Picture the scene. It’s early evening on the final Sunday before Christmas in the year 2003, and your 13-year-old author-to-be is listening with rapt intensity to the last few entries in the UK Top 40. The announcement of the Christmas Number 1 is imminent. Two spots left, and everything riding on what song comes on next…

The Darkness kick into ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ – in the Number 2 spot! Oh the injustice of it! The fact that it lost out on the top prize to a rather gloomy interpretation of Tears for Fears’ ‘Madworld’ genuinely put me in a bad mood for a good couple of days. Worth noting though that such festive luminaries as The Pogues and Mariah Carey suffered the same fate.

I’m not sure why The Darkness were so rapidly banished to the realm of ‘uncool’ after the roaring success of their debut album Permission to Land (2003). My guess is it had something to do with the early noughties surge of emo music and the rise of ‘really deep’ groups like Snow Patrol and Keane. There just wasn’t room for a cheery glam metal parody throwback rock band.

I discovered them hot on the heels of my newfound love for spoof rock power duo Tenacious D. Having been raised on a healthy diet of Led Zeppelin and Queen, I was fully onboard with the classic rock sound, and I loved that they didn’t take themselves at all seriously. Plus their lyrics were rude, and that was pretty much a pre-requisite for my listening choices as a young teen.

That spirit of parody is alive and kicking in this rollicking festive banger. Just watch the wonderfully silly music video. It opens with the camera tracking through the holly-wreathed front door of a snow-covered log cabin to find the band nestled by the fire, with frontman Justin Hawkins front and centre in a David Brent-esque Lothario pose, and is peppered with little comic touches throughout.

All the clichés are sent up, from Hawkins’ wistful gaze at the apparition of his lost love’s face in a tree bauble to the arrival of a carol singing children’s choir.

The lyrics are (probably deliberately) quite arbitrary, although I quite like the first line: ‘Feigning joy and surprise for the gifts we despise over mulled wine’. But it’s bursting with musicality. The dual lead guitar lines are great, the band are tight and there is more than a little channelling of Freddie Mercury and Brian May going on.

The real joy of the song is best summed up by Justin himself: “we managed to get ‘bellend’ into a Christmas song without it getting banned! (And ‘ringpiece’!)”

P.S. I do think Gary Jules’ ‘Madworld’ is a great cover.

Tommorrow, Joni Mitchell takes the floor…

The Christmas Playlist