Trivia / Top of the Pops

• Banned Episode:
  • Gary Glitter appeared as a guest presenter on multiple episodes throughout The '90s. After being arrested and convicted for possessing child pornography on his computer in 1997, all episodes featuring him were removed from rotation; his later arrests and convictions for soliciting sex from minors in southeast Asia ensured that these episodes' absence from airwaves would be permanent.
  • After Jimmy Savile was exposed as a prolific child predator in October 2012, the episodes he presented were dropped from the schedules. When similar allegations were made against Dave Lee Travis (who, unlike Savile, was still alive at the time) his episodes were also withdrawn, permanently after he was convicted.
  • The late Mike Smith's episodes also aren't being played, but for completely less controversial reasons: Smith chose not to sign licence extensions to permit rebroadcast. The fact that every news report on the Savile scandal used clips of the one episode he co-hosted with him may have influenced that decision.
  • Episodes hosted by Adrian Rose who presented between 1991 and 1992 also can't be aired because he didn't sign the licence extension allowing his shows to be rebroadcast
  • Episodes featuring Jonathan King hosting a US charts segment were edited to remove him while he was being investigated by the police between 2015 and 2018 (King had previously been convicted for child abuse in 2001). This occasionally also removed other performances as he sometimes linked back to a performance happening back in the UK.
  • 1990s episodes featuring R. Kelly have been edited for similar reasons. It is assumed if episodes from the 2000s are repeated, performances by Lostprophets will also be removed.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: As well as its 42 year run, the TOTP format was sold worldwide and spawned a magazine in the UK (which is still published despite the end of the weekly series) and many compilation albums (the 1970s ones not sung by the original artists, the 1990s ones actually sung by the original artists).
• Channel Hop: from BBC One to BBC Two in 2005, what turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for the weekly series.
  • New episodes of The Story of and Big/Biggest Hits from BBC Four to BBC Two in 2022 starting with 1991.
• Distanced from Current Events: The BBC's reasoning behind dropping all episodes featuring Savile, Glitter, and/or Dave Lee Travis (who was arrested as part of the Scotland Yard investigation of Savile's crimes) from the BBC Four rerun rotation.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • All references to who's hosting next week's show that mentions banned presenters (e.g Savile/DLT) are edited out of the BBC Four repeats
  • The UK Gold repeats (1993-97) edited out or shortened links and edited out studio performances or videos to either insert commercial breaks or to shorten the show to fit the timeslot.
  • Jonathan King was edited out from both the 7:30pm and the late night repeat of 15/07/76 in 2011 leading to him suing the BBC which caused the broadcaster to apologise to King saying that he would never be edited out again. This lasted until 2016 when he was arrested again on further allegations of paedophilia leading to all visual apperances and the majority of verbal references being cut from the BBC Four repeats but since 2018 when his criminal charges collapsed any appearances of him are now aired unedited
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Since the Savile sex abuse scandal broke, the BBC has announced it will no longer show reruns of any of his TOTP episodes, rendering a substantial chunk of the surviving run only available through home recordings; Dave Lee Travis' conviction for sexual assault has likewise caused the episodes he presented to be pulled from reruns, as did Mike Smith's/Adrian Rose's decision not to allow the BBC to extend the licence to rebroadcast their episodes. Going forward, the only place to watch footage of episodes hosted by Savile, Travis, Smith and/or Rose is likely those uploaded to video-sharing services (including those uploaded prior to the ITV-aired exposé).
  • Also in effect for the short-lived US version, which only aired on Friday late-nights during its short time on CBS.
• Missing Episode: The weekly run of TOTP from 1964-2006 consisted of over 2200 episodes, of which 508 were wiped by The BBC and have no known surviving recordings; only four complete episodes exist from the 1960s (one and most of another with the presenter's links mute), the earliest from Boxing Day 1967, and the show's archive only exists in full from 15 September 1977 onwards. And as mentioned above, much of that is now banned. In a bit of irony, the only surviving footage of The Beatles performing on TOTP (the first verse of a 1965 performance of "Ticket to Ride") exists due to being used in an episode of Doctor Who, which itself was far from immune to the archive purges.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The Pan's People performance of "Get Down" by Gilbert O'Sullivan was staged with a group of dogs sitting on a bench that the women danced around. About twenty seconds into the performance one of the dogs ran off the stage and never came back.
• No Export for You: Aside from an extremely brief run on BBC America in 2002, the only episode to air on American television was the last one, which was aired on VH1 Classic (now MTV Classic) in August 2006.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The series frequently switched theme tunes but the most well-known, and frequently returned-to, theme is the CCS cover of "Whole Lotta Love".
• Referenced by...:
  • In the Doctor Who serial "The War Machines", a clubgoer compares the First Doctor to "that DJ" in reference to Top of the Pops presenter Jimmy Savile.
  • The Tweenies episode "Favourite Songs" features a parody of Top of the Pops, complete with Max impersonating Jimmy Savile. This scene got the episode in hot water when it re-aired three months after the revelations of Savile's long history of sexually abusing children, resulting in the BBC hastily withdrawing it from further circulation for four months; it hasn't aired again since 2016.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Due to the rightholders of The Doors not allowing the BBC to play their songs on TV (including covers), episodes containing original/covered material of The Doors are either edited out or skipped on BBC Four.
• Unperson: The BBC's Story of... documentaries on the history of Top of the Pops in a given year stopped including any mention or footage of either Jimmy Savile or Dave Lee Travis starting with The Story of 1978 in 2013.

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