There was something going on with the scheduling and timing of shows at this point in TOTP history. The programmes were less than 30 minutes long it seems because the BBC had embarked upon a programme of repeating episodes of Fawlty Towers straight after our weekly dose of chart songs. As they were 35 minutes long, TOTP was truncated to allow them to fit. The Fawlty Towers episode being shown following this particular show was ‘Waldorf Salad’ which is one of my favourites. The scene where the American guest tells Basil to lay it on the line to his chef (who Basil has let go home early) that he’ll “bust his ass” if he hasn’t got the ingredients to make a Waldorf salad is just brilliant.

The other thing happening was that TOTP was being repeated in a late night slot, after midnight on Sunday morning, similar, I guess, to how these BBC4 repeats get shown again in the early hours. There’s something odd about the late night repeat of this show but we’ll get to that in time. Kate Thornton is our host and guess what? The first song of the night is last week’s No 1 which is no longer No 1 but which is being shown anyway. This was a standard and established Chris Cowey tactic by now as he fought to battle the constant flow of changing chart toppers. I get it (sort of) – why only show a big selling record just once especially if it hangs around the Top 10 for a while after debuting at No 1? However, the optics of this practice are odd – ending one show and beginning the next with the same song (and in some cases the same performance). Maybe that’s exaggerated though in these BBC4 repeats with two shows aired back to back. Was it not so noticeable at the time of original broadcast when seven days of viewers’ lives had passed since the last time they’d seen a performance of that song?

This week’s last week No 1 (if you get my drift) is “Booty Call” by All Saints who have dropped from the summit to No 7 in just one week which doesn’t bode well for a long lasting hit. Hang on, let me check the official charts database…

…no, it didn’t hang around the charts long at all. Just five weeks in the Top 40 in total and only two of those inside the Top 10. In fairness, it was the fourth single lifted from their album which had been out for about 10 months by this point so the fact that they’d got to No 1 at all was an achievement (or clever first week of release price discounting you might argue). The group (or record label London) weren’t done with that album just yet though and an improbable fifth single was released from it in late November and it made it to No 7. Presumably, this was to give the album a sales boost just before Christmas and also allowed them to add a promotional sticker to saying something along the lines of ‘includes the No 1s Never Ever, Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade and Booty Call plus the Top 10 hits I Know Where It’s At and War Of Nerves’. I seem to recall that reorders of the album at this point did actually have such a sticker applied to them and it was green in colour to match the cover artwork. The things you remember. Now, where did I put my house keys?

Next up an American band whom I’m guessing, traditionally wouldn’t have had the ingredients for a Waldorf salad at the top of their rider list for their gigs. Anyway, Kate Thornton is suggesting to us that Aerosmith have put on a concert just for TOTP which can’t be right can it? She seems pretty convinced though; in fact she’s “full on” sure about it as she’s says the phrase twice in the space of a few seconds in her intro to “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. Come on Kate – I thought you were a safe pair of hands.

As with All Saints, this was only on the show just last week as well. Now, after double checking the chart stats in this one, I can confirm that despite all the success this single had globally, in the UK it actually went down the charts from No 12 to No 14 this week in 1998. Despite that fall, Chris Cowey had it back on the show and this extra exposure would catapult it into the Top 10 where it would spend the next two months, peaking at No 4. So, the question is, would the worldwide success the song received have been replicated in the UK without Cowey’s decision to ignore them descending the charts and have them on the show again for a second consecutive week? And what was the reasoning behind that decision? Here’s a third question though – am I overestimating the influence and pull that TOTP wielded at this point? I fear I may be. Back in the 80s, the show could make or break a hit but in 1998 was that still the case? I’m not sure. Probably the fact that the film it was taken from – Armageddon – had been released in UK cinemas by this point maybe had something to do with the song’s success. Still, it’s best to consider all angles with these things. I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing after all.

