Top of the Pops: Mishaps, Miming, and Music: True Adventures of TV's No. 1 Pop Show

3.5/5 ( ratings)

A glorious celebration of the best of Top of the Pops, and a nostalgic look back to the days when it was all we had Top of the Pops is a powerful retro brand, with even broader appeal than recent retro hits The Best of Jackie and The Best of Smash Hits. In its 1970s hey day, Top of the Pops regularly reached audiences of 20 million. Homing straight in on the show's nostalgia trigger points, the book is not a chronological history, but is organized into 40 sections such as The Dancers, The Miming, The Seminal Moments, The Refuseniks and The Audience. Packed with long-forgotten photographs, and featuring original interviews with artists, DJs, and even audience members, this witty, wry, but affectionate look back on TV's favorite music show will delight a generation. Top of the Pops began life as a rebellious teenager, but unfortunately ended up as Grandpa at the disco. After decades as must-see Thursday-night TV, it was overtaken by the realities of a new multi-channel, digital age, was shunted disrespectfully between time-slots, and even relegated to BBC2, an irrelevant shadow of its glory days gone by. But there is an entire generation that will never forget the pivotal role TOTP held in the nation’s thoughts and affections. It brought into our living rooms both unforgettable moments of visceral pop brilliance, and also some of the clumsiest and most amateur performances possible that live on in the memory for different reasons entirely. A very British institution, TOTP was there through the best and worst of pop times. Packed with glorious images from rediscovered archives, this book will be an affectionate celebration of the artfulness and absurdities of TOTP, not via a dry chronological history, but by focusing in on 40 highlights—some sublime, some bizarre, many plain daft—that made the show such a unique spectacle. From the pipe-smoking DLT and his ever wacky fellow DJs to the narrative dance routines of Pan's People, from David Bowie to Clive Dunn, from the rebels who refused to mime for the cameras to the audience members who dressed up for them, TOTP really mattered to children of the 1970s, and this book will be irresistible to them.