Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was revealed as the buyer of Francis Bacon’s Triptych. The price he paid is a record for a post-war painting. The previous day he had purchased Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping for $33.6 million, a record price for a work by a living artist.

Even higher prices are reputed to have been paid for works of art sold privately. Such sales are rarely publicized, but it is believed that in 2006 US music mogul David Geffen sold Jackson Pollock’s No.5, 1948 for $140 million.

A private sale that never happened was that of Pablo Picasso’s painting Le rêve. Its owner, Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn, agreed to sell it privately for $139 million, but while showing it to a group of friends, Mr Wynn made a sweeping gesture and accidentally poked his elbow through the canvas, resulting in a 15-cm (6-inch) tear – and the cancellation of the sale.

Among the recent Top 10 film lists I have based on this information is one on the Top 10 Films Based on Computer Games – with pretty much every one of them earning upwards of $100 million worldwide, the link between computer games and films has proved hugely profitable:

Top 10 Films Based on Computer Games

* Original if series

I have also been working on other film lists on everything from Top 10 Horror Remakes to the 10 Latest People to Receive a Posthumous Oscar. We all know about Heath Ledger’s for his role in Dark Knight, but spare a thought for poor old Raymond Rasch and Larry Russell, who got theirs for the music for Limelight. The film was made in 1952, but the blacklisting of the film’s star, Charlie Chaplin, meant that it was not released and the Oscars not awarded until 1972, by which time both men were dead. Even that’s not the end of the story: it was recently claimed that another arranger, Russell Garcia, should have been credited and that Larry Russell received his Oscar by mistake!

“I’ve got an idea for a one-volume reference book – it’s called The Top 10 of Everything.” I didn’t say another word – I didn’t even get as far describing what would be in it before he made me an offer. It was a reasonable offer, but as I said to him, “It will take quite a while to research what lists I should or could do…” – so he immediately doubled his offer. Nowadays publishers have to report back to their sales and accounts people and number-crunch before they can make an offer, but in those days they were allowed that sort of latitude – and in the case of Top 10 it worked. There had been no intention of making it an annual, but the first edition was a bestseller – it even reached No.1 in Ireland! – and it has been published every year ever since. It remains unusual in being an annual that is compiled by an individual, rather than by an anonymous team, and what goes into each edition is still very much a personal decision.

Over the coming weeks, I hope to give you a few insights into what this involves and some of the often unlikely byways I follow in my ongoing quest for Top 10 lists.