As I write this, the latest series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! has just concluded with Danny Jones being crowned as the new King of the Jungle and it strikes me that there’s a couple of tie ins between that show and this episode of TOTP. No, nothing to do with McFly who wouldn’t be invented for another eight years nor The Communards whose Reverend Richard Coles came third this year. Neither is there a connection to contestant Tulisa formerly of hip-hop trio N-Dubz who wouldn’t start having hits for a further ten years. However, the first link is really obvious and it’s the show’s opening act who are Ant & Dec. Told you it was obvious! The ever present hosts of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! since the first series in 2002 (apart from they one year when Ant was in rehab and was replaced by Holly Willougby), the diminutive duo were still very much pop stars at this point in their career though that was rapidly approaching its natural end.

“When I Fall In Love” was their eleventh consecutive UK Top 40 hit but there were only two more to come in their original incarnation. Although the title of this one suggests images of Nat King Cole or maybe even Rick Astley (!), thankfully it was nothing to do with that classic 50s hit though maybe it would have been better if it had been as this was absolute garbage. A totally nothing tune but even that chronic lack of substance was too much for Dec’s weedy voice. Meanwhile, Ant’s rap was clearly inserted to give him something to do whilst his pal tried and failed to do the vocal heavy lifting. On the CD single, you had the choice of playing the radio edit with or without the rap though that’s like choosing whether you’d rather eat your left or right arm. Talking of arms, Dec seems to be unsure what to do with his right one during this performance, slashing about wildly with it as if he’s swatting flies. And what was going on with his hair? That mullet bit…was that even real? It looks like a wig that might have been used in a really poor quality Beatles biopic. In short (unlike Dec’s hair), everything about this was a bit naff (exactly like Dec’s hair). I think they made the right decision to knock the pop star thing on the head not long after this.

There’s no Shed Seven connection to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! that I’m aware of but in 1996, the York indie rockers were at the top of their game. Five UK chart hits in one calendar year was quite the achievement – they were literally at the apex of their career which was quite apt given that four of those hits came from an album called “Maximum High”. In fact, two of those singles continued the theme in “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold”. Sadly, “Bully Boy”can’t really be shoehorned in at all whilst “On Standby” and “Chasing Rainbows” not just end the metaphor but invert it.

It’s that last song that concerns us here though. This wasn’t from “A Maximum High” but the lead single from third studio album “Let It Ride” though it was released a good six months before it. So why was that? Well, Rick Witter is on record as having an issue with the release schedule but it’s nothing to do with the gap between the single and album coming out. He believes that if “Chasing Rainbows” had been released in a different week to its actual release date, it might have been a No 1. Does he have a point? On first glance, that seems a stretch for a single that peaked at No 17. However, was he meaning that they should have waited a few weeks until that sales lull after Christmas when traditionally it took much fewer sales to get a single to the top of the charts? I’m thinking Iron Maiden’s “Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter” for example. Well, a quick look at the first chart of 1997 shows the Christmas No 1 was still in pole position but the two highest new entries came at Nos 2 and 3 and from unlikely artists in Tori Amos with that dance remix of “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” and Orbital with their dramatic track “Satan”. There’s no guarantee that Shed Seven would have gone to the top of the pile if they’d released “Chasing Rainbows” in that same week but I’m betting they would have got higher than No 17.

P.S. One of my favourite bands is Embrace and just this week I attended a very intimate Q&A session with lead singer Danny McNamara in which he divulged that when they were starting out, the feedback they got from labels and A&R men was that they didn’t sound enough like Shed Seven. Hmm.

I’m pretty sure that Tina Turner was never a camp mate in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here nor Adina Howard or Warren G who remade her hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It”* in 1996. Despite its No 2 chart peak, this had totally disappeared from my poor, overworked memory. And thank f**k for that because it was a shoddy idea horribly executed. Warren G, of course, had scored a major hit two years prior to this with the track “Regulate” whilst Adina had bagged herself a minor UK hit the previous year with “Freak Like Me” which the Sugababes would take to No 1 seven years later as part of a mash up with Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?”.

*Breaking news: Before Tina Turner was offered the track, it was recorded by Bucks Fizz but shelved after Tina’s version was a hit. Is there a connection between the 1981 Eurovision winners and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!? Surely Cheryl Baker has been on it, she’s been on everything else.

