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You were still presenting the show in the 80s.
Jimmy: I had a deal with TOTP. I’d always had this thing about not being on television too much. When 'Jim’ll Fix It' took off, I wouldn’t go on TOTP and 'Jim’ll Fix It' at the same period, so I would do 12 weeks of 'Jim’ll Fix It' during which time I wouldn’t be on TOTP. When Fix It finished I’d phone up and say "we’re finished". They said "All right, come next Thursday". So then I’d go back on TOTP. One year, I just didn’t pick up the phone, so they didn’t say "Thank you but no thank you" and I didn’t say I didn’t want to be in it - I just didn’t get round to picking up the phone. So technically I’m actually still on TOTP!

As we moved into the 80s TOTP changed again - Michael Hurll tried to make it into a party atmosphere.
Jimmy: It started to look like an American political convention. There was a group that nobody remembers called Tenpole Tudor with big flags. They were waving them about, and even today I say to people "Tenpole Tudor!" and they say "who?". In the 80s, videos were coming into their own. Lots of stars - particularly if they lived abroad - knocked off videos. Videos were made by creative people and they came up with all sorts of new ideas. Artists would be concerned about the video and that created a totally new atmosphere to a TOTP show; suddenly you’ve no longer got this homely thing - a studio, with the group, an audience and the presenter. Out of the screen comes something like a science fiction film with special effects and this and that. So of course in the 80s it moved into a completely different world because nothing stands still and TOTP didn’t stand still - it matured and did all manner of things sometimes it did the right thing, sometimes it did the wrong thing, but inexorably it went forward.

They worked very hard on that party atmosphere - was it genuine?
Jimmy: First of all, I didn’t particularly agree with that because I didn’t think it was necessary. The teenagers who came in were hyped up enough because they just loved being there, they didn’t need to say "shout now - or if you don’t dance you're out now" business. They had a reputation - they tried to treat the audience like they were professional dancers - do this and do that and don’t stand there. A kid standing - not dancing and looking at somebody that was dancing - to me was as good a piece of TV as someone who was dancing. I mean a quick flash like that is good television - it’s real. You didn’t need to create a party atmosphere, because there was already one there. The atmosphere went down a couple of notches I thought.

A lot of audience manipulation, then?

Jimmy: They weren’t behaving the way they wanted to behave, they were behaving the way they were told. There was people diving in and out saying "if you don’t move more you won’t get a ticket next week" and all that - what was that all about - that wasn’t TOTP. It could only happen in London - if they tried that in Manchester they would have got chinned and quite rightly so.

Remember Wham! when you introduced the first performance of George Michael
Jimmy: Yeah - there was the Tone [Blackburn] and myself. We had great laughs - he kept telling me to behave and I kept getting him into trouble. Yeah, there was George, but of course at the time it wasn’t the mighty George Michael or the mighty Wham!, they were just a new group that came on and I said "This is a bit of all right". I wasn’t wrong.

Did you love the music on TOTP?

Jimmy: I loved being on TOTP because it was part of the fabric of my existence. I was doing my own TOTP before TOTP was invented. So when TOTP came along, I only carried along being me. One day I was on a rostrum and the band on the other rostrum had taken all the crowd. I’m on my own and I’m going with the music, man. There was a girl standing by the rostrum, and she’s looking up at me. I looked down and she said "You’re enjoying this". I said yeah, and she said "You’re not supposed to". "Why not?" "Because you're working!" she said. I said "I'm enjoying it more than you are" - and she said "That’s amazing" and walked off - and that was just the way that I felt

Is there anyone you got excited about introducing on TOTP?
Jimmy: Not really. The bands were all like family members - some were cousins you’d never seen before. You didn’t get particularly excited. I tell you something - TOTP and 'Jim’ll Fix It', to my knowledge, were the only two programmes that were pirated and shown in harems in Africa and the Middle East, because I’ve come across that on occasion.

What was the key to the shows success?

Jimmy: The key to the success of TOTP is fun at nobody else’s expense. Happiness, not belittling everybody else. Joining in - you could go and buy a £3 acoustic guitar in the morning you could be on TOTP next week - if you were that lucky. It was total participation. They were not on a programme, they were part of the programme. The audience were just as much a part as the groups. It was simple, sweet, clean and safe.