This Christmas, 2006, I am boycotting “Fairytale of New York.”

I told you you’d be shocked. Allow me to make myself very clear: I take this action not through boredom, sickness or dislike of said heart-of-gold drunken yuletide anthem. Quite the opposite. I’m doing this because I like it far too much to see it meet the fate of every other Christmas song: overplayed, irritating, redolent of tired, forced fun.

I remember when “Fairytale” first came out. The first time I heard it, I hated it. I was eight, for heaven’s sake; I wanted synths, beats, and preferably a little mini-rap for the middle eight. I really wasn’t ready for MacGowan’s lazily anguished snarl, or MacColl’s lilt for that matter. And yet, after my first listen, something stayed with me. By the next day I’d listened to it several times, learned the words, and put it on a tape I was making for a friend (along, if I remember correctly, with “Pump Up The Volume” by M/A/R/R/S, which must imply something).

For a long time, “Fairytale” remained, if not a secret passion, at least a pretty cliquey one. In the oh-so-ironic 90s, unashamed party ‘classics’ like Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody!” went down better than dark old “Fairytale.” I heard that it was kept from video appearances on Christmas Top of the Pops specials by the word “faggot,” but I’ve no idea if that’s true. Certainly, it was a badge of honour to admire the song over the array of Christmas crap out there. This, after all, was the decade when the coveted slot of Christmas number one was competed for almost entirely by novelty acts - from Mr. Blobby to Bob the Builder. I’m not saying that liking “Fairytale” made you some sort of musical guru, but it was a marker of discrimination. Like Radiohead, nobody who was really interested in music would dismiss it, and nobody who was basically more interested in football could really enjoy it.

I remember exactly when I realised that things had started to change: when, in 2000, I heard that likeable-but-dull Irish warbler Ronan Keating* was recording the song as a B-side to his single “The Way You Make Me Feel” - not, regrettably, a Michael Jackson cover, but a cliche with lyrics so mind-meltingly clichéd I’ve often wondered if they were the product of some drunken songwriter dare. Although I’ve never heard Keating’s actual version (with Clannad harp-n-vocalist** Maire Brennan), just the news of its existence made me sad to my core. The one genuinely meaningful Christmas record - the only one that portrays the contrived optimism of the festival in its true context, the misery and bitterness of winter - softened, made saccharine, safe, granny-friendly. Never mind that it’s about an elderly, drug-addicted couple whose dreams have been crushed into dust. It’s about Christmas! Let’s turn the violins up in the mix!

Then, even as Ronan’s cover was bothering the charts - and the ears of Radio 2 listeners - Kirsty MacColl died. Amidst the heartfelt (and well-deserved) tributes that flooded in from fans who’d long loved Kirsty for her tragic sensibility, unique voice, and sometimes biting wit, there were many who talked as if all she’d ever done was “Fairytale” (I’m talking about you, Duncan Connors). From that moment, the song began a quick ascent towards national treasure status. It topped a VH1 poll of the greatest Christmas song in 2004, and has done so every year since. When a colleague in my office recently started a poll on a popular gay networking website about the best Christmas song, it shot to the top. It’s just been re-released for the second time, and is currently at no. 10 in the charts. There are 64 versions of the song on YouTube, ranging from the official video (starring, incredibly, Matt Dillon) to a version by the parents of someone called Sam.

Perhaps I should be happy to see such a great song so popular. But I’m not. “Fairytale” was an aquired taste for a reason: it’s dark. It’s difficult; it contains a vision of Christmas that isn’t dominated by food and things.

He’s an alcoholic shambles, who spends Christmas Eve in a police station. She’s a bedridden junkie. The only hope on the horizon comes from his recent gambling victory (”Got on a lucky one / Came in eighteen to one / I’ve got a feeling / This year’s for me and you”). We all know he’s going to piss it away; that his cheerful Christmas optimism (”I can see a better time / when all our dreams come true”) is a grotesque annual ritual. And the song’s final verse, while it initially seems to bring resolution, in fact offers the protagonists only a weary resignation:

I could have been someone
(Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you)
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

In the end, their complete dependence on each other is all that holds them together: their dreams may be dead, but they huddle, shivering, warming themselves over the ashes.

