Chart Music #76: August 12th 1982 – Humpty Dumpty Is Big Eggy

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; do we really need a Chart Music Heritage Chart?

Never have we needed Simon Bates at the top of the show warning of explicit content as much as we do for this episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, for it pains us to say that this one is absolutely sopping with the musk of Percy Filth. We’re combing through the grot-encrusted underbelly of the last days of the Eighventies here, and this episode is an uncompromising stare at it. You might want to finish your tea before you start on it.

We’re in the Summer of 1982, and this instalment of our Favourite Thursday Evening Fizzy Pop Treat, and everything – even the rubbish bits – sparkles and wobbles like deeleyboppers in the breeze. Even John Peel gets into the spirit by putting on a bin liner, managing not to punch any City Farm wankers, and keeping the barbs to a minimum, unaware that Noel Edmonds is about to attempt to decapitate him over a year from now.

Musicwise, it’s a textbook example of Silver Age Top Of The Pops, the programme that everyone moans about, but everyone watches. David Essex gifts us a slab of flesh-eating sensuality and some blokes arsing about in a posh bar. Yazoo continue their upward trajectory. We get some Red Hot Dutch Gay Filth lobbed at us, and then – YESSSS! – two chocolate guitars. Sheena Easton deigns to make an appearance, and then SIMULATED BUMSEX. Zoo get absolutely ignored because even Michael Hurll’s had enough of ‘em by now, the Fun Boy Three Puppet Show rolls into town, George Cole gets lionised, and you already know what the Number One is, so put that buffet plate down and pile onto the dancefloor, and DEAL WITH IT.

David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham, the Dancing Fool for a glorious rampage through the summer of ‘82, veering off into tangents such as getting someone else’s calendar foisted upon you, the horrific tawdriness of Private Spy, the joys of old mens’ urine-soaked trousers, trying to get The Old Uns to buy records about being bummed by the police while a prostitute cheers them on, David Essex Apostrophe Showcase, and a doomed attempt to make some aliens have sex. FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!

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