LadBaby equal Beatles record with fourth Christmas No 1

LadBaby have scored their fourth consecutive Christmas No 1, making them the first artist to ever achieve that feat – while an expletive-strewn protest against Boris Johnson has reached the festive top five.

LadBaby’s four Christmas No 1s puts them level with the Beatles, who topped the Christmas chart in 1963, 64, 65 and 67.

But where the Beatles’ songs – I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine, Day Tripper and Hello, Goodbye – covered everything from LSD dilettantes to the joys of young love, LadBaby’s have all been focused on the gastronomic brilliance of sausage rolls.

The duo – YouTuber Mark Hoyle and his wife Roxanne – have created the series of comedy cover versions to raise money for the Trussell Trust, a food bank charity.

In 2018 they covered Starship’s We Built This City (its foundations recast from rock’n’roll to sausage rolls), and followed it with Joan Jett’s I Love Rock’n’Roll twisted into I Love Sausage Rolls. For 2020, they reheated the formula with Don’t Stop Me Eatin’, their riff on Journey’s perennial soft rock anthem Don’t Stop Believin’.

This year, the couple looked to have stiff competition from Ed Sheeran and Elton John, who seemed to regard the Christmas No 1 with the kind of determined festive focus shared by high-street retailers, the hospitality industry and children – they called their song Merry Christmas, and decked it with sleigh bells and lyrics about mistletoe, snow and fires aglow. It too was a charity release, to benefit the artists’ foundations.

But the pair gave LadBaby a boost by letting them do a cover of Merry Christmas and appearing on the recording, titled Sausage Rolls for Everyone.

Their own version is at No 2 this week, having spent two weeks at No 1, though they are still each credited alongside LadBaby with a Christmas No 1 win. It marks Sheeran’s fourth No 1 of the year, and Elton John’s third.

LadBaby thanked everyone who had streamed and downloaded Sausage Rolls for Everyone, saying: “Thank you for helping us raise the profile, raise money and awareness for the Trussell Trust, the food banks in the UK and helping support the 14 million people in this country that are living below the poverty line. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

At No 3 in the chart is Wham’s Last Christmas, which is yet to achieve a Christmas No 1 spot, though did finally reach the top just after Christmas last year – its first such placing since its release in 1984. At No 4 is another classic, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, which also reached No 1 for the first time last year.

At No 5, the festive mood darkens considerably for the protest song Boris Johnson is Still a Fucking Cunt, by punk band the Kunts. Lifting the tune from Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part II, it’s a 64-second follow-up to their 2020 song Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt, which also reached No 5. The similarly sweary and un-festive ABCDEFU, by 17-year-old TikTok star Gayle, is at No 6.

New Christmas recordings elsewhere in this year’s chart include George Ezra’s Come on Home for Christmas at No 10 (a cover of Please Come Home for Christmas by Charles Brown), and Olivia Dean’s cover of Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song at No 27.

There are 29 Christmas songs in the chart in total, including favourites such as the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York (No 7), Shakin’ Stevens’ Merry Christmas Everyone (8), Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (9), Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas (12), Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (17), Leona Lewis’s One More Sleep (21) and Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody (24).

Adele has the No 1 album at Christmas, with 30 spending its fifth week at the top. It is now the joint longest-running No 1 album of the year, with Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour.