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A brief overview about the historical show and some associated facts

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BFI Screenonline: Top of the Pops (1964-2006)

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Long-running, hugely influential chart-based pop music programme

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A tribute to Johnnie Stewart, the creator of TOTP in a more developed history about the programme

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Lorn Alastair ("Johnnie") Stewart, television producer: born Tonbridge, Kent 7 November 1917; married 1946 Sheila Williamson (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died East Dereham, Norfolk 29 April 2005.

The television show Top of the Pops seems an obvious and simple format - a TV show in which the artists perform their current chart hits - but, surprisingly, the programme did not start until New Year's Day 1964. Its producer Johnnie Stewart created a programme which became an institution and, as the charts were on-going, it never needed to be rested.

Stewart was born in Tonbridge in 1917. He was a good musician himself, playing the piano, and in 1937 he joined the sound effects department for BBC radio drama. Stewart was a wireless operator in the Middle East and then worked in intelligence during the Second World War. On returning to the BBC, he produced several music programmes including Sing It Again and BBC Jazz Club and he was especially proud to have secured Frank Sinatra as a guest for Cyril Stapleton's Show Band Show for a mere £50.

In 1958 Stewart transferred to BBC Television and produced Juke Box Jury, hosted by David Jacobs; in 1963 he produced a 90-minute television special, Terry-Thomas Says How Do You View, capitalising on the comedian's appearance in the big-budget film It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. The disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted the very popular Teen and Twenty Disc Club on Radio Luxembourg, and, in 1963, the BBC producer Barney Colehan thought his format could be adapted to television. He recorded a pilot with Savile and, in subsequent discussions, it was decided to make it a chart show, produced by Johnnie Stewart. Stewart came up with the title, Top of the Pops.

The programme was broadcast from a converted church in Dickinson Road, Manchester. With a limited budget, the studio had no facilities for artists to perform live and all the early shows were mimed. Radio Times turned this into something positive:

They will mime their songs. This is a departure from normal BBC practice, but the rule is being relaxed because the purpose of the programme is to let you hear the discs exactly as recorded, though within the setting of a television programme.

Top of the Pops was first broadcast between 6.35pm and 7pm on New Year's Day 1964 with Savile as the host. It featured a rundown of the charts and his assistant, Samantha Juste, was seen putting on records for the performers. Stewart was confident that the series would be a success and it was expanded to 12 programmes, and then indefinitely.

Their timing was perfect. Because of the explosion of British beat groups, the charts were filled with local product, and it was relatively easy to get them to perform. Allan Clarke of the Hollies was somewhat reluctant, saying, "How can you rock'n'roll in an old church?" In an early show, a record was played at the wrong speed when the Swinging Blue Jeans were about to mime.

For three years, Stewart used four different presenters, Savile, Alan Freeman, Pete Murray and David Jacobs. Savile realised that he was only on screen for a total of two minutes in each show and so he made himself as flamboyant as possible; once colour television was introduced, he even had tartan hair. The programme turned Savile's "How's about this then?" into a catchphrase and, during that first year, Freeman became known as "Fluff" after announcing "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" as "Cast Your Wind to the Fates".

Stewart devised simple rules: the programme would always end with the No l record and that was the only record which could be repeated from the previous week. He would always include the highest new entry and the highest climber and nothing going down was permitted. Quality was not the issue: the record-buyers determined the content, although Stewart did include a "Tip for the Top". Stewart's only mistake, and this was probably out of his hands, was not to record and store all the programmes. Many classic performances have been lost and all that remains are Harry Goodwin's still photographs, which were used in the chart rundowns. It was Goodwin who took the silhouette of Stewart that ended each programme: Stewart was seen as pointing out instructions with his forelock flopped over his face. Many assumed that the still was of Billy Fury.

Unlike ITV's rival programme, Ready, Steady, Go!, the programme was screened at peak time and, although aimed at the young, it attracted a family audience, as parents would comment on the current tastes. In a brilliant but now politically incorrect move, Stewart created a female dance troupe, which became Pan's People, with Flick Colby, Babs Lord, Ruth Pearson, Dee Dee Wilde, Louise Clarke and Andi Rutherford. When Rutherford became pregnant, TOTP made a big presentation of introducing the new member, Cherry Gillespie.

The audience was an important ingredient of Top of the Pops although this could lead to security problems with the stars. In more recent times, cheerleaders have been introduced to stimulate the crowd, but then the screaming was genuine. As Stewart put it, "Top of the Pops was the simplest show in the world and also pure murder on the ears."

Stewart sometimes felt antipathy towards the music he was promoting. In 1965, after the Small Faces had appeared on Top of the Pops, Stewart thanked them politely. Their leader Steve Marriott felt insulted by Stewart's patronising comments and told him to "fuck off". Stewart altered his rules so that the Small Faces could never play Top of the Pops again.

Presenting the show from Manchester created problems as many of the bigger acts did not want to travel there. In 1967 Top of the Pops moved to the Lime Grove Studios in west London. The fresh crop of presenters included Stuart Henry, Emperor Rosko, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett, who were all connected with the new Radio 1 station. John Peel made such a mess of presenting a programme in 1968 that Stewart told him he would never work on television again: later, Peel proved to be a witty host with ironic comments on the charts. Stewart started the Top of the Pops review of the year, the first of which was broadcast before the Queen's Speech on Christmas Day 1967. He produced Alan Freeman's magazine show All Systems Freeman.

The Musicians' Union felt that asking artists to mime was depriving their members of work, but Stewart argued that many of them could not create the same sound live. In the end, Stewart asked Johnny Pearson to form a Top of the Pops orchestra with experienced session musicians. In 1971 Pearson had his own Top Ten record with "Sleepy Shores".

Because of his long association with the BBC, Stewart was given a year's sabbatical in 1971 and went to North America. His set designer Stan Dorfman took over and amended Stewart's rules, adding an LP spot, which one week included a 10-minute piece by Yes. When Stewart returned, he reinstated his original concept. His return coincided with another flurry of patriotic record-buying, with groups like Slade and T. Rex doing well. The new presenters included Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee Travis and Tony Blackburn. When Stewart left the programme in 1974, one of the first moves by his successor, Robin Nash, was to replace Pan's People with a boy-and-girl dance troupe, Ruby Flipper, but an all girls' unit, Legs & Co, was soon installed.

In 1978 Stewart produced the pop quiz Cheggers Plays Pop, with Keith Chegwin, and also worked in South Africa on a local version of Top of the Pops. He retired to Ibiza but returned to the UK when his health deteriorated. There have now been over 2,000 Top of the Pops and, although the show is criticised from time to time, this is more a reflection on the current state of the charts than the programme. Stewart could feel satisfied that nobody had found a better way to present a chart show.

Spencer Leigh

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Lorn Alastair ("Johnnie") Stewart, television producer: born Tonbridge, Kent 7 November 1917; married 1946 Sheila Williamson (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died East Dereham, Norfolk 29 April 2005. The television show Top of the Pops seems an obvious and simple format - a TV show in which the artists perform their current chart hits - but, surprisingly, the programme did not start until New Year's Day 1964.

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The sucess of the program revealed in the music industry and TV audience

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The Story of 1979, Top of the Pops - BBC Four

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1979 saw disco, new wave, 2 Tone, reggae, rock, folk and electro all make the top five.

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D) An aesthetical and memorable performance

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D) An aesthetical and memorable performance

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An interesting aesthetical deconstruction of Bowie's perfomance in TOTP

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I went to YouTube just now to see if the memory I've kept in my head for more than 43 years is correct. When David Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops on 6 July 1972 performing Starman, did he really point at the camera on the line "I had to phone someone so I picked on you-hoo-oo"?