This version of Tina’s 1984 UK No 3 and US No 1 hit was nothing like as stunning as the Sugababes’ offering. It just seems like a cynically constructed vehicle for Warren G much as he had done with “Regulate” which was built around Michael McDonald’s yacht rock classic “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)”. This time though, it felt like a complete cut and paste exercise with Adina doing a passable Tina impression before Warren would come barging in with his rapping. It was part of the soundtrack to a film called Police Story 3: Supercop starring Jackie Chan hence his featuring in the video. Said soundtrack includes a version of Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” as covered by Tom Jones. If that sounds horrendous then I can assure you that it absolutely is…

If “Star” was Bryan Adams’ shot at securing a Christmas No 1, he was wildly off target. Maybe he thought having the word ‘star’ in the title would tip the seasonal scales in his direction. What he should have done was write a half decent song instead of this awful dirge. I think I used that word to describe his last single “Let’s Make A Night To Remember” as well. It was all a bit of a disappointment after his “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” track had spearheaded the campaign for his “18 Til I Die” album in fine form.

The single released after this was yet another love song, this time a duet with Barbara Streisand from the film The Mirror Has Two Faces called “I Finally Found Someone” which was equally as tedious. Following that, the title track from “18 Till I Die” was was released and was an uptempo rocker which was perfectly serviceable so it seemed to me that Bry was in a bit of a slump when it came to ballads around this time. If he wanted a Christmas hit, he could always have rereleased this which originally a single way back in 1985 before it got used in the 2022 film Violent Night.

Now, I’m confident that neither Bryan Adams nor Barbara Streisand have been on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! (can you imagine the fee they’d have to pay Babs to appear!) but how about next year the programme makers take a left field punt on Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker? Not only is he the lead singer of a band (albeit one that stopped having hits a quarter of a century ago) but his family background is acting royalty being the son of Haley Mills (Whistle Down The Wind, The Parent Trap etc) and the grandson of Sir John Mills (Ice Cold In Alex, Ryan’s Daughter etc and indeed etc). OK, it might be a bit of a stretch to assume that the watching TV audience would know who he was these days but back in 1996, he and his band were one of the breakout stars of the year. Rivalling Shed Seven for the most hits in those 12 months, “Govinda” was Kula Shaker’s fourth single to chart and their third to make the Top 10 when it peaked at No 7.

As host Nicky Campbell says, mixing Eastern mysticism with Western pop had indeed proved to be a good idea for the band, providing the blueprint for their whole career pretty much. It was never more evident than on “Govinda” which was sung totally in Sanskrit with the text taken from a devotional chant entitled “Govinda Jaya Jaya” which had been recorded back in 1970 by the London Radha Krishna Temple and produced by George Harrison who was also responsible for the collective’s No 12 UK hit “Hare Krishna Chant”. Growing up as a child in Worcester in the 70s, my only experience of the Hare Krishna movement had been people laughing at them as a procession of them snaked down the High Street on a Saturday afternoon chanting their mantra and dressed in saffron orange. Probably like most people who knew nothing of their beliefs, I was left wondering who this bloke Harry Krishna was. Fast forward to the mid 90s and whilst I hadn’t converted to their faith, I was fully into Kula Shaker and especially this single. Sadly, the Krishna teachings of humility, selflessness and global oneness didn’t reach everyone out there. Whilst working in the Stockport branch of Our Price, a man came to the counter and asked me if we had “that Paki song”. He meant “Govinda” and the irony of the dichotomy he represented (a man using a racist term to ask for the Eastern influenced song he liked) wasn’t lost on me though it certainly was on him.

“Govinda” would draw a line under the band’s prolific output with only two singles being released over the next two years until their second album “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” finally appeared in 1999 by which time, the band’s momentum, if not lost, had certainly been misplaced. They are still a going concern today though having released their latest album “Natural Magick” just this year.

P.S. I quite often watch these TOTP repeats with subtitles on so that if I comment on a song’s lyrics or a presenter’s links, I’m not misquoting people. The subtitles for “Govinda” just say ‘He sings in Sanskrit’. Bit of a ‘can’t be arsed’ approach to the job isn’t it?

Did I say that Kula Shaker were one of the biggest breakout acts of 1996? Like a back-pedalling, dodgy politician I may have mis-spoke as the official Breakthrough Artist of 1996 were actually Garbage who even won an award as such at the MTV Europe Music Awards (Kula Shaker weren’t even nominated). How so? Well, their eponymous debut album would sell 4 million copies worldwide and that calendar year saw them in the Top 10 of the UK singles charts with “Stupid Girl” and this track “Milk”. The last track on that album, it wasn’t the album closing, big ballad that might have been assumed but, as described by lead singer Shirley Manson, a “siren song” about loss. It’s almost hypnotic but with a definite dark element to it. Presumably the band didn’t think it was dark enough though and so recruited trip-hop artist Tricky to lay down some sinister vocals onto the track. It’s the Tricky version (called The Wicked Mix) that was a hit in the UK but obviously we don’t see/hear that version in this TOTP appearance as it’s an exclusive performance from Atlanta where the band were presumably on tour. However, in other territories, the track was released without Tricky’s vocals (The Siren Mix) which didn’t go down well with the Bristolian rapper who complained to the press about the situation. As far as I can tell, the Tricky version did better chart wise than the pure Garbage release.

