Quotes of the day

"Where's a shark when you need one?"

David Quantick on Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon falling off a boat in the video for 'Rio'.

"He makes a really convincing monkey."

Andrew Collins on Felix from Basement Jaxx and his transformation for the 'Where's Your Head At?' video.

Yes, I spent the entirety of yesterday evening watching C4's '100 Greatest Pop Videos As Voted For By You The Public'.

Cynical complaints about it being cheap TV aside, the programme did offer fascinating if fleeting insights into the stories behind the videos for such songs as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', 'Ashes To Ashes', 'No Surprises', 'Nothing Compares 2 U', 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Common People' and Johnny Cash's version of 'Hurt'.

At a time when most videos seem to lazily feature either semi-naked rump-shaking ladeeez or middle class white boys playing Serious Music, it's good to be reminded that the pop video is a space which allows a great scope for creativity and imagination, and can actually be an art form in its own right.

It also struck me how many #1s were represented in the countdown - it's perhaps a measure of how inseparable certain songs become from their visual companionpiece that I counted no fewer than 12 of the songs with videos in C4's 100 amongst my own Top 100 #1s.

There were cons, mind: the undeserved inclusion of 'True Faith', 'Get Ur Freak On' and 'Fit But You Know It'; the omission of The Avalanches' 'Frontier Psychiatrist', Beck's 'Deadweight' and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' (the latter much more convincingly filthy than Xtina's 'Dirrty'); and having to listen to Dave Stewart of Eurythmics earnestly claiming that the cow which appears in the video for 'Sweet Dreams' was a homage to surrealism...

One last thing: Jimmy Carr might be quite amusing, but he really is a whore, isn't he? Well, Channel 4's bitch, at least. Anyone see any of 'The Friday Night Project'? Wincingly bad stuff.