The Top 10 Top 10s of all time

As John Rentoul brings the Top 10 feature to a close after 10 years, he offers a selection of his favourites

The Top 10s started in The Independent on Sunday magazine, the New Review , 10 years ago (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The Top 10s started in The Independent on Sunday magazine, the New Review, 10 years ago on 2 May 2013, with the Top 10 Worst Beatles Songs. I had compiled a few Top 10s on my blog – “the best opening lines of any song ever”, and “the worst lyrics of all time” – and Laurence Earle, editor of the magazine, suggested it as a back-page feature.

Since then, the Top 10 has appeared every week, switching to online-only in 2016. Ten years is a good run. It has been a joy, and I am grateful and amazed at the erudition and silliness of so many readers that have made it such a delight. Time to bring it to a graceful end while some of the crowds still want more.

Here are some of my favourite Top 10s of the decade, one for each year.

2013: Worst Beatles Songs

The first Top 10, which happened because Tom Doran casually commented on Twitter that “All You Need is Love” is “the second-worst Beatles song”.

1. “Across the Universe.” Tom Doran: “The very worst Beatles song is one whose crushing banality and mediocrity are amplified by undeserved acclaim.”

2. “All You Need is Love.” It’s tautological: “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”

3. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Ian MacDonald wrote in Revolution in the Head: “If any single recording shows why the Beatles broke up…”

4. “Yellow Submarine.” A novelty kids’ song.

5. “Octopus’s Garden.” Another one for babies.

6. “Taxman.” I don’t like it. Daniel Finkelstein replied: “Are you insane?”

7. “Christmas Time (Is Here Again).” I had never heard of it. Now I need never hear it again.

8. Everything except “Hey Bulldog”. Fine nomination by Hegemony Jones.

9. “Wonderwall,” by Oasis. Yes, very droll, Mark Lott.

10. “Revolution 9.” Even Beatles fans don’t like it.

2014: Surprisingly Unrelated Pairs of Words

Not for the first time, I didn’t think there would be as many as 10 of these. The Twitter wisdom proved me wrong.

1. Female, male. Female is from the Latin femella, a diminutive of femina, a woman; while male is from the Old French masle, from the Latin masculus, masculine.

2. Island, isle. Old English iegland, ieg, from a base meaning watery, according to the Oxford Dictionary. The “s” came by association with isle, from the Latin insula via Old French.

3. Outrage, rage. From Old French ou(l)trage, based on Latin ultra, beyond.

4. Uproar, roar. Middle Dutch oproer, from op, meaning up, and roer, meaning confusion.

5. Jubilee, jubilant. The first comes from Hebrew yōḇēl, which means trumpet blast, with which the year of emancipation and restoration in Judaism was proclaimed every 50 years. The second comes from Latin, originally in the sense “making a joyful noise, calling, hallooing”. The words seem to have converged in Latin.

6. Pickaxe, axe. Middle English pikoys, from Old French picois, related to pike. The change in the ending was influenced by axe.

7. Gingerbread, bread. Originally meant preserved ginger used to make the biscuit, from Old French gingembrat, from medieval Latin gingibratum, from gingiber.

8. Belfry, bell. Originally a watchtower, from French berfrei, but because some had warning bells, it acquired an “l”.

9. Muskrat, musk. The animal does produce a musky smell, but the word is actually from Algonquin for “red”.

10. Crayfish, fish. From Old French crevice, related to German Krebs, crab. The ending altered by association with “fish” in about the 16th century.

2015: Obscure Sorrows

I stumbled across John Koenig’s online Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, from which many of these are taken, and was struck with sonder.

1. Énouement. The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, and not being able to tell your past self.

2. The long dark tea-time of the soul. How Douglas Adams described the failure to think of anything to do on a Sunday afternoon.

3. Anticipointment. The sinking feeling when anticipation fails to be the greater part of pleasure.

4. Ellipsism. The sadness that you’ll never know how history turns out.

5. Sonder. The realisation that each passer-by has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

6. Ely. A sense that something, somewhere has gone terribly wrong. Via Davey Barton from The Meaning of Liff, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.

7. Mauerbauertraurigkeit. The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends you like. Coined by John Koenig.

8. Zenosyne. The sense that time keeps going faster.

9. Kenopsia. The forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned.

10. Monachopsis. The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

2016: Compound Names in Which Every Word is Untrue

Long familiar with the first two, I didn’t believe, again, that I could get to 10.

1. Socialist Workers Party. It doesn’t contest elections under its own name; it isn’t even registered with the Electoral Commission; it supports candidates under other labels.

2. Holy Roman Empire. One of the few genuine Voltaire quotations on the internet: “The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” (“Le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire”).

3. Carphone Warehouse.

4. The Industrial Revolution. “It involved too many changes to really be a ‘The’, was about so much more than just industry, and was too gradual a process to properly call a revolution,” said Anton Howes, summarising TS Ashton, the author of The Industrial Revolution.

5. Eurovision Song Contest. Thanks to Mark Bassett.

6. Lord Privy Seal. Currently Lord True. Ernest Bevin, who held the office as a member of the House of Commons, said he was “neither a lord, nor a privy, nor a seal”.

7. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Scores half out of four, said David Herdson: not democratic; not run by or for the people; more a pseudo monarchy than a republic – and covers only half the peninsula.

8. Criminal justice system. Nick Davies of The Guardian wrote: “It doesn’t catch many criminals, it doesn’t dispense much justice and it’s no kind of system at all.”

9. Bayeux Tapestry. “Made in England, not Bayeux, and it’s embroidery, not tapestry,” said Alan Beattie.

10. “John Harvard, Founder, 1638.” Inscription on the statue at Harvard University. No one knows what Harvard looked like (the statue was modelled by a resident of Concord in the 19th century); he wasn’t the founder – when he died in 1638 he left a small library to an existing school which was renamed after him.

