Suedehead2

The BBC has made a four-part series of Lord Of The Flies, scripted by Jack Thorne who co-wrote Adolescence and has also contributed to Skins and Toxic Town among many others. It's a brilliant adaptation which uses the extra time over the classic Peter Brook film very well. Each of the four episodes centres on one of the key characters, including a back-story for some of them. That meant that Jack was portrayed as an arrogant bully in three episodes (as per the original film), but also as a vulnerable boy in the episode focussing on him. The quality of the acting was incredible. Most child actors benefit from being able to bounce off adult actors, but that didn't happen for most of this production.

They spent the 1977-8 season in what was then Division Two, narrowly edging Brighton out of a promotion spot.

It's a good song. Elkie Brooks' version is wonderful, so I'm intrigued to hear what Beck and friends make of it.

I'm so old that I can remember when they were last relegated

A song of this title has been recorded by Jeff Buckley and Elkie Brooks among others. Don't know whether this another version of the same song.

Without having read the article yet, that YouGov survey reinforces my view that almost anything could happen. if Deform top the poll with around 30% of the vote, they could win a majority or they could end up as the third, or even fourth, party in the Commons.

Just finished watching the series. Darius was bound to fall spectacularly, and that's what he did. The on-again off-again relationship between Agnes and Schuey is not untypical of teenagers, and the Freddie - Luca storyline was really sweet. Look forward to some new characters in the next series to replace the leavers.

Coldplay's version of Boys That Sing at 2016's Glastonbury has appeared at the top of my Youtube page Coldplay - Boys That Sing (Viola Beach Cover) Glastonbury 2016

This is the song that I would have entered before their album landed in the top forty on Friday. I'm delighted that they have finally had some success, but would have loved to see how they did in this contest. IST IST - Lost My Shadow

I had something lined up until last Monday's mids ruled it out. Replacement now selected.

They had such tremendous promise. They took a brief break from supporting Blossoms on tour to go to Sweden. Shortly after the accident happened, I went to see Blossoms on that tour and they played a recording of a Viola Beach set at the time they would have played

After losing again today, Sheffield Wednesday can be relegated next week.

This week's ramblings on the charts (and the weather) can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

