Of The Pops Train Special a month afterwards. All this, reader, was his fiefdom.

TOTP 7/10/76 (tx 20/10/11) open thread

Hello. This is little known Top Of The Pops retro blog Yes It's Number One. We're not here right now, we're about 150 miles away from our computer. If you see a man who seems deprived of fresh air sidling up to strangers and going "...but a month after they joined, you see, Dee Dee decided to retire through injury so they were back down to five with just the one original member left...", do say hello.

Of course, being away on a Thursday presents a huge problem, which is why I'm trading on the success of the comments box community and letting you fill in and make the sarky remarks this week. Using YouTube and assuming they don't put the wrong one on, here's a quick guide to what you can expect **SPOILERS**:

- Jimmy Savile in a Union Jack/Flag coat
- One of T Rex in his pyjamas and Marc in too much eye makeup
- Pussycat looking less scary than their picture suggests
- Rick Dees - on video! Plus the odd clip of becostumed Ruby Flipper as padding
- England Dan and John Ford Coley in a village hall
- Sir Jim with some sailors. Again
- The Detroit Spinners as frantically Flippered
- A huge bloke from BBC Radio Medway
- The Manhattans, of which there isn't that much to say (apart from according to one YouTube upload the band didn't have a copy of the shown video)
- Paul Nicholas' difficult second single, still with the bowler, this time with Sue and Lulu as distraction. Everybody cheerin', nobody steerin'
- a new appearance by Smokie, being amused and gurning in their own ways
- Yeah, ABBA again
- But no Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

Go ahead, then, and I'll see you late Monday or so in the comments and then properly back to recap business next Thursday (with an Alternative Canon in the middle). Also, can anyone in the meantime point to evidence that suggests these will continue into 1977? A lot of people seem convinced it's been confirmed but I don't know of hard say-so.

TOTP 9/9/76 (tx 22/9/11): the great pub rock revival

Something of a sea change for the rest of the 1976 run as all the remaining shows are half an hour long in their original form, so no excuse for editing from here on it (except possibly the show before Christmas which might run slightly long, and of course we don't yet know what slots the Christmas shows themselves get) The repeats are still on, though.

As a further aside, I liked this blog post about TOTP.

Jimmy Savile in charge, and as offputting as his bright orange tracksuit top with plunging neckline is as a hors d'oeuvre we only get a top half shot for now, which is a blessed relief for three or four minutes.

Eddie & The Hotrods – Get Out Of Denver
Punk! Well, it's not, it's rough-house pub rock by way of rockabilly as punk doesn't arrive in single form until late October and not on TOTP until May 1977, but in comparison insomuch as by this point they'd had a residency at the Nashville Rooms with Strummer's The 101ers and in February had booked the Sex Pistols as tour support only to drop them when at a preliminary gig at the Marquee Lydon smashed up their gear (getting the Pistols their first ever music press coverage, for what it's worth) This was from a live EP and sounds it too, the energy and enthusiasm somewhat stymied by the start of the performance being overlaid with a set design that says less rock'n'roll attitude and more One World Roots Festival 1998 logo and by an audience that don't yet know how to approach this music. Several people attempt some sort of solo jive. Two people with 'RODS' on the back of their jackets, having heard this all before, point at a monitor instead. Barrie Masters, with his migraine-inducing green squiggly jacket over bare chest, has been separated from the rest of his band by a pit full of youths. That band includes a bassist with the logo of the US fanzine Punk on his T-shirt and a drummer pointlessly in just his pants and very long stripy socks. It's not like he'd been sweating the whole night through to that point. Maybe it was his thing. Or he was on a bet. Towards the end the camera definitely, finally runs someone over as it closes in on Masters, swingingly briefly but wildly to the left before crash-zooming in on target. Jimmy then wanders on set, in front of that seperately projected backdrop, a bar too early with the visual effect still on so only his outline can be seen at first, and it's not a pretty outline. "Gonna go to number one, that, as it happens" he confidently predicts. It got to number 43, as it happened.

Twiggy – Here I Go Again
Someone's definitely got into the habit of not cutting Jimmy off when he starts rambling at the end of sentences, just letting him wind down like a Duracell bunny. "And how are all you ladies and gentlemen at home? Very well, we hope. Have a nice time. See you soon. Here's Twig." See you soon? Maybe he anticipated everyone drifting off during this, especially as it's the video with less of a budget than Pops had managed.

