top of the pops, a photo by duncan on Flickr.

My husband came home the other night with the news that BBC4 were going to re-running every single episode of Top of The Pops from 1976. This was a great moment of excitement for us sad buggers as we love our muisc nostagia. Even though it’s commonly known that the 70′s was resposnible for some pretty piss poor efforts, it was also a pretty magical time too.

In the spirit of of it, we watched a programme last night, dedicated to 70′s Top of the Pops. I guess it’s quite weird that I wasn’t even alive for most of the decade, but being brought up in a household full of older brothers and sisters, I couldn’t help but absorb their influence. I had brothers loving Pink Floyd, Bowie, Led Zeppelin etc and older sister who loved Marc Bolan and Stevie Wonder and another who was crazy for the Bay City Rollers – bit of a mixture really.

But that was the great thing about Top of the Pops, it was a great big mash-up of all sorts of music. Watching it, even the cheesy dancing by the surprisingly uncoordinated Pan’s People, made me feel sad that we had lost such an institution of British television.

I remember at school being so jealous of the lucky group who rocked up to London to be part of the audience. They came back, red faced with excitement and clutching Noel Gallagher’s plectrum. I was jealous for weeks, months even. Shit – I’ll be honest, I still haven’t got over it. It was the sheer thrill of being part of the “show” being and being there…

And now what have we got? My 90 year old neighbour is more likely to know what is number one now than me, and half the time she’s living in 1947.

Downloading is great and all that…but god ( I know I sound like an old fart now) I miss proper charts that matter. Just finding out what was number one when my daughter was born was hard enough (mind you, after finding out it was the Sugababes I wish I hadn’t bothered).

Settling down with my husband last night, watching Bowie strutting on screen, laughing at the Brotherhood of Man and their dire dancing and wondering how half the men managed to look so old – it made me really sad to think that we wouldn’t be watching anything like this again.

However, the only downside to all this was that I had a very VERY disturbing dream about Jimmy Saville…and that bloody cigar….