You’re my number one

One January Evening….

No, that’s not a long-lost Frankie Goes To Hollywood interview B-side, for those old enough to get the reference. It was the moment in 1984 when, instead of doing some horribly necessary homework, the inspiration to begin compiling a personal Top 40 Singles Chart fatally struck me.

I thought I’d give it a go.

They could have lasted a couple of weeks, for all I knew.

They lasted 26 and a half years.

Good, bad, happy and sad. The songs I can’t forget, and maybe the odd (VERY odd) one I wish I could. That’s one of the joys of a weekly personal chart, there’s no room for revisionism. If I put Bruce Willis at #1 in 1987, or I really liked Tin Machine, then it’s there for posterity (in fact, I still stand by both of those even now). There might be a lot of singles that I wish I’d awarded the coveted top spot to at the time, but that’s what All-Time lists are for, right?

So, over the next however-many-months-it-takes, I’ll look back over each and every one of my Number Ones, from the beginning of January 1984 until my chart’s official demise in July 2010.