By this stage of the BBC Four reruns the audience has formed itself into two distinct groups. One one hand there’s the casual viewer who isn’t really following the timeline but will greet every deviation from the norm – anything from a slightly clunky edit to a week missed because of The Sky at Night which has taken precedence over TOTP roughly once a month since the repeats started five years ago – as a sign that something has been cut because of the improper behaviour of the host. On the other hand there are the cognoscenti who know exactly what was broadcast first time around, what’s been surreptitiously removed and for what reason; they continue to argue amongst themselves about the rights and wrongs of skipping episodes but grudgingly accept that the Beeb isn’t going to start digging out Savile or Travis editions anytime soon. However, when the TV listings confirmed that BBC Four was leaping straight from the 16 April edition to the 14 May show – on consecutive evenings, no less – there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. What was wrong with the 7th of May show? Had the Undertones undertaken some kind of unacceptable political protest? Had Shaky done his whole performance with his flies open? Was the BBC scared of showing two Peter Powell editions back to back? In the end it was revealed that the gap was due to a much more mundane reason: this edition was broadcast live and it wasn’t recorded properly, so there simply wasn’t a broadcast-quality version in the archive. Luckily the phantom taper was on the ball so at least we can see (most of) what we missed.
See the full top 75 for this week on the Official Charts Website.
read more