In the glory days of Top of the Pops you couldn't watch things again. You retained them in the archive of your memory. People watched hungrily, believing it would be their only chance. It's only slowly, in the years since 1972, that I realised that I wasn't the only one for whom this was a key moment. The way Bowie pointed that finger, smilingly draped an arm around Mick Ronson, and looked beyond the camera to engage the audience sitting at home, stickily hemmed in by disapproving members of their immediate family, seemed of a piece with the new Ziggy Stardust persona we'd been reading about. It felt like an arrival long delayed.

People had been tipping Bowie for much of the previous year. His album Hunky Dory had come out just before Christmas 1971, with glowing reviews and a big marketing push from his new record company, but it hadn't really taken. The New York Times called him "the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression". In truth, Bowie was like everybody else, just trying to get a hit. The last time he'd been on Top of the Pops was playing piano behind Peter Noone on the latter's hit version of his own Oh! You Pretty Things. Bowie's people were furiously working the machine. His first release of 1972, Changes, was not a hit, despite being single of the week on Tony Blackburn's Radio 1 show.

When Bowie first came up with the Ziggy Stardust material, during a three-week trip to the US in February 1971, his idea had been to have it fronted by Fred Burrett, a young clothes designer he and his wife Angie had met at a gay club called El Sombrero and decided to rechristen Freddie Burretti. Bowie saw himself as the behind-the-scenes puppetmaster in that setup. Maybe he worried that his teeth disqualified him from frontman duties. Bowie at the time was an ideas man, pitching songs to everyone, including the horror actor Christopher Lee. His publisher was one of the many people in the business who were backing Bowie, but it wasn't clear that his future was as a performer.

Whereas Hunky Dory had been extravagantly melodic, like the Beatles album that everybody was trying to make now there was a gap in the market, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was influenced by the Stooges and Velvet Underground records Bowie had been impressed by on his visit to the States. It also owed a lot to the hit singles with which Marc Bolan, a fellow refugee from the obscurity of late night radio and the Arts Lab circuit, was tearing up the singles charts in 1971. "It's going to be lots of guitars," Bowie told his producer Ken Scott. "You probably won't like it."

Bowie had already recorded and sequenced Ziggy Stardust before Hunky Dory was released. Such was the speed people moved at in those days of two albums a year. "There was no time for second guessing yourself," Scott recalled. The only change made to the album was the replacement of a cover of Chuck Berry's Around and Around with Starman, a radio-friendly single made at the request of the boss of Bowie's new record company, RCA. Bowie had no problem doing him this favour, once he had finished the heavy lifting involved in recording the album.

In the early months of 1972, before Ziggy Stardust came out, he and his new band were starting to appear on stage wearing the clinging space suits they had cribbed from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which had opened in cinemas in January. On 8 February, they played the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, the albums-centred programme that had been launched late the previous year. Bowie stirred the pot further by turning up to an interview with Michael Watts from the Melody Maker in a camp playsuit and announcing that he was bisexual. Everything was primed so that when Ziggy Stardust appeared in June 1972, the market would be ready.

All of that investment in outrage and edginess paid off when Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops singing Starman. That was the moment Bowie went above ground and nationwide. The hype may have led us to expect something edgy and challenging. The record was as simple and hummable a radio hit as you could possibly desire. For the post-Beatles generation coming into their albums-buying majority, the record wasn't really the point. The point was the way he looked at them.

Never a Dull Moment, David Hepworth's book about music in 1971, is published in April

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How performing Starman on Top of the Pops sent Bowie into the stratosphere

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I went to YouTube just now to see if the memory I've kept in my head for more than 43 years is correct. When David Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops on 6 July 1972 performing Starman, did he really point at the camera on the line "I had to phone someone so I picked on you-hoo-oo"?

