In veneration of Talcy Malcy, we dedicate all of the worryingly occasional Five For Friday to the eminence grise of UK pop culture.

1 Buffalo Gals McLaren joined forces with Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley to create the proto-Art Of Noise project Folk Dances Of The World that eventually became his debut solo album Duck Rock. It was led by Malc’s extraordinary Buffalo Gals which teetered on that thin line between novelty and visionary, bringing hip hop to the masses in the guise of a cub scout square dance. That’s one way of sugaring the pill. A deranged way.

2 Double Dutch Improbably, giddily joyful stuff. A No.3 smash full of found music, late night radio chatter, African guitar, skip-chanting and Malcolm's somehow-not-creepy narration about the gals from New York City. An amalgam of all sorts of strands of what the hipsters in febrile downtown Manhattan were digging, and another early taste of hip hop for the hip hop generation on this side of the Atlantic. The video makes you wish you were still spry enough to get to skipping. Or commission one of those dance-against-the-odds movies set in The Bronx in 1982 about a chick who skips her way to glory, overcoming doubting parents, bullying classmates, and helped along the whole time by that crazy redhead Briddish guy who never stops believing in her.

3 Madam Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo) Heartbreaking electro hip popera, this. Rarely one for the small gesture, McLaren used his 1984 set Fans and classic single Madam Butterfly to realise the chart potential in the aria. This bears the whiff of grand folly, but succeeds through clarity of vision and pop sensibility.

4 Something’s Jumpin’ In Your Shirt By 1989, our Malc seemed pretty convinced he could pull off any dunderheaded splicing of form, and this time he fashioned Strauss-house. The Waltz Darling album felt a bit like Italo Hooked On Classics, but no less loveable for that, and Something’s Jumpin’ was its silliest, most charming single.

5 Magic’s Back Prompts the question, “Whatever happened to Alison Limerick?” while suggesting no one could ever come back from this – or from an anthem like Where Love Lives. The latter could sustain a career through occasional trend-dictated remixes, but Magic’s Back is the kind of recklessness to kill your livelihood stone dead. From the mad Ghosts Of Oxford Street concept album/TV movie (also featuring Happy Mondays dirtying up Stayin’ Alive), it’s a Yazz/Italo-house stormer tainted by its very setting and arrangement. Still, at least they were having a go.