Here we go then – down to the last four. But who will it be?
Results
| % | % | Votes | ||||
| 1 | The Light at the End of the Tunnel | 58 | v | 42 | The Trumpton Riots | 730 |
| 2 | Twenty Four Hour Garage People | 59 | v | 41 | Bob Wilson – Anchorman | 767 |
| 3 | Evening of Swing (Has Been Cancelled) | 34 | v | 66 | National Shite Day | 809 |
| 4 | Everything’s AOR | 61 | v | 39 | For What Is Chatteris… | 900 |
See the (now closed) chat for the completed ties: Match 1 • Match 2 • Match 3 • Match 4
Any losers will take their place in the updated table for the Baguette Dilemma round.
The draw for the Semi-Finals follows soon.
Chris The Siteowner
Given that The Trumpton Riots had just beaten the 2011 winner, that might look like a tasty result for TLATEOTT, but Trumpton turns out only to have made no.12 in the Baguette Dilemma round, and ACP had been an even more surprisingly lower no.21. So we may not have learned too much. That’s it for the 80s contenders, and indeed, AOR now carries the hopes of the entire pre-2000 songbook.
5 December 2015
Nagasaki shinpads
Well knock me down with a broken rail track…Chippy Minton is turning in his grave!
5 December 2015
Two fat feet
Pleased as I am with the result I must admit I’m still a little surprised that Light has now made the semis twice, and so comfortably too.
But then I listen to it again and … yeah I can live with that.
5 December 2015
Windy miller
Tie 3 could get very messy in these high winds but will it affect the outcome.
5 December 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
Well, that went exactly as I expected! Except that TTR lost.
5 December 2015
Stringy BOB
That’s 116 more votes for TLATEOTT. Which is a considerable thrashing. And to me, pretty surprising at this stage of the competition.
6 December 2015
Beltane beard
Bye Bob. You may not have got to the semis but you were still a better anchorman than Adrian Chiles.
6 December 2015
Two fat feet
2 out of 2 so far that have gone the way I voted, rather than the way I predicted. Still, I’d rather be happy than right any day.
6 December 2015
Stringy BOB
2 votes, 2 losers. I suck.
6 December 2015
Nagasaki shinpads
Whilst I’m 50/50 and from my comment above you know the one I picked wrong
6 December 2015
HALFMANHALFBIKE
Home advantage proving decisive so far. Will the semis be on neutral territory?
7 December 2015
Two fat feet
Back of the net, 3/3, finally predicted one right and spot on as well. Evening Of Swing has indeed been cancelled, sorry to see it go out but the Shite marches on relentlessly.
7 December 2015
Peter p
On the wrong side of all 3 votes. Man alive. Its like the RWC quarter finals all over again.
7 December 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
Three free-scoring matches so far. Have the goalkeepers no arms, or something?
7 December 2015
Bruce
I can’t be the only one not surprised by “Shite Day’s” strong showing away from home
7 December 2015
bengwy
EOS was at number 4? Blimey!
7 December 2015
Chris The Siteowner
I think tomorrow might be the closest of the four…
7 December 2015
Stringy bob
I really really like EOS. But number 4 overall is way too high in my humble opinion.
7 December 2015
peter mcornithologist
Come The Behemoth, just thirteen score and nine.I shall now switch my allegiance to the sanderlings .Just another fair weather fan.
7 December 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
@PMcO – I tried googling up a pic of a sanderling on Seal Sands. I failed, but did find a candidate for a caption competition.
7 December 2015
peter mcornithologist
@Dickhead. That’s a snap of Trevor McBlubby. Always has to be the centre of attention.
7 December 2015
Too much oranjeboom
I’ve been following and voting all the way through, but my first time posting. Loving the tournament and the site as a whole is obviously wonderful.
While National Shite Day is undoubtedly one of the best HMHB songs, I can’t help but think its dominance so far – you have to assume it is either the first or third song in the Baguette Dilemma Round given it just trounced the song that finished fourth – is partly due to the time at which this tournament is being held. With grey damp days and darkness at 4pm, plus the news dominated by terrorist attacks, air strikes, and stabbings in Poundland, its hard not to feel brushed by the wings of something dark most days and therefore NSD really resonates. Would a summer tournament produce different results I wonder?
