It’s funny what getting older does to you. By now you will probably be aware of the Facebook campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to Christmas number one ahead of the X Factor winner’s single. It’s no pipe dream either. The last I heard the two were neck and neck with the bookies.

I was 17 when Killing In The Name was first released and didn’t think much of it at the time. Like a snooty kid who thinks laughing at farts is “so immature”, I thought it was unsophisticated, juvenile, and banal.  I also didn’t like the sort of idiots who jumped up and down to it at indie discos (I still don’t). Of course that kid (yes, ok, it was me) later learned to lighten up and realise that farting could be very funny indeed in the right context.

Similarly, thanks to this story, I recently had cause to listen to RATM for the first time in years and… you can guess what’s coming next… I thought it was fantastic.

Anyway, I suppose this is all by the by. The point is that if you’re sick of the Christmas number one (not so long a great British pop culture institution) being not just a foregone conclusion but both inevitably bland and uninteresting and a means to line the pockets of a certain high-trousered gentleman who doesn’t need any more money, you really should buy it.

I just have and it’s the first piece of music I’ve paid for in more than four years.