I’m ready to pop a fuse
I’VE become a big fan of those Top Of The Pops re-runs on BBC Four. Actually, no, that’s a lie: I’ve become a medium-sized fan.To be a big fan I’d have to be able sit through an entire edition without punching the fast-forward button. In truth I have to punch it quite a lot.
As you’re quickly reminded if you glance at any episode’s line-up in the listings, a typical Top Of The Pops always worked to a ratio of one really great singer or band – the one you’d been looking forward to seeing all week – to at least one abomination.
Or one Jive Bunny, as it became known in the late Eighties. That insufferable cartoon rabbit – the public face of some guys from Yorkshire whose novelty act stitched together medleys of hits from years back – is one of the acts featured tonight on TOTP: THE STORY OF 1989 (BBC4, 8.30pm).
I’m afraid it was bound to be. The programme is the latest in an occasional series of nostalgic overviews, recalling Top Of The Pops’ key moments over a given year while reflecting on what was happening elsewhere in the real world.
And so there’s no getting away from the fact that Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers topped the UK singles charts a good many times in 1989 – with Swing The Mood (in August), That’s What I Like (October), Let’s Party (December) and Wouldn’t You Dearly Love To Meet Whoever’s To Blame For This Garbage And Pull Their Hair Really Hard? (in my imagination).
As is customary, the show mixes clips of acts who were big that year – Jason Donovan, Lisa Stansfield, Texas, Sam Brown, Soul II Soul, The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays etc – with recollections from those involved.
Or, in some cases, attempted recollections.
“It might even have been our first time on Top Of The Pops,” suggests Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder when reminded which year is under discussion. “Was it? Was that it..?” Elsewhere, there’s almost as nostalgic a feel to HOLIDAYING WITH JANE McDONALD & FRIENDS (Channel 5, 9pm), a new series in which Jane and guest celebrities get to sample luxury trips.
Nostalgic, that is, in that it brings to mind both ITV’s Wish You Were Here and BBC One’s Holiday programme.
Series from a bygone age in which a famous person would be paid to visit a ridiculously exotic location, in return for which they would deliver an editorially incisive, no-holds-barred report, confirming that it was ridiculously exotic.
In episode one of this new thing, Jane is in Corfu while Jennie Bond is in Lisbon.
Ore Oduba, mind you, only gets as far as the Lake District.