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Tuesday 21st April Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Chelsea (20:00) Wednesday 22nd April AFC Bournemouth 2-1 Leeds United (20:00) Burnley 0-2 Manchester City (20:00)

The sun will come out tomora, bet your bottom dollar that tomora...

Best Wah! - The Story Of The Blues Echo And The Bunnymen - The Cutter Icehouse - Hey Little Girl Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Genetic Engineering Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) There were other good songs, but these five are easily the best. Worst Imagination - Changes Joe Cocker And Jennifer Warnes - Up Where We Belong Sharon Redd - In The Name Of Love

The Barry hawkins v Matthew Stevens match was paused this evening berceuse the advertising screens were a distraction. What numpty thought that moving advertising screens were a good idea for snooker?

Saturday 18th April Brentford 2-1 Fulham (12;30) Leeds United 2-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers Newcastle United 1-2 AFC Bournemouth Tottenham Hotspur 1-3 Brighton & Hove Albion (17:30) Chelsea 2-2 Manchester United (20:00) Sunday 19th April Aston Villa 2-1 Sunderland (14:00) Everton 1-2 Liverpool (14:00) Nottingham Forest 2-0 Burnley (14:00) Manchester City 2-2 Arsenal (16:30) Monday 20th April Crystal Palace 0-1 West Ham United (20:00)

Looking at some of the entries that have been accepted, maybe I should have gone for my first choice from my year

This week's ramblings, with no shoehorned references to Artemis II and space travel, is available from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

There’s still no stopping Sam Fender and Olivia Dean who get an eighth week att the top of the singles chart with Rein Me In. It is the longest run at number one since Huntrx and a cast of thousands spent a total of ten weeks at the summit starting in August last year. Golden is still in the top forty today. Tame Impala’s Dracula entered the top forty between two of Golden’s three runs at the top of the singles chart. It climbed to number 21 before dropping out of the chart altogether in November. It returned to the top forty in February and started to gain momentum, climbing nine places to number three two weeks ago. This week it climbs one more place to number two. Alex Warren’s Fever Dream climbs two places to number three. The top five is completed by two other songs climbing two places. Sombr’s Homewrecker is at number four, one place ahead of Dominic Fike’s Babydoll. It is Fike’s first top five appearance since 3 Nights in August 2019. It is no secret that I am not generally a fan of K-Pop. Therefore, the chances of me liking a song by a Los Angeles-based group clearly inspired by K-Pop were never going to be great. However, I wasn't quite prepared for just how awful the song in question, Pinky Up by Katseye, would be. Pinky Up, a new entry at number fourteen, is their third top forty hit. It is the first to reach the top twenty. One of the surprise hits of last year was Doechii’s Anxiety which peaked at number three. The success of that song has earned her the chance to work with Lady Gaga, a performer with a chart history dating back to 2009. The result, Runway, is a new entry at number 32. It deserves to go higher. Prospa are a DJ duo from Leeds. They had minor hits in 2020 and last year, neither of which came anywhere near the top forty. They have teamed up with another DJ by the name of Cloonee to record their latest singleFree Your Mind. The combination of two acts with little chart success has worked as they enter at number 39. In the week that Olivia Dean gets an eighth week with the number one single alongside Sam Fender, she also gets an eighth week at the top of the albums chart The Art Of Loving climbs back up to number one. It first topped the chart on its release last October and was most recently at the top in February. It has been in the top five for its whole 29-week run in the chart with all but two of those weeks in the top three. Jack Savoretti’s ninth studio album, We Will Always Be The Way We Were, was at number one in the two chart updates this week. However, with fewer that 10,000 sales by Wednesday it always looked likely to miss out by the end of the week. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of that figure came from actual sales, both physical copies and downloads. As real sales are heavily weighted towards the beginning of the chart week, it was unlikely that he would add many sales to that total in the final two days. It is, therefore, no surprise to see him entering at number two. It is at number one in the Official Record Store chart which only counts physical sales from independent record shops. It comes as a pleasure to note that Holly Humberstone is the singer-songwriter’s real name. When you are blessed with a name like that, why change it? Her first full-length album reached number five in 2023. Her second has narrowly outperformed it; Cruel World is at number four. It is number one in the vinyl albums chart. Raye falls one place to number three with This Music May Contain Hope. BTS are still at number five with Arirang. I’m still not sure whether they are referring to Ari Styles, or what he might have been ringing about. Ella Langley’s first album got precisely nowhere in the UK albums chart However, with a big hit single to her name in the form of Choosin’ Texas, her second release was always likely to do significantly better. And so it has come to pass; Dandelion is at number seven. British rock band Enter Shikari are at number sixteen with Lose Your Self, an album that was a surprise release last week. Alfie Boe enters at number 32 with Face Myself. Unlike his previous albums, this includes some songs written by Boe himself. Justin Bieber’s Purpose returns at number 37 following his performance at the Coachella festival last weekend. He also returns to the singles chart with Beauty And A Beat (with Nicki Minaj) at number eleven, five places above its original peak position in 2012. Daisies, a number one hit last year, has sprouted at number fifteen and Yukon is back at number 26. Yukon reached number eighteen last year.