7 December 2015
Stringy BOB
All hail Kendo, destroyer of twee
8 December 2015
Chris The Siteowner
I have to announce that we clearly have a “fix” here. You can all see the rather large number of votes cast in this tie. Well, here’s how the voting went. The graph for FWIC follows the pattern of every other song in the round. The graph for EAOR shows an extraordinary number of votes arriving in the last few days. Today, for example, the voting was EAOR 74, FWIC 2. I’d have been suspicious whatever songs were involved, but given that the voting was against FWIC, which two or three people had devoted days of their time to voting against earlier in the tournament… well, you can guess the rest. The extra votes did all come from different IP addresses, and didn’t come directly from a website, so I suspect a mailing list was involved*. Sad really.
*Or maybe there’s a way to spoof your IP address, so you can vote many times and appear to come from a different, genuine IP address every time? Anyone know?
8 December 2015
CARRIE ANNE
That’s such a shame, I would’ve expected better from HMHB fans (and I voted EAOR)
8 December 2015
Stringy BOB
I am not a fan of chatteris and have said so many times. But that is just pathetic. If chatteris had won, then it was because more people liked it than other songs. And that would have been just fine with me.
CtSO, can you confirm AOR was winning anyway. If not, I suggest a replay.
8 December 2015
Stringy BOB
Just seen the graph. Too close to call. Have a 3 day replay.
8 December 2015
Chris The Siteowner
I’m inclined to just say “leave it” and move on. This clearly means so much to a couple of people that they’ll probably just carry on with this campaign until the bitter end. It’s only supposed to be a bit of fun, FFS. A replay won’t stop them.
You’ll also see that FWIC “only” finished 18th in the Baguette Dilemma round. My guess is that if you removed the thousands and thousands of votes from two individuals in particular, it would have been top 5, but I let things stand because it qualified anyway. Has whatever’s happened here changed the result? I don’t know. I might have a look and see what the result would have been if we just count the votes from the people who also voted in the other three ties, and excluded the ringers.
8 December 2015
Stringy BOB
Have a replay and request an email address along with the vote. Only then count those votes where the address is already registered to the site?
8 December 2015
BIG CON
My first appearance for four years and this has just tarnished what was a brilliant bit of fun. This was the hardest game to choose. You’ve got to somehow take away the spurious votes.
8 December 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
That has taken a lot of pleasure out of the competition for me – well done, whoever. FWIW, I voted for EAOR.
8 December 2015
Hazelsound
That really is quite sad. This HAS been fun Chris—months of much needed HMHB distraction from the crap stuff. The time and effort you put in so that we can enjoy this deserves better repayment. I voted Chatteris as I said in the thread, but I’m feeling gutted right now for the wrong reasons. We should be having a discussion of the songs and the vagaries of this brilliantly mad cup. We’ve moved beyond vagaries now though.
8 December 2015
Cygnus
I agree with other posters about this; it’s meant to be fun and great fun it has been until now. There have been mutterings about Chatteris along the way but this is just beyond pathetic, it was looking like an exciting end to end game until the last couple of days but sheesh if this cup means that much to someone I’m glad I don’t have their life.
8 December 2015
Two fat feEt
It’s incredibly childish behaviour. Some people must have too much time on their hands. To orchestrate such a concerted campaign against one particular song (which I seem to recall may have been similarly nobbled in the 2011 final) is particularly difficult to believe, because for it to have involved mailing lists or some such requires the alleged perpetrator to have that many friends.
8 December 2015
Two fat feEt
For the record I think AOR would have won anyway, but that was largely down to Chatteris’ unconvincing performance so far. Makes you wonder whether there’s been a bit of this all along and it’s finally paid off.
8 December 2015
talking to plankton
Agree with the comments above re. the fix. Whoever was responsible – you’re pathetic. Wise words from Cygnus; “I’m glad I don’t have their life”
8 December 2015
Hazelsound
This day started with shite and ended with shite. Woke stupidly early to get daughter to school for a trip… to find dog shite all over the dog, his bed and most of the kitchen. Took ages to clean. Stench still up my nose. Then work happened. More shite. Then I remembered Lux Familiar…even more shite. Happily I have my NSD badge. A fitting day for it. Maybe this all bodes well.
