Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one?

So Bowie didn't get to number one last week.

Great.

That's that, then. Let's Dance remains his most recent musical legacy of any widespread significance. Sigh.

The thin white berk had a great chance to revive an important musical tradition in the UK pop charts: that of the cheeky New Year number one. It should be easy. No-one buys anything apart from headache pills and diet books in the week after new year, so number one should be a walkover.

The new year charts seem dull these days. A guaranteed post-Xmas X Factor chart-topper, some r'n'b guff and that's about it. A drum 'n' bass track tiptoed in at number 100 and it seems Bon Jovi got back in the top 40, but neither are worth tweeting home about.

Iron Maiden famously topped the charts in 1991 with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter, followed by the ridiculous sadistic monks Enigma. Made-up people often took the chance for a cheeky early-January number one, with Mr Blobby and Bob The Builder inexplicably retaining their top positions after Christmas because there was naff all else to buy.

Cotton Eye Joe. Chocolate Salty Balls. Even Daniel Bedingfield's squeaky anthem Gotta Get Thru This. You cannot tell me that those tracks would have had the same chart-dominating impact without lower sales across the rest of the January charts, as great (or otherwise) as they were.

This weekend may well see the return to the top of the charts by Eminem, 50 Cent and that kazoo-voiced triangle man from Maroon 5. If they were covering White Town's Your Woman, or Aphex Twin's We Are The Music Makers, I'd class it as a cheeky new year number one.

They're not. And so it goes.

Further Fats:  Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant (2010)

The tractor thing

This is the place where you go to get the latest music news, yeah? It's like a news ticker but it's straight into your brain, yeah?

Eminem's gangsta-Geppetto Dr Dre is going all Aphex Twin on us by promising an instrumental concept album. He's going to make the sound of each planet in the solar system.

How did you like that news? This is like MTV with Tim Kash and all the stuff on the bottom of the screen that disappears before you have a chance to read it.

Sweat-drenched pill-thrilling Manchester club Sankeys Soap is going all global, like Cream, Ministry Of Sound or the recession. They're setting up in New York with a resident DJ called A-Luv (probably from Yorkshire).

I'm so up-to-date, I'm future. Like Perez Hilton. 50 Cent's appearing in Eastenders, yeah? Massive Attack will revive the War Child charity franchise, yeah? The Gorillaz' Jamie Hewlitt is exhibiting beautiful watercolours at the Contact Theatre, yeah? First thing in the morning, Lady Gaga smells of tractors and not in a good way, yeah?

I'm going to get Bill Turnbull to present my blog from now on. I will have an outside broadcast unit permanently positioned in a street with no-one in. I will constantly remind you of the time. IT'S TEN PAST TEN! SIXTEEN TO THREE! WELL PAST TEATIME!

Of course, everything in this blog post was true apart from (a) this being the place to get the latest news, (b) Bill Turnbull and MTV and (c) the tractor thing.

Five vocalists I definitely want to work with if I was a music producer who was definitely wanting to work with any one of five vocalists

Wesley Willis

Epically prolific Chicaco-born schizophrenic who reached Shaun Ryder-like heights with Rock N Roll McDonald's. Try this rhyming couplet for size: "A Big Mac has 26 grams of fat, a Quarter-Pounder has 28 grams of fat." Although his vocals were like a drunk hyena being attacked by a cabal of badgers, he brought a warm humanity that would have provided rich material for an overwrought X Factor biography piece - if he hadn't died before X Factor was invented, that is.

Dizzee Rascal

He sounds like he wants to sound like Scooby Doo. Enough said.

The scary woman from Human Nature

Let the carnival begin. Every pleasure every sin. Gary Clail's Human Nature was a strange old beast from the early 90s: a fairly standard dance track with the kind of choppy pianos that were de rigeur at the time, but with added Scary Transvestite who seemed to be dressed in the contents of 20 thousand grandma's jewellery boxes. At least, I think she was a transvestite - or, to be more accurate, drag artist. She sounded like a heroin-hit Boy George. Wait. It's Boy George, isn't it?

50 Cent (pictured)

The second most famous Jackson of all time (yes, that's his real name) decided to Get Rich instead of Die Trying, which must have taken a lot of courage. His rapping is singularly the most awful style since Robbie Williams tried to toast all over his middle eights. I think it's meant to sound lazy, but it just comes across as... well, lazy. He is the Barney The Dinosaur of rap, although in honour of that, his vocal chords should be declared the fifth element of hip hop. Despite my mockery, I would love to hear his version of Squarepusher's Red Hot Car.

Polly Harvey

The Mercury Music Prize got it right in 2001. Potato-gizzling -guzzling* sculptress Harvey is a folk singer from the depths of hell and she is wonderful. She is the most famous saxophonist not primarily known for playing the saxomophone. Her vocals are like felt drizzled in acid. She is definitely not to be confused with the depressive member of East 17, nor with the failed footballer and So Solid Crew MC, nor with the rabbit from Donnie Darko that tormented Jimmy Stewart as he jumped off that bridge (I think I got that right).

* Edit: I preferred 'gizzling'.

A low-denominator, low-rent scally by any other name would smell like sweets

When I was young and unwrinkly, I went flyposting to promote a night called Automa.

In my misty dreamcloud memory, I wore a hooded top and tried to look street despite spilling wallpaper paste all over my trousers.

It was a partial success. Manchester was plastered with Automa posters right up to the point where I got chased out the city by some bad boy gangster types.

You try running when your legs are stuck together.

It was no surprise, then, to find these Warehouse Project posters discarded near my house. They advertise the weekend just gone, headlined by the leg-end in his own lunchbox Dave Clarke.

The perpretrators of this oft-tolerated crime of flyposting have probably been strangled by some razor sharp bling or, even worse, been made to listen to a 50 Cent album all the way through.

Or maybe, just maybe, they couldn't be arsed and went to the pub instead.

There's an art to a good poster. These ones promoting the Warehouse Project are instantly recognisable thanks to a basic template they use for all of them.

Thank goodness too for Bill Drummond's understanding of a poster that does what it says on the tin, or Underworld's eye for a brilliant image.

Just save us please from the anti-Christ of quality, the Bop.

This infernal itch of a night continues to drown Manchester in low-denominator low-rent advertising that promises, "whilst the rest of club land goes high class, the Bop remains true to its roots... drinks prices are still dangerously low."

They add, "a relaxed dress code means you do get the odd scally". There is no other kind of scally, surely?

This blog post has been brought to you by my inflated middle-class Grauniad-reading ego. I'm off to clean my trousers.