TOTP2 - The 80s

Did anybody just watch TOTP2 - The 80s? It was nice to see the 80s graphics on some of the performances but wasn't happy about most of the songs being cut and Mark Radcliffe talking over the start of some of the songs.

Sky plussed for later, along with some of last nite's Radio 1 stuff.

How come Wrighty ain't doing it no more?

Any chance of a 70's, 90's & 00's special at some point pretty please Auntie Beeb?

(We'll let you off over the 60's stuff, seeing there's not much there!)

They also got a few dates wrong on the captions; which meant the show didn't run exactly to chronological order as it appeared to - it went from Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" to Feargal Sharkey's "A Good Heart" (misattributed to April 1985 instead of the correct date, 31st October 1985) and back to a genuine performance from April 1985, "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears.

As well as Radcliffe talking over a few intros, some of the edits to the performances were quite atrocious. I guess the point was to fit as many overplayed 80s songs into the 90 minute slot as possible - a shame, as I think some of the performances were new to TOTP2.

Because he's an annoying vacuous d_ck (in my 'umble )

I think the 80s special is to tie with the 1980s season... that Boy George film, A2A, amongst other things

I noticed a couple of edits, but all in all I enjoyed the programme.

loved the 80s top of the pops studios with all those neons. shame they don't make em like that any more!

Agree about the edits, but the majority were unnoticeable, unless you were familiar with the song & noticed it was shorter in the middle!

Going back to 1985, from memory, there was a few weeks of shows, where someone had the 'bright idea' of putting flash images / 2 second(?) interuptions into performances, presumbly to deter the home tapers!

I remember both a Fergal Sharkey - A Good Heart (studio performance) & the video of Elton John's 'Nikita' being affected, as I had them on tape for many years!

What do you mean by this? What did they do?

I think 'The Young Ones' did something similar(I definetely saw it on those repeats, dunno about the original transmissions. ).

Basically it was a sublimal image, but longer in duration!

(Sorry don't have any examples to show you, unless anyone else knows what I'm talking about!)

The idea behind The Young Ones' routine was that, at the time, there was a big thing about using flash frames and subliminal messages in shows and it was eventually made illegal. TYO, being the way it was, took the mick out of this in Series 2 and inserted their own, albeit pointless frames which were images of frogs, film credits, taps etc. The producers put these in also as a 'treat' to people who taped the show, so they could go frame by frame and catch the still.

Whilst the 'real' frames lasted a single frame (that's one out of 30 frames a second), the frames in TYO lasted around 3 or 4 frames, making them noticable but still incomprehensable. They got told off for using them, despite being harmless, and had to remove them from repeats - though they are still present on the DVD.

As for the BBC putting them into various other shows, I doubt that was likely, especially to 'deter' video tapers as, if anything, it'd encourage them to tape shows to work out what the frame was.

Still bloody annoying though at the time.

When you were happily taping the likes of Fergal Sharkey & it switches sound & vision to ? for a couple of seconds.

At least it was only a few shows affected.

Here's another thought.

Did you used to watch TOTP back in the day & when there was a track you wanted to see, you're thinking 'Please play the video!' & they played a studio performance instead? (I appreciate the studio performances now btw!)

If you heard the group was on the likes of 'Saturday Superstore' that weekend, you'd sit through a pile of ****, just in hope they'd play the video, so you could tape it. (& even they never played it all!)

Bearing in mind, groups did start to provide insert performances(early videos?) for use, if they were not around for the TOTP recording, why was the likes of Pans People still used to fill the gaps, back in the early days?

Did some groups still remain to be convinced that 'pop video' was the way to go, or were some videos just unable to be used?

(Example : Howard Jones - the video for 'Life In One Day', seeing it in the future via You Tube, there are lots of 'mock' technical interuptions during the video, which would confuse the viewer, plus Tony Blackburn appears at the beginning 'presenting' a mock TV pop show. Too close to home for the TOTP production team?

Then you have the likes of Frankie & 'Relax' & Jacko & 'Thriller', where the subject matter of the video prevented full transmission at the time. (Frankie did appear in the studio, but Jacko was represented by studio dancers over the closing credits!) The videos for these did appear later, mainly on satelite channels.)

It seems a shame groups went to work on videos & they never got shown at the time, as far as I know, but you would've thought they'd provide a TOTP friendly version for transmission!

I read somewhere recently the BBC initially placed a limit on the number of promo videos they could show on TOTP, I'm sure there was some level of stipulation from the Musician's Union. This must have been cast aside by the early 1980s, around the same time dancers were abandoned.

I also imagine the BBC wanted to limit the budget they spent paying for the right to play videos - I'm not certain how royalties for promo videos work.

Conversely, I remember seeing a 1986 episode where Mike Smith comments TOTP was the only place on TV you were able to see pop videos; a reference to a period when "The Chart Show", then on Channel 4, was taken off-air due to some kind of dispute.

Re: the "Thriller" video, I'm sure I posted on this before, but by the time the video for it was available, "Thriller" had fallen from its peak chart position (and already featured as a play-out track) and never climbed that high again.

Famously Keith Chegwin said Swap Shop were offered Michael Jackson live in the studio for five hundred quid or the video for fifty quid, and they chose the latter. According to, yes, the 1982 Top of the Pops Annual, Michael Hurll says in it that they had an agreement with the Musicians Union to show a maximum of three videos a show. Which makes sense, really, as any more and there's not really much point in doing Pops.