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Daily Mirror's first review of Top of the Pops the day after it aired for the first time. The article is short, but we can see how the programme was clearly aimed at teenagers and it was successful since day one.

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This is your gateway to over TWO million pages of the 20th Century's biggest-selling newspapers, from 1900 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word or phrase.

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Daily Express article published a couple of days before the programme ended. It analysis the possible reasons of why the show had to end, does a journey through its history and picks the 10 best moments.

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This is your gateway to over TWO million pages of the 20th Century's biggest-selling newspapers, from 1900 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word or phrase.

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A journey through the most important moments of Top of the Pops until 2004

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January 1 1964 First ever Top of the Pops is broadcast from Manchester, after a merciful name-change from the suggested "Teen and Twenty Record Club". It goes out at 6.30pm on a Wednesday, and sets the format which would be followed, with more or less tinkering, until this week: artists "performing" (this would prove one of the most flexible variables) in front of a live, young studio audience, culminating in a countdown of the week's singles chart. Acts include The Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield, with a filmed contribution from the week's number one act, The Beatles, with I Want to Hold Your Hand. Presiding: Mr (later Sir) Jimmy Saville, DJ. In those days it had to be on BBC1; the second public station didn't open until April the same year.

1967
The show moves to London, to make it easier to get acts into the studio. The BBC's new youth radio station, Radio 1, forms strong links with the show from the outset, with star DJs such as Kenny Everett presenting. One legendary performance saw Jimi Hendrix miming Purple Haze while an Alan Price record played over the PA.

1968
Pan's People, a dance troupe used to fill the stage when that week's charting acts were not available, make their first appearance. They are not the first set of go-go dancers, but they are the most memorable, staying with the show for 10 years. Their versatility is legendary, even coping when having to cover for The Clash.

1972
The distinctive TOTP theme tune - a version of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love - gets its first outing. Various other theme tunes and logos would be introduced over the years, but Whole Lotta Love remained the chart countdown backing for many years, and was reintroduced as part of a back-to-basics rework in 1998.

1973
The programme moves to Friday, briefly, but swaps back to Thursday after a ratings collapse. Future generations of TOTP producers will blithely ignore this elementary lesson from history at their peril. At the 500th show, Cliff Richard's performance is met with a mysterious shower of wigs. The Who's entourage - apparently not Cliff fans - had raided the props department.

1979
TOTP's finest hour, with viewing figures of 19 million. A strike over at ITV helps.

1981
In New Jersey, USA, MTV is born. The impact isn't immediately felt in the British isles, but it's the beginning of a process which will make TOTP if not obsolete, then at least no longer indispensable - as round-the-clock cable channels showing pop videos, and later the internet, mean that TOTP's weekly chart injection is increasingly available on demand.

1991
Producers admit - as most people have known all along - that acts usually mime, but promise that from now on the vocal track at least will be live. Other musicians continue to mime wilfully badly.

1994
Britpop should have been giving TOTP a shot in the arm, but all is not well. The beginning of the end is signalled by the introduction of TOTP2, a BBC nostalgiafest of old TOTP footage shown occasionally on BBC2. Presumably, this is meant to be a celebration of the long and rich heritage of the show. With hindsight, it looks increasingly like an unwitting admission that the only people who care about TOTP by now are over-25s hankering for the show's glory days. TOTP2 starts to spread across the schedules like a rash - by 2002 it has two weekly showings.

1996
The programme moves definitively to Friday evening, when self-respecting young people are out dancing and so on, rather than watching television. Inexplicably, this move fails to propel the show to new heights.

2003
TOTP goes out on the World Service for the first time. A major relaunch in December, masterminded by former presenter Andi Peters, aims to boost "editorial content" and initially boosts figures, but they quickly start to slide. Meanwhile, miming is acceptable once more.

