waichingliu81
12-18-2007, 04:58 PM
By Sky News SkyNews - Tuesday, December 18 02:13 pm
The mother of late singer Kirsty MacColl has branded Radio 1 "pathetic" for banning the word "******" from her hit Fairytale Of New York.
The words appear in a verse where she and co-star Shane MacGowan insult each other.
"You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk, lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed," he says.
"You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy ******, Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last," she replies.
MacColl's duet with the Pogues star is heading up the charts again this Christmas.
But Radio 1 has decided to bleep out the word "******" because it might offend listeners - sparking outrage from MacColl's mother, Jean.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast the move was "pathetic" because the language reflected the characters it describes.
"Today we have a lot of gratuitous vulgarity and 'f****** and whatever' from people all over, which I think is quite unnecessary. But these are characters and they speak like that," she said.
"It's like a play and it's very amusing and sad, and it's a great song."
Founder of gay rights group OutRage Peter Tatchell told Sky News online that it was all a "bit of a storm in a teacup".
"Obviously the song was not intended as a major hate campaign against the gay community," he said.
But Mr Tatchell pointed out that the BBC would have bleeped out a racial insult and so had taken the right decision.
Fairytale Of New York has been covered by more than 10 different bands since it first hit top spot in Ireland in 1987.
In 2000, Ronan Keating and Maire Brennan caused controversy when they changed the sentence "you cheap lousy ******" to "you're cheap and you're haggard" in their cover version.
MacColl died at the age of 41 the same year when she was hit by a speedboat while diving during a holiday in Mexico.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20071218/tuk-radio-1-censors-pogues-and-kirsty-ma-45dbed5.html
The mother of late singer Kirsty MacColl has branded Radio 1 "pathetic" for banning the word "******" from her hit Fairytale Of New York.
The words appear in a verse where she and co-star Shane MacGowan insult each other.
"You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk, lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed," he says.
"You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy ******, Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last," she replies.
MacColl's duet with the Pogues star is heading up the charts again this Christmas.
But Radio 1 has decided to bleep out the word "******" because it might offend listeners - sparking outrage from MacColl's mother, Jean.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast the move was "pathetic" because the language reflected the characters it describes.
"Today we have a lot of gratuitous vulgarity and 'f****** and whatever' from people all over, which I think is quite unnecessary. But these are characters and they speak like that," she said.
"It's like a play and it's very amusing and sad, and it's a great song."
Founder of gay rights group OutRage Peter Tatchell told Sky News online that it was all a "bit of a storm in a teacup".
"Obviously the song was not intended as a major hate campaign against the gay community," he said.
But Mr Tatchell pointed out that the BBC would have bleeped out a racial insult and so had taken the right decision.
Fairytale Of New York has been covered by more than 10 different bands since it first hit top spot in Ireland in 1987.
In 2000, Ronan Keating and Maire Brennan caused controversy when they changed the sentence "you cheap lousy ******" to "you're cheap and you're haggard" in their cover version.
MacColl died at the age of 41 the same year when she was hit by a speedboat while diving during a holiday in Mexico.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20071218/tuk-radio-1-censors-pogues-and-kirsty-ma-45dbed5.html