I'm going to be sick

If there's one reason not to like Christmas it's because it encourages clowns and idiots to foist dreadful songs on us in the hope of taking the coveted yuletide No.1 spot.

The latter years of Cliff Richard's career, for instance, were spent holed up in an underground bunker at an undisclosed location, where he would strain for 11 months of the year to distill all his dwindling creative powers into recording just one song that could be a hit at Yuletide. And invariably he'd manage it too the fecker, with his Mistletoe and Wine and Saviour's Day and Our Old Lang's Father Syne hybrid thingummy.

Anyhoo, I only refer to all this because I see that our own lite-version of Cliff Richard, Daniel O'Donnell (and there's a damning with faint praise if ever there was), is planning to release his version of Save Your Love, that old duet by Renee and Renato from the eighties.

I shall now pause here to give everyone reading this an opportunity to reflect and then projectile vomit.

In case you can't remember, you can relive this romantic tour de force on You Tube. Renato is the one dressed as a tubby golfer and looks like Bob Carolgees who used to perform with Spit the dog. Try and avert your gaze when he does the 'open crotch' stance beside the fountain. Ewwww my eyes! It burns! It burns!

Yes, it seems that this, the naffest, most buttock-clenchingly bad slushy shlock-song ever is about to be somehow rendered even more tacky with a thick application of fawning schmaltz by the King of Cheese himself, Mr. Daniel O'Donnell. Himself and Mary Duff are doing it. I mean, I ask you. Like, why?

The logic, if any, behind re-releasing old tunes like this is to honour a classic and reintroduce it to a new generation. However, this song is firstly, complete pants and secondly, all Daniel's fans are so old they will surely remember it from the first time, if they haven't descended into dementia. So what the hell is he thinking of? Combine all this with the fact the original song was sung by someone who looked like a poor man's Ron Jeremy and is now about to be resuscitated by a waxen Mammy's Boy of indeterminate sexuality, and the whole thing just lurches from the ridiculous to the horrendous.

In one way, I actually think fair play to wee Daniel, he's worth gazillions and certainly knows his market and how to milk it. He turns songs of cheese into milk and money, like a latter day messiah with a working knowledge of dairy bioscience. And sure he does the loaves and fishes thing every summer at his house in Donegal as well, where about ten billion pilgrimaging pensioners descend on inexhaustible supplies of tea and biccies, and get a rub of his relic so to speak.

Sigh. It's been a tough week. Kerry Katona, dead turtles haunting me and now this.

I wasn't going to, out of respect for the reader, but if you want to witness some of Daniel's limp-wristed, wooden stylings and drawlings, you can do so right here. It's like something out of Father Ted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCi50teu4vk">Go on! Punish me more please