Crotchets and Quavering

The best part of Christmas (other than the moment when you think, 'Yes, I have FINISHED my Christmas shopping')? Christmas music! Although it's hard not to get a bit Grinchy when you're hearing Slade, Wizzard and Mariah Carey on a constant loop from the end of November. Added to which, some bugger used Fairytale of New York on an advert this year. Seriously? One of the most heavily played Chrimbo songs of all time and now you're using it on an advert as well? As I've been at home all day with the radio on for six weeks, I've felt positively hounded by Christmas this year.

Nevertheless, I do have to profess a profound love for Christmas hits. They're generally raucous and jolly - apart from Pipes of Peace (*sad face*), Do They Know it's Christmas (*sad charity face*) and Wham's Last Christmas (*sad singleton face*). But you can cheer yourself up by visualising George 'n' Andrew's spectacular flicky hair do's and cringey jumpers in the video and give yourself a retro chuckle by remembering that when that first came out, we all thought George Michael was straight.

And because Christmas songs are wheeled out every year, they instantly transport you into happy Christmases past and prep you for The Great Trek Home (complete with carrier bags whose handles snap just as you heave them onto the train and the grinding realisation that you've left Mum's main present on the sofa in your flat). Plus they turn all of December into an impromtu karaoke session. I challenge even the most tone deaf person not to want to warble along to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas (the backing vocals on that are a particular joy). If all else fails, you can just shout, 'You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot' and channel your inner Scrooge with the Pogues and the much-missed Kirsty McColl.

2011's top Christmas music moments so far:
1/ A steel band playing Christmas tunes on Oxford Street yesterday. I love a steel band at the best of times, reminiscent as they are of sunshine and carnivals. Steel band + Christmas tunes = pure joy.
2/ A brass band playing carols outside a pub in Cleaver Square yesterday evening. I am so horribly sentimental now that this actually brought a tear to my eyes. I think it might've been the final scenes of Brassed Off that engendered a Pavlovian reaction to brass bands. They could be playing the world's happiest song, and I'd still be all teary.
3/ My karaoke leaving do at work. Man, I went out in style. I'd booked two hours (fool! Why do I never just go, 'come on, we're only just getting drunk two hours in - go for four, minimum'), starting at 7pm. I think I finally got home at 1.00am. We had a crack at everything (though The Only Rap Song I Can Do, Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance, was disappointingly absent. My colleagues would've been amazed at my word-and-timing perfect rendition of that). Finally, hoarse, drunker than a barrel of skunks at the Jack Daniels factory and emotional, it was time to finish. But what to choose for my actual swansong? It's Christmas, emotions were running high, there was only one choice: Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love. Yeah, half my colleagues weren't born when that came out, but dammit, it's a bloody great song. It's got mental lyrics ('I'll protect you from the hooded claw'), and has nothing to do with Christmas ('keep the vampires from your door'), but has brilliant soaring bits that if you're really in the mood can't be beaten.

I. Gave. It. Loads. I made that song my own, as Louis Walsh would say. Even the guy who'd come to try to eject us from the karaoke room went, 'Wow. That was really good' at the end. (High praise indeed). I can only apologise to the colleagues who were sitting there going, 'This is so SAD. How could she pick such a SAD SONG?' And hey, I could've had a crack at Adele's Someone Like You, and pointed at them all individually throughout, whilst weeping profusely. They'd never have allowed anyone to leave the company again if I'd done that.