It’s been such a strange year and in the spirit of togetherness and community, we’re going to be counting down to Christmas by sharing a selection of our – and our friends’ – favourite festive songs. Today, we’ve chosen Manic Street Preachers’ take on ‘Last Christmas’.

We all know Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ is the great Christmas song and we find the advent of ‘Whamageddon’ really disconcerting and disappointing… Why deprive yourself of hearing this classic on an annual basis? Back in the mid-’90s, James Dean Bradfield from Manic Street Preachers played an acoustic cover of the song on a Christmas edition of TFI Friday. It subsequently appeared on the band’s rarities collection ‘Lipstick Traces’ and now always gets an airing at ours. You get to hear James pour every last emotion from George Michael’s heartbreaking lyrics – it’s special.