Christmas in a British family home. Christmas knits. A roaring log fire. And a McVitie’s Victoria Biscuit Selection Box sat on the coffee table. Our dad slides open the lid, breaks open the glinting foil seal... And Christmas lunacy breaks loose.

Emerging from the box, 11 different festive animals appear and spontaneously break into song. 1982’s Christmas Number One, “Only You” by Yazoo. Beeped, miaowed, barked and squeaked in place of the original vocals.

Epic, ridiculous, and almost unbearably cute. A baby pig in a giant Christmas hat. An alpine marmot, singing his little marmot heart out. There’s even a narwhal bursting out of the punch bowl, “ta da!” An entire Christmas Choir, singing along before…

“Crunch.” Normality returns.

Choreographed, harmonised, and carefully constructed. Christmas, as only McVitie’s could do it. Sweeet.

Music forms the backbone of this film. The last thing we wanted was an expected Christmas track. Taking inspiration from Christmas office parties, school discos, and those long car rides home for the holidays, we chose Yazoo’s 1982 Christmas No1, “Only you.” It was perfect, both culturally (who doesn’t like Yazoo?) and musically. Those opening notes are instantly recogniseable, and even when we removed Alison Moyet’s iconic vocals and replaced them with a duck – arguably a hangable offence – people could instantly hum along.

We created a bespoke musical arrangement, replicating the original instrumentation from the 1982 recording, building each animal “vocal” into the track in the pre-production stage. Audio first, shooting boards second.

But more than that. We ‘Love Actually-d’ it. Adding sleigh bells, a classic movie strings flourish, and East 17- style church bells underneath for the finale. Adding a sense of scale and sheer Christmas abandon. I hope Yazoo can forgive us…