The catchy festive tune written and recorded in Hull that could be Christmas number one

A new Christmas song composed and recorded in Hull has been released and its creator has said it would be “amazing” if it reached number one this Christmas.

Aptly titled in anticipation, Christmas No. 1 is the work of singer, songwriter and director Will Metheringham. It is the third in a trilogy of seasonal tunes he has put out on YouTube, with Christmas Calling (2022) and Light the Tree Up (2023) being the festive forerunners to Christmas No. 1, which was released earlier this week and already been viewed over 1,000 times.

Like its predecessors, Christmas No. 1, featuring Hull singers Yvonne Berry and Lee Kamen, has been filmed in Hull, so viewers can enjoy a visual performance as well as an audio rendering. And for 2024, Will settled on an Eighties theme.

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He said: “It’s a bit of an earworm. I think once you hear it you won't stop singing it.”

Will, who works in pathology for the NHS and whose colleagues have urged him on with getting the Christmas song out there, describes it as a bit of “cheesy nostalgia”. He said: “It’s what my Christmases in Hull of the past were like.

“We’d be at my auntie’s house in Gipsyville and you’d find all these people in such a small house to celebrate Christmas. Even the local bobbies used to pop their heads in, with my auntie saying, ‘take some Arctic Roll, take some Blue Ribands with you’, and my cousins would come in drunk from a Hull City game. I wanted to create that vibe.”

The video opens with people turning up at a house and turning on the TV - to see what the Christmas number-one song is. Some of it was filmed at O’Riley’s, in Beverley Road, and some of it in the village of Wawne – “ we wanted to disrupt as few people as possible” – with snow machines and fog machines adding to the effects.

“It would be nice if my Christmas No. 1 got to be the Christmas number one. Yes, that would be amazing.”

Will said: “I’ve already got big plans for next year’s Christmas song. I’m taking it to another level; it’s going to be more like a mini parade. I always say, grab that magic of Christmas, because it’s there.”

Yvonne Berry said: “Will is a good friend of mine and he asked me to appear on the video. It’s all Hull people and we had no rehearsals whatsoever, it was all so spontaneous.

“It’s a really catchy song and I think it’s really going to put Hull on the map. It’s going to get a lot of response.

“I used to sing on the circuit years ago but I’ve never acted before. The video’s a bit like a Royle Family Christmas party, very tongue-in-cheek, I think everyone who hears this song is really going to like it.

“It’s been so much fun to be involved in. It would be amazing for this to go viral.”