Kinky Boobs

Swedehead

Things Will Only Get Bitter Thongs Will Only Get Better

Killed Queen

The Winner Fakes It All

This week's ramblings are available from the Blogs page and the Forums Index page.

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean stay at the top of the singles chart with Rein Me In. Pedants will hope that the success of this song will mean that more people can tell the difference between rein and reign. Rein Me In (not Reign Me In) has now spent seven weeks at number one. There have been many long-running number one singles this century. Whenever it happens, chart enthusiasts lament that these number ones don’t enter the public consciousness as much as songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You or Love Is All Around. Sadly, there is a lot of truth in this. A poll of the general public would probably show that Sam Fender is still a long way from being a household name. It would probably also show that a lot of people have no idea who Drake is. Lucky them. Bella Kay’s Iloveit cubed remains at number two. Tame Impala’s Dracula (on Columbia records) completes a static top three. Zara Larsson’s Lush Life is back up to number four. Alex Warren’s Fever Dream returns to the top five at number five. ANOTR’s first hit Relax In My Eyes had been in the top 100 for three months before it finally broke into the top forty. It peaked at number 33 in its tenth, and final, week in the broadcast part of the chart. Hit number two, Talk To You, launched into the top 100 last month and now climbs into the top forty at number 29. The Dutch duo are joined by 54 Ultra, a singer-songwriter from New Jersey. Californian singer-songwriter Malcolm Todd makes his UK top forty debut at number 40 with Earrings, a song I have already forgotten a few minutes after hearing it. There have been very few Malcolms named on single credits. One of the members of that exclusive club is Malcolm McLaren whose hits include Double Dutch and Madam Butterfly. Carl Malcolm’s Fattie Bum Bum is best forgotten. Harry Styles swaps one former number one with another this week. Aperture drops out of the top forty as it is no longer one of Styles’ three most popular tracks. Its replacement is his equally good first number one single, 2017’s Sign Of The Times at number 28. This slightly bizarre occurrence is entirely down to the quirks of chart rules. Most obviously, Aperture is a victim of the three-song limit. However, the biggest factor is that it has gone on to the Accelerated Chart Ratio meaning that its streams have halved in value. Sign Of The Times, on the other hand, has gone in the opposite direction. After its use in a film, it has been restored to the Standard Chart Ratio. Sean Paul and Keyshia Cole continue to climb the chart with the 20-year-old (When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me. It hits a new peak of number 24. I hope Tim is pleased. Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide climbs back up to number 36. If it had been released as a single at the time, some people might have been curious to find out what song was on the other side. Others wouldn’t have bothered. That lack of interest in b-sides probably led to many people buying Boney M’s Brown Girl In The Ring, not realising that it was on the b-side of the Rivers Of Babylon single they already owned. There is a dearth of new entries in the albums chart this week which means that this section will not take up much space. Those new entries start, and almost finish, with the number one. After topping the chart with his first two albums Dermot Kennedy may be over the moon to complete a hat-trick as The Weight Of The Woods rockets to the top. It follows Without Fear (2019) and Sonder (2022) in topping the chart. He is the first Irish solo artist to top the UK chart with their first three albums. While the US Kennedy political clan has Irish roots, I am not aware of any connection with this Irish Kennedy. Raye falls one place to number two after a week at the top. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving is at number three. Harry Styles climbs back up to number four with Kiss All The Time Disco Occasionally. BTS are at number five with Arirang. All of the top five albums have started their chart run at the top. Anaïs Marinho, recording as Arlo Parks, has a truly international background. While she was born in London, her ancestry is Nigerian, Chadian and French. She now lives in the USA. Her first two albums reached the top ten in the UK. Her third, Ambiguous Desire, ?is at number eleven. Her main co-writer on the album is Paul Epworth who has also worked with Adele (Rolling In The Deep, Skyfall), Florence and the Machine (Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)), and Coldplay (A Sky Full Of Stars, as producer) among many others. There is a new biopic on Michael Jackson who didn’t invent the moonwalk although he did do a lot to make it popular. That has led to an increase in streams of tracks from his Essential collection which helps it climb back into the top ten at number seven. Last week’s commentary referred to controversy surrounding Kanye West. By that time, some politicians had already started to call for him to be barred from entering the UK after the news that he would be headlining all three nights of the Wireless Festival in the summer. He has now been barred and the whole festival has been cancelled. As decisions by arts bodies go, the decision to choose West as a headliner is a definite arty miss. There are many re-entries in the albums chart this week. It is disappointing that Dark Side Of The Moon and The Race For Space are not among them. They do include the Beatles 1967-70 collection at number 39, a compilation that covers the time of the first moon landing, unless you think it was staged in a studio.

