Speculation that the band provocatively named The Kunts’ may be about to steal the Christmas No.1 slot in the UK has been mounting over the past week. Now, with less than six hours to go, the battle for the coveted No.1 billing is still raging.

As the band’s deliberately crude moniker implies, The Kunts are not your normal rock ’n’ roll band – and nor is their debut single, the laddishly titled ‘Boris Johnson Is a Fucking Cunt’ anything like your standard Christmas fare. Indeed the song contains just one line – that is, the title itself – repeated over and over again. It lasts just over a minute – long enough certainly to make its point.

But – while some have wrinkled their noses at the implicit sexism of using the word 'cunt' as a term of abuse – the deliberately simplistic and genuinely puerile message seems nonetheless to be resonating with a lot of people all over the UK. Last week, the track was at No.19 in the charts. But it has since risen as high as No.2 on the iTunes charts since, and was at No.6 in the official midweek charts, published two days ago.

The cut-off point for streams and purchases to count towards the 2020 UK Christmas singles chart is 11:59pm tonight – that’s Christmas Eve. The UK Christmas No.1 will then be announced on BBC Radio 1, in a show that runs from 2pm on Christmas Day. Were ‘Boris Johnson Is a Fucking Cunt’ to land at No.1 it is extremely unlikely that the BBC would play it.

Other contenders for the No.1 slot currently include familiar Christmas hits like ‘All I Want for Christmas’ (Mariah Carey) and ‘Last Christmas’ (Wham), which were at No.2 and No.3 respectively in the mid-week charts.

However, the favourite has to be LadBaby, whose ‘Don’t Stop Me Eatin'’ held down the top spot in the mid-week charts. If they hold onto the top slot, it will be their third Christmas No.1 in a row.

Other contenders include Jess Glynne’s ’This Christmas’ and Liam Gallagher’s ‘All You’re Dreaming Of’.

The bookies don’t believe that The Kunts can do it – they were offering odds of 8/1 a few days ago. However, the track has certainly picked up momentum, with industry observers tending to agree wholeheartedly with the anti-Boris Johnson sentiments – if not always the language in which they are expressed.