Fun Lovin’ Criminals

TOTP 07 MAY 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s early May 1999 here at TOTP Rewind and that can only mean one thing – the culmination of the football season! Despite only losing three games all season, my beloved Chelsea have blown the league by drawing too many matches and would finish third to a Man United team on their way to an historic treble. However, it was in League Division Three where all the drama was the day after this TOTP aired. Specifically, at Brunton Park, Carlisle where a near legendary game would play out. Carlisle United were fighting a dire relegation battle which, if lost, would condemn them to demotion to non-league football. It would be either them or Scarborough who would fall through the trap door. Carlisle needed a win but with time running out, the score in their game was locked at 1-1. Scarborough’s match had finished and they were safe as things stood but a Carlisle goal would reverse that situation and relegate Scarborough. With just 10 seconds left on the clock, the home team won a corner and Carlisle’s goalkeeper, one Jimmy Glass, was given the signal from his manager to go up the pitch to join in one last attack. Glass was only playing after being loaned from Swindon Town after a Carlisle goalkeeping emergency and this would be the last of three games he ever played for them. As the corner came in, this happened…

…pure, chaotic drama with a fairytale ending (for Carlisle at least). It’s the stuff of legend. However, for Glass, this wouldn’t be the fillip to his career that some might have assumed. There was no big money move to an elite club following his heroics; in fact, Carlisle United didn’t even sign him permanently and he only played a handful of professional games for a couple of clubs before drifting into non-league football and ultimately retiring from the game aged just 27. I wonder if any Glass related parallels can be drawn with the acts on this episode of TOTP?

Our host is Kate Thornton, and just as Jimmy Glass’s time at Carlisle United was coming to an end, this would be her final TOTP appearance. She only got to present ten shows which is a shame I think as she seemed a fairly safe pair of hands. Her first duty on her valedictory programme is to introduce Phats & Small on their fourth appearance on the show with “Turn Around”. There really can’t be anything else to say about this one can there? Well, it was back on TOTP as it had risen from No 8 to No 7 having already peaked at No 2. Yeah, that’s not exactly riveting reading material is it? I did notice that Phats & Small (the blokes on the decks as opposed to the singer) were wearing Skint Records T-shirts despite not being on that label – they were on Multiply, the people who brought us Sash! Skint was the home of Fatboy Slim and was based in Brighton which is where Phats & Small were from hence the connection I’m guessing? Russell Small is a big Brighton fan and they were in the same division as Carlisle United in 1998/99 finishing 17th out of 24, with only seven more points than bottom club Scarborough.

Jimmy Glass moment: You can’t get a bigger ‘turnaround’ moment than a last ditch winner to save your team from relegation can you?

It’s four consecutive appearances for Martine McCutcheon on the show but two of them were while “Perfect Moment” was at No 1 so I can’t argue with that. She was still in the Top 5 by the time of this final outing. Even so, it seems a little bit like overkill to me but then I wasn’t writing a TOTP blog back in 1999 and not watching two shows back to back as per the BBC4 schedule of repeats in 2026 so maybe I wouldn’t have noticed back then. As with Phats & Small, I’m struggling to find anything else to say about this one. Let me trawl the internet for a minute…

*blogger trawls internet*

Oh this is brilliant! No, really. Martine once went on a date with Mick Hucknall. She was very nervous, was drinking continually, hadn’t eaten anything and when she got in a car with him and the engine turned over she spewed all over him! Just fabulous work!

Jimmy Glass moment: Is there a more ‘perfect moment’ in football than Jimmy’s last minute winner?

If any of us thought that The Offspring’s chart topper “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)” was destined to be a one-off, well we were right and wrong. The US pop-punk rockers never did have another UK No 1 but they came within a whisker of bagging another when follow up “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” debuted at No 2 meaning that they certainly weren’t one-hit wonders. However, avoiding that status didn’t come without criticism. Nobody with even a perfunctory knowledge of The Beatles could listen to “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” and not immediately think “Hang on, that’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”!”. And it was although the lyrics were very different to the Fab Four’s original, detailing two miserable sounding relationships from the point of view of both a man and a woman complaining about the laziness of their partners and their lack of any discernible income. The opening two lines include the word “bitch” which the BBC censors decided to muffle for this TOTP appearance. I don’t think they did that when Meredith Brooks was on the show but then I think the gender of the singer was pivotal there. Given the song that it was based on, “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” was always going to be a catchy tune which certainly didn’t harm its chart chances though Bryan ‘Dexter’ Holland’s strained live vocals in this performance might have adversely affected them. He really couldn’t hit those higher notes. It’s a very scratchy affair altogether.

