Darlene Love: “All Alone On Christmas” (Arista); Chaka Demus & Pliers: “Twist and Shout” (Mango Records); Ronny Jordan: “Tinsel Town” (Island)

“The cold winds are blowing and the streets are getting dark/I’m writing you a letter and I don’t know where to start,” sings Darlene on Steven Van Zandt’s composition for the soundtrack for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Sounds just about right as an act of contrition by way of a gift from Eamonn Casey somewhere in Central America to Annie Murphy containing as it does the plea that “No one ought to be alone at Christmas.” ?

To which Annie might retort by return post with a jubilant two fingers in the form of Jamaica’s most popular duo’s ‘Twist and Shout’, produced by those masters of the rhythm method, Sly and Robbie, to indicate that she’s happily partying on down at the hypocritical fat fucker’s expense.

Contrary, however, to John Paul’s directives, the Roman Church seems very forgiving towards those of it’s errant male flock and so the truth of the matter is probably that our wayword Bishop is also supping it up in a ‘Tinsel Town’ somewhere near Clonmacnoise and getting his rocks off to the far too talented jazz funk of Ronny Jordan who continues to groovily and excitingly reinvent a musical genre that, shall we say, gives the lie to the notion that all good Christmases have to be white! Every town is tinsel town at this time of year and sure why not? Happy X-mas.