No Rock And Roll Fun

RELAUNCHING TOP OF THE POPS IS LIKE SHAGGING A CORPSE: Jimmy Saville writes about ver Pops in today's Guardian - he's now decided he's going to claim credit for the whole thing (why not? the old boy long since claimed to have invented the disco as well. Doubtless if he lives much longer we'll discover he invented both the marathon and television itself), although the input of Johnnie Stewart who came up with name and the format might be slightly more important in the sense of creating the show. It's also interesting that Saville says "I presented it once a month", thereby skating over that there were three episodes a month that he wasn't involved with at all.

Frustratingly, though, we do admit he's got a sort of point - the show does need to get back to doing what it always did well (viz. the charts) and stop doing badly what other shows are doing (yakking). It's funny that the musing of Lorraine Heggesey that the show needs to sharpen up was translated by several papers yesterday as a death knell for the Pops. If BBC 1 was going to axe every show which 'only' pulled about three million on a Friday night - never mind being buried against Corrie - then they wouldn't have very much left of their schedule - that'd be the Ten O'clock News gone for a start. We wouldn't be surprised, though, if they don't give the BBC1 showing a later slot, and used BBC 3 as a home for an premiere outing.