15th April

1965: Here's something momentous and in a way extraordinary. The Beatles, clearly at ease with being put on pedestals, appeared on TOTP six times, all but one pre-recorded without an audience, and all six shows were wiped because the 1960s BBC was callous like that. However, 25 seconds of their performance from this day's show of Ticket To Ride was used in the Doctor Who episode The Chase two months later as illustration of how in the future they would be seen as "classical music" (oh, how little they knew). In fact the band were asked to appear as themselves under aging make-up to represent their future selves but Brian Epstein put a stop to it.

1971: You know what's strange? Whether it's coincidence or not I don't know, but from the mass wiping years there's a lot of Rolling Stones that's been retained. This seems to be either a pre-record or full-on rehearsal footage, even when as in this case you'd imagine Mick would want all video evidence of his all-pink outfit and jockey's cap burying as landfill ASAP.

1976: A mystery that has pervaded this past year - what's with the one seated member of the Stylistics? With their full routine otherwise intact it looks ever more out of place. Meanwhile Fox returned with even more come-hither looks and flagrant talkbox, and note DLT offering a very static type of appreciation in the background.

1982: Time for another part of the 80s to arrive, Simple Minds' debut, Jim Kerr borrowing his hair from Gary Numan and ending up crouched on the floor like a synth-mystic twice. I wouldn't like to suggest David Van Day takes anything less than full pride in his appearance, but with Dollar on the up is a string vest really appropriate? The close-up on both pretty faces at the false ending is loaded with meaning. Shakatak didn't go for that whole frontperson business, meaning lots of shots of musos with beards and a desperate cutaway after a couple of minutes of some of Zoo ballroom dancing in near darkness.

1993: At home with East 17! You can't quite imagine them having a log fire, not even really a hearth, but three TV monitors is believable. Tony can't afford a keyboard stand, but at least he has something to do, one of the two at the back spending the whole time sitting, adding the odd backing vocal and watching. At the back. Eurovision time again, Sonia almost comically British-Eurovision-entry like - its Wiki entry describes it as "50s like", which means someone has no idea what 1950s music sounds like.