I went through my hard drive today breaking up all the countdowns into separate episodes. Fast forwarded through them quickly to make sure they all taped alright. When going through the Sun 6th March 1983 episode, some things struck me as very weird.

First Gavin Wood didn't do his run up at the start of the show, as what is coming up. It was like they still had to ad his voice. The top 10 at the end also lacked gavin wood, and just before Chris DeBurgh's "Don't pay the ferry man", both gavan's voice, and the video effects were very very chopped up.

Also had the very very strong suspicion that this was the first show for 1983, geeez, my favourite year in music, yet countdown started a month late.

This all came across as extraordinarily strange.

I think it was the second episode of 1983 - 1st was 27th Feb

It could of been the first show that was recorded as Sharon says welcome to the first Countdown for 83 yet might not of been the very first show aired that year as a number of Australian productions have been known to air shows out of their order from when they were originally recorded in the first place. Again it is an interesting observation.

I thought Sharon said welcome to the *second* show for 1983? Or maybe I was half-asleep by that point.

Sharon did say welcome to the second episode of 1983. The first was hosted by James Reyne 27/2/83 and was aired on rage way way back 8/1/94.

I was also puzzled why Countdown started so late that year, but I believe it could have been due to the Ash Wednesday bushfires 16/2/83 that moved Countdown back a couple of weeks.

The Top 10 had no voiceover for about the first 5 episodes.

I also heard Gavin say that Laura Branigan will be on the show in person in 2 weeks prior to playing Gloria. She didn't get around to it until 15/5/83.