Top of the Pops

On "What We Were Watching Christmas 1995", Grace Dent explains that Gallagher wrote the song for his wife who accused him of lying when the Mike Flowers Pop version came out.

Yes, hence why the CD single had a "As Heard On The Kevin Greening Show on Radio 1" sticker on the sleeve. As far as I can remember Greening and his producer Will Saunders commissioned it, and I think played it for the first time when he started doing weekend breakfasts (for the second time) at the end of October. Evans then picked it up and made it his record of the week, and that led to it actually being released. But the joke of it being the original version didn't last very long.

As mentioned, it was released the week before Christmas and I've never been more excited about the race for the Christmas number one, I remember recording Wallace and Gromit on Christmas Eve so I could listen to the Top 40. Kevin Greening says his proudest moment was when he walked past an old man in the supermarket, who looked about ninety, humming Wonderwall.

And the next time Mike Flowers was heard of, he was responsible for a version of the Radio 4 UK theme released as part of the campaign to stop Radio 4 scrapping it.

I don't think there's ever been a better Christmas number 1 moment than in 1993 when Mr Blobby took back the top spot back from Take That. As Blobby had already been number 1 and then knocked off, it had become a foregone conclusion that Take That would retain the top spot for Christmas. With it being unheard of at that time for a record to subsequently return to number 1 (this had not happened since 1969), it was a massive surprise and quite a thrill when Blobby unexpectedly returned to the top the next week.

Mind you the year Rage against the machine got xmas no.1 was fun! What a pity totp wasn't on air to cover it!

No, it was a boring crusade of supposed 'real music' over pop and achieved sod all.

The Mike Flowers Pops were never actually shown on any TOTP. They'd dropped to number 3 by the following week, so they'd presumably decided not to include them on the first TOTP of 1996 for that reason (maybe they'd have been shown if they'd stayed at number 2?). According to Popscene, the video was shown on TOTP2, however.

Also Bjork's delivery in that episode is incredibly stilted, there really were many guest presenters in that era who weren;t up to the job.

I think it was more about the X factor winner getting Christmas number one every year than a "crusade against pop".

Though that sausage roll bloke seems to be destined to get Xmas number one every year now which is no less tedious.

Well, to clarify. I didn't listen to much in the charts then, but at the time I just thought it was such a pointless endeavour, championed by people who also probably never listened to chart music at the time or since. As you imply, be careful what you wish for.

I do wonder how many years they've made multiple versions of the Christmas episode? Though I imagine if they have, in most cases while they'll have recorded different links (and possibly unbroadcast performances), there'll only be one completed edited version as there'd be enough time between the announcement of the chart and broadcast to get the edit done. Whereas with the chart in 1995 only being revealed on Xmas Eve, they wouldn't have had time to have completed the edit ahead of the chart announcement so had to make more than one version in advance.

Better than 1985 where the show was filmed in November (so we have a generic "here are some of the more recent chart toppers" link into Wham and Whitney) and the actual Christmas number one didn't feature on the show at all. because it seems nobody expected Shaky to be number one and made and edit with him in.

And aptly enough, someone who clearly didn't know any better has just edited the Mike Flowers Pops page on Wikipedia to claim the Christmas TOTP played Wonderwall instead of Earth Song even at the time in 1995

Probably the same person who thought Ronnie Hazlehurst wrote Reach.

I wonder how long it will take for it to become a "fact" that TOTP announced Mike Flowers Pops as Christmas number one that keeps popping up everywhere?