8 December 2015
rubber faced irritant
Sad but not surprising. I recall that last time CtSO uncovered a similar plot to stop Chatteris winning. They’re a determined bunch the Chatteris trolls. I voted for FWIC but don’t see the point in a replay. A rematch would be too laden with baggage and, anyway, I doubt there are many of us who would dispute that EAOR is a worthy semi-finalist.
In other news, Kendo Nagasaki is on the cover of the current issue of ‘The Chap’, the self-proclaimed “Anarcho-Dandyist’s Manifesto’. There’s an interview with the man himself, although not in the conventional sense of an interview. Apparently Kendo Nagasaki is a spirit guide who communicates through the silent man in the mask -known as Yogensha. His replies are given by his spiritual acolyte Roz MacDonald who was formerly known as Atlantis Chronos Goth.
The answer most pertinent to the above shenanigans comes when he is asked how aware people are of reality. “The reality which most people believe surrounds them is nothing more than an inter-subjectively agreed construct, the parameters of which are ill-defined and subject to fashion and other whimsy.” Try telling that to the Chatteris haters, Kendo.
8 December 2015
Chris The Siteowner
I concur with all of that, including that EAOR would have won anyway. I just did a bit of number-crunching, and discovered that if we just took the votes of the people who voted in matches 1 and 2, the result was:
Everything’s AOR 302
For What Is Chatteris… 270
I actually get some satisfaction from knowing that whoever organised the voting wasted their time. Onwards and upwards!
8 December 2015
Mr. Abelazar woozle
@CtSO – use of a VPN might give different IP addresses,perhaps by constantly logging in and out. I know our work one has done some strange things in the past like made Google think we were in foreign countries due to where the IP was and come up in Dutch or Hungarian. It got tiresome after a while….
Anyway, as you point out it doesn’t seem to have altered the outcome!
8 December 2015
Two fat feet
I’m happy to take the recalculated result for the purposes of post-competition analysis.
8 December 2015
lois common-denominator
@ Sourpuss Someone is keeping very quiet.
8 December 2015
Dickhead in quicksand
Possibly because of an arrest in a recent dawn raid?
Oh fuck it, I just feel too sickened to riff with FIFA-related jokes after this antic.
9 December 2015
Eric olthwaite
I’m a Chatteris fan (and have been mocked on here for it) but voted AOR purely because it’s one of my top three HMHB songs. I’m glad it turned out that the result was only skewed, not totally reversed.
9 December 2015
Nagasaki shinpads
I believe the letters are…WTF? …and at times like this I usually think with life, wife, mortgage etc I have problems! A fantastic bit of fun for real fans of HMHB…I first saw them in 1986…yes I did…spoiled by errant technology.
Oooooh a song I don’t agree with/like/ not my favourite..
right troll activity…
THEM THE VAGARIES!
@ CtSO…brilliant job mate just carry on regardless
9 December 2015
Nagasaki shinpads
How’s that brothel in Palermo looking?
9 December 2015
featureless tv producer steve
Very sad to get home tonight and read of all this, but heartened at the end to hear that EAOR was probably the just winner regardless. I hope the culprit(s) wasted countless hours and cost themselves dearly, in ways we can only dream of.
9 December 2015
BIG CON
Great work Chris!!
9 December 2015
Schoon
First off we don’t know for sure it was a fix. I can see why people are upset but surely it’s all part of the intrigue of the last eight. World tournaments like this have always been prone to accusations of cheating. Naturally mild mannered Chatteris fans need to toughen up and enjoy the unfairness of it all. PS it wasn’t me, I could have voted multiple times if I wanted to, but would have been happy to live with a Chatteris victory.
9 December 2015
Jeff dreadnought
I haven’t felt this disillusioned since Argentina beat Peru 6-0 in the ’78 World Cup.
9 December 2015
warwick Hunt
As someone who has occasionally voiced displeasure at the progress of FWIC, I would like to categorically state that I was in no way involved with the so-called fix (my attempt at a fix failed miserably in the previous round). Just kidding folks.
However, surely a bit of controversy is part of the game’s appeal? It’s not that dissimilar to, for example, campaigns to influence the result of contests such as Sports Personality of the Year. That’s the interweb for you.
