Easton promise

Just stumbled upon this fantastic clip of a pre-fame Sheena Easton on BBC series The Big Time, back when she was still Scottish, and when she was desperately trying to crack the UK charts for the first time.

It's amazing to think now just how much power Radio 1 DJs clearly wielded at the time, as evidenced by Sheena's undisguised joy at finding out that Simon "Master" Bates has made Modern Girl his record of the week (while Paul Burnett plumps for Another Nail In My Heart by Squeeze, Peter Powell UB40's Food For Thought, DLT Volcano by Jimmy Buffet(?) and Kid Jensen 9 O'Clock by Snips(??)). She'd actually got up that morning seemingly especially to listen to The Hairy Cornflake playing her record at 6.10am. Bless.

Also, my jaw dropped a bit when learning that, despite peaking at number 56 on its original release (although it subsequently hit the top 10 months later), Modern Girl still managed to shift 20,000 copies first time round. Christ, that would be enough to guarantee you the number 1 spot for about a month nowadays. Probably.

Anyway, this is fantastic. Listen out for the Round Table producer's reaction to hearing Modern Girl for the first time. He's really not impressed!