LOOKIN' AFTER No 1s THE XMAS FACTOR

Does your granny always tell ya that the old songs are the best? The truth might be more curious and complex, as Chris Roberts finds, tearing off the wrapping paper to discover the full history of the Christmas No 1

- 

It’s the time that every Santa has a ball, although — just to give you a heads up, full disclosure and all - there’s a world outside your window and it’s a world of dread and fear.

It’s Christmas time. There’s no need to be afraid. Look to the future now. It’s only just begun.

Confusing, isn’t it? Wait till we tell you the story of the Christmas No 1 spot. Hark, take a trip down the weirdest of chimneys. It’s nuttier than chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

The Beatles may or may not have been, as Lennon posited to the fury of the US Bible Belt in 1966, “more popular than Jesus”, but in his defence they'd spent since 1962 being more popular than Christmas. They'd held the “all-important” Christmas No 1 slot for three years running: I Want To Hold Your Hand in ’63, I Feel Fine in ’64 and Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out in '65. (They were there again in 1967, with Hello, Goodbye). And that record of three consecutive Yuletide yowzers held firm for over three decades, until Spice Girls equalled it. You get a sense, then, of how an act needed to be of monumental pop-cultural significance to attain such an all-conquering achievement.

Until, between 2018 and 2022, an outfit came along who smashed the feats of the Fab Four and the Cool Britannia girl power group with a mind-boggling five straight years of hogging the Xmas summit. And that outfit was LadBaby. Which begs the question: were LadBaby more popular than God?