Of course, Scottish band Marmalade beat The Offspring to it by over 30 years with an actual cover of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”!” which went to No 1 in the UK though this little known pop song from the 80s always makes me think that Owen Paul had been listening to The Beatles’ original when he recorded it.

Jimmy Glass moment: When Jimmy’s football career ended, he needed to go and get a conventional job and worked as both an IT salesman and a taxi driver.

With another airing for “No Scrubs” by TLC, it means that three of the first four hits on this show were clocking up their fourth TOTP appearance. Come on Cowey! Sort it out! And no, I don’t care that TLC were up to No 3, their highest position in six weeks. However, the chart trajectory of this single is interesting. A debut at No 7 followed by an immediate drop out of the Top 10 to No 13. An expected descent down the Top 40 failed to materialise as “No Scrubs” lurched back into the Top 10 where it would remain for seven weeks. Even within that time period it moved up and down before finally reaching its peak of No 3 having fallen as low as No 9 the week before. How to explain this? It may be something to do with the delayed release of the its accompanying video. An MTV Award winning, sci-fi themed promo featuring the group in different coloured space suits, was its eventual delivery to video channels linked to its rise up the charts? If so, TOTP clearly didn’t get the memo/video as they stuck to showing that same satellite performance for every one of its four appearances on the show. Am I overstating the importance of this video? Maybe but there is some context to this situation, specifically that the group weren’t allowed into Europe for promotional duties possibly due to Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez’s criminal record following an incident in 1994 when she set fire to her boyfriend’s trainers which led to their mansion burning down.

One more thing, the intro to this one from Kate Thornton is a bit inappropriate. “Now going up the charts, those bad girls from Atlanta. No scrubs, no scrubbers – it’s TLC!”. No scrubbers Kate? And I thought she was a safe pair of hands!

Jimmy Glass moment: “No Scrubs” is from an album called “Fanmail” and I’m sure that Jimmy Glass got some fan mail after his last minute heroics in 1999.

Well, this is a damn shame. Of the three singles released from the sophomore album “100% Colombian” by Fun Lovin’ Criminals, the one which I bought – “Big Night Out” – is the only one that failed to warrant a TOTP appearance. Boo! Not that the two that did make it were worthless – they weren’t – but..you know. Anyway, the third of those releases was “Korean Bodega” which does sound pretty cool compared to most of its chart contemporaries but also very familiar. It’s something about that guitar riff that runs through it. I can’t place which song it reminds me of but it’s certainly recognisable.

Despite it happening in 2021, I’m not sure that I was aware that Huey Morgan had left the band. They are still an ongoing entity but it’s kind of hard to imagine them without their charismatic frontman. The band have released one album since Huey’s departure but continue to perform live.

Jimmy Glass moment: There is a track on the “100% Colombian” album called “All My Time Is Gone” which was so nearly true for Carlisle United that day in 1999 until Jimmy Glass strode forward into the box with ten seconds to go…

It’s the return of Cast next whom we had not seen in the Top 40 for 18 months. Indeed, it had been two years since their last album “Mother Nature Calls” which, though a commercial success, had divided critics. Third album “Magic Hour” therefore had a lot riding on it. The lead single from it was “Beat Mama”, a relentlessly upbeat track with a looped guitar riff and sparse, almost non-specific lyrics. Maybe the latter didn’t matter though as it was all about the feel. I liked it I have to say.