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A short overview between the main differences between the two UK music TV programmes

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The beat group boom that reinvigorated British pop music in the 1960s reached the nation's television screens in February 1963, when the Beatles appeared on Independent Television's (ITV's) Thank Your Lucky Stars, followed in July by the Rolling Stones. However, it was ITV's Ready Steady Go!, launched that August, and the British Broadcasting Corporation's Top of the Pops, which debuted in January 1964, that became essential weekly viewing for hip and not-so-hip fans alike. It was no coincidence that Ready Steady Go!'s life span-by the end of 1966 it was all over-precisely matched that of the mod era of youth-oriented fashion and consumerism; the show relayed "Swinging London's" music, style, and attitude to the rest of the country with minimum delay and maximum excitement, and it was arguably the most memorable "televisation" of the pop experience. Top of the Pops was more predictable, reflecting what British record buyers were already listening to, and continued to survive, with an essentially unaltered format.

John Pidgeon

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Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops: The beat group boom that reinvigorated British pop music in the 1960s reached the nation's television screens in February 1963, when the Beatles appeared on Independent Television's (ITV's) Thank Your Lucky Stars, followed in July by the Rolling Stones.

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An extensive article concerning shocking revelations about sexual agressions in the program and sexual predators like the host Jimmy Savile

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Top of the Pops was the brightest, shiniest show on television. Remember Morrissey whirling gladioli above his head? Pulp doing "Common People"? St Winifred's School Choir singing "Grandma, Grandma, we love you..."?

Even if you were not actually on the sofa for great musical moments such as (two of) these, you've almost certainly seen them on repeat or got your own fond memories of the chart show that was a national weekly event for all but the last of its four decades. Sometimes cool, sometimes cheesy, Top of the Pops always seemed such a glorious celebration of the surface shimmer of life. Until now.

Dame Janet Smith's report into the activities of Jimmy Savile at the BBC also shines a light into the shadows of the TOTP studio and finds a cesspit of sleaze. Or, to be more precise, as one floor manager said, "an extraordinary mixture of sleaze and innocence".

She has exposed many things - and whitewashed others, according to some of Savile's victims - but there in the detail of the report is the disturbing suggestion that TOTP was a breeding ground for abusers, in which men preyed on young girls in the audience - making it almost seem normal for the worst serial sex offender in history to commit crimes against girls and boys, sometimes in plain sight.

Dame Janet found that at least 72 people were sexually abused by the DJ and presenter while he was working on BBC shows, including eight victims of rape. The youngest was just 10 years old. The largest number of assaults - 19 - happened during recordings of Top of the Pops.

Savile is often described as a monster. What he did was monstrous. But beyond the obvious horrors, the really striking thing is how creepy, dangerous, sexually charged the atmosphere was inside the programme.

"My conclusion is that at least during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (and possibly after that period), young people attending Top of the Pops were at risk of moral danger," says Dame Janet Smith. By that she means "young girls" (above and below the age of consent) were at risk of being encouraged, cajoled, intimated, pushed or seduced (as some called it) into sexual activity that was damaging and in some cases illegal. Not only by pop stars and presenters, but by other men including roadies, a photographer, even the stand-ins who posed on stage for camera angles before the real stars arrived.

Girls were taken away for a kiss and a cuddle or anything up to full sex in the dressing rooms or even in the alleyways outside Television Centre in west London. Those who complained were dismissed as silly, hysterical or a nuisance.

If there was ever an actual investigation it was inadequate. Even when a pop star saw something dodgy going on and complained, as the bass player from the band Sparks did twice, they were told not to be ridiculous.

Dame Janet is certainly not saying that everyone who ever presented or worked on TOTP was abusive or took advantage of their association with the show to get sex. Far from it. Most did not. But she is clearly saying there was a culture in the studio over a long period of the show's history that put members of the audience at risk.

"I think there was a feeling among some BBC staff that sexual contact between celebrities and young girls on BBC premises was almost inevitable," she says, and it created a climate that suited Savile. "The most important and obvious reason why what Savile was doing was not recognised was the general environment of the programme," says Dame Janet. "In this testosterone-laden atmosphere where everyone was, in theory at least, over the age of 16, child protection was simply not a live issue."

Men took it for granted that young girls were willing to have sex with them.

"I cannot think that it was acceptable for the BBC to run a programme which effectively provided a 'picking-up' opportunity' such as this."

