10 Songs that mention Top of the Pops

1. Angel delight, Fairport Convention

(Stand on a chair if you want to watch the box

The fleas can jump a mile

Peer through the haze watching Top Of The Pops

And smile)

2. Top of the Pops, The Rezillos

(Take the money, leave the box

Everybody's on Top of the Pops)

3. Top of the Pops, The Smithereens

(Big plans, big time, everything

Downtown pawn shop Bought us a ring

Heading for the top - Top of the Pops

Top, top, top of the pops - Hey! Hey!)

4. Rat Trap, The Boomtown Rats

(Oh little Judy's trying to watch "top of the pops"

But mum and dad are fighting don't they ever stop)

5. Knocked it off, B A Robertson

(Tell them they can stuff it, I'm not about to rough it

In some Granada Ghia, I was Top of the Pops)

6. Promises, Promises, Generation X

(Soon you'll get your gear form Marks and Sparks

Punk'll take over Top of the Pops)

7. Electric Trains, Top of the Pops

(And soloed round the clock

My records stacked up in a pile

Collected from the charts

And Top of the Pops)

8. C30 C60 C90 Go!, Bow wow wow

(So I don't buy records in your shop
Now I tape them all, 'cause I'm Top of the Pops!)

9.  Moving the Goalposts, Billy Bragg

(I dreamed of you as I walked to the shops

You were dancing with the wallies on Top of the Pops)

10. If you don't know what I know, All Saints

(Well actually girls no they're not

But at least you get to be on Top Of The Pops)

[Bonus Sing My Song, Donovan

So we're pickin' out your straight jacket

For the Top of the Pops

When I sing my song My song of songs

I want the whole wide world

To sing along

Sing for me]

Strawbs - Lay Down

Seventies pop music, eh?

Funeral St Bride's Wentloog

I was at a funeral yesterday. Going back home is always a little troumatic I find. I grew up in Cwmbran and the nearest boy of my age on the street where I lived, lived three doors up. His father was older than mine (and had fought in the war) but both worked at Lucas Girling (though my father left when I was 10). Stephen and I were thrown together from babyhood. Sadly when we were 6 Stephen's mother left home and we lost touch a little not really reconnecting again until we were 9 or 10. He is the one who invited me to the church where we were both converted and baptised. I was his best man when he married Fay, still quite young, and he reciprocated some years later when i married Eleri. Unlike me, he has continued to live in the same general area. He is an accountnat.

This month his dad, Uncle Eric, died at the grand age of 95. He was buried in the graveyard of St Bridget's,.St Bride's Wentlooge near Newport, where he grew up and where my friend Stephen lived a short time. It is a distinctive low lying part of the country. It makes me think of the Kent Marshes in Dickens. We were only about 25 present at the church, where we sang Hark the herald and Abide with me with food served later at the Ashbridge in Cwmbran. I enjoyed being with my sister and talking to some old college friends and members of Stephen's family.

Uncle Eric was a distant figure for me. My main memory is of him coming to our house weekly on a Thursday night to pay my mother the rent she had paid for him. It always seemed to be during Top of the Pops. I spent a lot of time when he was out at work in his house in the summer holidays as a teenager jumping down the stairs or over the hedge (they moved immediately around the corner and we moved across the road when sisters came along but we were still only yards from each other's homes). We listened to Uncle Eric's records (Last train to San Fernando, Trains and boats and planes, Ernie, etc) adn soemtimes Stephen would try to horrify us with his dad's spare glass eye. As was said in an excellent eulogy, he was a conservative man of humour who loved to tell stories. It was right to honour him and his good deeds. Whatever age you are it is never good to lose your father.

Tomorrow's Dankworth

Johnny Dankworth the British jazz musician died recently. His was a name I was always aware of (mainly through my dad) though not at all up on his music. It is only with his death that I have learned that the theme tune to BBC's technology programme of the sixties and seventies Tomorrow's World - a tune I always liked -was by Dankworth. This is the whole piece. If I remember rightly Tomorrow's World would be on at 7 pm on a Thursday immediately before Top of the Pops - a good hour that used to be (although we had a regular visitor around then every week who would always talk to my mam right through most of the hour).