chobar

It does sound rather nice! Thank you for writing up that report.

Well, as I said, I found Wikipedia, but didn't consider it to count as a reliable source. A statement in Wikipedia without an accessible reference to back it up is like something you hear from some bloke down the pub. That part of the article may well have been added by the bloke down the pub, too. I know because I used to be a Wikipedia regular, myself. That is, until I became too fed up with how the vast majority of editors were much more interested in deleting perfectly valid and reliable information that they just happened not to be interested in than they were to edit out stuff that was totally unreliable but that they personally found interesting... (Yes, I am bitter!) I'm annoyed that past charts are not archived. What does the Official Charts Company gain from not allowing past charts to be accessible?

Oops. Sorry. Why did I think it was higher, then? Must have been wishful thinking... Edit: I can't actually find a definitive statement anywhere of where "Rain" got to in the UK Singles Chart. Bizarrely, we have a 160-page thread here, devoted to talking about MIKA's chart positions and sales, and it seems that nobody thought to mention what the chart position of "Rain" actually was! (Not having a go at anyone. The set of people who didn't think to mention it includes me, as well.) Wikipedia is the only source I can find, and that hardly counts, as anyone can write anything in Wikipedia... I thought I'd saved the chart for the week that "Rain" was in it, but looking back, I seem not to have done. Does anyone know of any archives of past singles charts?

If "Blame It On The Girls" had been available to buy on CD from Amazon.co.uk, I would have bought it! On Saturday, late in the evening, I did find mention of a CD of "Blame It On The Girls" on eBay. It was a promotional copy, with one track only. And unfortunately, the listing had expired shortly before I found it, so I didn't get a chance to buy it. But there are a few up on eBay now, so I have just bought one. If you want one as well, head over to eBay and do a search! There is also a 5-track CD of remixes. My guess would be that the record company didn't do a proper release on CD because they didn't expect the sales to be high enough to offset the costs of manufacturing and distributing it. That's just my guess. But even with sales limited to downloads only, the new single still did better than "Rain". "Blame It On The Girls" is currently at No. 72 in the Official UK Singles Chart: http://www.theofficialcharts.com/top40_singles.php Not a great chart position, but better than nothing...

Yikes! Sorry! I will try to better in future. Just stop poking me with that stick... Tesco's! It's not on the official playlist for either radio station that they have published on the Web: Radio 1 Playlist Capital FM Playlist I'm not familiar with Capital FM, but I know that Radio 1 DJs get some leeway to play songs outside the playlist, at least some of the time. I have fond memories of John Peel, who always used to play very obscure songs. I wonder what he would have made of Mika...

Please enlighten me. I am rather out of touch with these things. What are the three versions of "Rain"?

I was astonished to see that Mika wasn't even in the Top 40 this evening. I feel rather guilty, now: I am one of those responsible. I am a big fan of Mika's, but I just haven't been in a music-buying mood lately. I had always been intending to buy his new album and the singles from it, but had just not got around to it yet. I was being complacent, too. I knew that Life in Cartoon Motion had got to No. 1, and that the singles from it had also done fairly well, so I just assumed that other people would buy his new records, too. Of course, assuming that other people will do the things that you should be doing yourself is never the right thing to do! Seeing that he didn't even reach the charts today has jolted me out of my complacency. I have just been to Amazon.co.uk, and bought all four of the CDs that I could find that I hadn't already bought: The Boy Who Knew Too Much, The Boy Who Knew Too Much (Deluxe Edition) - yes, both of them, without even bothering to first find out what the difference is! - "We Are Golden", and "Rain". I think I have now done my bit to try and get him in the charts for next week! Does anyone else want to buy duplicate copies of anything, just to nudge his sales figures up a little bit more?

Thanks for the welcomes, people. And for the warnings, purplegrape! Okay, so the bit about the forum being addictive and me being on here 24/7 didn't quite work out... The forum told me when I signed in last night that I hadn't been here since 22nd July. Isn't that shocking? Perhaps I got scared off... I'll try again... But as for Mika's "rocket ship"... I won't try to get my hands on it, don't worry. I'm not interested in him in that way...