19 please

Ian Fletcher is back! After stints working on the 2012 Olympics and at the BBC Fletcher, played by Hugh Bonneville is now working on the 2026 World Cup. His assistant, inexplicably, is the loveable idiot Will Humphreys, still played by Hugh Skinner. David Tennant returns as the narrator of the mockumentary. I saw the first three episodes on iPlayer this evening and it is just as good as its predecessors. It has the additional benefit of a running joke as FIFA didn't give permission for their name to be used. Therefore, any mention of the self-important organisation is bleeped out.

Friday 10th April West Ham United 1-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers (20:00) Saturday 11th April Arsenal 2-1 AFC Bournemouth (12:30) Brentford 1-2 Everton Burnley 0-2 Brighton & Hove Albion Crystal Palace 1-1 Newcastle United Nottingham Forest 1-2 Aston Villa Liverpool 3-1 Fulham (17:30) Sunday 12th April Sunderland 2-1 Tottenham Hotspur (14:00) Chelsea 0-2 Manchester City (16:30) Monday 13th April Manchester United 3-1 Leeds United (20:00)

TACO

Ed Davey was calling for West to be barred from entering the country last week. If West's only offence was to make anti-semitic remarks that would be bad enough. However, he went further than that by endorsing merchandise with the same message. That's a long-term thing, not an off-the-cuff remark.

I'm sure it was rehearsed many times to get the timing right. However, he only had one chance of getting it right in the actual shoot, and he nailed it. If he'd fluffed his lines, there would have been no second chance.

Number 11 is indeed an impressive achievement for a song that is very different from the mainstream. That doesn't make me change my mind about how it should have been a long-running number one.

It should be a multi-week number one.

James Burke was arguably the BBC's best science correspondent in the 1970s and '80s. He worked on Tomorrow's World before fronting his own programmes, including Connections. On The Last leg last night, I was reminded of perhaps his finest moment, demonstrating brilliant timing in his only chance of getting the take right. He had one chance to get it right and he absolutely nailed it. Burke will be 90 in December. It would be great if the BBC finally celebrated his career in the same way that they have paid tribute to other, equally brilliant, broadcasters. The Greatest Shot In Television