Some of the most serious contenders for this year’s Christmas No 1 are a bit longer in the tooth than your average X-Factor winner. But will the ‘grey pound’ be enough to keep Cowell’s crowd off the top spot?

Last Christmas in this paper I lost my sense of humour regarding the battle for the Christmas No 1 and spent a page berating Simon Cowell for killing the traditional annual British pub conversation about runners and riders in the race for the top of the festive chart.

For the last three years, as every weary pop-picker knows, the once prestigious spot has gone, virtually unchallenged, to the various whatsisnames and whatsernames who happen to have won that year’s X Factor.

A year ago I beseeched readers to fight back against Cowell by bulk-buying Scottish miserablist Malcolm Middleton’s We’re All Going to Die, which at the time of writing was 9/1 odds to sneak the No 1 place. My calls fell on deaf ears, and X Factor winner Leon Jackson glided effortlessly to glory instead.

This year though, there may be hope. For one thing, now that kooky Diana has been voted out, there is no chance that the X Factor single will be performed by anyone with charisma, likeability or any kind of unique selling point whatsoever. All we have left is three charmless facsimiles of a multitude of generic acts who have gone before, all so utterly forgettable that even Simon Cowell has trouble getting their names right.

I won’t even get started on the right and wrongs of whoever wins singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (except to say that for those of us who regard that song as a sacred artefact which illuminates the dark corners of humanity, the idea of it being passed around to collect the grimy fingerprints of vacuous musical illiterates and small elfish children makes us physically ill), but it’s clear that the chances of that single being a preposterous and empty experience are a mile high.

And so we turn to those who may be best placed to challenge the X-Factor’s dominance and find that this year, hope comes not from spotty depressives or Shaun the Sheep, but from a bunch of quite old people.

Yup, this could be the year when the squealing pre-pubescents who have dictated Christmas chart trends for the last few years are usurped by the increasingly powerful pensioner’s lobby. And though I am still on the younger side of 40, I for one would love to see the smirk wiped off Simon Cowell’s face by the great British granny and granpa.

Second favourite for the Christmas No 1 this year is currently Terry Wogan and Aled Jones’ newly recorded version of The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth, originally a hit for Bing Crosby and David Bowie in 1977.

The story of the original version, recorded for Crosby’s TV Christmas Special, isn’t a particularly heart-warming one. The initial idea had been for Bowie to simply duet with the old crooner on The Little Drummer Boy, but Bowie refused, saying he “hated’ the song. Peace on Earth was thus hastily written by Ian Fraser and Larry Grossman so that Bowie could sing something else.

Bing Crosby died about a month after the recording and Bowie churlishly said he’d only gone on the show because “I just knew my mum liked Bing Crosby”.

However the song has retained a place in the public’s affection over the prevailing decades, possibly because of the bizarre nature of the Bowie/Bing collaboration, and Jones and Wogan’s version has strong support across Radio 2. At 70, Wogan is still four years younger than Bing was when he sang it, so perhaps he’s even breathed some new life into the track. I’m not saying it’s any good, but wouldn’t it be beautiful if Cowell had to eat it for his Christmas dinner?

There are other contenders appealing to the greyer consumer this year and probably the most interesting are The Priests, the three Fathers from Ballyclare and Ballygowan, who signed a £2mideal with Sony and have just watched their debut album crash into the album charts at No 5, recording the biggest opening week of sales ever for a classical album. That’s more than Pavarotti or even Russell Watson!

Bearing in mind the competition right now — Britney Spears, Take That, Leona Lewis, The Killers — The Priests really have shaken up the industry, proving that you don’t need to know much about sex, drugs or rock’n’roll to break the Top 10.

In the run-up to Christmas the boys are stacking up serious radio airtime, both in this country and across Europe and the United States. Now that the over-50s are becoming au fait with iTunes, there’s nothing to stop The Priests crashing the Christmas chart. An ITV documentary to be aired this Sunday will certainly give them an extra push. A festive hit acknowledging a God who doesn’t fasten his trousers under his armpits? Now that would be a novelty No 1.

Then there is, of course, the Cliff factor. Cliff Richard is currently celebrating his 50th year in showbiz (doesn’t it feel like 100?) and has just released a greatest hits album. He’s released a few before of course but this one is receiving huge publicity as Cliff gears up for a huge reunion tour with The Shadows next year.

As the 25th draws nearer, the album is being used as an excuse to fill up radio time with mounting plays of Mistletoe & Wine and 21st Century Christmas. We all know how the Cliff community like to pull together to launch guerrilla assaults on the charts, they’ve done it very successfully in the past. He may have looked as if he was cryogenically frozen years ago but don’t rule rigor mortis-faced Richard out yet.

The same could be said for 78-year-old Rolf Harris, who has re-recorded and re-released the song which was 1969’s biggest selling single — Two Little Boys. It’s a terrible, saccharine song that nonetheless makes grown men cry and with a bit of seasonal sentimentality could push Rolf right up the charts.

So come on bath seat Britain – you could be the heroes of every right thinking man, woman and child in the UK if you get your act together and push the X Factor out of pole position with some Grey Pound activism.

The time has come again — your country needs you!