Slade star Noddy Holder often gets confused for Wizzard’s Roy Wood.

The singer, who penned the 1973 festive classic Merry Christmas Everybody, tells Robbie Williams on his At Home with the Williamses podcast he often gets drunken people coming up to him and belting out Wizzard’s hit I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday – which was released the same year.

“What’s funny is people come up to me in all the bars and all around and say, ‘Oh, I love your Christmas record’,” he laughs. “And I say, ‘Oh good, I’m glad you like it’. Then they say, ‘Yeah, we always have it on every year, that ‘Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’. They think I did Woody’s song.”

The hit single features Noddy, also 74, screaming his famous “It’s Christmas!” catchphrase, which he admits often ruins his dining out experience because everyone sings it to him.

“The worst time it happens is if I’m in a restaurant, having a meal with my mates or my family or whatever, and they’re shouting it across the restaurant at the top of their voice,” says the star.

“I’m trying to hide in a corner, sort of thing, especially around December time, you get all the Christmas parties in. Because I know the Christmas tape’s going on the sound system in the restaurant… so, I’m sort of heads down. And then, of course, somebody on their way to the bog, off the Christmas party, will pass my table.

“Then, it swiftly gets round the restaurant that I’m in, and then they all want it, you know? They all want me to sing along with it then, on a table or something.

“That gets really embarrassing, that.”