THE LAST TURKEY

And so to the Greatest Ever Christmas song ever made. Ever. The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York.

A most unusual love song - and despite the New York setting and Irish jig, there is something uniquely British about this song. Two drunk lovers who resent and verbally abuse each other, yet are desperately in love.

This song is not only my favourite Christmas song, but is one of my favourite songs from any genre and time of year of all time. The final verse is also one of my favourite verses in any song too:

HIM: I could have been someone,

HER: Well so could anyone, You took my dreams from me when I first found you

HIM: I kept them with me babe, I put them with my own,Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you.

Merry Christmas everybody!

"Fairytale of New York" is a Christmas song by Anglo-Irish folk-rock group The Pogues, and featuring the English singer Kirsty MacColl. The song is an Irish folk style ballad, written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan, and featured on The Pogues' album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. The song features string arrangements by Fiachra Trench. It is frequently voted the Number One Best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The song takes the form of a drunken man's Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank. After an inebriated old man also incarcerated in the jail cell sings a passage from the Irish drinking ballad "The Rare Old Mountain Dew", the drunken man (MacGowan) begins to dream about a failed relationship. The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) takes the form of a call and response between two Irish immigrants, lovers or ex-lovers, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, reminiscing and bickering on Christmas Eve in New York City. MacColl's melodious singing contrasts with the harsh sound of MacGowan's voice and the lyrics are sometimes bittersweet, sometimes plain bitter: "Happy Christmas your arse/ I pray God it's our last". The lyric "Sinatra was swinging" has been taken by some to suggest an unspecified period after World War II; however, it is possible that the song is actually set in the early 1980s, when one of Sinatra's last chart hits, his 1980 recording of John Kander and Fred Ebb's theme from the movie New York, New York, was a fixture of New York City airwaves and a standard singalong record in the city's many neighborhood bars. The title, taken from author J. P. Donleavy's novel A Fairy Tale of New York, was chosen after the song had been written and recorded.

Despite the lyrics "The boys of the NYPD choir still singing 'Galway Bay'", the New York Police Department does not have a choir.

MacGowan cannot play the piano, but in the video (at the urging of record company executives) James Fearnley reluctantly wore MacGowan's jacket and rings.

Is the favourite Christmas song of Cliff Richard, Matt Dillon, Dermot O'Leary, Karen Osborne, Pete Doherty, Peter Zimmerman, Ricky Olarenshaw, Carl Barat, Bob Geldof, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Chris Moyles, Tim Hames, Sue Johnstone, Chris Martin (who went as far as to say that if he could have written any song, "Fairytale of New York" would have been it) and The Office creators, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, with Gervais even going as far to say, when covering Jonathan Ross' BBC Radio 2 show on Christmas Eve 2005; "The best Christmas Song ever and one of the best songs ever - it's just brilliant".