OH Lord! The BBC's in hot water again - and this time it's Songs of Praise at the centre of the fuss.

The people who organise the filming schedule have been getting the major Christian festivals out of the way with a haste that seems almost indecent.

Christmas came early to Lichfield this month, when the cathedral was decked out for the recording of a festive special.

A bit quick off the mark perhaps - but then we all know that Christmas comes earlier every year.

The news that really put the fat in the festive fire was the revelation that the moment filming was completed, the flowers were changed, the lighting adjusted, the congregation asked to shed their winter coats - and the crew promptly got down to work on recording the Easter special.

What a swindle! And what a sad sign of the times, you might think, that even the people who make the religious programmes for the BBC can't be trusted not to deceive us.

Oh come on! It may be cheating - of course it is - but television programmes often have to be in the can well in advance, particularly those which go out around bank holiday periods.

A certain amount of this ducking and diving has to go on here at the Echo, where Christmas and New Year supplements have to be tackled early so as to ease the increased workload.

Accordingly, it's not at all unusual to find myself working on a New Year feature about shedding the extra pounds piled on over Christmas before I've even eaten my first mince pie.

Willie Rushton once told me in an interview in September that he'd already toasted in the New Year... for a recording of Celebrity Squares.

But surely the most striking example of this "seasonal cheating" involved Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, a festive special which went out in 1977.

It was classic feelgood fare, filmed in London with contributions from Twiggy, Ron Moody, Stanley Baxter and, memorably, David Bowie, who duetted with the Old Groaner on Little Drummer Boy.

But there was just one thing that cast a shadow over our enjoyment.

Bing, who recorded the show in September, had been dead since October.