Another clip featuring the revived Ruby Flipper, performing on the Lena Martell Show. Here Lena perform's Neil Sedaka's All You Need is the Music while the Flipperers dance, and we get some slightly eighties analogue video solarization effects.
Helpfully, the dancers are named in this clip, so I can finally identify the blokes as David, Nick and Okon. That's a weight off my mind. Thanks as ever to PattiforPM, who contributed this clip.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | telly.com
From Hot Gossip's reunion with Kenny Everett, for his fourth BBC series, here's their version of Prince's Girls & Boys.
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Here's my last clip of Love Machine: dancers on The Benny Hill Show, from before he developed his Hills Angels troupe. More of an extended gag than a dance routine proper I think. The song is The Best is Yet To Come which I think is original.
PattiforPM, my most constant source for new clips, has sent me another one: Legs & Co. (well. just Gill and Rosie here) dancing while Billy Ocean sings Red Light Spells Danger. The costume designers have taken over the "literal interpretation" job here: Big red circles on their outfits, to represent the "red light" I suppose. But charming costumes they are, none the less.
Thanks as ever to pattiforPM.
Discussion board regular Jez has pointed out that we don't have any examples featuring The Gojos on this blog. He points out that as "the pioneers of dance on TOTP" they deserves some recognition.
Quite right Jez: my only problem is that only one single Gojos Top of the Pops performance seems to have survived the Philistine Tape Wipers of the sixties: dancing to Diana Ross & the Supremes' Reflections on the 1967 Boxing Day Special show.
So if you've watched any documentaries or clip shows, you've probably seen this before. But in the interests of fair representation, here it is.
Our friends over at panspeople.com havea lots more information about the Gojos, including some non-totp clips they've unearthed.
Here's another clip of Zoo, Flick Colby's post-Legs dance troupe dance to Gary Byrd's The Crown in 1983.
Gosh, doesn't this early rap music soumd dated nowadays? That relentless bragging. and that Chic 'Good Times" funky guitar figure. And robotic dancing, body-popping, the full late-seventies hip-hop package.
Thanks again to bucksby for supplying the clip.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | youtube
Here's another Legs & Co clip kindly supplied by PattiforPM. What's going on here? Clearly this dance routine is a stylised version of airplane marshalling: arm movements are emphasised using sticks (here hidden under the loose flowing outfits) in the same way that airport ground marshalls gesture with coloured sticks or lights to communicate with pilots of airplanes under their instruction. The girls headresses poetically mimic the ear protectors that on-tarmac airport staff wear to stop themselves being deafened by aircraft noise. And the outfits themselves are a reference to air travel, in that they mimic parachutes. The music here is George Benson's original hit version of The Greatest Love of All: not my favourite song at all, but standing up well in comparison to old Whitney's histrionic bellowing.
Here's another update to an old, non-embedded clip post. This time, Legs & Co. dance to Donna Summer's Love's Unkind. Lots of classic literal interpretation here. I would observe that the set decor seems to have an "Homage to Tetris" theme, except I'm pretty sure this clip predates the addictive Russian game by a few years. So Tetris is, in fact, a tribute to this dance routine! Or something. Yay!
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Thanks to SuPaLu for the updated YouTube post.
Here's another routine from Benny Hill's early group, Love Machine. This time they'e actually singing too: the song's Think of the Boys which seems to be original to them (I can't finf any other mention of it anyway).
Thanks again to tvdancers for sending the clip.
Here's another Hot Gossip routine from Kenny Everett's 1986 series. The music here is their version of Obscene Phone Caller originally by Rockwell, Motown's eighties next-big-thing oh-wait-not-really guy.
Watch this clip on: telly.com | mobypicture
Here's another performance from Zoo, Flick Colby's early eighties TOTP dance troupe. The music here is Phil Lynott's Yellow Pearl.
The title is a reference which, back in the early eighties, was already quite obscure: nowadays only social historians and trivia quiz pundits would be able to tell you that it's a punning reference to "The Yellow Peril", an expression from the late 19th century,refering to obsessive European and American xenophobic ideas about China & Japan. Phil must have understood xenophobia himself at first hand, as a mixed-race child growing up in Dublin, a racially homogenous, though historically sensitive (ethnically and religiously) society.
Pardon me: I seem to have swallowed a dictionary.
For once I enjoyed this performance: the choreography is overt, and entertaining, and the usual early eighties TOTP ovedubbed whooping, cheering and clapping is pretty subdued. Thanks again to bucksby for supplying this clip.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | youtube | telly.com
Here's a rarity: Pan's People on the Benny Hill show. Sort of. If you look closely, you'll see there's only one classic Pan's Person involved here: Dee Dee. So this is the version of Pan's People that Dee Dee continued with after the group left Top of the Pops.
Since it's the Benny Hill show, as usual this "dance routine" is not really about dance or music at all: it's another excuse for Benny and his overgrown schoolboy viewers to oggle half naked ladies on the telly. Shocking depraved I'm sure you'll agree. I'm only posting this for historical reasons, you see, to demonstrate how terrible things were back in the seventies. Yes, that's it.
Most of the "dancers" you see here went on to become Benny's regulars, particularly Louise English, who became a full blown protogé of Svengali Benny. Thanks to tvdancers for the clip.
