It's Monday! And it turns out that the last
proper Top of the Pops was actually last week's show, with last night's episode being little more than an episode of TOTP2 with added live - well, half dead in some cases - presenters. Of course, given that looking forward is a bit tricky when you don't have any future to speak of, their backward looking stance probably isn't that much of a surprise. Anyway join us as we look, for the final time, at what we learnt from last night's
Top of the Pops:-
- Fearne Cotton, live from Love Island, also known as Pointless Peninsula, got the chance to say the final "It's still number one, it's Top of the Pops", which was nice.
- She was wearing a rather rubbish leopard skin headscarf, which was less so.
- The opening titles were a montage of all the previous opening titles from the last 42 years, proving if nothing else that the world of graphic design has come on leaps and bounds since the sixties.
- Ten ex-presenters are stood in a row. Look! It's Jimmy Savile! It's Rufus Hound! It's Dave Lee Travis! It's... Umm, sorry, who are you again?
- Jimmy welcomes us to the show, he also uses his microphone to feel Janice Long's left breast, for reasons which aren't made adequately clear.
- A montage of events from 1964, the year the show began, is broadcast. To the sounds of The Beatles we see shots of gang riots, girls being accused of being of less than sound morals for daring to wear a skirt above the knee and Mary Whitehouse moaning on about some 'awfully disgusting' programme. No wonder people don't remember the sixties, if we'd been around in that sort of world we wouldn't want to remember it either.
- It would have been nice had they opened the show with the same performance which opened the original broadcast. Unfortunately the BBC were a bit rubbish and reasoned that no-one would be likely to ever want to see The Rolling Stones performing I Wanna Be Your Man again and, to be fair, you can see their point.
- Instead they showed us one of their performances from a year or so later, The Last Time - do you see what they've done there? - which demonstrated that even then the band weren't adverse to churning out a lot of forgettable filler with which to fleece their fans.
- Despite the staid nature of the performance, the audience look absolutely terrified, but at least they've all put on their very best jumpers for the night.
- Pat Sharp reckons that the Spice Girls are the female version of the Stones. We're not convinced, though Geri is a dead ringer for Mick Jagger, now that you mention it.
- Their performance of Wannabe is still one of those all time great pop moments which excites every single part of your body that can get excited. Geri seems exciting, Girl Power seems exciting, even Mel C's lame backflips somehow manage to seem exciting.
- Dave Lee Travis, in his rush to get back on telly again, has left the house wearing a snakes & ladders board instead of a waistcoat.
- He introduces the sixties montage by singing a line of Strawberry Fields, going "Yeah!", thrusting his crotch towards Sarah Cawood and finally doing something dubious with his microphone. He probably genuinely wonders why he's not asked to be on telly more often as well.
- 60's Montage
- The Supremes - Baby Love // Once teamed up with The Tweets to form a supergroup called Chicken Supremes.
- The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Loving Feeling // Nine out of ten people who sing this song for Karaoke, can't.
- Stevie Wonder - Uptight // - George W Bush was at a charity event once and noticed Stevie Wonder. He raised a hand to wave at him, but, being a smart man, he swiftly realised the futility of this gesture and lowered his hand. Embarrassed by this faux pas, he turned to his wife and said "God,I hope he never saw that". True story. Worryingly.
- Cliff Richard - All My Love // And with Cliff's lack of bedroom experience, he must have a lot of love to give. Like melons, we understand.
- Bee Gees - Massachusetts // Many bands would consider a song about a mining disaster to be in somewhat poor taste, but not the Bee Gees. Mind you, having seen what they wear in their videos, poor taste is something they're expert in.
- The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire // Arthur is available for parties, though if you have a lot of shellsuit wearing friends you should probably reconsider. Your friends, that is, not just booking Arthur Brown.
- Tom Jones - Delilah // Tom contains so much testosterone that he's been known to make women pregnant just by standing in their general vicinity.
- The Hollies - Sorry Suzanne // And we'd be apologising too if we were in The Hollies
- Rufus Hound and Tony Blackburn shared a slightly awkward scripted moment regarding who has and hasn't appeared on the show as they linked into Jackson 5 performing Rockin' Robin.
- Quite offensively Michael Jackson has blacked up for this performance. Maybe he thought he was appearing on the Black and White Minstrel Show.
- Next up was a montage of some of the presenters the show's had over the years. If you think we've got anything more to say about that subject, you can think again.
- Robbie Williams can pull out the goods when he wants to, y'know, as proven with the excellent version of Let Me Entertain You shown here. It's just a shame that he prefers to go down the route of sub-Elton balladry.
- 70's Montage
- John Lennon - Instant Karma // "We all shine on / Like the moon, and the stars, and the sun". Yes, the man really was worth hailing as a poet, wasn't he?
- Elton John - Your Song // It's a good thing Elton doesn't write his own lyrics as his ego would never let him write a song about someone else.
- The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again // Featuring, lest we forget, convicted sex offender Pete Townsend on bass.
- Rod Stewart - Maggie May // Rod's songs can now be found in the musical Tonight's the Night, the plot of which involves a man who wants to impress a girl and so decides to become like Rod Stewart. We really don't want to know in what sort of world this is a even halfway plausible.
