The Pogues' "Fairytale Of New York" Voted #1 By British Christmas Song Fans

It’s a beautiful scene: a slurring Shane McGowan lying in an NYPD drunk tank on Christmas Eve, calling out for his love — a punky Kirsty MacColl — who’s sitting at home, busy regretting their entire dream-crushing relationship.

At turns glum and rowdy (and ultimately kind of sweet), The Pogues’ duet with MacColl, "Fairytale Of New York," is definitely one of the most vivid modern yuletide standards, and it turns out it’s the favourite for British VH1 viewers. The music channel polled its U.K. audience recently and of the whopping 10,000 online votes, the inebriated Christmas classic earned almost a quarter.

The Pogues beat out the much-hyped charity 1984 hit "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" performed by a who’s-who of Brit superstars under the moniker Band Aid. While the recent redux, Band Aid 20 featuring Chris Martin, pushed the song back into the spotlight, it may also have split the vote — after all, both the remake and the 1984 original made the Top 10. If there had only been one Band Aid to vote for then who knows how the snowflakes might have fallen?

Read the full top 10 Xmas songs >>The other songs that made the list are pretty much all over the map. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" only hit #9, though it is a little hard to buy that particular refrain while Iraq’s still plastered all over the news. Bing Crosby’s "White Christmas" made it to #8 some 62 years after its release, but Bing's cheesarific duet with David Bowie is nowhere to be seen.

The remaining songs are all your basic modern fluff: Mariah Carey’s "All I Want For Christmas Is You" came in at #6 (even though she was out-performed on that song by the crazy-good 11-year-old who sang it in last year’s holiday flick Love, Actually), '80s duo Wham! hit the #3 spot with "Last Christmas," and British glam rockers Slade and Wizzard, with their competing 1973 singles, also both made the list.

Those last two were actually sampled in one of my own favourite Christmas tracks — the 1989 U.K. mash-up "Let’s Party," from a certain cartoon rabbit-fronted group named Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers. Unfortunately, Jive was tragically excluded from the VH1 list.

VH1’s Top 10 Christmas Songs in U.K.:

1. ‘Fairytale Of New York’ The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (1987)

2. ‘Do They Know It's Christmas?’ Band Aid (1984)

3. ‘Last Christmas’ Wham! (1984)

4. ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ Slade (1973)

5. ‘Do They Know It's Christmas’ Band Aid 20 (2004)

6. ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ Mariah Carey (1994)

7. ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ Wizzard (1973)

8. ‘White Christmas’ Bing Crosby (1977)

9. ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ John Lennon (1972)

10. ‘Stay Another Day’ East 17 (1994)

11. ‘Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)’ The Darkness (2003)

12. ‘Mistletoe And Wine’ Cliff Richard (1988)

13. ‘Step Into Christmas’ Elton John (1973)

14. ‘Lonely This Christmas’ MUD (1974)

15. ‘Power Of Love’ Frankie Goes To Hollywood (1984)

16. ‘Little Drummer Boy’ David Bowie / Bing Crosby (1982)

17. ‘Do They know It's Christmas’ Band Aid 20 (1989)

18. ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’ Paul McCartney (1979)

19. ‘Walking In The Air’ Aled Jones (1985)

20. ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’ Bon Jovi (1994)