2nd January

1975: having seen his banker I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day not just fall short of Noddy and co but also end up behind the New Seekers in the Christmas 1973 chart, Roy Wood and Wizzard decided on something subtly different for the following year's festive period. At least three counts of nightmare fuel here. As there may be here, as Jimmy first grabs his inaugural sailor of 1975 and then, as he's a mightily ginger bearded Australian, chooses to indoctrinate him in the way of The Wombles. The observant will note the emergency clarification on the blackboard, Chris Spedding being on hand for this one and that Orinoco/Batt has borrowed his mike technique from Faces-era Rod Stewart. No less unlikely humanoid creatures, Kenny. None of those people are actually the lead vocalist on the recording, you know. Mud are still number one, as suddenly unseasonal as that is, and it's only now Les Gray has his big, celebrated idea of how to properly mime a spoken part - he'd tried to do it himself on the festive show itself. At least we the public gave him the opportunity to expand his CV.

1986: John Peel's best TOTP work was always as part of a double act, and with Jensen having thrown in BBC work for the cold steel embrace of commercial radio at the end of 1984 Janice Long acted as his most regular foil. Note at the end of his last link the return of The Dance. From that show, early flowerings of A-hamania.

1992: Right Said Fred reach hit number three, for which Richard Fairbrass gets out his best vacuum-packed club gear. 1992 proved to be something of a bind in pop terms, though, the rave explosion having ended up in stuff like Roobarb & Custard by Shaft, where they couldn't even get the rights to sample Richard Briers and had Steve Wright sideman Richard Easter revoice the quotes. Released four months after the Prodigy's Charly there was a lot of this kids TV-sampling stuff to come, from people who not only failed to become new Prodigys but didn't so much as achieve the success of half of Shaft (not the same Shaft, by the way, who covered Mucho Mambo at the end of the decade), Mark Pritchard, who tends for some reason to prefer to highlight his later work as half of Global Communication, who made the electronic ambient classic 76:14, and his remixes for the likes of Aphex Twin and Radiohead.