Top of the Pops

I remember Chris saying once that he only really liked to show a video if it was in the top 3 or if it was an exclusive first play by a big act. But of course he did break that rule quite often, which was his prerogative! I think he was at least less snobby than Ric Blaxill, who'd cut some dance tracks of performances down to about 2 minutes!

This is my upload - he actually gave an interview to Jamie Theakston before the U2 performance but I cut it out. There is another brief snippet of him in a top 10 rundown of "how not to present TOTP" that would probably need to go.

Germany, Italy and France all had their own versions, branded TOTP around the time the show ended.

When the new logo was introduced in 2003, the international versions tended to incorporate both the new and old logo, as this clip from Germany shows.



Here are the German opening titles:

That never stopped UKTV G2 (and Dave in the early days after the rebrand) repeating them after all.

NSync barely even attempting to speak German there, You'd have thought they'd at least give them phonetic versions of their links to read and try and learn and have on their cue cards!

Of course, there was also the US version in the late 80's.

Wiki states that the Netherlands show TopPop got a revival, and that came under the TOTP brand (although I'm sure there was sharing happening years before... Popscene lists some clips as airing on TOTP in the 70's and 80's)

Apparently New Zealand had a licenced version.

Along with MBC 2 in the UAE, but this was the UK show re-edited with some Arabic performances replacing some performers (I can only guess why).

BBC Prime and BBC America also broadcast re-edited versions of the UK show a week after transmission, but removed some acts for timing reasons.

You could always tell a performance from the German version when it appeared on the British show, partly because it was usually a nu-metal act because that genre was particularly popular in Germany and partly because, as German TV doesn't use the "counting the beats" way of directing music TV that we do, the cameras were up the artists' nose throughout. I remember when Blue did Eurovision in 2010 the documentary about them doing it featured them appearing on the still-running Italian Top of the Pops, which I remember still had some of the pre-2003 branding hanging around.

Of next week's repeats, the 11th January episode is notable as it's produced by Brian Whitehouse, his final contribution to Pops after a twenty year association with the show, his first credit in Genome is in 1970. This is the end of another link with the earliest days of the repeats as he produced many of the episodes we saw in the first six months back in 1976. He has a few credits in Genome after that, directing the odd episode of Wogan, with his final production credit being the Olivier Awards in April 1990, after which he presumably retired. On Roobarbs a while back, the ever-indescreet Richard Marson suggested towards the end he was seemingly not lavishing a great deal of care and attention on his work.

18th January is produced by Stan Appel and then Paul Ciani returns the following week, and aside from a month off in October then produces every episode until his departure in April 1991. That episode, and the one the week after, are actually two of the few episodes in this era that last longer than half an hour, as they were in a 35 minute slot on Fridays during the Commonwealth Games. It's also the final show in this period with double-headed presentation, and the first with the Cypher graphics I loved so much, so very exciting.

Richard Marson, who was on the production crew at the time, also talked about Paul Ciani, saying he was a very nice and funny man who was very popular with all the team and happy to let them try new things. Unfortunately he was badly injured in a car crash which caused further health problems, so he wasn't very well towards the end, and presumably contributed to his abrupt departure and the fact he was never well enough to return.

BBC Choice used to repeat a lot of editions as well.



Those themed editions do crop up quite frequently in the schedules - any more than that and, alongside the main TOTP repeat run, it could risk BBC Four coming to be seen as 'The Top of the Pops Channel' - which may please some, but I think the channel should retain a wide variety of programming. I think I'd prefer to see new editions of TOTP2 being produced for its original home of BBC2 which could be a low cost way of filling some airtime.

That's true enough, there's no need to repeat TOTP2 just for the sake of it - as you say, they do show some of the themed programmes, there's another one next week, but the regular weekly show seems rather pointless.

BBC4 continue to make new clip shows in any case, the Australian Hits at the BBC the other day featured lots of Pops clips and was very entertaining.

Anyone know the reason why Steve Wright stopped doing the TOTP2 voiceovers - from what I remember he did the Michael Jackson tribute in 2009, then the Christmas episode that year had Mark Radcliffe and it was him from then on.

The Wiki article is a bit confusing. Surely the Dutch TopPop was just a rip-off of TOTP?

But the version in the 90s/00s was proper TOTP, with the same sets/logos like the other European versions.

I could always spot a German performance by a slightly orange tinge to the picture. Dunno if it was due to the lighting in the studio or the cameras they used or the video format or what! Also, they didn't seem to have the same age restrictions on the audience members we had.. noticed older people wearing less fashionable clothes!!

The Italian 2011 series was a bit odd.. seemed to be mostly archive performances with a few new ones based around the current albums chart, and the set bore little resemblance to the UK one (indeed why should it..!), except they did have a big 2003 swirly thing on the floor and the 1998 logo sometimes on a screen in the background!