12 October 1968
It’s been a while, here in 2024, since we’ve had a newly-hatched TV talent show winner at number one in the charts. Those of you who soldiered through the ’00s and caught trench foot in the 2009 rage against the machine will recall that these used to be ten a penny, or at any rate twice a year while we were blessed with both The X Factor and You’re A Star. Mary Hopkin, winner of the 1968 series of UK show Opportunity Knocks and almost immediately thereafter fetching up at the top of the world’s hit parades, is a reminder that this sort of thing had happened before – and could happen again.
The TV talent show angle has probably been overshadowed in the Mary Hopkin story by the fact that ‘Those Were The Days’ became such a colossal worldwide hit that even today it still drifts around in our ambient noise. After all, you’ve sung the chorus to yourself at least twice since you’ve started reading this, with perhaps even a couple of high kicks too. If you follow Irish football, you’ve been singing it for years as “Come on you boys/girls in green!” Its bouncy mass-participation catchiness is undeniable, and I’m all for a catchy pop chorus.
But there’s also something irredeemably dreadful about ‘Those Were The Days’: the craven nostalgia; the borrowed folksiness; the cabaret naffness; the dreary cynicism of all that being sung by an actual young person. You ’00s pop survivors will note the presence of a climactic key change, triggering flashbacks not only to X Factor winners but to Irish boybands too. And the whole thing goes on for over five minutes! While I can get a bit of cheesy amusement if I happen to overhear that chorus in passing, fleetingly as I make for the opposite direction, I’d be concerned about anyone whose idea of fun is to sit down and listen to the full five minutes of ‘Those Were The Days’. Looming over all this as producer and main mover is Paul McCartney, settling into his new role as figurehead of ’60s and ’70s bubblegum mush.
No one-hit wonder is Mary Hopkin; she’ll appear again at the top of the Irish charts very soon. What’s more, she’ll also appear on another TV talent contest, representing the perfidious Royaume-Uni at Eurovision in 1970 but this time meeting her match in an Irish singer even younger and naffer.