This is an odd candidate for a feel-good Christmas anthem. And yet, in the words of one EMI staffer,

Fairytale Of New York is an adult answer to Jingle Bells. It’s difficult to remember a Christmas party without a drunken singalong with The Pogues.

Is it too elitist to suspect the millions of people who round off every Christmas party with a “drunken singalong” haven’t fully appreciated the dark bitterness of the story? And of course, there’s the depressing irony of watching drunk people imitate MacGowan’s alcoholic drawl.

And the Pogues aren’t helping, cheerfully performing the song with any passing female singer, not to mention Shane’s mum. And, of course, re-releasing the song any time they’re short of beer money. Think I’m being harsh? Note that Warner encouraged the single’s current re-release “because a whole new generation of fans have heard Shane through his association with Kate Moss and Pete Doherty.”

Now look, I’m not unrealistic. I understand that when fine things become hugely popular, a little of their meaning is inevitably lost; and to stand in the way of it is not only Canute-style arrogance, but pretty close to snobbishness. But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it, and it doesn’t mean I have to take part. Hence, the boycott. Before I’ve heard it once too many; before it conjures up images, not of postwar Manhattan with its dazzling lights and freezing tenements, but of work colleagues puking on my shoes; before I learn to associate it with that heady mix of plastic packaging, junk food, cheap wine and lazy nostalgia that is Christmas for childless adults. Before I see it on a bloody advert for holidays in New York, I’m having this Christmas without “Fairytale.”

It hasn’t been easy so far. It was mercifully forgotten at the work Christmas party, but when we had people round for an early festive dinner on Sunday, I had to smilingly ignore several requests. Several times, when Christmas shopping on Saturday, I felt myself bolting a shop without my planned purchases when I sensed the festive soundtrack CD was drifting Pogues-wards. Just today, a colleague put it on on his computer towards the end of the day, minus headphones, so the whole office could enjoy it crackling out of tinny, tiny speakers. I quickly stuck in my earphones and shoved on anything else.

I don’t, to be honest, know how much longer I can last. But I’m going to keep trying. “Fairytale” is a disarming, mature, evocative story, a real adult Christmas song, not to mention one of the most eloquent ever portrayals by an Anglo-Irish writer of the Irish-American urban immigrant experience. It deserves better than to be a drunken singalong, an afterthought, “even better than Slade.”

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And yet, I’ve always had a sense that the really exciting parts of clubworld have eluded me. When I was giving it the full Pulp, in 1995 and ‘96, I sometimes found myself daydreaming enviously about the ideas and images streaming out of the club scene. While Britpop prized world-weary cynicism, dance seemed hugely idealistic, even cod-spiritual - always aiming for that transcendent moment on the dancefloor, or at sunrise in Ibiza. While indie had vague undertones of violence, dance was quite literally “loved up.” And while Britpop was obsessed with the ordinary - songs about making the tea, millionaire musicians pointedly being photographed playing pool and getting into fights - dance seemed full of fantasy, of performance, of costume. Looking back now, Keith Flint’s “Firestarter” costume seems like a poor imitation of American punk. But in the drabness of 1996, with football taking over the nation, the simple fact of a man in eyeliner on Top of the Pops seemed viscerally exciting.

And as I became aware of the history of New York’s club scene, first with Studio 54 and later with Michael Alig and the club kids, clubland just seemed more thrilling, challenging, and expressive - particularly as I was just realising the contradictions between lad culture and my homosexuality. The fact that the club kids scene ended with Alig’s conviction for murder only made it more fascinating.

As time went on, my occasional forays into clubworld always came tinged with a sense of disappointment that I hadn’t found this fantastical aspect of the scene. At Pacha, people spend a lot of money to look beautiful, but no-one could be seriously accused of expressing themselves. In recent years, I’ve let theatre fulfil my need for performance and costume as a means of escape and self-expression - and i’ve become more aware of the prevalence of such things on the gay scene, at nights like Duckie. Nevertheless, a defined performance seems dead compared to the images of fast-moving, young, androgynous clublife that still rattled around in my head.

Until I encountered Leigh Bowery.

