17September

Voters in Scotland approved the proposed devolution, and agreed that it should be allowed to vary income taxes. Prime minister Mister Tony Blair told trade unions to modernise or die; George Carey also spoke to delegates. Irish foreign minister Ray Burke defended accepting £30,000 during the 1989 election campaign. Mary Robinson resigned as president to become the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire deposed earlier in 1997, died in exile.

Ireland qualified for the 1998 football World Cup. The top clubs in Scotland announced plans to break away and form a new Premier Division. Adam Hollioake was appointed England captain for one-day matches; Mike Atherton will stay on for Tests. Warwickshire won the Sunday cricket league. Tim Henman defeated Marc Rosset to win a title in Uzbekistan.

Twenty-six entries into the 75, plus a second re-entry for Gary Barlow, now marked down to 49p in Woolies. The stuff we know nothing about: Shades, Serenade, 75; PJ, Happy days, 72; Helen Love, Does your heart go boom?, 71; Chevelle Franklyn and Beenie Man, Dancehall queen, 70; Chilli and Carrapicho, Tic tic tac (dance to boi bumba!), 59; B-Crew featuring Barbara Tucker, Ultra Nate, Dajae and Mone; Partay feeling, 45. KRS-One entered at 66 with Step into a world; we've heard of him, but that's about it.

Some acts had a Follow That! moment with somewhat less success: Monaco's third and final hit was Shine (someone who needs me) at 55; Mr President put I give you my heart at 52; and Dubstar's Cathedral park entered at 41.

Sixteen new into the forty, beginning with the second and final hit for Aussie soul singer Deni Hines, I like the way made 37. Rap from Praxis, Turn me out (turn to sugar) was a number 35 hit, and is remembered (if at all) for its silly title. Tin Tin Out entered at 31 with Strings for Yasmin, their big hit would come with the next single, Here's where the story ends. Marilyn Manson's Tourniquet made 28, about what it deserved.

On 13 October 1987, the two or three viewers of BBC daytime import Neighbours saw a new character, Charlene. The actress behind the dungarees was Kylie Minogue, and she would quickly become a Grade-A Popstar, with a capital P. Already a star in Australia, Kylie released the ever-so-simple ditty I should be so lucky at the start of 1988. It took about ten minutes to write, and spent five weeks as the UK's best-seller. It was the start of five years with Stock Aitken and Waterman, and (thanks to an entirely literal interpretation of the rules) four years as the country's biggest indie music star, until S/A/W were defined as non-indie. Truth be told, Minogue's early career was a bit samey, and by 1991 the cracks were beginning to show. What do I have to do became her first hit to miss the top five, and The word is out barely scraped into the top 20. Minogue split with S/A/W at the end of 1992, and moved to Deconstruction records, with whom she put out a dance-tinged album in 1994. Lead single Confide in me hit number 2, its two successors just missed the ten. A duet with Nick Cave set the mood for her next work.

By 1997, Kylie Minogue was trying to throw off the last shackles of her wholesome past, and employed some credible writers for her sixth studio album, Impossible Princess. Kylie had writing credits on the entire album, but attention here was centred on two songs co-written with James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers. Some kind of bliss was one of those songs. The opening guitar figure is pure Manics, but the cheeky organ and arrival of the horns just before the vocals colour it as a pop song. The lyrics aren't up to much, a two-line verse is repeated, a two-line chorus is repeated, there's a little more adventure in the second verse, then the chorus is repeated for a minute. The song's heart is the lazy groove, as if Minogue is floating off the ground, swooping over a flower-strewn meadow. It's perfect upbeat, bouncy pop, was the obvious choice as the lead-off single ... and promptly ran into the nineteenth pillar of the Tunnel of Mawk, crashed, and the airbag deflated at number 22. It remains the only release of Kylie's career not to make the UK top 20, and we would rather expect a careful re-release would set that right.

The mawkish climate of late 1997 ensured that Deconstruction would whip out the company's airbrush and take the title off the album. Two further singles would make number 14, then Kylie would take a couple of years off before signing to Parlophone records, and making a stream of tedious and trivial post-disco records that all sound exactly the same. Ill-health has prevented Minogue from recording since 2004, and we hope against hope that her new material - due before the end of the year - represents some sort of progression.

Snoop Doggy Dogg entered at 21 with We just wanna party with you, and Jaydee put Plastic dreams in at 18. Nope, don't remember that at all. Chemical Brothers were in Follow That! mode, but the two number ones ensured only that Elektrobank could get an airing before people decided it's rubbish. Number 17 was more than it deserved, and until The salmon dance we would deem it their worst single.

