![](\"https:\/\/cdn.images.express.co.uk\/img\/dynamic\/35\/590x\/secondary\/Noddy-Holder-5112234.jpg?r=1702423013340\")
<\/p>\nTo mark 50 years since he co-wrote it, the Slade frontman has told the true story behind his beloved song.<\/p>\n
Released in 1973, his hit still dominates the airwaves in November and December.<\/p>\n
Noddy, 77, admits a few glasses of whisky after a trip to the pub helped him finish it.<\/p>\n
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He told the members\u2019 magazine of royalties body PRS: \u201cThe idea for a Christmas song came from [co-writer] Jimmy Lea\u2019s auntie, who suggested we do a perennial-type song like Happy Birthday.”<\/p>\n
\u201cThe song that became Merry Xmas Everybody was written in 1967. It was hippy-trippy and the chorus went: \u2018So won\u2019t you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by \/ Buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye…\u2019”<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway, one night in 1973 I was at my parents\u2019 in the Midlands. After a few drinks down the local the whisky came out and I rewrote that song in two hours, using the same music for the chorus but changing the words and adding the verses. I wanted to paint a picture of a working-class Christmas.”<\/p>\n
READ MORE <\/strong> Bryan Adams admits he tried to save Princess Diana before tragedy struck<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI played it to Jim and he didn\u2019t really say much but I knew he secretly liked it.”<\/p>\n \u201cWe cut it in the US at the end of the hot summer of 1973. The studio was in an office block and we sang the chorus in the \u201cFour English blokes singing about Christmas…the office workers must have thought us mad!”<\/p>\n
stairwell to get that echoey effect.”<\/p>\n\n