miss_squiddy | "Does your Granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?"

Right. So there are 168 hours in a week. If you minus the hours spent at work (38) and the time spent sleeping (56), that leaves 74 hours of 'free' time which could feasibly be filled with audio-visual stimulation to one degree or another.

I estimate that Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody must be played on average once every 2 hours throughout November and once an hour throughout December.^[1]

Thats... (74*4=148)+(74*4*2=296) ...444 plays per year.

Given that Merry Christmas Everybody was released in 1973 and that I wasn't born until 1978, I estimate that I have heard that blinking song 11,988 times in my life.^[2]

No wonder I'm sick of it.

^[1] ...Within range of me. And I'm counting hearing any part of the song as a 'play'. So that includes annoying repetitive radio jingles, adverts for compilation CDs, 100 Greatest Christmassy Moments programmes and shopping trips where every single shop is playing dodgy Christmas tunes. So no, I wouldn't expect to hear Noddy Holder crowing 'Iiiiit's Chriiiistmas!' on the hour every hour like some demented cuckoo clock, but I reckon all the airplay he takes up at the end of the month must even things up...
^[2] Yeah, I know my working out is shoddy. Dammit Jim - I'm a historian, not a mathematician!