The Rolling "Top of the Pops" BBC4 Revival thread.

Suggs keeps popping up either as the presenter or performing a song.

This isn't a bad cover of 'Cecilia', apart from that repeating 'coil spring' sample that sounds a bit out of place.

Mark Morrison pioneering the ‘man’s not hot’ look tonight. Shirt, thick suit and huge fur coat under 40 spotlights and not breaking a sweat.

TOTP was brilliant tonight. Second episode especially.

As for Cecilia, I can't help but feel that in UK pop terms it was a bit ahead of the curve. Reminds me more of dancehall hits from the early-mid 00s than any 90s pop reggae.

Only one episode tonight but it's the one where Chris Eubank is the presenter.

great pronunciation of "Suggs with Cecilia" there

And a minute from the video for That's Nice by Minty at the end! Worth tuning in for that alone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9GBO7i-6GI

I liked it at the time but I think I love it now.

Charmless Man - Damon inadvertantly sings about himself.

Ha.

I actually do believe "Stereotypes" is Damon saying "oh god sake I can't be forever writing crap character descriptions as songs can I?"

Particularly as after "The Great Escape" he didn't write any more.

The b-sides to Charmless Man are the bleakest songs they ever put out, real "what's the fucking point?" stuff, fully expected them to break up after hearing that.

I think The Man Who Left Himself is bleaker/forecasts breakup that didn't happen better: Don't be frightened, these things never last/Maybe tomorrow your time will have passed

Seeing them do both songs on TOTP there really is a sense of a band who'd rather be playing those flipsides. Big drumsticks tiny guitar shenanigans count for nothing when this was around the corner

Cricket and Dolly Parton conspire to stump (geddit?) your weekly "90s eclectic chart mix" or whatever the announcer says every week before the second programme. Episodes from 1983 and 1977 on later if you're so inclinated.

BBC4 gives up with tonights selection: back-to-back they're showing a March 1994 episode of Noel's House Party, a 1981 episode of Larry Grayson's Generation Game, a January 1975 edition of Blankety Blank hosted by Les Dawson (although the BBC4 website uses a thumbnail of Terry Wogan), and a January 1988 episode of Bob (Monkhouse)'s Full House. You'd have to really really hate sport to give this even a cursory glance.

Dear Points Of View, Have the BBC totally forgotten about Paul Daniels' Odd One Out and Every Second Counts? When might we see repeats of these high quality high budget game shows? Yours sincerely, Mr. Daily Mail Fuckwit

Presumably you mean 1985. The show didn't start until 1979, and Dawson didn't take over until 1984.

yes, January 1985, not 1975. Meanwhile Noel's House Party includes 'a Gunge battle between Ross King and Alan Titchmarsh. ' - distilled mid 90s grimness.

Do I hate sport?

Oh yeah i do...

watched that Noels House Party episode on iPlayer the other day thinking it would be a bit of kitsch nostalgia from just before I was old enough to have proper Saturday night TV memories but it was ATROCIOUS no wonder people in the 90s went into fields and took drugs all night if this was the alternative

Noel's House Party is terrible - lazy self-congratulatory smug light entertainment from the period where UK TV producers realised they could crap out anything on a Saturday evening and people would watch because there were only four channels and the internet wasn't really a thing that most people in this country had access to yet. See also Cannon and Ball's Casino and a million crappy gameshows of the time. Bob's Full House not even being the worst by a long way. The likes of Strictly, The Voice, and Britain's Got Talent may be light entertainment fluff but they started partly because by early 00s so many people were choosing to take drugs in a field or hang out online rather than watch even a nanosecond of crappy TV.

I watched pretty much all of the variety season of reruns, but wasn't prepared to touch Noel's House Party and only survived 5 minutes of Friends Like These.

The weirdest shows have probably been Call My Bluff and Going For A Song which redefine low stakes and gentle television and are a difficult watch at all, even more baffling by what must have been the viewing figures at the time.

i saw a couple of minutes of arthur negus talking about urns made of coal, recognised him immediately

they are also doing the summer comedy repeats on bbc2, single episodes of things like the Boosh, Cuckoo, and to the manor born.

I love olc light entertainment too much sorry everyone

That said I can't imagine watching through the whole of NHP. But I am tempted to iPlayer it. And Friends Like These is the way I remember BBC game shows looking when I was really little. Cosy.

There's nothing to recommend Noel's House Party unless there's a specific musical performance or a particular celebrity being gunged, and even then that's over-selling it. The Gotchas are woeful with the only highlight being Garth Crooks struggling to explain the offside rule. Then Edmonds comes on pratting about in the Mr Blobby costume. In a nutshell it sums up my problem with NHP - it's light entertainment made by people who think the audience are idiots.