- T.Rex - Get it On // Marc Bolan had many talents. The ability to avoid trees, alas, was not one of them.
- Slade - Cum on Feel the Noize // No matter how many royalties they earned, not one of them ever thought to invest five quid in a dictionary.
- Mud - Tiger Feet // The dance routine for this was probably knocked up in five seconds. This is four seconds longer than it took to write the song.
- Abba - Waterloo // This was written about the most luxurious toilet Benny had ever been in.
- Queen - Killer Queen // Freddie Mercury could occasionally be described as 'flamboyant'.
- The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again // Given the harsh face of Sheila Ferguson it'd probably as long as could decently leave it.
- Status Quo - Down Down // Well, it said Down, Down on the caption at any rate. When it comes to Status Quo the name of the song doesn't really mean that much.
- Bob Marley and the Wailers - Exodus // Due to not spending half our life stoned, we've never really got into Bob Marley.
- Blondie - Denis // Due to a clothing mix-up, Debbie Harry was forced to perform in one of her bandmates shirts and nothing else. She must have been mortified!
- After the montage, and entirely unprompted by anyone, DLT decided to tell an anecdote about playing brush guitar with Brian May on TotP. We say anecdote, it was more the dull ramblings of a man who genuinely has nothing interesting to say whatsoever.
- David Bowie doing Starman, few men can get away with wearing a skintight multicoloured jumpsuit. Babies, yes, but grown adults? No.
- Behind Dave is a young man in a tank top who is clearly watching himself on the monitor. He dances with a concentration that belies the sheer awfulness of his moves. He must cringe with embarrassment every time this clip is shown.
- The nostalgia continues with a glance at the dance troupes the show used to have on when they couldn't be arsed booking any proper acts. The main qualification for joining seemed to be that you were both female and possessed no feelings of shame or self respect whatsoever.
- Beyonce's high octane performance of Crazy in Love is still a supersonic rocket of a live appearance, shooting straight out of the atmosphere and into orbit around planet party. Or something like that, anyway.
- 80's Montage
- Adam and the Ants - Antmusic // If you want to hear what actual any music sounds like, go and stand in an anthill. You might find it a bit scratchy, though.
- Kim Wilde - Kids in America // Woah-oh. Sorry, it's a reflex action.
- Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up // Dear God, no! Sorry, it's a reflex action.
- Spandau Ballet - Chant No.1 // Nowhere near as good as Gold, obviously.
- Human League - Don't You Want Me // Phil Oakey's hair is possibly the world's only example of a sideways mullet.
- Duran Duran - Rio // It's probably best that Rio was the inspiration for this song as "Her name is Thames and she's full of sewage and dead bodies" doesn't quite have the same sorta ring to it.
- Culture Club - Karma Chameleon // We're not quite sure why people found Boy George's gender so confusing. There was a bit of a clue in the name, you know.
- Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas Time? // The follow up single, Are they Even Aware that it's Whitsun, for Christ's sake proved to be less successful.
- Eurythmics - There Must be an Angel // Given their more recent stuff, who'dve thought that Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart might have actually done something worth listening to?
- Kylie and Jason - Especially For You // A duet that would bring a tear to even the coldest stone heart.
- Bros - When Will I Be Famous // This question was answered very quickly, but a more pertinent one to ask would have been "How long will I be famous for?"
- Yazz - The Only Way is Up // One of only seven songs about broken lifts to ever make the charts.
- The frankly horrific sight of Sonny cooing over Cher in their drippy duet, I Got You Babe is next to insult our retinas. The audience, equally as black and whit as the performers, seem similarly unimpressed. Or bored, as it's more accurately known.
- The audience themselves are the stars of the next set of clips, as they demonstrate that there's no-one more self conscious than someone who's dancing while fully aware there's a camera pointing at them.
- Children and Animals - Novelty acts, basically - Montage
- Clive Dunn - Grandad // You'd think he was old enough to know better, wouldn't you?
- The Wombles - The Wombling Song // Like Cerys Matthews, every day, when we wake up, we remember we're a womble.
- Our Kid - You Just Might See Me Cry // We'd never heard this song before, but it seems to be promoting child cruelty so it gets the thumbs up from us.
- The Smurfs - The Smurf Song // If you ever watch The Smurfs, whenever they say the word "Smurf", imagine they're saying "fuck". The programme instantly becomes more entertaining.
- St Winifred's School Choir - There's No-one Quite Like Grandma // Except, possibly, your other grandma.
- The Tweets - Birdie Song - Despite the fact that Tweet will play all her other hits such as Oops (Oh My) live, she has never played this one.
- Keith Harris & Orville - Orville's Song // Orville would probably be able to do a better job of flying if he wasn't being held down by the rectum.
- Aled Jones - Walking in the Air // See! No-one's ever held Aled Jones down by the rectum and he's fully able to go walking in the air.
- The Tweenies - Number One // You know, with a bit more oomph, this could be a really good pop song. Not as good as Do The Lollypop, though.