2004
By May, the relaunched show is attracting just 2.6 million viewers, from 5.5 million for the relaunch special six months before. In November, the BBC announces that the show is leaving BBC1 for BBC2, in a Sunday night slot to move it nearer to the radio chart show, which now includes charts for downloads. While the chart show moves forward, there's still a suspicion that TOTP is moving towards an older audience, with the admission it will "combine some of the elements of TOTP2".
Topics

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January 1 1964 First ever Top of the Pops is broadcast from Manchester, after a merciful name-change from the suggested "Teen and Twenty Record Club".

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4. BBC in talks to revive Top of the Pops-style music chart show

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4. BBC in talks to revive Top of the Pops-style music chart show

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Nine years after the end of the show, the BBC starts to consider a new show chart-based programme, aimed either at a family audience or an over-25 audience. It also deals with the potential difficulties and reasons why Top of the Pops had to end.

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A decade after it closed Top of the Pops, after a 42-year run, the BBC is in discussions to bring back a weekly charts-based music show to the primetime schedule.

Ben Cooper, head of BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, is in talks with Bob Shennan, the BBC director of music, to create a show which would be aimed at over-25s and potentially unite families in watching popular contemporary music.

The music and TV impresario Simon Cowell, as well as senior figures from the British music industry, have also been party to negotiations in finding the right format for the BBC1 show which, however, will not carry the " Top of the Pops " name.

The plans represent a bold move by the BBC in advance of publication of the review by Dame Janet Smith of the conditions that allowed Jimmy Savile, a former TOTP presenter, to abuse children on the Corporation's premises.

There has been lingering uncertainty over the BBC's future, with a government White Paper coming out in the new year, and it is anxious to regain its sense of direction. Global media rivals including Apple, Amazon and Google are expanding their provision of music services.

John Whittingdale, the Culture Secretary, recently expressed personal support for the BBC bringing back a flagship music programme, while the BBC Trust chairwoman, Rona Fairhead, spoke this week of the Corporation being the "central ecological contributor" to the UK music industry.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Cooper said he was in discussions to try to "bring back a youth music weekly programme to primetime BBC".

"I am working hard with Bob Shennan, asking, 'What are the ingredients that would work for today?'" he said. "When people ask about whether Top of the Pops is coming back, what they are really saying is, 'When can we get a once-a-week primetime BBC1 music slot?' I have had this conversation with agents, independent production companies, and with Simon Cowell a few weeks back."

He said the decision to drop the BBC1 Saturday night show The Voice had created an opening for a big weekly music show. "With The Voice going to ITV, that does give you an opportunity, a moment in history, to go, 'Right, let's crack this, what can we do to bring music and entertainment together for a primetime BBC1 audience?' That's the Holy Grail!" he said. "The music industry would like a weekly moment to showcase the best new British music."

Mr Cooper said he hoped to realise the ambition "as soon as possible" and that the show would not be limited to British artists. "I think it would have to be the best new music around that week, whether American or UK. Like Radio 1, you need the big hits to draw in the audience that then can be exposed to the new music. It's a fragile ecology that will be right for that new music programme and is right for Radio 1. So we are not going to exclude Justin Bieber."

Asked about Cowell's potential role, he said: "I think Simon is just one of many trying to crack this nut. We also have BBC in-house people trying to come up with this magic chemistry."

He said a simple replication of the TOTP format would not work in the internet age. "It's not just about one musical performance after another, because you can get that on YouTube," he said. "We are talking about [a programme aimed at] either a family audience or an over-25 audience. The under-25 [audience] is well-served by Radio 1 and children's TV when it comes to visual opportunities to see your favourite bands."

He said that for young people, the Radio 1 Live Lounge feature, which is filmed and viewed 20 million times a month, has become " Top of the Pops for today" for a lot of young people.

Mr Cooper was hopeful that the new show would provide the same cross-generational viewing that generated nostalgia for TOTP. "You want a moment that will feature on [Channel 4's] Gogglebox, that's what you are after, that family-on-the-sofa moment. Where, 'You call this music?' will come from one side of the sofa and, 'But Mum, it's the best' from the other."

