When he was paired with David Jensen, they took the programme into the realms of the surreal, whilst always being aware of the nature of the beast - Peel & Jensen realised that TOTP was supposed to be a programme about what was in the charts, and so while you suspected they'd rather be doing Whistle Test, they never insulted the programme or the acts that appeared. 1982-84 is (with the exception of the 60's) the high point of the programme - clips from this era still manage to look quite fresh, with an air of orgainsed chaos pervading the whole affair. Viewing at home, the studio looked an exciting place to be, and no doubt it was. Not everything was brilliant - Jonathan King's awful US chart slot was a mistake - but on the whole TOTP fulfilled its true potential.

There was a decline in the mid-80s as Hurll became less involved in the series - Stanley Appel & Brian Whitehouse taking over in the producer's chair.

Of course it was a copy of TOTP, but how could it be anything but? Tyne Tees, ITV's pop specialists, were entrusted with the production of the series, and an impressive production team were assembled. The Roxy launched in June, and one could imagine TOTP looking at the new show and wondering if they had anything to fear. As it turns out, they didn't - although reasons for its failure are hard to come by. It was well-produced, and being transmitted on a Tuesday it could claim to be more topical than TOTP.

Yet within 10 months the series had ended - although Tyne Tees had a run of bad luck, not helped by ITVs lack of support for the series. It never had a regular networked slot, and while many regions scheduled it at 7pm (19.00hrs) other scheduled it at 6.30pm (18.30hrs) and others, fatally at 7.30 (19.30hrs) opposite Eastenders. An industrial dispute at the end of 1987 meant that for a few weeks, no acts could come into the studio, meaning the programme had to be made up of performances held over from previous episodes and videos. Also, producing the programme from Newcastle-upon-Tyne inevitable led to problems enticing acts up there (a lesson TOTP learned in the 60s with Manchester which was only half the distance from London) - whilst they were no doubt happy to come up for The Tube,

that had a loyal audience of record buyers and there was the opportunity to perform for longer periods of time. The Roxy only offered 3 minutes of miming in front of an audience who hadn't turned off after Crossroads.

Eventually Thames & TVS began scheduling the series at 12.30am (00.30hrs), and very soon TOTP was a monopoly again. They were very fortunate as the series was very weak at the time - Peel had left and their only idea to counteract The Roxy (who used regular presenters) was getting Mike Smith & Gary Davies to do almost every show. The end of the year saw the BBC team up with ABC to launch an (thankfully short-lived) American version of the series, which led to a few programmes full of boring, mushe US-derived material.