Top of the Pops

This Thursday's episode will be the first (brief) appearance of Simon Mayo, where, as he pointed out in the Story of 1986, he botches his introduction to the Pet Shop Boys by looking at them rather than the camera. He doesn't properly present his first episode till October though. I notice he never presented with Mike Smith even though there was an 18 month overlap between them, I wonder why that was.

Also mentioning how Mark Goodier did the chart voiceover in the Cowey era, he'd only presented his final episode a few months earlier, so it must have been odd for him to be back on the show so soon, and every week.

Could be something as daft as they didn't want two fairly similar looking presenters alongside each other...

At least it means we'll (hopefully) not lose any of his episodes on BBC4. As long as no issues emerge with any of his other 1988/89 co-presenters.

The 1998 logo looks virtually the same as the 1966 logo, though I imagine it's intentional. I remember thinking it looked very old fashioned at the time, though it's dated a lot less now than I imagine a more stylised/modern logo would have.

Very strange things going on in the TV listings right now- not just on the BBC website, but other listings too (including Digiguide and the Virgin EPG), showing the 3/4/86 episode both this Friday and next Thursday. I can't see them showing the episode twice, so it must either be a mistake (but as it's made it to numerous listings, I'm not so sure), or they're thinking it might not get shown on Friday (overrunning Prom possibly?) so are scheduling it for next week just in case.

Is that what it's meant to be? I thought it was an aerial. It is a TV show after all.

It looks like a misshapen guitar to me

There was a model of the logo on the set too up on a gantry, until early 1994 anyway, it seemed to vanish not long after Blaxill took over.

Edit: that's strange, the post I was replying too seems to have gone...

That was my post.

Seconds after I'd posted it, I found that I actually wasn't 100% happy with what I had typed in it, and in the heat of the moment decided to delete it altogether and replace it with a similar post that I *would* be 100% happy with - forgetting that it's very possible for posts to be replied to almost instantaneously, no matter how happy one is with them...

Should have had a little bit more faith in myself, I guess.

Anyway, what I *did* say in this post was that the 1991 logo must have been a real model shot on camera and then keyed in to the opening and closing sequences (looking far too sophisticated for early '90s computer generation), and that a similar model was used in the Top 10 countdown until February 1994.

Assuming that they were indeed real models, is it possible that the model of the logo on the set - seen here beside Dortie and Franklin on the first episode with the look - was the exact same model used in the opening and closing sequences? Ugly it may have been, but no doubt the time and effort taken to put this model together were significant.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2wlrbqg.jpg

Just wait till we find our Tony Dortie didn't sign the form
(joke...I hope...)