14th December

1972: Got any spare tinfoil and polythene in your TV studio dressing room? Simply give it to Slade's Dave Hill, he'll make use of it.

1978: Landfill doo-wop quartet Rocky Sharpe & The Replays may not have been able to stretch to a fourth white jacket and their bass man certainly wasn't the requisite mad eyed 'character' but they had the foresight to play a comically small sax well before Madness did. No shortage of white jackets for Boney M, though the cotton exterior had clearly been left in the wash for too long.

1989: Van Morrison and Cliff Richard sounds like a weird combination... and it was. Van looks like he's going to dish out at least one right hander as soon as they get off stage if Cliff so much as puts a toe on his patch.

1995: John Peel hadn't fronted the show for coming up for nine years and wouldn't do so again, so there must have been a special reason why he was invited back. Of course there was. "Loads of my favourites"? Righto. Let's alight while we're here together on Bjork, no people in costumes this time but a full complement of trumpeters.

2001: It would've been better had Sophie Ellis-Bextor remained totally aloof to the myriad and confusing styles of dance taking off behind her, but she seems keen if unwieldly. Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman - one of them's there, one isn't. Obviously. What there is is the most obtrusive orchestra since Johnny Pearson was given the elbow, plus - and these things matter - a remarkably pink guitar.