It's entirely appropriate that Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born on Christmas Day because his celebrated song Fairytale Of New Yorkseems to be just about everybody's favourite festive piece of music.
Polls about the song have been as plentiful as mince pies: it is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st Century; the best to cook to; the best to drive to; the best to dance with your mother-in-law to (OK, I made up that one).
The polls are harmless and meaningless. Heinz Frozen UK announced in 2011 that the Pogues' classic was the nations' "favourite Christmas song to cook to"? Poor old Bing Crosby's song was past its sell-by-date, apparently.
More significantly, the 1987 song by the Pogues – once censored by the BBC for its raw language - was announced as the most-played Christmas song of the century by music licensing body PPL, leapfrogging Wham's Last Christmas. A Fairytale of New York certainly still sells in big numbers. It has been in the Christmas Top 20 over seven different years and was went back into the UK charts in 2014, thanks in part to support from streaming services.
My advice is to forget polls or charts and just enjoy again a really cracking, funny song, the title of which was taken from a 1972 book called A Fairytale of New York by James Patrick Donleavy.
The magical lyrics of MacGowan and banjo player Jem Finer – allied to the verve of the band and the fine vocals by the sadly missed Kirsty MacColl – make it something special and enduring.
But a song for cooking to? No. Isn't A Fairytale of New York best enjoyed, drink in hand, as you sway and sing with friends at a boisterous party? Altogether now:
You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last
The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day.