Returning to Fawlty Towers, a writer in The Guardian once described Jarvis Cocker as having “long Basil Fawlty legs” and you can see where they were coming from as the two do share a similar physicality. Said physicality is centre stage in this performance which would prove to be a valedictory one for Pulp for the 90s. Yes, “Party Hard” was their last hit of the decade and also the final single to be released from their “This Is Hardcore” album. Following “Different Class” was always going to be a big ask but I’m not sure anybody would have predicted the disparity in sales that would unfold. “Different Class” went four times platinum selling over a million copies whilst “This Is Hardcore” would sell a tenth of that. This was reflected in the chart positions of the latter’s four singles which achieve the following peak positions:

8 – 12 – 22 – 29

In the case of “Party Hard”, its chances were hamstrung by the second CD single including remixes of the track that were too long to count as sales according to recently introduced chart eligibility regulations. Talk about an own goal. Written about clubbers having to come to terms with ageing out of the nightlife scene, it’s a decent song but hardly one of their most memorable. All the reviews I’ve read about it point to Jarvis’s vocal sounded (deliberately?) like David Bowie but if I hadn’t read that beforehand, I’m not sure I would have picked up on it. Maybe I’m just not a big enough Bowie aficionado. I did pick up on the strange look this performance has with the cheerleading-type dancers and the studio audience holding helium filled balloons behind the band which lends the balloons an unnatural look as if they were lollipops or something. I’m not completely convinced that it all hangs together cohesively to be honest. And talking of honesty, when was the last time I was in a nightclub? I think it was in Manchester in 1999 when I would have been 31 which does seem to be too old for that type of thing on reflection.

There are plenty of examples of music stars whose offspring have followed their parents into the charts. Off the top of my head there’s Billy Ray Cyrus/Miles Cyrus, Bob Marley/Ziggy Marley, Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra and John Lennon/Julian Lennon. There’s a sub genre though that isn’t so easy to name examples from. Parents who were in a pop group whose children also went on to be in bands with their own siblings. How many are there out there? There’s Wilson Phillips, 3T and…erm…The Osmond Boys? Well, add to that list Alisha’s Attic who were sisters Shelley and Karen Poole, the daughters of Brian Poole of Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame. Having established themselves as a bona fide chart artist in 1996/97 with four hit singles and a Top 20 album, the time had come to progress that success with a second album and they had a very consistent yardstick to live up to. Look at these chart peaks for those first four singles:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12

As it turned out, the lead single from that sophomore album would continue the streak admirably by going to No 13. “The Incidentals” was its title and it was more, thoughtful, tuneful, well constructed pop on which they had made their name. However, it didn’t really push any musical boundaries and was reliant on their fanbase wanting more of the same. Initially they did with parent album “Ilumnia” also going Top 20 but by the time of third album “The House We Built” in 2001, times and tastes had changed and it disappointed commercially with the duo splitting soon after.

Both sisters went on to be very successful songwriters for other artists including Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, Rita Ora, Sugababes, Boyzone and Westlife. Shelley is also a member of alt-country band Red Sky July with her husband Ally McErlaine (ex of Texas) who my wife caught recently as support for Eddie Reader at the Cottingham Folk Festival. Very good they were too apparently.

Whilst looking into the career history of the Honeyz, I discovered that they had appeared on ITV’s The Big Reunion show in 2013. The premise of the show was to get seven acts who were big in the 90s to reform and rehearse for a comeback show at the Hammersmith Apollo. Basically, it was a steal of MTV’s Bands Reunited from a decade earlier. Anyway, some of The Big Reunion episodes are on YouTube so I checked the Honeyz one out and one of the revelations that came out was that one of the members of the band couldn’t really sing, used to have her microphone turned off when performing and was only recruited for her looks! I’ll leave you to guess who that was but it got me thinking about members of bands throughout musical history who didn’t really do anything. Now, I’m not saying I agree that the people on the list below contributed nothing at all but that in some people’s/the media’s perception, they didn’t:

• Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols)
• Andrew Ridgeley (Wham!)
• Bez (Happy Mondays)
• Paul Rutherford (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
• Craig ‘Ken’ Logan (Bros)
• Anyone in Boyzone who wasn’t Ronan Keating or Stephen Gately

OK, the last one is a bit facetious but you get my point. As for the Honeyz, OK it was Naima Belkhiati who had her microphone turned off (allegedly), the one on the left in this performance. There, she’s been “Finally Found” out.

