Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where we have yet another ‘golden mic’ guest presenter hosting the show and this one was a rather unusual choice in that he was from the world of sport. Starting in March 1994, there had only been two other sporting celebrities up to this point – Chris Eubank and Ian Wright. What made this guy even more of a left field choice was that he was a jockey. Now, I don’t follow the horses so I don’t know who the current crop of jockeys are or what there personalities are like but back in the day when I was growing up, they weren’t all over the TV apart from on race days. They certainly weren’t presenting the BBC’s premier pop music show. They were jockeys not disc jockeys. However, this particular guy broke the mould somewhat. It can only be Frankie Dettori that I’m talking about and indeed it is. Now back in November 1996, the diminutive Italian wasn’t a captain on A Question Of Sport (that didn’t happen until 2002 and he hadn’t been on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (that hadn’t been invented yet) and he hadn’t been given the This Is Your Life treatment (1998). However, what he had done and was most famous for in 1996 was to have ridden all seven winners on British Festival of Racing Day at Ascot on the 28th September. That famous image of him jumping from his horse? Yeah, that was after he’d won the seventh race. Suddenly it seemed, everybody knew the name Frankie Dettori. It wasn’t just his sporting achievements that set him apart though. He had a ‘cheeky chappie’ persona and that winning accent that endeared him to people and I’m guessing it was those traits that persuaded executive producer Ric Blaxill to give him a shot at hosting his show. I mean, can you imagine Lester Piggott for example introducing the latest chart sounds on TOTP?!

Frankie is still a name today having appeared on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here just last year. His fame touched my life in a rather shameful incident a few years back. The tale goes like this. There was an old Italian guy who lived on our street who didn’t speak much English but who was very sociable and would try and engage everyone he saw in conversation. At some point his health started to fail him and he had to have an operation which incapacitated him but he still liked to sit in his front garden so he could talk to passers by. One day, on my way back from the shop, it was my turn for a chat as he’d spotted me and beckoned me over. He started to talk to me but after some initial pleasantries I was starting to struggle to understand what he was saying. I think he was telling me about his operation but then he went off in a direction that I couldn’t fathom at all. Not wishing to appear rude, I tried to indulge his need for company by just saying the first thing that came into my head that had a vague Italian connection. I pulled out Pavarotti, the Pope, Toto Schillaci and finally my mind settled on Frankie Dettori. I know – how condescending of me. What was I thinking? At least I wasn’t shouting at him. By this point, he was as lost as I was with our conversation and so I did the only thing left to do – bid him farewell, good health and left. I never had another conversation with him and after a while he stopped sitting in his garden. Finally his house went up for sale at which point he must have passed away. I still feel bad about our interaction that day. Wherever he is now, I hope he’s having better conversations than he had with me.

So anyway, back to matters at hand and what’s the deal with the direct to camera piece at the start of the show? More specifically, why do Boyzone seem to be on it every week? This time they share the slot with…horror of horrors…Mick Hucknall! Let’s not think about that for now though as we switch to a very smartly dressed Frankie Dettori whose first job is to introduce Gina G. He manages to get a racing term into his segue immediately – is this going to set the tone for the whole show? Gina is here to perform “I Belong To You” which is at its chart peak of No 6. However, the TOTP caption says that it’s her second Top 5 hit! I mean, you couldn’t have a bigger clue than the big figure six next to her name! And it was the single’s first week in the chart – it couldn’t have possibly been higher than No 6! And while we’re at it, her last single was a No 1 record so saying it went Top 5 is underselling it rather. Honestly caption person! You had one job! In 1998, B*Witched would rearrange the words of the title of Gina’s hit and take “To You I Belong” to No 1. I don’t think you could do that with “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” and remain grammatically correct if indeed that song title was grammatically correct in the first place.

And now for something completely different…so different in fact that the assembled studio audience don’t really know how to react to what they are witnessing. If the artist is a little bit out there then the chances are that said artist will be Björk. Seriously, watch this performance of “Possibly Maybe” and keep your eyes on the studio audience rather than Björk (she won’t like that). They look like they are completely nonplussed by the whole affair. You can actually see some of them thinking “When are Boyzone coming on?” or “Can’t Gina G do another song?”. To be fair to them, Björk’s song isn’t a natural toe-tapper so it would have been hard to know what an appropriate reaction to it was. Most opt for swaying along a bit which I guess is as good a response as any. I’ve come round to Björk a bit over the course of these TOTP repeats but “Possibly Maybe” is setting me back a bit. It’s just noise with some lyrics that have been described as melancholy though I would call them weird and miserable. References to joining a cult, car crashes, electric shocks and sucking your tongue as an act of remembrance are not for me.

