I'M AFRAID didn't shed any tears when Top of the Pops was finally consigned to the dustbin of television history.

Though I was once an avid viewer and am old enough to remember the very first show old enough even to remember it featuring Cilla Black cutting her 21st birthday cake for heaven's sake its passing was a curiously unemotional event for me.

Times change, so does the recording industry. The fact is that by the time it took its final bow, Top of the Pops was so far past its sell-by date that, even with a diet of current chart favourites, it looked painfully anachronistic.

It had started out 42 long years ago as a relentlessly jolly if rather patronising show aimed at "young people" and presented in a manner that suggested they were some kind of unfathomable sub-species who had to be humoured.

The early disc jockeys really were like beings from another planet and about as cool and cutting edge as a cup of cocoa at bedtime.

There was Poole's own former Pirate Radio star Tony Blackburn with his dreadful shirts and even worse jokes. Then there was his diminutive chum Diddy' David Hamilton, who seemed a touch exotic on account of his Canadian accent.

Other favourites included Dave Lee Travis, a one-time tour manager for Herman's Hermits who reinvented himself for reason's best known to himself as The Hairy Cornflake, and the cigar-chomping former coalminer Jimmy Savile, who started off as the Beeb's token maverick broadcaster but somehow became an institution.

Back in the 1960s, Savile's decision to twin whacky shoulder-length blond hair with terminally unfashionable Arran sweaters should have led to a swift 15 minutes of fame followed by oblivion.

In fact he not only ended up a prime time TV favourite but earned himself a knighthood along the way. He was also the only jock to stay the course from the first to the very last show.

By the time of its demise, Top of the Pops had metamorphosed into a cynical, industry-led time-slot that didn't even seem to have the energy to pretend that it was anything to do with entertainment.

Of course it had always been about selling records. The formula was simple. The show both reflected and set current musical trends.

A three-minute showcase on TOTP could quite literally transform a spotty oik with a guitar into a money-spinning teen-dream.

It also made a whole load of money for the record company, but at least there was some pretence that the artiste was King. Not any more.

Being "signed" is the Holy Grail for many wannabe pop stars.

They want to be company men and women and will do whatever it takes should they be lucky enough to get a crack at the big time.

The singles market is a shadow of its former self. Downloads rule.

As one ageing sixties singer told me: "When I told my kids that I used to make 45s, they thought I'd had a job in a gun factory." Top of the Pops RIP.