14th February

1974: A wiped show, but dragged from the back of an antique cupboard comes Lena Zavaroni, whom Pops lore claims was the youngest person to appear on the show aged 10, though surely St Winifred's School Choir were seven and eight. Regardless, no small amount of self-possession here.

1985: When they say the 80s was a unique time for pop, it's not because of Tony Hadley types but because the mainstream opened its arms towards people like these three. Pete Burns, for example, leading Dead Or Alive into battle carrying on like the sort of presence your parents warned you about coming across after dark. Watch the bass head whack the camera at 0:41. If not Burns in that alleyway it'd be the permanenly clenched in anguish fist of Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke, the sort of man for whom flashlights would prove no aid. And on top of them, the Smiths appear, Morrissey in two ill-fitting tops. See the audience clap gleefully along with the suggestion of going home, crying and wanting to die.

1991: Rave bandwagon jumpers with their keytars and their dancing girls pretending to sing aren't the way the pros do it. 808 State set up three keyboard stacks and a drumkit and make like the awkward studio men they are. That one guy's dancing on the first break proves that. The traditionalists would rather we stuck to The Railway Children, chiefly included here for the quadrupled screen experience.

1997: Eels and their toy instrument trashing has been covered before at the big brother blog. Meanwhile, now he's the housewife's favourite again it's easy to remember how much Mark Owen fancied himself as a Britpop frontman in stage act. He's really trying to command things at the front, down on his knee, throwing himself into it at the end of the pre-chorus and everything, met by the same girl screams he was achieving in different circumstances a year earlier.

2003: Fearne Cotton's debut, as a late replacement, and look where that eventually left us. Her first job was with Oasis, or at least Liam and Gem. Really worth Liam standing up and wandering around in the middle. In fairness, maybe he had a hard cushion.