Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Tonight's Concert in the Malvern Arms

Christmas is not complete without this one playing somewhere.

Too true

I've always liked the song. There's something slightly operatic about the interplay of Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl. My younger daughter, however, loathes it with a vengeance. When she was a student in Dublin, she worked in a very busy place called Cafe en Seine. In the run-up to Xmas, that song was on an almost permanent loop. It drove her nuts, and even now, many years later she can't stand it.

I do like the whole story of how Kirsty MacColl got to sing the female part. Originally, it was meant for Cait O'Riordan, with whom they made a few unsuccessful recordings of the song. She then left when the band fell out with producer Elvis Costello (with whom she was an item at the time). When the band returned to recording the song, initially in the absence of a female vocalist Shane McGowan was singing both the male and female parts. The new producer, Steve Lilywhite, offered to get his wife Kirsty MacColl to lay down a vocal for it at his home studio. The rest, as they say, is history.

There was a great program about it on BBC 4 this week.

I'll listen to that later. Thanks for the heads-up. I see it's on R4's Soul Music.

The first time I have seen YouTube come up with a message which, translated, says something like "The author of this upload has not made this video available for your country."

Have we been Brexited?

For those who can't view the above there is this one:

That's odd Giles didn't mention anything about not being able to view it - probably the Italian Mafia Peter
I've never seen a message like that either, thanks for putting the other link on.

I heard it on the radio this morning and they had "blanked" out the word faggot. That was a first too.

Unbelievable especially when you know some of the other lyrics

One from Frankie..

Nope. Worked fine for me.