As the 7th December show wasn’t repeated on BBC4 due to the issue of it being hosted by Gary Glitter, we’ve jumped a week and find that this week’s presenter is someone we hadn’t seen in that role for nearly nine years! John Peel was last seen on TOTP in February 1987 so why was he suddenly back on our screens? The answer would be revealed at the end of the show when Peel is ambushed by Michael Aspel who informs him that he is the subject for an episode of This Is Your Life. Supposedly, the whole thing had been orchestrated by the BBC but it begs the question of why Peel himself thought he had been brought in from the cold for what would prove to be a one off return to the show. Didn’t he suspect something was afoot? After all, this was the era of the ‘golden mic’ slot – surely executive producer Ric Blaxill could have wheeled in a current celebrity or pop star for hosting duties over plucking Peel from the dusky corridors of late night Radio 1? Wouldn’t that have occurred to the experienced, seen-it-all Peely? Perhaps not as he seems genuinely surprised by the appearance of Aspel at the close of the show.

As for what John made of the artists he was presenting on this particular episode, well, I cant speak for him but, you know what, I’m going to have a go anyway. We start with Everything But The Girl and “Missing”. Is this the third time on the show for this one? Or maybe the fourth? This was bound to happen when a hit has the staying power that this one did. Fourteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10? TOTP couldn’t ignore that sort of chart run.

Just as all roads seemed to lead to The Beatles at this time, there’s an element of The Fab Four to the story behind this song. The Beatles were turned down by record label Decca on New Year’s Day 1962 with manager Brian Epstein being told that guitar groups were on the way out – a year later Beatlemania broke out across the world. In 1995, after the original version of “Missing” had failed to become a hit, Ben and Tracey were let go by their UK record label Warner who told them that it was time to call it a day despite being played the Todd Terry mix of “Missing” and the track “Protection” that they’d worked on with Massive Attack. That remix would sell 1.2 million copies in the UK alone. Bloody record labels – what do they know?

Would John Peel have liked it? Surely he’d have liked this one

On account of us missing that Gary Glitter episode, I fear we’ll be served up the same songs that we saw in the last TOTP repeat. That certainly seems to be the case with “The Gift Of Christmas” by Childliners and what an unfortunate case it is. They’ve got the ‘galaxy of stars’ that was this charity collective into the studio again which presumably was a logistical nightmare so I’m surprised that the TOTP producers went for this option again. Just to prove my point, Michelle Gayle is front and centre in the line up this time – I’m sure she was missing the first time around. Boyzone, at least, were booked on the show in their own right to make the scheduling slightly easier. After seeing PJ/Ant had nicked his spiky hairstyle which he was sporting last time, Ronan Keating has completely flattened his locks for this appearance slightly giving him the look of a choirboy. I’ve no doubt that wannabe pop star ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire didn’t need asking twice to turn up given his desperation to traverse from the world of acting to the charts. Look at him jumping up and down at the end of the song trying to get into shot as our host does his next link. Had he no respect for himself nor Peel?

Would John Peel have liked it? He’d have had no truck with this rabble, charity record or not

This is definitely a third time on the show for the video of “Free As A Bird” by The Beatles. Obviously the video had to be the promotional tool for this single. There was no way that Paul, George and Ringo were going to rock up to the TOTP studio and perform the song with – what? – an image of John projected onto a screen behind them and Jeff Lynne lurking about in the background? Never happening and would we have wanted that anyway? I’m not sure. Having said that, such an appearance might have upped the single’s sales enough to overtake Michael Jackson and make it the Christmas No 1. Talking of which, I’m sure that “Free As A Bird” would have been the favourite for the festive chart topper crown as soon as news of its release came out. However, as the chart announcement neared, predictably Boyzone were in the hunt with Björk being seen as the ‘out of left field’ decent each way bet. The Beatles’ chances were further undermined by the late emergence of the perhaps even more left field The Mike Flowers Pops and their version of “Wonderwall” (more of whom later).

Perhaps they were also hampered by the fact that once people had heard “Free As A Bird”, they realised that it wasn’t all that after all. Sure, the huge fan base were always going to buy it and those intrigued by its status as a piece of pop history maybe bought it for that reason and not what it sounded like but it was never going to sustain as a classic track. An appearance by the then remaining Beatles on TOTP twenty-five years after splitting? That really would have been a moment in cultural history.

