Fairytale of New York Christmas number one by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always on My Mind". MacGowan was reported to have said "We were beaten by two queens and a drum machine". MacColl later said that she did not feel they were really in competition with the Pet Shop Boys as they were doing a completely different kind of music. The song was re-released by the Pogues in the UK in 1991 (reaching #36), and again in the UK and Ireland for Christmas 2005, reaching number three in the UK. All proceeds from the latter release were donated towards a mixture of
Music censorship out its "obscene" lyrics, and announced that he would no longer play the song during his show. The BBC subsequently restricted the song to evening airplay. When the band made statements in a "Daily Express" interview confirming the possibility of sexual connotations in the lyrics, the BBC banned "Relax" entirely. The ban only increased interest in the single, causing it to become the number-one song in Britain only two weeks later. In December 2007, BBC Radio 1 began to play a version of The Pogues' popular Christmas song "Fairytale of New York" that censored the words "faggot" and "slut" from