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December 1 is the day every radio DJ in the land is infected with tinselitis. They blow the dust off their festive songs and can barely refrain shouting “It’s C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s-s-s-s-s!!!” so loud even Noddy Holder tells ‘em to turn it down.

You just know they’re wearing Christmas jumpers while dancing round the studio with the sort of enforced, mandatory jollity that makes my teeth itch.

I’d cut them some slack if they actually played more than just Roy Wood, Shakin’ Stevens, and Wham on a loop - music’s equivalent of waterboarding. There are some beautiful, heartfelt songs about Christmas out there that never get played simply because they never made the sole “Now That’s What I Call Christmas” CD which is hauled out the station’s cupboard every year.

Sadly you won’t ever hear Simon & Garfunkel’s remarkable rendition of Silent Night which slowly merges with a breaking news broadcast on a shocking murder, or Tom Waits’ magnificent piece of story telling, Christmas Card From A Hooker, or even Kate Bush’s fabulous December Will Be Magic Again. If you really want to wrap yourself in Christmas, simply press play on Sarah McLachlan’s stunning Wintersong album.

Christmas tunes are being blasted out by every radio station

Even Radio2 went down with tinselitis as Jeremy Vine cranked up Band Aid with the opening line “It’s Christmas time…” which simply had me yelling “no, it isnae! It’s only December 1…!”

But radio is positively tardy when it comes to the festive season. The clocks have barely gone back before TV stations dive head first into 24/7 Christmas movies. To tune in is to go down a rabbit hole that can consume an entire weekend. I’ll confess they are my guilty pleasure, and for the true festive spirit, the Christmas Movies channel is the place to go.

There’s an entire Christmas movie industry which churns these stocking fillers out in a matter of weeks. They won’t win any awards, but they do tick all the boxes. My other half and I play guess the plot based purely on the synopsis. In truth it ain’t that difficult.

Every film has a love story based around the same key pillars. Career-driven son or daughter returns to sleepy village, gets stuck there for Christmas and meets the love of their life after the obligatory frosty initial meeting. Ideally, they should fall for someone who is already engaged to some dead weight.

Corporate folks are all Scrooges - no exceptions - who eventually discover the true meaning of Christmas and family businesses must always be based around selling Christmas trees or running a cake shop which is under an obligatory buy-out threat from some faceless conglomerate.

The skies are always brilliant blue and the snow is not so much deep, crisp and even, more unpacked from a cardboard box and laid pleasingly along the top of hedges and bushes, leaving roads and pavements completely free of that grim slush we wade through every winter.

The plots from it’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol are shamelessly ripped off time after time, and, should Santa ever be gubbed by some catastrophe, the town’s resident Ba Humbug has to take over

It’s all complete tosh – glorious, brain-soothing nonsense which beats doing anything productive such as actually planning Christmas itself.

And not a hint of Wizzard or Slade anywhere either …

Diagnosis tinselitis; festive songs on repeat and dreadful 24/7 Christmas movies