Sir Cliff Richard wants to challenge ‘The X Factor’ UK winner for the Christmas number one spot.

The ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ crooner thinks the winner of the reality TV show has an unfair advantage in the British charts because of the platform the show gives them, and admitted if he could find the right song he would be willing to undertake a gruelling promotional schedule in order to win the chart battle.

He said: “I would love to compete with ‘The X Factor’ for Christmas number one if I had the right song. It’s not worth just doing it because it’s Christmas, you’d need to have a really good song that lots of people like and then you’d have to spend a lot of time promoting it.

“I’d have to do every TV show available for a month because they have 26 weeks and the public are waiting for the winner to release their record. Of course they’re going to buy it because they’re invested in it, it’s an unfair competition. But I’d love one day to have truly the better song and then you say to yourself ‘I do have the better song so it should be number one’ But you know number two’s not bad either.”

Cliff also revealed he has no plans to release a new Christmas album but is constantly on the lookout for a festive song he is “excited” by.

He said: “I have no plans for a new album but if I found a song that I felt excited by I’d be very tempted to just record the song rather than an album and then eventually add it to the album that’s already out there because it’s constantly being remastered and rereleased anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually sold a million copies eventually over the next 50 years.”