#40: 4th April 1991 - You've Got To Earn Your Na Na Na Na

Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast

The 40th episode of the podcast which asks: so how do you get your pills out of a Kinder Surprise egg while wearing long opera gloves?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, takes us nearly ten years away from the glory of the last one and plunges us deep into the turquoise shell-suited heart of the Neighnties - and oh dear, our beloved programme is right up Arsehole Street. The ratings are dropping like a Shed Seven release in its second week, newer and savvier shows are undercutting it, and the BBC have pissed about with the scheduling to such an extent that middle-aged spods with a craving for Judith Hann are sitting there shouting; "Oh, what's this bollocks? WHERE'S TOMORROW'S WORLD?"

Musicwise, hmm: Gary Davies, in a boxy denim jacked beloved of the era, just about manages to not look like he's too old for this shit (despite dropping a few clunky Dad-phrases). Inspiral Carpets - the Freddie and the Dreamers of Madchester - pitch up, demonstrating the bad haircuts that were available to youths at the time. Saffron-not-yet-of-Republica dresses up like a magician's assistant. The Mock Turtles do a mobile phone advert. The mid-Eighties refuses to piss off, in the shape of Feargal Sharkey, The Waterboys and Mike and the Mechanics. Still, there's a welcome opportunity for people who haven't got Sky yet to have a proper goz at The Simpsons, Black Box remind us that they did more than one record, and there's some dead good angel wings on your woman in C&C Music Factory. Chesney Hawkes - 'the iconic legend of the 80s and 90s', according to his website, which is roughly 1.96666 decades too many - punches the air.

Sarah Bee and Simon Price link up with Al Needham at the car boot sale of 1991, veering off on such tangents as being refused entry to gay clubs by National Front activists, why you should never install a plastic tank into your wardrobe to piss into, bragging at school that you've seen Sky at Centre Parcs, the phenomenon of Some Rap, and the misery of having to share a crappy Student Union with people who have been on Top Of The Pops more than you have. And there's swearing.

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