NICK BERRY – “Every Loser Wins”
Here’s a thing: I have never watched an episode of Eastenders. Not all through. Too much shouting for me. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this but it does mean I missed out on the astonishing storyline in which “Every Loser Wins” made its debut before it became the first soap star single to reach number one. I’m missing some critical context on “Wicksy” here, people, and I expect you to fully enlighten me in the comments box.
I’m not expecting it to change my view of the record, mind you, since free of its story context “Every Loser Wins” is beyond terrible. The work of ’stenders theme composer Simon May it’s one of the faffiest, most disheartening songs to drift our way: every loser wins, but only when they’re dreaming, but it’s still a win, and this is for the losers, who are really winners, we nearly made it. For pity’s sake it features the lyric: “every loser knows / the light the tunnel shows”, whose contortion is only marginally worse than “In time you’ll see / Fate holds the key”.
As a performer, Nick Berry is a blow-dried void, a soft-focus nullity and certainly the best thing about the record. Though listening to it he’s easily overwhelmed by that high piano trill, cutting repeatedly through “Every Loser Wins” with all the heartbreaking sensitivity of the Intel chimes. The record also boasts perhaps the clumsiest drum drop-in of the whole decade, wellington-booted snares whomping down painfully into the AOR murk. There are no winners here.
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Tom in FT / Popular • 1,716 views • Share/Save
TOTPWatch: Simon May performed ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ on the edition of 12 May 1977. Also in the studio that week were; Honky, Blue, Trinidad Oil Company, The Martin Ford Orchestra, Mud, Billy Paul and Dr Feelgood, plus Legs & Co’s Interpretations of Ma Na Ma Na and Got To Give It Up. Jimmy Saville OBE was the host. This edition survives in the archives, and – with that line-up – sounds particularly intriguing.
I was briefly in Eastenders as a child – 1988 – in a pre-Christmas episode Christmas Carolling bit outside the Queen Vic. I was hoping my shortarse status would get me down the front, but yet again my height confounded the director and I was placed firmly off middle and almost completely obscured by a candle (little kids got front row duty). Such is the peril of growing up in Borehamwood where the studios are.
At the time Easties, Grange Hill (three extras appearances there) and Top Of The Pops were all being film in Borehamwood which gave the place a certain fame. Now it just hosts Eastenders (anbd of course Big Brother for Ch4) and is better known as the burning people alive capital of Britain.
Re: 50 – there’s a number one coming up in 1987 where the named act didn’t release anything else (although at least one of the groups that made up the act, did)
Re #46
The recently deceased Edward Woodward had a small hit in the early 70s, and a small part in EE last year.
Scottish blues singer Tam White also had one hit in the 70s, and a recent-ish stint in EE.
Will Mellor also did a stretch, as did Ruby Turner, I believe.
#50 Thanks for the correction re Telly. was his version on a par with Paul Shane’s ?
But I have a correction for you. It was May’s contemporary (Lord) David Dundas who did the Channel 4 jingle.
Wasn’t it more likely May was crouching to get a look at Twinkle’s winkle ? Sorry couldn’t resist that onne !
@22 Sally Lindsay has, of course, already featured in popular as a member of St Winifrids School Choir!
@46 I had E’voke “Arms of Loren” of tape for a bit Judge Jules used to play it a lot on his Kiss FM show at the time – don’t ever remember hearing it being played out though. Quite a classy bit of pop-trance if I remember correctly possibly a bit too pop for the club play the mix they played on the radio anyway.Think I’ll have to download it and hear it again now.
Billy at 51: I don’t know what the site is called but a few weeks/months ago I came across a site that seemed to be flying in the face of all the accepted wisdom re wiped TOTP performances. If the site’s true (and the people on it ie real tv archive buffs gave credence to this)it seems that somewhere in Germany they seem to have countless hitherto thought wiped TOTP performances from the early 70s (possibly all or a very high proportion of c1970-75 complete shows).
Do you know anything about this?
And then there’s the 1000s of hours of Bob Monkhouses video (he owned one of the UKs first ever videorecorders nearly 15 years before they became freely available) archives from 1966 onwards – which he obviously recorded mostly for comedy but considering there’s supposed to be literally 1000s of hours of tape in existence and there were only 3 channels back then its possible he must have sometimes just left them on whilst he went out and been recording everything). So surely amongst that lot there may well be the absolute holy grail of TOTP from the 1960s.
