The wife of the late Irish punk rocker Shane MacGowan has given her support to a campaign to make The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York Christmas number one.
Victoria Mary Clarke says she is ‘very much in favour’ of a push by Brits to get the song – a duet recorded with singer Kirsty MacColl – into the coveted festive top spot.
The song, released in 1987, is regularly named Britain’s favourite Christmas song in polls but has never secured first place in the charts, finishing second behind the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of Always On My Mind in the year of its release.
Clarke, 57, who first met MacGowan when she was 16 and was by his side when he died on Thursday, has given her approval to the bid to give the song the chart position that fans believe it deserves in memory of the raucous folk star.
Fairytale finished at number 18 in the most recent Official Top 40 update, behind hits by Wham! and Mariah Carey, but chart bosses say the 36-year-old anthem is sizing up to be a ‘genuine contender’ come the last Friday before Christmas.
Victoria Mary Clarke pictured with Shane MacGowan in 1999. The pair met when Clarke was 16
The pair pictured in 2012. They were engaged for 11 years before finally getting married in Copenhagen in 2018
Fairytale of New York is The Pogues’ best known song and a festive favourite – but it has never reached number one at Christmas
The Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan with Kirsty MacColl, with whom he duetted on Fairytale of New York
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Irish journalist Clarke said: ‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it? It should be the Christmas number one. It absolutely should. I’m very much in favour of that.’
Clarke also told the programme that, behind closed doors, MacGowan was a very different man to his very cynical and boisterous public persona.
She added that the staunch Irish republican liked to watch documentaries about the Royal Family, and cried when Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Diana died.
She said: ‘He always buying flowers and he was just a really romantic man.’
MacGowan, 65, died at home in Dublin on Thursday surrounded by his family after developing pneumonia. He and Clarke married in Copenhagen in 2018 after being engaged for 11 years and in a relationship for decades.
He had been discharged from hospital just over a week before after undergoing months of treatment for viral encephalitis, a condition in which swelling develops on the brain.
His passing prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the globe and kick-started a renewed campaign to get Fairytale of New York to number one in the UK for the first time.
And on Friday, a poll by bookmakers Ladbrokes once again named the song as the UK’s favourite festive song of all time.
Bookies have slashed their odds on the song – a drunken dirge by an Irish immigrant in America as he reminisces about a former lover – reaching the top spot.
It is odds-on favourite to be Christmas number one ahead of both competing festive tunes and hits by the likes of Taylor Swift.
Spotify chart data for November 29, the day before MacGowan died, shows the song was the 23rd most-streamed tune in the UK that day, being played 190,288 times.
But on November 30, as news of his passing came to light streams more than doubled to 390,657, and the song was Brits’ sixth most listened-to track that day.
It also notched up 694,571 listens on December 1, becoming the fourth most-played song on the platform.
Martin Talbot, CEO of Official Charts, said of the song: ‘It is a genuine contender for this year’s Christmas Number 1 – a chart position which this classic has never previously reached. What a fitting tribute to Shane that would be.’
Shane MacGowan performing live with The Popes, the band he formed after the breakup of The Pogues
The Pogues later reformed and continued playing live until 2014 (pictured: MacGowan performing in Hyde Park, London that year)
MacGowan’s lifelong battles with alcohol and drug addiction led to a number of health issues
A photograph of MacGowan at Mansion House in Dublin, where a book of condolences was opened by the city’s Lord Mayor
Following his death, the creative director of a theatre show called Fairytale Of New York has redoubled efforts to get MacGowan’s best-known song to the top of the UK charts for the first time.
Ged Graham told the PA news agency that even though Fairytale Of New York has never topped the charts, it is the most-played Christmas song in the UK.
‘It’s a great Christmas story,’ he said. ‘It’s honest and it’s real, and honest and real music just lasts for eternity.
‘It’s not a jingle-belly, happy, happy Christmas. It’s a nitty-gritty, real-life story at Christmas. Everything at Christmas isn’t all nice and bells and whistles and loveliness, it’s got an earthiness and a great kind of vibe to it that just appeals to people, especially Irish people in the UK.
‘Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl… are just two real people. They don’t look like film stars, they don’t look like George Michael and Wham! My friends look like that.’
However, the song continues to divide public opinion because of its lyrics, which MacGowan maintained had been written from the perspective of the characters in the song, who were not supposed to be ‘nice’.
It includes MacGowan’s character referring to his lover as ‘an old sl*t on junk’, and MacColl’s retorting that he is a ‘cheap lousy f*****’.
In the past, the lyrics have been changed for both live performances and radio play. Official Charts does not distinguish between versions when it collates sales data to decide the Official Top 40.
The results will be announced on the last Friday before Christmas, December 22, with sales and streams from the Friday before until 11.59pm on Thursday counted towards that week’s charts.
