Top of the Pops 4 April 1991

 Words: Chris Arnsby

 Gary Davies: “Hello. Very good evening to you. We are all live tonight from Television Centre. We’re in stereo on Radio 1FM. In the studio we’ve got The Mock Turtles, Fergeal Sharkey, and N-joi, but first we start off with a song at number thirty in the charts. It’s called Caravan, Inspiral Carpets.”

 [30] INSPIRAL CARPETS: CARAVAN. There’s an odd detail on the VT Countdown clock at the start of this episode, a note that reads “P AS B” which stands for Programme AS Broadcast. I’m probably teaching everyone who reads this to suck eggs* but this note is there because this is a live edition. No time for edits. Cross your fingers and hope everyone behaves themselves.

A few weeks ago Anthea Turner hosted a live show, 21/03/1991, and I went back to see if this P AS B note was also on that VT Clock. Unfortunately, we’ll never know because whoever digitised the episodes got confused and edited the 11/04/1991 VT Clock onto the start of the show, as it was also hosted by Anthea Turner.

*The secret, is to put them in your mouth.

[22] THE SIMPSONS: DEEP DEEP TROUBLE. Promo VT. A guy standing behind Gary Davis keeps pulling silly faces during the link into N-Joi. I think he also turns up in the audience during N-Joi’s performance facing the camera rather than the band.

[19] N-JOI: ANTHEM. I really liked (see how I skilfully avoid using the word enjoy) N-Joi’s performance on the 28/02/1991 show. It was fast and frenetic and well edited. This one is pretty good but it feels dialled back. It’s possibly less ambitious because this is a live show and there’s no chance for retakes if something goes terribly wrong. As it is, there are several moment when the picture judders as the handheld camera operators clunk into keyboards. The most worrying judder comes when a handheld camera moves in to pan up the body of the Lycra clad Dancing Man (imagine the Raston Warrior Robot from The Five Doctors at a rave*). The camera moves in, the picture judders, and then the camera moves back. It appears to have bounced off the Dancing Man. Let’s hope it was his knee rather than his groinal bulge. (A quick editorial note to David Lock, don’t put the uplights there again please. The chiaroscuro was unnerving.)

CHARTS FROM 39 TO 11. While introducing the charts, Gary Davies uses the phrase “happening tunes.” This is the worst thing he has ever done.

There’s an odd kind of heat haze effect on some of the chart captions. You can see it clearly on the slide for [36] MONIE LOVE/ADEVA, Ring My Bell. It looks like a Moiré pattern, the wavy interference you would see on TV if someone was wearing a chequered pattern. It’s not present on every slide and I can’t work out if this was how the programme went out, or if this is an artefact introduced by the digitisation. A quick check shows it was present on other chart countdowns in the past. Evidentially it was particularly bad this week for me to notice.

[10] THE WATERBOYS: THE WHOLE OF THE MOON. Promo VT. (John- This was a re-release that would peak at number 3 after only reaching number 26 in 1985. How it never reached number one is a chart mystery as its surely one of the best songs ever!)

[33] THE MOCK TURTLES: CAN YOU DIG IT? Triangle Stage news update. The big perspex X and the Christmas Tree thing are both still AWOL.

[21] C & C MUSIC FACTORY/FREEDOM WILLIAMS: HERE WE GO. Promo VT.

[26] BLACK BOX: STRIKE IT UP. Promo VT.

[12] FEARGAL SHARKEY: I’VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU. Feargal Sharkey’s attempt at a beard has not progressed since he was on the 21/03/1991 edition. Once again the Top of the Pops audience are confounded by the idea of swaying their arms in time to the music.

TOP 10

[1] CHESNEY HAWKES: THE ONE AND ONLY. BBC VT. A repeat of his performance from last week, 28/03/1991.

[35] MIKE & THE MECHANICS: WORD OF MOUTH. Promo VT. Anthea Turner next week. Idiot watch, that bloke’s back again standing right behind Gary David. He’s mostly blocked from the camera and all you can see is his arm.

 

Countdown to Year Zero revamp: 27

Ratings: The Easter boost has gone. Top of the Pops slips out of the Top 30 again, meaning the programme rated less than the 7.08 million who watched Grandstand. Annoyingly there were no ratings printed in The Stage for the equivalent week in 1990.

 Performance of the week:  N-Joi, Anthem.

*(John- For non Doctor Who fans out there, the Raston robot was a humanoid robot played by a man encased in a silver body stocking but he could do cool things like zap Cybermen.)