In October last year Taylor Swift became the first artist to reach number one with a song that had the name Ophelia in its title. Now she has become the first artist to top the chart with a song called Opalite.The song originally reached number two, behind The fate Of Ophelia, and spent eight weeks in the top ten. Last week it was at number fifteen. Its promotion as an official single, along with a vinyl release, sees it climb all the way to the top. It is Swift’s sixth number one single and the second from her latest album. Dave and Tems slip to number two with Raindance. Readers in Aberdeen (home of the wonderful Annie Lennox) will have been surprised (or confused) when they finally saw some sunshine yesterday afternoon (Thursday) for the first time since 21 January. Raye drops to number three with Where Is My Husband. This week she was named as one of the headline acts for this year’s Brighton Pride in August. She will appear on the Saturday while Diana Ross will headline Sunday’s show. If Raye has found her husband by then, she can bring him along. Shane Boose, under the name Sombr, has had three top ten hits from his debut album I Baqerly Know Her, released last August. Now he has already moved on to songs from his next album with the release of Homewrecker. It is a new entry at number fourteen, complete with its Beach Boys-y beginning and end. Just two weeks after former members of One Direction topped the singles and albums charts, another former member has landed in the charts. This time it is the turn of Niall Horan who has temed up with Myles Smith to record a song called Drive Safe, sound advice in the rubbish weather we have been having. Each singer has two top ten singles to his name with Smith charting higher than Horan. Their perfectly decent joint venture is at number 27. Two acts whose age would generally make them unlikely visitors to the singles chart enter at number 37 with a song called Release The Pressure. Forty-two-year-old Harris has been having hits consistently for nearly twenty years, including eleven number ones. Leicester band Kasabian last had a top forty single in 2014. Kasabian seem to have decided that the best way to get back in the singles chart is to play second fiddle to Harris as this sounds far more like a Calvin Harris song than a Kasabian one. American singer-songwriter Dominic Fike is at number 30 with Babydoll, a song originally released in 2018 before it became a minor (non-top forty) hit in 2023. There are several re-entries in the chart this week, one of which is covered in the albums chart round-up. Tame Impala’s Dracula, a surprisingly long-lasting hit last year, is back at number 25. Justin Bieber’s Yukon reached number twelve last summer. It is now at number 29. If he had stuck to the original release date, Robbie Williams would have been celebrating his 52nd birthday today with a record-breaking number one album. As it is, Britpop has already been to number one (two weeks ago) and left the top forty. That means another week at the top for the Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving which has become the “default” number one whenever there are no major releases. On one Sunday evening every January, tens of millions of Americans spend several hours watching two teams of men in armour playing a glorified version of catch. Most of the time is occupied by adverts with brief interruptions for “action”, but Americans lap it up. While the men in armour have a slightly longer break than the ones for adverts, there is a live musical act. This year, the performer was Puerto Rican Bad Bunny who recently became the first act to win the Grammy award for best album with a release entirely in Spanish. Donald Trump once described the president of Puerto Rico as terrible for his inadequate response to a natural disaster there. Pity the poor person who had to explain that the president of Puerto Rico at the time was one Donald J Trump. Whether that contributed to Bad Bunny’s antipathy towards Trump, I don’t know. However, it was no surprise that Trump was not a fan of the Superbowl performance. Because of the lateness of the show, the UK audience for the quasi-sporting event is relatively low. However, the controversial choice of half-time performer generated more than the usual amount of publicity, increasing the gap between the number of people who know about that and those who know the result. The publicity surrounding Bad Bunny’s performance has had an impact on the UK charts. The now award-winning album Debi Tirar Mas Fotos reached number thirteen in January last year. Now it is back at number two, easily his best position in the UK charts. DtMF, a number 26 hit early last year, returns to the singles chart at number four. Nuevayol is a hit for the first time at number fifteen. As is Baile Inolvidable at number twenty. J Cole is at number three with The Fall-Off. Cole has said that this will be his final album. However, as he is only 41, he has plenty of time to change his mind. If not, he finishes his career with a fifth top ten album from seven releases. In Monday’s update J Cole was sitting neatly at number 26 with a song called Two Six. Some of us might have hoped he had recorded a song called Six Seven instead. Those people will have been relieved to see the song miss the top forty by the end of the week. Even if he wasn’t Japanese, the man known as Joji might have decided that his birth name of George Miller didn’t exactly catch the eye. It certainly isn’t a name that would lead to the assumption that he is from eastern Asia. Under his chosen moniker he gets a fourth top forty album this week with the delightfully-titled Piss In The Wind at number six. It matches the peak achieved by the sweeter sounding Nectar in 2020. Still on names that might mislead people about the origin of the act, the band Ist Ist come from Manchester rather than a German-speaking country. Their first four albums all fell well short of the top forty. The best they managed was number 87 with The Art Of Lying in 2021. Thankfully, their record label has been patient enough to allow them to release a fifth studio album. That patience has paid off as Dagger is a new entry at number 21. French composer Lorien Testard won awards last year for the music he wrote for the video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The soundtrack album reached number six in the soundtrack albums chart, but was placed nowhere in the main albums chart. Following a release on vinyl, it lands at number sixteen this week. The list of famous musicians from Portsmouth is relatively short although the city has at least had a hit single named after it. Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears comes from there as does former Dr Who composer Murray Gold. It was also the home of the intentionally terrible Portsmouth Sinfonia. The band Crystal Tides were formed in the city eight years ago. This week they make their chart debut with Toothpaste at number 37. Jamaican-British singer Marnz Malone is at number 36 with Yaqeen.

Going back to the decade apart question, Beatles singles were reissued after the original release and many of them returned to the chart.

Tuesday 10th February Chelsea 3-1 Leeds United (19:30) Everton 2-1 AFC Bournemouth (19:30) Tottenham Hotspur 1-1 Newcastle United (19:30) West Ham United 1-2 Manchester United (20:15) Wednesday 11th February Aston Villa 2-2 Brighton & Hove Albion (19:30) Crystal Palace 1-1 Burnley (19:30) Manchester City 3-0 Fulham (19:30) Nottingham Forest 2-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers (19:30) Sunderland 1-2 Liverpool (20:15) Thursday 12th February Brentford 1-3 Arsenal (20:00) Wednesday 18th February Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-3 Arsenal (20:00)

I was thinking of entering them for Unknown Pleasures, but I won't be able to now!

If Starmer goes, the press will be even more brutal with his successor.

Yes, it's great to see this back. The first two episodes have been very good.

I don't think we've ever heard anything official. It's just that he suddenly stopped posting.

Manchester United 2-0 Tottenham Hotspur AFC Bournemouth 1-2 Aston Villa Arsenal 2-0 Sunderland Burnley 0-1 West Ham United Fulham 1-2 Everton Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-3 Chelsea Newcastle United 3-1 Brentford Brighton & Hove Albion 3-1 Crystal Palace Liverpool 2-2 Manchester City

A completely bonkers game in the German second tier tonight between Greuther Furth and Magdeburg. The home side took the lead in the eight minute, but Magdeburg equalised and were 5-1 up after just over half-an-hour. Furth fought back to make it 3-5 by half-time. They scored again early in the second half to make it 4-5, but then the players seemed to decide that was enough madness and there were no further goals.

Leeds 3-1 Forest

This week's musings can be found from the Blogs page of the Forums Index page.