The Wurzels – I Am A Cider Drinker
Jimmy Saville surrounded by seamen. Don't. Three of the crew of HMS Daedelus "from the boiling high seas", as he puts it, which suggests he doesn't know that much about the properties of large expanses of water, or for that matter sense as he then calls them "the BBC seas". They don't manage everything, Jimmy. Wonder if the show was recommended by those bored pisstaking sailors in the crowd the other week, and if so what must these three men of the tides have made of the circumstances of the moment at which they had their television break. No sousaphones made their way through this week, so it's rags on sticks all round and collective knee bending. Bizarre as this possibility seems, I wonder if this is an orchestra job - they're definitely re-recorded vocals and the rhythm seems a little flat-footed. We do get the extra bits performed live, though. No samples here.

Lou Rawls – You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine
Haven't mentioned Jimmy's bottom half yet, and for a good reason - it's the smallest pair of red athletic shorts you'll see. You really do fear for shots from anywhere below. Surrounded by people in homemade T-shirts the slogans on which aren't entirely readable - 'MIKE AND MARTYN' something say two - Jimmy has help introducing a real hodge-podge, like Flick had three ideas and just couldn't decide, except that this week it really wouldn't be driven by the lyrics. Stage right, Floyd in a silver reflective suit and matching top hat waves a cane around, another of those short straw efforts he seems to keep being assigned (oh, just you wait for next week). Stage left, three of the girls do the time immemorial ostrich feather routine. Middle front, Cherry and Philip play out a modern morality dance part-trad part-mating ritual, Philip in an entirely car spray silver outfit with cape and hat attached to the top of said cape, Cherry with a toga/throw rug and a huge blue flower in her hair. Although everyone clearly goes through their own fulsome routines throughout it is this pairing that get the bulk of screen time and as you'd expect from that pairing there's an overflow of nods to camera - over the shoulder, little glance, the lot - though at least Philip isn't miming along this week. Jimmy, arm on a girl's shoulder, says "yes indeedy" four times in a row.

Cliff Richard – I Can't Ask For Anything More Than You
An advance in the director's art as we get the first few seconds actually off a studio monitor, later overlays giving the impression of infinite Cliffs. Well, it fills the big black space. It's another staging of the same falsetto-friendly arrangement, Cliff back in his too tight jeans as well as a small medallion. You wouldn't think he'd be the type.

Bay City Rollers – I Only Wanna Be With You
Now Jimmy's sitting down, giving those unsettingly thin pins a full airing. We're pretty much towards the end of Rollermania, with a new bassist sporting huge flares and barrelling through a cover without much due care and attention. Only Les even has tartan on, and that's on his shirt. There's a weird bit where a triangle appears at the top of a long shot of the stage with close-ups of the band members' heads as they work through the break. The orchestra adds an unwarranted triumphalist tone.

Kiki Dee – Loving And Free
How come Jimmy always gets the nurses on? It's established he does a lot of charity work, but that's no excuse to keep dragging on, as here, five ladies from Stoke Mandeville. If ever there was a time we needed orange overalls and awkward dancing it's now as Kiki and her fringe sits on a high stool and sings a light acoustic ballad that reeks of Two Ronnies middle bit.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
Same as last week. You'd better get used to this song. Oh yeah, IT'S NOT DOUCHE.

ABBA – Dancing Queen
Now Jimmy's surrounded by every female in the audience, some of whom are even listening. Presumably they still hadn't found a full broadcastable version of the video as this is a performance from something called ABBA In Australia (the whole thing is on YouTube). In a triumph of 1976 editing Jimmy is intercut to say goodbye before the end of the first verse and over the start of the chorus rather than a sensible point, given the whole clip goes on to be shown. It's not like people really knew it then as well as we know it now, after all. Costume is credited to 'Nicholas Rocker', who is a man that exists and has a costuming iMDB credit, but it seems presumptious to call that a costume, more something nicked from an athletics store cupboard.

TOTP 5/8/76 (tx 25/8/11): it's like punk happened

Let's get this out of the way first, because it'll be keenly felt in the comments box, I can tell. Yes, unfolding drama in the Ruby Flipper camp as it turns out TOCG isn't so O after all - not only was she not present this week, she'd been excised from the troupe's end credit! Did she get time off? Surely not, dancers can't go on extended breaks from the show, they just record in advance, surely. Unless... she does come back, but given she's not long for the show anyway maybe she went on strike like that time Noel Edmonds had creative differences and refused to do House Party one week.

Unless she was ill.

Shall we ask her?

She'll probably have forgotten. It's not worth it. Also, I wouldn't know how to ask her.

