主播大秀

When mince pies appear on supermarket shelves in April, you know Christmas is just around the corner.

Playlists change and become a subliminal stimulus to start buying gifts and stocking up on party food and drink that you’d never in a million years consume at any other time of the year. Nuts in a bowl, a hundred weight of sausage meat in the freezer and a bottle of advocaat - they’re all synonymous with Christmas, much like the soundtrack that rings in our ears through December. However, when the mince pies first appear in shops, they’re met with a groan. When the Christmas songs start playing it’s hard not to feel, well, Christmassy.

As you open the door to your cupboard full of ‘stuff’ and pull out your decorations, the Christmas songs are in full swing. I’m pretty sure that anyone who says they ‘hate Christmas songs’, actually doesn’t. It’s not like hating a particular genre of music. You might not like rap, hardcore metal or Tuvan throat singing but Christmas songs come in all minor of shapes and sizes and they’re not always obvious Christmas numbers.

Coming up in my on Friday 23 December, I’m running a special feature – A Brief History Of Christmas Songs – which will feature more than a dozen tracks which I believe are the Tracy Islands, Buzz Lightyears and Furbys - the sought after Christmas toy equivalents - of festive music.

The programme is an hour-long special, telling the stories behind a selection of the greatest Christmas songs of all time. Each of the artists reveals how their Christmas song came about. Bing Crosby describes the first time the writer of White Christmas, Irving Berlin, played it to him. Berlin described it as "a nice little song, an amusing little number”. According to Andy Williams, “When Bing heard it for the first time, he took his pipe out of his mouth and said to Irving Berlin, ‘this one you don’t have to worry about’ ”. He really didn’t. Crosby’s version of the song has sold more than a 100 million copies since it was first released in 1942.

White Christmas is your absolute gold standard Christmas classic and I would happily spend my Woolworth’s vouchers on getting it to number one each year. Could that work, as a thing? White Christmas, always the Christmas Number 1. It would certainly avoid the annual battle between the X Factor winner, previous X Factor winners, social media campaign songs and hideous novelties. In my view, arguably the most irritating novelty song in the all too long history of irritating novelty songs appeared in 1993. A stalwart of Saturday night TV at the time, Mr Blobby - the giant pink beast - topped the Christmas chart with his eponymously titled track. It made Bob The Builder’s year 2000 Number 1 seem mildly credible.

Not all Christmas songs start life as intentional festive releases. Jona Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry grew into one, thanks to the addition of bells - both tubular and the sleigh variety. What started life as a protest song turned into a festive favourite in 1980. It’s now a ‘Best Christmas Songs In The World Ever’ staple and has doubtless helped keep Lewie in fancy fairy lights through the years. It’s reported that Slade earn in the region of £500,000 annually from Merry Xmas Everybody and Wham! are not far behind thanks to Last Christmas. George Michael says he and Andrew Ridgeley were watching the football on TV when inspiration for the song struck. I do love the image of George and Andrew sat on the sofa sipping from cans of lager eating crisps when the lightbulb moment struck, but by George - George nailed it.

A real gem that features in my celebration of yuletide tunes is a breath-taking version of a Christmas Carol, performed live on the 主播大秀’s Top Gear show. Long before Top Gear meant cars being driven fast by middle-aged men, it was a music show presented by, amongst others, John Peel. Broadcast on Boxing Day 1970, Rod Stewart makes Away In A Manger sound like it was written just for him. Similarly, who can imagine anyone other than Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl delivering A Fairytale In New York in quite the same biting way? You can hear both Shane and the much-missed Kirsty reveal, in their own words, how the duet came about in 'A Brief History Of Christmas Songs’. You’ve listened to the best Christmas songs for years and now you can hear the stories behind them, told by the great artists who wrote them and made them famous / pension funds.

The show is available as a handy download and could be your perfect accompaniment for a journey this Christmas, to your present wrapping or turkey preparations. Or, simply sit back and enjoy the show with with us early on Friday morning. Merry Christmas.

• to 'A Brief History Of Christmas Songs' on 6 Music, Friday 23 December from 5am.