Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead tops download after campaign by late PM's critics

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• By Paul Cockert

Margaret Thatcher dead: Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead tops download charts after campaign by late PM's critics

9 Apr 2013 20:03[size=1.30769em]The Judy Garland version of the Wizard of Oz song has raced to number 1 on the Amazon charts and number 2 with iTunes users





[size=1.15385em]Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead has soared to the top of the download charts after an online campaign by Margaret Thatcher's critics.

[size=1.15385em]The Judy Garland version of the Wizard of Oz song tonight raced to number 1 on the Amazon charts and number 2 on the iTunes charts.

[size=1.15385em]While many mourned the former Prime Minister who died aged 87 yesterday, many others saw her death as a cause for celebration.

[size=1.15385em]The latest figures from the Official Charts Company - which compiles sales from all online and high street retailers - were released yesterday.

[size=1.15385em]Those showed Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead had reached number 54 within 12 hours of the death of Baroness Thatcher being announced.

[size=1.15385em]Given its continuing success with users of Amazon and iTunes, two of the biggest online music stores, the song is expected to have climbed much higher when sales figures are updated.

[size=1.15385em]The Official Charts Company midweek sales chart will be released tomorrow and then on Sunday evening the traditional top 40 chart will be revealed.

[size=1.15385em]In the 1939 musical Dorothy, played by Garland, sings the song with the Munchkins and Glinda the Good Witch after the death of the Wicked Witch of the East.

[size=1.15385em]There had been some speculation that the track might be too short to qualify at just 51 seconds, but chart bosses say it is eligible.

[size=1.15385em]In 2007 the track The Ladies Bras by Wisbey made the chart despite lasting just 36 seconds.

[size=1.15385em]But Garland's version is not the only one to be selling: A version by Ella Fitzgerald is at 146 and one by the Munchkins is at 183.

[size=1.15385em]A spokesman for the Official Singles Chart told the Mirror today: "If the sales of all three were combined, the song would be in 40th place today, with almost 2,500 sales."

[size=1.15385em]The Facebook group campaigning for Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead to hit the top of the charts now has over 4,000 members

[size=1.15385em]There had not been a post for three months until the news broke this morning that the former Prime Minister had died.

[size=1.15385em]The divisive former PM's death has also led to a burst of sales for Elvis Costello's track about Baroness Thatcher - Tramp The Dirt Down.

[size=1.15385em]The song, from his 1989 album Spike, was at number 85 in the iTunes chart this afternoon.

[size=1.15385em]Respect MP George Galloway referred to the track in a message on Twitter in the wake of her death.



Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-ding-dong-1821155#ixzz2Q8H3XX8S

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April 12, 2013, 5:05 pm
BBC Won’t Ban ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,’ Adopted as Anti-Thatcher Anthem
By ROBERT MACKEY

[size=1.1em]The original version of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” from “The Wizard of Oz.”

[size=1.4em]Last Updated, 6:13 p.m.
[size=1.4em]The BBC on Friday rejected loud calls to ban the song “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from its airwaves after the apparent success of a Facebook campaign to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher, the divisive former prime minister, by driving sales of the tune from “The Wizard of Oz” up the British singles chart.

[size=1.4em]In a statement, the controller of BBC Radio 1, Ben Cooper, said that while he found “the campaign to promote the song in response to the death of Baroness Thatcher as distasteful as anyone,” the channel’s weekly review of the most popular singles could not simply “ignore a high new entry which clearly reflects the views of a big enough portion of the record-buying public to propel it up the charts.”

By way of compromise, Mr. Cooper said he had decided “that we should treat the rise of the song, based as it is on a political campaign to denigrate Lady Thatcher’s memory, as a news story.” So, he said, the BBC “will play a brief excerpt of it in a short news report during the show which explains to our audience why a 70-year-old song is at the top of the charts.”

While acknowledging that the broadcast could offend Mrs. Thatcher’s family and supporters, Mr. Cooper added, “To ban the record from our airwaves completely would risk giving the campaign the oxygen of further publicity and might inflame an already delicate situation.”

Mrs. Thatcher herself made famous use of the same metaphor in 1985, shortly after the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 by Islamist militants, when she argued:

We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. In our societies we do not believe in constraining the media, still less in censorship. But ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, a code under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists’ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted?

In a television interview on Friday, one of the organizers of the Facebook campaign, Mark Biddiss, said that for many people, buying the record was “a very cathartic experience,” even if it also enriched the corporate owners of the rights to the “Wizard of Oz” soundtrack.