Would John Peel have liked it? Tricky one this. He was born on the Wirral and was famously a massive fan of Liverpool FC so he must have felt a connection to The Beatles. Indeed, during his early career in the States, he was hired by Dallas radio station KLIF as their official Beatles correspondent. However, would he have liked this particular track. I doubt it.

After achieving their first and so far only No 1 single with their last release “Fairground”, Simply Red must surely have expected a bigger hit than this follow up – “Remembering The First Time” – gave them when it peaked at No 22. Or would they have? Mick Hucknall and co were always more of an album band when it came to shifting units. Of their twenty single releases before “Fairground”, only four of them made the Top 10 with seven not piercing the Top 40 at all. When it came to albums though, well, just look at these numbers;

Album	Released	Chart peak	UK sales
Picture Book	1985	No 2	5 x platinum
Men And Women	1987	No 2	3 x platinum
A New Flame	1989	No 1	7 x platinum
Stars	1991	No 1	12 x platinum
Life	1995	No 1	5 x platinum

I have to say I don’t recall this one at all but then it is almost instantly forgettable though its lyrics should live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons.

Sitting here looking at the table, it’s just like a photograph, there’s you and me, fruit, drink, good food

All the things we did, the things we did, from the shower we took to the very first look

Words and music Mick Hucknall
EMI Music Publishing Ltd/So What Ltd

Ugh! The notion of Hucknall in the shower should never be articulated! Then there’s the chorus which ends with Mick singing “diddly dip, diddly dip” which sounds like the musical equivalent of The Flowerpot Men’s catchphrase “Flobabdob” which is in no way any sort of endorsement. In short, this was a bit of a stinker. Maybe that shower was desperately needed.

Would John Peel have liked it? No way! No way did Peel like Simply Red. He confirms this in his undoubted piss take comments after the performance about how Hucknall is the master of melody and that he can’t get enough of him.

1995 gave us a whole pan full of shit music and in many varieties of stool but surely none stank the charts out more than The Outhere Brothers. These two arses somehow wiped up two No 1s in “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” and “Boom Boom Boom” and a further Top 10 hit with “La La La Hey Hey”. They rounded off the year by joining forces with Molella on “If You Wanna Party”. Who was/is Molella? An Italian DJ and producer of course (weren’t they all?) who, judging by his Discogs entry, has worked with a load of names from the world of dance that I’ve never heard of. Would his input make any difference to The Outhere Brothers’ sound? No chance. This was more of their usual call and response bullshit – the musical equivalent of “Oggy Oggy Oggy, Oi Oi Oi!”. Their hits were more like ringtones than songs. Thankfully, they will only have one more UK chart hit after this – 1997’s “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole Olé’” – with their final single being a remix of their debut release, a rather aptly titled little ditty called “Pass The Toilet Paper”.

Would John Peel have liked it? Bollocks he would!

It’s the aforementioned Ronan Keating and his Boyzone mates now as they’re back in the studio once more to perform their version of “Father And Son”. I think I’m right to give Ronan top billing as it really does feel like the rest of them are his backing band on this one, ‘oohing and aahing’ away behind him. As per his previous two appearances, Ronan takes it upon himself to address the studio audience mid song to big up the band, this time with a “we’ve had a great year” comment. I suppose they had; a No 1, triple platinum selling album and four huge hit singles, they were positioning themselves as the natural successor to Take That even though the lads from Manchester were still a going concern despite having very publicly lost a member. Maybe Boyzone or their management had some insider knowledge – literally just two months after this TOTP aired, almost to the day, Gary Barlow uttered these infamous words at a press conference “Unfortunately the rumours are true…from today there is no more”.

“Father And Son” would sell 600,000 copies in the UK peaking at No 2 and Ronan would revisit the song in 2004, recording a virtual duet with Cat Stevens to promote his solo Best Of album “10 Years Of Hits” and matching the chart position he achieved with Boyzone.

