Happy Christmas your arse

It’s not very often I find myself cheering for Jeremy Vine, but I did hear him this lunchtime on Radio 2 and was happy to hear Fairytale of New York, a song I could recite bar by bar even if I hadn’t heard it in ten years. I didn’t realise at that moment why he was doing it until I saw this. I have to write this as it was the only way to calm my gay housemate as he shouted swear words and abuse at Peter Tatchell on the television. Worse ones than ’slut’ and ‘faggot’ if we are going to grade these things.

Now, I know that faggot is an offensive word, as is slut. I wouldn’t use them in the course of my daily discourse. But the point of the song, and the reason it is so appropriate for Christmas, is that it reflects people leading an imperfect life with imperfect and dysfunctional relationships. They may use imperfect language. It’s the perfect antidote to the parts of commercial Christmas culture which exclude everything but happy families. With perfect teeth. It’s an important part of Christmas cheer if it can amuse anyone lonely or sad at Christmas.

It’s not as if the late great Kirsty MacColl or the thankfully still with us Shane McGowan are exactly setting themselves up as role models for Radio 1 listeners here. They are, as Ms MacColl’s mother points out, a couple not in the first flush of youth. There are suggestions one or both may be somewhat compromised by their drug use. The song starts with Shane McGowan ‘in the drunk tank’ placing bets. You’d have to be very naïve to imagine that both singers are not drunk when having this row. So they’re hardly saying it’s right to call people faggots.

Despite this the song is genuinely romantic, albeit not in the sterile way that most Christmas songs are. Kissing on a street corner while the NYPD choir sing is just as authentic as being under some arranged mistletoe. There aren’t many better lines than ‘I could have been someone – well so could anyone’ to express a total lack of sympathy for someone being drunkenly maudlin. It’s a skill plenty of people may find themselves using at Christmas (along with sympathy of course, and holding people’s hair out of the way while they experience the later effects of festive drinking).

So I’d like to say well done to Radio 1, not just for sensibly caving but for getting still more airtime for a great song for everyone who might have an imperfect Christmas or imperfect relationships. I counted at least four groups on Facebook asking to get Fairytale of New York to be Christmas number one, and one of them had 2351 new members when I just looked. Maybe Radio 1 are not fools.

Maybe they know that picking the boring answer is not what we need at Christmas. They know that bans from Radio 1 inevitably lead to success, and thank god this time they may have used the power for something great. Maybe I’ll even retune from Radio 2. But not until Chris Evans goes on holiday.