The Radio 1 controller has had to look on as Nick Grimshaw, the breakfast presenter he introduced to the network to attract a younger audience, has forged a television career with ITV as a presenter on The X Factor. He said the move had helped Grimshaw's profile, but that he hoped a new BBC music TV show would be an opportunity for Radio 1 presenters, as Top of the Pops once was.

"I hope that soon there will be an opportunity for my daytime presenters to take on a brand new music programme." The annual Christmas and New Year editions of Top of the Pops, which are about to be filmed, are hosted by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates, neither of whom is now on Radio 1.

Radio 1 is increasingly a visual network and, with 2.8 million subscribers, is the largest radio station in the world on YouTube. The Radio 1 channel on BBC iPlayer is about to be extended with live streaming introduced next year for major events such as Radio 1's Big Weekend. The channel is also set to launch a series of specialist monthly music shows, including one on hip-hop presented by Charlie Sloth and one on alternative music hosted by Annie Mac, featuring filmed interviews and live performances.

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A Top of the Pops-style show could return to the BBC

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A decade after it closed Top of the Pops, after a 42-year run, the BBC is in discussions to bring back a weekly charts-based music show to the primetime schedule.

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Fans reactions to the decision of moving Top of the Pops from BBC to BBC2 back in 2004. It also shows some of the problems the programme was facing at the time, from the schedule, target audience and the success of MTV.

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8am: Top of the Pops fans have reacted furiously to the BBC's decision to dump the programme from the BBC1 schedule after 40 years. By Chris Tryhorn.

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8. Nirvana performs Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)

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8. Nirvana performs Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)

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Video of the performance of Nirvana on Top of the Pops. It reflects how the format of the show was failing and some bands were uncomfortable with playbacks and miming, thus, Kurt Cobain changes the lyrics and sings with a different voice while Krist and Dave are overacting their moves. It ends with the crowd on the stage and the performance being cut.

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Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Top Of The Pops 1991) HD

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6. Thursday Night Fever: Top Of The Pops

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6. Thursday Night Fever: Top Of The Pops

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A journey through the 80s: what changed during the decade, the problems the show faced and some of the best moments of those years.

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Top Of The Pops transformed itself into a non-stop party showcase for the 1980s pop explosion. Those who were there, including Heaven 17's Martin Ware and DJ Janice Long, look back on the show's glory days...
Matthew Lindsay

At the dawn of the 1980s, Top Of The Pops was faced with a dilemma. "It was a mechanical operation, very well run, but there was that BBC cleanliness to it that wasn't quite right," remembers Judd Lander, a plugger who worked with ABBA and The Jacksons on the show. "If you got a young band like Bay City Rollers on with a young audience, then it worked, but it was full of these weird moments where the audience wasn't responding to what was happening onstage."

This problem became even more acute as the 70s drew to a close. The charts were brim-full of variety, from Blondie to Madness to Chic, and singles such as M's Pop Muzik and Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star. In 1979, sales of 45s hit a record high. The previous year, Smash Hits reached the magazine shelves, celebrating the chart-bound with trivia, humour and colour. The seeds of the 80s were already being sown, but TOTP was stuck in the past. This was obvious when the future shock of synth-pop collided with the BBC's light-entertainment aesthetics; cameras languidly panning across an unmistakably 70s stage, slowly zooming in on starburst lights. "It was a transitional time. People like Gary Numan were having hits, but when we went on the show doing Rock 'N' Roll, there was the same sparse crowd boogalooing and being shepherded around," recalls Martyn Ware, still then part of The Human League.

The new decade required a TOTP revamp. When Michael Hurll took over from dickie-bowed patrician Robin Nash as producer in mid-1980, it got one.