Jimmy's back in charge for one of what aren't that many appearances in 1976, at least in the sector of it we're covering. He's dressed up for the occasion this week, none of his glitter patterned speciality T-shirts, it's a jacket a bit like a police constable's, dignified if polka-dotted tie... oh, the pull-back reveals he's wearing a kilt. Always has to spoil things.

The charts reveal a new Wings single and a new Wings picture, all five holding gold discs to emphasise their big shot status. Linda looks most unsure.

Slik – The Kid's A Punk
Now, hold on youngsters, while there may have been prescience in choosing to release a song with that word in the title in July 1976, the month of the Ramones' celebrated catalystic London Roundhouse gig and six months after it was first coined in America to refer to that form of rock (we caught on in February within the Sex Pistols' NME debut - see, it's not just sneering at bad mainstream music fashion here, you learn stuff too), but what eleven year old Midge and baseball-attired friends are clearly meaning here, unless they were hugely prescient on writing it, is the (namechecked in the second line) youth gone wild delinquency/cool-as dropout use of the word. Midge backs that up with his opening stance, clicking his fingers contemptuously like someone who was just too damned good for Guys & Dolls round a pretend lamp-post. His acting masterclass isn't over once he gets into the song, though, staring down the camera on the chorus, challenging us to disagree with his assessment of the fictional subject. As if we didn't know from the dress sense Slik are by this stage definitely the sort of people who wish they were American or at least second hand aspire to its culture but aren't quite sure how to go about co-opting it, rolling out barrelhouse piano, FM soft rock choruses and the idea Glasgow is well across the idea of a "hip shaking, heartbreaking hobo". As a crazed sax player holds the middle eight hostage Ure, just to set the seal on this being someone else's dream, draws out a flick-comb and draws it across the sides of his hair like he thinks he once saw James Dean do. America was a long way away in those days, congenitally as well as figuratively. "Of course they're from Scotland, of course" Jimmy repetitively states afterwards, just to rub it in. It wasn't a hit. By this point in 1977 Ure was an actual punk in PVC2 (who were Slik with a new name, clothes and guitar tuning anyway) and then the Rich Kids.

David Dundas – Jeans On
And this week providing something to fill the stage gaps, the temporarily reduced Ruby Flipper! The message is clear. BACK OFF, HOT GOSSIP, THIS IS OUR PATCH. As if to show they can do the suggestive stuff as well as any Arlene Phillips choreography, their collective stance at outset will come in familiar to anyone who's seen Rita, Sue And Bob Too. For some reason all but Lulu are wearing hats too - huge peaked cap for Floyd, workman's cap for Sue, blue Liam Gallagher bucket hat for Philip, golf visor for Patti. Maybe Lulu's hair was too high maintenance to be messed with. Also worth noting "when I wake up" is literally rubbing of eyes. Dundas has at least remembered not to wear slacks this week, but he still looks a little friendless there all on his tod.

Billie Jo Spears – What I've Got In Mind
Jimmy must have completely mistimed a simple introduction as having introduced this video he chooses to improvise: "Also we have all sorts of other great sounds as well, on account of tonight is a good night for music. How about this one? Yes siree." Not exactly a flashy COMING SOON graphic, is it? Billie Jo is on whatever show it was that all the country clips come from and looks most unsure of her surroundings, and rather like a lost early 80s Coronation Street character.

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
It's a video and a half, this one.



Oh, no, that's not the right one, hang on a moment. Ah, now, this is it. Never quite tops its opening thirty seconds, really.



I want the percussionist's job. He's still not as threatening as Harley, despite wielding a mallet for his job. Harley himself has before long been comfortably covered from every angle.

KC & The Sunshine Band – (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty
Or The KC Sunshine Band, as Jimmy calls them. Of course Ruby Flipper were always destined for this one. Surrounded by an expectant audience and with TOCG having been kidnapped by errant gypsies Patti steps up and takes the jointly significant mantles of most gawping at camera and most minimalist top, although all three will catch their death if they go out like that. Obviously there's shakeage when required, and occasionally when not, but Flick must have been caught off guard by the reduction in numbers as the rest is mere leaning, arm waving and sidestepping filler. What's more, most of the shaking is done from the shoulders and on at least a couple of occasions the lower legs, which defeats the purpose of choosing this song. Dancer of the day goes to Floyd, who gets to illustrate the words "very well" in closeup by pretending to lick his finger and then making that circle with the thumb and forefinger gesture that people did in the 1970s to express goodness.

Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue
"Everybody take a breather!" Surrounded by pretty much the entire audience, which he creeps into surely accidentally while on camera in the background about thirty seconds before Ruby Flipper have finished, Jimmy cues up the same video clip as last time.

Billy Ocean – L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)
And will sir be favouring the mustard coloured waistcoat with matching trousers a size too small over the shirt with the green and white striped mint-like design tonight? Decently strident and professional performance, but this is where the cameraman gets his excuse to indulge in his weekly hit-and-run audience rampage, his target primed and set this week for a girl getting into Ocean somewhat, joyously bouncing around in her cool Wolfie Smith-turns-fisherman cap until being stopped in her tracks and then, judging by her expression, having her foot run over by the machinery.

Twiggy – Here I Go Again
One thing we haven't discussed in the two or three weeks since it was erected is the new stage backdrop, designed in a V shape without the point, with hundreds of small Noddy Holder's hat-style mirrors attached which at times move about as if being shaken by some black-clad stagehand. If it's meant to resonate the glitter of glitzy pop it only works in stages - Dundas' backing was a spectacular prism of random flashing, yet here they don't seem to reflect any light much as Twiggy doesn't seem to exude much charisma or singing ability. Of course this is the same Twiggy who stands now in her big eyelashes as shorthand for 60s Mary Quant fashion, going on to spend the 70s and much of the 80s in stage musicals and the early 00s being the worst This Morning host ever, but with a shot at pop in the middle. Fair to say that by this time she's less the waifish Vogue androgyne and more the lost Charlie's Angel in her all white trouser and waistcoat outfit and poor make-up. Just to make sure it's caught the trend of the day it's a country number (originally by Country Joe & The Fish), one that, reinterpreted in-house, loses Ms Lawson's voice somewhere in the mix. All the pleading eyes she makes at the mixed-in close-up camera shots won't save her now.

Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Yeah, I know. What can you do? This time it's enlivened by Jimmy's original and wayward way with the language. "And now, what should we have now?" is the link's opening gambit and again it runs slightly too long for comfort, leading him to freestyle: "We have just time to say how are all of you at home? Very good we are? Here we go!" Rather too late in the show to be asking after us, your loyal viewership, but it's appreciated nonetheless. "We've assembled the troops!" Jimmy announces afterwards, though they aren't actually troops, they're women in nurses' uniforms whose presence is never explained, and he spends most of the link standing in front of them anyway, but is presumably something to do with Jim's famously tireless charity work. That's how he earned that OBE he proudly has displayed by his name in the credits. Hopefully. "Yes siree!" he concludes for the fourth time in the show. Someone called Jesse Green's something called Nice And Slow, which seems to be an instrumental only because in the actual version (he's on an upcoming show, you'll see) he doesn't start singing for more than a minute, soundtracks those controversial cast lists.

EDIT NEWS: So evidently BBC4 don't trust a pre-watershed audience with Sheer Elegance's 'challenging' subject matter, as It's Temptation misses out for the second of two appearances. Unique Sheer Elegance sense of fashion watch: red dungarees over blue shirts with sleeve ruffs. When at one point all three try twirls, all completely out of sync and one in a different direction to his colleagues, you begin to understand why they never had another hit. 5000 Volts turn up with just Linda, the guitarist (who doesn't even bother pretending when it comes to the talkbox bit) and bassist, so there must have been rows there. Lastly was Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band, which has to be posted for all sorts of reasons, from Jimmy's manner of disappearing out of shot to the shaker maker's manly chest, but mainly the bassist having some gloriously undignified issues with his headgear at 1:38.



Oh, and Jimmy was wearing a kilt to promote his role as Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games, a role he still holds after forty years albeit only in an honorary position now. That's not an excuse.

The disappeared: 1/7/76

As previously mentioned, eight shows from the second half of 1976 are missing from the BBC archive, which is why we're getting these Sky At Night breaks once a month so we all hit Christmas together. But what was on these shows? Playlists survive, and with those we can all fill in the gaps with linkage and speculation. In this Saville-fronted week, then...

Hello – Love Stealer
Don't you sometimes wish Noel or Diddy would walk on and straight off like that German host does? Another in that thankfully now broken but still bitty run of show openers that never chart, odd given they'd had a top 10 single at the end of 1975, but disturbing stomping glam was on its way out by mid-1976. I mean, look at that stare, slightly brought down by the underwritten and overlong phone break. Hope that involved the borrowing of a trimphone at TV Centre. (EDIT: it was in the public domain all along! See the comments for YouTube link)

Liverpool Express – You Are My Love
Of solarised sub-10cc fame. We hear that after its first showing it made possibly the biggest leap up the download charts of any song so far shown in this re-run. Does that prove anything? Not sure.

Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
The tremendously hairy and homoerotic video will be shown in a future week, but this sappy FM ballad got the Ruby Flipper treatment. We're picturing Lulu, Cherry, Gavin and Philip slow dancing in fake moonlight.

The Manhattans – Kiss And Say Goodbye
Despite reaching number four this is the only TOTP appearance for this big heartbreak ballad by the standard issue singer plus four blokes adept at turning in a circle soul group lineup.

T-Rex – I Love To Boogie
Not the same performance as two weeks earlier but I doubt Marc looked much better.

One Hundred Ton And A Feather – It Only Takes A Minute
A Ruby Flipper moment, a solo Lulu in fact, which is presumably what's overlaid at the start of the later studio appearance. As those who saw the TV Hell video post a couple of weeks ago will know the artist was ostensibly secret (though actually wasn't, as will be discussed come the time) and would turn up to perform in the studio the show after next. What will BBC4 do? Stay tuned.

Bill Oddie & The Superspike Squad With John Cleese – Superspike
Oh, nothing here.

Hot ChoNO, NO, HANG ON! It's Britain's foremost ornithological funkateer! Having been Britain's fourth most successful songwriter in 1975 the Goodies' hits suddenly dried up but Bill still felt a need to get on the one somehow and got the opportunity with an Olympics tie-in fundraiser for the International Athlete's Club, whatever that is. Cleese acted as commentator, Oddie as a running shoe with sentience. It didn't chart. You know what makes this show's loss all the more unfortunate? They showed the video, which apparently featured cameos from the top athletes of the day. Imagine how much of a modern talking point this could have been. Who cares about those Doctor bloody Whos when this has gone missing from the BBC archives?

Sigh.

Hot Chocolate – Man To Man
What a letdown this might have felt. With string interjections and toytown organ there were plenty of opportunities for the BBC orchestra to get the arrangement hideously wrong, and with spoken sections chances for Errol to look overbearing.

Our Kid – You Just Might See Me Cry
Pre-pubescent junior showtime, as seen before.

Don Williams – I Recall A Gypsy Woman
Britain liked its country in mid-1976, didn't it?

The Shangri-Las – Leader Of The Pack
Ruby Flipper, and you can probably see in your mind's eye what this might have been like.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
The Amoos and friends raid another dressing up box to mark the second of **SPOILER** three weeks at number one.

TOTP 27/5/76 (tx 2/6/11): Flipper's folly

ALERT! ALERT! As we well know by now trusting the advance listings is a fool's errand, but we're fairly confident in saying that because Cardiff Singer Of The World takes up that slot every other day that week, the next TOTP will be on MONDAY 13th at 7.30pm, with repeats in the usual Thursday and Saturday loose slots. No idea which weeks. Knowing BBC4, it'll be the one they've just missed out.

Also, to cover next week's fallow period there'll be a new Alternative Canon nomination every weekday. Suggestions through the usual channels.

So, after many references to the odd decision to skip a week we know exists, BBC4 decide to show it anyway. They just don't think of us in such circumstances. This'll be Jimmy Saville's first appearance on the show since New Year's Day, and to celebrate the CSO people have found a way to black out his head for the opening gag. You know in Smashie & Nicey: End Of An Era where they demonstrate the fun they had hosting the Populous? This bit? It's among the most realistic bits Enfield and Whitehouse came up with.

Special mention from the countdown this week for Mud, one of whom turned in for the publicity shot in a jacket adorned with the male symbol in rhinestones. Stay classy.


Heavy Metal Kids – She’s No Angel
Inevitably given the year, people have been only too keen to mention that (insert name of least favourite act on any given TOTP) must be the reason punk happened. Punk wasn't quite happening yet - at least one of the three weekly music papers hadn't even mentioned the Sex Pistols yet, and we don't get a punk single of any recognised stripe until late October - but we're not seeing a lot of the guitar music that prefigured it either. Thin Lizzy will be along before long, Queen had been and gone, but pub rock was hived off to the Old Grey Whistle Test while heavy metal's stirrings weren't yet for wider consumption, Black Sabbath past their peak, NWOBHM still in early beta testing. Heavy Metal Kids weren't all that heavy metal either, but they've been watching closely. Too closely, as if future Auf Weidersehen Pet actor Gary Holton's stage demeanour is anything to go by they knew the Alice Cooper School's Out performance, an umbrella replacing the fencing sword. Then he starts singing, a bit like Steve Harley, and it turns out to be a meat and potatoes pub rock Faces. The keyboard player borrows the Bon Jovi style a decade early and has a range of cock-o-the-walk struts and stances all lost because we can only see his top half behind a band banner. Holton eventually tries to get the audience going, and that's where he gets cut off.

