Top of the Pops

1976 was the only year between 1974 and 1980 there was an audience on the Christmas show. Seemingly it was easier to put it together with performances filmed over the year, I know Tammy Wynette filmed her contribution to 1975 in August.

After the 80s shows we expect the Christmas programme to be especially glitzy but in the 70s it was often the lowest key episode of the year. That's why I don't think 1978's presentation had anything to do with the strike, I think it was always supposed to be like that.

Jonathan King as well, who popped in to show off a then-new Rubik's Cube for one link.

No virtual audience on the New Year Eve's show, and the only applause from the studio crew coming at the end of the programme.

I assume it gets recorded on the same day as the Christmas show which was exactly the same setup.

If it was indeed recorded on the same day (as it has been in the past sometimes), I wonder why they didn't just reuse the virtual audience.

Was it definitely the same day? Usually they have 4 sessions over 2 days I think? Fewer performances this year though of course.

Forgot to mention this when it came up in discussion, but I'm sure the short clip of the En Vogue performance shown at the end of the Story Of 1989 is of an unseen pre-recorded performance, and not just a different take of their appearance on the 24/05 show we recently saw:



It was mentioned in here a while back that they did do at least one in 1990, so this must be it - unless it was on TOTP2 at some point it's a shame we don't get to see more of this type of thing.

Noticed on some of the World In Motion video, the faux-letterbox effect doesn't quite go to the bottom of the screen, you can see the very bottom of the frame isn't covered up! These things you notice when you see the entire picture with no overscan.

Popscene's episode guide (and Infax by extension) reckons the second of tonight's episodes was a live edition, but no mention of that being the case in the links.

Did notice a floor manager with a broken arm having a brief moment of fame though:

That's not the floor manager (Iain McLean), that's Alex, one of the cheerleaders who stayed on post-1986 to do the audience warm-up and shout 'Hands in the air, c'mon!' during recording.

I hadn't made that connection - looking at some of his other appearances (including the final link in this episode uploaded to YT), that's definitely him:

I notice they've finally stopped with the SD quality episodes on iPlayer now as well; seems to be a recent thing, as some of the older ones are still 960x540.