The Four Seasons’ ‘December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ had now spent as many weeks as there were seasons in their name at 1 while Marie Gibson’s ‘One Day At A Time’ was enjoying a second week at 2.

Vicky Leandros, who had been the only Greek act to chart until Demis Roussos had recently entered the charts, had managed 4 biggest climbers. Roussos opened his account this week with an 8 place climb by ‘Happy to be on an Island in the Sun’ which moved up from 18 to 10. While he still had a way to go to catch up to Leandros in terms of number of biggest climbers, this 8 place climb immediately equalled the best a Greek act had managed to date and (spoiler alert) these 2 would be the biggest climbs we would ever see by a Greek act (Leandos had managed it with ‘The Love in Your Eyes’).

We saw 3 other star rater climbs and they were Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ (the biggest climber 2 weeks back) which moved up 4 from 9 to 5, Cliff Richard’s ‘Miss You Nights’ which climbed 6 from 15 to 9 and J.J. Barrie’s ‘No Charge’ which made a 5 place jump from 20 to 15. It was Cliff’s 9^th time with a star rater and he was the 30^th act to get to this many.

Richard Jon Smith picked up his 4^th faller of the week award with a 6 place drop from 11 to 17 by ‘But I Do’. Smith was the 13^th local act to have seen at least 4 biggest fallers.

Bruce Millar’s ‘I Won’t Give Up’ enjoyed its 2^nd week as the oldest on the charts and its 15^th week overall with us.

Barry Manilow’s ‘I Write The Songs’ was the first of 2 songs to leave the charts this week. It had been with us for 12 weeks and peaked at 5. This was 1 week less and 2 places lower than ‘Mandy’ his only other hit to date. He would grace our charts again.

Bobby Angel saw his weeks total for a song improve. His previous 2 hits (‘The Greatest Christmas Gift’ and ‘Don Junior’) had spent just 2 and 3 weeks in the charts respectively. ‘It’s A Burning Thing’ which left the top 20 this week, managed 9. While being better, this still fell short of the 11 and 17 weeks his first 2 hits had managed. ‘It’s A Burning Thing’ peaked at 15 and this was the worst peak we had seen so far for a song spending 9 weeks in the charts. The next worst was 13 which 5 songs (3 of which were by local acts) had managed.

Abba returned to the chart after an absence of only 4 weeks. Their 7th SA hit was ‘Fernando’ and this put them level with The Seekers at the top of the list for number of hits by acts not from the UK, the US or SA. ‘Fernando’ went to number 1 in Australia (selling over 720,000 unit), Austria, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, Switzerland and the UK (selling over 500,000 units there). It narrowly missed out on topping the charts in Canada, Finland, Norway, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Sweden, making number 2 on all those charts. In the US it made 13 and topped the Adult Contemporary charts there. The original Swedish lyrics of the song by Stig Anderson were different to the English ones that they recorded. ‘Fernando’ was originally recorded by Frida for a solo album and started off with the title of ‘Tango’ but that was changed at the last minute to ‘Fernando’. The arrival of ‘Fernando’ on the charts improved on last week’s 6 UK number 1’s in the top 20 and ‘Fernando’ was now a record equally 7th. The last time we had seen this many UK chart toppers in the top 20 was back in 1965.

Also joining us was Sailor with ‘A Glass Of Champagne’. Sailor consisted of Norwegian born Georg Kajanus, German born Phil Pickett and British born Henry Marsh and Grant Serpell. Despite their international line-up, they are regarded as a British band. Kranjus who had written the song ‘Flying Machine’ for Cliff Richard was also the writer of ‘A Glass Of Champagne’. The song went to number 2 in the UK and made top 3 in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. ‘Sailor’ gave us the 3^rd case of a charting group having the same name as a song as we had seen in the top 20 as a song called ‘Sailor’ by Petula Clark spend time in the charts. The other 2 cases of this we had seen was ‘Waterloo’ (local act name and Abba hit) and ‘Sunny’ (song by Bobby Hebb and the woman who had sung ‘Doctor’s Orders’).

The male domination of the top 20 was beginning to wane as they dropped to below 10 of the top 20 for the first time in 13 weeks, although there were still more solo men in the charts than another type of act as they had 9 of the top 20 with the balance being split between 7 groups, 2 solo female acts and 2 collaborations.

Acts from Sweden moved onto 91 weeks in the chart and this gave them 10^th place on the list of weeks by a nation to themselves as the Jamaicans on 90 dropped into 11^th place. Abba had now accounted for 80 of those 91 Swedish weeks and they were the 23^rd act to reach this milestone.

Cliff Richard moved into tied 16^th place on the overall weeks count list, his 83 putting him level with The Staccatos.

Richard Jon Smith moved ahead of Bobby Angel and The Rising Sons with his total on 43. He held on to 17^th place on the local weeks count list while the latter 2 on 42 fell into tied 18^th place.

With Abba and Slik on the chart together, we experienced the 37^th time we had 2 acts whose name was just 4 letters long in the chart together. We had seen 5 weeks when there were 3 such acts in the top 20 and that was when we had a run with Abba, Cher and MFSB in the charts at the same time.

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