Missing the hits

Pop-a-doodle-doo, pop picklers! What a sen-say-tional bit of news we go this week – they’re moving the day of the Chart Show!

For at least the first half of The Eighties, there was only one place you’d find me between 5 and 7 on a Sunday evening. You’re probably thinking; “What? A guy that cool and sophisticated, with such natural good looks and obvious charm? Probably at the front of the queue for a trendy night club. Or maybe partying with stars. Or rescuing kittens stuck in trees. Definitely one of those, right?”

Thanks for that, but no – I’m afraid you’re incorrect. I would be in the bath. Hitting the bathroom so that the water had stopped running just as the pips announced it was 5pm, I would then top up with extra hot water at regular intervals, and pull the plug out with a couple of minutes to go before 7.

Yes, I was a smelly teenager, but hygiene wasn’t the reason (as my favourite baseball boots would have willingly attested to anyone brave enough to go near them). I was there for Radio 1’s Chart Show – that wondrous romp though the ponderous collection of tracks that made up the Top 40 best selling ‘singles’ of the week.

Pre-internet, the countdown was the only way of finding out who had gone up, down or leapt in at number 1. Happy days indeed, and a genuine thrill for me when a band or singer I loved had made a significant leap up the hit parade or achieved the pinnacle of pop and made it to the top of the chart.

It was less thrilling for the rest of my family – we only had one loo in the house, and my steamy bathroom liaison with the stars prevented them from getting near it for 120 minutes.

My assumption that I would always love the charts, and by extension Top of the Pops and Radio 1, was challenged by the sounds of the 90s, and by the time the last century was heading for the exit in it’s shell suit, I’d admitted defeat and switched over to Radio 2.

Like the sale of bits of 7” vinyl with a couple of songs pressed on them, the number of listeners for the Chart Show gradually dwindled and currently stands at around 1.2 million, compared to 4 million in the 80s.

Now that the chart statistics include any track, irrespective of it being pushed as a ‘single’ or not, and factor in streaming services and downloads too, the charts seem a lot less important, in a world where music is just one of a bewildering choice of entertainment options, rather than THE one.

A global agreement to release new music on Fridays means the Chart Show will switch to Friday too, ending a Sunday run on Radio 1 stretching back to 1967.

I can’t say I’m bothered. Sorry Chart Show- you’re just not my number 1 any more.

Right. I’m off for a long bath.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 27th of March 2015. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here where it was retiled "Giving the hits rundown a miss".

Apart from a couple of minor punctuation changes, the only obvious alteration was correcting "Picklers" to "Pickers" in the opening line. I did actually want it to say "Picklers" though, but I can see why they assumed it was a typo.

I'm still amused by folks my age and above who consider anyone who listens to Radio 2 to be somehow old-fashioned and out of touch. Considering these are the same people that proudly point out that they still listen to Radio 1, like it makes them in some way more 'modern' or cool, only adds to the chuckle factor.

2 has massively more listeners, plays current stuff as well as older material, and with a roster of DJs who actually enhance the experience (rather than trying to be all 'yoof'), I fail to see why anyone over about 25 bothers with Radio 1 any more, except through some erroneous belief that it still means they're young at heart, really.

Um... no. There's a time to grow old gracefully - a 50 year old Radio 1 listener is the equivalent of your great grandma declaring that she really does like some of those New Romanticyclists, although their hair looked very odd, and some of them are a bit camp.

(Have given up on the cassettes, and am now heading through another mostly forgotten musical format - my CD singles collection. You'll be unsurprised, no doubt, to hear that these are arranged alphabetically too. Now playing: Tori Amos' rather lovely "Silent All These Years" from 1992.)