Would John Peel have liked it? The Cat Stevens original? Possibly. The Boyzone cover? I don’t think so

It’s another of those songs that had a long chart life next. Everything But The Girl, Boyzone and now Björk racked up a total of 32 weeks inside the Top 10 between the three hits on this show tonight – that’s well over half a year! I’m guessing that these singles experienced longevity of sales beyond what would normally be expected because of the time of year they they happened to be in the shops. The Christmas retail period would usually artificially inflate sales as members of the public, who wouldn’t normally frequent their local record emporium, would make an annual pilgrimage with shopping lists in hand. Even so, there was clearly something about these records that made them crossover into the mainstream consciousness. Boyzone’s single was always going to be a big hit I suppose but Everything But The Girl and Björk’s offerings were less obviously huge sellers.

In the case of “It’s Oh So Quiet”, I think the fact that it was a song from the 50s and had a big band backing helped it to appeal to an older audience despite Björk’s rather unique vocal stylings. The staging of the performance here works really well I think with the brass section hit by spotlights every time they burst into life and Björk cavorting about like a mischievous Nordic pixie sprinkled in fairy dust.

Would John Peel have liked it? Oh I reckon so don’t you?

And so to that late entrant to the race to be Christmas No 1. A complete outsider coming up on the rail from nowhere, with what was considered by many to be a novelty hit are The Mike Flowers Pops with their rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Despite working in a record shop at the time, I had no idea who this lot were or where they had come from but their backstory was that they’d been on the live circuit since 1993 and were seen by the producer of Radio 1 DJ Kevin Greening’s show who asked them to record easy listening versions of chart songs for a section called ‘Hits of 95’. “Wonderwall” was the first one they did and it was picked up by Chris Evans who told listeners of his breakfast show that it was the original version of the song. What larks! I heard a story that someone at Creation got spooked and rang Noel Gallagher to ask him if he was absolutely sure that he’d written “Wonderwall” and that he hadn’t just copied an obscure easy listening track because someone had discovered it and found Noel out! I didn’t listen to Kevin Greening’s show so just thought this was a case of someone finding a new angle to cash in on the success of Oasis*

*Tribute band No Way Sis would do a similar thing but in reverse when they bagged a chart hit in 1996 by releasing a version of easy listening classic “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” by The New Seekers in the style of Oasis.

To me, The Mike Flowers Pops version of “Wonderwall” was entertaining the first time you heard it and maybe a couple more after that but I couldn’t really understand why it turned out to be such a big hit going all the way to No 2. Maybe it was just that Christmas factor again. My wife liked it enough to go and see them live at the Manchester Academy though and enjoyed the evening. With their profile raised, the band would play at much bigger venues and were in demand for a while. Two more minor Top 40 hits followed in the new year but they will surely be defined by “Wonderwall”.

By the way, that Christmas Day TOTP that John Peel mentioned was shown on BBC4 in 2020 and in that repeat, they announced The Mike Flowers Pops as the festive chart topper. How so? Apparently, they’d recorded two chart rundowns as the Christmas chart wasn’t announced until December 24th and so they wouldn’t have known at the time of recording who was No 1. Somehow when they aired the repeat, they showed the wrong version with Michael Jackson not in pole position. Well, it was the Christmas of COVID so we were all a bit stressed out to be fair.

Would John Peel have liked it? I think he would have got on board with it at least initially anyway.

And so to the aforementioned Michael Jackson who is at No 1 and will stay there for Christmas with “Earth Song”. In total, it would spend six weeks stop the UK singles chart going on to sell over a million copies here. I have to say that I’m surprised it was such a success – it has always sounded so overwrought and the wrong side of melodramatic to me (and Jarvis Cocker too we would go into find out at the 1996 BRIT Awards but that’s all for a future post).

Would John Peel have liked it? No way. Peel stood with Jarvis on this one I reckon.

As John Peel does his sign off at the end of the show, Michael Aspel appears like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn at his side and does the whole This Is Your Life thing. Brilliantly, the sardonic Peel says that he was “rather looking forward to going home actually Michael”. Unbelievably, he’ll have been gone 20 years this October.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely?
2	Childliners	The Gift Of Christmas	Not even for charity
3	The Beatles	Free As A Bird	Nah
4	Simply Red	Remembering The First Time	I did not
5	The Outhere Brothers / Molella	If You Wanna Party	Not with you guys thank you – bo
6	Boyzone	Father And Son	No
7	Björk	It’s Oh So Quiet	Negative
8	The Mike Flowers Pops	Wonderwall	Nope
9	Michael Jackson	Earth Song	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/m001xz4g/top-of-the-pops-14121995?seriesId=unsliced