Thin Lizzy – a rerun, but still the most “1977″-looking thing here.

The Double G – Jesus H Corbett, this would still have been creepy had I known nothing else about him. As Lena so rightly said, this didn’t even sound like Glitter – a cheap ride on the disco wagon (at points the song threatens to turn into “I Love To Love”) revealing nothing but a Bizarro World Lionel Blair, with his unbecoming teeth and positively repulsive camera leers. The sort who’d be hanging around the Hippodrome asking ladies if they were English and wanting to go to the boogie bop disco, if we didn’t know they were probably hanging around school playgrounds instead. Yeeeeuck.

All respect to JtS for the continuing Mucky Sue updates but I continue to find Legs & Co’s appeal baffling (“Don’t Leave Me This Way” – surely it should have been three of them in prefect blazers and the other three dressed as weather balloons?). Then again Hot Gossip (who were marketed as everything Legs & Co weren’t) didn’t get me going either.

Boz Scaggs – on Soul Train I think, and simply splendid, down to the double drumming. Did you know that Toto formed out of the rhythm section on Silk Degrees? I noticed that I hadn’t given the album a CD upgrade, and rectified that the next day (a fiver in Fopp). Terrific record, plays like a greatest hits, etc.

The Real Thing – putting on a big hat doesn’t make you Sly Stone, Mr Amoo, and nor does this nondescript ballad, with the rest of the group petrified and apparently in school uniform. The stench of prize-giving day was very redolent.

Silver Convention – NEXT!

The Rubettes – the sort of thing the BBC wanted to be big in ’77, business as usual; somebody’s been listening to the Eagles, eh?

DAVIDSOULHORSENIGHTMARE – thankfully the final week for Mr Soul’s eye-rolling, nearly-dropped-off-there performance.

Thelma Houston – inexplicable and a bit mean of the BBC to put her in there. But her version went to #1 in the USA so what did she care?

Heatwave – strange they haven’t actually been ON the show yet. Did Rod Temperton draw the short straw for getting in the pies and peas?

Hard to believe that lineup of blokes old before their time were sold to the teenies a couple years ago.

If they’d have hung on a bit, they could have been the english Eagles. And so many did (I remember Rameo from the Shcwads being a fan)

Gary Glitter was only aged 32 when he made this appearance(!)

Although the Real Thing were never really anything more than pop-soul/funk (and so not part of the Britfunk continuum and never really accepted by the underground funkers) the nearest they did get to such acceptance ie the 12 inch of “Can You Feel The Force?” , “Children Of The Ghetto” , “Boogie Down (Get Funky Now)” were still well in the future at this point

Rubettes – surely more a country-ish song with a touch of Mark Knopfler guitar on this at exactly the time Dire Straits were forming although obviously not connected

Thin Lizzy – Great stuff, natch. What will TOTP follow that with, do you think?

By God, it’s Gadd!! At last we see him after weeks of North Korean-style airbrusing out of the show. But the Swede smells a rat. The performance we are presented with is pure sleaze and even without hindsight, this is grim. A tragic middle-aged old lad prancing up and down trying to be sexy. Just wrong. I think TOTP put this out for that very reason and I commend them for it. A nauseating spectacle. Let’s move on to something far more decent and wholesome…

It’s the Gals! And, glory-be, they’re back in their true orbit after last week’s reticent nonsense. They look breath-taking in silver ball gowns with splits down the left leg. Mucky Sue has never looked better. They do a routine to Harold Melvin’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. And this prefaces an odd little moment at the end of the show, more of which later.

Boz Scaggs – And what can I say? No, what CAN I say? Despite bad hair, Boz smoothly rocks to a backing girly trio and a very visible brass section. Nothing to fault here apart, perhaps, for the snatches of the two drummers, the nearest of whom is clearly deranged. But what can we dooo?

The Real Thing – And Kid makes the same irritating error that Edmonds always made by referring to the groups’ “two chart-toppers”. And now they look like numpites. An end of the pier act, if you will. And since the Swede has spent far too much time at the end of a pier, I should bloody well know. Not good.

Silver Convention – Neither fish nor fowl really. But the lead girl, a product of a US Serviceman father and a German mother, is more than a little yummy.

The Rubettes – An unspriring piece of folk from a mob well past their sell-by date. The Kid assures us that this is heading for number one. Well, of course it is!

David Soul – I thought he was off the top this week, but no…

And then Jensen introduces his special guest. It is Thelma Houston, who is in the UK to promote her new single. Alas, it is her own version of the same song given the full Legs treatment earlier. I only hope Thelma was in the Green Room when Harold was clocking up the sales earlier on. The very charming Miss Houston then introduces Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” to fade.

An enjoyable show.

Even Presley’s (tottctrd) had a jukebox with ‘only’ 50% Elvis.

Obviously, it is.

Edit: just noticed, not updated from last week yet. He wasn’t on, obviously.

Thanks for the info, Mark. Christmas With Dicken below… gor blimey guv, you’re not wrong. Sounds oddly Euro in spite of extreme Essex-isms. The spoken part sounds a lot like Dan Treacy, too.

A long way from here to Romeo’s bed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIso-toiUDo

(Quick uplook, they formed in 1972 and “XmwDick” was 1974)

See, again, it’s the ‘soft-rock’ that died thanks to Punk, the “prog” bands carried on regardless to smaller crowds maybe..

The Moments’ innuendo passed me by, aged 11, but it’s pretty obvious now. Me and my sis thought this was risible at the time; now it sounds incredibly repetitive at best.

I love the way the camera pulled as far back as possible during David Parton’s horrid roses-for-the-ladies routine.

Mr Big – they were confident, weren’t they? Had any of them done anything before? Still can’t work out if I like it, something about their precise ee-nun-see-ay-shun rubs me up the wrong way.

No WTF about the Brothers, not unless you think every X Factor winner is similarly WTF. Bloody tedious record though. Worst thing about them is that they called themselves… The Brothers. Just because they were. Not like those fraudulent Walker and Righteous tykes.

Andy Fairweather Low – “What audience was he targeting?” I had the exact same thought. I really have no idea. Noel Edmonds?

I went to see The Stranglers play at Crawley College
For some reason I thought they played the Leisure Centre rather than the College. Dunno why, the college makes loads more sense now that I think about it. I was only 12 so too young to attend, but the gig was legendary at my school.

God, The Moments were a sight.

Less than a month after this was broadcast I went to see The Stranglers play at Crawley College – ‘Something better change’