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WE WERE discussing here recently Ireland’s theft of the song Dirty Old Town, a crime on which the many fingerprints include those of the Pogues. Its writer, Ewan MacColl, probably wouldn’t have minded much anyway. He had a love-hate relationship with the real DOT, his native Salford. And he believed in reinvention, having been born as Jimmy Miller before adopting a name more in sympathy with his Scottish ancestry.

But the Pogues have in any case handsomely made it up to him for their part in the aforementioned larceny, by means of one of their own compositions. I refer of course to Fairytale of New York. Because when Shane McGowan wrote what for many people is the greatest Christmas song of all in 1987, he incidentally immortalised the woman with whom he performed it: MacColl’s daughter, Kirsty.