24September

A passenger train passed through a red signal and crashed into a freight train at Southall, killing six. Nine tourists were killed in Cairo as petrol bombs and bullets were fired at a bus. The people of Wales narrowly voted in favour of an Assembly to take over the powers of the Welsh Office. William Vague defended his criticism of the government's handling of a recent funeral. The completely forgettable Hugh Dykes defected from the Blues to the Yellows. The government launched its Kill your speed not a child propaganda campaign, and a self-assessment tax campaign featuring Dale Winton and an elephant. The Royal Mint announced that the UK was suffering from an acute shortage of pennies.

Kitty Kelley's book The Royals was published; the tome discusses how the Windsors obscured their German ancestry, claimed that George VI's wife was a racist bastard, that he relied on artificial insemination to produce his two daughters, that his elder daughter was addicted to sex, and that her husband fathered children in every port. Hachette declined to publish the book in the UK, claiming that it would be libellous. The UK print run was put in a dusty corner of a warehouse for a couple of years, and quietly sold through remainder stores in 1999 and 2000.

Cricket's first-class counties turned down Maclaurin's proposals to re-structure the first-class game, preferring a two-division structure in both first-class and one-day formats from 1999. Glamorgan won this year's championship. Newcastle beat Barcelona in the European Cup; Celtic and Liverpool drew their UEFA Cup match 2:2.

BBC-2 had a night of programmes celebrating the 30th birthday of Radio 1, far more than the station itself bothered to do. Included in the evening's entertainment was a celebratory promotion that would take on a life of its own.

UK Singles Chart for w/c 21 September 1997

Number One	Candle in the wind '97, Elton John, 2nd week, 774th in sequence
Highest new entry	Sunchyme - Dario G - number 2
Fastest climber (within top 40)	Never gonna let you go - Tina Moore - up 3 to 9
Fastest climber (within top 75)	as above
Lemming-like fall (within top 40)	Plastic dreams - Jaydee - down 22 to 40
Lemming-like fall (within top 75)	Tourniquet - Marilyn Manson - down 29 to 57
Top 40 debuts	Bellini, Dario G, Adam F, Third Eye Blind, TJR Featuring Xavier
Top 40 exits	Brownstone, Genesis, The Notorious BIG, TJR Featuring Xavier
Top 75 debuts	Bellini, Dario G, Adam F, Freakyman, JDS, Niagra, Vicki Sue Robinson, Third Eye Blind, TJR Featuring Xavier
Top 75 exits	The Adventures Of Stevie V, China Drum, Fluke, Freakyman, Niagra, No Mercy, Vicki Sue Robinson

Twenty-three new entries into the top 75; the ones we remember nothing about are China Drum, Somewhere else, 74; Freakyman, Discobug '97, 68; Niagra, Cloudburst, 65; JDS, Nine ways, 61; Vicki Sue Robinson, House of joy, 48; Fluke, Squirt, 46; and we assume that Eat Static's Interceptor (44) did not include a sample of Ah cannae get a good zap, Mikey. Old songs revisited: The Adventures of Stevie V had reached number 2 in 1990 with Dirty cash. Remixed, re-released, and subtly re-titled Dirty ca$h, the song tanked at number 69, which is about where it should have reached first time out.

A future classic entered at 55, Savage Garden's To the moon and back did absolutely nothing on this release, but after the success of Truly madly deeply the following spring, would be re-released in August 1998. It became the group's biggest hit, reaching number 3. It's unfortunate that Savage Garden are remembered only for their ballads, Truly... and I knew I loved you, for they were best on fast tunes like this one and The animal song (16 in 1999). Mike Scott was taking time out of the Waterboys to have a solo career. Love anyway was the first single from his second solo album Still Burning, entered at 50, exited, and that's his solo career just about done. Third Eye Blind entered at 37 with Semi-charmed life; we'll discuss this record further on Thursday. Chris de Burgh joined us at 35 with the exceptionally mawkish So beautiful.

A year earlier, Genesis had parted company with lead singer Phil Collins. After auditioning such luminaries as Paul Carrack from Mike + the Mechanics, and quondam Marillion vocalist Fish, the replacement was Ray Wilson, who had been the voice on Stiltskin's much-derided number one single. We've never worked out why Inside should attract so much critical vitriol. It was a shamelessly deliberate parody of the grunge scene, made purely to sell jeans and expose the way that grunge had completely sold out to commercial interests. (See also: Panty smile.) If it had been done by Spitting Image, we'd have remembered it with affection; because Wilson and his session musicians kept up the pretence of being a real act, the critics damned them. Anyway, Wilson was a competent vocalist, but the album Calling All Stations didn't sell, a tour was scrapped part-way through, Wilson was fired, and Genesis would vanish into the ether. Until, with a certain sense of inevitability, Phil Collins returned for a reunion tour (2006) and yet another hits album (2007).

TJR featuring Xavier was in at 28 with Just gets better, and Wyclef Jean featuring Refugee Allstars appeared at 25 performing Guantanamera. This is one of over 800 versions of the song popularised by Jose Fernandez Diaz in the 1930s. Fernandez was a radio presenter who would write short ditties about quotidian events and set them to this tune. Wyclef's version was inspired by the canonical lyrics, but included some English-language commentary on matters of the day.