JJ Barrie – No Charge
Also, much as we'd like to believe it, punk didn't happen as a reaction to sappy country hits. Barrie's in the studio again, not that it makes much difference, and he's got a backing 'singer' in overlaid half-light. Song is still awful.

The Wurzels – Combine Harvester
Should mention while the miracle of editing is helping Jim make audience members disappear that he's wearing a yellow vest with the show name on and decorated in the sort of glitter usually only found in school art departments. His hands must have been covered in Gloy for hours afterwards. There's a lot of going over old ground this week, literally in this case as there's a tractor on stage and the non-singers are sitting on the bonnet. A tractor is not a combine harvester, but that's BBC urbanites for you. Jim's on stage before the end so he can make the Wurzels disappear and the woman he vanished "to Birmingham" return in their stead. You know, we never would have imagined Noel Edmonds out of the then current presenting roster would be the musically inclined one, but such are the wiles of entertainment. Maybe he was just trying too hard.

Archie Bell and the Drells – Soul City Walk
Full bib and tucker on film. It's no fun writing this when it's a proper disco outfit, Gamble & Huff proteges in this case, with a fine record because as well as it being easier to critique shite, such outfits expect to put on a showbiz glitz performance so don't look out of place or attempting to fit in, from where we draw humour.

Mac & Katie Kissoon – The Two Of Us
Actually Gerald and Katherine Farthing. There you go. Katie is mixed up a lot higher than her brother here, so much so that by the break he's having to break out a few shimmies given he's practically inaudible. So is Jim's link, which is a shame as he goes right round the houses and doesn't actually properly name the mystery man standing to his right. Looking unimpressed by disco and/or this man he's expected to converse with, and less than two months after Tony Blackburn had deemed him untraceable, it's Hank Mizell, and all he has to share after such a long period of infamy is that his next single would be called Kangaroo Rock. Not cashing in at all, then. Seamlessly Jim then switches to holding up an album sleeve and inviting us to guess who it is on the cover.

David Bowie – TVC15
Somewhat spoiling the event, it's clearly David Bowie. Mind you, being after Station To Station it's possible people had forgotten what he actually looked like. After the girls got their turn last week it's the three men with one woman on screens at the back of the set and... well now.



That's been put up in the last 24 hours, that video, as the only previously available version was unembeddable. And a good thing too, as with one possible exception we'll post next week this was the most freeform Top Of The Pops dancing surely ever got. TVC15 is a pretty groove-free thing and thus pretty difficult to get a collective dance routine together to at short notice. This is apparently how Flick Colby, given a tribute in the link preceding the show, should be remembered. Basically it's three men, one dressed as a jockey, on a stylised living room set-ette making shapes on furniture, standing on their head and rolling around to the melodies in their heads. It does genuinely fade out at that stage, by the way, all possibilities already exhausted.

The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
The same face-off with acoustics as shown at least once already.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
At least Jim's interacting with the audience, getting the studio's bluffest youth to make the introduction (Jim: "Ooooh! Didn't catch him out!") Notable even among his wildly differently dressed colleagues Eddy Amoo sports an open yellow shirt and the world's largest brimmed Panama hat. Such distractions don't get to Jim, as he appears on the fringe of shot during the second chorus lining people up for his next link, his body language suggesting that he's always like that. His four friends, by the way, are wearing matching striped tops and massive Bay City Rollers tartan scarves tied around their necks, and one of the girls is wearing ludicrously high waisted trousers.

ABBA – Fernando
"At number one, dear friends, of course, Fernando. Abba. How are you. See you later." If you like, Jim. Their last week at the top. Literally, their fire was burning out. Why did they always play this when they had a perfectly good studio performance they only ever showed once? Afterwards Jim has a handful of friends encircling him, there's some playing with another hat and Wigan Casino favourite The Flasher by Mistura soundtracks the British Market Research Bureau's namecheck. More at a later date with some week's show or other.

EDIT NEWS: Ruby Flipper do Melba Moore's This Is It with podiums and streamers, and that Gladys Knight & the Pips performance again. See, they could repeat studio appearances when they fancied.