Cliff's Millenium Prayer, like many of his recordings, is spectacularly awful for far many reasons to list, but you have to remember from where he's coming. He's aiming at old ladies and he has a loyal, if insane fan base to which he aims his output. Personally, I think "Wired for sound" was worse. In any case, picking a list of the worst ever number ones is like trying to decide which ten out of a thousand different turds to eat.
Obviously, most of the crap that comes out of programmes like "Pop Idol" and the like are complete shit, but the people behind it understand that. Each tossy, untalented waste of space they troll out is almost instantly forgotten, like 49-stone pikey, Michelle Anus. It's much worse when a non-musician makes a novelty record, like Frank Butcher's excruciating "Ugly Duckling" or an established act records something truly face-tearing-off, painfully awful, like Paul McCartney's fucking frog song.
What about Mister fucking Blobby? If the sight and sound of a gigantic pink plastic turd isn't reason enough for anyone who isn't a moron to hack off their own ears with jagged glass, then surely the knowledge that wierdy beardy, smug, jumper wearing, irritating little shit Noel Edmonds was the "brains" behind it is enough to cause any normal person to vomit hard enough to burst their own face.
Then there's the ugly, smug, brush-eyebrowed, Irish creep, Chris De Burgh. Chris de Bluuuurrghhhhhh more like. His dreadful, whiny, nasal dirge "Lady in Red" kept him at the top of most people's hit-list for months.
How we would love to forget that phrase: "There's klingons on the starboard bow" repeated over and over again in an irritating squawk. If you see anyone singing along to this, I urge you to smash them quickly over the back of the head with a metal ashtray.
It's impossible to ignore the huge contribution of German Hard Rock to the downfall of the Berlin wall, as people from both sides frantically clawed and hacked at the concrete with their bare hands and teeth in a desperate attempt to get away from the inhuman torture of The Scorpions' "Winds of change" or even worse, the nonsensical "Live is Life" by Opus, one chorus of which would be enough to cause East Berliners to run screaming and waving towards the machine-gun towers.
Keith Harris has produced a body of work that has consistently had people digging deep into their pockets for every last coin, so they can pelt them at him and his bug eyed, bright green freak puppet, that's got a voice like Mike Tyson, except a bit butcher and without the lisp.
Finally, how can we possibly forget Chris Waddle and Glenn Hoddle's "Diamond Lights"? Please, somebody tell me how.