The demise of Chatteris, coupled with the abject failure of the scum* in the Champions League, resulted in yesterday being a top, top day for most sports fans!
*= Man U, obviously.
9 December 2015
bobby svarc
This is a great shame and I feel very sorry for Chris, running anything for the love of it should be applauded. Cheating bastards.
9 December 2015
surprised of anglia
Hear, hear, Bobby.
Doesn’t match-fixing carry an automatic lifetime ban?
9 December 2015
Jeff Dreadnought
Well said Bobby, Big Con and all the rest. CtSO, all the work that goes into running the LF Cup, and this whole project in general, is much appreciated.
9 December 2015
bobby svarc
I’ve not cast a single vote in the LFC, not really interested in voting for anything tbh. I have read all the posts on a daily basis in between looking endlessly at the Premier League table, still pissed I can’t make Bilston though.
9 December 2015
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
I think these words of Buzz Lightyear sum up my views of these individuals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9JDPm_QHk4
9 December 2015
Celery
I did, half jokingly, warn that something like this might happen after being presented with the chance of a second vote in an early last 32 fixture. Some ‘dodgy characters on here’ have obviously succumbed to the temptation.
I was assured that the bad votes could be ‘weeded’ out, but that seems a thankless and impossible task if people are using multiple/masked IPs.
This is not without precedent where HMHB and polls are concerned of course. There’s the whole NB57/10 phenomenon and also last year’s Guardian readers ‘Album of the year’ thing.
Two positives we must cling too are that it seems the rigging didn’t actually affect the result and that the fixing was used to vote AGAINST a song rather than to propel one unfairly forward. Now that the aim of neutering Chatteris has been achieved the culprits may let the contest proceed without further meddling.
9 December 2015
peter mcornithologist
Only reiterating previous comments.Since becoming a full time carer I am indoors much more than in days of yore.The discovery of this band and then this site has brought great entertainment. Thanks to Chris Rand and all you regular contributors. May Leicester remain where they are and Constance be loved in 4 years time!
9 December 2015
Schoon
@celery I take your point, but IMO in no way was the Guardian readers ‘Album of the year’ voting problematic. On the one side a few hundred or thousand HMHB fans vs 99.99999% of all media promoting shit music.
9 December 2015
Two fat feet
Chris has calculated what the score would be if only those who’d voted in previous rounds were counted; we will assume that those votes were straight on each occasion, including the QF. Analysing the official result, Chatteris did still have some votes among the first-time voters so if we assume they were all genuine, and that the number of genuine first-timer votes for AOR was in the same proportion, it leaves about 150 suspicious votes.
9 December 2015
AMOCO CADIZ
Hopefully justice was done, damn the Chatteris haters and sing Hosanna, they may just be going home now…it’s a great song (although not as great as EAOR in my opinion or according to my vote)…there seems to have been a growing negativity to some songs, but hey they’re a top band aren’t they? (sorry, the top band) There’s room within this wonderful back catalogue for everyone’s taste, raucous, poignant, funny, sad, angry…if more people prefer one classic to another then so be it and let it roll. Thanks to Chris for all his hard work and for what it’s worth, NSD for me and can’t quite get how 24HrGP got this far. Them’s the vagaries…
9 December 2015
D List paul ross
Two brilliant songs, a brilliant site. If it matters that much to you please feel free to fuck off and build your own website. CtSO deserves better. I’m actually outraged, which is pretty pathetic but FFS.
9 December 2015
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
@schoon – the “fix” can be implied by @CtSO’s comment at no. 17 in this discussion compared to the actual result and the dramatically higher turnout in this match compared to the others.
Although I am a little conscious that we’re all starting to sound like another Nigel:
“There are some really quite big changes now in the way people are voting. They can’t speak English, they have never heard of HMHB or Macintyre and Treadmore, they haven’t even heard of Davitt”
9 December 2015
Beltane beard
Really baffled why FWIC would invoke such levels of hostility that someone would want to try and fix the result of an online competition which is ultimately for fun.
It’s really rather sad.
9 December 2015
Audrey’s EUPHEMISMS
For shame! Cads and poltroons, the lot of ’em. I voted EAOR, but very much enjoy FWIC too. My faith in democracy is shaken to the core!
