{"id":787294,"date":"2026-09-30T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787294\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:44:08","slug":"how-a-carlisle-teenager-helped-the-wonder-stuff-avoid-top-of-the-pops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787294\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Carlisle teenager helped The Wonder Stuff avoid Top of the Pops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A music fan who helped his idol escape playing Top of the Pops says his friends did not believe him until they heard the performance was cancelled on BBC Radio 1 the next day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Indie band The Wonder Stuff had finished their gig in Cumbria when singer Miles Hunt decided to go missing so they could avoid playing the music show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hunt left the Sands Centre in Carlisle through a side door and blagged a lift to a hotel in the city centre with Mark Galbraith and three of his friends in Galbraith&#8217;s mum&#8217;s blue Volvo. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There wasn&#8217;t any internet and there was no way of corroborating any story like this other than waiting to hear it on the news,&#8221; Galbraith said. &#8220;It was a different era.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But, once his friends had heard the news for themselves, &#8220;it was then believable how we had such insider knowledge&#8221;, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Wonder Stuff were due to play on Top of the Pops for a sixth time during their March 1994 tour, but Hunt said that he had hated &#8220;every single one of those experiences&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I didn&#8217;t join a band or learn to play an instrument to mime,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There was no way I was getting up at six or seven in the morning to fly down to London and do Top of the Pops on a day off.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A music fan who helped his idol escape playing Top of the Pops says his friends did not&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}