Gennaro Castaldo watch: His most wonderful time of the year

If there's a point where Gennaro Castaldo really comes into his own, it's the annual race for the Christmas Number One. It's likely that, were he to be on Mastermind, this would be his specialist subject.

Of course, with that one off the X-Factor running away with it this year, there's not much room for analysis. For Gennaro, it must be like being called in as a pundit prior to a match between Manchester United and Rushden and Diamonds:

"It is absolutely no contest," said HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo.

"If sales reach 750,000 that would make it the second biggest single of the year after Gnarls Barclay's 'Crazy'," he told Reuters.

"It is already the fastest ever music download in Britain. She sold 100,000 in the first two days," he said. "She [Leona] is outselling everyone else by a margin of about 10-1."

"The market in singles is ebbing away. But after the X-Factor, mums and parents go out to buy the winner. At 3.99 (pounds) it's a no-brainer as a stocking filler," he added.

Actually, we're a little confused as to how, if the market in singles is ebbing away, this isn't the best selling single of the year, especially since Crazy was a proper single by a proper group and not a TV-spin off.

Sadly, Gennaro wasn't given room to discuss the story slightly closer to his office, HMV's bleak Christmas. It seems that not even Gennaro's tireless appearance in any and every article about Take That has managed to persuade people to enter their increasingly tatty and poorly laid-out stores:

The music and bookshop owner said it expected the high street environment to remain difficult for the rest of the year as it reported group like-for-like sales fell 1.3 per cent during the 12 weeks to December 16.

Chief executive Simon Fox said: "We recognise we face very tough and rapidly changing markets and have to work hard to offset this."

Which will probably mean they'll hide the music CDs even more next year.

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