However, when I think about “Beat Mama”, its sound isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Let me explain. The week that it came out, the shop stereo in the Our Price store I was working in suddenly stopped working one morning. That’s pretty much a disaster for a record shop. As a last resort, we brought down to the shop floor the only thing we had that could play music – a tiny, portable CD player/radio that was in the stock room that staff working in there could listen to. It sounded tinny and pathetic as we opened the doors to the public. The first CD that we put on to play through it? “Beat Mama”. We couldn’t spend the whole day with this as the output for our in-store music so I decided to try and fix the shop stereo’s misfiring speakers. Quite why I thought I had the knowledge to do this I don’t know. Somehow I did get them working again though – it must have been something simple like a loose connection. However, at one point I had the speakers wired up so that two different songs were playing out of them at the same time. How did I manage that? To this day I’m wary of doing anything technical in our house beyond changing a light bulb on account of this.

Jimmy Glass moment: Cast hail from Liverpool. In May 2021, Liverpool FC’s goalkeeper Alisson scored a 95th minute winning goal versus WBA with a header prompting immediate comparisons with Jimmy Glass.

Despite this being its second time on the show, you still couldn’t actually buy “Look At Me” by Geri Halliwell in the shops as it wasn’t released until the Monday after this TOTP aired. The promotion on this one was huge but then it was always going to be. The first official solo single by an (ex-) Spice Girl was big news. After being served up the official promo video on its last outing, we get an exclusive performance of the song this time, again introduced by Geri herself. It’s all very over the top with Halliwell backed by four male dancers on a set that includes an elaborate staircase and chaise longue as props. It all seems a bit forced to me, trying a bit too hard to make it look like Geri was this kooky, zany character that we hadn’t really been aware of before. In the end, all that promotion couldn’t quite deliver the expected and presumably desperately wanted No 1 with “Look At Me” debuting in second place.

*Mel B’s “I Want You Back” had featured Missy Elliott whilst Melanie C had duetted with Bryan Adams on “When You’re Gone” before “Look At Me”.

Jimmy Glass moment: After his legendary winning goal, the whole world was looking at Jimmy.

Westlife remains at No 1 with “Swear It Again” and if that wasn’t annoying enough, for this performance, they’ve ditched the stools I said they always sat on therefore making me look like a lier! Apart from one of them, they’re all dressed in white which was another affectation of theirs but no doubt the next time they’re on, they’ll be dressed as goths just to spite me again! I swear it!

Jimmy Glass moment: Westlife had a No 1 with a cover of ABBA’s “I Have A Dream” and there was no more dream like moment in football than Jimmy Glass’s last second winner.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Phats & SmallTurn AroundI did not
2Martine McCutcheonPerfect MomentNo
3The OffspringWhy Don’t You Get A Job?Nah
4TLCNo ScrubsNope
5Fun Lovin’ CriminalsKorean BodegaNot this one but the one before it
6CastBeat MamaGood song but no
7Geri HalliwellLook At MeNo thanks
8WestlifeSwear It AgainNever

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/m002rxqk/top-of-the-pops-07051999

TOTP 14 AUG 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

There’s a whole swathe of hits in this TOTP show that we hadn’t seen before back in 1998…and I don’t think I could have told you how any of them went without watching this BBC4 repeat back. Let’s see if that is actually the case. Our host is Jayne Middlemiss but we actually start with a song that bar the No 1 record was the last hit we saw in the previous show – “Lost In Space” by Apollo Four Forty. Yes, despite having dropped two places from its debut position of No 4, it was still considered a big enough seller by executive producer Chris Cowey to be featured again just seven days later. In fairness to Cowey, all but one of the other hits (including the No 1 record) on this show are new entries so maybe I’ll let him have this one. This is just a repeat of that initial performance so clock up another one for Cowey’s recycling policy. So successful was this venture into contributing songs for film soundtracks (“Lost In Space” was their biggest ever hit) that Apollo Four Forty would go there again two years later when they reworked the Charlie’s Angels theme for the 2000 reboot starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu which also featured Matt Le Blanc in a smaller role than he commanded in Lost In Space. How you doin’ Matt the film star? Not so good apparently.

