Switch on the TV we may pick him up on channel two…
After a brief tease of ‘Starman’ during an historical look back at Top Of The Pops on TOTP2 yesterday, there is now promise of more tomorrow on the same show at 18:00 (GMT) on BBC2. Billed as a “2001-style space special”, the show looks like being a veritable feast of aliens and inter-galactic goings-on. ‘Starman’ isn’t the only clip they may show of course. In the past TOTP has aired ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Hallo Spaceboy’, and you never know, they may assemble a new bunch of dancing lovelies for ‘Life On Mars?’!
While we’re on the subject of TOTP, click on the logo above to go to the incredibly detailed biography of David Bowie on the TOTP site. The fact that some of those details aren’t exactly accurate shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment of this brilliantly researched, up-to-the-minute piece of journalism. When I say up-to-the-minute, I’m obviously referring to a minute at the tail end of 1999. If you can’t be bothered with the thought of tele-porting yourself over to the site, then perhaps the samples I have picked out below may whet your appetite…
01 A playground fight left the singer with a paralysed pupil after being stabbed in the eye with a school compass.
02 Bowie completed his first major work, an extraordinary album entitled ‘The Man Who Sold The World’.
03 Bowie worked through a variety of themes including sexual perversion (‘The Width Of A Circle’)
04 ‘Aladdin Sane’, another concept work, centred on global destruction as its main plot.
05 Bowie shocked the rock world on 4 July 1974 by announcing his retirement from the stage of London’s Hammersmith Odeon.
06 There were some memorable moments on ‘Pin Ups’ including a hit reworking of the Merseys’ ‘Sorrow’ and a frantic reading of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’.
07 Julia, described as ”a rebel from the waist downwards” by the book’s anti-hero Winston Smith, becomes the hot tramp of ‘Rebel Rebel’.
08 In order to promote the campaign (the re-release of his back catalogue on CD) Bowie set out on an acoustic ‘greatest hits’ tour.
Total Blam Blam – (European Correspondent)