4th March

1964: Which means this is some of the earliest surviving material the archives still have, the days when The Hollies could get away with Allan Clarke sitting down. There's also all of 35 seconds of the Rolling Stones' Not Fade Away, with Brian on harmonica and Mick showing off the stock from his unwise decision to purchase a maraca factory.

1965: Yes, one year later. Not that it's not unwelcome but there's a lot of Rolling Stones from the 60s left in the vault compared to their contemporaries, Beatles especially. On Not Fade Away we get to observe Bill Wyman's vertical playing style once again, the bludgeon influence of pop art and helpfully captioned at 1:37 a man not traditionally seen as awkward around dancing girls.

1976: One of the many wiped shows from the start of that year, which is why BBC4 started in April. Tina Charles at number one literally just about survives though, given a much bigger stage than she was allowed for the Christmas special. That really isn't a flatteringly cut dress.

1982: Still never likely to be confused for a party starter, Gary Numan invested in a fretless bass and a white hat and broke into a few moves as if he were the Nick Heyward of dystopian synthpop. Note how both keytarists are dressed like 1930s gangster archetypes. Rather more active is Leee John from Imagination, although the hand work cameos of bassist Ashley Ingram were cheesy even then. Good to see TOTP2's captioneer really putting his research shift in that week. Meanwhile Flick, now in charge of Zoo, was having a flashback to simpler dancing times. Not just in the group movement, but given one of the chancer reissued early singles (and thus, despite being seen as the cool early stuff Jo Whiley types always used to go on about, nowadays sounding far less interesting than the actual contemporary Ants hits) of Adam & the Ants, Deutscher Girls, she took one look at the title, got on the phone and ordered in the lederhosen.

2005: You'd correctly imagine a band like Kaiser Chiefs could seize the moment and the opportunity of the Pops stage, suited, booted and ready to fly. I was never crazy about that insistence all bands concluded their song with "thank you, Top Of The Pops!" in those days. We'll decide whether you've done enough to require thanking, cheers.