"Michael wanted to razzmatazz it up, make it sexy. He wanted it to reflect the times," says Lander. "He was an innovator, he loved technology and would be the first to take advantage of any new gizmo." Janice Long, soon to be the first female presenter on the show, agrees: "Michael really knew how to put something together. He understood entertainment."

Hurll deployed all the latest tricks, onscreen graphics and video screens and, in 1981, commissioned a new title sequence and theme. Footage of multicoloured vinyl tumbling into dry ice was reversed to appear like flying saucers hurtling towards the viewer, all cut with rapid-fire editing to the synth-heavy, stuttering wallop of Midge Ure's theme (a reworking of his Phil Lynott collaboration Yellow Pearl, bolstered by timely Burundi-style toms). The sequence came to an explosive climax of shattering neon-pink vinyl. A new TOTP logo was cut out of reflective steel. Everything was shiny and new, and very, very 80s.

25-Minute Party People

This sense of perpetual motion continued within the show itself. In came sweeping cranes surveying the action and hand-held cameras getting up close to the stars. The latter development proved particularly useful when an act such as Toyah, Cyndi Lauper or Frankie's Holly Johnson decided to saunter offstage and interact with the crowd, a breaking of the fourth wall that was unimaginable in the static performances of just a few years before. Stage sets were increasingly inventive, like the giant Chaplinesque cogs adorning The Stranglers' Strange Little Girl stage set in 1982. Sci-fi -like steel contraptions gave the show an industrial, modern gleam. Madness even got a sit-com style living room installed for '82's Our House. "Everybody on the show worked so hard, they had so much love for it," points out Long.

TOTP was now rebooted with a frantic party atmosphere, created, as Hurll told the BBC years later, "to make the viewer at home feel more included". Props galore flooded the show; balloons, glitterballs, and streamers. To make the experience even more immersive, the now-supersized audience would frequently encircle the acts featured on the stage and appear above them on newly constructed gantries. Crowds on TOTP in recent years had seemed like rabbits caught in the headlights, staring at the cameras, waving to mum and dad watching at home - a far cry from the Swinging Sixties Carnaby Street kids or the platform-booted longhairs of the glam-rock era. Hurll - who for all his forward-thinking, ran the show like a stern schoolmaster - now whipped the audience into a frenzy, demanding that either they dance, cheer and wave with all the gusto they could muster, or go home. Those "beaming fans with their golden tickets to TOTP", as Long calls them, also now had fierce competition in the audience. Hurll placed cheerleaders, professional dancers and trapeze artists alongside the young spectators. Playboy Bunny-style models and scantily clad bodybuilders were thrown into the pick-and-mix pop jamboree, threatening to upstage not just the kids, but also the main chart attractions.

TOTP in this new era seemed like a Beeb-sanitised recreation of a nightclub experience; be it the New Romantic Blitz, the 'three ring circus' hedonism of Studio 54, or the strobe-lit ecstasy of a gay club (see Hazell Dean's Searchin'). The 80s were all about excess, and TOTP delivered the goods, including fire-eaters and a merry-go-round.

Screen Cred

If TOTP's audience was no place for camera-shy wallflowers anymore, neither were the charts. Pop music was booming and everyone making it seemed to have a shrewd sense of 'the look' - how to project an image. Whether it be girls- and boys-next-door given a glamorous makeover (eg, Kim Wilde, Dollar or Bucks Fizz), panto-popstars such as Adam And The Ants and Madness, or bands like ABC, Duran Duran and Culture Club, who, in Martyn Fry's words, "all wanted to be their own movie". The charts provided TOTP with raw material totally in sync with their glossy reinvention. Previously, bands like the Clash had snubbed the show, saying it lacked credibility. But the new breed of pop stars were a televisual dream come true. "You'd get people like Boy George who'd say: 'I want to be a peacock. I want to show off,'" says Lander, who went from plugger to popster when he played harmonica on Culture Club's 1983 mega-hit and got himself on the show with the band. Martyn Ware echoes this emphasis on ambition and style on returning to the show with Heaven 17 to perform hits such as Play To Win and Temptation: "We were going for the jugular and we knew exactly what to do. We knew that fashion was important."

