Age: 47.
Appearance: The oldest swinger in town.
Good old TOTP! Not just British TV's longest-running chart show, but a reminder that there's more to music than expensive videos. Such as?
Such as embarrassed pop stars miming to their own recordings. Is the BBC still threatening to shut it down? Not any more. It's been off air since 2006, if you don't count Christmas specials.
And I thought it had been buried on one of the digital channels. I'm devastated. On the other hand, I'm delighted. Because?
Because if we're talking about it now, it must be making a comeback. Got it in one. From next Thursday, TOTP will be on BBC Four in its old time slot of 7.30pm.
So it's about to be buried on one of the digital channels. Still, that's prime time. Didn't the show die because everyone stopped watching it? Pretty much. At its peak audiences were 15 million. By the end 14 million of them had vanished.
How's the BBC going to make it work this time? Can we look forward to a big-budget Doctor Who-style revival, ideally featuring Karen Gillan in an extremely short skirt? Only if she really can travel through time. The BBC's not so much rebooting TOTP as repeating it – one episode a week, starting in 1976.
A golden year for pop? More like a golden year for the Beeb not losing its recordings. No 1s in 1976 included Brotherhood of Man's Save Your Kisses for Me, The Wurzels' Combine Harvester and Showaddywaddy's Under the Moon of Love. As for the show's DJs . . .
Or smug gits, as they were officially known . . . They were led by Jimmy Savile, Tony Blackburn and Dave Lee Travis.
This suddenly sounds a lot less appealing. Especially since I've just realised it could drag on into the 2040s. Don't worry. Punk will be along to shake everything up in 2012 – or, as we must now call it, 1977.
Do say: "Now that's what I call music!"
Don't say: "Now that's what I call cheap TV!"
