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Radio 1 will play a version of Fairytale of New York without the homophobic slur – 12 Twitter takes

Oonagh Keating. Updated November 19th, 2020

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – and that’s mostly because Twitter is once again arguing about the lyrics to a festive hit.

Past rows have broken out over ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside‘, in which the male character tries to ply a young woman with drink and talk her into having sex – just as the Baby Jesus would* have wanted.

*wouldn’t – don’t @ us.

Then there’s the hideously uninformed ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?‘ Band Aid charity single that gets 10/10 for trying to help the needy but no points whatsoever for the statement that “There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas“, or in fact for shoe-horning an entire continent’s circumstances or interest in a Christian festival into a homogeneous lump.

Today’s storm – at the time of writing – is the perennial row over The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl‘s classic, ‘Fairytale of New York‘, in which the original lyrics feature a homophobic slur that rhymes with ‘maggot’ and an insult relating to female sexual behaviour, and that’s as much as needs to be said.

Here’s why the row has broken out while we’re barely halfway through November.

They added a statement.

Radio 6 Music DJs will have the option of playing either.

The Guardian’s Media Editor had this explanation of the different approaches.

Opinions were broadly divided between those saying “about time”, others suggesting it was some kind of Philistinism and the tweeters walking the tightrope of accusing people of being snowflakes while crying about a change to a song they can hear in its original form on a different channel.

For the ‘Don’t be a Philistine‘ faction –

Here’s what people were saying.

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