WHAT were your Top Of The Pops moments? Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust performing Starman? Morrissey singing This Charming Man with a bunch of gladioli hanging out of his trousers? Cameo strutting to Word Up..?

A Top Of The Pops moment was the talk of school next day. Was that Boy George really a boy? Why did Dexy’s Midnight Runners appear with a giant photo of Scottish darts champ Jocky Wilson? We’d barely heard of some girl called Madonna singing Holiday in a pink wig, but we immediately wanted to be her. And how our toes curled when All About Eve sat awkwardly on stage, waiting for Martha’s Harbour to start while half the song was being played out to millions of viewers.

“It’s starting!” we’d cry, as Led Zep’s Whole Lotta Love riff signalled the start of Top Of The Pops. No pause TV back then, kids. Because families often watched TOTP together, after tea on a Thursday, pop stars were familiar to all. I remember my dad muttering behind his newspaper when Buster Bloodvessel came bounding on the telly, and my mum going on about that weird girl with frizzy hair screeching Wuthering Heights. I’d never seen, or heard, anything like Kate Bush before, and watching her on TOTP the first time was seminal.

Chart stars were instantly recognisable. But that’s a thing of the past, says radio presenter Trevor Nelson, who points out that the demise of music shows on TV means pop stars aren’t as well known as in previous generations. He tells this week’s Radio Times that while TOTP wouldn’t compete with a YouTube audience today, “there are moments on that show that everyone remembers”.

I hear current chart hits on the radio but, aside from big players like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, I wouldn’t recognise most of the acts if I passed them in the street. Many popsters are faceless, certainly to anyone over 30, because they’re not beamed into our living-rooms every week on TOTP or Saturday morning telly.

Trevor Nelson recalls attending a Quincy Jones concert, where Jess Glynne was a guest artist. Despite her being one of the most successful female singers in British pop, she wasn’t a familiar face. “People didn’t know who she was - they knew her songs but didn’t know the singer,” Nelson tells the Radio Times. “Generations past, it wasn’t just young kids who knew who pop stars were - everyone did because they’d seen them on telly.”

Music is instantly available now, so kids don’t need to watch a weekly pop show on TV to see their favourite band or singer. Television viewing is no longer an inter-generational shared experience, and because kids don’t buy records or CDs, there are no such imprints of their pop idols lying around the house.

I interviewed Merrill Osmond recently and he recalled the ‘Osmondmania’ of the early 1970s. As a child I was fascinated by TV footage of hysterical teenage girls screaming, sobbing, fainting and being carried out of Osmonds concerts on stretchers. It happened with the Bay City Rollers too, and later the likes of New Kids On The Block, Take That and, more recently, One Direction.

For these acts, and other bands and singers, the promotional trail involved record store signings. Young fans would queue for hours to meet their pop heroes, bringing city streets to a standstill.

Nobody signs records or CDs anymore. Today’s meet-and-greeters are 15-minute wonders from Love Island and TOWIE. And, unlike Bowie, Kate Bush and Boy George, we won’t still be talking about them in 30 or 40 years time.

* SUNDAY, 10.30pm, just getting off to sleep...and fireworks begin to shatter the quiet evening air. Clearly terrified by the noise, a yappy dog in my neighbourhood barks continuously for about an hour. Thanks for that, firework-starters.

Fireworks have become a regular nuisance. It used to be that we only had to put up with them in the days leading to Bonfire Night, now it's the whole summer too. It's not classed as noise pollution because it's not "repetitive" - yet fireworks are going off pretty much every weekend. Is that not repetitive?

What is this childish obsession people have with fireworks? And late night on a Sunday? Really? It should be illegal to buy or set the wretched things off at any time other than Bonfire Night and New Year. And even that would be too often for my liking.

* CORONATION Street has always shone a spotlight on strong working-class women who don’t take any prisoners. So it’s been a bit disappointing of late to see gutsy, independent characters like Eileen and Yasmeen turn into simpering wrecks in the company of nasty, manipulative men.

The current storyline, involving twisted Geoff playing mind games with Yasmeen, does however highlight a form of domestic abuse that can dig away at people until they begin to doubt their own sanity. It's uncomfortable viewing, but an important issue to explore.