Marcus Parks

Wrong hair.

Wrong hair.

Now, the first episode of Top of the Pops aired on New Year's Day 1964 with Jimmy Savile as the host.

The show was an immediate hit.

It ran for 42 years and had an average viewership of 15 million people a week.

It didn't lose cultural relevance until the 2000s.

But in the process, Jimmy Savile made household names out of bands, and he broke countless careers, all while he made himself perhaps the most well-known household name of all, at least within the UK.

In other words, Jimmy Savile was attaching himself to pleasure, to joy, ensuring that everyone who watched Top of the Pops associated him with the incredible feelings we get when we hear something new and exciting.

Savile, however, was not the only host.

Top of the Pops had a rotating team of four presenters, including Jimmy Savile.

But while all four hosts were approaching their 40th birthday when the first episode aired in 1964, Jimmy Savile was the one who presented himself as much younger.

While the other hosts dressed and groomed themselves appropriately for their age, according to the standards of the time, suits and well-groomed hair, Jimmy Savile, at 38 years old, did everything he could to attract attention and set himself apart as, quote, the world's oldest teenager.

That's how he liked to refer to himself.

Yes.

Savile would appear on camera without explanation, dressed as a Roman legionnaire or a pharaoh.

He liked to wear costumes.

Sometimes he'd wear a suit adorned with real bananas or a hat covered in flashing lights.

His hair was also longer than most of the acts, male or female.

And he bleached and straightened his hair to make himself look even more bizarre and even more clownish.

It's almost like his job was boring and he had to dress like that so people would remember who he was.