Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

When I was growing up, assuming that I did manage to climb to the top of that particular mountain, it was presumed that what children wanted on television in the way of drama was escapist fodder. Thus my memories are full of daring-do on the high seas, in shows such as Freewheelers, or moderately scary outer-space malarkey on Saturday teatimes during the late Sixties, in the company of Patrick Troughton and chums! Doctor Who was aimed at intelligent 12-year-olds, although I was a little younger when Pat was the Doc, but designed for all the family to enjoy. The lovelies that accompanied our hero were always suitably attired… yes, they wore miniskirts and, thus, showed a bit of leg but it never really went beyond that. If you wanted to see Wendy Padbury having sex, you wouldn’t see her engaged in the deed on either of the aforementioned series. You’d have to stay up late and catch her in Blood On Satan’s Claw for that kind of thing! Even when you got a bit older, sex was never really a staple for teenage consumption. The closest television was ever going to get to linking the two would be Marc Bolan and T.Rex encouraging us to Get It On, on Top Of The Pops in 1971. The girls dancing amongst the studio audience weren’t dressed to ever suggest that that prospect was an actual possibility.

So, here we are, 40 years on, and your offspring are more likely to want to watch Hollyoaks or Skins than an episode of Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s not hip to enjoy a rollicking good yarn with the faint hint of a moral message in these enlightened times. We’ve got to concern ourselves with the issues of the day and wallow in all things problematical. Is Johnny finally coming out of the closet or has he just been in the bathroom an awfully long time?! Is Jenny on the pill and having underage sex? Probably, considering how much mascara she has on, not to mention the boob spillage from her low-cut tops! It isn’t just 16-year-old girls that want to watch Skins. If they have a younger sister, the sibling won’t want to be left out. They’ll want to see it too, even though I presume it’s the older lasses who are the target audience. The lads will be tuning in to see how much flesh is on display, rather than to learn about safe sex. Childhood no longer exists anymore. It’s been gradually eroded away by commercial interests, despite self-appointed moral guardians doing their level best to stop anyone, of any age, from being remotely titillated by anything they see on the box. Alf Garnet once complained he couldn’t find the pornography Mary Whitehouse was fussing over… and he’d looked on every channel!

Are you going to the party?

Along with reruns of the 45-year-old Batman series, one of the most enjoyable things on television, at the moment, is BBC Four’s repeats of 35-year-old episodes of Top Of The Pops. Yes, most of it is absolute tosh but each instalment usually contains a gem or two. And I’m not talking about the beautiful Babs - dunno what her name is! This week’s programme opened with Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel performing George Harrison’s Here Comes The Sun from their Love’s A Prima Donna album. Great to see the band again, especially Duncan Mackay on keyboards whom I was lucky enough to meet in Bristol after a 10cc gig. It was the week they were No. 1 with Dreadlock Holiday. Even though not enough rock fans know his name, Duncan has been to the top spot on no less than three occasions, the other two being Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me), by the aforementioned Rebels, and on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Also playing with Steve were the incomparable George Ford on bass, guitarist Jim Cregan, later to join Rod Stewart and more recently Katie Melua, and Stuart Eliot on drums, a regular fixture on the early Kate Bush albums.

This week’s edition of Top Of The Pops: 1976 ended with the brand new number one having been on the chart for three weeks according to DJ presenter Dave Lee Travis. Elton John and Kiki Dee’s duet Don’t Go Breaking My Heart also happened to be the first time Reg reached the top. Can’t claim to have met Mr. Dwight but I did spend a whole day once chatting to the lovely Miss Dee. In the late Seventies, and on-and-off throughout the Eighties, I worked in a record store and she paid us a visit. All our customers seemed too shy to come up and talk to her so we got chatting about the record industry. Pleasant lady and, although Elton is good fun in the recorded performance, Kiki sings her part better despite the bespectacled one being the more famous of the two. The pair displaced a certain Greek singer, perhaps now more notorious for being a favourite of Alison Steadman’s character Beverley in Abigail’s Party! I mentioned Doomwatch and Holby City actor Robert Powell’s wife Babs earlier but, by this time, regular dance troupe Pan’s People had been replaced by Ruby Flipper, still choreographed by the recently deceased Flick Colby however. If my memory serves me well, the mix of girls and boys would soon revert to girls only with Legs And Co.

