S & D: old-school Brit cheesy pop

There was a tv documentary about Pete Waterman recently which, apart from largely excising Stock and Aitken from the story, repeated the Waterman-planted hype that 'Roadblock' conned the cognoscenti into thinking it was a genuine 'rare groove'. I've never understood this. Even at the time I remember listening to it and thinking that it sounded of its time, still with a SAW-ish quality and no way some kind of obscure sub James brown funk.

Was "Roadblock" the beginning of that enduring tactic where non-credible acts release their records as club promos under pseudonyms?