Tuesday 6 December 2011

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: The Snowmen - Hokey Cokey

What is this? Well, it's a 1981 conceptual pop idea from the conceptual pop idealists at Stiff Records, some uncredited people doing one of the great party records in costumes not actually designed for knee bending or arm stretching. Rumour continues to this day that it's Ian Dury on vocals, but quite apart from that no definitive biography has ever linked him to the song it sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Dury. A more likely candidate is Jona Lewie, a Stiff artist fond of both Christmas hitmaking and novelty hits under a pseudonym (hello, Terry Dactyl & the Dinosaurs), not to mention that future hot shot video director Nigel Dick has claimed to be in one of the costumes and he was in Lewie's backing band. (Which of course means he made an appearance on a definite Lewie TOTP showing - he's on the tuba and claims alongside him is John Otway) The men in top hat and tails at the back had been participating in Godley & Creme's Wedding Bells earlier in the show; at the start is unlikely proof of Simon Bates' S&M tendencies.

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