For the elderly – those 30 and over – for whom Top of the Pops was a pivotal part of their youth, news of its putative resurrection will be greeted with no little emotion. In an age before MTV and the internet, Top of the Pops was, for many provincial youths, the primary – and often only – instruction manual on how to be a teenager.

This was, after all, an age where pop music and fashion were severely rationed commodities. Anyone who can remember standing in a phone box, excitedly spending 2p on Dial-A-Disc – a service whereby one rang up to listen to a single random pop song chosen by British Telecom, an idea that seems borderline sectionable now – will know how important was the Top of the Pops weekly news bulletin from the infinitely glamorous world of Noddy Holder, Adam Ant and the Smiths. It worked as some manner of cathode-ray campfire – the Thursday night meeting point that provided Friday morning’s playground conversation.

Not least when everyone’s dads thought that Boy George was a girl and said that “she” was really pretty. Or when Nirvana did Smells Like Teen Spirit, and sang it in a funny voice, and the playground presumed it was a bad cold – rather than, as was the case, lots of heroin.

Of course, the key thing to remember about Top of the Pops now, should it return, is that it probably won’t spur playground conversation any more. Bright, young 21st-century things interact with music in an infinitely more complex way than can be serviced by a single, lumbering, weekly show, tied to the charts and probably still presented by Jimmy Savile. But you know who is going to love it? Old people. People over the age of 30. People who still feel a little bit self-conscious saying “download”, and stopped automatically knowing what song was at No 1 some time in 1998.

They just want to go back to the old ways, to a world where there’s just one show, once a week, where it’s still No 1 – it’s Top of the Pops.

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