last night's top 100 number ones channel 4 tv show

eye-level wz inescapable in the 70s (also the van der valk books were written from the POV of vdv himself, and the final one ends something a la thus: "van der valk had no opinion on this: he was dead" which = k-kool, no?)

i wz k-reminded — by "don't you love me" and "careless whisper" — of BOTH of the "two that i lost" mentioned at the end of in my punk rock epic, so wz quite glum as i was watching it on my own

It would have been nice if they hadn't had Avid Cocking Merrion on throughout doing his "comedy".

the merrion stuff was grating but i laughed
at the britney bit.

i imagine the next morning involved a list w. a "maybe not" written in beside one entry

Thatcher's comments are unintentionally hilarious because she seems to imply that she was a young girl when "Telstar" came out, rather than a 37-year-old backbencher in her first parliamentary term (think it was Ian MacDonald who pointed out how appropriate it was that she liked a song that evoked the newly-empowered consumerism of the Macmillan era). However the highlight of the show was, naturally, the 1961 BBC-tv continuity clip in the "Stranger on the Shore" sequence - the sort of journey into a completely different world which is all this sort of programme is ultimately good for.

aaarrrrghghgh

I only saw the last 50 or so, but there was an awkward turd-in-the-playpool moment that was swanned past with editorial speed: a pic of Gary Glitter was shown, but the song wasn't heard, and he wasn't even mentioned by name: just a 'this man was once popular - not any more!' type voiceover. Straight on with business as usual. Perhaps a policy of 'no more royalties for you, you perv', or an editorial expression of condemnation........but a slight sense of being patronised too.
(I mean wow what a relief that the lighthearted atmosphere of cultural consumerism and nostalgia-by-numbers and entertainment-through-mockery was maintained by ruefully smirking through a possible 5-second tingle of dissonance and reflection over the relation between artefacts and their makers, or punters and popstars, or cultural approbation....ah well, that wasn't their job. Doesn't seem to be anybody's, unfortunately.)

Might have been interesting to attend the production meeting where they discussed how to deal with that inconvenience.

not to mention the possibly greater inconvenience that the number one record was not played (as opposed to the live clip of the "original" candle in the wind + 5 secs of e. john singing it at w'minster abbey).

it's a pity no one filmed the scene i witnessed in w h smiths in oxford st. where two customers were slagging the record off and the till lady ordered them out of the shop for being "insolent." security guards and everything.