2017: Famous people whose names are sentences

An exception to my rule, which you would understand if you had a name like mine, that jokes about people’s names are Not Funny.

1. Clive Staples Lewis. Little known incident in one of the Narnia books.

2. Jeremy Irons. Except that he usually looks rather crumpled.

3. Tom Waits.

4. Nigel Havers.

5. Ella Fitzgerald. Very good, Stu Gardner.

6. Samuel Pepys.

7. Theresa May. I once ended an article predicting she would become prime minister with “Theresa Might”. I am very sorry.

8. Julius Caesar. The old ones are the best.

9. Rosa Parks.

10. Mike Gapes. Nominated by himself.

Britney Spears, Stevie Nicks, Karl Marx, Ryan Giggs and Ed Balls (bawls) didn’t even make the Top 10.

2018: Geographic anomalies

I had to choose between this one and Timespan Quirks (T Rex the band is closer in time to T rex the dinosaur than T rex is to Stegosaurus).

1. Bristol is further east than Edinburgh. There are plenty more of these. Carlisle is also east of Edinburgh; Chile is east of New York; Reno, Nevada, is west of Los Angeles, California.

2. Maine is the closest US state to Africa. It’s true.

3. The Atlantic end of the Panama Canal is further west than the Pacific end.

4. The Church is disestablished in parts of England. When the Church of England in Wales was disestablished in 1920, becoming the Church in Wales, there were parishes that were on both sides of the border that held referendums to decide which side they should go on. There is a tiny corner of Shropshire which is disestablished, and several bits of Wales that still recognise Charles III as supreme governor.

5. North Parade in Oxford is to the south of South Parade.

6. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is an entity under international law with UN observer status and diplomatic ties with 107 states – yet it has no territory, in Malta or anywhere else.

7. Swansea and Cardiff play in the English Football League. Shrewsbury has won the Welsh Cup six times. Berwick Rangers, from Berwick-upon-Tweed, play in Scottish football leagues.

8. Little Diomede Island is two miles from Big Diomede Island but 21 hours away, divided by the international date line in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia.

9. Israel and Australia compete in the Eurovision Song Contest.

10. France has a border with the Netherlands, not in Europe, but on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. The one that had jumbo jets landing over a beach until 2016.

2019: Irregular plurals

Some pedants suggest that the correct plural of diddum is didda, but Moose Allain pointed out that it is in fact diddums.

1. Volkswagen Golves.

2. Bi, plural of bus. Also minibi. And ba, plural of bum.

3. Tollbeeth.

4. Weetabixen. (Although some say it is actually Weetaboides.)

5. Hice.

6. Tantra.

7. Jimi Hendrices. Also Rolices.

8. Robins Hood.

9. Little Bo Peep. (This one I had to think about for longer than the others.)

10. Umbrellae.

2020: Underappreciated innovations

Things we take for granted.

1. Anaesthetic. We are literally oblivious to its benefits.

2. Barcodes. Ping. Done. Thanks to John Peters.

3. Buttons.

4. Data centres. “People do not appreciate the near-instantaneous retrieval times for any piece of information are made possible by this infrastructure rendered invisible in the ‘cloud’,” said Paul T Horgan.

5. Domestication of wheat. Changed everything about 10,000 years ago.

6. Pallets. As a former fork-lift truck driver, I do appreciate that these wooden bases make moving goods easy.

7. Plastic. Now public enemy number one, but it made the near-universal luxuries of modern life possible.

8. RFID. Radiofrequency identification, the basis of contactless technology.

9. Stairs. Stewart Slater nominated the lift, without which high-rise buildings would not be possible, but I think the staircase is even more revolutionary.

10. Trap. A U- or S-bend in waste pipes, invented in 1775, that makes flushing toilets and hygienic sewage systems possible.

2021: Tribute bands

I also did Covers Better than the Originals.

1. Proxy Music.

2. I Wanna Cher (shares facts about Cher as well as singing).

3. Ziggy Sawdust, who played at the Nag’s Head in Only Fools and Horses.

4. Lez Zeppelin.

5. Purple Reign.

6. Kings of Leigh-on-Sea.

7. Antarctic Monkeys.

8. AD/BC, the Christian rock version of AC/DC in The Simpsons.

9. Hayseed Dixie, who play bluegrass/hillbilly AC/DC covers.

10. Fake That.

2022: Things you would expect to see more of based on childhood comics

When life doesn’t imitate art.

1. Anvils.

2. People shaking their fists. Or saying, “Bah!”

3. Quicksand. Usually marked with warning signs.

4. Magnifying glasses. Essential for any amateur child sleuth or budding pyromaniac.

5. Single palm tree on an improbably small island.

6. Pile of mashed potato with sausages sticking out of it. Most popular single nomination.

7. Washing someone’s mouth out with soap and water.

8. Visible skeleton when someone has an electric shock. Eve Wiseman said her daughter was boggled to learn that this doesn’t happen.

9. Vacuum cleaner with a suck/blow switch.

10. Cucumber slices on eyes as a beauty treatment. Or a ribeye steak to cure a black eye.

Along with people slipping (and somersaulting) on banana skins or stepping on rakes, dogs running away with strings of sausages or cats leaving whole fish skeletons, people being chased by a swarm of bees, pies left on window sills to cool, and catapults, most of these still feature in the Beano to this day.

All the Top 10s since the start of 2022 are listed here.

Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top Tens, from Politics to Pop, was published in 2014; secondhand and Kindle editions (£4.74) still available.