Top of the Pops is a British music chart television programme. It was originally shown each week on BBC and is now licensed for national versions around the world. The following is a list of presenters who have hosted the show, including the many guest presenters over the years.
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1960s-1970s
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1970s-1980s
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1980s-1991
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Top of the Pops had always been closely associated with Radio 1 and its presenters were thus drawn from the ranks of DJs at the station. The list below is not exhaustive but represents the main TOTP presenters during this period. Many other Radio 1 DJs, for example Liz Kershaw, Adrian Juste and Adrian John also appeared on special programmes such as Christmas broadcasts and milestones for TOTP or Radio 1. For this reason, the 30 September 1982 show celebrating Radio 1's fifteenth birthday affords Annie Nightingale, in her one and only appearance and as one of nineteen presenters that day, the honour of being the first female presenter of Top of the Pops, beating Janice Long - who would go on to present TOTP regularly for nearly six years - by three months. By the end of the decade, the bond with Radio 1 seemed unbreakable with the show being simulcast on the station from 1988 and even traffic reporters like Sybil Ruscoe trying their hand at presenting TOTP. Presenters were also brought in from children's television, including Children's BBC presenters Andy Crane and Simon Parkin, Blue Peter's Caron Keating, and Anthea Turner and Jenny Powell who had cut their teeth together on Saturday morning show UP2U. With the exception of Turner, who presented until 1991, all appointments were short-lived and this proved indicative of the diffusion from Radio 1 TOTP was about to undergo in the 1990s.
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1991 revamp
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When production moved to the BBC's studios in Elstree, Hertfordshire, a new team of young presenters were introduced in place of the aging Radio 1 DJs. Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon had been working for Children's BBC, with Dortie having presented Saturday morning magazine UP2U (with former TOTP presenters Jenny Powell and Anthea Turner) in the summers of 1988 and 1989 and Simon being one of the presenters of BFT in 1990. 17-year-old Mark Franklin was picked from local radio. With a new theme tune and set of titles modelled on a weathervane, the first show was presented by Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie on 3 October 1991 with the first live performance Erasure's Love To Hate You. Performance rules were altered so that acts had to sing live whether they wanted to or not and performances reflected the current album charts and American Billboard Hot 100 as well as the UK Singles Chart. Two presenters from the team always hosted each episode until July 1992 when Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin began to host some shows individually. By October 1992, the rest of the team had been dropped completely.
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Return of the Radio 1 DJs 1994
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The presentation changes introduced in 1991 had not had the impact producers had hoped for and by 1993 only Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie remained from the revamped team. Reasons for the sustained lack of popularity for the show ranged wildly from a general apathy towards the music that featured in the charts at this time to claims that the graphics styled around the 'weathervane' idea were hard to read. Dortie and Franklin presented the show individually in rotation until January 1994 when Ric Blaxill replaced Stanley Appel as executive producer. Blaxill had produced shows for Radio 1 and had survived the first wave of change under new station controller Matthew Bannister which had seen many of the DJs deemed too old for Top of the Pops in 1991 be sacked or resign. Of those DJs that survived Bannister's cull, Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Nicky Campbell had all presented TOTP prior to the 1991 revamp and were all reinstated as presenters from 3 February 1994. Also returning was Bruno Brookes, another stalwart of the pre-1991 presenting team, though he was fired from Radio 1 in a second wave of Bannister cullings in February 1995 and accordingly he left the Top of the Pops presenting roster in April. Blaxill's brainwave was to make the show seem like an event and he wanted the presentation between each song to be as spontaneous as the music it was introducing. To do this Blaxill introduced the 'golden microphone' and experimented with celebrity guest presenters, mainly drawn from the realms of comedy and sport, as well as pop stars who were not promoting a single that week, to introduce the show. The team of Radio 1 DJs, which was gradually augmented by Bannister's new signings Lisa I'Anson, Wendy Lloyd, Claire Sturgess, and Jo Whiley, were retained as relief presenters and were used intermittently.
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The golden mic - celebrity guest presenters 1994-1997
On 13 June 1996 BBC1 showed coverage of Switzerland vs Netherlands from Euro '96. Top of the Pops was accordingly moved from the Thursday to Friday, originally as a temporary move to incorporate the BBC's expansive portfolio of sport (as well as Euro '96, the 1996 Summer Olympic Games were also broadcast on the channel that summer), though it soon became clear that the move was permanent and TOTP never again returned to its original Thursday night slot.
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Late 90s presenting team
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When Ric Blaxill left in June 1997, the celebrity presenters were phased out by new executive producer Chris Cowey. With a background in 'serious' music broadcasting having worked on Channel 4's The Tube and The White Room, Cowey stripped the show of the gimmicks bequeathed by its predecessors and gradually built up a new team of regular presenters with backgrounds in music television and radio. Jayne Middlemiss, who had presented music strand The O-Zone for Children's BBC since 1995 was recruited in June 1997, with her co-host on The O-Zone, Jamie Theakston arriving in October. Both would continue to present The O-Zone and Top of the Pops concurrently until the former's end in 2000. Having been a guest presenter in March 1997, Theakston's Live and Kicking co-presenter Zoe Ball was also given a full-time role, three months ahead of her posting as the host of Radio 1's coveted breakfast show. Theakston and Ball also continued to front Live and Kicking alongside TOTP until 1999. The only survivor of Blaxill's reign, Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley made the final piece of the quartet, graduating from occasional host to lead presenter in June 1997, a role she shared jointly with Ball, Middlemiss and Theakston. Fellow Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs and Never Mind the Buzzcocks host Mark Lamarr were added to the team but were quickly dropped, and the departure of Ball and Whiley in summer 1998 was offset by the arrival of former Smash Hits editor Kate Thornton who established herself with Middlemiss and Theakston as lead presenters by autumn 1998. A revamp in May 1998 which included a change of title sequence, logo and theme music also saw a shift in focus from the Top 40 to the Top 20, with the chart rundown, now voiced every week by Radio 1 Chart Show host and former TOTP presenter Mark Goodier, extended from the Top 10 to Top 20. Children's TV presenter and model Gail Porter and Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills augmented the line-up from March 1999.
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2000s
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