Chart Music: the TOTP Podcast

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: is Simon Bates negging or cock-blocking?

Into the penultimate stretch of the Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and Our Sarah has taken us all the way back to the time when her keen Pop sensibilities were hauling itself upright from the ooze. And she. Has. Chosen. Well.

We're weeks away from Band Aid and the Eighties are already starting to ming of unwashed cock, but this e...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: Why didn't NASA do something for the old 'uns?

It's the mid-point of our Critics Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and this time Our Taylor has taken us back - way back - to the spring of 1969, when two-thirds of Team ATVland weren't even thought of and the third was imprisoned in a cage made out of pallets, with all nails sticking out. 

Musicwise, well: we are 301 days from the end...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: What's more important, the Taint or the Love?

Part Two of our Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and Our Neil has dragged us back to the idyllic summer of 1981, where the panel were a) replaying the 1970 World Cup with Subbuteo, b) wearing burgundy and c) playing The Omen in our bedroom respectively. And good Lord, what an episode he's picked! 

Musicwise, it's a ridiculous m...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: can you remember a wazz you had 43 years ago?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is the beginning of a five-part mini-series where members of Team Chart Music run a finger along our TOTP collection and select one of their favourites - and Our David has kicked it off by pulling out an absolute plum from the very end of the Drought. Your panel were killing time during the summer holiday...

The 40th episode of the podcast which asks: so how do you get your pills out of a Kinder Surprise egg while wearing long opera gloves?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, takes us nearly ten years away from the glory of the last one and plunges us deep into the turquoise shell-suited heart of the Neighnties - and oh dear, our beloved programme is right up Arsehole Street. The ratings are dropping like a Shed Seven release in its s...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: did Phil Oakey ever have it out with the Undertones for coating him down on My Perfect Cousin?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is the longest EVER, but don't blame us - because there is so much going on in this episode of The Pops, and we take a concentrated blast of 1981 full in the face. No lie, it's wave after wave of late-Eighventies pop brilliance, broken up by assorted bits o...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: Rod Stewart - a grower or a shower?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, involves one of the grimmer aspects of Top Of The Pops, as it comes in the wake of one of the regular audience members comitting suicide, the subsequent tabloid coverage when it was revealed that she'd left a diary behind, and the fallout from it - which continued right the way up to this decade. And it's something...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: how did we manage to go on about 7 Days for 20 minutes without once adding the word 'Jankers' to it?

Jesus in a jumpsuit, Pop-Crazed Youngsters - it's a Top Of Pops from THIS ACTUAL CENTURY, and your three contributors, who are by now frantially sucking at the bone-dry and chapped teats of traditional media, are still upset that there are no Massive Glam Robots on, and it's not availabl...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; how would Mike Read get on in the WWF? and how long would it take before someone took his guitar off him and stoved his head in with it?

It's been too long, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, but we're back from our spell of R&R at Pontins Camber Sands and are going armpit-deep into the cavity of one of the landmark episodes of Top Of The Pops - the one with the biggest TV audience ever. ITV are on...

A special-ish episode of the podcast which asks: why do we always leave the Xmas episodes to the last minute?

Another MASSIVE examination of Pop-telly nirvarna sees us tucking in to the annual Xmas day selection box - this time from the year of Nineteen and Seventy-Six. And lucky us: we've been invited to the head table of Radio One, dominated by the bearded gorgons of The Happy Sound themselves - DLT and Noel Edmonds - as they giv...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; who is more important - a dead Beatle, or your Nana?

It's cold and dark, pop-crazed youngsters, so it's time once again to binge upon one of our favourite eras of Top Of The Pops. Your hosts are simultaneously deciding which 50 badges to wear for the school Xmas disco, still in hiding from the fake accusation that they had a good cry about someone dying, and going about their business u...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; if God were one of us, who would he hate more out of M People and the Lighthouse Family?

The longest episode of Chart Music EVER sees us pitched into the second half of the Nineties for the first time - and oh dear, our favourite Pop show is beginning to enter its slow decline and being pissed about with big style. The guest presenters are still in effect - but luckily for us, this week...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: why didn't Top Of The Pops do a Bonfire Night special instead, the traitorous, British-way-of-life-hating bastards?

Yeah yeah, we know: another early Eighties one. But if you thought we were going to wait another year before we got stuck into this particular episode, you don't know Chart Music. The Pops is entombed in its rah-rah-rah flags-and-balloons Zoo-wanker phase and has pulled ou...

The latest edition of the podcast which asks: that thing with the earlobes - the entire country didn't just imagine it, did they?

It's the summer of '83, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and your avuncular host is battling a series of crises: not only is he still recovering from a de-bagging on the school field and sulking over the re-election of the foul hag Thatcherax, he's fending off rumours about his sexuality before he's even had the c...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: if Bummerdog was a band, what would they sound like?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is one of the absolute landmark moments of the long and storied history of The Pops - the week where all the rubbish of the Laties is finally driven into the sea by streetwise lairy youths with a malevolent shuffle and a drug-induced attitude. And as well as Big Fun, the Stone Roses and Happy Monda...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: if Midge Ure had become lead singer of the Sex Pistols, would we all still be wearing flares? 

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, was foraged from the very dustbin of History, being one from early 1976 which missed out on the BBC4 treatment. And, as we very quickly discover, huge chunks of it should have stayed there. Diddy Fucking David Hamilton wears a nasty Christmas-present jumper...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: is there such a thing as a trendy wank?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, drags us back to the dark  Civil War of the mid-90s, when brother fought against brother over whether Roll With It was slightly less rubbish than Country House, and Oasis-loving loving wives imposed a 'nookie strike' upon their Blur-supporting husbands. Yes, it's the aftermath of the Battle of Britpop, and we f...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: has there ever been a Good Bates?

The year is 1982, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and the world is waiting for England. Actually, no - what the world is waiting for is for Tomorrow's World to piss off, because this episode of The Pops is a bit special. No less than three football teams have been hitting the BBC bar all afternoon and rubbing a manky-jumpered shoulder with the Pop Elite and part...

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: that scrap between Reagan and Chernenko - whose coat would you be holding?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees us refraining from fretting about Armageddon for a bit and getting blasted full in the face by non-stop Rah-Rah-Rah American Olympic nonsense instead, revelling in the thrill of being able to watch BBC1 at four in the morning and indulging in golf ball-assisted masturbati...