During the course of Wednesday’s TOTP, we were also treated to another showing of the original performance (of two) of The Boston Tea Party by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. In 1975 I bought their album Tomorrow Belongs To Me as well as their live single Delilah, the same song previously recorded by Tom Jones but here given the full rock treatment. Captain Sensible, of comedy punk outfit The Damned, would later ape this when he recorded Happy Talk from the musical South Pacific. The late Alex’s appearances on these repeats has led to a resurgence of interest for me in the music of SAHB. In earlier editions, Bryan Ferry’s been on a couple of times performing Let’s Stick Together with guitar legend Chris Spedding, aided-and-abetted in the whooping department by Texan beauty Jerry Hall, better known to Roxy Music fans as Prairie Rose and the cover girl of their fifth album Siren. Best of all though was the absolute joy of seeing the original 10cc performing I’m Mandy, Fly Me from their masterpiece How Dare You! Shot a little like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video, but sadly nowhere near as commercially successful, Lol Crème, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman performed to perfection. Again, and apologies for being such a name dropper, I was lucky enough to meet the latter two at the same Colston Hall concert as Duncan Mackay. The colleague with whom I went told the band we’d hyped Dreadlock Holiday to number one. I could’ve shot him - with Rubber Bullets!

Television in Trash Shocker

Next Wednesday, on ITV2, the younger Minogue sibling gets her own three-part fly-on-the-wall television series, “Dannii Minogue: Style Queen”.

Why?

What particular talents does Miss Minogue junior bring to enhance our viewing pleasure? Alright, we can all think of a couple… and she hasn’t been slow to exploit them. Let’s not beat about her bush here, we’re talking breasts. Or, as The Stranglers once so eloquently put it, “What was the size of her tits?”!

Well, I’m not sure how big Dannii’s boobies are and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really care. They’re decently sized, big enough to previously model her own range of underwear and now she’s back to promote her new fashion range… and new range of perfume… and latest pop record. Yikes, she’s working incredibly hard, it must be exhausting! What with all that, having a baby, and “The X Factor”!!

I’d like to know if Dannii, or any so-called celeb, pays for the air space or is she paid for her time? I sometimes pondered that same question when “artists” appeared on “Top of the Pops” promoting their latest single, including the delightful-looking auburn-haired Minogue. Surely these slots were essentially three-minute commercials.

So, there they were, bouncing up and down, though I don’t remember the names of any of Dannii’s songs! She even admits her music has come in for some criticism, in the past, but doesn’t say whether or not she thinks it is justified. Everyone is always too busy, getting jiggy wit it, to pay any scant attention to something as unimportant as musicality!!

And, getting urgently back to the subject of scanties, I bet Dannii’s designer bra and knickers cost a bob or two even before they reach E-Bay!

Bottom of the Tops!

As I used to work in the record industry, I’m occasionally interested to see how certain records perform sales wise, regardless of musical merit. It’s a curious fact, of the employed system for measuring a disc’s success, that while “Umbrella” by Rihanna topped the charts for ten weeks, back in the summer of last year, the song was pipped to the post of best-selling single of 2007, at the eleventh hour, by Leona Lewis’s bleeding awful “Bleeding Love”, which only held pole position for a mere seven! In that shorter amount of time, the latter managed to outsell the former quite considerably. In fact, it did so very early on, upon consideration of the week-by-week sales figures. If “Single of the Year” was down to number of weeks as “Top of the Pops”, or even number of weeks on the chart, then Rihanna’s song would’ve won hands down as it has certainly been the more consistent of the pair, regardless of the fact that it was released earlier. It’s still been a golden shower for Rihanna!

