Anyone who had a chart

As newfolder points out in the comments down there, the brave attempt to kick off Capital of Culture year by seizing the number one slot with, erm, a cover of a Cilla Black song hasn't exactly been a roaring success.

Indeed, Atomic Kitten didn't even manage to make the top 75, wandering in to number 77.

Awkward for the Liverpool Echo, who'd thrown their entire influence behind the single. They bury the news in an article about something else.

The lazy scouse stereotyper would, at this point, expect the organisers to launch into a defensive tirade which blamed everyone but themselves for their problems, before trying to explain how a terrible flop was, in fact, an amazing success. Of course, that would just be lazy stereotyping, wouldn't it?:

[O]rganiser Martin O’Shea said technical problems and the download-only format meant Atomic Kitten’s reworking of Anyone Who Had A Heart failed to chart in the top 40

He said: “We’re very disappointed about the single – the Kittens are gutted.

“But that was down to the decision by EMI not to make the single available to buy in shops.

“Our audience clearly wasn’t able to get hold of the track in the way that was most convenient for them.

“We have been told by record shops across the city that the demand for the single outstripped the number one by two or three times to one."

Aha. If only there was a chart that decided the number one position on the basis of requests to purchase in Merseyside stores, eh?

You've got to love the grumbly "well, it was inconvenient to purchase, so of course it didn't sell" as if there's never a hope of download single being successful, when compared to the ease of heading into town, hunting down a record shop that hasn't been turned into a mobile phone store, discovering whichever corner the singles rack has been shoved, and hoping to find a copy for sale there.

Still, it's a better explanation than the attempt to seize the best-selling slot with a clapped-out warhorse was an act of hubris that was always going to fail, even if it wasn't relying entirely on a customer base who head to the shops to ask whereabouts they buy the download single they've been reading about.