A new report out today revealed that Psychology researchers from Warwick University used Google books to look at the number of instances of key words signifying happiness and sadness in millions of novels, memoirs and newspapers stretching back to 1825.
They concluded that people in the UK were at their least happy in 1978 during the ‘Winter of Discontent’, when unions brought the country to a stand still.. more so than during the first and second world wars.
The team at SMILER reckon they have got that totally wrong, back in 1978 we were named The Rod Squad [Before becoming SMILER] under the guidance of Mick Pulchan and John Gray and as Rod’s only fan club were pulling in members from everywhere.
In January Rod had a Number 5 hit with the double A side single ‘Hot Legs’/’I Was Only Joking’, May saw the release of the best ever football song ‘Ole Ola’ shoot up to number 4 in the charts and if The Scottish national side had been better at shooting it might have even made number 1!
In November Rod’s monster hit ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy did make number 1 in the charts followed by the album ‘Blondes Ave More Fun’ that made number 3 on the album charts.
And fans in Manchester, Leicester, Brighton, Birmingham and London got to see a total of 17 concerts by Rod and his band who had just been joined by new boy Kevin Savigar…Sounds like another vintage year to us?