Is this actually true? It really reads like fan fiction. I've never even heard of the artist nor song so for them to be Radio 2's most requested song seems... implausible?

As is the idea that a TOTP broadcast was delayed for 14 months. Clearly someone taking the proverbial.

His performance on Top of the Pops was apparently not aired at the time (there's a recording of it on YouTube that says it's taken from a Top of the Pops 2 broadcast in February 2003 so that lines up with 'being delayed 14 months'). He mentions being pulled from TOTP in this interview and there's also a Guardian article from the time that states it was Radio 2's 'most requested song ever'.

 

The last sentence, 'It is generally accepted that had he been broadcast he would have taken the No 1 from Williams and no explanation or apology was ever given by the BBC Executive Producer.', does sound a little speculative / overdramatised but the rest of it appears to be true.

Yeah the reason why this intrigued me so much is because I’d never heard of the song before either! He died recently and the most requested quote was in the BBC article regarding that, I promise I’m not pulling it out of thin air :’) and Bray has pulled up the exact same information that I found from YouTube, too. Maybe I should’ve worded it clearer - not the entire TOTP show, just his performance. So it looks dodgy! Blame Wikipedia for further OTT speculation about the Robbie drama :D

A postponement of the performance makes more sense but it is still all very odd. I have no memory of the song or the incident either.

Destiny’s child - Lose my breath

 

4 weeks at number 2 behind:

Eminem - just lose it

U2 - vertigo

Girls aloud - I’ll stand by you

Gordon Haskell would have been an awful Christmas no.1 so even if there were shenanigans, I’m glad because Robbie and Nicole was a much better song. I never hear How Wonderful You Are outside of the chart show though my grandparents hyped it up after listening to Radio 2 and 13 year old me looked at them like they had 2 heads.

 

The story is still doubtful. It’s likely Gordon recorded at Top Of The Pops performance intended for the Christmas show in the event he went to no.1 but it wasn’t shown because, outside of the Christmas no.1, the show focused mainly on the hits of the year back then so they might not have included the Christmas no.2. The was no TOTP the next week when it was still top 3 and it had fallen from the top 10 by the time the show returned in 2002. They may have just thought no one would care.

 

And if Robbie’s label were that desperate then why didn’t they hold back the release until Christmas week rather than allowing it a week at no.1 beforehand?

Gordon Haskell would have been an awful Christmas no.1 so even if there were shenanigans, I’m glad because Robbie and Nicole was a much better song. I never hear How Wonderful You Are outside of the chart show though my grandparents hyped it up after listening to Radio 2 and 13 year old me looked at them like they had 2 heads.

 

The story is still doubtful. It’s likely Gordon recorded at Top Of The Pops performance intended for the Christmas show in the event he went to no.1 but it wasn’t shown because, outside of the Christmas no.1, the show focused mainly on the hits of the year back then so they might not have included the Christmas no.2. The was no TOTP the next week when it was still top 3 and it had fallen from the top 10 by the time the show returned in 2002. They may have just thought no one would care.

 

And if Robbie’s label were that desperate then why didn’t they hold back the release until Christmas week rather than allowing it a week at no.1 beforehand?

 

I agree with this. It was released on Xmas week, so essentially was No.1 or bust for his performance being shown on the Christmas edition. I doubt there was any malice in not showing it, it just slipped through the net of relevancy due to its quick fall and the way the dates of broadcast lined up. There are loads of acts that recorded TOTP performances in advance for them to never be shown, albeit usually songs that ended up flopping. This would have been a rare case of a huge hit not being shown, and maybe they should have tried to squeeze it into the Christmas Day show, but I don't blame them for not playing a freefalling No.12 in the first week of 2002.

 

I do recall it was being hyped as the favourite for Xmas No.1 in the week just beforehand (after Country Roads by Hermes House Band had been tipped a couple of weeks earlier), and I remember the song too, a sort of laidback jazz and blues style number. Of course Robbie and Nicole stayed ahead in the end but I can't remember the sales difference.

I do recall it was being hyped as the favourite for Xmas No.1 in the week just beforehand (after Country Roads by Hermes House Band had been tipped a couple of weeks earlier), and I remember the song too, a sort of laidback jazz and blues style number. Of course Robbie and Nicole stayed ahead in the end but I can't remember the sales difference.

'Something Stupid' sold 110k, up 11k week-on-week, whilst 'How Wonderful You Are' sold 86k.

What was the difference between RW and Gordon? Was it close?

Thanks. Seems relatively unlikely then that the performance would have boosted it to No.1 (also would it not have had to climb there the following week anyway, seeing as they wouldn't have shown it in advance of it charting?)

 

But who knows, it was the same year that a TOTP2 performance had sent Eva Cassidy's album to No.1, but I'm not sure Gordon's intended audience were regularly watching the main show.

Edited February 15, 20214 yr by gooddelta

I'm really quite dubious about whether a TOTP performance could have overturned a 24,000 difference.

Thanks guys for the TOTP info! The show was (sadly) over before I'd even reached a double-digit age so I'm not too hot on context like that. I've seen this dramatic telling of events on Gordon's Wikipedia page for a while (I was first alerted to the song by looking through a list of every UK #2, then reminded of it again by his recent death) - again I don't know what the kind of impact would've been at the time, hence me bringing this example to BuzzJack in the hope that others knew more about it from the time :lol: I just found the details like the Radio 2 stat and delayed TOTP performance interesting. Then Gordon obviously mentioned the 'Robbie rigging' situation himself in the interview Bray linked above. But that sales gap doesn't lie - perhaps the alternate outcome wasn't so 'generally accepted' then.

