If you liked the years of the X Factor winner’s single, you’ll love LadBaby!

1. LadBaby featuring Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Sausage Rolls for Everyone”

Mark Hoyle has had the Christmas number one for the last three years, with essentially the same joke: do a cover version of a well known song but change the lyrics to be about sausage rolls. By having a fourth Christmas number one, Hoyle has matched the record set by the Beatles, although of course they did it organically, in the days before the Christmas Number One was a big part of British popular culture (for reasons now lost in the mists of time to younger generations). Hoyle is doing it as a campaign record.

This year there’s actual competition in the form of Ed Sheeran and Elton John, but the simple solution is that this is, in effect, an extra version of that song – but credited with a different title and lead artist so that it’s listed separately on the chart. It’s not very good; the joke is getting tired and nobody’s going to claim it’s a musical improvement. But it is what it is.

Hoyle has an odd kind of status. He hasn’t really managed to convert his Christmas hits into a wider career outside YouTube, or at least not one that’s registered much with me. A YouTube audience can be a pretty big deal in itself, though, so how does he fit in over there? Well, he has 1.07 million subscribers. But looking at his videos archive, a typical video is getting an audience of maybe 100-150K. Let’s ignore December (when he was promoting this single) and take an average of the views for videos posts 1 or 2 months age – I make his average audience to be 122,500. Not bad at all, but someone like Tom Scott consistently gets over a million views per video. GeoWizard has a similar subscriber count but more actual views per video. We’re not in the top tier of YouTube, then.

Has the joke run its course yet with the public? I suspect it might have, since the angle this year was to push for a record, and it really does feel a bit like he’s been enlisted to provide a charity angle for Ed Sheeran and Elton John.

5. The Kunts – “Boris Johnson is Still a Fucking Cunt”

Last Christmas, the Kunts reached number 5 with their thoughtful number “Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt”. This year, they’re back for another go with exactly the same result. In a shameless bid to game the charts, the song is available for download in 11 formats, and they’re also encouraging people to stream it 24/7. Presumably, the assorted mixes – which all have their own video – also help to get more video streams for the chart. The Cassetteboy mix is probably the best.

This year’s song is basically a cover version of “Rock & Roll (Part 2)” by Gary Glitter, a number 2 hit in 1972, which has been largely verboten since the 1990s for all the obvious reasons. That said, it’s a seminal glam rock track, and it was used in the Joker soundtrack a couple of years ago, perhaps because “Part 2” is an instrumental on which Glitter himself doesn’t appear. As the video above also alludes to, it was the basis of the novelty hit “Doctorin’ the Tardis” by the Timelords in 1988 – the band who went on to be the KLF.

36. Dean Martin – “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”

Climbing from last week’s number 41. This has only charted in the previous two years, and in both cases it got to number 39. It’s an album track recorded in 1959 – the original, by Vaughan Monroe, was a number 1 hit in America in 1946. Yes, Billboard was doing a chart that far back.

38. Camila Cabello – “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”

A track recorded for a Michael Bublé special, which has been hovering outside the top 40 for a few weeks. Originally a hit for Bing Crosby in 1943, this song hasn’t made the UK singles top 40 before.

39. Justin Bieber – “Mistletoe”

Originally a number 21 hit in 2011, this has charted every year since 2018 – but until now it’s always made the top 30, so this is a weak year for it.

40. Kelly Clarkson & Ariana Grande – “Santa Can’t You Hear Me”

This is a track from Clarkson’s 2021 Christmas album (her second), which happens to have been promoted in a US television special. It’s perfectly decent, but it’s not up there with “Underneath the Tree”.

This week’s climbers:

• “Come On Home for Christmas” by George Ezra climbs 15-10. It’s his sixth top 10 hit.
• “Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea climbs 17-12, one place shy of its peak from 2018 and 2020.
• “Step Into Christmas” by Elton John climbs 14-13. It got to number 8 in each of the last two years (but there’s time yet, since the next chart week will cover both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day).
• “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams climbs 18-15. That’s a new all-time peak, beating 2017, when it got to 17.
• “Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande climbs 19-16. It’s got to 11 in the past.
• “I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday” by Wizzard climbs 22-17.
• “Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson climbs 20-19.
• “One More Sleep” by Leona Lewis climbs 28-21.
• “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms climbs 26-22. It was already at an all-time peak last week.
• “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney climbs 27-23.
• “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade climbs 30-24.
• “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon & Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band climbs 34-26.
• “The Christmas Song” by Olivia Dean climbs 38-27.
• “Sleigh Ride” by the Ronettes climbs 35-29. That’s an all-time peak for this single (though they had bigger hits back in the 60s).
• “Holly Jolly Christmas” by Michael Bublé climbs 39-33. It got to 24 last year, but that doesn’t look to be repeating.
• “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano climbs 40-34 – this is its first run on the top 40.

The top 10 non-Christmas (and non-novelty) singles would be:

• 1 – “ABCDEFU” by Gayle.
• 2 – “Seventeen Going Under” by Sam Fender.
• 3 – “Flowers” by Arrdee
• 4 – “Overseas” by D-Block Europe
• 5 – “Easy on Me” by Adele (which gets hit by the downweighting rule this week).
• 6 – “Coming for You” by SwitchOTR
• 7 – “Overpass Graffiti” by Ed Sheeran
• 8 – “Do It To It” by Acraze
• 9 – “Make You Smile” by D-Block Europe
• 10 – “Shivers” by Ed Sheeran

The album chart, of course, is dead. “30” by Adele is still at number 1. The only new entry is “Live Life Fast” by Roddy Ricch at number 34 – which got a single, “Late at Night”, to number 40 earlier in the year. Considering the previous album got to number 13, this is a disappointing number, so either releasing in Christmas week was a mistake in this market, or something’s gone badly wrong.