Many of the current pop crop had been raised on the out-there glamour of Bowie and galvanised by the DIY ethos of punk. This juxtaposition gave British pop of the period its peculiar character: caught between the fantastical and the real, both dazzling and relatable in equal parts to TOTP viewers at home. It made everything, as Janice Long notes, "individual". Such uniqueness was often borne out of economic necessity. Long herself remembers buying clothes from Army & Navy and cutting them into new designs. Toto Coelo wore punk-style bin-liner attire, though it came in poppy Day-Glo colours. When they performed I Eat Cannibals on TOTP, presenter John Peel couldn't resist putting on a bin bag, too.

For kids watching, it meant you'd get a new, easy-to-emulate dressing-up tip. "I'm a young kid watching the show and suddenly this cool artist comes up with an eye patch or a little facial make-up mark," says Lander. "I'm young and I go in to school and say to my mates: 'I'm cool' by having an eyepatch or make-up mark on. It had that effect, from the band to the crowd to the fans at home and on the high street. It was also a fashion programme. It dictated fashion, as well as music. When I was on the show with Culture Club coming and going from the BBC, you'd see all the little Boy Georges."

Crowdsourcing

Kaleidoscopic variety defined the new TOTP. Floppy-haired, eyeliner-wearing poseurs rubbed shoulders with performers who resembled the actual crowd, often within the same band. This was the case in Ware's former group, the new hit-making Human League, who'd recruited two schoolgirls from the dancefloors of Sheffield. They could have easily been plucked from the audience of Hurll's new TOTP. Sometimes, future pop stars would be in that crowd, bopping to The Jets like a pre-fame Boy George, or later on, a cheerleader who crossed over to be a chart act like Sinitta. Boy/girl, black/white dance troupe Zoo, whose performances of songs such as Gary Byrd's The Crown in '83, made it clear how zeitgeist-savvy the show now was - it was a world away from the incongruity of watching Legs & Co. boogie to the Pistols' Pretty Vacant.

Hurll's overhaul brought with it new presenters. John Peel returned after a 14-year absence in 1982, followed the next year by Janice Long, often his sidekick after the departure of his former foil Kid Jensen. Peel served dry wit, mocking the artists and breaking the 'Smashie And Nicey' mould former presenters seemed uniformly cast from. "Some of the DJs on the show were cool and funky like Peter Powell. Then you'd get others who would be like weather readers. But Peel and Janice were so good, so passionate about music and funny," says Lander. So funny, in fact, their irreverent style often drew the ire of the public. Surprisingly, the complaints didn't faze the authoritarian Hurll, who, according to Long, encouraged it. "Michael loved controversy. He knew it would push up the ratings," Lander adds.

Reality occasionally seeped in to the TOTP party thanks to a hard-hitting protest singer such as Billy Bragg. Like Thatcher's 80s itself, divided between glitz and squalor, the TOTP experience had, as Holly Johnson told the BBC, two very different sides to it. Backstage was a sharp contrast to the razzle dazzle Hurll cultivated in the studio. Away from the bright stagelights were the endless corridors and drab rooms of BBC TV Centre. Catch a star back there, and the bubble of pop mystique could be burst forever. The spectacle of seeing The Weather Girls eating KFC and Chrissie Hynde having a sandwich were just two such moments for Janice Long.

The presenters' free rein with banter was echoed, Long says, by total wardrobe freedom. Clad in big frocks and outsized earrings, Long would be faced with the Olympian task of running through the assault course-style set. Presenters and audience alike were constantly revved up. "I remember being told to make the countdown more lively. I felt like I'd had too many blue Smarties!" recalls Long.

