#500 - Elis and John’s Christmas Cracker

Elis James and John Robins

BBC

Comedy

4.8 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Put the wrapping paper down, turn off Home Alone and stop stressing about a glorified Sunday roast… the true meaning of Christmas has finally been revealed to us, and would you believe it, it’s Elis and John!

Yes, everything in this festive period has been leading up to Elis and John’s Christmas Cracker, and boy does it deliver on festive cheer. Because what’s more Christmassy than a debate about TVs in hotel rooms, or a 45-year-old man getting lost in pictures of the 1950s footballer Tom Finney, (aka The Preston Plumber)?

Unwrapping this podcast with your ears will also reveal a not-so-secret secret Santa, some yuletide Mad Daddery, and a chat with a very busy Mother Christmas.

But festive cheer is not the only thing on today’s agenda because we’re also celebrating 500 episodes of the BBC era! Elis and John relive some moments from their very first show and the ghosts of Christmas Past Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode stop by to play a Made Up Game and chat Christmas flicks.

Thanks for all your tip-top correspondence this year, and may 2026 bring even better emails and WhatsApps about oils, guffs and inappropriate school trips. Send everything into [email protected] or WhatsApp 07974 293 022.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.
0:11.1	You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.
0:14.0	Ho!
0:14.3	Ho! Ho! No, no, no.
0:17.5	I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.
0:20.4	Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay?
0:23.7	It's Christmas kitchen disco season, surely.
0:26.4	Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day.
0:28.6	Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of Lapland.
0:30.9	Get all kinds of Christmassy.
0:32.6	Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.
0:35.9	Ellis and John's Christmas Cracker.
0:46.3	It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, nothing was stirring,
0:52.7	not even a mouse. If only that were true for Ellis John and Dave
0:57.3	this year, each of the three corners of the equilateral triangle of content have a very
1:02.1	different experience of Christmas, and for Ellis especially, the opening lines of the poem
1:06.4	couldn't be further from reality. Yes, his AI cat flap had finally become sentient.
1:12.2	Decided that the best treatment for a house full of mouse phobics was aversion therapy.
1:17.4	And its newly acquired intelligence was only letting in local cats who were holding live mice.
1:22.5	Yes, that's happening.
1:23.8	We've had a bit.
	...

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