Just like Karen Ramirez from a few shows ago, we are faced with a solo female artist who prompts the question “whatever happened to…?”. In this case it’s Hinda Hicks who was briefly talked about as the next big name in UK R&B but who would ultimately drift away to the ultimate status of ‘current whereabouts unknown’. After her debut album “Hinda” went Top 20, she received three MOBO and two BRIT award nominations (the later of which The Guardian unkindly dismissed as just ‘making up the numbers’). This single – “I Wanna Be Your Lady” – was actually a rerelease of her debut single that initially peaked at No 89 but made No 14 second time around to become Hinda’s highest charting hit possibly helped by her support slots on tours with Boyzone and 911. However, that old chestnut of record label mergers meant that promotion of her new material for the second album was undercooked and she would not return to the Top 40 again with that sophomore album never receiving a full commercial release. She would make a third album available via R&B label Shout Our Records in 2004 but it failed to chart and a fourth album announced in 2007 remains unreleased. As of 2015, Hinda has been missing in action from her social media channels and the story of Hinda Hicks has gone cold with the only notable mention of her coming from Lilly Allen tweeting that she was experiencing ‘Toni Braxton Hinda Hicks’ about the pregnancy of her daughter in 2011 referring to the condition of ‘Braxton Hicks’ or practice contractions. As of 2025, we are still awaiting the rebirth of the career of Hinda Hicks.

As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, this next bloke seems to have a “different lass” with him every time he appears on the show. Sash! though, was actually three blokes, what with them being a German DJ/production team who racked up a string of massive hits in the late 90s/early 00s. Famously, they achieved the most No 2 hits without ever getting to the top of the charts.

“Mysterious Times” was their fourth hit of five to miss being No 1 by one place (the other made No 3) and no, I don’t remember it on the account of it being totally forgettable. This is despite it featuring another new vocalist, this time the UK’s Tina Cousins who would go on to carve out a small solo career of her own but it didn’t last too long with her biggest hit actually being part of the conglomerate that included Steps, Cleopatra, B*Witched and Billie Piper who recorded the medley “Thank ABBA For The Music”. Rather inevitably, she ended up on the ‘Identity Parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks though I did enjoy her giving host Simon Amstell the finger…

By this point in the 90s, had the whole concept of girl groups not been done to death in the same way that boy bands had in the earlier part of the decade? I know subsequently the format would spawn super successful names like Girls Aloud and The Saturdays but at this particular time of the summer of 1998, hadn’t we had our fill of them? The Spice Girls, All Saints, Eternal, B*Witched, Cleopatra, N-Tyce had all had success ranging from global domination to a few medium sized chart hits with styles of music encompassing either all out pop or an R&B/pop hybrid. Did we need anymore? Well, apparently we did. The very end of the 90s saw no let up in the girl group phenomenon with the likes of Honeyz, Hepburn and Precious all chart regulars. In between came Solid HarmoniE (no capital ‘E’, no points). Conceived as the male counterpart to the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC by Lou Pearlman, the man behind those two boy bands and a very shady character indeed*, they would have three Top 20 hits that all started with the word ‘I’. This one – “I Wanna Love You” – was the last of those three and it’s a nice enough pop song but it was never going to set the world alight or ignite a global sensation like “Wannabe” did for example.

*I’d never heard of him before now but reading up on him, he had his fingers in all sorts of business pies and would end up being sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy and money laundering. He died incarcerated after serving just two. There’s probably a film to be made about him though

One of their number – Mariama Goodman – would leave the band, rejoin, leave again and throw her hat in with the aforementioned Honeyz before giving it all up and retraining as a midwife…and then joining up with her ex-band mates for the ITV2 series The Big Reunion in 2013. After that series finished, I presume she went back to being a midwife. As with Hinda Hicks, there are no further signs of her pop career being reborn.

There seems to be a theme of rebirth/renewal emerging within this post which certainly wasn’t planned but I guess the title of this next hit kind of plays into that? “Pure Morning” was the lead single from Placebo’s second album “Without You I’m Nothing” but was actually a last minute addition to the album, having emerged during a B-side session after the rest of the album ahead been recorded. I have to say that the idea of a ‘B-sides session’ doesn’t sit well with me like they’d sat down to write some songs they didn’t want to be as worthy as their A-sides. Is that how the creative process works for some artists? That they can deliberately write songs that they know will never reach the widest audience? It all sounds very cynical. I’m put in mind of the story about Creation Records founder Alan McGee telling Noel Gallagher that “Acquiesce” was too good a song to be just an extra track on the “Some Might Say” single to which Noel replied “I don’t write shit songs”. McGee, of course, was right about “Acquiesce” in the same way that Brian Molko was right to make “Pure Morning” an A-side and not a B-side. Created around a repeated guitar loop, it sounds kind of like a demo version of “Nancy Boy” which is possibly due to it being produced by Phil Vinall, the guy behind their first hit. I thought that I didn’t remember it but the opening lyrics of “A friend in need’s a friend indeed” was instantly recognisable. Molko gives a performance here in an observed, dispassionate state which lends itself well to the song which would become the band’s joint biggest hit single ever.

