This is the holy grail of Top of the Pops LPs, mainly because it has - you guessed it - PiL's 'Death Disco' on it. It's my holy grail anyway. I think some other people's holy grail might be the one with 'Anarchy in the UK' or 'God Save the Queen' or whatever, on it. I don't know. The holy grails are always John Lydon-related, anyway. The fascinatingness of the intersection between Lydon, ostensibly so anti-normality, with the uber-commercialism of soundalikes. So in this case, the version of 'Death Disco' is a fairly credible remake of the original, hideous whining vocal and everything. It's a lot more like the original than the version of 'Breakfast in America' is like its original, although tbh the people who put the Top of the Pops albums together were a pretty skilled bunch of artisans and 99% of the time it's only the fact that you know you're listening to a Top of the Pops album that makes you listen out for the differences, otherwise you might not notice them at all. 

I don't know or care about the background to the Top of the Pops records though I gather that it was (a little like Countdown magazine) the case of a private company being smart and sneaky enough to get in either with a pitch to license the name which the main TV program might later have cause to regret and/or copyrighting the name independently of the program but getting by for a long time with a perceived association. Countdown magazine was licensed, by the way. Also, it didn't necessarily let the side down that often. The Top of the Pops albums, all hundred and shit of them, were as I said a very skilfully created soundalike series. I hope that the people who made them knew the importance of what they could do and they weren't always cavilling and wishing they could do the music version of 'write that sitcom about the sassy robot' or if they did they were satisfied with mixing some of their own songs in with some Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens at the pub on a Sunday night.