The sleaze lingered a long time. Dame Janet heard from witnesses who worked on the show during the whole of its run, particularly the Television Centre years from 1969 to 1990 and again from 2002 to 2006, and says: "Their evidence suggests that the environment at Top of the Pops did not change much over the years."

There was one woman who tried to stop Jimmy Savile, right at the start, the report reveals. Anna Instone, head of the gramophone department at the BBC, told her boss in writing before the first episode in 1964 that Savile was "a terrible man, terrible". Bill Cotton, head of light entertainment, did not ask her reasons for saying that, even when she rang him up to say Savile was "a shit".

He admitted as much for a documentary about Top of the Pops filmed in 2001, although the footage was never broadcast. Cotton laughed and wondered what Anna Instone would have made of the knighthood given to Savile in 1990. As Dame Janet says, "With the benefit of hindsight, how wise Ms Instone was."

There was a huge demand for tickets for the show, but no more than 100 young people were let in to dance around the cameras. Producers went out scouting for good-looking, fashionable dancers in bars and nightclubs, and those who became regulars did not need tickets. Nor did friends and family of the acts, presenters and staff.

Television Centre was "bursting at the seams" on Top of the Pops nights with "infiltrators and stowaways" among the crowds, says Dame Janet, but nobody cared - it was all too exciting. It was easy to sneak past elderly commissionaires. "It seems to me obvious that those girls were at real risk of moral danger."

Witnesses said it was easy for a star or a presenter to take someone back to his dressing room. "There would be so many people milling about that no one would notice." They also said it was "common wisdom" that some girls were intent on having sex with their idols - or sometimes anyone associated with the show.

There's another side to that story, of course. BBC managers were all too ready to brand young women as hysterical or silly. Staff on the studio floor were dismissive of complaints of harassment, fondling, abuse or worse. One 16-year-old ran to a floor manager crying after she felt Savile's hand inside her hot pants even as he introduced the next song. She was escorted from the studio by security, with her zip still undone.

"There is no hint of any concern that some of the young audience would be impressionable and star-struck and vulnerable to the advances of anyone (including such people as stand-ins, photographers or roadies) who had acquired a superficial glamour by virtue of association with the programme," says Dame Janet.

Savile used the show as a bait to catch young women for sex with him in the camper van he parked outside Television Centre or in his dressing room. It wasn't glamorous - none of the dressing rooms were, even for big stars like Bowie or the Beatles: just a shower, toilet, dressing table with lights and a mirror, a couple of standard-issue BBC chairs and a day bed. But there was a key. "Dressing rooms could be locked and were regarded as the private space of the performer concerned."

Savile molested very young boys and girls there, even once while dressed as a Womble. Another of his victims says Gary Glitter was raping a 14-year-old in the same room at the same time.

The BBC failed to heed "wake-up calls" in the early Seventies, including the News of the World revelation that official photographer Harry Goodwin was showing and shooting pornography in his own room.

Claire McAlpine, a regular in the audience, took an overdose and died in March 1971 at the age of 15. Her diary said she had been "seduced" by a presenter, now known to be Tony Blackburn.

He strongly denies the allegation and also denies being interviewed at the time by Bill Cotton and a lawyer. Dame Janet says she has found a memo that says he was interviewed and she prefers to believe that.

Tony Hall, director-general of the BBC, says it has parted company with Blackburn because he "fell short of the standards of evidence that such an inquiry demanded".

Blackburn intends to sue. The report gives no verdict on Claire McAlpine's claims, although it does accuse investigators at the time of trying to "fob off" the girl's grieving mother.

Dame Janet suggests young people may have been in "moral danger" all the way through the show's history - and certainly until it left Television Centre in 1990.

Robin Carr, a director during the boy-band era of the Eighties, gave evidence. "He thought there was a general realisation that not all the girls would be over 16. He thought it was believed that the girls, or some of them, were there for sex." As long as they were legal, this was thought to be their own business.