Bizarrely, they were deemed a perfect fit for inclusion on an album for Childline that had just been released. Previous efforts by pop music to raise funds for the charity had been very conventional – that cover of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Wet Wet Wet in 1988 and a duet between Sonia and Big Fun in 1990 couldn’t have been more mainstream. However, in the era of Britpop, an approach with a bit more gravitas was deemed more suitable and so artists like Ocean Colour Scene, Menswear, Cast and Pulp whose “Different Class” artwork was co-opted for the album all contributed tracks. To be fair, the running order also featured Boyzone and Lighthouse Family but they were the exception rather than the rule. Even in that company though, “Possibly Maybe” feels an odd choice. Some artists did cover versions (Menswear did “Can’t Smile Without You” and These Animal Men offered “Wichita Lineman”) whilst a U2 / REM combo tackled the former’s “One”. But “Possibly Maybe”? It’s hardly an obvious choice for a charity album. The version on the Childline compilation was a remix by LFO but that was available on one of the three official Björk CD singles that were released so it’s not as if fans would have bought the Childline album for completist reasons. I shouldn’t really be criticising someone for supporting a charity should I? It just strikes me as an odd choice but maybe Björk was trying to fit in with the Britpop vibe. “Possibly Maybe”, “Definitely Maybe”? Funnily enough, Oasis didn’t contribute a track to the album.

I couldn’t understand a word of “1st Of Tha Month” by Bone Thugs–n–Harmony because they were rapping so fast so I rewatched it with subtitles on and guess what? I still couldn’t make head nor tail of what they were banging on about. Reading between the lines though, I think they’re using a load of drug references that I wasn’t familiar with and researching the track online, its title is a reference to when welfare checks were paid (getting your giro in our country). Interesting that they called it “1st Of Tha Month” and not “1st Of Da Month”. What’s the difference? I’m not sure but, as with Gina G, I’m not convinced either is grammatically correct.

When it comes to naming 90s boy bands, I’m not convinced that 911 trips of the tongue but if you check their chart stats they’re not too shabby. After small beginnings when their first two singles peaked at No 38 and No 21, this hit – “Don’t Make Me Wait” – began a run of ten consecutive Top 10 hits. Look at these chart positions:

10 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 5 – 4 – 10 – 2 – 1 – 3

Like I said, they stand up to scrutiny. I haven’t watched that Boybands Forever series on iPlayer yet so I don’t know what sort of review (if any) they get on there. Of course, selling a load of records is no guarantee of quality and 911, in my humble opinion, were not… how can I put this?…they are more quantity than quality. Oh alright, they were pants. Rubbish. Just no good. Their two biggest hits were predictably cover versions and there just didn’t seem to be much to them – a Dec from Ant & Dec lookalike as the singer and two backing dancers who you would have sworn had a sideline in being nightclub bouncers. Apparently those two had actually worked in a club but as dancers on The Hitman And Her TV show where Take That’s Howard Donald and Jason Orange had also been dancers. The 911 lads (Spike and Jimmy) thought they fancied a bit of that pop star lark and so formed a group with Dec Lee Brennan who had nearly had a football career with Carlisle United but was rejected due to being too small (something that never seemed to be a problem to Dec). Amazingly it worked as well and they weren’t made to wait as all those hits would be along soon.

So what connects 911 to legendary R&B producer Babyface? No he didn’t work with them (of course he didn’t) but he did collaborate with US pop/soul group Shalamar on this hit “This Is For The Lover In You” and which song did 911 release as their first single? Yep, “A Night To Remember” by Shalamar. They also recorded “There It Is” for their third album of cover versions. Blimey! I haven’t written so much about Shalamar in this blog for years! Not surprising really seeing as they hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since 1983. Suddenly though, 13 years later, they were back courtesy of Babyface and his reactivation of this track of theirs that was originally released back in 1981. I can’t say I knew it before and it obviously didn’t stick in my head the second time around as I don’t remember it at all but it did manage to reunite the three members of Shalamar (from its most famous line up). This exclusive satellite performance from Los Angeles was the first time they’d actually been in the same physical space together for over a decade (they’d recorded their backing vocals for the reworked track separately). Obviously, it wasn’t really my thing and the addition of LL Cool J on rapping duties want going to persuade me but my biggest disappointment was that we didn’t see Jeffrey Daniel perform his backslide/moonwalk steps.

