great big number twos

I was interested to discover which songs had kept the five Queen number 2 hits I referred to in the previous post off the top slot, and, having done that, made the unwarranted inference that you'd be interested too. Well, whatever, I've done the research now so you're getting it anyway.

• Killer Queen spent two weeks at number two, the weeks of 10th and 17th November 1974, for both of which it was kept off the top spot by David Essex's Gonna Make You A Star.
• Somebody To Love was kept off the top spot by Showaddywaddy's Under The Moon Of Love for one week, 5th December 1976.
• The double A-side of We Are The Champions and We Will Rock You spent three weeks at number 2, and was kept off the top spot for the first two of those (13th November and 20th November 1977) by Abba's Name Of The Game, and then, just as Name Of The Game dropped down the chart the following week, was leapfrogged by the dreaded Mull Of Kintyre.
• Crazy Little Thing Called Love spent two weeks at number 2, 18th and 25th November 1979, for both of which it was kept off the top spot by Dr Hook's When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman. 
• Radio Ga Ga spent two weeks at number 2, 5th and 12th February 1984, for both of which it was kept off the top spot by Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax. 

Personally I wouldn't feel able to say that any of the number 1's listed there were better than the song they kept at number 2, but there's a long and glorious history of this in the UK charts, from The Beatles' Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever double A-side being thwarted by Englebert Humperdinck's Please Release Me to Ultravox's Vienna meeting a similar fate at the hands of Joe Dolce Music Theatre's Shaddap You Face. This particular injustice was voted the worst of all time in a poll by Radio 2 a couple of years ago.