When choosing this week’s topic, I neglected to take into account that period, in the early 1970s, when suburban, middle-class music fans keen to impress with their intellectual prowess listened to what is now termed prog rock. We – mostly men – would don greatcoats, grow our hair into greasy bangs and wander around with album covers under our arms in the vain hope girls would marvel at our good taste and braininess in liking Uriah Heep or Gnidrolog.

Many songs of the era – extended and twisted into epics with changes of pace or instrumentation – were nominated and, reluctantly at first, a list slanted towards the genre began to form.