"If You Want To Make A Purchase, Please Come To The Nearest Till..."

The chapter in Chris Moyles's book which looked back at Radio Topshop got me thinking.
They didn't half have cracking jingles!

First of all this set from TM in 1986. Resung from a package called "Powerplay" this really demonstrates how classy Tom Merriman's jingles were and it definitely showed Capital the way forward as they ended up having a similar sounding package on their station a year later. Steve Collins even used his shout jingle from Top Shop on air after joining the Euston Tower!
Other DJs back then included Gary King, Jonathan Miles who went onto do a great job on Invicta FM's "Late Night Grooves" a few years ago, and some bloke called
Andi Peters.

But it wasn't just Top Shop as Top Man decided it wanted it's own jingles so they went to Alfasound and ended up with this package which is definitely of it's time!
Both stations by the late 80s ended up using this effort by AJ Productions, some of which ended up being resung for Steve Wright and I reckon Anthony James has made some of the most underated jingles used on radio. The Radio Topshop package being one of the highlights.

But if you think they're cheesy, then have a listen to what I had to put up with for four years with these offerings from ASDA FM! Ugh!
Whilst it's got the unmistakable vocals of Steve Butler on the Stereophonics and Blue soundalike jingles, they are incredibly tacky and on arriving at the store I wasn't impressed having heard so many better jingles before my arrival.

If you thought it couldn't get any worse, every weekday at four they would announce for all the managers to "rumble" (that's moving everything on the aisles upfront so as to avoid empty spaces) by playing the PJ and Duncan record of the same name!
Thankfully they stopped doing that two months after I started working there although I didn't actually mind rumbling when I worked in the home and leisure department for a couple of months.
That was great fun, we had a lift which we'd use to send up stuff and if you pushed the button when the lift door was open it would set off a siren like the one you'd hear on a ghost train at a travelling fairground!
I'd happily return to that department any day especially as we had a radio/CD player on the first floor of the warehouse.