We have arrived at one of the most infamous episodes of TOTP certainly of the 90s, maybe ever. It’s that show with Chris Eubank. Why was he presenting the nation’s favourite music programme? Well, he’d retired from boxing in the September of 1995 having failed to regain his super-middleweight title from Steve Collins. However, he would return to the fight game later in 1996. For now though, he was seen by executive producer Ric Blaxill as a suitable choice for the ‘golden mic’ slot. As far as I can tell he was one of only three sporting celebrities to host TOTP with the others being footballer Ian Wright and jockey Frankie Dettori. All three you could argue have a personality that transcended their sporting fame – Wright is exuberant and Tigger-ish, Dettori is cheeky and likeable and Eubank…well, he’s eccentric if not downright odd. I’m actually quite intrigued to see what he says in his links to camera. Ding! Ding! Round one!

Eubank starts by introducing himself (as if he needed to) by giving us his full nomenclature including his middle name Livingstone. It’s pretty impressive as middle names go but nobody will ever top ex-footballer Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey. He then says something about the forthcoming “goodies” on the show and that he’s feeling “effervescent”. It’s a nervous, stumbling start – he needs to get a few punchy lines in to settle him down. The act he introduces are Babylon Zoo and their second hit of the year “Animal Army”. I said of this song when the video was shown the other week that it had traces of both Oasis and the Stone Roses about it and listening to it again here, I’m even more convinced of that assertion. Try closing your eyes and just listening to this performance – see what I mean? Anyway, Jas Mann has grown a spattering of facial hair and is wielding a guitar for this performance which we never saw during the “Spaceman” weeks. I presume he was trying to establish some musicianship credentials on the hunt for credibility points but I’m not sure he really wins that fight. Following what would turn out to be the third biggest selling single of the year in the UK was always going to be a bout too far but its peak of No 17 was probably a little on the harsh side on reflection. Babylon Zoo would stagger on for one final round before being KO’d when third single “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” peaked at No 32.

Eubank looks like he’s on the ropes already, appearing dazed and confused and uttering barely remembered lines instructing us to “enjoy the show”. He needs to rally and quickly. Whilst he takes a break between rounds and gets some encouragement from his corner man, we get a performance of the latest dance hit to cross over from the clubs to the charts. “Keep On Jumpin’” was originally recorded by US disco act Musique in 1978 but didn’t trouble our charts until it was revived by The Lisa Marie Experience who took a version of it to No 7 in the UK Top 40 and to the top of our Dance Chart. Despite their name, this lot were actually two male house DJs Neil Hinde and Dean Marriott (aka D. Ramirez). They would go on to remix tracks for the likes of Sash, Eternal, Robin S and Inner City. “(Keep On) Jumpin’” (no brackets, no points) would be their only chart hit as The Lisa Marie Experience though. I’m assuming that their name was inspired by Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla, who, at this time, was in the process of divorcing perhaps the most famous person on the planet Michael Jackson. I’m guessing they were hoping to trade subliminally on the news headlines that the couple would have been generating? Is that a known marketing strategy?

As for their hit, they couldn’t get clearance to use a sample of the original track so had to record their own version of the chorus which they do pretty faithfully with convincing disco strings to the fore. Having not been a UK hit in the 70s, the song found itself in the Top 10 twice in the space of a few weeks in 1996 when a much more housed-up version by Todd Terry featuring Martha Wash and Jocelyn Brown peaked at No 8.

Eubank throws a cryptic curveball with his next link, setting the mathematicians in the watching audience a brain teaser – “how long does it take a lady to make that step?”. What was he on about? I can only assume he was referring to the first video of the night for “The Box” by Orbital. In it, actor Tilda Swinton plays an alien-like character who observes Earth and its inhabitants in stop-motion giving the impression that she is operating outside of temporal constructs before disappearing whence she came. It’s all very The Man Who Fell To Earth which apparently was the inspiration for the promo according to its co-director Jes Benstock. Was its stop-motion effect what Eubank was being obscure about in his intro? Another question I have is how famous was Tilda Swinton at this point? I’m thinking not that well known beyond the art house crowd as most of her credits up to this point were for a clutch of Derek Jarman films. This was well before her roles in The Beach, Vanilla Sky and The Chronicles Of Narnia franchise. If my guess is true, then her smaller profile would only have added to her portrayal of the mysterious protagonist of the video.

