Shane McGowan is an extraordinary song writer.

Some Xmas songs are about happiness, some are cynical, some are calls to think of the past and the future but I cannot think of anyone else who could write a song like ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ with its immense range of emotions – lost dreams, bitterness and disappointments of failed relationships between people who are somehow still bound together and then the wild uplift of the music celebrating that, despite all this, it is still Christmas: there is joy, there is some kind of promise.

It’s a song about relationships of many kinds.

Relationships between people, lovers, yes but also being McGowan and his awareness of his heritage, it’s a song about the Irish diaspora, the contrast between the promises and the often-bitter reality of the American Dream.

And then it becomes universal: a song about us all trying to make our way through this shattered and shattering world.