almost witty

If you’re the kind of person who follows radio stations or listens to Virgin/Absolute Radio, you can’t have failed to notice the recent rebranding, emphasising the fact that it’s now Absolute Radio.

Unless you’re a relative of mine, who thought that the renaming of the radio station was a temporary sponsorship deal with the vodka manufacturers, and that it’d go back to being Virgin Radio in a week or so…

Update: Heard it on 6 December. Hurrah. Christmas can now officially start!

Despite having spent the last three days trotting around all the shopping centres that Manchester and Cheshire have to offer - in the hunt for a new pair of spectacles actually! - and spending countless hours on shopping websites, I still don’t quite feel that Christmassy.

It’s partly because I’m still a bit ill so instead of rich mince pies I’m mostly craving plain jacket potatoes - and half-dreading the 12-hour drink fest that is the annual works Christmas party this weekend with special mystery guest star.

But it’s mostly because despite all the driving around and listening to the radio at work all day, I still haven’t yet heard The Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. The definitive bitter-sweet Christmas tune, and one that never fails to give me Christmassy memories, such as snow falling on an American car park. Ahhh, snow, where have you gone?

Has it been taken off mainstream UK radio? Has it now been deemed too unChristmassy? Is there a mass conspiracy behind its’ disappearance off UK Radio? Or is it just me?

There I was, getting ready for a day of being Birthday’ed/Christmas’ed/whatever. I’d had a good night’s sleep, had a vague list in my head - although I didn’t check it twice.

I got my haircut. I even bought some tinsel to go along with my first ever Christmas tree (thank you Nia!) and some icicle lights to dangle over my balcony. So now the whole of Cardiff City Centre can see how tacky and sentimental I’ve gotten.

However, all that gets ruined when I hear, in some shop somewhere, Ronan Keating and Maire Brennan’s terrible cover version of Fairytale of New York (which has apparently been around since November 2000)

Now I loved the original version with Kirsty MacColl and Shane McGowan. It had the right edge of yearning, sentimentality, hope, despair, blackness and venom. Plus it was the right side of Irish.

This cover version Guinesses’s ups the Irish accent, to the point when I half expect amateur actors to be singing it at all Callaghan’s pubs. And of course, they change the lyrics to replace “you cheap lousy faggot” to “you’re cheap and you’re haggard.” - the same song that even US radio seems to play fine without any lyrical changes.

Grrrr. Anyway, time to compile my Christmas / December hits CD. So there’s that, Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind, The Farm’s All Together Now, and Soul II Soul’s Get A Life. What else is there?