Suedehead2

It is quite extraordinary that a World Cup host has bombed one qualifying country (Iran), threatened one of its co-hosts (Mexico), suggested that the other co-host (Canada) should be a US state and has threatened to annex the territory of another potential qualifier (Denmark). Sadly, it isn't practical to strip the USA of its hosting rights.

I had assumed it was recorded in two or three days, but I didn't realise it was recorded in the Netherlands.

Tuesday 3rd March AFC Bournemouth 2-1 Brentford (19:30) Everton 2-0 Burnley (19:30) Leeds United 2-0 Sunderland (19:30) Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-3 Liverpool (20:15) Wednesday 4th March Aston Villa 2-1 Chelsea (19:30) Brighton & Hove Albion 2-2 Arsenal (19:30) Fulham 2-0 West Ham United (19:30) Manchester City 3-0 Nottingham Forest (19:30) Newcastle United 0-2 Manchester United (20:15) Thursday 5th March Tottenham 2-1 Crystal Palace (20:00)

There was a good programme on the making of the series on BBC4 tonight.

Saturday 28th February AFC Bournemouth 2-1 Sunderland (12:30) Burnley 0-1 Brentford Liverpool 3-1 West Ham United Newcastle United 2-0 Everton Leeds United 1-3 Manchester City (17:30) Sunday 1st March Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Nottingham Forest (14:00) Fulham 1-1 Tottenham Hotspur (14:00) Manchester United 3-1 Crystal Palace (14:00) Arsenal 2-2 Chelsea (16:30)

So you'd want to see someone wrongfully imprisoned get a much longer sentence for attempted murder, or a life sentence for murder if Huntley dies?

Whatever you think of Huntley, that shouldn't be a reason to celebrate what is currently attempted murder.

This week's chart-related ramble can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

After completing a marathon journey to the top of the chart last week, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In gets a second week at number one. The song first appeared on Fender’s People Watching album released early last year. Dean was invited to choose a song from the album to sing as a duet. She chose Rein Me In and Fender has been rewarded with his first number one single. Olivia Dean can also be found at number two with So Easy (To Fall In Love). Pink Pantheress jumps six places to number three with Stateside. It is her second top three single after Boy’s A Liar in 2023. Bella Kay climbs a massive 22 places to number four with Iloveitiloveitiloveit. Sombr’s Homewrecker climbs two places to number five. As origins of band names go, the story behind the choice of Twenty One Pilots is one of the more bizarre. American playwright Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is based on a true story about am American company which, knowingly, sent defective aircraft to Europe for military use. This resulted in the death of 21 pilots. The band have a new entry at number 23 with Drag Path. By a neat coincidence, a revival of the play is currently being performed in London’s West End. Drag Path is the only new entry in the chart, but there is also a very welcome re-entry. Charli XCX’s soundtrack for the new Wuthering Heights film falls to number eight this week after a week at number one. The original musical Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush’s brilliant debut single, re-enters at number 40. In April last year, the music world’s favourite removals firm Mumford And Sons released their first album for seven years. It matched two of its predecessors by going to number one. However, while one of those number ones and the number two album Sigh No More enjoyed lengthy runs in the chart, Rushmere did something that has happened to so many albums in the 2020s. It dropped straight out of the chart the following week. Less than a year later, they have released another album, Prizefighter. It too has gone straight to number one, giving them a fourth chart-topping album. It would not be a surprise if it is nowhere to be seen in next week’s chart. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving remains at number two. Lovers of coincidences will enjoy the fact that former Little Mix member Leigh-Anne’s debut solo album My Ego Told Me To is at number three. That means that it has matched the albums chart peak achieved by each of her two former bandmates. So far this year, we have already been reminded of the tenth anniversary of David Bowie’s death. In the rest of 2016 the music world also lost Prince, Greg Lake, Keith Emerson, the whole of promising indie band Viola Beach and , on Christmas Day, George Michael. In the wider world of entertainment, we also lost two brilliantly funny women Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne. In the USA Debbie Reynolds died just a day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher. George Michael had made his name with Wham, alongside his childhood friend Andrew Ridgeley. When Wham split up Michael pursued a solo career, Ridgeley chose to enjoy the fact that he could do what he liked having with a combination of the money he had already made and ongoing royalties. This includes income from Michael’s Careless Whisper on which he receives a writing credit although there has always been a suspicion that the credit was a characteristic act of generosity by Michael. Faith was George Michael’s first solo album. It included the song I Want Your Sex which was banned from radio and television. Broadcasters claimed that the song promoted promiscuity at a time when the government was trying to combat the spread of Aids. Michael gave interviews in which he said that that was the opposite of the message he was trying to convey. Careless Whisper was not on the album as it had already appeared on a Wham album. Faith has now been made available on vinyl for the first time in many years. The album spent a week at number one when it was first released in 1987 and was last seen in the top forty in 2011 following the release of a remastered edition. This latest reissue sees it back in the chart at number four. The Official Charts Company (ICC) hasn’t published its albums chart write-up at the time of writing this, but I’m willing to guess that they will describe Hilary Duff as a multihyphenate. As we;; as being a singer and actor, she also hs five books published in her name. While she has enjoyed several top ten albums in her native USA, her achievements in the UK have been rather more modest. Just one of her previous studio albums troubled the top forty. Dignity reached number 25 in 2007. Luck…. Or Something has fared rather better as her first album for eleven years enters at number five. (The OCC’s write-up has just appeared,and the word multihyphenate is nowhere to be seen.) To accompany the release of an Elvis Presley concert film, there is also an album, EPiC - Elvis Presley in Concert. It enters at number seventeen and is Presley's 96th top forty album. Will his record company find a way of getting that figure up to 100 in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his death next year? If Baby Keem manages to get 100 top forty albums in the UK, I don't expect to be around to see it. His tally currently stands at one, thanks to Ca$ino entering at number 29.

