Watching Top of the Pops was never a real pleasure when I was fourteen or fifteen. My parents were pretty good about letting me take over the TV at that time every Thursday, but neither of them could ever restrain themselves from making comments of the ‘Gawd, you can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl!’ or ‘Blimey, what a racket!’ variety. It sounds silly now, but this sort of thing used to ruin the programme for me. My father in particular used to make jokes about my favourite singers or just stand there shaking his head in a sort of mime show. I would far rather have been able to watch it all by myself, but I could hardly have expected as a fourteen-year-old to be able to order my parents from the family living room. << less