LadBaby takes Christmas No 1 with I Love Sausage Rolls
LadBaby have scored their second Christmas No 1 in a row with I Love Sausage Rolls, a novelty song recorded to raise money for food banks.
It makes LadBaby – British YouTube star Mark Hoyle and his wife Roxanne – only the third act ever to score backto-back Christmas No 1s, following the Beatles, who topped the chart from 1963 to 1965, and the Spice Girls from 1996 to 1998.
“I can’t believe we’ve done it again,” Mark said. “Thank you so much to everybody who downloaded the song … I’m honestly speechless. I’m out of sausage roll songs so I don’t know if we can do it again.”
Using the melody to Joan Jett’s I Love Rock’n’Roll, the song is an ode to “a beige and savoury treat”, full of smutty double entendres and proud carnivorousness (“We’re not on a vegan diet / We know Quorn will never be a client”). It follows LadBaby’s 2018 No 1 We Built This City on Sausage Rolls, another pastry-themed hit sung to the tune of Starship’s 1985 hit We Built This City. I Love Sausage Rolls scored 93,000 chart sales (a figure combined from streams and downloads), 18,000 more than We Built This City in 2018.
Proceeds from I Love Sausage Rolls are going to food bank charity The Trussell Trust. Chief executive Emma Revie told the Guardian she was “so grateful” for LadBaby’s campaign: “The money raised will help us support our network of food banks to provide the best possible emergency help to people referred, while we work towards a future without the need for food banks.”
Mark Hoyle, a graphic designer from Hemel Hempstead, first became famous for his candid YouTube diary videos documenting fatherhood and family life. As LadBaby, he and his family have 3.4m followers on Facebook, and in October signed a management deal with William Morris Entertainment and Margravine Management to help them branch out into merchandise, publishing and live events.
Speaking to the Guardian, Mark
Hoyle described visiting a food bank as “heartbreaking” and complained that the issue of food poverty had been overlooked for too long: “So much of the last few years has been dominated by Brexit and what’s happening with the government that so many issues – whether it be food banks or so many others – are taking a back seat because everyone’s focusing on that.”
Stormzy’s single with Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy, Own It, is at No 2. The Croydon rapper was also kept off the top of the album chart, by Rod Stewart’s new release You’re in My Heart.
Wham!’s Last Christmas reached the singles Top 10 for the fifth year running, but is still yet to top the chart – it was kept off No 1 by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? on its initial release in 1984, and also reached No 2 in 2017. Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, which finally topped the US chart this week 25 years after its first release, couldn’t repeat the success in the UK – it reached No 8. Thirteen other Christmas songs, by the likes of the Pogues, Shakin’ Stevens and Michael Bublé, are in the Top 40.
Despite a passionate social media campaign and support from the singer himself, Jarvis Cocker’s 2006 song Running the World could only reach No 48. The campaign to get it to Christmas No 1 had begun in the wake of the Conservative party’s election victory – the expletive-laden lyrics are a diatribe against the ruling classes.