rated for constipated peak viewing time
While the news filtering in that 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' is set to top the various music charts by the end of this week is fairly amusing, I can't help getting somewhat misty eyed for the old days of the Radio 1 Top 40 and Top of the Pops.
Although being principally Facebook driven, an event such as this just felt a tad more salient in a mass media context.
At the time of writing 'Ding Dong' is sitting at number one on amazon and number two on the UK itunes chart.
As a cultural 'event' however the top 40 has long ago lost any significance with the broader public, what was formerly a social object of sorts is now a minor data point.
The problem is the lack of availability of those charts to the casual viewer and therefore the sense that 'something is happening'.
It requires a proper dig around to find them.
I guess the proof of the pudding will be on Sunday when the 'official' UK top forty is announced on BBC radio.
We wait with interest to see if the BBC will decide to give Ding Dong it's due chart placing.
If your old enough to have experienced the Thatcher years then you are equally likely to remember the conspiracy between the BBC and the mainstream high street retailers who participated in the chart-return process to provide the nations top 40 back in the day.
Between themselves they acted to keep the Sex Pistols 'God Save The Queen' off the number one spot in Jubilee year 1977.
The BBC engineered things to ensure insipid-period Rod Stewart topped the charts despite being out-sold 2-1 by the Pistols.
WH Smith found it too much to even acknowledge the existence of the record, leaving the number two slot blank in their chart.
A nice one-two-three would be Ding Dong at number one followed by Elvis Costello's 'Tramp the Dirt Down' (which has also seen a spike in sales this week and is apparently bothering the top 40) followed by the mighty Pete's 'The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies' or maybe the less poetic but direct 'How Does It Feel to Be The Mother of a Thousand Dead' by those naughty public school anarchists (in effect Thatcher's badly behaved disruptive children) Crass.
