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
Fairytale of New York merely set at Christmas. In the UK it is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st Century. The song has featured in many UK-based surveys and polls: The song was the subject of BBC Radio 4's "Soul Music" series on 22 December 2015, with a repeat on the same station on 26 December 2015 and then on the BBC iPlayer. Among those appearing in the programme were The Pogues' pianist James Fearnley — who tells how "the song started off as a transatlantic love story between an Irish seafarer missing his girl at Christmas before becoming the bittersweet reminiscences of