2003 was a vintage year for Christmas songs. We were treated to Avid Merrion’s Proper Crimbo, which was fun, but which I now discover has a very long and mostly stupid video, and The Darkness’s Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End), which was properly brilliant. And instead we chose to make Gary Jules’ melancholy and slightly drab version of Mad World our Christmas number one. The two reasons to be grateful for this are that (1) it gave us a mesmerisingly terrifying performance from the much-missed Aiden in this year’s X Factor, and (2) it’s given me a reason to check out the video, which is actually quite lovely:

(Also, just be pleased that the other two inhabitants of that week’s top five, Happy Christmas (War is Over) by the Pop Idols and Changes by Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne, missed out on the top slot.)