Tim: We’ve mentioned a couple of times this year how he’s now been going 20 years – shall we check out his sole festive one, from 2011?
Tom: I cannot believe he doesn’t do a Christmas cover every year. Surely he’d rake it in at the ski resorts?
Tim: You’d think so, but apparently not. By the way, make sure you watch this through to the end before reading ahead, spoilers and all that.
Tim: RING-A-LING DONG DING, YES.
Tom: Good heavens, that manages to fall into “catchy” and “awful” at the same time. I’m not sure what else I was expecting from him.
Tim: And there’s a number of things to mention. First, hell of a twist that his (Santa’s?) girlfriend is the Easter Bunny, who’s apparently called Sally, WOAH.
Tom: His incredibly Austrian pronunciation of “fertile deep green valley” in the first verse.
Tim: Also excellent. Third, then: “all my only, every penny, I’ve been spending on Kilkenny” is a very odd lyric, because as far as I can tell the only Kilkenny that makes sense is a beer made by Guinness that’s largely popular in Australia and Canada.
Tom: Plus, to be a pedant, it’s “Kilkennies”, which is stranger still because a) it’s perfectly valid as a mass noun and b) that means it doesn’t rhyme as well?
Tim: I…I don’t know. But fourth, and most importantly, is a thing I don’t often say: that is a genuinely lovely key change. Normally I’m just “YES IT’S GREAT”, but here it’s different: it’s understated, it comes out of nowhere, and it give the song a quick “ooh, that was nice” feeling.
Tom: I actually had to go back and check that there really was a key change. If a key change happens in a forest and… never mind.
Tim: Yes, never mind. Because all in all, taking that into account and everything else: bloody marvellous song, I’ll have a Kilkenny.