But Dame Janet insists: "I do not think it is an excuse for the BBC that its attitudes were largely in accordance with attitudes elsewhere in society. As a public service broadcaster it should, in my view, have thought more carefully about the implications of ignoring the potential consequences to young girls of having casual sex with older men, rather than regarding such girls as being 'unbalanced' and a nuisance."

Top of the Pops ran out of steam before the turn of the century and was put out of its misery in 2006. Jimmy Savile presented the last one at the age of 80, a bizarre figure in gold lamé and pink glasses with long, wispy white hair. Even then, he couldn't stop groping people.

Savile wrapped himself around a young woman recording an interview for the Radio 4 arts programme Front Row and rubbed his crotch up and down against her. She "did not want to compromise her position at the BBC" so made no official complaint at the time. A familiar story.

Dame Janet Smith concludes that senior managers at the BBC were never aware of what Savile was up to. Frankly, that is incredible. But it's all too easy to believe in the ignorance, cowardice and fear that prevented anyone from confronting what was going on inside Top of the Pops for so many years, providing him cover.

The brightest, shiniest show on the telly had the darkest, nastiest secrets lurking in the shadows. When the final countdown was over in the last episode, Jimmy Savile was seen to go backstage, pull a switch and shut the whole thing down.

His victims - and those of every man who used the show to get his hands on a schoolgirl - will say it was a terrible shame that nobody had the guts to shut down Top of the Pops for real, years before.

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How Top of the Pops was a breeding ground for sexual abusers

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Top of the Pops was the brightest, shiniest show on television. Remember Morrissey whirling gladioli above his head? Pulp doing "Common People"? St Winifred's School Choir singing "Grandma, Grandma, we love you..."?

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Facing a big lost in it's audience, the show is moved from BBC1 to BBC2, producing multiple opinions by the people

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Cotton (r) co-hosts with alternating presenters like Reggie Yates (l)

Long-running music show Top of the Pops has seen a huge decline in viewing figures since transferring to BBC Two.
An average of 2.4m viewers watched the last four editions of the programme in its previous Friday slot on BBC One.

Since moving to a Sunday night slot on its sister channel on 17 July, the show has been watched by an average of 1.1m.

"We always knew Top of the Pops would undergo a period of adjustment," said a BBC spokeswoman. "For us, this is not a problem but a sound transfer."

Launched on New Year's Day in 1964, Top of the Pops attracted 15m viewers in its 1970s heyday

In recent years, however, it has seen a marked decline in viewing figures.

A controversial move from Thursday to Friday in 1996 failed to reverse the slump, as did a high-profile relaunch in 2003.

But the BBC's spokeswoman said ratings always fluctuated in the summer months and that the switch "was not just about viewing figures".

'New era'

Last Sunday's edition of Top of the Pops was trounced by both BBC One, where Antiques Roadshow attracted 4.5m viewers, and ITV1, where 6.8m watched Emmerdale.

With 1.4m watching Carry On Up the Khyber on Channel 4, the show's only victory was over Five's broadcast of The Love Bug - seen by just 700,000 viewers.

The new Top of the Pops combines the show's traditional elements, including live performances and a singles chart rundown, with the archive footage featured on its spin-off show, TOTP2.

Fearne Cotton presents the programme alongside a changing line-up of guest hosts.

Last month BBC Two controller Roly Keating said the new slot marked "an exciting new era for the show".

Are you watching Top of the Pops on Sunday nights? If so, how do you think the show is performing? Is it as good as it ever was, or a shadow of its former self?

Your comments:

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BBC NEWS | Entertainment | New TOTP loses half its audience

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Cotton (r) co-hosts with alternating presenters like Reggie Yates (l) Long-running music show Top of the Pops has seen a huge decline in viewing figures since transferring to BBC Two. An average of 2.4m viewers watched the last four editions of the programme in its previous Friday slot on BBC One.

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An interview with presenter Andi Peters about the reformulation of the show due to decline in audience viewers

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BBC - Top of the Pops - Interviews - Andi Peters

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An article exploring the reaons of the cancellation of the broadcast emissions

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by MATT BORN, Daily Mail

For almost half a century, it has helped to shape the nation's taste in music. From the Swinging Sixties onwards, Top of the Pops has been essential viewing for teenagers eager to catch the sight and sound of their favourite stars.

