'I do feel guilty sometimes, especially when I see all the mountains of tat infesting every shop and all the tacky TV ads for Chinese made-tat before the cricket season is even over,' says Roy Wood, lead singer of the 1970s glam rock band Wizzard. He has now officially apologised for his own part in this situation coming about.
Thirty seven years ago this week, Wood and his band hit Number Two in the charts with 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day', just behind Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody'. As of this year, his remarkable vision has now come true. Wood himself has since retired from the music industry and manages an organic fruit farm in Shropshire that he bought with the royalties from the song.
'In my defence, when I wrote the bloody song we were on tour in East Anglia, it was a blazing hot August day and I was homesick,' said the hirsute Brummie. 'I got to thinking, wouldn't it be nice if it was Christmas every day, you know when the kids start singing and the band begins to play and all that? How was I to know what would happen next?'
Analysts have now calculated that, with Christmas goods reaching most shops in September and the unsold pile staying there on 3-for-2 offers until well into March, followed by entertainment venues planning their marketing campaigns for office Christmas parties in April, it is actually Christmas every bastard day. Given that many country houses are now advertising their first events of the New Year, an Easter Egg hunt, it is also coming close to being Easter every frigging day as well.
'Mind you,' Wood told a female reporter, 'I wouldn't mind your rosy cheeks lighting my merry way, if you get my drift, eh eh? Oh sorry, thought I was back in the '70s for a moment there.'