It's odd that it was made by a lot of the same people who made The Late Late Breakfast Show, which itself could be terrible sometimes but a lot of the time managed to be not shit. Or maybe it's my memory as I was younger. And I guess when you're a teenager you revolt against light entertainment.

Not that I hate everything Edmonds has ever done. Despite being a Tiswas kid at heart, I enjoyed Swap Shop. And I liked the first ten years of Telly Addicts, to the point where it was part of my Christmas TV watching schedule.

There was also a programme where Edmonds was interviewed by Terry Wogan where he came across as a reasonable likeable person. But in Edmonds' own autobiography he was a womanising creep and then there's the whole business of driving a taxi with a manequin in the back so that he can use bus lanes and avoid traffic jams. When he got caught he said it was his 'campaign for action against timewasters' or something.

The less said about Deal Or No Deal the better. My father was obsessed with that gameshow to the point that I bought him the quiz book as a sarcastic Christmas present.

> the quiz book

there was / is no quiz element to d|!d

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQEFKqBhv1Gan_s28o_gYBnrD_awK5nfglorA&s
I just saw the book in a charity shop and bought it for my father's Christmas present. I don't know how faithful it is to the TV show.

the boxes just get given out at random at the beginning and the player picks the order of boxes to open, he / she gets to keep the money in his / hers. the only game-like element is whether to choose the banker's offer or not, based on what has been revealed. (am assuming the banker is as blind as the player) (there may be the option to swap boxes).

you do get an option to swap boxes at the end. the maths works out as a 23% chance of getting more than the average prize

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/deal-or-no-deal-investigating-gameshow-maths/

I once watched the very beginning of a round of Deal Or No Deal and when I saw the randomness of the box allocation I realised that it was a bit pointless (pun not intended). It's like Golden Balls but without all the different rules.

I liked Deal Or No Deal - before contestants and gameplay started getting far too New Age and superstitious (encouraged by Noel himself ofc) - and I like the new Mulhern version. The box allocation may be random but the show is about deciding when to get off and shake hands with the banker. A Deal or No Deal without it is a disaster like Tarrant's The Colour of Money.

Golden Balls on the other hand was, Jasper aside, a load of balls. So ruthlessly cruel - like Divided and, years earlier, Shafted - that unless there was a split-split it would spoil my afternoon.

The horrible thing about Noel - the flaw in my character - is even though he's a raging egomaniac I like seeing him do well because he's been around so long and he takes failures badly.

A few things.

"Then Edmonds comes on pratting about in the Mr Blobby costume." This never, ever happened, right? He wasn't ever Blobby, was he?

"pointless (pun not intended)" I remember something somewhere speculating Osman was the banker. Is this more widely recognised than I thought?

It's clear Edmonds is as much as Madeley the real Alan Partridge inspiration. Of course he is a terrible person.

Osman was never the Banker, it was Glenn Hugill.

He wasn't ever Blobby, was he?

Yeah, he was. The rehearsal would be some young bloke in the costume talking to um, celeb. Then on the real show, it'd all get maaad! then Noel would unveil himself....

I "auditioned" for Shafted - I was doing too well and got held back from doing the "final", and by then I had decided that there was no way I'd get any money out of this, so didn't go back.

Right decision!

... he was naked in that Blobby suit too.

they let Keith Allen back?

(first '96 episodes for a while)

Candidate for worst compilation album ever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Game_(compilation_album)

Northern Uproar – "I Am the Cosmos" – 3:17

Say it ain't so

I grew up with The Beautiful Game and created that (very badly written) wiki article in my teens

Missed TOTP tonight - too busy trying and failing to travel to see A.R. Kane and Seefeel - but England's Irie is brilliant.

Gina G (presenting) saying "the band that refused to do totp" meaning the Sex Pistols, but Joe Strummer was right there (and miming!)

Sex Pistols were bad, of all the songs to perform, Pretty Vacant and New York, the worst single and an unremarkable album track? And Rotten's hair has never been worse.

"the band that refused to do totp"

and in the year of the Prodigy having two number ones

Gina G was TERRIBLE as a host and the Sex Pistols were and always will be rotten, that episode was a real slog for me

I loved the competition winner being completely unimpressed. He probably thought he was going to Vegas with Blur or Oasis instead of a Spanish holiday resort to watch Shampoo do one of their less successful songs

Also that Black Grape effort was terrible, watching it felt like when you're sober at a party when everyone else is snorting cocaine. And that Simply Red I had no recollection of might be the most dismal attempt at a terrace anthem ever.

I didn't like them at the time (cos I was 8 and girls were yucky!!!) but you can see why Spice Girls really had to happen by this point

Hate the competition winner, if I'd been in Madrid with Shampoo in 1996 I'd have been having an amazing time, miserable cunt thought it was beneath him or something.

he 100% deserved to be that miserable for going in with the worst attitude

Oh he had a great time, Shampoo always did 'grumpy' and he was doing likewise.