Amazon.co.uk, the BBC and the Christmas #1

You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know that there's a bit of fuss over who should be the Christmas number one, with even Paul McCartney backing RATM to stop the Cowell child from taking top spot this week. I suspect amazon.co.uk don't agree for some reason: searching for Killing in the Name Of... this morning on their site, the second 'featured' search result I was offered was "The Climb - Joe McElderry". Yeah, amazon, that's the one I wanted, I just typed "killing in the name of" into your search bar by mistake.

To be fair, it is true that if you search for "The Climb" then one of the search results you see is 'Killing in the name of", but not in a featured position, and just nestling somewhere in the list. It just seems completely bizarre that anyone would think "I really want to buy that rock track that's been re-released for Christmas, the one with all the swearing, you know, by the people who hate Simon Cowell and X-factor, but I can't remember the name of it, so I'll search for a song by Miley Cyrus, and see if it is listed there". Yeah, right.

Anway, amazon.co.uk sent me a gift voucher this morning for £3-worth of music downloads because of all the CDs I've bought as Christmas presents, and they're offering 'Killing in the name of' for 29p, so I reckon that's RATM ten units to the good by tea time.

I've had a soft spot for that particular song ever since we went down to Brighton to see Pearl and Leo in a magnificent kids' rock gig arranged by the awesome 'Squeezebox' outfit down there, and were treated to a rendition of the song by an ex-Squeezebox participant who, it turned out, was now in the army. Watching a 19 year old squaddie leap around the stage singing an anti-war anthem and screaming "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" was truly surreal. Anyway, good song.

... which brings me to the BBC, who also waded in to the 'battle' for the number one this week, after Zack de la Rocha swore in a performance of the song on radio 5 live. For fuck's sake, of course he did. What possible thought process went through the head of the show's producer when they told the band they couldn't swear on air? "Now, the song lyric goes 'fuck you, i won't do what you tell me' but I'm sure they're just good boys really, and will do exactly what we tell them to do.." Having faded the band out, the show's producer then told listeners to buy the X-factor winner's record instead. I think we all know what to say to her, children? After three... one, two, three.. <fade>