What’s the score on that?
Heard ‘Arms of Loren’ for first time in about 13 years and yeah not bad at all – also downloaded Simon May ‘Summer of My Life’ while I was at it that must be the first time I’d heard that since 1976.I actually seem to actually remember hearing it on “Crossroads” a programme which I used to hate back then as when I was round my auntie and uncle’s house my (10 years older than me) cousin would go all boring and grown up and make me shut up and be quiet whenever ‘Crossroads’ came on!
I think that quite a lot of 1970s TOTP performances were reproduced and syndicated and might survive unarchived in Europe. I would imagine that they are more likely to exist as dribs and drabs than complete shows, but we can but hope. Certainly, missing clips do seem to turn up on YouTube fairly often.
Also on the archive front, there’s been some good news; three missing 1976 editions have been recovered from the private collection of dave ‘Diddy’ Hamilton, one 1969 edition from the private holdings of Lulu, and 40 minutes of poor quality recordings from 1967 have been found in an editing suite – including an anarchic appearance by the Turtles and Pink Floyd performing ‘See Emily Play’!
Hm. Kaleidoscope have just published a book listing the Monkhouse holdings, so I imagine that means that they’ve gone through them. Even if you were a top entertainer, tapes for those 1960s Shilbanden video recorders cost hundreds of pounds, so I imagine that Monkhouse concentrated upon keeping a record of his own appearances, rather than helpfully taping Hendrix and The Beatles on TOTP, Alan Bennett’s sketch series, ‘Evil Of The Daleks’, etc…
Listening to this song for the first time makes me think you should have given Lady in Red a 2. Lady in Red is vile, but this is on a whole other level.
There was this actress in an Oz soap, Kylie someone, I think she released a record once…
Billy i see where you’re coming from but the archive contains 36,000 tapes (excluding film cans)and although some were probably much more recent 36,000 tapes is a hell of a lot of hours of footage and he was quite a rich man in the 60s and 70s.
Regarding the site that mentioned the TOTP editions in Germany (I could kick myself for not taking down the address but I was at work when I stumbled upon it and got sidetracked))it shocked me just what they were talking about (those on the quite long threads seemed to be people who really knew their stuff and it seemed accepted by these also intitially surprised posters that this/these German source(s) had these complete editions which they were tweaking eg sometimes by taking out the djs etc but that they had complete shows to do this too – and these seemed to be really juicy 1971 and 1972 complete editions IIRC. I’ll have to set my self the probably very hard task of trying to find the site again.
But as you say we can hope! or hope that Soviet Russia in a obsessive state of paranoia that Western television was being used to pass messages recorded and archived every single second of every programme from the 50s to the late 70s and one day they’ll be found in a vast hanger somewhere in Russia – that’d be my ultimate fantasy!
Wasn’t one of the current/more recent Corrie girls one of the brats of St Winifred’s?…I can’t be sure. As Tom has never seen ‘Stenders so The Swede has never taken to the Street.
I even came late to ‘Stenders, in fact; certainly well after Den and Angie and Wicksy had left the scene and thus this pitiful record had zero significance to me beyond being…well, a pitiful record.
Marcello’s piece at the top of the thread sums the show up nicely and as he says, the template simply doesn’t alter beyond the inevitability of misery for everyone. Steve McFadden, for example, a brilliant actor and RADA trained to boot, must be torn between the security of continually playing thuggish Phil Mitchell, a charcater becoming ever more laughable as the years pass and a desire to spread his wings and attempt fresh pastures which I have no doubt would be well within his substantial talents. As a fellow “Prisoner” student (100% entry, 100% pass!), I am also intrigued by MC’s suggestion of Number 6 waking up in The Vic. I have given this a lot of thought and have concluded that Janine Butcher has taken the pub over and demands that the new arrival works for her as a barman. Six being Six refuses and tries to do a runner but only gets as far as Walford East tube before being dragged back to “The Landlady” by Max, Jack and Bradley, who throw him to her feet.
