Top of the Pops 19 February 1981:
The youthful Legs & Co dance rings around Fred Wedlock,
who is the Oldest Swinger in Town.
If you decide to have both singer and dancing girls performing together on your TV show, this is the right way to do it. Not separate stages, or separate parts of the same stage, or dancers mixed in with the audience. Instead, embed the singer right in the middle of the dancers: that way, you can’t possibly get a shot of the singer, even in close up, without at least some of the dancers appearing in each frame. This will keep all those obsessive fans of the dancers (who don’t give a fig about the song, or whoever happens to be singing it) happy. Obsessive fans like … er, me.
I’ve always enjoyed this routine, and as I crawl toward Fred’s age, I find my increasing resemblance to him makes me enjoy it all the more. I too am an old geezer who enjoys looking at the company of healthy youthful beautiful women, honest enough to admit that this makes us easy (and fair) targets for ridicule. And content not to care.
Hurrah for skimpy metallic dresses, and the lovely, talented dancers inside them!
We’ve already seen these dresses, of course: when Legs & Co. danced to ELO’s Don’t Walk Away on 27 November 1980.
Update, 5 February 2016: Well I’ve just looked up Fred’s date of birth, and it turn out he was 39 years old when this video was made. Thirty nine. I don’t know about you, but I feel old.
