There is an old, terrible joke about a golfer who dies and goes to hell. “Well, I suppose there are no golf courses here,” he says to the Devil on being escorted to his dungeon. “Not at all,” Satan replies. “We have a million beautiful links.”
So, the next day, our hero finds himself in a four-ball with Hitler, Dr Crippen and Vlad the Impaler. (You know how these dreadful things go.) The course is indeed picturesque. The weather is perfect. He steps up, swings and, to his astonishment, sees a sudden wind carry his ball to a hole-in-one on the opening par four. Hang on: how is this hell?
The other three then do exactly the same thing. “Oh, we always get holes in one here,” Hitler says. “Every time. On every hole.”
Get it? Ha ha! Have another gin and tonic.
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Anyway, about Last Christmas. The Wham! song was for some time the biggest-selling single never to get to number one in the UK. This was particularly painful as, had it made it to the top, it would almost certainly have been there for Christmas.
For 20 years or so, predicting what track would close out the seasonal Top of the Pops was a national obsession. There was a bit of that in Ireland too. But, across the water, the race for the Christmas number one was as newsworthy as the Grand National or the FA Cup Final.
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Last Christmas had all the ingredients. It had sleighbells. The title referenced the festive season. It had a cute video. Wham! were on a roll. How could it fail?
It came as some consolation that the winning record in 1984 featured George Michael – near sole progenitor of Last Christmas – delivering a seasonal greeting to the world. “But say a prayer – pray for the other ones, at Christmas time … ” he warbled on the original version of Do They Know It’s Christmas?
So the biggest-selling single not to get to number one in the UK was beaten by the then-biggest-selling UK single of all time. That seems right.
This piece of trivia was useful to DJs as the Wham! song continued to land on seasonal playlists deep into the new century. In 2021, Last Christmas made number one on New Year’s Day, and the records had to be altered. (If you’re interested, Mr Brightside, by The Killers, is now the biggest seller never to hit the UK top spot.)
But it took until 2023 for the bittersweet lament to grab the Yuletide prize. It was there again last year. Bookmakers have it as odds-on favourite to take the title for 2025. So, after four decades, Last Christmas has gone from being the best-known record not to secure the Christmas number one to being the record that’s always number one at that time of year. An odd story.
But does it matter any more? The final death rites for the Christmas number one began sounding as talent shows and other chart hijackers moved into the competition at the beginning of this century. Girls Aloud took the honours in 2002 (with the, to be fair, excellent Sound of the Underground). Then Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson and Alexandra Burke.
There are some good records here, but they were all pre-anointed by triumphs on The X Factor. Nobody now looked forward to the yearly announcement of the seasonal topper. A protest win by Rage Against the Machine, with Killing in the Name, was followed by restoration of the new order when Matt Cardle’s When We Collide scored in 2010. A series of charity singles and novelty numbers then followed.
It took Wham!’s return to end the tyranny of Ladbaby, an English YouTuber whose sausage-roll-themed tunes dominated from 2018 to 2022.
In truth, the decline of the Christmas number one started some time before the millennium. The heyday, from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, coincided with the popularity of the 45rpm single. People actually went out and bought title holders such as Mud’s Lonely This Christmas, Jimmy Osmond’s Long Haired Lover from Liverpool and – surely the supreme champ – Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody, from 1973.
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The population was still buying singles when Last Christmas and Do They Know it’s Christmas? duked it out in 1984, but, with the contemporaneous arrival of the CD, the end of the charts as a spectator sport was already in train. People cared less in the 1990s. They barely care at all in the streaming age.
So, nine years after George Michael’s death on Christmas Day, in 2016, Wham!, like Napoleon entering an evacuated Moscow, find themselves in control of ruined territory. They score a hole in one every time. But nobody gives a hoot.