Ideally, I would like to see Labour winning the seat with the Greens second. Of course, the broadcasters would still be far more interested in hearing what Farage has to say than anyone else. It has been reported that Reform have had a lot of people outside polling stations talking to voters on their way to vote. This is illegal.

I've never got round to reading the book, although I have been in English lessons where they are doing part of it. I'm planning to read it in the summer when I can probably finish it in a day.

The US Justice Department has been sitting on this information about Mandelson and Andy W for years. Why was it never passed on to the UK authorities?

The programme is recorded on Tuesday night. That's a bit of an issue this week.

According to the BBC website today, it is indeed a record. No team has ever finished a season on negative points. Sheffield Wednesday have been stuck on -7 for ten games.

The previous holder of the record, Gareth Barry, was originally at Brighton as a trainee before he went to Aston Villa. The first time I head of James Milner was when he broke Wayne Rooney's record as they youngest score in the Premier League. He now has a chance to beet Teddy Sheringham's records as the oldest scorer in the PL and the oldest outfield player in a PL match.

"They are a tourist attraction" is a very strange way of deciding who should be Head of State. Not that I believe abolishing the monarchy will make a significant difference to the number of tourists who come here. How would a president be more expensive? Look at the number of Windsors who are paid from the public purse. That wouldn't happen with a president's family. We wouldn't need to pay for multiple homes for them and their hangers-on.

One of France's biggest tourist attractions is the Palace of Versailles. The same could apply to the Windsors' various homes.

An elected president could have the same powers as those exercised by the monarch, i.e. almost none.

West Brom lost their lunchtime fixture so Sheffield Wednesday can't be relegated today. They will go down if they don't win tomorrow - at Sheffield United.

Saturday 21st February Aston Villa 2-0 Leeds United Brentford 2-2 Brighton & Hove Albion Chelsea 3-1 Burnley West Ham United 1-2 AFC Bournemouth (17:30) Manchester City 2-0 Newcastle United (20:00) Sunday 22nd February Crystal Palace 0-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers (14:00) Nottingham Forest 1-3 Liverpool (14:00) Sunderland 1-0 Fulham (14:00) Tottenham Hotspur 2-2 Arsenal (16:30) Monday 23rd February Everton 1-3 Manchester United (20:00)