Thanks guys for the TOTP info! The show was (sadly) over before I'd even reached a double-digit age so I'm not too hot on context like that. I've seen this dramatic telling of events on Gordon's Wikipedia page for a while (I was first alerted to the song by looking through a list of every UK #2, then reminded of it again by his recent death) - again I don't know what the kind of impact would've been at the time, hence me bringing this example to BuzzJack in the hope that others knew more about it from the time :lol: I just found the details like the Radio 2 stat and delayed TOTP performance interesting. Perhaps the alternate outcome wasn't so 'generally accepted' then.

 

I think by 2001, TOTP impacts were negligible, as was seen by most songs immediately falling after entering high, even those that had a performance. Maybe it helped to cushion the blow for a few songs, but there are few examples I can look at a chart run from that period and think 'ah, a TOTP boost!'.

 

Also, Christmas Day TOTP tended to be shown at 2pm back then iirc, while people were eating. I'm not so sure that How Wonderful You Are would have been a great festive mood lifter and inspired thousands of people to go out and buy it the following week! The story does seem bizarre, were his team expecting the performance to be shown the week before it charted or something? They usually only did preview performance with huge names like Spice Girls and Steps etc...

and what was the difference on the week after Xmas?

and what was the difference on the week after Xmas?

1- SOMETHING STUPID- Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman (68,000)

2- GOTTA GET THRU THIS- Daniel Bedingfield (42,000)

3- HOW WONDERFUL YOU ARE- Gordon Haskell (38,000)

^thanks

so again a huge gap that a Xmas TOTP performance wouldn't have compensated for

I remember How Wonderful You Are from the time, like T Boy I was also a 13 year old who found it to be very dull. :kink: I was bemused that it was even as high as #2 (the fact it was so requested and loved by Radio 2's audience is something I didn't realise at the time). I preferred Robbie/Nicole being #1, although I didn't particularly like that song either. I did help it out though, because I bought the CD single as a gift for a friend!

 

Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Murder on the Dancefloor was the best song in the Christmas Top 5 imo. *.* https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singl.../20011223/7501/ A #2 peaking song of course, but I don't think I could claim it to be one of the unluckiest #2s. I think it really deserved #1, it felt inescapable at the time and it's stood the test of time, so I wish it had managed to outdo Gotta Get Thru This for one week at least.

 

 

Also, while Spice Girls - Stop is certainly not one of the unluckiest #2s in terms of closeness in sales between it and the #1 song... from a stats point of view, it ended a streak of #1s for them (they had 6 #1s prior to it, and then they went on to have 3 in a row after it), so that's a shame. 10 #1s in a row would have been an amazing achievement. With the passing of time, Stop has ended up becoming one of their most definitive hits, and it's arguably more known and memorable these days than quite a few of their #1s! They were unlucky in a sense though, because for some reason the release of Stop was delayed by one week. Had they stuck with the original release date, there's a slight chance they might have made it to #1 instead of Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On (Celine sold 112k in that week at #1, Spice Girls sold 115k to be #2 a week later... but that's with the assumption they'd have sold the same amount a week earlier).

 

Westlife also had #2 single between a long run of #1s. Their #2 single What Makes a Man ended a streak of 7 #1s, and then they had 3 #1s after that - so that would have been 11 #1s in a row! As mentioned by Liam, that single sold an impressive 230,747 in its first week. Only two of their #1 singles achieved better sales than that in a week. 231,000 for I Have a Dream (I wonder if that figure is rounded up or down? Maybe What Makes a Man sold more than it?) and 292,319 for Uptown Girl.

 

 

As for the songs in the poll, a case can be argued for all of them of course, but Madonna peaking at #2 twice with different releases of Crazy for You, 6 years apart... that hurts! :cry: Side note: It's weird to think that songs which weren't even particularly old were re-issued and became big hits again. It has reminded me of Peter Andre - Mysterious Girl, which was a case of third time lucky... #53 in 1995, #2 in 1996 [10 consecutive weeks in the Top 5 - in most weeks it was 3 Lions and Killing Me Softly that stood in its way] and finally #1 in 2004!

I'm not convinced of 'How Wonderful You Are' being Radio 2's most requested when this was its airplay chart run: 38-33-33-29-40-48. I believe this was when the airplay chart was based on amount of plays rather than audience numbers.

Of course, it is possible Gordon Haskell’s performance would have been recorded for TOTP the week before Christmas. I remember Spice Girls’ Goodbye was on the show before Christmas in 1998 and possibly because they knew it would be a close battle for the top. On that note, I can’t remember whether they ever showed Chef’s video for Chocolate Salty Balls on TOTP. They didn’t in the Christmas show and there wasn’t a show the week it was no.1 but I can’t remember if it was shown in 1999 or not.

 

But I still doubt the case for Haskell, the week before Christmas that year there were loads of new entries that would have qualified for a slot over him.

Edited February 15, 20214 yr by T Boy

and the most requested song thing sounds like something people say but actually without data behind to back it up

does R2 keep track of all requests? how? by email? by phone? do they have someone writing down every song that someone calls and requests and

then they do statistics? I doubt it...Sure people requested it and probably lots but I doubt there's a reliable list...