I can’t remember the first time I watched Top of the Pops. I can’t have been any older than about three or four, because one of my earliest memories is of mounting my own episodes with my sister. While we were decorating the Christmas tree, I’d cover myself in tinsel and, suitably glammed up, would be Mike Read or Peter Powell, introducing my her miming (we were already well aware of the conventions) to records by Diana Ross, Kim Wilde or, as we were still very much relying on our parents’ record collection, St Winifred’s School Choir.

So Top of the Pops has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Perhaps only Blue Peter is another series I can’t recall not being there, and even with that evergreen show there was a lengthy period when I wanted nothing to do with it. With Top of the Pops, though, I’ve been an avid viewer as child, teenager and adult, and I remember ages ago deciding I was never going to stop being interested in pop music and so never stop watching Top of the Pops.

Of course, over the years, it’s meant something different. At the start it was exciting to watch as a family, but as my parents grew out of it and I got a telly in my bedroom, it would be a solo pursuit, where I would sit mere inches in front of the screen, the better to take in the vibrant atmosphere. Even when the show was at its nadir in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I was still faithfully tuning in to painstakingly make notes on chart statistics and facts.

Later, in the mid ’90s, Top of the Pops was the opportunity to watch the latest Britpop faves – from Echobelly to Symposium – showcase their latest three-minute wonders that were going to reinvent pop music forever. Then it was off to university, where each week I’d end up watching it with at least half a dozen other people, all expressing their opinions on the week’s line-up. Finally, as I no longer had the time or inclination to listen to daytime Radio 1, it was the chance to catch up with the latest pop, sometimes finding something great, at other times starting to feel ancient.

Anyway, as it turns out, I’ve managed to outlive Top of the Pops, meaning I’ll miss the final stage of the Pops-watching process; sitting watching it with kids and winding them up about the silliness of the acts. It all means that, given the series has been such a major part of my life – and indeed, the life of almost everyone under the age of 50- the final show was always going to be a disappointment. How can they possibly have found room for everyone’s most cherished moments in just 60 minutes?

Basically it was very much as you would expect – the likes of Savile, Travis and Blackburn were all present and correct (and in a nice touch surely nobody else noticed, they were all given period microphones), though quite why Pat Sharp, who hosted about three shows in 1983, was considered one of the final 10 is a mystery. Presumably, given he also hosted the last edition of The Roxy, he had experience of this sort of thing. It was nice to see Rufus Hound among the hosts, though, as he was perhaps the only plus point of the last few desperate years. Hound seems hugely affable, is capable of being witty in a 30-second link (although admittedly he only had Fearne Cotton as competition in this regard) and even appears to be genuinely interested in music. I’m sincerely hoping that he goes on to bigger and better things.

There were no surprises in the clips, either – indeed, many of them would appear later on this evening in the repeated documentary about the show. Much of this is, of course, thanks to the fact that the number of clips that still exist from the ’60s would have trouble filling up a half-hour show on their own. Anyone who’s ever watched more than a handful of episodes of TOTP2 can probably cue in the miserable-looking bloke that stands staring between Sonny and Cher. One thing it did prove was that clips from recent years stood up well enough compared to the older material – in terms of creativity and the role the audience played, they may well even be rather better.

But of course, simply showing the big names – your Madonnas, your Rolling Stones – is only really telling half the story of Top of the Pops. Much of the fun of the series came from those stars rubbing shoulders with an indie band who had finally reached the heady heights of number 37, who about 99% of the audience had never heard of but, if you were a fan, you were delighted to see being treated as a “proper” pop group. This was the case right until the end – seeing Belle and Sebastian jumping around or the lead singer of The Crimea attempting to stare out the audience is always a real treat.

This was always the great thing about the show – if you were in the charts, it didn’t matter what you looked like or if you’d only sold records to members of your fan club, you were on the programme. Even some of the most famous moments came about this way – Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s performance of Relax is rightly celebrated, but they were at number 35 at the time and were only on because it was straight after Christmas and hardly any records had been released.