I’d heard of Bowery, mostly as a character in Boy George’s musical Taboo and as the operator of the London club night of the same name. I also dimly remembered reading in around 1994 about Minty, the band/performance art collective Bowery spent what turned out to be his last months working with. I had a vague sense that he may have worn interesting clothes. I had no idea of just how he encapsulated everything I’d sought from nightlife, until I saw The Legend of Leigh Bowery. A nil-budget documentary by the amusingly-named Charles Atlas, Legend provides a compassionate peek at the fashion designer/club promoter/performance artist/queer icon. More importantly, it contains hundreds of pictures of his clothes.

There are too many incredible Bowery images to present more than a first impression here (plus, none of the best ones come up on a Google Image Search). But the spattering here should give you the general idea. Throughout the late 1980’s and early 90’s, Bowery was the dark heart of the club scene.

It’s important to emphasise that: he wore these clothes in clubs. Despite the label “fashion designer,” he never expressed any interest in designing for anyone else but himself, and though towards the end of his career he made moves towards performance art, it remained heavily club-based. Mostly, though, he just got dressed up to go out.

And go out he did. Sometimes unable to drink or piss for hours because of the mask and fake vagina he often wore; sometimes in excruciating pain, and usually fuelled by nothing more than a few vodkas; he would go out and dance for hours and hours. And by dance, I don’t mean anything remotely composed or prepared. My favourite image of the film is of Bowery, fully gimp-masked, waving his hands out in front of him like an ecstatic zombie, and spinning wildly around. Given his considerable bulk, that must have been scary to see (and I suppose his transcendence of his size is another aspect of what attracts me to him. It takes a unique type of body confidence to use a corset to turn your belly into a pair of breasts).That lack of drugtaking is very important. For what’s so striking about Bowery is his seriousness - purely from the testimony of his friends, it’s clear he thought carefully about his outfits, and endured considerable discomfort to wear them. Contrast that to the New York scene, where extremes of costume and behaviour were always inseparably tied up with extremes of drug use. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with that. But I found myself more attracted to Bowery’s thoughtful, deliberate creativity - he never collapsed into self-parody or self-destructiveness. And his intense, lumbering maleness, which contrasts so effectively with the androgyny of his costumes, is so much more complex and attractive than the New York kids’ adolescent queening.Had it just been for Bowery’s spectacular club career, I’d have found him fascinating and inspiring. But it turned out there was a whole other chapter of Bowery’s extraordinary story that resonated with me even more.The Hertfordshire Mercury is not a very good newspaper. With nothing to report except traffic alterations and the occasional robbery, it’s a thin read. But I always remember an article I read when I was about 12. It was an interview with an artist about his relationship with one of his regular models. He described how he “bends himself into incredible shapes for me.” It was accompanied by one of the portraits of the model, nude, sprawled across a chair, one foot cocked. The model was male, large, bald. I remember being transfixed by the portrait, and for the first time by the idea of the relationship between artist and model - that weird uneven intimacy, with the artist coolly analysing the model’s nude body and the model glimpsing the full passion of the artist’s inner thoughts. Contrasted with the staid, comic images in the popular imagination of models perched on stools in front of a class, this was intense and intoxicating. I’ve been slightly fascinated by the relationship between model and artist ever since.So when, towards the end of the film, Legend describes Leigh Bowery’s modelling for Lucien Freud, my ears pricked up. I’m a huge fan of Freud, and was interested at the thought of this king of costume baring himself for this most unfoolable of eyes. But I never expected what I saw - although those of you who know Bowery will no doubt have guessed. The sight of the first of the portraits shown in the film jolted me like an electric shock. It was, of course, the very painting I’d seen in the Mercury years ago.

The article had been an interview with Freud about the Bowery sitting. Leigh had me again. He’d been haunting me, like some nude Magwitch, for over 14 years.

Leigh died in 1994, just as I was beginning to become aware of the very scene he’d dominated. But even though I’ve only discovered him properly now, aged 26, I’ll always consider him one of my formative influences in life. He helped to inspire many of the aspects of the 90’s club scene that I was drawn to - and directly inspired my interest in the model-artist relationship, even though I didn’t know it was him. He was my Marc Bolan, my Bowie - my unknown teenage idol, the person who made my tiny smalltown world a little bigger, a little more diverse - even though I didn’t know his name.

Leigh Bowery, 1961-1994

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