- Crazy Frog - Axel F // It's the normal frogs we feel sorry for, tainted with the same brush as their more insane brother. And Glenn from Pop!, of course.
- And because we haven't heard it enough this year, military style version or not, here's Gnarls Barkley doing Crazy. Whoopee.
- 90's Montage
- Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do it For You // A claim for which the phrase "No, you shouldn't have. No, really. You shouldn't have" was invented.
- Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit // Oh look! He's not singing the song properly! How subversive. No, wait. Subversive isn't the right word, is it? No... Dull! That's the word we were looking for. How dull!
- Take That ft Lulu - Relight My Fire // During their heyday, firefighters were plagued by fans of the band following them around, waiting for them to extinguish the blaze, before leaping in and promptly setting fire to the building again, believing it's what Mark and Howard would have wanted. They weren't too arsed about what Gary wanted.
- Wet Wet Wet - Love is All Around // And so was Marti Pellow at the time this song was a hit. We'd have preferred just the love on its own to be honest.
- Oasis - Don't Look Back in Anger // While Oasis may not look back in anger, they've certainly never looked forward in their life, preferring instead to look towards the past with an eye on what they can nick.
- Blur - Country House // The winner of the Britpop war between them and Oasis, in as much as there could ever be a winner in such a sorry contest.
- Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity // If you were a bank manager in the nineties, then as far as you were concerned there was no-one cool than Jamiroquai. Not even Lenny Kravitz.
- All Saints - Never Ever // "A few questions that I need to know."? Come on girls, you may have spent more time practicing dance routines than in the classroom but there's really no excuse for such sloppy grammar.
- Janet Jackson - Together Forever // Despite having never really released anything of note or, indeed, anything even halfway memorable, she always seems to crop up. One day we'll understand why.
- Whitney Houston - My Love is Your Love // And her crack pipe is your crack pipe, too.
- Shania Twain - That Don't Impress Me Much // She's only got one leg, you know. Fact!
- Ricky Martin - Livin' La Vida Loca // If you wish to live, like Ricky, the crazy life, why not try dosing yourself up with so much medication you can barely stand, let alone speak, submitting yourself to electroshock therapy, or perhaps getting hold of a large hammer and going on a spree in your local highstreet.
- Prince - Baby Knows // Baby might, but the odds on anyone else remembering this track are somewhat slim.
- From the days when George Michael was straight - well, or at least genuinely believed that everyone was convinced he was - it's Wham! doing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.
- "One delicious old Queen", said Tony, scarily, as he introduced a clip of Madonna performing Like a Virgin.
- She was wearing a neon pink wig, showing that even in those days she still had the sort of dress sense which should really be illegal.
- 00's Montage
- Britney Spears - Oops! I Did It Again // Which was how Britney announced her second pregnancy, letting the world know that she'd lowered herself to sleeping with Kevin Federline at least twice.
- Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head // This song was written about a time when a earwig buried into Kylie's brain and made a nest.
- Justin Timberlake - Like I Love You // We're not sure if he's talking about proper love here or the same sort of love he displays for McDonald's products.
- 50 cent - In Da Club // If you're in 'da' sorta club where Fiddy is likely to be played you too will be drinking Bacardi like it's your birthday, if only so you get so paralytic drunk that you forget you're in a club where they're playing 50 Cent.
- Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne - Changes // The most evil and satanic thing Ozzy's ever been involved with.
- Girls Aloud - Love Machine // Hooray!
- Marilyn Manson - Personal Jesus // You can't tell if it's a man or one of Satan's undead minions these days.
- U2 - Vertigo // Titled after the dizzying feeling Bono gets when he thinks about his perceived position in the global scheme of things.
- Eminem - Like Toy Soldiers // The one where he appeared on a boat and the BBC got all excited, while everyone else just shrugged and failed to see what the fuss was all about.
- McFly - All About You // Cunts, etc.
- Tony Christie - (Is This The Way To) Amarillo // Still as irritating as a heat rash.
- Coldplay - Speed of Sound // Still as dull as someone who bangs on about Fair Trade coffee all the time.
- James Blunt - You're Beautiful // Still a cunt. And also officially the fourth most annoying thing in the world, which is quite fantastic.
- Westlife - You Raise Me Up // And you drag us down to a painful, dark, horrible place.
- Sugababes - Push The Button // Perhaps an ironic reference to the fact that many people preferred to push the button on their remote control whenever Top of the Pops came on their screens. Probably not, though.
- And so, the end is near, and now we face the final countdown. The last ever number one on Top of the Pops is, perhaps disappointingly for the Beeb, Shakira and Hips Don't Lie, which means they have to end on a video, rather than a live performance. Though given that Shakira is all kinds of aceness and the alternative was McFly, we're counting our blessings.
- And then it's over. Jimmy stumbles over the "It's still number one" line, we get a chance to see all the clips we've already seen as the end credits roll and Kool and the Gang's Celebration plays us out. Jimmy walks off the set, he reaches the power switch and turns it off. The studio lights flicker and die and a small part of everyone in the country who's ever loved pop music dies along with them.
- The end.
- :(
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