Okay, I'm sorry for grumping at you... I'm annoyed that I couldn't buy one of the pictures, although obviously that's not your fault! It would have been brilliant to have a piece of the artistic development of Life in Cartoon Motion up on my wall. *sigh* Maybe they will be sold one day, in fifty years' time, when Mika is officially the Top Pop Star of All Time, and then they'll be auctioned off, and go for a billion pounds each... I'll just have to start saving my money up for that day...

No, I've just checked with the gallery. They say: "The work is not for sale, and far as we know, never will be."

Did Mika actually say that he had OCD? Or did he just talk about how he made tea, and then the journalist jumped to the conclusion? I have OCD, so I'm rather hoping that it's true that Mika has it too, because I like finding I have things in common with him. So much for Mika's message of being oneself. When he says that "Grace Kelly" was his expression of wanting to be an individual, I just think, "Oh yes, I want to be like that, too."

Oh, I'm very happy to hear this! I'm right-handed, and I've been told I'm doing it "wrong" by wearing my watch on my right wrist. It's good to know that not only am I not alone in this, but also that I am in the esteemed company of Mika himself. I've never understood why other people consider it better to have their watches on their left wrists, anyway. If I have my watch on my right wrist, it means it's right there in my field of view when I am writing, so that I don't need to raise my left hand as well, just to see what the time is. See? It's much more efficient!

Okay, I'm sorry for saying it was silly! Please forgive me...

hotdlp and BexxY, those are really great photographs that you took of the exhibition. Thank you for uploading them. I rather stupidly didn't take a camera when I went, so I failed to get any photographs! I did take some lollipops, though. Seven, in fact. Is that too greedy? Well, I live in a big household, and I didn't want anyone to feel left out... I went yesterday. I was surprised at how small the gallery was, and how low-key the whole event was. There was hardly anyone there. For most of the time I was there, it was just me and this other family - two women and a little girl - with just two or three other couples and single people wandering through at various times. Clearly the general public are a lot less interested in the artwork than in the music. If it had been a concert, the building would have been overflowing, I'm sure... It's a shame, really, because Mika talks of the pictures and the music as being intimately connected, and he seems to want people to engage with the cartoons as well as the songs. Hang on, is it being sold? I asked the chap who was in charge if they were selling anything, and he said no, because they were all one-offs... so I wonder if maybe he just misunderstood me, and thought I was asking if they were selling copies... So are the pictures themselves for sale? If so they might have just missed out on a sale there... and I might have just missed out on owning a genuine piece of Life in Cartoon Motion artwork. :'(

Hello, rockinrocketrobyn. Welcome to MikaFanClub.com! Actually, I'm only new here, myself, so it's a bit silly me welcoming you, isn't it? But I welcome you, nevertheless, and hope you enjoy your stay here.

I'm very happy to hear that everyone here is nice and friendly. I don't know to what extent it will take over my life... Every so often I'll join a message board, and start posting there, sometimes very obsessively, but then I'll get distracted by something else, and suddenly I'll go missing from the board for several months. (Hang on, what's that over there? I'll be back in a minute...)

Thank you for the welcomes, everybody. I'm sure I will enjoy posting here.

I'm new here, so hello, everybody. Apparently I'm supposed to say where I first heard of MIKA, is that right? Well, I think he entered my consciousness quite gradually at first, when "Grace Kelly" was out. I loved that song, but it wasn't until I read an enthusiastic message on a message board I frequented, saying good things about "Lollipop", and linking to it on YouTube, that I started trying to find out about the man himself, and about the other songs that he'd done. That was in mid-February. Since then, I've been rather a huge fan of MIKA. I also found this forum in February, and decided back then that I should join it. However, I am an expert at procrastination, so it's taken me about five months just to show up... I seem to be in quite a small minority here, being a man. I mean, I know there are obvious reasons for women to like him, if they're the sorts of women that like men, but surely there are reasons for men to like him, too? Oh well, I'll just have to hope that I'm not persecuted too much for being a member of a sexual minority...