Thinking rationally, it’s obvious why Top of the Pops is coming to an end. Viewing figures are a fraction of what they used to be, the target audience of teenagers don’t seem to care less about it, and of its loyal audience, most of those are 20 or thirtysomething men who are only still watching it because they’ve not missed an episode since they were five years old. It surely couldn’t continue in the slot it ended up in, because it was like nothing else on that channel and smacked of simply being allowed to continue because the Beeb were too sentimental to axe it.

And yet, the thing about Top of the Pops is that throughout its 42 years on air, there was always a new chart, and with it was always some new bands to appear on the programme. The format can never be tired, because it’s always based on what’s happening right now. Sure, we’re going to get a Christmas show, and TOTP2 will sometimes feature a new band, and there are new ideas like The BBC1 Sessions and The Electric Proms, but there won’t be a showcase week in week out where everyone who’s released a single has the chance to get on television.

The last show once more made use of the Top of the Pops archive, surely the greatest collection of recorded music in the world. The great tragedy is, it’s not going to get any bigger.

It can’t come as much of surprise to anybody really, given that it has been living on borrowed time for the past five or six years (if not longer). The move to Sunday evenings was surely the last roll of the dice for the programme, and given that it never worked it seems quite a pathetic end for what once was a mighty staple of prime time BBC broadcasting. Andi Peters was brought in a few years ago to try and revive the ailing show, but his new ideas did nothing to help and he has since cleared off to present a cookery programme on Sunday mornings on ITV1.

So, a sad, ignominious end, but quite inevitable given the recent state of the programme. Expect to see all kinds of tribute features on the news over the coming days. Hopefully Sir Jimmy will be brought back to present the final edition at the end of July.

Being able to reveal the new number one before anyone else on television at last gives the show a major selling point and an obvious hook for the first time in ages. But here’s the bad news – it’s on BBC2. It may perhaps have been an outdated idea, but certainly Top of the Pops‘ great appeal came from the fact it was on BBC1 and therefore putting new bands in front of the widest audience around. The fact that your grandmother could stumble across Kanye West or the Kaiser Chiefs was all part of the excitement. Moving the programme out of the mainstream turns it into just another music show, and its new slot still puts it up against Coronation Street. Okay, it’s longer than before, but no doubt when it’s followed by something other than the 22-minute Malcolm in the Middle it’ll return to the usual half-hour length.

Still, if it has become just another music show, we can at least hope that it’s a decent music one. The move to BBC2 has seen something of a change in emphasis for the programme, with the idea being it is now aimed at a family, rather than a purely youth, audience. To this end, it’s been “merged” with TOTP2 and now adds archive clips to the mix, while regular host Fearne Cotton will be joined each week by an older sidekick to give a different perspective. First up it was Phill Jupitus – a wise choice given his musical knowledge and telly experience – but future co-hosts are promised to include Jeremy Clarkson and Ozzy Osbourne. Some of this seems like stunt casting, and it’s reminiscent of the guest presenters that did shifts on the show a decade ago, where in the end hosts like Chris Eubank or Frankie Dettori just got in the way of the music.

Cotton and Jupitus certainly made for an odd couple. Despite having been on the programme for some time and having presented loads of live telly, she seemed oddly tongue-tied and had trouble getting her lines out – references to “Churlotte Charch” are fair enough on a live show, but “Top of the Plops” and “tonight o’clock at eight” suggest a real battle with the autocue. Meanwhile Phill’s anecdotes and wordy links appeared to baffle and bore the teenage audience.

For the most part, the show continued as the BBC1 Top of the Pops did – there were a couple of records from the chart and a few pre-release singles. It seemed a little remiss not to book anyone truly spectacular to launch the new slot – a Robbie Williams or Coldplay might have got casual viewers tuning in, whereas Bananarama and Paul Weller probably wouldn’t. Those two acts, as well as comedy country band Hayseed Dixie, were presumably chosen with a more adult audience in mind. Yet it’s important not to turn the younger audience off as well, and if we’re stuck with endless Elton John and Sting again then it will only hasten its descent into irrelevance.

