What the hell is this? I thought you said you were going to buy me a drink? And where’s that reindeer you said I could stroke?

Ho ho ho, all in good time, young fellow, all in good time. First, a special festive gift that’ll do you far more good than any cheap alcoholic fix or quick velvety fondle: a CD containing five shiny pop-songs which are – like the sight of snowflakes melting on the upturned lips of a loved-one, or of familiar handwriting smudged across an airmail envelope, or of TV footage of large groups of penguins falling over – guaranteed to pluck you promptly from your torpid pit of self-pity and plant you pertly on the sun-dappled peaks of purposefulness; in short, five songs to make you think that life is, perhaps, worth another shot after all.

Five songs? It implies six on the cover.

Yes, but the first one’s just an instrumental, and no-one counts instrumentals. Look, let me talk you through it:

PACIFIC RADIO: Pop Heart
Pacific Radio is basically a pseudonym for north London curiosity Rob Crutchley, who’s also previously recorded under the name Monograph. And here’s how it works: wait for that first molten rush of guitars to explode over you and then begin declaiming above the roar I might not be sixteen any more, I might live 25 minutes’ walk from the nearest tube-station and I might, through no fault of my own, support Barnet FC, but deep inside me something still burns with a furious incandescent rage – because then you’ll know how it feels to have a true Pop Heart. Or to have had a really hot curry – it’s often only the flock wallpaper and poppadom crumbs that gives it away. This track is taken – if you’re interested – from their debut mini-album. If you’re not interested, then it’s taken from Cross Channel Ferry, a mailorder-only double-CD on which the former Roxy Music lounge-lizard puts his own languorous spin on the hits of Daft Punk and Air. As advertised in post-offices.

CODY: Ghost Shakers
It’s often said that what makes Cody different from other Oxford bands is the fact they’re not from Oxford. But I think what really sets them apart is their ability to conjure – as effortlessly as a skilled magician conjures a rabbit out of a hat, say, or a rabbit conjures a rabbit out of another rabbit – the sort of glistening electronic grooves and wide-eyed wide-screen panoramas that would – if stumbled upon unattended in a cardboard box in a rainy field outside Abingdon – cause a band such as Supergrass to simply gibber and point, wild with confusion, like giant apes who’d just found a small glass snowstorm paperweight in the back of the jungle and turned it upside-down. My favourite track on Stillpoint Primer (their debut album) is Sleepy Park Royal: heard heading west out of London in the small hours on an empty motorway, preferably the M40, and preferably in a car or other similar vehicle, it sounds like liquid moonlight – but Ghost Shakers is on this CD because it’s shorter.

FOSCA: The Millionaire Of Your Own Hair
Starring Dickon from the greatly lamented and hugely divisive Orlando on words and guitars, Rachel on keyboards and vocals, Sheila on cello and Alex (formerly of Brighter) on lurking around at the back twiddling things and looking shifty, Fosca straddled this summer with their first two releases on Shinkansen: The Agony Without The Ecstasy and On Earth To Make The Numbers Up, from which this track is taken. And already the plaudits are piling up like dead dogs on a towpath: they’re feted like heroes in France, worshipped like gods in Greece, toasted like crumpets in Sweden and hunted like bears across the Central Russian Uplands; they raise hopes of a better time to come in small redneck towns across the Midwest where synthesisers are still banned, and raise eyebrows in cheap steamy cafes around Archway station whenever Dickon tries to cross the road outside in daylight. They are, in a word, important.

TOMPOT BLENNY: Found Under Blankets
Tompot Blenny claim to be based in Nottingham, though most other inhabitants of the UK’s former doily-capital will eye you disbelievingly when you tell them this, inform you that, well, they’ve never heard of them, and then ask you if it’s true that people in London have wings and keep miniature hairless monkeys as servants. Found Under Blankets is the title-track of the band’s debut album, finally released this autumn, four years after their last single – an embarrassing repetitive strain injury and related persistent twitch having forced them into temporary retirement from the contemporary music-scene during the so-called “lost” years in between.

TREMBLING BLUE STARS: Christmas And Train Trips And Things
Written and recorded in 1997 and originally intended for the band’s second album, but then omitted on the grounds that it was much too full already. Listening to it again 3 years on, it’s clear the world was a very different place back then; there’s certainly no way they’d ever get away with this sort of thing nowadays.

Call me a cynic, but the more you talk, the more this whole CD sounds less like a generous festive gift, and more like a devious marketing tool, promoting the 4 albums Shinkansen has released this autumn on the back of a hitherto unavailable Trembling Blue Stars song...

Peace, goodwill and crass commercial gestures to all men, I say. I don’t do this for fun, you know – climbing up and down chimneys, endless PAs in department stores – I have a wife, two dozen elves and a mistress in Hove with a fetish for expensive tinsel to support. I’m on a percentage, kid - get real.

And what if I accidentally get drunk tonight and lose it – the CD, I mean – or want another copy for my friend? I heard a rumour it was a limited-edition, available only at tonight’s gig.

That’s the story that’s been put around, yes, but it would be a horribly elitist and politically wrong-headed act for a supposed Socialist record-label, wouldn’t it? That sort of thing just brings out the petty avaricious Capitalist thug in us all. So, from Christmas Eve, further copies will be on sale for a couple of quid... but in completely different packaging, so that everyone who gets one tonight can still feel special and go home glowing as if they’ve each and every one been loved by hand.

You mean you won’t get a tatty piece of coloured paper with this curiously self-referential and clearly hastily-written-two-days-before-the-gig playlet?

Indeed not. You’ll get a specially-commissioned festive short story entitled A Christmas Carrot – it’s a supernatural tale for the hard of hearing. You’re dead right about this being hastily written, by the way – that’s why it’s full of spolling mistikes, why the paragraphs often seem to break at random

points and why I’m not wearing any trousers. And I believe there wasn’t time to read it back properly before getting it photocopied, so you might also spot the odd continuity error.

With that, he picks up the alligator, walks out the door and enters the space-ship. A few moments later, he re-emerges from behind the bar wearing sunglasses and a pink cravat.

I’m terribly sorry, I really have no idea what happened there, but I think I’d finished anyway. If you need any more information about any of this, why not contact Shinkansen - or check out their website.

The sound of hoofbeats and merry jingling is heard from outside. All rise and leave. God bless them, every one!