As for the track itself, “The Box” would become one of Orbital’s bigger hits peaking at No 11. It sounds like the soundtrack to a 60s spy thriller but with a few dance beats thrown in. Maybe the duo of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll were in training with their eye on the prize of an actual film soundtrack which they achieved the following year with their reworking of the theme to the 1997 remake of The Saint which gave them their second consecutive No 3 hit following the rather disturbing “Satan Live”. In 2000, they would continue with the soundtrack work when they contributed a track (with Angelo Badalamenti) to the aforementioned The Beach movie.

Eubank’s landing some blows now (or at least he thinks he is) with some more enigmatic words. This time, he says “We live in a country where the minds of the people are manipulated by the press. Think about it”. I mean, he’s not wrong and nearly 30 years later that is still the case but why was he prompted to say that at this time? Was he having a particularly bad time with the tabloids? In his early pugilist career, he hadn’t enjoyed a good relationship with the press who depicted him as arrogant and with ideas above his station with his flamboyant sartorial style and posturing or as his Wikipedia entry puts it ‘the man you love to hate’. After he’d lost his boxing title and was supposedly retired from the fight game, would he have still attracted so much attention? I guess by presenting TOTP he was hardly shying away from the public counting his money in his expensive mansion was he?

Definitely on the covers of the music press would have been Ash who were onto their third (and ultimately biggest) hit in “Goldfinger”. I guess this would have been a breakthrough moment for the band – their first time inside the Top 10 and it came with a single that was released a good six months after their last hit. Momentum could easily have been lost. “Goldfinger” not only consolidated that previous success but went beyond it. To do that, the band had to come up with a bloody good tune and they did that. I used my words carefully there – it’s a good tune but not a great one to my ears in the respect that I think they’ve got better songs. Still better than most of the garbage in the charts though. Watching this performance back, I’m struck by how much Tim Wheeler looks like Vernon Kay? Odd(job).

Eubank is finding his feet now and getting a combination together. He’s not stumbling over his words so much and is addressing the audience in a more direct way informing us that he’s got something next to get us “absolutely freaking” before describing it as a modern day version of “Knees Up Mother Brown”. Who can he be talking about? It’s Technohead of course and their latest hit “Happy Birthday”. Yes, the people who brought us “I Wanna Be A Hippy” thought we could do with another dose of their dumbo brand of high speed, happy hardcore nonsense and duly delivered unto us a second hit. It’s a carbon copy of its infuriating predecessor but that didn’t stop UK punters from buying it in enough numbers to send it to No 18 – just bonkers. That’s also the word I would use for this performance which is a riot of idiots jumping around maniacally for the duration of the ‘song’. And what was the recreation of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party all about? Ever wondered why the hatter was mad? Well, apparently it was an actual condition arising from the use of mercury in the Victorian era to cure pelts in the hat making process. When the mercury got into the systems of the hat makers, it gave rise to mental health problems including dementia hence the phrase. In terms of Lewis Carroll’s character in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, some analysis suggests he was written this way to highlight some of the most irritating and unpleasant traits of human nature. ‘Irritating’ and ‘unpleasant’? Well, that explains it then as “Happy Birthday” by Technohead was nothing if not irritating and unpleasant.

P.S. The Emily who Eubank says happy birthday to in his intro is presumably his daughter Emily whose 2nd birthday it had been six days before this TOTP aired.

Oh dear. Eubank makes a misstep in his next intro although in 1996, I’m not sure his choice of words would necessarily have tripped him up. Would we have winced at him describing Louise Werner of Sleeper as “an absolute tottie” back then? I like to think I would have but I can’t be sure. Also, would Eubank’s Nicholas Parsons reference have hit home with the TV audience in 1996? The game show that Parsons presented that shared its name with Sleeper’s single ran from 1971 to 1983 so had been off our screens for 13 years by this point. I think that particular punch line might have failed to hit its intended target.