“THAT wasn’t very clever, was it?” chides The Landlady softly. “You’ll work for me if you like it or not. No-one walks out on me. Now pour Minty a pint of Churchills!”… You get the idea. Janine as Number Two. Yes, yes. I can see it!!
the comma i wish didn’t exist: Alan Bennett’s sketch series ‘Evil Of The Daleks’
Choice line last time Ross Kemp returned to the show, as Bloke in Pub sees an increasingly porky Phil and Grant together again: “I see Right Said Fred have re-formed.”
Of course the Vic has now passed to Roxy Mitchell, played by Rita Simons who was in a girl band called Girls@Play – who as far as I know never troubled the chart scorers.
I certainly couldn’t imagine Roxy as Number Two, though. The girl is entirely vacuous and is only capable of one facial expression. Number Six would have buggered off within five minutes of her assuming charge of the Green Dome!
Ross Kemp and Steve McFadden play off each other magnificently and it is a shame that Kemp does not return for more lengthy stays between his rather alarming appearances on shows examining the world’s murder gangs. The Phil and Grant chemistry is pure gold (as is Garry and Minty) and a far cry from the usual drab story lines, which have all the imagination of an episode of “Bargain Hunt”.
Great Guardian column on the future of the single, Tom, but I was intrigued by the idea that “hits” might become “nothing more than random eddies of local preference” if they cost less than a Pot Noodle. Here’s an example of a super-localised hit that wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without its TV connection. Same goes for a ton of unloved Popular entries going back to Where Are You Now and David Whitfield’s brace. Likewise, event singles like Bad Romance will always be rare, or they wouldn’t feel like events.
To me at any rate, pop has always been about cheering the goodies (Gaga) and booing the baddies (Berry). I still do the same to James Alexander Gordon’s classified football results – it’s amazing how few I don’t care about one way or the other.
As for Every Loser Wins, it’s simpering and useless but not offensive like Grandma/Liverpool/Lady In Red. The thing that most irks me is the opening line, blatantly lifted from Barry Manilow’s Looks Like We Made It. And the fact it goes on and on… a 3 for me.
Well thing is the Eastenders audience really ISN’T “super-localised” in UK cultural terms – globally this record doesn’t register at all, but it’s an example of something from a different area of mass-culture simply overwhelming the charts, crashing the sale on which they’re calibrated.
On a related note, it’s going to be interesting to see how songs from Glee perform in and affect the charts (both in the US and here) as they emerge. It would help if they weren’t ALL covers…
@70…this week #99 to #5 Glee Cast with “Don’t Stop Believin’”. 2010 looks like it’s going to be an interesting year.
I immediately downloaded the Journey original of DSB last year when I watched the first episode of Glee online so I can testify to it’s influence. Later episodes include music ranging from Duffy’s ‘Mercy’ to the Stones’ ‘You can’t always get what you want’.
If I was a songwriter down to my last million I’d be begging my agent to get my song onto the show.
re 65: ‘A cream-cracker under the doomsday device’
A visit from Miss Protheroe to the tomb of the Cybermen…
40 million years on
re #64 Sod Ashes To Ashes, would watch THIS
68 – saying Jackie Trent’s number one is unloved is rather contentious to say the least and how could David Whitfield be viewed as some kind of TV hype when he was accepted at the time as a superior singer of semi-operatic pop with a massive following both male and female. (incidentally I remember my dad recounting that during his National Service there was a fellow squaddie in his billet who was just such a fan).And to further diminish any accusation of localised hype he had a Top Ten hit in America when Vera Lynn notwithstanding that just didn’t happen.
Re 77: I adore Where Are You Now, but a quick flick through the Popular comments would suggest it is now largely unloved and forgotten.
Granted it wasn’t via tv, but David Whitfield rose to fame as the first winner of Opportunity Knocks (then radio only). Yes, I was ignoring Cara Mia’s US success (more down to Mantovani’s St Peter-at-the-gates arrangement?), but his long run of hits in the UK was down to a local talent show – the US had Mario Lanza, Al Martino etc who could steamroller David’s rubbery operatics.
A cream cracker under the Tardis.
London Lee is right. Early Brookside was superb.
David Whitfield – best thing to come out of Hull since William Wilberforce – in fact they should rename the Humber Bridge The David Whitfield Bridge ;-)
And if he did nothing else at least he stopped the fuckin’ Housemartins from being the most succesful act in chart terms connected to Hull