Fairytale of New York censored by BBC Radio

Reacting to the censorship of the "You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot" line sung by her late daughter Kirsty, Jean MacColl says: “It’s too ridiculous. These are a couple of characters – not in the first flush of youth, I’d have thought. This is the way they spoke. Today we have a lot of gratuitous vulgarity and whatever from people all over which I think is quite unnecessary. They are what they are. These are characters and they speak like that.”
Commenting on behalf of The Pogues, a spokesperson says they “found it amusing that a song that has been one of the best-loved Christmas tunes should suddenly have been deemed offensive.”
Curiously, the bleeping isn’t a corporation wide one, with BBC Radio Two happy to air ‘Fairytale…’ in its original form.
Furor or not, download sales of the song mean that The Pogues will be slugging it out with X-Factor winner Scot Leon for the UK Christmas number one.