I sit in Robbie's front room twice a week. Same chair. Same cup of tea — he doesn't drink it, but he boils the kettle anyway because that's what you do. The flat's floor to ceil in, isn't it. Records, tapes, CDs, books stacked on top of books. Every Guinness Book of Hit Singles from 1977 onwards, spines cracked. The earlier ones he got at car boot sales in Birkenhead, fifty pence, before people knew what they were worth.
Last week I was sat there and he handed me something. A bit of paper, yellow, thin as anything. The NME from November 1952. The first ever UK singles chart. Al Martino at number one with 'Here in My Heart'. Twelve songs. The whole of British music was twelve songs that week. And whoever typed that list out on a Friday afternoon had no idea they were startin' somethin' that would still be goin' seven decades later.
I held that bit of paper and thought — someone kept this. For seventy years. Through house moves and clear-outs and probably a few moments when they thought "why am I keepin' this?" But they did. And now it's here, in Robbie's flat, in my hands.
That's where this story starts. Not with data or statistics or market research. With a bloke who knew this stuff mattered before anyone else did.
Before 1952, there was no chart. The music press done their own little surveys — phone a few shops, see what's sellin', print a list. That's it. No science. NME were the first to turn that into a proper published chart every week, and from there it grew. By 1960 the Record Retailer chart was the official one. By 1963 the Sunday lunchtime chart show was a national habit. Families round the radio. Dinner on laps. Sunday dinner interrupted by the countdown. Try doin' that today.
Some things worth knowin' about the early charts. 'Here in My Heart' by Al Martino, first ever number one. 1952. The chart had twelve positions. Twelve. They didn't even have a name for what they were buildin' — it was just a bit of paper at the back of a music magazine.
1969 the BBC launched its own chart with a bigger panel of shops. The British Market Research Bureau took over. More data, more accuracy, more money involved. The chart wasn't just a list anymore, it was business.
1978 the Top 40 proper started. BBC Radio 1, Tom Browne, Saturday afternoons. Forty songs, one show. I was born that year. Grew up with it. Never known a Saturday without the chart. Between four and seven, life stopped. You knew where you were gonna be. In front of the radio.
Robbie's got every chart show recorded somewhere. Cassettes with the date and presenter written on 'em in biro. The first ever Top 40 show is on a tape in that flat somewhere, probably been rewound a thousand times. I've seen it. He won't let me play it — says the tape's too fragile. But I've seen it.
1984, Band Aid. 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' fastest-sellin' single in UK history. The chart wasn't just a commercial tool anymore — it was a cultural event. A charity single goin' straight to number one felt like the whole country holdin' hands. I was six. I remember my mum cryin' when it came on the radio. I didn't understand why until I was older.
1991 the chart changed again. CD singles outsold vinyl for the first time. The chart included data from more shops, then supermarkets, then downloads, then streams. The physical single — the thing Robbie's been collectin' for forty years — started dyin'.
But here's the thing. People still care. Saturday afternoon, Radio 1, the countdown. Still there. The format's changed but the ritual hasn't. Millions of people still want to know what's number one. They might not write it in an exercise book anymore, but they're listenin'.
I said at the start this is Robbie's knowledge, just written down by me. And it is. But what Robbie really taught me isn't the facts. It's holdin' that 1952 NME and knowin' someone typed it out on a Friday, never knowin' what they'd started. Robbie's flat is full of moments like that. Every record, every magazine, every tape — someone listened to a chart show and thought "I need to remember this." And he did. For forty years.
That's the UK Top 40. Not a list. A diary of the nation, written week by week, song by song, by people like Robbie who cared enough to keep the receipts.