Bruno Brookes:
“Good evening. Hello. Welcome to Europe's number one TV pop show. This is Top
of the Pops and here's Adrian John.”
Adrian John:
“Thanks Bruno, yes. Here we are kicking off with Joyce Sims at number twenty
four with Walk Away.”
[24] JOYCE
SIMS: walk away. Quién
es Adrian John? He looks like someone doing a funny spoof of a Top of the
Pops host. Could it be David Copperfield, promoting Coppers & Co?
No. Adrian John is the Radio 1 DJ you got when the Roadshow visited Ellesmere
Port. He's the host of The Early Show on Radio 1. It starts extremely
early, 5.30am to be exact. Let's hope he's not sticking around after recording
finishes or he'll have a rough start to the day tomorrow.
All those early
starts haven't done much for his television profile. BBC Genome records; Top
of the Pops 29/12/1983; two episodes of quiz Names and Games, “Presented
by Lennie Bennett... Sixteen show-business stars compete in games to win money
for their nominated charities. The winning team will receive the highly coveted
Butlins Trophy.” 25/08/1986 with a repeat on 24/12/1986; and this episode of Top
of the Pops* Adrian John is presumably chancing his arm at joining the Top
of the Pops roster now that Paul Ciani is the new broom in town. Or maybe
he just fancied getting out and seeing West London by daylight.
Speaking of Mr
New Broom Ciani, it's clear he now regards Quantel effects as part of the
normal presentation process, unlike Michael Hurll who kept them for cutting
between songs and programme segments. Paul Ciani has been sneaking them in as
part of the presentation of electronic and dance tracks but observe the way the
screen splits into quarters that spin away as Joyce Sims sings. It adds visual
punctuation to the beat of the song. Quantel effects during performances are
here to stay.
[10] NEW
ORDER: blue monday 1988.
On video. The first
single I brought. Unfortunately the second single I brought was The Twist, by
The Fat Boys and Chubby Checker.
TOP 40 FROM
40 TO 31
[29] MAGNUM: start talking love. Or “Sweet Talking Love,” if you are Adrian John. For reasons which are never explored Bruno Brookes and Adrian John are wearing matching blazers. It makes the pair look perilously close to Smashie & Nicey, and does make me wonder if Harry Enfield was taking notes when he tuned in tonight.
TOP 40
BREAKERS: [no 17 HARRY
ENFIELD loadsamoney]; [no 30 THE ADVENTURES broken land]; [no 22 NARADA
divine emotions]; [no 18 PRINCE alphabet street].
TOP 40 FROM
30 TO 11
[26] THE
CHRISTIANS: born again.
I don't understand why the keyboard player feels the need to bend double over
his keyboard each time he plays the riff. Is it not set high enough?
More Quantel is
used to add visual interest during the lengthy introduction. The output from
two separate cameras is shrunk into boxes which get gently spun around the
screen. Has the Quantel box been upgraded? This is the kind of electronic trick
which became standard but I don't recall seeing it before.
[25]
PRIMITIVES: out of reach. The
Primitives are tucked away on a stage which looks smaller than normal because
of the the two two-by-two banks of monitors put in behind them.
TOP 10. Is that really a picture of New Order?
[1]
S-EXPRESS: theme from s-express. Back
in the studio for their third week at Number One.
New Quantel
effect. The box has clearly been upgraded. Observe the way the picture does a
loop-the-loop while leaving a sort of comet trail effect behind. This is a much
better staged performance than last time, 21/04/1988, with less sweeping crane
shots and more hand held camera work. Good to see Paul Ciani is taking my
advice.
[15] STAR
TURN ON 45 PINTS: pump up the bitter. Mike
Read and Simon Mayo next week. Top of the Pops closes with the video for
a northern working men's club themed spoof of Pump Up the Volume. It's exactly
as bad as you'd expect from that description.
That photo of New Order in the chart rundown is of course several months out of date by this point in 1988 - it was taken for publicity of their previous single, 'Touched by the Hand of God'. They parodied glam metal bands in its promo video, which sadly didn't get any play on TOTP during late 1987, despite reaching #20 in the charts here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9M_bqIB6EU
Slight spoiler perhaps, but IIRC the photo is later replaced by an even less representative one of just the dog from the promo video for 'Blue Monday '88' (!).