Just like Ash earlier, Sleeper were at a pivotal moment in their career with the release of their first Top 10 single “Sale Of The Century”. Also just like Ash, it came six months after their last hit so it was an important moment momentum wise. In terms of the song itself, it was arguably just more of the same Sleeper sound that previous hits “Inbetweener” and “What Do I Did Now?” had established. That shouldn’t be seen as a criticism though. They had a successful formula and were giving the people what they wanted. What’s that? Couldn’t the same argument be applied to Technohead? Erm…no. Why not? Well…I didn’t like them did I? That’s fair enough isn’t it? I think it is. Interestingly, Louise Werner doesn’t have her guitar with her for this performance and she seems a bit lost without it. Not knowing quite what to do with herself, she resorts to a few skip and jump movements. She should have floated around the stage Muhammad Ali style, throwing a few jabs, ducking and weaving. I’m sure Chris Eubank would have been even more enamoured with her than he already was.

It’s round seven and Eubank rallies with an intro that sits well with the esoteric, faux-existential quotes he specialises in. It also shows that he knew something of the band he was introducing. “Now here’s a group to make you philosophise and think” he pronounces before the Manic Street Preachers fill our screens. There’s no doubting that the Welsh rockers have a canon of work that displays a certain intellectual rigour with their influences ranging from Nietzsche to Camus to Chomsky and much wider. Was it possible that Eubank was a Manics fan or just that he’d done his research? Whatever Eubank’s truth, the band were telling us that theirs was that they were definitely still a going concern despite the disappearance of Richey Edwards via the success of “A Design For Life”. Ironically, the song’s best known lyric – “We don’t talk about love, we only wanna get drunk” – in which the band highlight the working class’s right to do so, would be sung back to them by crowds of middle class festival goers. Think about that as Chris Eubank might have said.

OK, we nearly at the KO moment for Eubank. The moment when Chris is dealt a blow he can’t recover from. When the BBC4 audience, with our prior knowledge of what’s coming, look on with a building sense of schadenfreude until suddenly it’s here…and Chris Eubank has to introduce Suggs singing “Cecilia”. Why was this a big deal? Because of our host’s lisp of course – it’s not a great look is it? Taking the piss out of a speech impediment. Six years on from this, Gareth Gates would win the hearts of the public on Pop Idol with his singing and looks but also because of his determination to not let his stammer prove too big an obstacle in his pursuit of becoming a pop star and recording artist. I guess Eubank’s perceived arrogance and eccentric demeanour meant he was never going to be afforded the same reaction.

His intro for the actual performance by Suggs and Louchie Lou and Michie One of “Cecilia” has him on the ropes but the knockout blow comes during the Top 10 countdown when he has to say “At six, Cecilia by Suggs”. That moment was used in an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks in the a round called Freeze Frame which was basically a What Happened Next? section…

Mark Morrison is still in pole position at the top of the charts and he’s still got his rather creepy handcuffs with him. The recurrent line “you lied to me” combined with Morrison’s style of delivery has made me ponder that “Return Of The Mack” is what you get if you combined “Ain’t No Doubt” by Jimmy Nail (“she’s lying”) with “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy. What a thought!

After the Suggs KO, the defeated Chrissy boy gives a reflective speech about being true to yourself before signing off with a cheery “Good bloody show”. To paraphrase Chumbawamba, you can knock Eubank down but he’ll always get up again. The play out song is something of an oddity called “That’s Nice” by Minty. If you don’t remember it (as I don’t), it’s probably because it never charted as far as I can tell. Yes, it’s another of those left field Ric Blaxill choices where he championed a track that would not actually become a Top 40 hit.

Minty was a vehicle for Australian performance artist, club promoter, fashion designer and friend of Boy George, Leigh Bowery. Wikipedia tell me that Minty were part of the Romo movement which I’d never heard of but which was short for Romantic Modernism and was characterised by a hotchpotch of musical genres including disco, glam rock and the New Romantics with its base camp being the club night Club Skinny in Camden. This track was a posthumous release as Bowery died from an AIDS related illness on New Year’s Eve 1994 though the project continued under the leadership of his long term female partner Nicola Bateman. I’m guessing now but was Leigh Bowery the inspiration for the character of Vulva from Spaced?

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/m0020ldh/top-of-the-pops-25041996?seriesId=unsliced