Some proper soul from Joe, The love scene in at 22; and the final hit from neo-doo-wop group Brownstone, Kiss and tell makes 21. Modern dance from Adam F, Circles enters at 20. He is, in fact, Adam Fenton, the son of Shane Fenton, better known as Alvin Stardust. Fenton fils would have one more single, Music in my mind, a number 27 smash the following February. He's since concentrated on production work, including LL Cool J's 2000 opus Goat. Fourth and final single from Blur's eponymous album was MOR, in at number 15. Fourth single from Robbie Williams's still-unreleased album is South of the border, and it only makes number 14. Anxious days for the erstwhile Thatter, as he becomes the third former member to miss the top 10. The album emerges from promotion limbo in a week's time, and it looks like the next single, released in time for Christmas, will be a do-or-die affair.

Out of the top ten went Portishead, 8-26; All Saints, 9-17; Boys to Men, 10-16; and Hanson, 7-11. Something unusual as Sly and Robbie's Night nurse climbs from its entry point, up a place to 13; the remaining song in the top 15 is Puff Daddy, dropping just one to 12. On the Network Chart, the new M People single was at number 12, just one place adrift of the maximum achievable by a pre-release single. The Lighthouse Family were also in the top 20, and Oasis's newie was comfortably in the 30. Meredith Brooks's bounce-back continued, there were post-release bumps for Finlay Quaye and the Sundays, but the new longest-stayer was from Ultra Nate; Free was now down at 60 on sales, but still top ten amongst the airplay.

Cricket Martin dropped four to 10, and Tina Moore bounced back up 3 to 9. Bellini was one of this year's Ibiza hits, played a lot in the sunny Med, and bought by clubbers on their return to the UK, hoping to recapture their holiday, or remember the fit bird they couldn't pull. Samba de Janeiro was in at 8, her only hit. Blackstreet's second top ten hit of the year was Fix, the new-soul group combined new-fangled samples and old-fashioned harmonies to have a number 7 hit. George Michael fell from 2 to 6, Will Smith and the Verve dropped a place each, allowing Chumbawumba's Tubthumping to go back up two to 3.

Paul Spencer, Stephen Spencer, and Scott Rosser took their group's name from Dario Grady, manager-for-life of Crewe Alexandra. Sunchyme was a bunch of samples - the chanting from Life in a northern town, some steel drums, a bundle of beats - and made something rather special. It's a very upbeat song, with a clear debt to Deep Forest, and one that ostentatiously celebrates life in all its forms. That explains why it fell off the radio in the first week of September, when controllers found that living was the last thing on their minds. There were plenty of mixes of this track, including one by Sash; this became the third number 2 hit he would work on so far this year.

Dario G attempted to replicate the success the following summer with Carnaval de Paris, which cleaved a bit too closely to Sunchyme's formula. Still, it gave them a number 5 hit; a tweaking in 2002 sounded very dated, and only made 34. The album - trailed in the Sunchyme sleeve as Super Dario Land, but re-titled Sunmachine - eventually emerged in summer 1998, and came alive with the title track, featuring a contribution from David Bowie. It's world music set to dance beats, and works rather better than it might sound. Sunmachine the single would scrape into the top 20. In 2000, Voices was taken from one of the many films where Leonardo di Caprio walks around with his shirt off and was lucky to make 37. Dream to me returned Dario G to the top ten at the start of 2001, with Dolores O'Riordan re-recording her vocals from the Cranberries' 1994 hit Dreams. That was from the scheduled second album In Full Colour, the album came out in Germany, but there was no UK release.

The grop - by now reduced to Paul Spencer and session producers - put out Heaven is closer in 2003, a re-make of Fiction Factory's 1984 hit Feels like heaven. A version of Ring of fire was promoted to football clubs in 2004, but a commercial release for the 2006 world cup was delayed until October, and was not eligible for the singles chart.

So, with a song celebrating life as this week's highest new entry, is it time to stop celebrating death? Perhaps not; the best-selling single of the week was Elton John's Candle in the wind '97. And it's not just by a short margin: while Dario G's 85,000 copies would have made an above-average chart-topper by 1997 standards, it was beaten by a margin of slightly less than One And A Half Million copies. One store in Bristol was selling the record from the back of their delivery van, not even bothering to unload the single into the store. Most of these sales went to people who left us rather worried: one man from Oxford said, I'm buying eight or nine copies for family and another copy which won't be played, as a collector's item.. James Masterton would go on to call this a kind of social duty completely unrelated to what's actually in the package.

In addition to the 604,000 copies sold on the previous Saturday, 400,000 copies went between Sunday and Tuesday, another 650,000 during the working week, and another 430,000 on Saturday. In rough terms, that's 2.1 million copies in eight days. More copies of this single went in a week and a day than any other 1997 release; indeed, more copies of this single had gone in eight days than a handful of other records.

These days, it's possible to pick up used copies of Elton's single for a quid plus postage. Still sealed? Two quid. The vinyl of Interceptor will also cost you a toonie, TJR and Xavier's single goes for three quid, Genesis's CD single the four quid it cost on first release, and Adam F's 12-incher will set you back a fiver. Those, we suggests, are collectors' items. Elton's disk is not.

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