A 1998 episode of Top of the Pops, the first performance from Fat Les starting in Albert Square before moving onto the TOTP stage. Also Jamie Theakston with surprise facial hair.
Of course, as the video description points out, that episode was back on a Thursday, at seven o'clock, because of the World Cup -
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1998-06-25#at-19.00 (Obviously Zoe Ball wasn't presenting.) I remember that episode getting in the Top 70 highest-rated programmes in Broadcast that week, which was I think the only time it ever got in that chart. I do remember every time they moved Pops away from Friday at 7.30, the ratings would go up, which would seem to illustrate that it was in the wrong slot, and regardless of how many times they revamped it, the only revamp that would have been any use to it would have been a crap revamp of Corrie.
You'll also note that episode was longer than thirty minutes, which is because, I remember, the hour-long episode of 'stEnders that followed it was substantially shorter than an hour, presumably it was just two episodes stuck together minus titles and credits. The 'stEnders scheduling was all over the place in that World Cup, they stuck it in any available slot and at one point I think they went over a week without an episode, from the Tuesday to the following Thursday, which was probably the longest ever gap between episodes, until now of course.
I remember that performance from the time, back then I didn't know that EE and TOTP were filmed at the same place so I wondered what the relevence of Albert Square was. Vindaloo and Three Lions '98 were both unofficial songs which did much better than the official England song from that year- "How Does It Feel to Be on top of the world" by England United, which just scraped in the top 10, then quickly vanished and everyone's forgotten about it now. Whereas the other two still get played fairly regularly over 20 years on.
Looks like England United never even featured on TOTP, probably due to Cowey's reluctance to show videos and the fact you'd be unlikely to get all the people featured into the studio. Was a policy that was far too strict in my opinion, led to songs not appearing that in all honesty should have (Ray of Light for example), songs that were going down the chart or had been around for ages being shown over new entries because they had performances (one Whitney Houston performance in 1999 was shown 5 times, each time at a lower chart position than the last time it was shown), and the same performances being shown for weeks on end rather than show the video some weeks for a change (Believe by Cher for example).
I was always quite fond of On Top Of The World, I never really understood why it was slagged off so much. The general view seemed to be "you can't sing it on the terraces", which until Three Lions had never been a requirement anyway. Seemingly people just liked Three Lions so much they didn't see why they needed another one. It was also the theme tune to Gary Lineker's Golden Boots, the series they did in the run-up to the tournament on the Beeb. They may not have performed it on Pops, but they did get everyone together to perform it on TFI Friday.
The big problem with the Cowey era was its repetition, as you say if you watched it every week you would see some performances turn up again and again and again. I suppose the idea was that they were still in the chart and being played on the radio and still popular, which is fair enough, but it seemed a waste of time in only half an hour a week to be constantly repeating clips. And showing the previous week's number one never made sense. The other problem with the pre-records is that anything exciting that ever happened in this era - the Travis food fight, various Robbie Williams outfits - was never a surprise, because they'd already shown pictures of it in the papers (and obviously, it was really obvious it was a repeat when they showed it again).
It's funny, though, because everyone used to complain when they had exclusives, and how it should be records in the charts and nothing but, and in this era it was just records in the charts, and it was really boring. The idea was probably a sound one, but the problem in this era is that all the records would have been on other shows for weeks on end, so by the time they got on Pops they'd seem really out of date - even more so when they had CDUK less than 24 hours later doing the following week's chart. So instead of the old idea of releasing a single, getting on Pops and from that, going up the charts and going on other programmes, it was now the case that you'd do all those other programmes before you were in the charts, and then release the single and then get on Pops, and it would be the last thing you'd do with that single. So as a promotional tool, it was useless. The single was already on the way down.
Under Chris Cowey it was the era where the presenters exhibited their individual personalities the least, it was pretty clear he'd written the scripts and you soon got used to some of his familiar turns of phrase. Richard Marson talks in his book about doing a bit about Pops for Blue Peter, and saying that as it was in Elstree, away from all the other programmes, Cowey had turned it into his own empire where he called the shots, and every single person would go "Let me check this with Chris" or "Chris says yes". He also says he had a very individual directing style, in that he wouldn't physically direct the show but sit in the control room and say "Camera 2 looks good!" or "Interesting shots from 4!".