No! Surely not?! It can’t be?! The aforementioned Boyzone are on the show AGAIN?! WHY?! That’s five out of the last six weeks they’ve featured. Yes, OK “No Matter What” was No 1 for three of those appearances and it stayed at No 3 for three consecutive weeks after that but even so!

Look, I’ve nothing else to say about this one. Instead, here’s Basil Fawlty to describe my frustration at its reappearance with actions saying much more than my words ever could.

Right, this is the point where this episode gets a bit complicated as previously mentioned. The version of the show that I watched and that exists currently on iPlayer featured T–Spoon and a track called “Sex On The Beach” which was at No 2 in the charts. However, back in 1998, the version that aired in the show’s usual early evening slot had Steps “One For Sorrow” on in place of T-Spoon. When the late night repeat aired in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was T-Spoon and not Steps who featured. So what gives? Well, apparently the BBC had received complaints from listeners to the Radio 1 Chart Show the previous Sunday when “Sex On The Beach” was played having debuted at No 2. Apparently, the lyrics “I wanna have sex on the beach, come on move your body” which are repeated throughout were the cause of the offence and so the BBC took the decision to not show it in the pre-watershed show at 7.30 as originally intended. However, presumably to pacify all those involved in the T-Spoon hit, a performance was recorded and it was shown (instead of Steps) in the late night rerun. Was the BBC right to take such action? On reflection, it seems a peculiar hill to die on. There have been far more controversial records to have charted and appear on the show than this one surely?! Just recently, a 1998 TOTP repeat included “Horny” by Mousse T – was that not cut from a similar cloth? Or was it the use of the word ‘sex’ that rattled the BBC powers that be? If so, how come “Generation Sex” by The Divine Comedy was on the very next week? I’ve checked out the rest of the lyrics and I’m not convinced they were a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth to be honest. Most of it I can’t understand anyway but there’s a reference to ‘ding-a-ling’, a term which didn’t stop Chuck Berry having a No 1 hit in 1972 based on the double entendre. Anyway, what’s surely more offensive is the way the thing sounded which was atrocious. I think I spotted the following influences in its composition:

• The naffness of Peter Andre
• The ‘toasting’ style of Chaka Demus and Pliers
• The hollow production of Ace Of Base
• The inane sing-along chanting of Inner Circle’s “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement. As for T-Spoon, they defended themselves by stating that “Sex On The Beach” referred to the name of the infamous cocktail but nobody was really buying that. The whole thing was a sorry episode from start to finish.

Robbie Williams has bagged his first No 1 single with ”Millennium” and to celebrate that he’s performing the song in a dress and not just any dress but a sheer, floor length gown through which you could see his undergarments. I guess the obvious question is ‘why?’. So I asked AI. It had an answer for me which I could have guessed if I’d thought about it a bit more. According to AI it was a “provocative and attention-grabbing choice…designed to be memorable and push boundaries”. Yes, probably. Or was he just copying David Beckham wearing a sarong skirt just a few months earlier which caused a tabloid frenzy? In any case, he wasn’t the first nor the last music star to don a dress. David Bowie was famously photographed in a cream and blue satin dress whilst reclining on a chaise lounge for the cover of the UK release of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album. In 2020, Harry Styles was the first male to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine and he did so wearing a Gucci dress and just to come full circle on this post, although I don’t think Basil Fawlty ever wore a dress, I’m pretty sure John Cleese has at some point in his career.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	All Saints	Booty Call	It’s a no from me
2	Aerosmith	I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing	Negative
3	Pulp	Party Hard	I did not
4	Alisha’s Attic	The Incidentals	Nope
5	Honeyz	Finally Found	Nah
6	Boyzone	No Matter What	Big NO
7	T-Spoon	Sex On The Beach	As if
8	Robbie Williams	Millennium	And no

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/m002lvjr/top-of-the-pops-18091998