The Top Of The Charts

There are those of you who believe that the music charts mean nothing anymore. That because everyone steals their music online anyway; nobody buys records or singles anymore, so the chart is based on radio airplay more than anything else. And those people would be right. Nobody cares about which song is number #1 anymore, because it’ll inevitably be whichever musician has been given the biggest push from their record company. There’s no fun in it anymore.

But there is one exception, which happens to be Christmas. The Christmas #1 is still incredibly important, because it’s the one week of the year when almost anything could win. Sure, the X-Factor and countless other reality shows all release their singles for Christmas, so usually one of those wins. But at the same time, there are so many different wild cards in play during Christmas that nothing can be guaranteed. The winning song could be performed by a credible rock band, or a children’s TV show (Tellytubbies, anyone?) And because there is such variety, and so little stability for this week, the BBC have relented.

They’ve given in. Finally, the public have won. Because Top Of The Pops is coming back! At Christmas! It’s only coming back for a special, but this is still rather big news. Top Of The Pops, for our international reader (you know who you are), is a TV institution which was cancelled a while back. It ran down the chart, and featured performances from six or seven of the bands who had done well that week. Although these performances were generally mimed, the show was entertaining Friday-night viewing (wait... when was it on, again?) and the public loved it. And then... they didn’t love it anymore, and it lost viewing figures and got cancelled. The reason? Well, Wilftonville thinks it knows the answer to that one:

Yeah, the presenters. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who actually likes Fearne Cotton as a TV presenter, and her overeager sidekick Reggie Yates isn’t much fun either. Yet they were put in charge of the show during the last few months of its existence, and ran it into the ground. And hey – guess who are back to present this year? Yeah, those two. It’s not on.

What TOTP needs is a guest presenter format, like ‘Have I Got News For You’, so that each week a different celebrity hosts the show, thus making each week’s show different from the week before. Guests hosts can include: Jeremy Clarkson, Michael Palin (yes!), Jimmy Saville, Claudia Winkleman (hey Claudia!) and Terry Wogan. This is what is needed, BBC, if you want to make a success of this franchise again. And make sure that you dump Fearne and Reggie, and put Noddy Holder on the Christmas show instead, because he’s really excellent.

You’ll thank us for this later.