That was Number One, that was "Top of the Pops"

After a little over 42 and a half years the BBC's flagship pop programme, "Top of the Pops", is to finish at the end of July. "Another One Bites the Dust", to quote Freddie Mercury. It's a brilliant lifespan for a television show, of course, but, having got this far, one might've been forgiven for thinking it would go on forever. I always believed "Doctor Who" was a permanent fixture too. It lasted 26 years before being abandoned to collect dust in archive storage. Now the flagship SF series has been resurrected, after 16 years in the wilderness, so there is no reason why the same thing shouldn't happen to "Top of the Pops", one day. After all, like "Doctor Who", it is a brand name and, after a suitable period, I'm sure the powers that Beeb will want to capitalise on it!

Also, again in a similar fashion to "Doctor Who", the producers started tinkering with the programme's format. "Top of the Pops" was originally intended to feature only singles going up the chart, the top twenty not the top forty, and, unless you were at number one, no record would be played on consecutive weeks. It didn't feature the album chart although there was a time when they started playing new releases, before they charted, if it was a dead cert the artist in question would be a new entry the following week.

Originally broadcast on Wednesday, January 1st, 1964, "Top of the Pops" became better established as part of early evening television on Thursday nights and there was a time, in the mid-Seventies, when I was torn between watching it and the competition of "Space:1999" on ITV, just as I had been forced to choose between "Doctor Who" and "UFO" earlier the same decade. Some say that when "Top of the Pops" was later moved to Friday nights it spelt the beginning of the end, just as the same thing had been said about "Doctor Who" when moved from Saturday to weeknights. The pop show's fate was sealed when moved to Sunday nights on BBC2.

The original presenter was Jimmy Savile and you can see, in the top of the picture, that he actually used to spin the records. Bottom right is a bare-footed Sandie Shaw who was at number 1 that particular week. Above her, you can see the bottom of the top twenty chart board and can just make out that "Crying in the Chapel" by Elvis Presley was at number 20. In the first ever edition, Sir Jimmy, as he is now, introduced The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield no less! Much archive footage has been erased, another thing in common with "Doctor Who", and the only clip of Sandie that still exists from the black and white days, for example, is a rehearsal sequence.

Many presenters followed Jimmy, from the sublime to the ridiculous depending on your point of view. Noel Edmonds was painful while John Peel's sarcasm was refreshing considering some of the awful "acts" he had to introduce. The vacuous nature of the programme's most recent host, Fearne Cotton, so falsely earnest, is a million miles from the fun of Jimmy Savile's approach to the given material. I still remember soul boy Tony Blackburn commenting, on a rare appearance by prog rock band Genesis, that "It takes all sorts", for which, despite not being a fan of them particularly, I've never really forgiven his narrow-mindedness. I've often thought that the "artists" should pay to appear on "Top of the Pops", rather than being paid, considering a slot on the show is no more than advertising the availability of a product!

The programme has produced many memorable moments and the choice of these probably depends, most likely, on one's age! My era was the Seventies and, in particular, the more musically adventurous side of Glam Rock followed by New Wave, the more musically adventurous side of Punk. So, I remember Roxy Music performing "Virginia Plain" in which you can barely see future U2 producer Brian Eno on synthesiser; Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel with their number one hit "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)" in which Steve repeats a verse, by mistake, and acknowledges it during the performance by adding a word - "I know what faith is AGAIN and what it's worth" - and I fondly recall Hugh Cornwell snarling his way through The Stranglers' "No More Heroes". Any more? Loads! But I'll finish with my all-time favourite appearance, on "Top of the Pops", which was "Starman" by David Bowie, featuring the late Mick Ronson, of The Spiders from Mars, on guitar.