Cheese with your turkey?
IN the film About a Boy, based on Nick Hornby’s novel of the same name, the protagonist is a loafer. Played by Hugh Grant, he doesn’t work because he has the royalties every year from his dad’s successful Christmas song, ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’.
It’s a dream scenario.
The Christmas hit is guaranteed airtime every year and potential for re-release as a new audience comes of age (the Band Aid single has been No 1 three times); with the advent of downloads, singles don’t have to be re-released to make the top 40.
The artist’s share of the money accrued from sales depends on contracts.
Boney M recorded the biggest-selling, non-charity Christmas No 1 in the UK, the 1978 song ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ (which was originally a hit for Harry Belafonte), but for every £1m of records the band sells, its four members get just £357.14 each.
Shakin’ Stevens, who also topped the Christmas charts with a song he didn’t write, the 1985 single ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, told the Guardian newspaper, in an interview last year, that he gets thousands of pounds from airplay royalties every year.
There are also big whammies if the song is taken on by a corporate gorilla for an advertising campaign: astute retailer John Lewis this year used Gabrielle Aplin’s cover of ‘The Power of Love’, currently a major chart hit.
The original song, by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, provided one of the most farcical Christmas videos, featuring one of the ‘three wise men’ ambling about an Arabian desert on a camel, looking a ringer for Santa Claus, as part of a nativity story. The song reached No 1, but was ousted before Christmas 1984 by Bob Geldof’s Band Aid single.
The worst Christmas No 1 single is contentious.
There have been some horrors since Al Martino’s ‘Here in My Heart’ 60 years ago, the UK’s debutante yuletide No 1, following the inauguration of the single charts by New Musical Express.
There have been novelty numbers, like Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)’ in 1971, and ‘Mr Blobby’ (1993), as well as a parade of music for bed-wetters, like Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ (1992) or Michael Andrews’s and Gary Jules’s cover of the Tears for Fears song ‘Mad World’ in 2003.
We’ve been overrun, in recent times, by power ballads from X Factor winners, songs that grate like itchy Christmas scarves. There have been six in a row (if you include Rage against the Machine’s 2009 protest song, ‘Killing in the Name’).
From a straw poll I conducted, many people said two words: ‘Cliff Richard’; others blurted “I wish it could be Christmas everyday”, because that would be a kind of Chinese water torture, and because of the circumstances in which the song is often heard.
“It’s more the memories of the day after a Christmas booze-up,” said one friend,” stumbling along, trying to get Christmas shopping done in a packed shop, with a bad dose of the fear coming on, hearing ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’ blaring for the seventh time that day. God, the thought of it is enough to give me the cold sweats (and send me off to the pub).”
Many people think the song is by Slade, but it’s actually by Wizzard, another English 1970s glam rock outfit with big hair. Neither was it a Christmas No 1, being pipped to the post in 1973 by Slade’s anodyne ‘Merry Christmas Everyone,’ which is, according to the Performing Right Society, the most heard song in the world, based on the number of countries from which royalties flow in — 42% of people, seemingly, have been exposed to the irritant.
The first time Slade performed the song live was after their star had faded.
In 1980, Slade played at the Reading Festival. By then, they’d been gazumped by punk. They were there as a jokey, last-minute replacement for Ozzy Osborne, but their act stormed. During their second encore, they asked the audience what they wanted to hear.
It was the middle of August, but that didn’t stop 100,000 punters breaking into a chorus of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’.
As for the greatest Christmas No 1 — there have been decent songs, including four singles in the 1960s from The Beatles, Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)’, in 1979, and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (twice), but none are Christmassy.
Is there a better Christmas ballad than ‘Fairytale of New York’, by The Pogues and Kirsty McCall? Unlikely, although it was never a No 1.
As for the worst Christmas book — does the RTÉ Guide’s Christmas bumper edition count? Or a Cliff Richard calendar?
If put to it, I’d choose any cookbook (see Delia, Jamie, Gordon, et al).
Best book? Hard to look past Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Since its publication, in 1843, it has beguiled with its seasonal messages of love, charity and goodwill, and a bit of the supernatural.
Even for people who don’t read much, A Christmas Carol has become synonymous with Christmas, due to film, cartoon and theatre versions.
I have vivid memories, for instance, of an atmospheric promenade production staged by Corcadorca in the Cork City Gaol in 1994.
And the choice of Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol was an inspired piece of casting in a great take on the tale.
As for the worst Christmas film — Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, from 1964, might hold the distinction.
It’s a sci-fi shocker, with B-movie production values, laughable fight scenes, pre-Star Trek outfits like something the staff at Argos might wear, and a plot that hinges on the abduction of Santa Claus because some Martian parents, Momar (mom Martian) and Kimar (king Martian”) are worried their kids, Girmar (girl Martian) and Bomar (boy Martian”) are watching too much Earth television.
There have been a few fine films, including Zulu, The Great Escape and Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory that have become Christmassy because of repeat showings around the end of December, but the accolade for the best of them might go to Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
Watching it has a balming effect. It appeals to all ages. It’s got the necessary Christmas elements — the snow, the lights, and an orchestral soundtrack.
It has a fantastic baddie in Lionel Barrymore’s character, an uplifting Yeatsian “my glory was I had such friends” theme, and the peerless Jimmy Stewart in the lead role, with that rolling, quivering voice of his, and a crabby, wisecracking persona that makes him human and appealing.
And if you find the notion that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings a bit maudlin, just watch the film for the sound of a 1940s police-car siren.
