Tag Archives: Colin Blunstone

Off The Chart: 20 April 1981

Off The Chart: 20 April 1981

It’s another weird time travel experience on Off The Chart this week, as we go back exactly forty years and find that it’s Easter Monday. Join us for two hours of forgotten and obscure hits from that week’s chart, as well as three of the week’s new albums, a look at the day’s goings-on, a quick jaunt to New Zealand to sneak a look at their chart, and back home for the top five singles in full.

  • Who was enjoying their first of over fifty hit singles this week?
  • Who had a top five hit with a parody of a TV ad?
  • And which hit was described in 2002 as “the strangest chart record of the last 25 years, maybe ever”?

Tune in and find out!


Listen to Off The Chart on Noisebox Radio at 9pm every Tuesday! You can stream Noisebox Radio via their website, their apps for iOS or Android, or through TuneIn and MyTuner, or ask your smart speaker to “play Noisebox Radio” – and don’t forget to tweet along using the hashtag #OffTheChart. If you’re not around, you can hear the show again on Noisebox Radio at 10am on Friday, or catch up on Mixcloud after that.

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Spotify playlists

If you’ve missed a previous edition they’re all on our Mixcloud page, or for a taster of the music we play, listen to our Spotify playlist Way Off The Chart including one track from each show!

We also have a Spotify playlist for our #ICEOTWF feature, including all (well, most) of the international hits we’ve played since the feature began in March 2017. There are all sorts of oddities in here, all of which were hits somewhere in the world but not in the UK!

Off The Chart: 8 April 1981

Off The Chart: 8 April 1981

All the way back to 1981 on this week’s Off The Chart as Steve and Julian play some of the less famous records in the week’s singles chart, three tracks from the album of the week and the top five … read more

“Strong are the bonds that we make” – Top of the Pops, 2 April 1981

Shakin' Stevens

Another week, another two editions of TOTP on BBC Four as we attempt to crack on through the whole year before the Proms, the Olympics and whatever else has been displaced by the closure of BBC Three as a linear … read more

“Try to look as if you don’t care less” – Top of the Pops, 19 March 1981

Bucks Fizz

So the industrial dispute we were pretending wasn’t happening last week has been resolved, the audience has been allowed back out of the tiny airless booths from where they were encouraged to cheer and applaud in sound only, and everything’s … read more