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With everyone fixated on John Lewis' Christmas advert, this seems to have slipped by:
Really, Tesco? The Fairytale Of New York? I guess this means that the song has now melted so far in our national psyche that the lyrics have been replaced with just a chanting of "Christmassy Christmassy Christmassy" whenever we hear it?
Nine years after the death of Kirsty MacColl, her mother Jean is dropping the campaign to find out what really happened:
[H]aving finally exhausted all legal avenues to bring to justice the man she believes is responsible for the death, Guillermo González Nova, one of Mexico's wealthiest businessmen, Jean has abandoned the Justice for Kirsty campaign which has sustained her through intense grief.
The campaign raised funds through "the most wonderful fans" to pay for the costly expenses of Jean's legal battle. "But it felt dishonest to go on, to keep asking for money, when we don't feel we've got a chance," she said.
Set here, with scary, space-stalery precision, and filmed at the same time as Planes, Trains, She's Having A Baby might well be Hughes' lost classic.
It's also the soundtrack which perhaps best showcases Hughes' range - XTC, Love and Rockets, Kate Bush rubbing shoulders with classic motown; Kirsty MacColl covering The Smiths and even some Dr Calculus, Stephen Tin Tin Duffy's side project.
And this: Gene Loves Jezebel's Desire:
Buy
The Best Of Gene Loves Jezebel
She's Having A Baby DVD
She's Having A Baby Soundtrack
[Part of John Hughes weekend]
Interesting piece just popped up on the 10 O'Clock News as it trailed the story about Radio One first banning, then unbanning the word "faggot" on Fairytale Of New York. Huw Edwards read something along the lines of "how the BBC failed to clean up this song" over an appearance by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues on Top of the Pops.
Trouble is, they showed the performance where MacColl had been forced to sing "Merry Christmas you ass" instead of "arse".
They've actually just shown in again in the report itself, claiming it was the "classic" version rather than an bowlderised version, even though it, erm, was a version which had been edited on the instructions of the BBC. Albeit twenty years ago.
Poor Gennaro Castaldo - not only is HMV increasingly deciding to shift its business from making losses on CDs to making losses on computer games meaning he's going to have to struggle with the Wii versus PS3 battles, but his area of expertise isn't as simple as it used to be. Ireland Online asks him for a comment on the possibility that Fairytale of New York could be the Christmas number one. Because there's, you know, a Facebook campaign to make it happen.
What's Gennaro going to say? There's about sixteen thousand bloody online campaigns to get different songs to number one next Sunday. How the hell is he meant to predict which will win, or if they'll all cancel themselves out and wind up letting Leon X Factor winner bloke through? It's all on download sales, isn't it? He's not got a bloody batphone through to Apple to find out what's selling. He can only ring up HMV shops to find out what's selling, but the bloody X Factor single hasn't even been released yet, has it?
Wearily, he mumbles:
