Christmas crackers!

Just what is it about Christmas that turns normally sane selective record buyers into whimsical culture-bypassed suckers for whichever puppet of the day has lined up some dreadful ditty for them to coo over!

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This year it’s good old Bob The Builder who has given swearing wife-beating white rapper Eminem a serious drubbing in the sales department, and managed to worry the apparently invincible Westlife – a taste test beckons there as well, but let’s stay with the Christmas Number One issue for now. On the surface, the opposite appeal of the two makes an easy connection – sensible loveable children’s role model sees off nasty foul-mouthed bad-boy youth icon, but it’s actually not as simple as that.

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These days it’s puppets like Bob that sell at Christmas, but the thread of cosy sing along songs leaving scorch marks on the pop charts can be traced back to 1942 and Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. It’s not the best song written by Irving Berlin, or recorded by Crosby, but it’s still one of the best selling records ever made, so it touches a serious chord in a massive number of people, and that’s the essence of Christmas hits.

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Touch the right emotional chord of safety, nostalgia, togetherness and joy, and you tap into a massive market of people who only buy one song a year, and you can make it yours, if you follow the rules.

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Forward to 1957 – Pinky and Perky (and anyone over forty-five will find their childhood TV. memory tweaked by the mere mention of their names!) who took the pig, a good luck symbol in the puppets’ creator’s Czech Republic homeland, and made it a national children’s icon with enough clout to make all the Teletubbies turn green!

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But it was 1969 that the seriously schmaltzy Christmas / hit record link was firmly forged with the double whammy of Rolf Harris’ ‘Two Little Boys’ followed by Clive Dunn’s ‘Grandad’ a year later. Of course, reliving all these past saccharine glories makes for cavity-worrying sweetness levels, but records you could really learn to loathe were not far away.

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The puppets hit their stride from the mid-seventies onwards; first offensive (in every sense of the word!) was The Wombles, backed up by The Smurfs, Mr Blobby and The Teletubbies in fairly rapid succession.

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Live performers did their bit at Christmas – Slade and Wizard are as much a part of Christmas as holly and ivy, and one national electrical retailer has actually banned their respective songs from being played in-store after a poll among shoppers found them to be the most hated Christmas records of all time!

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The simple fact is – fifty-seven million people loathe and detest novelty singles, at Christmas, or any time, but the other million are up for hearing, and in a lot of cases, buying them.�

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The shrinking singles sales market merely means that safe un-threatening pretty boy stars like Westlife would normally scythe through the charts like the hoards of Genghis Khan, but at Christmas, the warm and fuzzy factor kicks in, and it’s anybody’s race – anybody with the right ingredients in their song that is. On that basis, Eminem never really stood a chance, Westlife and Bob were the serious contenders. Next year, the icon may alter, the reasons for safe happy loveable chart toppers will be the same. Apart from Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop The Cavalry’, which contradicts everything, you’ve just read – but that’s pop music for you!

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The poll for the best / worst Christmas Number One is open now – please have your vote, and your say on the Message Boards.���