Monday, 3rd October 2005.

Growing old disgracefully

Did anyone else see Top Of The Pops last night?

I won't pretend that it's something I normally watch - I've waited eagerly every time the show has 'reinvented' itself, only to be completely disappointed, and these days I've just about given up. I remember the constant rotation of theme music (Led Zeppelin / Yellow Pearl / The Wizard / Led Zeppelin), the constantly restyled visuals - and, best of all, the time that the TOTP producers decided that the miming had gone too far, and that from now on everyone should sing live. Obviously they'd never heard Victoria Beckham. The show reinvented itself more than Bowie, but unlike Bowie there was no real progression - just a constant shift back and forth from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous. But last night we were having dinner and it was the only thing that was even mildly interesting. It's basically the same programme, with the occasional archive clip, and a special guest presenter to assist the completely useless Fern Cotton.

Cotton herself is an insidious wart on the BBC's roster; a woman who somehow manages to make even Cat Deeley appear comparatively intelligent and insightful. How she ever got to play such a major role in Live 8 is beyond me - the bands she was interviewing were almost unanimously bored and fed up, looking around for an excuse to get away, like a party guest caught in conversation with someone they wish they'd never agreed to chat with. This was in no small part due to the questions she was asking, whether it was probing Nick Mason as to the likelihood of a Pink Floyd reunion (which is a bloody stupid thing to ask, full stop) or her inane banter with the crowd - when the concert was less than forty minutes old, for example, and the only bands to perform had been U2 and Coldplay, she asked one audience member to pick out their highlight thus far.

Later on, after Madonna, our dear Fern decided that it was time to get serious, and interrogated one unsuspecting chap with the words "Now, are you here for the music, or are you here for another reason?" All in all, it was most uncomfortable - the obvious exception was Robbie Williams, who provided one of the day's unexpected highlights when he summoned up enough dutch courage to proposition her on live TV. Cotton's occasional 'help me!' glances towards the camera were ignored - you could visualise the producers in the control room laughing their arses off as they watched her flounder and recoil from Mr Williams' lager-soaked breath. It went on longer than it should have done, but for good reason. Oh how we chuckled.

Anyway. Ignore the vacuous host; she's only window dressing, and it's the show itself that is the real star. The 'new look' Top of the Pops also features archive clips from older editions, which are generally more interesting than the contemporary artists, and the captions that reveal hastily-gathered 'facts' about the songs and groups featured. Some of these revelations are interesting (the Undertones' keyboard player first appeared on Top of The Pops as an audience member, and was nearly thrown out for refusing to dance to Tie A Yellow Ribbon); others painfully obvious (Teenage Kicks was John Peel's favourite song) and others just dull (The Sugababes calm their pre-performance nerves by singing Madonna lyrics). Overall, the whole thing comes across as a slightly uncomfortable amalgamation of TOTP and TOTP2, and the general impression you get is that at long last the death knell has been sounded for the show - it's perhaps not unreasonable to interpret the schedule relegation from BBC1 to BBC2 as a sign of the world-weary producers' grudging sense of defeat.

Surreal sight of the evening: The Happy Mondays. It's nice that they've reformed, but the sight of five middle-aged blokes cavorting on stage to the same happy-go-lucky indie music they were doing in 1990 was enough to make me feel pretty old myself, and I'm only twenty-seven. To be honest, I never really understood the appeal of the Mondays - I only caught the tail end of the Madchester thing, and I was never really involved in it. I don't even own a copy of The Farm's Spartacus album, and I only got round to buying The Stone Roses when the special edition was released in 1999. Still, Mr Ryder and co seemed to make a lot of people happy, and watching 24 Hour Party People a while back did at least give me an appreciation of what was going on in Lancashire all those years ago.

It was Bez that got me. He's to be utterly commended for his apparent refusal to take any of it even remotely seriously: he bounded around on stage, grinning like an idiot whenever the camera passed by, waving his maracas with an obviously Freudian sense of abandon. After all this time, I think I finally understand what Bez is about. He is to indie what Bill Bailey is to Never Mind The Buzzcocks: a bizarre and entirely random sense of fun that's there to have a laugh at the expense of Ryder's / Lamarr's cynical oafishness. Next to Ryder - who is old, bald and dried up - he's a picture of health, but the sad truth is that none of them are getting any younger. When the Mondays were in their prime, Bez made dancing around like an idiot look extremely cool. These days, despite the Big Brother win, he just looks like someone's dad, embarrassing himself and his kids at a wedding reception disco, presumably to Diana Ross.

But maybe that's all right. Growing old disgracefully may be cringeworthy to anyone who has to bear witness to it, but nonetheless it's a little more interesting than settling down with a pension and a bag of Werther's. I have no intention of wearing purple when I am old, but there's something about me that greatly envies Jagger and Keith Richards - you could park a plane in some of the creases on his face, but at least he's still enjoying himself. I've long since wished that Andy Williams and Tony Bennett would hang up their hats and call it a day, now that their voices are on a final decline - you only have to compare Tony Christie's live performances of Is This The Way To Fluff A Pillow? to that of the original a few times in order to generate enough bitter disappointment for a good week's wallowing. But maybe I was wrong. For a long time I've been more inclined towards the burn-out generation; the sorts that achieve immortality through dying young - Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin, Bolan - but these days I'm experiencing a shift in views. While they'll always be heroes, I think that it's age, or family responsibility, or both, that makes me favour Robbie's "Old before I die" over Townshend's "Hope I die before I get old".

These years are a long time in coming: I'm nowhere near senility just yet. Still, maybe I ought to practice a little now, so that when the time comes to be old and embarrassing, I will be suitably accomplished. Do excuse me, won't you? I'm off to dig out my copy of Chain Reaction.