Fairporters on TOTP

[Jess]

Sir Rafe was on TOTP.  Does he count as a Fairporter? (After all, he's performed with them many times)

[Maart]

I was on Top Of The Pops 2 with Robbie McIntosh (The Pretenders guitarist on mandolin) with The Reel And Soul Association (Me - bass, Paul Burgess (10cc) - drums, John Kirkpatrick - accordion, Michael McGoldrick (BBC Folk Awards Musician Of The Year) - Uilleann pipes, Thea Gilmore - (guitar, vocal), Nigel Stonier (songwriter for both Fairport AND Lindisfarne) - guitar, vocal) and the ultimately fab Kelly While (guitar, vocal).

It was our only gig, though we did get together for the video...

[Simon Nicol]

The only other one I can think of is Bob Brady from the short-lived 1976 line-up who was a member of Wizzard prior to his brief stay with Fairport.  There was a rumour, though, that Peggy & DM appeared back in the early 70's miming to some Jonathan King track or other - possibly 100 tons & a Feather.  The rumour had it that Peggy was on drums & DM on bass.  Anyone able to corroborate that one.

"Sugar Sugar" was the song, unaccountably a cover of The Archies US hit by the aforementioned child-botherer under the nom de guerre Saccharine. The line up was King himself vocalising, DM playing bass (there was a wee solo tag line calling for a close-up, so the wag unloosed the A string, tied an elaborate knot in it and replaced it - tres drole..) Peggy and Phil Pickett (not the medieavalist, the songwriter from Culture Club and Sailor) playing guitars, and Tony Cox (not Yoko Ono's ex, the other one {God we're running out of names here}) and ME PLAYING well miming the drums. Much water under bridge since. As you all know. Pan's People eh? Lovely Babs! (What was her name again??? R.Barker)

[Pete Standing]

How about DM with the McGarrigle sisters?

[tony the roundhead]

"Sugar Sugar" was the song, unaccountably a cover of The Archies US hit by the aforementioned child-botherer under the nom de guerre Saccharine.

Oh dear - I bought that record and you had to go and remind me.

[Dubai Danny]

I don't think Tull have been on TOTP since Ring Out Solstice Bells in about 1977. They had a pretty big hit with Said She Was A Dancer in the mid-80s but presumably weren't considered hip enough to be on.

Was Said She Was A Dancer actually a Top 40 chart hit in the UK, then?  I don't remember that at all.

I've got most of the singles that were released from Crest of a Knave, but I don't think any of them made any kind of dent in the UK charts, not even the more radio-friendly ones like Steel Monkey.

EDIT - I've just checked, and no, none of the Crest of a Knave singles ever cracked the UK Top 40 (hence their lack of a TOTP appearance). After the Solstice Bells EP reached #28 in December '76, they didn't trouble the Top 40 again until May '93, when Living In The (Slightly More Recent) Past reached #32. Pop pickers.

[Alex Lyons]

Did it not, Danny? Funny how the memory plays tricks.

Perhaps it was more of a radio hit then - certainly the video was shown quite a bit at the time, with a moody Ian Anderson walking about on a beach (a Scottish type rocky one, not a Costal del Sol sort of beach), it still crops up on the Sky music channels.

Just checked here too & couldn't lay my hands on my Guiness Book of Hit Singles but the best a web search could do was a reference to it being "top twenty single" and also an appearance on an album called "1987: 20 Original Chart Hits":

1 You Sexy Thing (Remix) Hot Chocolate [UK] (3:47)     
2 Rise to the Occasion Climie Fisher (4:48)     
3 Have You Ever Loved Somebody Jackson, Freddie (4:18)     
4 Sexy Girl Thomas, Lillo (4:01)     
5 Radio Head Talking Heads (3:32)     
6 Dominoes Nevil, Robbie (4:06)     
7 Southern Freeez Freeez (3:49)     
8 Respectable Mel & Kim (3:22)     
9 Said She Was a Dancer Jethro Tull (3:40)     
10 Mony Mony Amazulu (4:04)     
11 Living in a Box Living In A Box (3:04)     
12 Comin' on Strong Broken English (3:51)     
13 In Love With Love Harry, Deborah (3:21)     
14 Who Found Who Jellybean (3:44)     
15 Letter from America Proclaimers (4:00)     
16 Incommunicado Marillion (3:57)     
17 I Want to Hear from You Go West (4:48)     
18 Let It Be With You Some, Belouis (3:33)     
19 When You Walk in the Room Carrack, Paul (3:25)     
20 Simple as That Lewis, Huey & the News

That looks like an English release rather than a US one so it must have been there or thereabouts. Maybe it was just outside the top 40?

[Tasha]

It got to number 55 in the Uk charts according to te Chrysalis home pages.

 http://www.chrysalismusic.co.uk/media/asset/throughtheyears.htm

[Alex Lyons]

Thanks Tasha (yer little clever sh*te yer... )

[Tasha]

Thanks Tasha (yer little clever sh*te yer... )

You're welcome Alex!

[Dubai Danny]

the best a web search could do was a reference to it being "top twenty single"

Most likely in Germany or Denmark or somewhere like that.

and also an appearance on an album called "1987: 20 Original Chart Hits"

During the 80s and early 90s, it was very common practice for UK record companies to pad out those sorts of compilations with one or two tracks that were released during the year but were never actually Top 40 hits. It was a way of gaining extra exposure for their more "chart-challenged" artists. If you look back through the "Now..." and "Hits" albums and their ilk, you can see this sort of thing happening a lot.

BTW, there's an online searchable database of all the UK Top 40 charts from 1952 to the present day available at http://www.everyhit.com/.