Mud took a sideways turn from Glam stompers to celebrate the Christmas of 1974 with an hommage to Elvis Presley – and a bizarre TOTP appearance.

Here’s one of the most memorable Top of the Pops performances from 50 years ago this weekend.

Mud had won our teenage hearts with Glam stompers like Dynamite, Tiger Feet and The Cat Crept In – and now they changed direction entirely.

Lonely This Christmas is a loving hommage to Elvis Presley and the only hints of a tongue in cheek are guitarist Rob Davis’s earrings, which seem to have been plucked from the nearest Christmas tree, and Les Gray’s peculiar decision to sing the song to a ventriloquist’s dummy on his lap.

I had the pleasure of meeting Les once, entirely by chance, in a pub in Maida Vale. It was mid-afternoon about 20 years after this and he was perched by the bar in The Warrington Hotel with a pint in front of him and a fag in his hand.

I don’t think I would have recognised him without an introduction – he grinned enthusiastically and shook my hand firmly – and I got the impression he rarely moved far from that particular stool, though I seem to remember whoever I was with knew him a little, and told me he lived mostly in the Algarve.

Sadly he died about ten years after that encounter but Mud remain one of the key bands of the Glam era, if not quite in the same league as Slade, Sweet and T.Rex.