Fairytale of New York undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987. Although the single never reached the coveted UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover version of "Always on My Mind", it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on fifteen separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year since 2005, and was certified double platinum in
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