9 December 2015
gipton teenager
I’ve just found out about the dodgy goings-on. What a shame that a couple of dolts have attempted to ruin a fabulous waste of time. Shame on you for spoiling the fun for everybody else. As I posted a while ago “Bloody hell, it’s only a game”. Thanks Chris for all your hard work, you (indeed we) deserve to be treated better.
9 December 2015
Audrey’s EUPHEMISMS
#jesuischatteris
9 December 2015
Paddy
Chris – sorry your wonderful tournament, that has provided so much pleasure has been the victim of a dirty tricks campaign. Despite non of my favourite songs getting anywhere I am very grateful of the entertainment the Lux Familiar cup has brought.
9 December 2015
CTSO In St.Pauli
Thanks all for the positive feedback. As I mentioned, I don’t think any harm was done as we seem to have got the right result regardless, so no need for anyone to get too worked up – to be honest, the fact that whoever organised all the extraneous voting wasted their time is rather satisfying. So let’s not worry about it any more. We’ve got a live semi-final draw at Bilston to look forward to.
However, just because it made me laugh a lot, #jesuischatteris.
10 December 2015
TAYLO
wow, I voted for FWIC but love AOR too….far more than NSD but vote rigging just ain’t cricket!
Another pat on the back to CtSO for his hard work on this.
Oh and Warwick, what’s your team? ( to make ‘Man U’ ‘scum’)
10 December 2015
Dirk Hofman
Surely a bit of controversy is part of the game’s appeal..
Envelope of cash waiting for you on your return CtSO, as ever – great work..
10 December 2015
SEPP BLATTER
It wasn’t me
10 December 2015
D List paul ross
#jesuischatteris nice one Audrey’s. I’d say the rigging was absurd but, you know…
10 December 2015
Hammerfist Deceiver
This is an outrage of ‘Emilio Guruceta Muro’ proportions. Well, maybe not, but still….#jesuischatteris
10 December 2015
counterblast to Agnosticism
Some people clearly have a lot more time on their hands than me.
That said, I work in website analytics, so if CtsO ever did want a more in-depth investigation, I could have a look at the data…
11 December 2015
Hazelsound
Some observations about the vagaries of voting in the LFC and identifying honest voters via IPs. (Though I’m not really sure how IPs work, as this will reveal). If you took Mr Hazelsound and me as a sample you’d probably find it hard to locate us consistently through the LFC. We voted once each in every match, but we were all over the place in terms of IPs. We started voting after the BD round (still not over the misery of missing that). In final 32 round I voted mostly from my desktop (home), but also on mobile up in County Durham (away). Mr H always voted from his phone (mix of home and away). We voted once each and didn’t really think about the IP issue. Then in the final 16 we realised that we’d been sharing the same IP for some votes (which would have looked to CtSO like cheating), cos CtSO switched to a system that closed down an IP after one vote. Mr H had nicked my votes so I couldn’t vote from home. I did most of my voting from work desktop, slightly nervous that someone else might be voting from there (but then maybe IPs don’t work in the same way at a big institution…) – not many HMHB fans in my vicinity it seems. In last few rounds I voted from work on occasion, but cast a few votes in car in random locations (that sounds dodgy, but actually very dull). It’s the mobile phone factor that complicates it all I think. Mr H thought that switching to 4G would shift him to a different IP, but that didn’t always seem to be the case. Who knows which IP I was using when I was out. So, even though we voted in every round (once only) it might be that CtSO couldn’t trace us through every round…and so wouldn’t have included our votes in the re-count of the infamous match 4 (I’m not worried about that btw, just an observation).
So…not sure where this gets us. I could have voted many times in each round (though not as many as the fix needed – that would have taken more time than I have…and basic mean-mindedness), but didn’t. My IP address did shift, but I have no idea how many times. Mr H thinks postal registry could be a solution. I don’t.
Now I’m going to shut up and stop thinking about this. I imagine that most people stopped reading after the first sentence.
12 December 2015
Schoon
@Hazel it’s not just IPs, cookies are used to track too.
12 December 2015
Hazelsound
Thanks @Schoon. Yes, I’m sure there’s much more to it.
13 December 2015
bobby svarc
He/She is most probably using a proxy server, masking who they really are. I run a footy message board and we have a few cranks who like to upset people, they’re hard to track down.
13 December 2015