23 November, 1987.

So, I woke up this morning with Shane MacGowan growling at me that it’s Christmas Eve and do you know what? He’s right, it is! How exciting!

Written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan, this song was born from a bet made by Elvis Costello (then producer of the band) that The Pogues couldn’t come up with a Christmas hit. How wrong he was. The song reached number two in the UK charts on its release in 1987, being kept off the top spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of Always on My Mind.

Now, whilst this has never been a Christmas number one (no, I don’t get it either), to-date it has made it into the UK top seventy-five on twenty separate occasions, nineteen of those making it to the top twenty and eighteen of those being on successive years. Basically it has charted every year since 2005 and to-date, it has spent one hundred and ten weeks on the UK charts (and is currently sitting at number thirteen in this year’s chart) – no other single has achieved this. In fact, it has now reached quadruple platinum status having sold over two million copies/downloads since first being released.

A modern classic if ever there was one and one hell of a bet to lose!