Christmas Time is Here Again

And that means you have to listen that one, infernal EMI Christmas album wherever you go. The EMI Christmas Album.

Everyone knows that Christmas songs are rubbish. You buy them because the festive season addles your brain with wine and good will. In January they are rightly discarded. Since Simon Cowell rogered the Number 1 spot with whatever pathetic excuse for a singer he's dragged through ITV, Christmas music has got even less interesting.

There is only one good Christmas song, which is Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" which was made for whooping it up in the pub drinking Advocaat. The rest of the EMI Christmas Album is detritus. If you can crawl through Chris Rea singing "Driving Home For Christmas", John and Yoko crabbing out that war is over, if you want it, complete with tuneless vocals, you might despair that there are any good musical times at Christmas.

Christmas is for singing yourself, and the carols that you learned at school. That's the joy of it. It's for everyone and you don't need popstars to do it for you, unlike the rest of the year when we've all got day jobs to worry about. Christmas music can have finesse such as the carols from Kings in Cambridge, but at large in England there is a tacit acceptance that Christmas will mean wassailing from tuneless six year old girls and recorder recitals.

But Christmas is a time of good will to all men (even Simon Cowell) and so there have been some interesting songs written about Christmas. For good or bad it can be one of the most powerfully emotional times of the year, and I toast and post to that.

Mike Hugg and Highly Likely - What Happened to You?

Or the theme from "Whatever happened to the Likely Lads?"

This one is pure 1970s pop, and a bit clever. Mike Hugg of Mannfred Mann wrote the song and Highly Likely were his session band. I've never heard the full thing, only those lines that ask you what you used to be. It's an incredibly downbeat song in total. Miserable. Odd then that it should be the theme to a comedy. But there's a pathos in this that mirrors the comedy perfectly.

When I watched as a child I didn't understand Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? My parents found it horribly funny. Now I get it completely. I've been cleaning up in order to move, and a slip of paper found in the pocket of an old coat can sometimes bring it all back. What became of the people we used to be?

Here they are, the once Likely Lads, with faces of bewilderment as responsibility beckons. I'm glad they never revisited it. There never could be much funnier than this.

Ron Grainer - Doctor Who

Okay, its been terrifying children for decades, but the music alone is haunting.

This remarkable music is made by tape looping, white noise, and wave form oscillators titervated by Delia Derbyshire in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Not one note comes from a musical instrument. That someone saw fit to create for a children's programme in 1963 is brilliant. The current version is with a full orchestra but goes to show you can't really improve it.



Delia Derbyshire was later invited by Paul McCartney to collaborate with the Beatles. The BBC nixed it. Gah!

Laurie Johnson - The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers, British television at its campest, funniest and most stylish.

I confess to shamelessly ripping my flirting technique from Diana Rigg and even copying her haircut when I was 16. It worked, I got that higher class of boyfriend who takes you out for a drink before lunging for your bra straps.

The Avengers owes a lot to Johnson's theme, recorded with a full orchestra for ATV. Lush, opulent, strings are undermined utterly rink dink piano. Perfect, atmospheric, and sets you up for both the sublime and the ridiculous.

Bill Bailey - The BBC Apocalypse

A silly one, but shows that the BBC can still style out a great theme when they want to.

Bill gave it a great remix, and when I managed to see him perform it live at the Apollo on Shaftesbury Avenue, the whole crowd got down. Next time the 10 o'clock news comes on, get your glow sticks out.

Ronnie Hazelhurst - Are You Being Served?

Ronnie Hazelhurst is the BBC composer. For anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, his music was ubiquitous.

He dominated the themes of the BBC, writing the funky Yes Minister (listen to that guitar), Last of the Summer Wine, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Sorry, and arranging countless other tunes. He even managed to do Eurovision. Ronnie is at his height with the big band stylings of the Two Ronnies, but perhaps his most creative with "Are You Being Served?". Since he couldn't afford a percussionist, he disguised the gap with the clanging of tills and change, a full year before Pink Floyd did "Money".

Far out, Ronnie.

Beethovens of the Small Screen - Pop Goes Bach

Television has lost stock recently. Falling advertising revenues and miniscule budgets mean that it is cheap, dominated by quizzes, reality shows and phone ins where money can be recouped.

These cuts in budget are not just evident in what comes on screen, but also in the music used. These days, television rarely has its own music, but instead buys hits from music companies.

In the glory days of course, British television had its own composers. They created music that is instantly recognisable, taut and perfectly made. This week, we celebrate those Beethovens of the small screen, the classic tunes of British television.

We start with the irrepressible "Ski Sunday" by Sam Fonteyn, otherwise known as "Pop Goes Bach" because it resembles Fugue in D Minor. Fonteyn made it a Frug in D Minor. The BBC still show "Ski Sunday" but they've buggered up the theme by making it modern. Gah. And Alberto Tomba, aka "Tomba La Bomba" aka Tomba the Bomb aka the greatest slalom skier of all time isn't in it anymore, which is a shame. Both theme and man exist in perfect harmony. Tomba flinging himself down the mountains of Austria to this theme still lingers in the memory.

War - Good, Good Feelin'

I went out on Saturday for some class disco. I didn't get it, so here's something to meet the need. Shake it!