Suburban Subversion

Top Of The Pops, beamed into homes at 7.30pm on a Thursday night, was, in Judd Lander's words, "a shared visual experience for all the family. The charts meant that the show was a mish-mash, a menu where you didn't know what you were going to get for dinner. It had these highs and lows, you know, it'd be: 'Oh, that's great, oh that's naff'. Your dad would see Boy George and be horrified, saying: 'That's not a fella!' Then his daughter would go: 'Oh dad, everybody's dressing like that, you're so uncool!' It had the ability to smuggle the subversive into the suburban living room as light entertainment."

In the past, Bowie draping his arm suggestively around Mick Ronson during Starman, or The Sweet camping it up in German uniforms, had given TOTP the whiff of controversy. Hurll's revamp did likewise, via 'gender benders' such as Boy George, or out-and-proud acts like Bronski Beat.

The show even became a heated familial talking point for the presenters. Watching the show at home, Long remembers her mother turning to her after the Echo & The Bunnymen were on and saying: 'I hope you aren't hanging out with them. They're either drinking too much or on drugs!'

Parents may have disapproved, but their kids were being exposed to sophisticated music along with the novel and the naff. A pre-teen might be tuning in to see Bucks Fizz, but they'd also encounter an alternative act who'd crash-landed in the charts: The Banshees, The Cure, Japan or The Smiths. This was the same kind of 'mish mash' youngsters experienced on the early Now!... compilations, giving an entire generation eclectic tastes before they'd even hit double figures.

It was the pan-generational appeal of TOTP that covered all bases. Sneaking indiscretions through the back door if you were Frankie, pulling out toy guns on a live transmission of TOTP, was always a bit more thrilling to watch with the family than any outrage, say, Rik Mayall puking, seen solitarily on The Tube. TOTP was, in Martyn Ware's words, "the gold medal, the seal of approval that you were a pop star, even if you were only on it once".

The trouble was, by the late 80s, the charts upon which the show's format relied were becoming bereft of character and colour. "Music was becoming quite grey," says Neal X who, as part of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, added a rare flash of outrage to the show in the second half of the 80s. Hurll left the show in 1987 and subsequent producers struggled to compete with the dry ice and neon party he'd thrown during his tenure. Perhaps it was foolish to try. As self-styled pop stars such as Dexys, Adam Ant or Culture Club faded from view, record companies seized control, predicting tastes rather than taking risks on dashing weirdoes. They were replaced by squeaky clean SAW acts, manufactured boy bands or mature power balladeers. "The stylists took over. A blandness prevailed," notes Long.

Dance music's faceless one-offs didn't help, either. The lack of telegenic pop posed a huge problem for TOTP 's future. Those who were left were mostly overseas and Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna were just sending their now-lavish videos in at this point. "It was a long day," Lander says. "It took a huge chunk out an artist's promotional schedule, all that hanging around."

The bland assault on pop made it hard for Top Of The Pops to recapture that Hurll magic. TOTP 's 'golden moment' is now gone, zapped by streaming and downloads. Chart rundowns and that shared visual experience after tea on a Thursday night have disappeared. With them went that 'mish mash' of Joe Dolce, Duran Duran and The Cult.

Ware says modern pop, with its talent-show contestants aping what is already popular, rather than delivering the 'shock of the new', suffers from "a denial in the power of fantasy". That power was always what made TOTP so vivid in those few years of the 80's. Enduringly so, as Janice Long says: "All I remember about that period is colour. When I see re-runs and hear the 'boom derder' of the title music, my stomach still flips with excitement."

Pick Of The Pops
A rundown of weird and wonderful TOTP moments

1. Human League Don't You Want Me
Oakey's New Romantic Bela Lugosi meets festive cheer on this chart-topping 1981 performance, with flashes of Santa red from Susan Ann Sulley's dress and Jo Callis' jumpsuit: elegant Art Deco-style staging, too. Slightly less elegant, though, is the crazy string fired from the audience by prankster (and Dare producer) Martin Rushent.

