in this episode, unsurprisingly perhaps, is the legs & co girls shaking their thing with practically no clothes on. I couldn't quite put my finger on it (!) but then I realised that the reason they looked so 'now' but yet somehow from the 'olden days' was this: none of them had a tan, natural or otherwise. They were pasty white and proud and they looked fantastic for it!

You just wouldn't see that these days.

Yes I noticed them too. Your description, DC, was brilliant. I bought that single, loved it.

And yes, niscum, I have been quite surprised at some of the outfits on Legs & Co and their predecessors. There isn't a whole lot of difference between them 35 years ago and Rihanna causing outrage on the X Factor; just the choreography that was a whole lot purer.

Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts.

A fantastic pop rock band, even if they were a decidely odd bunch.
The Great Paul Shuttleworth was a superb front man.
I put them on in a northern night club that I was managing at the time. After a blistering set, they left the stage with the parting shot of 'Good night Scunthorpe. Back on yer heads'

Gawd bless 'em. Dr Feelgood or The Motors are other good examples: faces about which even a mother might think twice about bestowing her affections. That Kursaal Flyers song's a minor classic, though.

As for "ugliness" in pop - or at least, lack of "perfection" - isn't it a little reassuring that someone like Adele, a girl with ordinary good looks and without many discernible pretensions, can become the biggest selling singer in Britain? Admittedly, she has to wear a hairstyle with its own private ecosystem in order to do so, but still...

For I was/am that man. Teeth gone (falsers nowadays) and of course a lot less hair than before. But those were the times and back in the day we could be accepted for our music and not how we looked......

You see, ugliness is but a state of mind. And whilst we didn't perhaps have your typical film or rock-star looks, we had a laugh and a bit of fun and good memories remain...

Great song, though how he kept a straight face with some of those lyrics is beyond me, we were in hysterics.

You're spot on, DC. One of the most frequent comments when the FPO and I are watching TOTP is that someone or other is no oil painting, you'd never see that these days etc. It extends to the rest of the show, though. It was only the 70s, of course, but in visual terms the whole thing seems so, well, amateurish. Every other week or so there's someone stepping in front of the camera and recoiling in horror when they're realised their gaffe. Yet this show was unmissable at the time, I suppose mainly because it had no real competition. For us, it's still a must-see but for very different reasons, definitely one of the telly highlights of the week.

I must admit I feel sorry for Ruby Flipper; I don't remember them from the time because their tenure was so brief. Maybe it was decided that the viewing public couldn't get enough dancing girls, but blokes? Evidently not.

You could project an IMAX movie on that forehead.

He has what is called an anterior open bite superimposed on a skeletal class III dental base relationship with what would appear to be maxillary retrognathia.

(Google trans: His front teeth don't meet up and his lower jaw protrudes beyond his upper jaw. His upper jaw is a bit on the small side.)

His upper left central incisor has suffered some form of trauma and appears to have been reconstructed using cyanoacrylate and low-density polyethylene by someone not entirely familiar with the normal dental morphology of the tooth.

(Google trans: He's had his front tooth kicked out and, by the look of it, a mate has stuck something in the gap made from clingfilm and superglue)