Monday 19 November 2012

19th November

1981: Unaccustomed to leaving stops in place, it's just like the Latin quarter when Modern Romance are around. They've actually got nearly the whole audience in a conga line, and not one of them is listening or cares who's on the stage, which is a shame for the samba dancer and the bloke wearing a deer head. Such frivolity carries over to everyone else, Trevor Walters seeing the competition and taking no chances by bringing along friends this time, namely two women dressed as sarcophaguses, a robot dancer and a bloke just wandering around at the back in zebra print trousers. Walters seems surprised when a confetti storm erupts halfway through. It takes the debut of Fun Boy Three to stop them in their tracks, attempting as they are to replicate a whole track through two sets of bongo drums alone.

1987: Not too long after Paula Yates had introduced them as "something really weird", The Proclaimers were taking no chances on their TOTP debut - see the coterie of handclappers at side of stage. Somehow this was Donna Summer's show debut, though imagine what the orchestra might have done to I Feel Love and feel that bit more thankful for that.

1992: Two returning 80s favourites, two circumstances of performance, two highly desperate sets of measures going for the revival hit. Heaven 17, Glenn as groomed as he ever was in the BEF days, remixed their biggest hit, while Madness covered a reggae perennial and then, for some reason, went to perform it in Red Square. That's what the fall of the eastern bloc facilitated. It takes that home crowd quite some time to get into it.

1999: Good to see after everything that Robbie Williams can still, at 1:54, derive amusement from people singing his song's words back at him.

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