In amongst this we got archive clips of Take That and Madness, both of which will have been pretty familiar to viewers of TOTP2. However there seems to be little point to these clips – Madness made some sense as they have a new album out, but the Take That snippet was seemingly shown because Take That were once famous. They were simply slotted in among the running order, with little context or introduction – they didn’t even have the date on screen – and some viewers may have been confused as to why they were interrupting the flow of current hits for old material. Great though the archive is, these items just get in the way and there seems to be no reason for their presence other than a cynical attempt to get adults watching.

Obviously for a relaunch of Top of the Pops we’ve got to have an unenlightening speech-based feature as well, and the show certainly delivered when Fearne interviewed the cast of the new Fantastic Four film. This segment was like death on television, not helped by the fact it was conducted in absolute silence in the studio – at least play some music in the background! – and the quartet had little of interest to say. When questioned as to whether they’d attended any gigs while they were in London, one of them pointed out that they had been unable to do this during the two hours they’d spent in the country. As ever, it falls foul of the obvious contradiction of the current Pops – if it’s that interested in music, why not just play more music?

It must be said that, despite the many flaws, there are aspects of the programme under the current regime that have proven to be successful. Certainly, at points its ability to create a spectacle has been unmatched since the neon’n'cheerleaders golden age of the 1980s, with some recent performances making great use of the whole of the studio and snazzy special effects, and looking really rather exciting on screen. However the move to BBC2 seems to have been concurrent with a budget cut, with the sets appearing much cheaper than in recent months, and the performance from Hayseed Dixie coming across as especially dull – it just looked as if they were turning the lights on and off.

Rushed production also seemed evident with Inaya Day’s caption putting her at the wrong number in the charts, while the voiceover – albeit having more personality than the previous narrator, the irritating Lynsey Breckney – appeared to come from someone they’d just dragged off the street. In fact it turned out to be James Cannon, regularly heard hollering bombastic announcements about competitions and exclusives, without the million echo chambers his voice normally goes through. His rather weedy natural tones seemed to sap the chart countdown of much of the excitement the new slot should have given it.

In the end, the BBC2 Top of the Pops is not really any better or worse than the previous few years on BBC1 – it’s a bog-standard pop show that occasionally sparkles but more often just inoffensively plods on. Now it’s been shunted out of sight of the general audience, it’s lost the one aspect that genuinely made it an important series. No longer can Top of the Pops justify itself as an untouchable programme. The future looks uncertain.

Yet there’s still a place for it in the schedules – mostly because it’s the only show on peak-time mainstream TV that gives airtime to all types of music. The fact that Slipknot and So Solid Crew regularly appear between A Question of Sport and EastEnders is justification enough for the programme to continue.

It should be easy to produce Top of the Pops – simply get together the biggest sellers in the chart and stick them in a studio. However a look through the recent past suggests otherwise. A decade ago the show was helmed by veteran BBC producer Stan Appel and his ridiculous “no miming” policy that drove away younger viewers. Then, a few years later Ric Blaxill filled the show full of indie bands that drove away older viewers. For the past six years, the show’s been the responsibility of Chris Cowey. At the start of his reign, things looked to be going well, as there seemed to be a wider variety of acts on the show, and much more imagination in the presentation. However in recent years Cowey’s been less than sure-footed, and the latest “revamp” sees his worst ideas yet.

The most obvious change is that the show now has two presenters rather than one. This isn’t a bad idea, with the chance of two lively hosts sparking off each other and creating a bit of rapport. However Lisa Snowden and Sarah Cawood only appear together at the start and end of the programme, and for the rest of the time they just present individually – in which case, there’s no need for two presenters at all. Indeed, if they’re simply regurgitating bland Cowey-penned statements, then there’s perhaps no need for any presenters at all. It seems to be frowned upon them to show any signs of individuality whatsoever, and as such everyone who hosts is completely interchangeable. Yes, the bands are the stars, but that’s no reason to remove all traces of wit.

