HURRAH, it's back on our television sets.
Everyone’s favourite music chart show, Top Of The Pops, is returning to the BBC. But before you get your hopes up, it’s not a new series of the show. Instead, BBC 4 will be running vintage repeats dating back 35 years – starting on Thursday (with a four-hour appetiser screened last night). What an excellent chance to get all nostalgic over old tunes and snicker at the sartorial style of has-been pop stars. Viewers of a certain age – heck, nearly every age – will have fond memories of the show. Whether it’s a young Boy George shaking his braids to Karma Chameleon in the mid 1980s, David Bowie performing Starman, or a Nirvana forgetting their own lyrics, we all have iconic moments we remember from sitting in front of the telly.
And these repeats come at a poignant time – it has just been announced that Johnny Pearson, the best-known silhouette in British pop, has died. He was leader of the Top of the Pops orchestra and the man on the stool in the logo at the end of the programme.
The repeated episodes will start at historically the same time: April 1976, airing week by week in its now defunct time slot of 7.30pm. According to the BBC, this experiment in nostalgia will run for at least a year and, depending on their popularity, maybe longer. Here’s hoping.
The show actually began on New Year’s Day 1964, changing our musical lives forever as a cigar-smoking, tracksuit-wearing Jimmy Savile burst on to our black and white TV boxes. (The reason the BBC isn’t airing an episode from that date is due to the sketchy nature of their archive.)
The format of each show was the same: highlights of the week’s top acts, as well as a run down of the singles chart. During its heyday in the 1970s, it attracted over 15 million viewers. The show often featured choreographed dance troupes, the most famous of which were Pan’s People (pictured above).
So what can we expect from April 1976? For the first week of the month, the number one single was Brotherhood of Man’s Save Your Kisses For Me, quickly followed by an Abba classic: Fernando. Before the summer’s over, we’ll have had a little Elton John and Kiki Dee belting it out to Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and more of our Swedish song-gods with Dancing Queen.
In the 1970s, colour took command, acting as a welcome antidote to the turbulent strike situations around the country. In the 1980s, it was all about the style – or lack of. And come the 1990s, faceless dance music took hold but Britpop edged its way in, changing our country’s music forever with Take That, the Spice Girls, Oasis and Blur. After many years – and more than one rebranding – the TOTP of the noughties had a nomadic existence of changing time slots and was affected by the emergence of download sales. Its last episode aired on our screen on July 30 2006, ending an incredible 42-year run, with the now-knighted Sir Jimmy Savile making a final guest appearance to round off the show’s history nicely.
.... Top of the Pops
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