Thanks for your interest in our All Time Chart.  

Our Easter Top 200 - broadcast over sixteen hours - is always our most popular programme of the year and this year was certainly no exception!  Thanks for listening.

As we always receive some questions, we're happy to share how we do it.

The chart was assembled from many thousands of listener votes. We had more than ever this year; not least because we’re delighted to have more listeners than a year ago - and three times as many as when we did our first chart!

You were invited to choose your favourite tracks. This year, we asked for five (rather than three) choices to make the job a little easier for those people who said they found it a challenge to narrow it down in previous years. We hoped it might give a leg up too to the less well-known songs.

Once you'd voted, we allotted points, dependent on whether it was your 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice etc.

As the poll closed on Friday 11^th April, the final calculations got underway and we began the job of assembling all the tracks and accompanying information ready for broadcast right across the four days of the Easter break. It's always a mammoth additional task for our small hard-working team.

The idea of a chart is to identify the most popular songs - so it's no surprise when the most popular tracks rise to the top! Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale was voted Number One for the fifth time.The track may perplex - but it is clearly hugely popular with our audience at large. It's a very original piece and first heard in 1967 - a year which many of our listeners hold dear - and one of the most commercially successful singles ever released.

There were, however, also a few surprises - as we allowed you to vote for absolutely anything rather than choosing from a list. You’ll know how Boom prides itself generally on playing many thousands of different songs.

Some listeners appear puzzled about why certain songs do well, or don’t do well. But - hey – that’s democracy! It makes us smile when listeners say ’how on earth did 'X group' appear at Number 4?’ or 'why is there no Y group in the chart?' etc, given the answer is always the same. They were - or were not - voted for by many listeners and that's how these charts work. Rest assured, we do take steps to identify any mischievous voting. :)

It's always dangerous, of course, to presume everyone shares your personal view of what is 'good' or 'bad'. Music tastes differ from age group to age group, male to female, person to person. You may be fiercely proud of your particular tastes - but this chart is about what most people agree on - it's not the same as your own personal chart; although we hope you enjoy many tracks included.

Mind you, it’s always interesting to hear a lively debate about the chart results - we’d be upset if no-one talked about it!

This year it was hosted proudly by Simon Bates, Rob Jones, Dave Brown, David Lloyd and our chart supremo - John Peters. Whilst it's great fun to present, the pace, detail and precision is quite a feat. As ever, we did our best to play each song in its entirety. Timing is, however, a real headache, so we sometimes played the single mix rather than longer album versions (for those tracks where they exist) - but you'll likely hear the latter on other occasions on our Boom stations. In fact, Gary Burton played the longer version of Free Bird  across on our Boom Rock station the day after!

We don't labour too much about last year's positions - but you can check those online as last year's chart is still there. Similarly, we choose not to clutter the programme with voting numbers or points allocated - much like the record sales charts don't include actual sales figures. The only figure that really matters is where a song now is in our listener rankings.

We tried - as ever - to mention a selection of voter names, usually in trios. It would be a challenge to mention more without the programme sounding like the 'phone directory - but we thank you for taking part!

Once the Number One had been revealed on Easter Monday, Simon Bates returned with two hours of the songs that attracted appreciable numbers of votes, but not quite sufficient to qualify for the Top 200. They always attract a great deal of interest - so we're delighted to play some of the fine 'underdogs'.

Overall, our All Time Chart  always attracts our highest ever audiences every year - and this year we've been truly amazed by the scale of the audience and about the lovely messages we've received. Thank you so much.

Above all - it's simply a lot of fun.

The All Time Chart is the largest of our charts, but we’ve conducted many others – from the Beatles Chart to the Elvis Chart, the Bacharach Chart to the Instrumentals Chart – and there are more special charts to come this year.