What? Surely not? Taylor Swift better than The Rolling Stones? Sussex's top arts writer despairs at the 'greatest ever' pop chart

You know the kind of thing. The people in Chichester drink the fifth most cups of tea in the country. Brighton is the UK’s fourth best place for stag dos. And Horsham people are the second best lovers anywhere in the world. OK, I made that last one up – though they might be. Who knows. But you get my drift. The latest survey only yesterday affirmed that most domestic disputes happen between 6pm and 8pm. And maybe they do. I will certainly be on my best behaviour over tea tonight.

But the point is that these are the kind of spurious facts and dodgy stats that you can't actually defend but nor can you truly refute them. Except for the latest survey, one that we can instantly bring down in flames – an outrageous claim that Taylor Swift is the world’s ‘most popular musician.’ The survey, which delights in calling itself a study, justifies its claim on the basis that Taylor attracts more than 38 million Google searches every month around the world.

And yep, that’s a pretty impressive figure. K-Pop bands, BTS and BLACKPINK rank second and third respectively. Elvis Presley, Coldplay, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber all make the top thirty – presumably much to their relief.

But how meaningful is this actually once you start to consider who’s missing from the study’s top 39? I take comfort in the fact that I haven’t heard of eight acts in the top 39, but far more significant is who’s not there – the double outrage that there is no place for The Beatles, no place for The Rolling Stones, which lunacy makes the entire list instantly, utterly redundant. Or at least triple underlines the absolute shallowness of popularity as an indication of worth.

Taylor Swift is as astonishing musician who rightly attracts the most devoted of fans; she’s a remarkable performer who gives incredible value and, just as importantly, treats her fans with huge respect.

But… Google hits? Really? As a measure of importance, it’s crass and it’s superficial – for the simple reason that in this instance popularity seems to trump true greatness. And that’s the only way you can explain the absence in that top 39 of The Beatles, The Stones, Paul Weller, The Kinks… I could go on… and on and on and on.

Let’s just take The Stones – and take them out of this world where clicks on a computer are the only measure of merit. It’s not about searches. It’s about the way they make you feel.

Nothing is more exhilarating than The Rolling Stones in concert. Nothing more mesmerising than those opening bars of Sympathy for the Devil. Nothing more life-affirming than Jumping Jack Flash in all its thumping glory.

Nothing makes me feel more alive than The Stones, the sound of them, the thought of them, the genius of them. The realisation of just how much I owe them.

The clips filtering back from their current US tour are awesome. And without being ageist, let’s remember Sir Mick is very nearly 81. Staggering, isn’t it. Very very nearly Joe Biden’s age, and blimey, there’s quite a difference between the two.

It’s pretty much impossible to put into words what The Rolling Stones mean to me, but maybe one gruesome moment gets closer than any other to summing up just how much they inhabit my heart and soul and always have done.

Weird things go through your mind when you think you’ll be dead in a couple of minutes – things that sum you up completely.

I was stabbed, beaten and kicked in a vicious mugging in South Africa seven years ago. You can read about it in my book Outrunning The Demons. As I lay on a Cape Town pavement, watching the blood pool around me (there was a lot of it), fighting the urge to shut my eyes, I found myself thinking “So that’s that, then.” And with that thought came the consolation: “At least I am wearing my favourite Rolling Stones T-shirt.”

It mattered in that moment – just as the Stones have mattered all my life and mattered hugely. Thank goodness, I survived. I was rescued by a pizza delivery driver and whisked to hospital. And that T-shirt, a present from my daughter Laura, has been my protection ever since. I mean, you’d have to be seriously unlucky to get stabbed twice while wearing exactly the same T-shirt, wouldn’t you?

And naturally I am wearing it today – as my rebuttal of that silly survey. Mick Jagger. What a man, What a performer. What a superstar. And I wore it just over two years ago, amidst tens of thousands of people, when I stood utterly transfixed in Hyde Park staring at a tiny dot in the distance – a dot fizzing with such energy that you could barely keep track of it as it beckoned, swayed, cajoled, gyrated, entranced and hypnotised.

That dot of course was Mick Jagger, forever prancing, dancing, goading, weaving and enticing – a performer of immense power who knows precisely how to use it. I remember thinking at the time “Wow, he’s nearly 79”. My knees were aching from too much running; and I was wearing a very pirate-like eye patch applied in A&E the day before after I tumbled into a prickly bush during a bit of misjudged pruning of a prickly bush. I was a wreck. I felt 80. No, nearer 90. But Jagger was a shooting star on that stage, whizzing this way and that, the ultimate mesmeriser, the ultimate showman. It was as if he held every single one of us in his hand.

Of course, there were the big screens either side of the stage if you wanted the full detail of the performance, but it was the buzzing dot on the horizon that held us captivated. And what songs Mick and the band sang on a poignant day, their first London gig without long-time drummer Charlie. But it was light-hearted too. With Macca playing Glastonbury that weekend, with Elton John on stage nearby and with the Stones themselves reigning supreme in Hyde Park, Jagger joked from the stage that this was a great weekend for the young hopes in the music biz – those dreaming of bright careers ahead of them.

It was a lovely moment, lovelier by the second as Mick, Keef and Ronnie then showed us quite why, even after 60 years, absolutely no one can hold a candle to the Stones at their best. And boy, they really were at their best on this blissful night in Hyde Park, a venue so rich in resonance for them down the decades in a city which has always been absolutely their own.

I first saw the Stones 40 years before to the very day at Wembley on their 20th anniversary tour – and it felt uncharted territory even then. No band had been going at that level for 20 years back then. And blimey, we were watching men in their late 30s rocking their socks off. I was convinced I was watching them for the very last time at my first very possible opportunity. How fabulous to be so outrageously wrong. Fast forward exactly four decades, and wow. Just wow – seeing them for the tenth time.

The years have enhanced their standing, but most amazingly of all, the years have left them totally, utterly undimmed in their power and glory – as they showed at Hyde Park two years ago.

It was over in a flash. A Jumping Jack Flash. But what a memory – just as fabulous as the first time I saw them, Friday, June 25 1982, one of those days that, even as I lived it, I knew I would remember in glowing, radiant detail for the rest of my life. It was the last day of my A-levels, and my brother, then a medical student in London, had managed to get us tickets to see The Stones at the old Wembley stadium.

Barely had I added the final Punkt to my German translation than I was on the train to London, ready to be enveloped by the weirdest, most heart-warming experience. This was 1982, remember. The Stones weren’t the national treasures they are today, our country’s favourite grandfathers. Back then, you were met with scorn and sympathy (For The Devil?) if you dared confess to liking them.

But as my brother and I hared it towards Wembley, the crowds grew thicker with every step, Jagger look-alikes and wannabe-Keefs everywhere around us. Ensconced in the stadium, Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Bill and Charlie were like the world’s most powerful magnet drawing their people, Stones people, towards them.

A magnet indeed. And it was sheer magnetism we got. Jagger is an astonishing performer, electrifying, dazzling, intoxicating, capable of thrilling to the bone 80,000 people while making each and every one of us think that this is for me and me alone.

And that’s how we should measure music. Not in Google searches and clicks on a keyboard, but in what it does to us, how deep it goes, how it gets in our gut and gets in our mind and stays there forever. That’s greatness. Who cares about popularity.