It's Monday! And Last night Top of the Pops moved to it's new home on BBC 2 where, up in our neck of the woods anyway, it's sandwiched between rubbish Scottish soap, River City, and occasionally decent, but generally rubbish sitcom, Malcom in the Middle. Truly the BBC really do see it as the jewel in their televisual crown. And by 'jewel' we mean 'diamond'. And by 'diamond' we mean 'carbon'. And by 'carbon' we mean 'coal'. And by 'coal' we mean 'dog shit'. Still, let's see what we learnt from this week's show:-
- The lovely Fearne Cotton isn't trusted to present the show by herself, what with her bein a girl and all, so prone to slight skittishness, so each week she will be joined by a guest presenter to keep her in check. This week Phill Jupitus takes on the task of counteracting Fearne's enthusiasm with a mix of cynicism and a general air of wishing he was somewhere else.
- Inaya Day only got to number 9. Boo!
- As the show's now on BBC 2, it seems we have to endure the most annoying part of the old TotP2 show, apart from Steve Wright's voiceovers that is: irritating and obvious facts running across the bottom of the screen.
- Proving that being on the more 'mature' channel doesn't mean they're going to blunt their cutting edge, next on the line-up is, umm, Paul Weller.
- To be fair, From the Floorboards Up isn't too bad a song, especially when you consider the fact that it's got the drag factor of it being a Paul Weller song.
- In a "It's cheaper than actually booking acts" kinda way, they're now using archive performances to fill up the airtime. First up is Take That with It Only Takes a Minute!
- Ah, they don't make them like that any more. Well, not successfully anyway. Sorry, V.
- Fearne is obsessed with telling us that we'll seeing the chart on TV for the first time. Presumably she is unaware of the concept of teletext.
- The album chart run down now has a 'hilarious' voice over.
- Charlotte Church's choice of pedal pushers for her performance of Crazy Chick were somewhat ill advised.
- In what seemed like a flashback to the days of Movies, Games and Videos, the cast of the new Fantastic Four movie appeared for no reason other than to plug the new Fantastic Four movie. Can someone please tell us under which of the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain this feature came under?
- Anastasia and Ben Moody from Evanessence, the sort of coupling which only appears in our worst nightmares, are doing the theme song, Everything Burns, for the Fantastic Four movie. You have three guesses as to what it sounds like. And the first two don't count.
- More retroness, this time from Madness with Driving in my Car. Madness have, in their time, done some good songs, Michael Caine, Our House, Wings of a Dove, for example. This wasn't one of them.
- Hayseed Dixie, with their cover of Outkast's Roses, manage the impressive feat of going from vaguely amusing to intensely irritating in the space of one song.
- Banarama's new single, Move in my Direction features nice, bored, slightly out of tune - in a good way - vocals, but overall it's a bit too generic and not the killer comeback we could have hoped for. Oh well, perhaps it's a grower.
- James Blunt is at number one with Beautiful. Suddenly the prospect of a Crazy Frog, Tupac and Elton John collaboration seems really appealing.
music totp tv
