Tartan Top Of The Pops: Scots acts share what iconic show meant to their careers

On January 1 1964, Top Of The Pops made its television debut. Intended to run for only six weeks, it became a fixture on our screens for 42 years and was one of the most influential programmes in British TV history, changing the way we consumed music and influencing generations of young people to pick up a guitar and chase their dreams.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the much-missed show, some of Scotland’s best-loved musicians share their TOTP memories for a new Radio Scotland documentary airing tomorrow called Tartan Top Of The Pops.

Midge Ure – Ultravox

Top Of The Pops was incredibly important to everyone in the UK – a direct lifeline to what was going on in London.

You could see your favourite bands but also the fashion and what the girls looked like, which was incredibly exciting for a young man, let alone an aspiring musician from the back streets of Glasgow.

My first time performing on it was 1975 with Slik, when TOTP decided to give four new acts the chance to appear on the New Year’s Day episode. We travelled down by train and turned up at the studio, which was tiny yet looked huge on TV. I remember trying – and failing – to sneak a peek in Pan’s People’s dressing room. The next day, back home, as we were going out to parties, everyone stopped us after seeing us on the show.

Ian Donaldson – H2O

The world stopped when it came on each week. I remember, when I was 12, watching David Bowie performing Starman with his arm round Mick Ronson and I thought it was amazing.

Then to get to stand on that same stage, a boy from Govan.

I remember going into the make-up department and there were only two seats and Elton John was sitting in one. He said ‘hello young man, I really love your song’, and he started singing I Dream To Sleep! It doesn’t get much better than that.

Anyone who made a brilliant noise had been there before me, and now there I was with five other working class guys.

Greg and Pat Kane – Hue and Cry

© SYSTEM

Greg: Our first performance was in 1987. I was 20, Pat was 23. The attention I got afterwards, even random people in the street, folk applauding and shouting out their cars – that’s the effect it had on me.

Pat: Kenny G was on the same show as us and he kept playing his sax in the waiting area, where everyone was standing nervously. He continued playing, completely unaware of his surroundings. He wouldn’t stop. Eventually one of us said to him ‘can you please stop?’ There was definitely a body language applause through the room, saying thank God for that.

Richard Jobson – The Skids

Stuart Adamson wanted to follow The Clash’s policy of never appearing on it but (record label boss) Richard Branson persuaded us, saying we’d be able to talk to so many people of our age. I was 16 when I was first on it, a kid.

I’m epileptic and wasn’t well that day – I had a seizure in the dressing room. Stuart wanted to cancel because we couldn’t rehearse, but we decided to go for it. We only did one take because it’s all I had in me and it worked. We exploded on the stage in a way that surprised everyone, including us.

Back home in Scotland, I remember walking to our rehearsal space and there were 500 kids there and that was because of the show. Into The Valley broke us.

Stuart Wood – Bay City Rollers

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I remember we were waiting to go up one time and Agnetha from Abba tapped me on the shoulder and said she was so nervous. They were doing Waterloo. It was their first time, and we’d done it five or six times by then. There I was, 18 years old, telling Abba not to be nervous and that they’d be fine!

Clare Grogan – Altered Images

© Shutterstock

My sisters and I loved watching it every Thursday. I remember seeing Poly Styrene and realising there are girls like me out there – it was so relatable. I had no idea a year after I left school I would be on it – nothing prepared me for that.

The first time Altered Images did Top Of The Pops, we weren’t in the charts but we got to do it because everyone was convinced Happy Birthday would chart really high, and the gamble paid off. We recorded it not knowing if we’d make the charts the following week. It was a little bemusing and terrifying. It’s often a criticism of us that we were happy, but we were, we were dead happy. Just out of school, signed to a major label and getting to be on Top Of The Pops – what wasn’t there to be happy about?

Bobby Bluebell – The Bluebells

To be in a band, you have to give up a lot. In my case it was my job, and when my mother found out she went crazy. My only defence was I’d be on Top Of The Pops one day and luckily I managed it.

The first time I went was as a spectator with Bananarama. I felt lightheaded because it was so magical and it cemented my desire to be on it.

I’m Falling was our debut performance. When we got a call telling us Young At Heart was going on a car advert, it dawned on me we were going to be on Top Of The Pops again and the excitement was phenomenal.

The great thing about being back on the second time was there was no pressure to succeed. I remember meeting Cliff Richard and Barry Manilow. We had a little set to with Cliff and his entourage.

The next day, he was on an early morning show and said he’d met us and loved us, which was an obvious way to kill our credibility, so well done Cliff.

Lorraine McIntosh – Deacon Blue

I remember Robbie Williams came to our dressing room and told us he was a fan and that he loved Glasgow. I asked him what he loved about Glasgow and he said The Tunnel. I thought he was talking about the Clyde Tunnel but he meant the nightclub that used to be there!

BA Robertson

My first appearance was as the piano player in Cockney Rebel, so when I was there to do Bang Bang (which reached number two in 1979) I knew what to expect. It had been something I’d been thinking about since I was a little boy, when my father used to buy me the NME and Disc, so I’d been waiting a while. I was also there and part of it for We Have A Dream, the Scotland 1982 World Cup song.

It was a complete nightmare – the footballers spent the majority of the day in the free bar. Alan Rough (former Scotland goalkeeper): We’ll never forget that day and I think a lot of people who decided we should go on won’t forget it either. There’s a lot of hanging about and the only place to go is the BBC bar, which was a really bad move. You could tell why we were all swaying – we’d been in that bar for five and a half hours.

Wet Wet Wet

Most appearances by a Scottish act, with 51 studio and satellite performances and seven music videos.

Marti Pellow: We were so excited to be on it and I don’t think that ever left us. It was also who you would meet on the show, including other Scottish bands like Texas, Del Amitri and Deacon Blue.

Graeme Clark: Whitney Houston was on the same show, performing I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Seeing that close up was art, a masterclass on how you perform, sing and put it across. We were lucky to be there when she delivered that remarkable performance.

Tommy Cunningham: We thought Love Is All Around was a B-side, then we thought it would last a few weeks like our other songs, never realising three months later it would still be there.

We were on about 10 times and they needed something different each week. We did a satellite performance from America with the Hollywood sign behind us, then one from our Wembley gig, then back into the studio where we mimed, then a live version where Marti forgot the words halfway through. We dressed like hippies, then we were surrounded by candles, and eventually we couldn’t think of anything else.

We had a meeting and said this is getting out of hand. We did one more performance, just as ourselves, and then pulled it from the shops. Sorry everyone for being there so long. We still think it’s nuts. But to have that journey and share it with four friends is wonderful.

Tartan Top Of The Pops, Radio Scotland, New Year’s Day, 6pm.