Top of the Pops 21 January 1988

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Gary Davies: “Hello, good evening. Welcome to Top of the Pops. Nice to see you. In the studio tonight we have The Christians, we also have Dollar, and Joyce Sims, and a born again trendy.” Steve Wright: “Thank you!! Thank you very much!! Listen!! We've got Bros to start!! They are so young!! They are hideously young!! When Will I Be Famous!! On Top of the Pops!!”

 [16] BROS: when will i be famous. Steve Wright and Bros in the same edition? The gods must be angry. I don't have anything constructive to say about Bros. I hated them at the time. I don't much like them now. Which I'm sure comes as a terrible disappointment to the trio. Still, I sat through the song on repeat which is more than I can say about Lady In Red.

Speaking of the trio. Viz used to dismiss Bros as “Matt, Luke, and Ken.” I always assumed Ken was the drummer. Watching now I realise Ken played the guitar and Matt or Luke, probably Luke, did the drums. (John- Actually Ken was really Craig, the bass player and the member of Bros who was not a brother. He was called Ken for some obscure reason. I always thought Smash Hits invented that but if it featured here then perhaps it was Steve Wright?)

Bros: Ken looks fed up from the start

Gary Davies continues his early bid for worst dressed man of 1988. Last week it was the vile jumper. This week he's dressed a bit like Tom Baker in Doctor Who. Steve Wright is his usual charmless self. He wobbles through Gary Davis' introduction like a badly maintained Thunderbirds marionette. He's not drunk. It's nutty, you see. Gary Davis refers to him as a “born again trendy”, Simon Mayo did the same last week. Presumably this is a reference to one of Steve Wright's hilarious radio characters like Mr Angry (he's angry), Mr Deaf (he's deaf), and Mr Radio (he's on the radio). Born Again Trendy presumably did trendy things like skateboarding, wearing fingerless gloves and (help me out here Wikipedia) reading A Brief History of Time and playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja  Hero Turtles.

[12] AC / DC: heatseeker. On video.

[8] JOYCE SIMS: come into my life. Joyce performs seated at a grand piano. I can't hear a piano on the music track but it makes for a good visual. (John- Joyce was temporarily glued to a piano for three weeks in a classical music accident)

TOP 40.

[15] THE CHRISTIANS: ideal world. A lovely understated and wistful song. I just wish I had more to say about it. The lighting is very nice. Chris Kempton is credited this week and he lights the stage in shades of blue and purple. One of the lights is fitted with a rotating device (stop me if this gets too technical) which sends moving shafts of light into the studio dry ice, and gives an underwater effect.

TOP 40 BREAKERS: New caption alert. (John- Apologies these don’t look how they’re supposed to when I loaded the post. Imagine arrows and circles pointing leftwards) It scrolls from right to left like the one used two weeks ago for Jellybean. tÅtÅtÅtÅt no 23 t MOTELY CRUE t wild side tÅtÅtÅtÅt; tÅtÅtÅtÅt no 14 t THE BEATMASTERS FEATURING THE COOKIE CREW t rok da house tÅtÅtÅtÅt; tÅtÅtÅtÅt no 20 t BANANARAMA t i can't help it tÅtÅtÅtÅt. That was a lot of effort for little return

[18] DOLLAR: o'lamour. More thunderflashes? Someone in the Visual Effects Workshop has found a whole stash of them -a stockpile resulting from, no doubt, the 18 month postponement of Doctor Who. (John- Or this was why it was postponed) They need to be used post-haste but we'll never know who sets them off because Top of the Pops doesn't credit a Visual Effects Designer any more. It seems unlikely to be Dave Jervis because he's up in the gallery working the Quantel box.

TOP 10.

[1] BELINDA CARLISLE: heaven is a place on earth. A repeat of the Top of the Pops USA performance, from 06/11/1987. No US TOP OF THE POPS caption this week. Top of the Pops USA has a second Belinda Carlisle performance for use, 27/11/1987 but the London team are obviously saving that in case the song stays at Number One for a third week.

[7] THE STRANGLERS: all day and all of the night. Mike Smith and Gary Davies next week. Here's The Stranglers, repeated from 07/01/1988. Producer and Director Paul Ciani gently suggests to Executive Michael Hurll that maybe he doesn't need to spend all this time in the Top of the Pops office.

Performance of the week: The Christians, Ideal World.