Top Of The Pops is more than just a music show - it's a British institution. As a new book celebrates 2,000 epiodes of the show, Steve Pratt reports opn how it just keeps on entertaining.

IT was 6.35pm on New Year's Day 1964 when a BBC continuity man announced, "It's number one, it's Top Of The Pops" and a great British institution was born. The current Newcastle-born executive producer Chris Cowey, a former researcher on The Tube, describes the show as "a great British invention, like football and fish and chips".

Jimmy Savile presented that first programme from a converted church in Manchester, introducing a bill that included The Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield and The Dave Clark Five performing live. The Beatles were featured on film.

Thirty-eight music-filled years later Top Of The Pops is still going strong. Audiences are nowhere near the 20 million who used to tune in but there's still no show like it. "We get fewer viewers but there's also Top Of The Pops 2 on BBC2, the website and it's the name of the biggest-selling music magazine," says Jeff Simpson, a BBC music department producer and author of a new book charting the success story.

As the 2,000th edition approaches next month, producers are planning to export this Brit-hit with an American version of Top Of The Pops, staged on a replica set in Los Angeles and giving the British show access to those artists who rarely make the trip across the Atlantic. A special edition of Top Of The Pops will also feature in BBC1's main Saturday morning children's show.

Rivals have come and gone, but TOTP goes on forever.

"Music will always provoke reaction from people, whether it's music you love or hate," says Simpson.

"There's always new music, and the show provides that weekly opportunity to check out what that music is."

Auntie BBC hasn't always had an easy relationship with the show. There's a suggestion that the series originally came from Manchester, not because of the influence of Northern bands on the 1960s scene but because the stuffy Establishment figures at the BBC didn't want horrible, long-haired pop groups loitering around their shiny new Television Centre in London.

What Bill Cotton, head of variety in 1964, knew was that the BBC needed to keep up with commercial television which enjoyed a big hit with Ready, Steady, Go. His own record included the music shows Juke Box Jury and Six-Five Special. Now he came up with the idea for Top Of The Pops.

"What struck me," he recalls, "was that the majority of the hit parade was British. Previously, it had been mostly American. But now, out of the Top 20, there were probably 15 or 16 British songs. Why didn't we do a hit parade show? So I put the idea forward, and I think we did a deal for half-a-dozen shows."

The timing proved perfect, although fans who turned up outside the Manchester studio to scream at The Beatles were disappointed. The Fab Four were only seen on film singing that week's number one I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

The Rolling Stones did play live, although Keith Richards recalls chaos backstage. "The crew were all there, tripping over each other," he says. "It was a great ramshackle event at the beginning, because everyone was making it up as they went along. It wasn't like Juke Box Jury, where everybody had to sit down and do what they were told. Everybody was kind of feeling their way."

As he points out, the programme was a great place to promote your record. The show became - and remains - a vital port of call for anyone plugging a new release.

In common with all long-running shows, there have been moments of crisis. The greatest threat was in the early 1990s when the axe was poised over TOTP. The uneasy relationship between the pop industry and the BBC was partly to blame, according to Simpson.

"Historically, the show had a problem being part of the BBC," he says. "It was run by middle-aged men who weren't into keeping up with what young people were into. Much more colourful shows like The Tube and The Word, and also videos, came along. A lot of artists preferred to provide a video rather than appear in person. It's fair to say that Top Of The Pops lost its way a bit at that time."

Apart from the teen appeal of Take That, the music biz was going through a transitional time and that was echoed in the show's fading fortunes. Simpson calls the show "bland and unfocused" at that time while the presenters, who included far too many children's TV presenters, had gone from bad to worse.

The BBC opted not to axe the show but a rescue package. The man chosen for the task was Radio 1 producer Ric Blaxill, who joined in February 1994. He was in his mid-20s, in stark contrast to his predecessor who'd joined as a cameraman in 1966 before Blaxill was even born.

He gave the show a much-needed kick into the 90s, introducing satellite links and celebrity presenters in a bid to restore credibility. He was fortunate his arrival coincided with the rise of Britpop, as bands like Blur and Oasis brought fresh excitement to the music scene, as well as being able to obey the new TOTP rule that anyone appearing had to sing live.

The revival was working, although BBC bosses then did their best to upset everything by switching the show from Thursday to Friday nights, putting it directly opposite Coronation Street. The record industry didn't react well. The new time left only one day for viewers to buy records and help influence the chart published on Sundays.

The good news was that corporation's commercial arm raised the show's profile by launching a Top Of The Pops magazine. The debut in 1994 on BBC2 of TOTP2, which mixed new and established bands with archive material, helped promote the brand too.

No mention of the show would be complete without Pan's People. Simpson says whenever he's interviewed about the book the subject of the female dancing group always arises (probably because many of us were at an impressionable age when those scantily clad dancers performed).

"I call them the Spice Girls of their day," he says. "They were so famous because women hadn't done what they did before. Although they were criticised for being sex objects, they ran their own lives and decided what to wear. These days it's slightly different as acts bring their own dancers and there are groups, like Steps, that dance and sing."

His book is illustrated with previously-unseen photographs taken on the set, and there's no shortage of pop stars wanting to recall appearing. "Everyone has their own fantastic memory. That first appearance really is a rites of passage for any artist. Noel Gallagher says he learnt how to be a pop star watching Top Of The Pops. It's such an important stage in every artist's career," he says.

* Top Of The Pops: 1964-2002 by Jeff Simpson is published by BBC Worldwide, £14.99. TOTP2 is on BBC2 on Wednesday at 7pm. The 2,000th edition of Top Of The Pops is on BBC1 on September 13.

Published: 03/08/2002