John Peel Festive Fifty 1995

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John Peel's annual rundown of listeners' fifty favourite tracks of the year, 'The John Peel Festive 50' became a Christmas institution more loved than fairy lights and Christmas crackers. Listeners of John's Radio 1 show picked the chart by voting for their three favourite tracks of the year before the end of November. The Festive 50 were then played on air. John originally let listeners choose their all-time favourite three tracks for the 1976 chart. The Beatles, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix all cropped up in the run-down, even though the Beatles had split up and The Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix were dead by then. John counted the listeners' votes and compiled the chart himself. He told the NME: "It's really just me marking every single vote down in a ledger. There is obviously the temptation to slip something in that I like, especially if it's just outside the 50, and something crap has gone above it. But I have a very workman-like brain so it just wouldn't be on to fix it." The all-time Festive 50 that first aired in 1976 was replaced by a year-only chart in 1982, but was briefly revived for the Millennium. By 1986, the chart was overstuffed with listeners' top tracks of the year. John didn't like this at all, even though it contained many of his favourite artists, including seven tracks from The Smiths, seven by The Fall and four from The Wedding Present, as he felt that it was too predictable and unadventurous. John wasn't always happy with what t

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