1,000 Number Ones

Joe Williams had a simple idea earlier this year:

I have a new mission. Or at least a new hobby.

This week Elvis Presley’s re-released single One Night became the 1000th UK Number One Single, a little over 52 years after Here In My Heart by Al Martino made history as the first. They and 998 others plot the history of popular music in Britain since 1952*. I’m going to get them all.

Not that it’s all fun and games, mind you:

This purchase was followed by the first of many visits to a charity fund-raising shop, where I was able to lay my hands on a copy of ‘Now That’s What I Call Music Volume 45’. In an ideal world this would have boosted the collection by the tune of 10 Number Ones, but on returning home I was disappointed to discover that only one of the expected two CDs was actually in the case, reducing the total benefit to just 6 chart-toppers. I decided against making a rather uncharitable complaint to the Marie Curie Cancer Care organisation, and so Fragma’s Toca’s Miracle, the 856th Number One, will just have to wait.

I would have been glad to own the Fragma record, as it is an excellent single. On the other hand I would have been perfectly content, notwithstanding my mission, to have spent the rest of my days without a copy of the 852nd Number One, Bag It Up by Geri Halliwell. But I must accept that, having entered into this escapade, I have only myself to blame for being forced into the purchase of terrible records.

[...]

There is, of course, much worse to come. The 748th Number One is at least blandly inoffensive enough to listen to without feeling the need to run screaming from the room. In order to retain my sanity, I will remind myself that I can still enjoy the luxury of not owning the 698th. You’ll have to look that one up yourself – I can’t even bring myself to say it.

Having looked it up, I can’t blame him for not wanting to have to walk into a shop somewhere and actually ask for #698. Perhaps he’d best buy it over the internet. Using someone else’s credit card. And arrange for the parcel to be delivered to a Post Office box rented in a false name.

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