It’s another showing next of that ‘exclusive’ performance we’ve already seen from two weeks ago by Will Smith with his hit “Just The Two Of Us”. Maintaining the (re)birth theme, the video (which presumably we didn’t see because of Chris Cowey’s reluctance to include promos on the show) features Smith’s wife Jada who was pregnant with their first child Jaden. A reworking of the Grover Washington Jnr/Bill Withers classic with Smith taking on the mantle of a father trying to be a good role model for his young son, the admirable intentions of the lyrics were rather undermined by the events of March 27, 2022 when Smith left his seat at the 94th Academy Awards, walked across the stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face during his presentation for Best Documentary Feature. Smith’s image as an upstanding family man of firm moral fibre and virtue were certainly put into doubt by the incident despite his aforementioned son Jaden tweeting support of his Dad “And that’s how we do it!”.

It’s the return of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals next with a brand new track – “Love Unlimited”. Having broken the UK (if not America) with their first album “Come Find Yourself”, Huey, ‘Fast’ and Steve Borgovini looked to consolidate on their success with sophomore collection “100% Colombian”. I recall there being quite a buzz around its release what with them being one of the hippest bands around with their Quentin Tarantino sampling hits and effortlessly charismatic front man Huey Morgan. But then…they came back with a song about Barry White! Now, I don’t have any objections to ‘The Walrus Of Love’ but neither am I much of a fan. I can appreciate his unique voice and the fact that he was also a songwriter, record producer and keyboard player. However, I didn’t really appreciate “Love Unlimited” that wanted to pay tribute to him on account of it being as dull as yet another old character being resurfaced on EastEnders. It really is so very pedestrian and one paced with the call and response chorus just being banal. I wonder how many of the youth in the TOTP audience shouting White’s name even knew who he was. Maybe they thought he was an EastEnders character; after all, his name sounded like one (“Awright Baz, fancy a pint in the Queen Vic?”). As poor as “Love Unlimited” was (and yes, I get the reference in its title), follow up single “Big Night Out” was brilliant and I duly bought it. Hope we get to see that one on these TOTP repeats.

Boyzone are No 1 for the second time in 1998 but this time it’s with a track written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman no less. Yes, it’s time for that song from the Whistle Down The Wind musical. Is it fair to say that “No Matter What” is the band’s best known hit? I think it might be given that it shifted 1.4 million copies and was the fourth best selling single in the UK in 1998. This was one of those songs that was always destined to be No 1 if for no other reason than the promotion and fuss around it demanded it. Look at the way it’s presented here with both Steinman and Lloyd Webber in the TOTP studio to give it that extra push and imbue it with a sense that this was no ordinary chart topper. Except that it was…ordinary that is, to my ears at least. I could never hear why it was supposed to be so great. If I thought “Love Unlimited” before it was pedestrian then “No Matter What” was like walking my dog when he really can’t be arsed – painfully slow and with a good chance of featuring shit along the way. Apart from vocalists Stephen Gately and Roman Keating, the other three really might as well not be there. They are given almost zero to do on stage except shuffle from foot to foot with their arms behind their back, make some “ooh” and “aah” backing noises and occasionally click their fingers. Ah yer bollix ye.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1 Apollo Four FortyLost In SpaceNo
2Hinda HicksI Wanna BeYour LadyNah
3Sash! featuring Tina CousinsMysterious TimesNegative
4Solid HarmoniEI Wanna Love YouNope
5PlaceboPure MorningOK song but no
6Will SmithJust The Two Of UsI did not
7Fun Lovin’ CriminalsLove UnlimitedNo but I bought the follow up
8BoyzoneNon Matter WhatNever

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/m002kx4x/top-of-the-pops-14081998