Are the crimes of Gary Glitter so heinous as to convince the BBC that he must be purged from pop chart history — or rather, at least, that his chart entries must not be heard?

I ask this because of a recent edition of Pick of the Pops, a programme hugely improved in my view since its takeover by the legendary Tony Blackburn. The show featured in the first part the utter bliss of the early July chart of 1967, the Summer of Love, which was headed by Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale and also featured Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco (Be Sure, etc).

Then we moved to July 1975, when Glitter was riding high in the charts with Doing Alright With the Boys. And yet not a note of the song was heard. When songs are not played it is usually because they are on the way out. Yet this song was still climbing in the chart featured (that of July 12), towards an eventual peak at No 6. All very odd . . .

The ghastly Glitter, incidentally, qualifies as a ‘local man’ for readers of The Oxford Times, having been brought up in Banbury. He was born in an Oxfordshire workhouse-cum-maternity home for unmarried mothers, and went on to live with his mother and brother in the attic of his grandmother’s little hotel in South Bar.

His first stage appearance came singing What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor? and dancing the hornpipe in Banbury’s Gang Show.

When changing his name from Paul Gadd to GG, he considered various alternatives, including Stanley Sparkle, Terry Tinsel and Vicky Vomit. In the light of his later crimes, that last would have been most appropriate.