This week's ramblings can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

Olivia Dean battles against herself for the number one single, and against Charli XCX in the albums chart. There was a close race at the top of the singles chart this week. There was no real doubt that Olivia Dean would be getting her second number one single. The question was whether Sam Fender would get his first. Back in the days when the singles chart measured physical sales only (because that was all that was available), it was relatively unusual for a single to fall down the chart and then climb back up again. It was even more unusual for a single to yo-yo up and down over a prolonged period. The inclusion of streaming, and the various changes to the rules to try to speed up the chart, has made a yo-yo chart run very common. One of the clearest examples of the yo-yo phenomenon is Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In which has had seven runs in the top ten since it first entered the upper tier last October. Four of those runs have been just a single week at number ten. The longest run in the top ten started at the beginning of the year and reached seven weeks last week when it climbed to its peak of number five for the third time. In the midweek updates, Rein Me In was at number one, but with a slender lead over the number two. The opposition came from another Olivia Dean song, So Easy (To Fall In Love). That song was at number six last week, having peaked at number three. Both songs, then, were heading for new peaks. It was just a matter of which song would get the higher peak. Regardless of which song won, Sam Fender would be able to celebrate a new singles chart high, beating the number three peak achieved by Seventeen Going Under. A win for Rein Me In would also set a new record for the longest time taken for a song to get to number one in a single chart run. Rein Me In’s 36-week path to the top would easily outstrip the relatively swift 19 weeks taken by Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud. In the end, victory went to Rein Me In which means that Olivia Dean’s second number one is also Sam Fender's first. After waiting two-and-a-half years from his first top 100 to get into the top forty for the first time, he has had another fairly lengthy wait to get a deserved number one. Dean has a third song in the top five as Man I Need, her previous number one, climbs back up to number four. Zara Larsson’s Lush Life climbs to number three, matching its peak from almost exactly a decade ago. Bad Bunny falls one place to number five with DtMF. He also gets a fourth hit from his current album as Titi Me Pregunto enters at number eighteen. Under the three-song limit Baile Inolvidable drops out to make way for it. Last week’s number one, Taylor Swift’s Opalite drops to number eight after a week at the top. It just about avoids the fate of Lewis Capaldi’s Pointless which climbed to the top from number fifteen (as Swift did last week) before dropping straight back out of the top ten. Central Cee’s new single Iceman Freestyle gets off to a great start with a brief clip of Albinoni’s familiar Adagio in D Minor. Sadly, it goes rapidly downhill when Mr Cee’s vocals start. The wait for a song of his that I like goes on. Iceman Freestyle, a title which could have been used for a song about the Winter Olympics, is at number 37 giving Central Cee a 34th top forty single since his 2002 debut. Sean Paul and Keyshia Cole’s (When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me was a number 31 hit in 2006. Thanks to Tik Tok, it is a re-entry at number 38, Oh joy. After spending the first six weeks of the year in the lower reaches of the top forty Sombr’s Back To Friends dropped out last week. This week it returns at number 40. His Homewrecker enters the top ten at number seven. If it goes no higher, it will be the third of his five top forty hits to peak in that position. There are two more new entries and a re-entry in the singles chart which will be recorded in the upcoming albums chart section. While Olivia Dean was almost guaranteed to have the number one single as her main opponent was herself, in the albums chart, the competition came from fellow Briton Charli XCX with her soundtrack for the new Wuthering Heights film. Most soundtrack albums are now consigned to the separate compilations chart (a move that came after soundtrack albums - particularly The Greatest Showman - spent a large part of 2018 at number one) but this qualifies as it is credited to Charli XCX alone. In musical terms, Wuthering Heights is, of course, mostly associated with the sublime debut single from Kate Bush. When agreeing to do the soundtrack for the new film, it is unlikely that Charli XCX had any illusions that that was likely to change. Still, if she could get the number one album, Wuthering Heights would be arguably the most unusual title of a number one single and album by different artists. On the other hand, if Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving held on, it would match the three-week run by the same album in the first three charts of the year. In Wednesday’s update Wuthering Heights was still at number one, albeit with a fairly narrow lead over The Art Of Loving. By the end of the week, it held on at the top, thereby denying Olivia Dean a chart double. It is Charli XCX’s third number one album and the first of those three to have a second word in the title. And those three remaining singles? All three are from Wuthering Heights. Chains Of Love spent a week in the top forty last November. It now returns at a new peak of number seventeen. Dying For You is at number 27. The glorious Always Everywhere is at number 33. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving, then, slips one place to number two. It has spent seven weeks at the top in four separate runs. Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years: Don’t Stop is at number three, one place ahead of another compilation, The Weeknd’s Highlights. Bad Bunny is at number five with Debi Tirar Mas Fotos. In between releasing Tension and Tension II, Kylie Minogue embarked on a 66-show world tour. A live album, recorded on the tour, was released last September, but was initially only available to stream. The lack of the opportunity to buy the album meant that it failed to enter the chart in the UK. With physical copies now on sale, it enters at number nineteen. Fred Again’s USB re-enters at number 31 after he performed for four nights at one of my least favourite London venues, Alexandra Palace.Another album about a stick. Noah Kahan’s Stick Season continues to do well.

Not much of a Charli XCX fan, but this is glorious.

Trust Jack to talk over the best bit of this.

Why is this back?