If You Come Back

Living in Headingley, with its wide selection of charity shops and population of bleeding-heart liberals eager to donate to them, is certainly an advantage. When I recently popped in to the Cancer Research shop, I was delighted to discover several Number Ones, despite the fact that just a few weeks beforehand I had bought their entire collection of chart-toppers (totalling one CD single). Inspired by this, I decided on an unplanned blitz of some of their local competitors, and came away with a clutch of additions to my collection.

I was particularly happy to pick up two of the best ever Number Ones, namely You To Me Are Everything by the Real Thing and Baby D’s Let Me Be Your Fantasy. The Baby D CD was unfortunately one of the many remixed re-releases, but it did include the 1994 version that made it to the top, which wasn’t even the original itself, being a shorter edit of the track that had been a club hit a couple of years earlier.

This has partly made up for the frustration of knowing that I used to have the 1994 release on CD single, which has vanished somewhere along the line. In this case I suspect the culprits are the burglars who decimated my CD collection in 1997, though I can’t blame them for the disappearance of my 7” copy of Doctorin’ The Tardis by the Timelords, for which I can find no explanation, and from which I am yet to recover.

As usual the classics were accompanied by a number of monstrosities. Most notable in this selection are a pair associated with TV comedies, Clive Dunn’s Grandad and Whispering Grass by Windsor Davies & Don Estelle of ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ fame. Whispering Grass is at least slightly redeemed by some nice barber-shop harmonies, if you like that kind of thing.

I also now own Swing The Mood, the first of three Number Ones by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this is, surprisingly, the first record I have bought which skips, somewhere around the point where the nauseating rabbit mauls the Everly Brothers. Sadly this means that at some point I will have to buy this record again.

All Around The World is one of the few titles to reach the top twice in the guise of two completely different songs*, and while I am yet to acquire the one by Oasis, I can now boast ownership of Lisa Stansfield’s rendition**. Also worth mentioning is Let It Be by Ferry Aid, which would be just another charity record if not for the mystifying appearance of the notoriously reclusive Kate Bush. Her contribution doesn’t exactly set the world alight, but it does make you wonder how they persuaded her to turn up in the first place.

Finally I should note Hero by Enrique Iglesias, which not only made Enrique and Julio the first father and son to have individual Number Ones, but also hit the top spot on the chart dated 02/02/02, which is the kind of neatness that befits a mission as anal as mine.

I now have 335 Number Ones, so I have completed the first third of my journey in the space of just under 5 months. And I’m eager for more.

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* There are three others, and if you can tell me what they are I’ll be very impressed indeed.
** My friend Nik would probably like me to mention at this point that Lisa Stansfield is from Rochdale, so I will.