TV On The Radio #15: It's A Knockout

Even as a six year old, I found little point to It's A Knockout. Surely I was the ideal target audience for a ridiculous game show about people dressed in ridiculously over-sized costumes trying to race and falling in water? But no, even at that age, I found myself thinking, "This is stupid". I'm convinced that the only person who really enjoyed It's A Knockout was Stuart Hall, and the less said about him, the better.

Back in 1996 though, it was still OK to name-drop him in a tune...

Brotherhood is back from their sabbatical

Dramatical and hit, we're here to take it all

Three rounds of verse, it's a knockout, Stuart Hall

The Brotherhood - Mad Headz

The North Sea Scrolls was a 2011 collaboration between Luke Haines, Cathal Coughlan and Andrew Mueller. They only did one album, but if you like twisted 70s nostalgia or things that are mad as a fish driving a lorry, then it's a wonderful, wonderful record.

Blakey and Olive

Freaks and fascists

It's A Knockout

With tiny moustaches

The Mosley frontbench

Cheered on by the masses

Take on the cast of

'On the Buses'

A cry goes up

"I'll get you, Butler"

Mosley leers:

He's played his joker

The North Sea Scrolls - Enoch Powell Space Poet

It's A Knockout was, as I'm sure you all know, based on the French game-show Jeux Sans Frontières. I'd argue that the only decent thing to come out of the whole sorry affair was the tune below, in which Peter Gabriel uses the show's puerile farce as a metaphor for world politics. Games Without Frontiers, with Kate Bush on backing vocals (she's the one who sings 'Jeux sans frontières'), is another classic from Gabriel... from an era when his albums took a bit of work. You come to those albums wanting every track to sound like Solsbury Hill, and when they don't it can be a little disappointing. Persevere though, and after a while a world of riches opens up.

Games Without Frontiers comes from his third eponymous album, one the record company knocked back as "commercial suicide"... until today's song started picking up airplay, when suddenly they became interested. That's when Gabriel told them to bog off and took his master tapes elsewhere. Games Without Frontiers went on to become his highest charting single in the UK (tying with Sledgehammer), so nyah nyah nyah to you ignorant record company bigwigs.

If looks could kill, they probably will

In games without frontiers

War without tears