For over 40 years, Top of the Pops was judged as the pinnacle of TV success for any artist playing the UK. Appearing on the BBC’s flagship music programme immediately put you in music’s big leagues; New Order's Peter Hook told Mojo in 2005: “Being on Top of the Pops was one of the highlights of my life, it was the only time when people like my mother, and relatives that didn’t have anything to do with us, thought that we had made it.”
Understandably, most people who got booked for the show knew it was a hell of a career opportunity, took it very seriously and acted as professionally as possible. But we’re glad to report that not everyone was so overawed by TOTP’s Lustre. Some rock bands deliberately set out to mock, fuck with the formula of and, in some cases, full on sabotage the show. They might have had Auntie Beeb’s producers pulling their hair out, but here are 10 times we loved seeing rock bands totally ruin Top of the Pops.
