18 Sleeps to go - Top of the Pops Christmas special...

There was a period in my life when Top of the Pops was essential viewing. Back then there were no VCRs or Sky Plus to sort the men from the boys - or even the Jackson Five from the Osmonds – and if you wanted to keep in conversation at school the next day then ‘It’s Thursday, it’s 7pm, and it’s Top of the Pops’ was a must. Particularly to a young man wishing to talk pop to the girls at the Wenman School disco that evening and hopefully getting a snog around the back of the Youth Club.

I used to daydream as I watched the shuffling packs of over-made-up, blank-eyed girls from Smethwick or Aylesbury swaying to the music in their tank-tops and wedges, their tendril-like feathered hair wafting in an air heavy with dry ice and the great smell of Brut. All of this – music, dancing (of a sort), sex (of a sort), and stack-heeled shoes - whilst that whacky Dave Lee Travis or the beautifully combed-over Diddy David looked on being really, really bonkers-mad.

I used to watch the screen ogling Pan’s People and learning all the latest dance trends. How well I remember the time I first learnt the Kate Bush mystical fluttering-fingered, windmill-arm dance; a skill I still reveal on the dance floor to this day. The studio audience seemed only to have two moves: the side-to-side hop from one foot to the other (Bay City Rollers, Mud, Slade and that Gary Glitter person with the very startled face); and the other one which involved waving their hands from side to side, even when they were sitting down (Osmonds, Smokey, Peters and Lee and more one-hit-wonder female ballad singers than you could shake your leg at.)

Looking back I wonder why I anticipated Thursday evenings with such deep joy and elation. "Why do you watch this rubbish?" Mr Angry would ask. Good question, but I managed to ignore him as I sat glued watching Lieutenant Pigeon perform that not-quite-fully instrumental and mighty number one, Mouldy Old Dough.

On Christmas and Boxing Day my routine revolved around the Top of the Pops Christmas Special and my meals were eaten accordingly. I sulkily insisted that the telly was on as we morosely munched our way through the turkey and sprouts, sometimes hastily devouring it on a tray on my lap so as not to miss the pop-picking action. Roy Wood and Wizard, Sir Cliff, Boney ‘M’, David Cassidy, the ever annoying Paul McCartney and his Mull of f’Kintyre, all performed as a Christmas soundtrack to the Christmas pudding and pulling of crackers. Of course my father hated it and would lose his temper. But seeing as I was forced to endure the Queen’s Speech at three I felt it a very fair trade.

Of course TOTP has been gone a while now. But I hear (or fear) that his year it makes a Christmas return with a Top Of The Pops Christmas Special featuring mysterious names such as John Newman, One Republic, Ellie Goulding, Tom Odell, Jessie J, Moko, Rizzle Kicks, Rudimental, James Blunt, Sam Smith, and The Saturdays. Even more wowtastic, twenty years since first topping the charts Boyzone will return to the Top Of The Pops stage and the hour-long festive feast of pop will culminate in the countdown to this year’s all-important Christmas No.1.

Will I be eating my Christmas dinner on a tray so as not to miss it? Well, in the words of David Jacobs of Juke Box Jury fame: “I think that I might give that a miss then.”