Reviewing the charts in 1981 – on stolen chip paper

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"STATISTICS!" parps the cover of the first ever issue of Pop Scene, "published" in 1981. Because, of course, when you're an 11-year-old boy writing your own pop magazine on paper taken from your parents' chip shop, there are few more exciting things in the world than STATISTICS!

As a dedicated 11-year-old chart watcher, I knew from the outset that Pop Scene wouldn't be short of STATISTICS! And in 1981 there were no more exciting STATISTICS! than those that made up the weekly singles chart. Pop Scene was born of a gap in the market. Having studied the existing music magazines – NME, Melody Maker, Smash Hits, Record Mirror – brought into the house by my 15-year-old brother, I noticed that none of them featured reviews of every single record in the top 75. I surely can't have heard every record in the top 75, but looking at Pop Scene 31 years later, it's pretty clear to me that I'd heard a lot of them. So I duly set about the process of reviewing them. I can tell from the records in the chart – Take It on the Run by REO Speedwagon; Body Talk by Imagination; Ghost Town by the Specials – that we're into July. So I suspect that Pop Scene was also born of summer holiday boredom. Nevertheless, it's nothing if not thorough. I really do appear to have written something about every single record in that week's chart.

In my 11-year-old mind, the charts were a battleground between real and manufactured pop, between the authenticity of guitars and the fakeness of synths and drum machines, and it's pretty clear which side I was on. Writing about Depeche Mode's maiden hit New Life, I grudgingly conceded: "It's a good sound but imagine seeing them in concert. It's just as lively as Crossroads. All the noises are made by a synthesiser." Note the disapproval. Dropping to No 61 that week, Adam and the Ants had not long ridden into the hearts of a million teenage girls with an audaciously bonkers concept album about pirates and Native Americans. Stand & Deliver was no less brilliant, but in a Birmingham suburb, one critic remained unimpressed. Adam Ant was, I decided, "a prat who thinks he's Tonto and the next minute Dick Turpin". My searing evisceration of his oeuvre continued at some length, but in a little box to the side, the 11-year-old within could no longer be contained. "He's bent!" it said.

Mainly though, I called it like I saw it – usually in the sniffy, supercilious tones I deemed essential to all rock discourse. Pondering Eddy Grant's descent to No 40 with I Love You, Yes I Love You, I sounded an ominous note of warning: "Same ole Eddy and people are getting bored." After an impressive run of hits such as Cool for Cats, Up the Junction and Another Nail in My Heart, Squeeze – exponents of the sort of unshowy songcraft I held in high regard – were struggling to penetrate the top 40 with Tempted. "Squeeze have got two things other groups haven't got – Difford and Tilbrook," I lamented, before concluding: "Squeeze deserve more than they're getting." I could perceive comparable depths to Bob Marley and the Wailers' posthumously released No Woman No Cry, but this merely left me conflicted: "Brought [sic] in honour of the reggae king's death. It's got feeling, a meaning. But I don't like it."

With their monophonic synth-prodding, I might have disdained Depeche Mode, but in his own way, the all-conquering Shakin' Stevens seemed no less lazy to me. As Shaky gazed imperiously down from his perch, at the apex of that week's top 75, one lone, prepubescent voice of dissent, somewhere in the West Midlands, could be heard: "I like it, it's good, but it's just not right how he can pick one old song, sing it and sell it. How about some new stuff, Mr Stevens?" The same puritanism extended to pre-eminent medley-makers Star Sound, who had the temerity to tackle Abba with Stars on 45 Vol II: "This Abba medley is very good but I, being an Abba fan, hate it. If you like people making money out of other people's songs, buy it." Meanwhile, five places beneath it, at 14, sat the real Abba, with their 12in-only club hit Lay All Your Love On Me: "The best group the world has ever seen. The only group that can get in the top 10 on 12in singles at £1.99 each. Another outstanding Abba song."

I didn't know anyone else who was quite as obsessed with the weekly hit parade as I was in 1981. But if this Friday's BBC4 documentary Pop Chart Britannia is anything to go by, there were quite a few of us. Chart fan Steve Carr recreates the weekly ritual of unwrapping an audio cassette and preparing to tape his favourite songs from that week's chart countdown, finger hovering over the pause button in order to eliminate the sound of the DJ at the end of the track.

But do people still view the top 40 in the same way? I'm not sure if it's quite the pop share index it once used to be. That only really works if you have a weekly high-profile TV show predicated on the ups and downs of that chart. Without Top of the Pops, the top 40 on its own is a little too much like any other trade chart – akin to say, the latest rundown on chiller cabinet lines found in the Grocer or a list of the most purchased paperbacks in motorway services. It's hard to imagine any freakish 11-year-olds in 2012 sharing Pop Scene's excitement about STATISTICS!

In the continued absence of Top of the Pops, my 11-year old daughter has found herself drawn to BBC4's Thursday night TOTP reruns from 35 years ago. We sit in the front room discussing whether Summer Nights will continue its run in the top spot. I can't remember if it will and she never knew in the first place. Meanwhile, in the current chart, neither of us have any idea what's No 1. If only there was a magazine you could go to for that sort of information.

Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top 10 is on BBC4 on Friday at 9.25pm