Advent Calendar 2021 Day 23: Pop Goes Christmas

We've featured a couple of clips from this before but never before the whole show from Boxing Day 1982, where Granada - and it very much has the air of a Granada studio production - sought to take on the Pops hegemony by getting the day's stars to cover Christmas songs or entinsel their own. Mari Wilson throws herself fully into it, giving a joyous jazzy treatment to to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town and rewriting Just What I Always Wanted into what presents she expects Santa, on passing by Neasden next, to send down the Compact Organisation's chimney. Dexys Midnight Runners give Merry Xmas Everybody the Emerald Express treatment. Shakin’ Stevens croons Blue Christmas, the big Shaky festive hit that nobody plays any more. Toto Coelo give an unnecessary sheen to Step Into Christmas, with a musical reference to I Eat Cannibals in case you don't recognise them in normal dresses. Toyah joins the prog dots by covering I Believe In Father Christmas. Musical Youth meet Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer uptown. David Essex borrows a very big staircase for A Winter's Tale, followed by the Nolans chorusing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas at its base trading verses with a dangerously overmanned St. Winifred's School Choir. "Pop illusionist" Simon Drake, years before going underground to The Secret Cabaret, plays with a cane of lights and a floating bauble over Happy Christmas (War is Over) And Wah! perform The Story Of The Blues because Pete Wylie is above all this, maybe?