Christmas number one: Freezing This Christmas - who are Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers?

Freezing This Christmas is a take-off of the crooning Mud perennial Lonely This Christmas - but unlike similar parodies its aim is not to raise a smile but to stoke anger. The fictional band Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers are looking to highlight the plight of pensioners.

It was written as a protest against the new Labour government’s decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance. So far 1.6m people have watched the video on YouTube - and the song is, according to bookmaker William Hill, in the running to be Christmas number one.

The lyrics were drafted by33-year-old freelance writer Chris Middleton from Newcastle. He told the Daily Telegraph: “I never set out to get to Christmas number one – that wasn’t my plan at all. I saw something on Twitter a couple of months ago about trying to do a Christmas song for pensioners and the hook of the chorus just came to me. Lonely This Christmas is my favourite Christmas song so that’s probably why. I wrote the rest of the lyrics in an hour while I was pottering around the house, and then I thought ‘This is quite good!’”

The biting lyrics see the first verse of: “Try to imagine a house that’s full of cold / Try to imagine being 80 years old / That’s where I’ll be since the cure left me / I wish tears could heat my home / What can I do without fuel? / I’ve got no place, no place to go” while later lines mentioned people staying in bed all day to keep warm, while all the singer sees is “foreign wars and open doors” - seemingly a jibe at money being spent on refugees.

The song has an accompanying JustGiving fundraising page, which is raising money for Age UK. After setting a target of £5,000, so far it has raised more than £35,000 for the charity, and donations can be made here.

The singer is Dean Ager, 51, from Worthing, who usually impersonates Frank Sinatra and Michael Buble. He was contacted online by Middleton and agreed to provide the vocals, and was paid £50.

As well as hundreds of thousands of streams on YouTube, Freezing This Christmas has topped the Apple iTunes download chart - but so far the BBC has not played it.

There are more than 6,000 comments on YouTube, with many along the lines of “This song deserves to be Christmas number 1. The attack on the elderly is sickening” and “I was banking on my fuel allowance this winter and now I hear the b******s are sending the money to other countries. This cruel government should be imprisoned.”

A source from the Official Charts Company said: “It’s a classic last minute charity-comedy contender. It’s not impacted the main chart yet, but it will.”

What is the winter fuel allowance?

The winter fuel allowance was introduced by the Labour government in 1997 for all pensioners, and was announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in his Pre-Budget Statement that year.

Until this year, it was given to all pensioners, based only on age and residence. The qualifying age was 60 at first, and then raised to 65 in 2010 and 66 in 2018. The change introduced by this Labour government was to make it means-tested, so it is now only available to those on Pension Credit or other means-tested benefits.

It is thought that this change will reduce the number of pensioners who receive the payment from 11.4m to 1.5m, which saves the Treasury £1.4bn. Last year the tax-free payment was between £100 and £300.

The decision to scrap the payment as a universal benefit has been criticised by many - but defended by those who have pointed out that it was also being paid to millionaires.