The First Top Of The Pops

Top of The Pops was the world’s longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One in the UK. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week’s best-selling records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week’s singles chart. During its heyday, it attracted 15 million viewers each week. The peak TV audience of 19 million was recorded in 1979.

The first edition of Top of the Pops was broadcast on Wednesday, 1 January 1964 at 6:35 pm. It was produced in Studio A at Dickenson Road Studios in Rusholme, Manchester. Dusty Springfield‘s “I Only Want to Be with You” was the first song featured on TOTP, while the Rolling Stones were the first band to perform, with “I Wanna Be Your Man”. The first show featured (in order) Dusty Springfield, The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five with “Glad All Over”, the Hollies with “Stay”, the Swinging Blue Jeans with “Hippy Hippy Shake” and The Beatles with “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, that week’s number one.

In the first few editions, Denise Sampey was the “disc girl”, who would be seen to put the record on a turntable before the next act played their track. However, a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste, became the regular disc girl after a few episodes, a role she performed until 1967. Juste later married Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. When Juste and Dolenz began a relationship, it prompted such headlines as “Samantha traps Monkee” and “Pops girl goes ape”.

In October 1964 a decision was made to at least occasionally bring in a dance troupe with a choreographed routine to some of the tracks. An initial candidate troupe was the existing BBC TV Beat Girls, but an ex-dancer from the Beat Girls, Jo Cook, was engaged to create a troupe, the all-female Go-Jos. Pan’s People were then selected by the BBC over the Go-Jos when they chose a group to be the resident troupe. Pan’s People were not a weekly fixture on the programme at first, however, due to group fan mail and good viewing figures, by 1970 the group was on nearly every week. Pay was not high – they were paid the minimum Equity rate of £56 per week.

The show was taped 52 weeks a year with no breaks. The chart came out on Tuesday mornings and the show aired live on Thursday evenings. This led to a process of difficult weekly planning, rescheduling, booking, and rebooking, as well as pre-recording of acts, particularly of American artists who might be advancing up the chart the following weeks, to ensure that each week’s top 20 would be able to appear on the show.

After two years at the Manchester Dickenson Road Studios, the show moved to London (considered to be better located for bands to appear), initially for six months at BBC TV Centre Studio 2 and then to the larger Studio G at BBC Lime Grove Studios in mid-1966 to provide space for the Top of the Pops Orchestra, which was introduced to provide live instrumentation on some performances (previously, acts had generally mimed to the records). In November 1969, with the introduction of colour, the show moved to BBC TV Centre, where it stayed until 1991 when it moved to Elstree Studios Studio C.

A year-end Christmas show featuring a review of the year’s biggest hits was inaugurated on 24 December 1964 and has continued every year since. From 1965 until 2021, the special edition was broadcast on Christmas Day.

On 20 June 2006, the show was formally cancelled and it was announced that the last edition would be broadcast on 30 July 2006. Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single “Chasing Cars”. Cliff Richard appeared the most times on the show, with almost 160 performances. Status Quo made more appearances than any other artist, with a total of 87 (the first was with “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in 1968 and last with “The Party Ain’t Over Yet” in 2005).

The show has seen seminal performances over its history. The March 1971 appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan wearing glitter and satins as he performed “Hot Love” is often seen as the inception of glam rock, and David Bowie‘s performance of “Starman” inspired future musicians.

Episodes featuring disgraced presenters and artists such as Jimmy Savile, Jonathan King, Ian Watkins (Lostprophets), R. Kelly, Rolf Harris, and Gary Glitter are no longer repeated.