At its heart, Top of the Pops is simply eight bands performing eight records. With only half an hour to play with, the more acts – and crucially, the more varied acts – they can fit in, the better. The great strength of the programme has always been that if you didn’t like what was on now, there’d be something else along any minute. Hence features have never really had much of a place on the show – there are other programmes that can do that. That’s especially the case if they’re as awful as the latest ideas they’ve come up with. Liberty X were invited to express their opinions on the other acts on the show. The obvious flaw with this is that, given they’re probably going to appear with them on other TV shows, they end up saying that they’re all brilliant. That’s likely to happen every single week unless Mark E Smith ever appears on the programme again, and as such renders the whole item pointless.

Worse still, this feature takes place in the “Star Bar”. Unbelievably this has been part of the show for 18 months now; the idea being that we can all enjoy the glamour of watching the stars relax off-camera. However virtually no stars ever appear in the bar, and as such we end up just seeing a load of anonymous hangers-on quaffing booze, and this just makes the viewer feel ignored. That would be bad enough, but because it’s an actual working bar, everyone gets drowned out by constant chatter and the presenters have to awkwardly pass the microphone around to allow anyone to be heard. Surely the first consideration before building the bar should have been whether it actually worked on telly, and it clearly doesn’t – it looks and sounds completely rubbish. As it stands, it is just utterly pointless.

What’s baffling about the show at the moment is that when interviewed Chris Cowey always goes on about how the most important thing about Top of the Pops is the music, yet the actual show itself often seems keen to break off it for irrelevance. Indeed, we’ve now lost one track to make way for pointless footage of Blue and Gareth Gates arsing about backstage. Regardless of the quality of this footage – and exactly what we gain from seeing the drummer from Linkin Park drinking a cup of coffee, God alone knows – the basic fact is that it’s out of place on a 30 minute show based around performances. They don’t even play any music in the background while they do it! In the time they waste, they could put on another act.

The only plus point of these changes is that, like most of the other “innovations” this show has seen, they’ll obviously be dropped within weeks. Yet the basic flaws remain. At the moment the programme is resolutely dull and unexciting, with very little energy put into the presentation. The reliance on pre-recorded performances gives the whole thing the feel of a clip show, further sapping the excitement, and every act is filmed in exactly the same way. Presumably now the show is seen around the world there has to be a uniform look, but this seems to have come at the expense of any sort of wit or humour whatsoever. In the ’80s, the show was brash and over-the-top, but you always got the impression that it had its tongue firmly in its cheek (after all, John Peel was a regular host). Nowadays it’s just a sea of blandness. This goes right down to Wes Butters on voice-over duties, who reads out the chart with about as much excitement as he’d use reading out his shopping list.

You might argue that the current state of the chart is to blame, but other TV shows prove that you can still present pop in an interesting way. Take CD:UK, for example, which comes across as 10 times more exciting, thanks to better direction, good effects and a hyper audience. It also seems to be more interested in music, as when guests appear they talk about their records rather than, say, tonight’s EastEnders or the new series of Cutting It (indeed, Cowey keeps on going on about how appearing on Pops is an honour, while letting any old C-list star with something to plug appear). An extra frisson of excitement is added by the fact it’s broadcast live, something Top of the Pops seemingly can’t be bothered with anymore.

Similarly Popworld, on T4 on Sunday mornings is much better than Pops, as it has a sense of humour and regularly takes the piss out of the guests and pop in general. Compare this to Top of the Pops, which always acts as if the second coming is taking place in the studio. BBC3′s Re:Covered is much better than Pops. It’s a fair bet that even The Roxy was better than current Pops.

I’ll stick with Top of the Pops, if only because I’ve been watching it non-stop for some 20 years now. I’d assumed that there was a time I’d get too old for the show and stop watching. However with its creaking format and lack of enthusiasm, it looks as if the show is starting to get on the creaky-side itself.