17 December: Dora Bryan: All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle

This 1963 single by the British actress Dora Bryan sometimes shows up on lists of all-time worst Christmas records, which a part of me can understand. But another part of me is charmed by the record as an artefact of its times: items like this often do a better job than millions of words in showing how quickly The Beatles became a national treasure - or at least a concept that everyone related to in some way - in the UK. They had barely been famous for a year, and already there were Christmas songs written about them.

Listen here.