Here's another updated version of clip I posted long ago: this time, Ked Jensen introduces Legs & Co. dancing to Kate Bush's Them Heavy People. So with its repeated "rolling the ball" motif, what sorts of outfits could L & C's designers have dreamed up for this song? Cricket whites? Crown green bowling old ladies with navy blue blazers, pleated white skirts and sensible shoes? Croquet mallets and sensible tweed suits? Ten-pin-bowling fat American slob shirts with slacks and unpleasent bowling alley shoes?
Nope. None of the above. They seem to have just given up, and dressed the girls in skimpy lingerie.
Oh well *sigh* : I suppose that'll have to do.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | youtube | youtube
Here's another Hot Gossip routine from Kenny Everett's 4th BBC Series (1986). Dancing to Berlin's Masquerade, although i think this is their own version of the song: that seems to have been their normal practice in later years.
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Yet another clip from the generous PattiforPM. He's dedicated this clip to two people:
A rare solo performance from Pauline here, to Gladys Knight & the Pips' Come back and finish what you started.
Some classic literal choreography, particularly the use of the trapeze when the lyrics mention "hanging". Thanks again, PattiforPM.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | telly.com
Here's another of bucksby's Zoo clips. David "Grown-up" Jensen introduces them dancing to Donna Summer's Love's in Control, with that incomprehensible vocoder hookline that's just so eighties. I can believe that the loud clapping noises we can hear over the music are genuinely made by the audience: but the whoops and yells sound pretty fakey-overdubby to me.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | mixturecloud | telly.com
Here's another Love Machine routine from tvdancers (thanks!). While Benny Hill regular Eddie Buchanan sings Dancing in the Nude, Love Machine dance. But this is prime-time Thames TV in the seventies, so anyone expecting a literal interpretation of the title will be disappointed. Not that there isn't plenty of oggling opportunity: has a female dancer troupe ever begun a routine wearing trenchcoats/overcoats and not removed them during the routine? Yes, it's a typical Benny Hill cheap thrills piece. Perfect for the thirteen-year-old that I was when I first saw it: charmingly quaint to the old bloke I seem to have morphed into these days.
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Here's an improved version of a clip I posted long ago, in the days before I'd got the hang of embedded video. It's Legs & Co. dancing to The Four Seasons' Oh What a Night from the 1976 Boxing Day TOTP. Presented by the Sainted Jimmy amd the Shallow Tony.
Discussion-board regular Bucksby has sent me a few clips of Zoo performances, from mid-eighties TOTPs (Thanks, bucksby!). Here's one from the celebratory 1,000th show, where they're dancing to New Edition's Candy Girl.
This is a good example of why I was watching TOTP less and less by this time: the producer's desperate need for a "party" atmosphere means we get lots of overdubbed whooping and yelping: this on a flagship music show, where hearing the music is the most important feature for a large portion of the audience. Harrumph.
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Here's another Hot Gossip clip from their reunion with Kenny Everett, on his fourth BBC series in 1986. Here, they're dancing to their own version (I think) of Prince's Purple Rain.
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Here's the late Jimmy Saville, introducing a slow one: Legs & Co. dancing to Crystal Gayle's Talking in Your Sleep, with Gill featuring. Thanks once again to PattiforPM, who sent me this clip.
Watch this clip on mobypicture | telly.com
Thanks to tvdancers, who sent me this clip of Love Machine, a dance group who appeared on The Benny Hill Show in 1976. Ver much the precursors of Benny's Hill's Angel's troupe, this clip seems to be more about ogling scantily-clad women than music or choreography. Hardly surprising, really, from The Benny Hill Show.
Members of Love Machine became part of Benny's regular troupe of performers, and between their appearances and the start of Hill's Angels was one appearance from Dee Dee's post-TOTP incarnation of Pan's People, which I really should dig out and post sometime.
Here's anpther of those clips from Pan's People's residency on John Denver's 1973 BBC series. This time, John sings a traditional folk ballad, Barbara Allen, while Babs wanders around the countryside in a bodice.
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I remember finding kenny Everett's BBC TV output a little disappointing: after the rough & ready, "Kenny & Chums running riot in a TV studio" anarchy of the Thames series. the beeb material seemed tame: production standards were higher, but that seemed to stifle the ad-lib nature of Kenny's work. And the studio audiemce's laughter instead of the Thames studio crew's guffaws, seem to add to the mainstream showbiz light entertainment feel. And Cleo Rocos? I never got her at all.
Of course the other missing element was Hot Gossip. And I think I must have stopped bothering to watch kenny by his fourth BBC series, when Kenny & HG were reunited.
So thanks to Floid Fan over on the discussion board, I've tracked down a couple of Hot Gossip routines from this series. And the good news for Ruby Flipper fans is that Floyd was a member of Hot Gossip by this period, and is well featured. Except he's "Floid" by this time, of course.
I can't say I'm too excited by this first clip, dancing to Philip Glass & Linda Ronstadt's Freezing. I'm afraid both music and choreography leave me cold. But an interesting find, nonetheless
So why the Everett & Gossip reunion? Seems like expediency to me: reading between the lines Kenny's series needed the extra draw of old favourites HG: he only got one more series after this one before the BBC axed the show, after all. And Hot Gossip would fold soon after this: by the mid-eighties music video boom, there must have been less work around for dance troupes, as fewer and fewer producers could justify the expense of hiring a dance group when they could easily just shove on another video.
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