In his intro to Babyface, Frankie Dettori pointed at his own fizzog and cheeky smile and he’s at it again when introducing this week’s ‘flashback‘ slot, telling us all that he was only a one year old when Slade were in the charts with “Coz I Luv You”. Yeah yeah Frankie, you were very fresh faced back in 1996 – weren’t we all? This was Slade’s first No 1 hit of six and also the first song to feature their misspelling gimmick. Their next six single releases all followed the same pattern. Am I right in thinking there was some criticism from schools in that the practice was encouraging poor spelling in children? Never mind that though – how did “Cum On Feel The Noize” get past the censors?

Like most people I’m guessing, if I think about Moby, his “Play” album comes to mind with all those singles released from it and their use in multiple films, TV shows and commercials. Or possibly his Twin Peaks inspired techno hit “Go”. I would never have come up with this awful noise called “Come On Baby” possibly because I don’t think it even made the Top 100 of the UK charts. Which raises the question, why was Moby granted a slot on the running order for this TOTP to promote it? The album it was from – “Animal Rights” – did nothing much in the charts so surely it wouldn’t have warranted being featured on the show and in any case, Boyzone occupied that slot this week. It’s billed as an ‘exclusive’ but that seems a bit over the top to describe Moby running around topless with ‘Porn Star’ daubed over his chest making a howling racket. It’s all a bit rum just like Moby’s song.

A howling racket Moby might have been but you couldn’t accuse him of being mainstream a category which the last three artists on tonight surely fall into. We start with Simply Red who had reached that point in their career where a Greatest Hits album was due and they duly delivered it in 1996, just in time for Christmas. Not cynical at all. Although the album went to No 1 and went six times platinum in the UK, for me, it slightly underperformed commercially. That statement sounds ridiculous given those numbers but if I give it the context that it was completely outsold by their studio albums “A New Flame” and “Stars” then maybe it carries a bit more weight. It was the eighth best selling album in the UK of 1996 but it was outsold by Celine Dion, Robson and Jerome and an album in “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” that had been released in October 1995.

Anyway, as was the trend, a new track was required to promote the album and “Angel”, a 1973 hit by Aretha Franklin, was chosen for that task. Covering Aretha might be seen as a heinous crime by some but I reckon Hucknall’s ego would have allowed him to back himself to take it on. Apparently the Fugees are uncredited contributors to his version which Hucknall acknowledges by shouting out “one time” midway through and almost chuckling to himself at his wit. He didn’t help himself sometimes did he? He must have been pleased with his treatment of “Angel” as the next Simply Red album called simply “Blue” included five cover versions. More Best Of albums followed including 2008’s “Simply Red 25: The Greatest Hits” which sold half the amount its 1996 counterpart. Maybe I did misjudge that album’s commercial performance after all.

And so to that album chart feature. In his intro, Frankie Dettori announces “It wasn’t much of a race in the album chart. These guys even beat The Beatles. No photograph. Boyzone!”. Frankie wasn’t wrong either. Boyzone had indeed gone straight in at No 1 with sophomore album “A Different Beat” whilst the much anticipated third volume of The Beatles Anthology project debuted at No 4. To celebrate, they are back on TOTP with a track from said album in the form of “Isn’t It A Wonder”. This syrupy ballad would eventually become the third single released from “A Different Beat” after “Words” and the title track both went to No 1. It just failed to make it a hat trick of chart toppers when it peaked at No 2. Watching this performance, I’m struck by how young they all look. Shane Lynch especially looks extremely fresh faced without all those horrible tattoos that were yet to be inked onto his neck. I’ve never understood that fashion but there are so many examples of it in the world of celebrity from Lynch to David Beckham to current Strictly contestant Pete Wicks. It just makes them look like they need a good wash to me.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Well not me personally you understand – I never bought any Robson & Jerome records but plenty of people did not once but twice. After the nation lost its collective head in 1995 over the two actors from the TV drama Soldier Soldier and delivered Robson Green and Jerome Flynn the best selling single of the year in the UK in the form of their cover of “Unchained Melody” and a six times platinum album, those not under the duo’s spell must have hoped it was a short lived aberration that we could all agree to never talk of again. RCA and Simon Cowell had other ideas and the two actors were back just in time for Christmas (and I thought Simply Red were cynical) with a new single and album, the latter, rather aptly, called “Take Two”. The song chosen for the lead single was Jimmy Ruffin’s excellent “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” which I think I would have been made aware of initially by the cover by Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone. That version was all about synths and 80s production which brought a different angle to the original soul classic. What I didn’t need was a sub par facsimile of it delivered by two actors thanks but that’s what we all got. In fact, what we actually got was a a triple threat of “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” alongside “Saturday Night At The Movies” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with all three tracks receiving equal billing – in effect a triple A-side. Apparently this was the first time this had ever happened. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, shame on both of us.

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/p00fsvdz/top-of-the-pops-08111996?seriesId=unsliced