Top of the Pops 7 August 1986

Introduced by Chris Arnsby. [19] Status Quo: Red Sky. Mike Smith. “Good evening and welcome to Top of the Pops. We start tonight at number nineteen with Status Quo, spot the new drummer, here is Red Sky.” Who drummer Kenny Jones steps in for Status Quo's own unwell Jeff Rich, probably. It's not easy to keep track of Status Quo's Spinal Tap-esque succession of drummers; John Coghlan, 1962-1982; Pete Kircher, 1982-85; Jeff Rich, 1985-2000; Matt Letley 2000-12; John Coghlan (again), 2012; Leon Cave, 2012- present.

Stanley Appel, a veteran Light Entertainment Producer, also steps in for this week only to cover for Producer/Director Brian Whitehouse. Hopefully he's off on holiday. Stanley Appel keeps the cameras tight on Status Quo so Vision Mixer Carol Abbott bounces mainly between static mid shots and medium close-ups; with regular cutaways to Kenny Jones who gets his own camera. The paucity of sweeping crane shots makes the performance feel claustrophobic and boring, or maybe that's just the song. At the end the camera pulls back until Mike Smith is frame, and then he turns and introduces the next song. It's the first time this move has been seen for a while, it's fallen out of favour presumably because Brian Whitehouse doesn't like it very much.

Brian Whitehouse prefers the opposite approach. He likes the host to introduce the song while the camera sweeps from host to stage during the introduction. Why does he prefer this? It's only supposition but it could be because the director of Top of the Pops has to perform a balancing act. They need to give the programme a flow, and stop it from seeming like a series of disjointed clips edited together, but also make each performance an individual package which could be snipped out and used elsewhere, or repeated*.

Any information which could date the performance, like the chart position or a glimpse of the wrong presenter, needs to be clipped by an editor. Brian Whitehouse's pan at the beginning puts all the material which needs to be edited (the host, the chart position) at the start. An an editor knows that once he's taken out the opening caption he can let the the performance run to the end and the final caption -which is only the band name- will act as a full stop.

When Stanley Appel pans from Status Quo to Mike Smith he introduces a very small mistake because the Status Quo caption appears over Mike Smith. In other words, the end of performance full stop is in the wrong place. If Top of the Pops was to reuse this performance the editor would need to pay attention, end the performance earlier, and add a new caption. If this seems like nitpicking, it's because it is. BBC policy often revolves around these sorts of trivial points and the idea that you avoid future costs -however small- by doing as much work as possible at the time of production. 

Mike Smith. “There's is no truth in the rumour that they've now got their own spaces in the BBC car park. Status Qu-ho there, with Who drummer Kenny Jones 'cause their own drummer's not feeling too well. Here's Boris Gardiner, biggest climber this week.”

[5] Boris Gardiner: I Want To Wake Up With You. On video.

[16] Lulu: Shout. I'm going back to my comment about captions (no, please) and how they mark out the material for an editor to cut. The downside of putting the editable information at the front of a performance is that it affects songs with notable introductions, such as Lulu's yodelling here. The chart information is displayed on a wide shot of the stage while Lulu yodels the word “well.” The captions disappear when Carol Abbott quickly cuts to a close up of Lulu as she launches into the “you make me wanna shout...” line. Any repeat of the footage would begin with the close-up.

In fact the caption disappears with such precision that I wonder if it's only applied to the wide shot. My hazy understanding of television technology is that captions were originally overlaid on top of footage, so a caption would stay on screen even when cutting between different cameras. However here the captions are removed at precisely the same moment as the cut from the wide shot to close-up. It might be that Carol Abbott is extremely quick with her button pressing but it seems more likely that the advanced Quantel technology of the eighties allows captions to be overlaid on footage from just one camera, rather than all of them.

Stanley Appel worked on Lulu's eponymous 1975 BBC1 series. They also worked together in 1984 when Appel produced a grim one off called The Main Attraction. “The very best in sparkling Saturday-night entertainment,” featuring “the unique comedy of Norman Collier*,” “the outrageous humour of 'Chase me, chase me' Duncan Norvelle,” and Lulu as a special guest star, to give your ribs a chance to stop aching.

Top 40 Charts: Brace yourselves. Anyone Can Fall In Love, Anita Dobson, [28]. 1986 isn't done with the novelty singles yet.

[11] The Smiths: Panic. On video, but video that looks radically different to the Top 40 Breaker clip from last week. This video shows the band performing Panic, overlaid on a background of black and white film. The Breaker's footage was just the black and white film. Evidentially someone decided the official video needed more Smiths. The “hang the DJ,” refrain is played out in full.

Top 40 Breakers. [34] Patti La Belle, Oh People; [31] Phil Fearon, I Can Prove It; [23] Lionel Richie, Dancing On The Ceiling. “And here it is! A world exclusive for Top of the Pops,” says Mike Smith. You'd think they'd make something more of their world exclusive than a 45 second clip -featuring 20 seconds of ceiling dancing.

[2] Sinitta: So Macho. Sinitta's limp-wrist gesture on the “boy who thinks he's a girl,” line can be problematised. She's on the Beelzebub stage which, for a change, doesn't have it's pentagrams covered by waterfalls of dry ice. Incidentally, to my embarrassment I've been mistyping Beelzebub as Beezlebub for the last couple of weeks. (John- I noticed that. I assumed you were referring to the well known Seventies magician Beezlebub who famously made himself disappear and was never able to find himself again.) This is my most embarrassing misspelling since I persistently referred to late-seventies rock band Gillan, as Gillian. I'll do my best to honour his Satanic Majesty by typing his name properly in future.

[1] Chris De Burgh: Lady In Red. No it isn't.

[12] Gwen Guthrie: Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent. “Next week Top of the Pops is presented by Radio One's answer to The Refrigerator, Simon Bates,” says Mike Smith in an unflattering comparison for the then famous American Football player.

What will be the background to the credits. Could it be a blurry close-up of some blue and purple neon scenery? It surely is.

Performance of the Week: Sinitta: So Macho

* Not that Top of the Pops does many repeats these days.

** Chicken impression and broken microphone. If you're thinking of the “fockers” gag, that was Stan Boardman.