After a week when it never seemed to stop raining, Dave and Tems climb back to the top of the singles chart with Raindance. The song’s last spell at number one lasted just a single week. Time will tell whether it falls so soon this time. Raye climbs back up to number two with Where Is My Husband. Djo’s End Of beginning remains at number three. Harry Style’s Aperture drops to number four after a week at the summit. Taylor Swift is at number five with The Fate Of Ophelia. Like last week, all of the top five singles have spent at least a week at number one. Noah Kahan’s Stick Season was very much a slow burner. It entered the singles chart in October 2023, over a year after it was released. It climbed to number one at the beginning of the following year and stayed there for eight weeks. It stuck around in the top forty for many months. Since Stick Season, Noah Kahan’s subsequent single releases have had mixed fortunes. Some have been hits while others have been less popular. His latest single, The Great Divide (not a tribute to an Ed Sheeran album) was at number one in Sunday’s initial update. However, by the following day it had already fallen to number five. It finishes the week as a new entry at number ten. Country music has never been particularly popular in the UK. Even country singers who have scored hit singles here have generally done so with songs that lean some way towards pop. Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas, a new entry at number 38, is more like what we expect American country music to sound like. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste. There are four re-entries in the top forty. Three of them were in the top forty recently, but the other is from 2002. Italian production group Milky reached the top ten that year with Just The Way You Are (not the Billy Joel song or a time warp-enhanced version of the Bruno Mars song). Thanks to a new remix, it returns at number 35. Billy Eilish’s Wildflower is back at number 32. It peaked at number seven in 2024 and was last in the top forty in March 2025. Tate McRae’s Tit For tat is back at number 39 after leaving the top forty last week. Fred Again, Sammy Virji and Reggie’s Talk Of The Town also dropped out last week. This week it returns at number 40. When Lily Allen’s West End Girl reached the top five last year, it was tempting to predict that it would climb to number one when physical copies were released as it was scheduled for a week lacking in major releases. However, I reckoned without the enduring popularity of Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving. The album received an additional boost when Dean won the Best New Artist award at last weekend’s Grammys ceremony. That boost sees the album reclaim the top spot, bringing its total time at number one up to six weeks. The success of West End Girl led to tickets for Lily Allen’s tour selling out very quickly, despite some eye-watering prices. Fresh dates added to the tour, including three nights at the London Palladium, also sold out quickly. She narrowly misses out on being able to say that the tour is promoting a number one album as the physical release helps it to return to the chart at number two, matching its peak position last year. Liverpool band The Molotovs were formed in 2020 by brother and sister Matthew and Issey Cartlidge. Their debut album Wasted On Youth enters at number three. Maybe they will celebrate with a few cocktails tonight. On one of the occasions I saw Oasis live, they were supported by The La’s who had re-formed not long before. At the time they were known for There She Does and little else. That song had been a hit in 1990, two years after its original release. Not long after their time supporting Oasis, the band split up for a second time and backing vocalist and guitarist John Power went back to Cast., the band having been formed after The La’s split up for the first time. Thirty-odd years later, Cast supported Oasis on their reunion tour. They are the second Liverpool act to enter the top ten as their eighth studio album Yeah Yeah Yeah lands at number eight. Texan Don Toliver’s first three albums peaked at steadily lower positions. If that trend had continued, his fourth offering would probably have missed the top forty. However, the trend went into reverse and it reached number 27. The reversal in fortune continues in style this week as he bags his first top ten album with Octane at number four. Despite the lack of any chart history, in either the singles or albums chart, Reading band Only The Poets managed to sell out a gig at the Brixton Academy recently. They have now broken their chart duck by reaching number nine with their debut album And I’d Do It Again. Cast are not the only band never regarded as particularly cool to have a new album in the charts this week. They were briefly popular as a result of their psychedelic-sounding singles Tattvah and Govinda, but lost any coolness they had when the best-known thing about the band was the fact that singer Crispin Mills was a member of the Mills acting dynasty rather than any of their songs. A Nepo band before the term was invented. It, therefore, came as something of a surprise when people started to hear songs from Kula Shaker’s new album and found that they were rather good. As a result, Wormslayer is at number thirteen. It is their highest charting album since their second set Peasants, Pigs And Astronauts reached number nine in 1999. While Status Quo have enjoyed sustained success over many decades, their singer Francis Rossi’s solo career has been less than stellar. That continues this week as The Accidental enters at number 25. He can at least console himself with the fact that it has performed better than his previous solo efforts. Michael Jackson’s Number Ones collection was released on vinyl for the first time lsat week, coinciding with a new biopic about him. It returns to the top ten at number seven. Chart rules dictate that streams of a song can only contribute towards “sales” of one compilation album. Therefore, The Essential Michael Jackson drops out of the chart from last week’s number ten position. Phil Collins also returns to the top forty with a hits collection. A coloured vinyl; edition of The Singles was released last week to mark his 75th birthday. The album is at number 37, its first appearance in the top forty for a little over nine years. Last week he reached a total of 800 weeks in the UK albums chart from 20 albums. He has another 479 weeks as a member of Genesis.