“Milk” was the last single to be taken from the album (the one with the pink cover) and that pedantic part of my brain is still impressed with how Shirley Manson has colour co-ordinated with it in her choice of outfit for this performance. I say ‘still’ as I liked it the first time she did it in an earlier TOTP appearance when there was a pink feather boa wrapped around her microphone stand. If I am being really pedantic though, does Shirley have some lipstick on her teeth in this performance?

I bet Jimmy Nail has been asked to be on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! He’d have been a prime candidate wouldn’t he? I also bet he would have turned down flat any invitation as my perception is that he’s quite a private person and would have balked at the idea of laying himself bare in a reality TV show. Why do I think that? Well, in 2004, Nail successfully sued News Group Newspapers and Harper Collins Publishers over false allegations made in the News Of The World about him and Nailed, an unofficial biography which was the newspaper’s source of the claims. Jimmy described reading the article as one of the worst experiences of his life. Given all of that, I don’t think he would have been up for being filmed constantly in an artificial environment with people he didn’t know. Anyway, he’s on TOTP to promote his single “Country Boy”. The last time he was on the show, he and his band wore schoolboy outfits but this time, they are wearing black suits and ties which makes them look like they’ve just arrived from a funeral. This was possibly quite apt as this single would be his last ever hit in the UK so you could say this valedictory performance was almost a wake for his career as a pop star.

And so we arrive at the other link to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! No, none of the members of the Fugees have ever been on the show – it’s far more tenuous than that but I’ll get to it in a minute. “No Woman, No Cry” was the fourth single taken from “The Score” album and it just missed out on giving the band a third consecutive No 1 after “Killing Me Softly” and “Ready Or Not” when it peaked one place lower – the Fugees really were a big deal in this year. Yet another classic song given the hip-hop treatment, Bob Marley’s original had peaked at No 22 in 1975 and at No 8 when rereleased in 1981 following his death. I say “given the hip hop treatment” but it’s actually a pretty straight version – host Nicky Campbell calls it “authentic” though I’m not sure that’s quite the right word.

Anyway, to that I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! connection. So this year’s runner up was Coleen Rooney. Now back in September 2010, Rooney’s then current club Manchester United were due to play his former team Everton at Goodison Park. Rooney’s switch from red to blue back in 2004 had never been forgiven by the fans who had once adored him and to whom he had sworn allegiance what with Everton being the team he grew up supporting. The abuse Rooney would receive every time he returned to Everton was horrific and unyielding. A month before this particular match, Rooney was the centre of claims that he’d paid two women for a threesome in a Manchester hotel whilst Colleen was five months pregnant with their first child Kai. The press was rife with stories that this would be the end of their marriage. If this was manna from heaven for the more salacious tabloids, it was also the stuff of inspiration for the Everton faithful who came up with a chant based around the story. Set to the tune of “No Woman, No Cry”, they would let rip with “No woman, no Kai”. Cruel absolutely but undeniably clever. In the end, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t select Rooney for the match day squad choosing instead to protect him from running the gauntlet of abuse he would inevitably have received. And that is my second and final connection between this episode of TOTP and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! I thank you.

We have a new No 1 and thank heavens for that as the last incumbents were Robson & Jerome. Going straight to the top of the charts are The Prodigy and it’s their second No 1 of 1996 following “Firestarter” in the March. If anything, I liked “Breathe” even more than its predecessor even though it was cut from the same cloth pretty much. It was another barnstorming dance anthem that felt claustrophobic, dangerous and indeed dirty, a sensation only exaggerated by the downright grimy video. Cockroaches, centipedes and an alligator inhabit an apartment that made that house at the end of The Blair Witch Project look clean. Then there’s the performances of Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill who look absolutely crazed and depraved, almost daring the audience not to carry on listening. There’s also a slight nod to the Run DMC /Aerosmith video for “Walk This Way” with the two protagonists separated by a flimsy wall which is ultimately breached. This wasn’t doing anything to improve Flint’s public perception amongst the tabloids who were already on his case after his deranged appearance in the “Firestarter” promo.

“Breathe” would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst parent album “The Fat Of The Land” topped the charts for six and went five times platinum in the UK alone. The Prodigy were never bigger than in this year.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ant & Dec	When I Fall In Love	As if
2	Shed Seven	Chasing Rainbows	Nah
3	Warren G and Adina Howard	What’s Love Got To Do With It	Never
4	Bryan Adams	Star	No thanks
5	Kula Shaker	Govinda	No but I had a promo copy of the album
6	Garbage	Milk	I did not
7	Jimmy Nail	Country Boy	Nope
8	Fugees	No Woman, No Cry	No but my wife had the album
9	The Prodigy	Breathe	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0025gms/top-of-the-pops-22111996?seriesId=unsliced