Top of the Pops

Yes, it was okay to have a guest host on an occasional basis, but I think having a regular presenter or presenters is part of what gives a programme its identity. For most of its existence TOTP had a rota of regular faces who you become familiar with, guiding you through the show week after week - take that away and have guest hosts every week, and the programme starts to lose its identity. It was all very amusing seeing an apparently deliberately mismatched pair hosting this edition, but I think I would rather they had stuck with a regular set of presenters, teaming up for the festive special. Andi Peters, of course, went a little too far in the other direction by trying to install a single regular presenter every week.

If/when the main repeat run reaches Christmas 1995 it will be interesting to see what version of this edition they show - I don't think it matters so much when it's an isolated showing like this, and I would certainly have rather watched Mike Flowers Pops than that Jacko video, but as part of an ongoing run, it really ought to show the correct number one.

What time is the chart actually made available, because if it is available in the morning, I wonder why Radio 1 aren't doing it in the morning so Katie Thistleton doesn't have to present the chart slap bang in the middle of the afternoon (it's on air 2-4pm earlier than the usual 4-5:45 slot). It's also made even more irrelevant if BBC One have already announced it hours earlier.

Jack Dee presented three episodes in 1995 (and once each in 1994 and 1996), the most of any non-radio 1 DJ in this era, by some distance, so Ric Blaxill clearly liked him.

I remember the hype surrounding TOTP revealing the Christmas Number 1 before Radio 1 did in 1994; the first occasion the chart was broadcast on Christmas Day, and Bruno Brookes' one and only time to do so.

(Not sure too if they got Take That to film multiple closing links for that Christmas Day edition which, when repeated on BBC Four, had 'Stay Another Day' as the correct chart-topper. I don't recall an East 17 versus Mariah Carey/Oasis/Power Rangers/Zig and Zag etc. 'chart battle' at the time to determine its necessity.)

For me, the best 'sticking plaster' method was getting a rushed-sounding Simon Bates voiceover announcing Jackie Wilson's 'Reet Petite' as the Christmas Number 1 of 1986 - as opposed to (verbatim) "the *current* Number 1 in the run-up to Christmas", 'Caravan of Love' by the Housemartins...

...who, as I found out last night, at the time reportedly (according to a tabloid newspaper) refused to perform on that year's Christmas TOTP as they weren't allowed to have their mothers join them on the stage!

It just seemed a bit disappointing when it got shunted to Fridays. TOTP had essentially come back from the dead (in the early 90s), then suddenly seemed to be quite relevant again, thanks to Britpop etc.

On a Friday it also seemed to be in the shade of TFI, which finished just 30 mins before. From memory the first Friday one was hosted by Julia Carling (now utterly forgotten) and she disingenuously claimed it was ‘just for the summer’.

Yes, and I remember he was also supposed to do another episode in 1994 and was promoted as such on the previous week's show, but he pulled out at the last minute and Lily Savage did it. The 1996 episode was with Jeremy Hardy, surely the unlikeliest Top of the Pops presenter ever, to promote their series Jack and Jeremy's Real Lives on Channel 4, which flopped massively and the final episode went out at 1.20am.

I suppose Dee was the sort of host this show needed - popular, relevant and credible to a young audience but amusing enough to appeal to older viewers. But they never found enough of those hosts. It's a bit like HIGNFY, really, they have a pool of regular hosts and then every so often they have a new one to make a bit of a splash, I think that's probably the best way to do it, rather than having to find a new one every week and scraping the barrel.



The 1986 one is a bit interesting because you can clearly hear the audience singing along to Reet Petite and then there's a back reference to it afterwards, with the audience in shot, so seemingly it was like that on the day - but they didn't change the intro into it so it's a bit clunky. I seem to remember reading that 1986 was filmed on Monday 21st, with the chart revealed the next day (the last Christmas it was revealed on a Tuesday) so presumably they would have had a heads-up as to potential runners and riders, and filmed another one with the full Caravan of Love video.

Not that we saw it, but Christmas 1987 was a very strange Christmas show that included the current Top 40 and Johnny Hates Jazz performing Turn Back The Clock as a non-mover at number fifteen. I remember reading Boy George was supposed to be on it to perform Everything I Own but there was some kind of argument and he didn't, so maybe they did that as a last resort. And of course if they ever did show it on BBC4, we found out last year there were two versions of that - although billed as running from 2.05-3pm on Christmas Day, it was actually only 45 minutes from 2.15, and there's a long version which includes two videos from the Very Special Christmas LP. In the Radio Times the start time is billed as approximate because the church service earlier, attended by the Royals, could have overrun, so presumably they did two versions with some easily removable ballast in case it did, which it did.



The last Thursday one was back in June, and I remember Nicky Campbell called it "the last Thursday Top of the Pops for a while". It was sold as being only for the summer to get out of the way of summer sport, though in fact there was only one Thursday that year where there was sport that wasn't also on the Friday, a Euro 96 match in the first week, so it could have stayed there no problem. Clearly they just wanted to try out a new slot.

The first Friday episode in June was presented by Mark Owen, and there were a few changes that week - a couple of acts did two records in the first few shows, Paul Weller in the first one and also The Sex Pistols a week or two later, and there was a competition for a few weeks where the prize was to go to the venue of one of their satellite performances.

The first episode on Friday opposite Corrie in September was indeed hosted by Julia Carling. That was also the time the Saturday repeat began, with Ric Blaxill saying if you combined the showings the ratings were about the same as they had been, though I remember a piece in The Guardian saying the music industry was very concerned about the new slot and weren't sure they'd be able to be as supportive of it if the ratings went down a lot there. Initially it was 35 minutes long at 7.25 following The Muppets, with the extra time filled by an archive clip. When The Muppets ended, I assumed The Simpsons would take that slot, but they didn't, and Pops moved back to half an hour at 7.30.

There's a rather unfortunate moment in one of the April 96 episodes hosted by Andi Peters, where he links out of an exclusive Manic Street Preachers performance saying "it's like Thursdays were made for this show", or words to that effect!

Peters also apparently did a 1994 edition, and if we end up seeing both on BBC4 it will be strange watching them in retrospect with the knowledge that he was the person who killed the show off for good.

Not only did he do a 94 edition, but I think his edition was the first to use the "filmstrip" top 10 countdown animation.

Going back to the Cuban Boys for a moment again, I'm sure remember a tweet from Ricardo Autobahn saying that they planned to bring John Peel along to their TOTP performance, where he would sit in a rocking chair on stage while they surrounded him and mimed their song, but he couldn't make it in the end - a shame, as it probably would've been featured on the main show if that had actually happened.

Doesn't seem like the easiest song to mime to 🤣

Unsurprising that their performance wasn't shown really - as much as it was a nice send-up visually with the costumes and cobwebs across their keyboards, there of course just isn't much going on:

Used to laugh out loud at the "Hey you, you take those pants off" line. I assume it's a sample from somewhere... like most of the track.