By John Hand BBC News Online

It has been said, probably by someone with more sense than style, that the best way to ensure you never go out of fashion is never to be in fashion in the first place.

Over the years, the music monolith that is BBC One's weekly Top Of The Pops has been much maligned, imitated by rival broadcasters, shortened, and shunted around the schedules.

Finally, it has frequently been damned with the faint praise that "of course it was better in my day".

Jimmy Saville was the first presenter of the show

The truth is it WAS better in my day and that day was 1984 - the era of Madonna in a pink wig, Frankie slipping a sly one in before being banned and John Peel observing it all like he could not care less.

But still the show survives, gloriously out of fashion, into its 38th year, and marks its 2000th show on 13 September, prompting the release of TOTP producer Jeff Simpson's glossy paperback Top Of The Pops: 1964-2002.

Surely his book serves just one purpose - to show both those who have lost their TOTP faith and young upstarts who actually enjoy the current show that there was a golden era when it really was the most important thing on TV.

Simpson's book effectively covers the ground necessary to achieve that.

Just as someone will be looking through rose-tinted glasses back to the appearances of The Hollies and The Animals, so someone else will be happy that pictures of Britney and J-Lo are in place to remind them of those heady days of 2001.

John Peel was a presenter of the show

Both of these readers - or just the one for those emerging from midlife crisis - can shake their heads as they turn the pages and wonder whether TOTP will ever reach those heights again.

Simpson's attempt to link these two eras - and miss out nothing in between - in just 125 pages makes this book a necessarily lightweight look at Thursday and Friday nights gone past.

Memories are recalled and anecdotes recounted by the star performers.

The book is at its best when Simpson catches his breath and instead allows the likes of Suggs, Noddy Holder and Noel Gallagher a whole page (of small type) to explain what the TOTP experience meant to them.

In his rollercoaster ride through 38 years of TOTP history, Simpson may fail to satisfy his most likely readers - the chart fanatics who would have welcomed more in the way of set lists and detailed information and dates about who appeared when.

Rod Stewart has appeared on the show many times

But to his credit, he does include most of the moments which any serious student of TOTP history would have demanded on the syllabus.

A quick check of the index confirms the very necessary entries for All About Eve (silent performance), Rod Stewart (footballs), Dexy's Midnight Runners (Jocky Wilson pic) and even one-off guest presenter Chris Eubank ("and here's Suggs singing Cecilia").

And yes, Frankie, the pink wig and John Peel are all there, even if 1984 is heartlessly cast aside after merely one page of reminiscence.

So all the bases are covered and Simpson just does just enough jogging of the memory to whisk us back to the days when our parents could not understand that it was a bloke in that dress, Kurt Cobain did not normally sing like that and, yes, the world was centred around "Madchester".

As Jamie Theakston might very well say at 7.30pm one Friday, it is still Top Of The Pops.

Top Of The Pops: 1964-2002 by Jeff Simpson is published on 1 August by BBC Worldwide