So we reach the nineties and the first Christmas number one of the decade was Peter Pan of Pop himself Cliff Richard with "Saviour's Day" 1991 saw Queen at number one, Freddie Mercury having recently passed away, so their classic piece of pomp rock "Bohemian Rhapsody" coupled with "Best days of our lives" made the top spot and stayed there for five weeks.

Whitney Houston made the Christmas top spot in 1992 with her version of "I wll always love you", before in 1993 the UK went Blobby crazy.  94, & 95 saw two pretty ordinary number ones from East 17 & Michael Jackson respectively.

The next three years saw the top spot dominated by Girl Power in the form of The Spice Girls, or as we called 'em in the shop The Pies Girls.

Their three chart topping Christmas hits being, "2 become 1", "Too much", & "Goodbye"

It was pretty much at this point I relly lost interest in Christmas number ones, the charts at Christmas would soon be dominated by reality TV talent show hits, and the real fun of guessing what would be number one on Christmas Day was gone, until 2009 when a campaign on Facebook broke the stranglehold and the ever wacky British public downloaded Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the name" in their thousands to spoil Mr Cowell's Christmas.

And then again last year when a choir of serving British Forces, wives and girlfriends under the baton of a certain Gareth Malone, took the top spot with "Wherever you are"

The Military Wives.

And so to this year, it looks like we are back to the X factor domination, what would have been a perfect Christmas number one Gabrielle Alpin's cover version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Power of love" has been bounced off the top spot this week, so it peaked a bit too early.

Will be back on Christmas Eve with top twenty Christmas hits as chosen by Ebid's Kitchen Table forum readers.

In the meantime BBC Four have a night of Slade tomorrow night.