2. Soft Cell Tainted Love
Few synth duos were more telegenic than Soft Cell: the most striking since Sparks. In this 1981 appearance, a black-clad Almond, all wild gestures and fierce painted eye contact, sends shockwaves through the nation's living rooms. Recently reunited for a huge farewell gig, our love affair with the twosome started here.

3. Japan Ghosts
The 70s had those strange moments when audience and act didn't quite gel. Similar moments in the 80s were often an odd, arty thrill. Japan's spooky, beatless Ghosts from 1982 reduces the crowd to an eerie silence, as dry ice wafts across the stage. For more atmospheric party-stoppers, see Clannad's Harry's Game.

4. Shalamar A Night To Remember
In 1982, singer Jody Watley was pregnant, so Jeffrey Daniel, alone, presents a combination of mime and street-dance, featuring the never before seen backslide, a precursor to Jacko's moonwalk. The result? After popular demand, an invitation back. Read our interview with Jeffrey here.

5. Adam Ant Goody Two Shoes
The apex of TOTP's staging. Ant, in imperial pomp, takes over the studio for this 1982 spectacle, swaggering from stage to stage, through Ancient Greece to Dick Whittington's London. If TOTP couldn't beat the video boom, then it would simply create one on the show. Nifty choreography, too.

6. ABC The Look Of Love
A mohair-suited Martin Fry's eyes lock with the cameras in hot pursuit; pure pop ambition in one televisual embrace. Fellow band members provide choreographed back-up, harking back to Smokey and The Miracles. The foppish flick of Fry's floppy fringe adds a very English flourish to this sophisticated masterpiece from '82.

7. The Associates Party Fears Two
It's 1982 and to quote Fun Boy Three, the lunatics are taking over the asylum. The charts were full of visionary weirdos like The Associates, featuring multi-instrumentalist Rankine and 'Sinatra on hot coals' Billy Mackenzie. "The voice of an angel, the look of a film star", says Martyn Ware. New Pop Heaven.

8. Madonna Holiday
Everybody remembers her cavorting solo, in a pink wig, for Like A Virgin later that year, but January '84's loping, muscular performance of Holiday was TOTP 's best showcase of her bid to "conquer the world". Backed by two dancers, including brother Christopher, it's clear here that it was only a matter of time before the mission was accomplished.

9. Bronski Beat Smalltown Boy
This hi-energy cri de coeur, sung live, was "the first overtly gay piece of propaganda on TOTP", according to London Records' Colin Bell. More of the same, albeit more rambunctious in nature, came with Frankie's gun-toting, tabloid-ripping appearances that same year. More '84 politics amid the balloons and streamers came with The Special AKA's Nelson Mandela.

10. Band Aid Do They Know It's Christmas
Every top-shelf pop mullet gathered under one roof for this warm-hearted runthrough of the charity single. Save for Bono, of course, who had Paul Weller mime for him. "Everybody was very good-natured," recalls Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes. The Quo, toe-trampled and nudged by Bananarama, remember otherwise.

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Thursday Night Fever: Top Of The Pops - Classic Pop Magazine

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Top Of The Pops transformed itself into a non-stop party showcase for the 1980s pop explosion. Those who were there, including Heaven 17's Martin Ware and DJ Janice Long, look back on the show's glory days... Matthew Lindsay At the dawn of the 1980s, Top Of The Pops was faced with a dilemma.

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

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

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Importance of the performance by David Bowie back in the golden days of Top of the Pops. Shows the importance of the program and the impact it had, and still has.

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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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10. BBC plans Euro push for Top of the Pops brand

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10. BBC plans Euro push for Top of the Pops brand

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BBC wanted to export the Top of the Pops brand to Europe in 1998. The importance of the show and the format goes beyond British television, as music travels through international markets.

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Twitter fan account with 21.4K followers that tweets facts about the programme since 2011. This shows how the program is still relevant today.

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Tweets by TOTPFacts