they cut the tallest blooms

Chad, rightly, considers "Fairytale of New York" to be one of the greatest holiday anthems of all time.

News have now arrived, via Iceland of course, that the BBC is censoring the song during play.

The problem is Kirsty McCall's "You scumbag, you maggot/You cheap lousy faggot" line. The Beeb now fades Kirsty's voice on that last word.

Offensensitivity folks.

The locals respond

Personally I rather like faggots, especially with lots of onion and gravy chased down with a nice beer. Don't understand what the fuzz is about.
Maybe it is some public school thing.

And mushy peas! Lots of mushy peas!
The Mitre off River Street does a lovely faggot.

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The BBC (just Radio 1, actually) backed down within a day. The full uncensored version is now being played. (They objected not only to the "faggot", but also to the "slut".) One twit, a guest columnist in the The Guardian, thought the censoring of faggot was right, and (as I now recall) used Reductio ad Hitlerum as his main argument (or something equally silly, I recall giggling about about as the TGV sped through the French countryside).