Just shy of the top ten were entries for the Sundays, Summertime at number 15; for Sly and Robbie featuring Simply Red, Night nurse at 14; and Mark Morrison's Who's the mack! at 13. It was Morrison's first single since his latest jail sentence ended, but only added to his criminal record. Sly and Robbie were covering a Marianne Faithfull number, with vocal extensions from Mick Hucknall; by this time, he was Simply Red. We'll cover the Sundays in more detail on Thursday.

On the Network Chart, something approaching normal service was resuming. The Brand New Heavies were in at 30, one week ahead of release; Dario G re-entered at 28, and the Lighthouse Family and M People were both breaking the top 20 well before release. Meredith Brooks, Todd Terry, and Texas all improved their places. Back on the real chart, two big fallers out of the top ten: Finley Quaye (10-25) and Cast (7-24) were overtaken by events. More natural declines for Mariargh Cantsing (8-16), Tina Moore (9-12) and Puff Daddy (5-11). First of the five new entries into the top ten was 4 seasons of loneliness, the new release from Boys II Men. The group had broken through in the UK five years previously, when the wonderful soul track End of the road took two months to climb from 36 to 1. I'll make love to you made number 5 in 1994, and that duet with Mariargh in 1995 went one better. After this hit, the group stopped having hits, and rather vanished into the ether: a greatest hits collection emerged in early 2002, and equally vanished.

All Saints were showing remarkable tenacity, dropping three to 9 in their third week out. Portishead had won the Mercury prize in 1995; the first single from their new album was All mine, entered at 8, but we couldn't tell you what it sounded like if someone were playing it right now. It's their biggest hit single, but nowhere near their best known. Hanson dropped three to 7, and in at 6 was the great insect hit maker, Cricket Martin. (Ant, dos, tres) Maria had been promoted on all the Saturday morning shows, but it was a false start to his career. Not until 1999's Livin' la vida locust would Cricket return to the top ten, but that spent three weeks at number 1. The insect rubbed his legs on Meja's Private emotion, a top five hit from spring 2000, and returned to the top three later that year with She-beetle. After that, it appears that someone poured a kettle of hot water over him - apart from the number 11 single I don't fly in 2005, we've heard nothing from Cricket Martin in the years since. We win!

Fastest climber time, as Chumbawumba, Will Smith, and the Verve all dropped two to 5, 4, and 3. It's the third week in four that the Chumbas and Smith had been the fastest climbers. Number one on all the midweeks, but down to number 2 by the Sunday, was George Michael's You have been loved. It's the sixth and final release from his Older album, ensuring that all six singles made the top 3. With a further release at either end (1993's Five live ep and 1998's Older), Yog was stringing together eight top three singles in a row, only just behind the nine huge smashes that bridged the end of Wham!'s career and the start of his solo work.

Two weeks earlier, ITV had ripped up its schedules so that it could carry pillar-to-post coverage of the aftermath of a car crash in Paris. One of the shows that went out in a severely altered form was the network's lunchtime yoof news programme, Straight Up!. It was presented by Kate Thornton, recently fired from the editor's hotseat at Smash Hits. We can blame her for many things: axing Black Type from the pages of the world's most swingorilliant pop fortnightly, dragging Top of the Pops into the gutter, hosting Celebrity Wrestling, and generally being even less substantial than Willo the Wisp.

For one crime, she cannot be forgiven. On the way into work that sunny morning, la Thornbird was struck by an idea of extreme evilness: set footage of one of the people killed by a drunk driver to the strains of Candle in the wind. And so it came to pass that the viewing hundreds were bemused by shots of some out-of-her-depth blonde bimbette with nothing but sawdust between her ears being played in slow motion, with some abysmal guff falling out of their television speakers. Then the producers played the film montage.

Elton John and his songwriter, Bernie Taupin, had originally intended to work on a new version of Your song for a funeral the following week, but a mix-up ensured that the re-written tune was Candle in the wind. It was put on the B-side of Elton's scheduled single, Something about the way you look tonight, and released two days ahead of schedule on Saturday 13 September. The single sold 658,000 copies on that day alone, the largest ever one-day sale, and record stores suggested that they could have sold a couple of million if there had been stocks. To the surprise of no-one, it was the week's biggest-selling single. Andy Lown of Tower Records said, The demand has outweighed anything we have ever done. I think it will still be number one at Christmas.

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