The pathetic censorship of ‘Fairytale of New York’

There’s a surefire way to tell Christmas has arrived. Forget the Oxford Street lights. Forget the sudden appearance of stacks of selection boxes in your supermarket. Forget Noddy Holder’s pained cry, ‘It’s Chriiiistmaaas!’

No, these days it isn’t really Christmas until we have the annual handwringing over The Pogues’ song ‘Fairytale of New York’.

And it’s here. It has arrived. As predictably as pine trees in your local garden centre and dads getting boxes of tinsel from the attic, the argument over Shane MacGowan’s ‘offensive’ lyrics is back. Happy Christmas, everyone!

This year, the annual blizzard of snowflakery over MacGowan’s lyrical masterpiece has been started by the BBC. The Beeb has announced that Radio 1 will play a censored version of ‘Fairytale of New York’, while Radio 2 will play the original. The reasoning seems to be that the mostly youthful listeners to Radio 1 will be horrified, possibly even traumatised, if they hear the word ‘faggot’, while the older, round-the-block listeners to Radio 2 won’t give a fig.