It's Monday! And it's practically Christmas as well. We watched
Girls Aloud's
Christmas-Mania on Saturday night and it certainly helped us get into the festive spirit. Well, it drove us to drink at any rate, which is much the same thing. Our favourite part was probably when Cheryl declared that "Everyone just loves Christmas", in a tone of voice which suggested that to her even the thought of the yuletide season finds her reaching for an overdose of sleeping pills. Still, they did do their covers of
Jingle Bell Rock and
I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday and wore some lovely dresses, so it would be churlish to complain, though we are generally quite churlish when you get right down to it. Anyway, to other matters of the pop television variety and let's have a look at what we learned from this week's
Top of the Pops:-
- "Be warned", said the announcer before the show began, "This show contains repetitive flashing lights", despite the fact that a more useful warning would have been: "Beware, this show contains a performance by Westlife."
- Fearne Cotton's scary uncle this week was Justin Lee Collins, a man labouring under the delusion that having an unusual accent means that he is in some way actually funny.
- McFly, at number 9 with Ultraviolet, really want to be the Beatles, don't they? We look forward to their acrimonious split, one of them getting shot, another developing an unhealthy interest in cartoon frogs, and Harry voicing Thomas the Tank Engine.
- We bet The Choirboys get bullied at school. And if they don't, they really, really should.
- Their arms must have been stapled to their sides, and their feet nailed to the floor, as they made not a single movement throughout the entire performance.
- Hard-Fi's Cash Machine heralds the much anticipated return of the Melodica. Hooray!
- RETRO: Roy Wood doing I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday. They don't write them like that any more. Or grow beards like that either. Unless you're a tramp, that is.
- Girls Aloud are hoping that See The Day gets them the Christmas Number One. We merely hope that Nicola sees the sense and leaves the crimping irons alone next time she does her hair.
- Robbie Williams is back to doing what he does best on Advertising Space, i.e. performing forgettable songs with an entirely undeserved arrogance.
- When You Tell Me That You Love Me, the new Westlife single, features Diana Ross. It's hard to know who should be most embarrassed by having to collaborate with the other.
- While Nizlopi's JCB Song may be the sort of embarrassment which would get normally get booed off even if they performed it at an open mic night in front of a partisan crowd, and serves mainly to demonstrate conclusively that people's taste in music seems to entirely vanish the minute someone sprays fake snow on to the windows of their nearest High Street music retailer, it has kept Westlife off of the number one spot, so it can't be all bad.
- Fearne and Justin stood outside to excitedly inform us that Green Day had recorded lots of songs for TotP when they last appeared on the show and, as some sort of perverse, unwanted Christmas present, they were going to broadcast them all now. On our big long list of really unpleasant ways to spend our time, listening to one Green Day song ranks pretty highly, never mind half an hours worth, so we switched off here, safe in the knowledge that we didn't miss anything good. Which, to be fair, is knowledge that could probably be acquired by switching off each edition right from the start.
music tv totp