Top 20 facts about the top 20 TV show

Counting down... The 70 presenters in 42 years

Gallery: Top of the Pops through the years

Top of the Pop's demise not a day too soon

But last night the BBC announced that the iconic chart show - fronted by a host of presenters such as Jimmy Savile and Noel Edmonds - is to be axed after 42 years.
Will you miss Top of the Pops? Tell us your views in the reader comments below
The decision comes after the latest much-trumpeted relaunch - which saw TOTP move from BBC1 to BBC2 - failed to revive interest in the world's longest-running music show.

Ratings for the new Sunday teatime slot have dipped as low as one million - a far cry from its heyday when the show regularly attracted audiences of up to 19million.

Announcing the decision, the BBC said TOTP was a victim of competition from 24-hour music channels such as MTV and the declining importance of the singles chart.

The rise of the Internet, iPods and music downloading have also rendered it out of

step with today's teenagers who want to 'consume music of their choice any time of day or night' in a way that a weekly chart show cannot match, it said.

Last night, former presenters lined up to mourn the demise of the show that shot many of them to fame.

Jimmy Savile said he was 'not surprised in the slightest'.

He added: 'In those days you would have to wait until Thursday night to get your fix and you don't need to do that anymore. Top of the Pops has been overrun by video of music on TV.'

Tony Blackburn said the programme had 'lost direction' in recent years.

'I remember seeing a show with Jeremy Clarkson who was very, very funny,' he said.

'But he had a rap act on and said,

"Well, that was really awful." And I thought, "The kids won't like him saying that." Then they had Bucks Fizz on.

'It went down well with the mums and dads but they were trying to be all things to all people.'

But Noel Edmonds said the BBC was making a mistake by throwing out 'one of the most recognised brands in TV today'.

He said: 'It's a huge commodity and kids are still listening to music, even if they are downloading it. It's a tragedy when a broadcaster doesn't understand such a powerful brand.'

TOTP isn't the first iconic show to fall victim to digital technology. In April , the BBC announced it was getting rid of Grandstand after an equally long run on air. The first episode of TOTP was broadcast on New Year's Day in 1964 from a disused church in Salford, Manchester.

Hosted by Savile, it featured the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield and the Hollies.

Although commissioned for only six episodes, it proved an immediate hit and was quickly rewarded with a weekly slot. It celebrated its 2,000th show in 2002.

Over the years, it has played a vital role in showcasing new musical trends to a captivated audience - from the psychedelic 60s, to punk, the New Romantics, dance music and Britpop.

Its huge popularity elevated its presenters - mainly Radio 1 DJs such as Dave Lee Travis, Kenny Everett, Kid Jenson and Janice Long - into some of the country's biggest celebrities.

But audience numbers fell steeply in recent years.

The programme underwent a relaunch in 2003 - dropping its rigid adherence to the top 40 singles in an attempt to showcase more up-and-coming artists.

But when that failed to excite viewers, it was switched from BBC1 to BBC2 last year.

Rebranded as 'All New Top of the Pops', it was extended to include archive clips in the hope of attracting older audiences as well as teenagers, and given a new presenter, former MTV host Tim Kash.

He was later replaced by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates, but the show fared no better.

Announcing the decision yesterday, BBC director of television Jana Bennett said: 'We're very proud of a show which has survived 42 years in the UK and gone on to become a worldwide brand but the time has come to bring the show to its natural conclusion.'

She stressed that the BBC remained committed to music shows such as Later with Jools Holland and the BBC4 Sessions.

The final edition of TOTP will be broadcast at the end of next month.

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For almost half a century, it has helped to shape the nation's taste in music. But last night the BBC announced that the iconic chart show - fronted by a host of presenters such as Jimmy Savile and Noel Edmonds - is to be axed after 42 years.