Happy New Year to you. Last month, in this piece, I wrote about Mariah Carey rewriting UK chart history when her seasonal hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You” reached #1, 26 years after its original release. It had previously reached #2 on four separate occasions, a unique feat for any song. As noted… Continue reading Stuck at 2: now Wham! rewrite chart history
Last Sunday night Lewis Hamilton won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award for the second time, a deserved winner after his record-breaking season in Formula 1. The Sports Personality of the Year (or SPOTY, as I shall call it from now on) has been awarded annually since 1954, when athlete Christopher Chataway was the first winner. The first SPOTY… Continue reading SPOTY research
How is your knowledge of Irish geography? If you have never visited the island of Ireland it may be rather hazy. This earlier piece, prompted by the All-Ireland Hurling Final between Limerick and Waterford, reflects on how I got to know my way around the place, on childhood holidays and then as an adult. I have spent time in 23 of the… Continue reading More about Irish counties (“It’s a long way to Tipperary…”)
“Stuck at 2” has been a regular theme on this Blog, with articles and lists about the songs and artists that made it to #2 in the UK chart but didn’t make it to #1. There are links to all of these pieces here, on the Trivia Menu. In 2019 Mariah Carey made chart history… Continue reading Stuck at 2: Mariah Carey changes everything
Today is the First Sunday of Advent and in keeping with tradition I have dug out our handful of Christmas-themed CDs. Also, as is now traditional with that music format, I had to track down a CD player that still works, apart from the one in the car. The first one I tried (a portable… Continue reading The earliest Christmas #1
The Monday night quiz marathon is back. As reported here in March, BBC2 has modified its schedule over the last year and now broadcasts 90 minutes of serious quizzing from 7.30pm on a Monday. This comprises three shows that are due to build up to Grand Finals next spring. “University Challenge”, which now has a… Continue reading Word of the week: Angstrom
Back in 2018, in this piece, I posed the following question: What do the songs “Virginia Plain” and “Up the Junction” have in common with each other, and with no other singles that have reached the UK Top 10? It’s one of my favourite pop trivia challenges. The answer was revealed in that earlier piece,… Continue reading “Up the Junction” and “Virginia Plain” revisited
The current UK #1 is “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry featuring MNEK, enjoying its fourth week at the top of the charts. I hadn’t heard it until a week ago, when I used this YouTube clip to check it out. Since then I have also heard it on BBC Radio 2 and have realized… Continue reading More Pop Trivia: a few updates prompted by “Head & Heart”, the current UK #1
ITV are currently screening repeats of Series 2 of quiz show “Tenable” on weekday afternoons. This piece from July 2019 lists the questions and answers from the first 11 episodes of that series. I described it as “Raw ‘Tenable’ data” because it was not edited and tidied up in the same way as some of… Continue reading “Tenable” Series 2, repeated July 2020, episode 12 onwards
Back in April I posted three pieces, each of which listed a week’s worth of questions from Pop Master, the mid-morning quiz hosted by Ken Bruce on weekdays on BBC Radio 2. The most recent of the pieces, for week ending 17 April 2020, is here, and contains links to its predecessors. Before April I… Continue reading A surfeit of Pop Master
