Live blog: Rage Against The Machine versus a small boy with white teeth

It's the chart battle everyone's talking about. Simon Cowell thinks it's stupid. 7Digital reckon X Factor's Joe McFlurry won't get to number one. So I've settled down in front of a warm radio to being you a live blog of the chart result as it happens.

6.31pm: Someone is on the wireless comparing RATM to David and Joe McDonalds to Goliath. This can't be right?

6.35pm: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow," says the stupid charity single that Peter Kay did. This is at number four, just ahead of 3OH!3 and their annoying shouty song Starstrukk with pretend lesbian Katy Perry. Already, with three more hits to go, I feel like ending it all and forgetting about tomorrow forever.

6.37pm: This supposed 'medley' (for that, read 'malady') is going on forever. At least we know RATM and Joe McCavity are in the top three...

6.40pm: So then who is number three? The insipid presenter fellow has just read out a text saying Killing In The Name is "just noise". Surely that's what music is? It's not something you can taste, is it? Right then, they've finally got to number three in the UK singles chart. Oh no! It's Lady Gaga and her "rah rah rasputin" nonsense! You've got to love her videos, though.

6.43pm: I'm quite excited by this. In a year in which Twitter has defined as well as followed the news, it's a real moment for the internet. I bought Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name first time round, and it's as good as anything to stick one in the eye of the annual X Factor Christmas number one stitch up.

6.45pm: Radio One is playing a recap of the whole Joe McElderberry versus RATM battle, Rocky-style. They'll no doubt recap the chart so far. Any moment now; just minutes to go.

6.46pm: Rage Against The Machine sold 100,000 downloads just yesterday. I'm feeling quietly confident.

6.47pm: And the number two single and runner-up is...

6.47pm: JOE McCRAPPYPANTS! Ha ha ha ha ha!

6.49pm: Simon Cowell, the internet has spoken. Please hand your King Of Slush card into security on the way out. This is amazing news - I just hope Scott Mills remembers to play the censored verson in a few minutes (unlike the embarrassed Simon Mayo (I think) on the chart show back in 1990).

"Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes you're going to have to lose."
Joe McElderry, 2009

6.56pm: The largest first-week digital sales ever (does that count for an old track?) and the most downloads ever sold for a Christmas number one single. Well done, chaps. Zack de la RATM says "when young people decide to take action, they can make the seemingly impossible possible." Bless, he just called me young!

6.58pm: Those who downloaded are justified for wearing the badge saying "screw you, X Factor, your time is up". I'm not quite sure if those adapted lyrics would scan, but you get the idea. And it's also quite a while where we've had a number one where there's a man going "UH!" all over the place.

Hurrah! 'Night all.

A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article

Maimed

In the 1970s, thousands of children were killed or maimed on Britain's roads. A cutesy animated kid and his cat warned us to take more care. The Prodigy turned this innocent bairn into a drug-hoovering club gibbon with debut hit Charly. Rave was born, and Kenny Everett, who voiced the cat, died of shock.

Trumped

While Sesame Street and Trumpton birthed kids 'n' drugs anthems photocopied from the Charly original, the Prodigy retreated into the studio to record an album. Experience was a crap name, and the music, although iconic, became a joke in grunge-obsessed Britain. Still, they proved techno bands could turn out a decent album.

Burnt

Experience was beaten to the Mercury Music Prize by Manchester band M People: the repercussions of this were felt 15 years later when the B Of The Bang sculpture fell apart. Alex Garland, who designed the Experience's cover, went on to write the screenplay for 28 Days Later in which Manchester was burnt to the ground. M People have won nothing since.

Goaded

On mid-90s follow-up Music for the Jilted Generation, the Prodge sidled up to sweaty crusties Pop Will Eat Itself to stamp their feet against the Criminal Justice Bill. So many voodoo people bought this album, they became the same establishment they so hated. They goaded people with "the poison" and "the remedy" simultaneously, which seems like a pretty toothless threat to me.

Sandwiched

After D:Ream won the election for "New" Labour, the Prodigy did wonders for the sale of Stella with abuse anthem Smack My Bitch Up. The video for this single used lesbianism in a way that only Katy Perry could wish for.  Parent album The Fat Of The Land turned band member Keith into a spiky-haired firestarting freak. It was quite the in-thing to be "psychosomatic addict insane". Fat Of The Land was the sixth most successful LP of 1997 in the UK, sandwiched between Celine Dion and the Spice Girls. There are so many potential jokes here, but I'm ignoring every one of 'em.

Things
Between 1997 and 2008, the Prodge did quite a lot of things that precisely nobody cares about.

Ends.

So there it is. All you need to know about the Prodigy. They have come a long way since what is offically known as their 'Kenny Everett phase'. The dear old Prodders have returned with an album of nuanced ballads called Invaders Must Die. Like a flesh-eating disease, it has grown on me, and I fear I was a little harsh in my review last week.

If this scant biography was too long for you to read, settle for this even briefer biog posted by a friend on my Facebook page:

"Band formed, did stuff, went away, did more stuff a bit later. Shouted a lot."