Start of show: 'Well, I hope you were listening to Anne Nightingale's 'Rock In Russia'. Right towards the end of it, a woman was saying that she was sitting in a taxi in Moscow recently, and heard them play a Genesis song followed by a Van Halen song. As if they didn't have life hard enough as it was!')
The third installment of the 1987 Festive Fifty backed by repeats of the best sessions of the year.
JP has trouble pronouncing Terence Trent D'Arby's name throughout the programme.
Due to the combined length of the Festive Fifty tracks, some of the session tracks do not appear.
Sessions
Bhundu Boys, #2 (repeat). Recorded 1986-12-12. No known commercial release. 'My Foolish Heart' not TX in this show (although the LP version appears in the Festive Fifty).
Darling Buds, #1 (repeat). Recorded 1987-03-29. No known commercial release.
Terence Trent D'Arby, one and only session (repeat). Recorded 1987-08-02. No known commercial release.
Electro Hippies, one and only session (repeat). Recorded 1987-07-12. Available on The Peel Sessions (sic) (Strange Fruit). 'Deadend' and 'Mother' not TX in this show.
Housemartins, #4 (repeat). Recorded 1987-11-03. 'Build' not TX in this show. 'There Is Always Something There To Remind Me' available on Now That's What I Call Quite Good (Go! Discs). 'Sunday Isn't Sunday' and 'Build' available on Live At The BBC (Universal).
(JP: 'You won't be too surprised to learn that plans have been made at the highest level for us to have another session by the Electro Hippies as soon as we possibly can.') This never came about.
Housemartins: 'There Is Always Something There To Remind Me' (Peel Session)
(JP: 'I got a Christmas card from them, but printed, which I always regard as being slightly below the belt. I got one of those years ago from Cliff Richard, of all people.')
(JP: 'Aren't you impressed with the fact that we're something like 24 minutes into the programme (actually 22-SIG), and haven't yet mentioned what I did over Christmas? Went to the pub, had a bit of a party in which I did my Ancient Mariner routine, and wrote lots of letters.')
(JP: 'You probably want to know what I got for Christmas, well I'm sure everybody's been telling you: a pair of waders, so that next time my house is threatened with flood waters, I can get into the stream and sort it out; and an axe, so I can chop down trees and things like that, if they threaten to cause flooding.')
(JP: 'Even when they're not on mid-season form, I still love them.')
(JP: 'I should thank once again, for the last time for this year anyway, all of those people who sent us Christmas cards. We're having them pulped, as we usually do once the festive season's over, because, with the addition of stabilisers and some flavouring, they make a wholesome breakfast for all the family.')
(JP: 'For reasons which will become apparent as we drone on, or as I drone on anyway, this is what I've thought of ever since I finished putting the chart together as the silly night of the Festive Fifty.')
27: Eric B. & Rakim, 'Paid In Full (12 inch-Seven Minutes Of Madness: The Coldcut Remix)' (Fourth & Broadway)
(JP: 'I know that Eric B. & Rakim themselves didn't entirely approve of that version of their work...but the Coldcut people gave me so much pleasure during the year...that I felt they deserved some sort of representation, and that was my preferred version of it anyway, so there.')
(John then plays a practical joke on his listeners: he announces the number 26 track, and plays the beginning of Rick Astley's 'When I Fall In Love', adding after a painful few seconds, 'Had you worried there.')