For more than 40 years, the BBC beamed Top Of The Pops into UK homes. It was the world's longest-running music show, a Thursday night ritual for families across the nation, appointment TV before the phrase was ever coined.
It wasn't always great. There were the dancers – Pan's People, Legs & Co and so on – troupes of (mostly) female movers and shakers employed to interpret songs via the most literal choreography imaginable. There was the miming, with backing tracks pre-recorded and vocals either live or otherwise, depending on the policy of the day. And there was a lack of archiving, with only 20 of the first 500 episodes preserved in their entirety.
