Wrong word? We can work it out

This morning’s Daily Telegraph carries an obituary for Spencer Davis, the musician who enjoyed considerable chart success in the 1960s. One of his achievements with his band  the Spencer Davis Group was to knock The Beatles off the No 1 slot in January 1966 with the Jackie Edwards composed "Keep on Running".  
 
 
Initially, the Telegraph obit said that the Spencer Davis Group had kept The Beatles from the top slot. It is the word “kept” that had to be disputed. The Beatles were not “kept” from the No 1 slot.  The Fab Four had been at the top of the charts with their double A-sided single "Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out" for five weeks so were probably due to start their downward trip out of the Top 20.
 
Naturally, I wrote to the Telegraph to point out the incorrect use of the word “kept”. My concern was that anyone under a certain age - say 60 - might not realise that The Beatles went to No 1 with all their singles between 1963 and 1967, until Engelbert Humperdinck prevented “Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever” from reaching the top slot. After that interlude, they returned to topping that charts with “All You Need Is Love” in June 1967 and continued to do so until May 1969 with “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.
 
I received a reply from Andrew Brown of the Telegraph to say he was changing the word “kept” to  “knocked” in the online edition of the paper. And he then reassured me that there is no shortage of Beatles fans in the Telegraph office.
 
Good to know.
 
 The Beatles in 1967.

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