<P> MacColl's melodious singing contrasts with the harshness of MacGowan's voice, and the lyrics are sometimes bittersweet--sometimes purely bitter: "Happy Christmas your arse / I pray God it's our last". The lyrics "Sinatra was swinging" and "cars as big as bars" seem to place the song in the late 1940s, although the music video clearly depicts what was then present - day 1980s New York . </P> <P> The video for the song was directed by Peter Dougherty and filmed in New York during a bitterly cold Thanksgiving week in November 1987 . The video opens with MacGowan sitting at a piano as if playing the song's opening refrain: however, as MacGowan could not play the instrument, the close - up shot of "his" hands actually features the hands of the band's pianist James Fearnley wearing MacGowan's rings on his fingers . Fearnley found the experience "humiliating" but conceded that it did look better in the video to show MacGowan seated at the piano . </P> <P> Part of the video was filmed inside a real police station on the Lower East Side . Matt Dillon plays a police officer who "arrests" MacGowan and takes him to the cells . Dillon recalled that he had been afraid to handle his friend roughly, and had to be ordered by Dougherty and MacGowan to use force . MacGowan and the rest of the band were drinking throughout the shoot, and the police became concerned about their increasingly rowdy behaviour in the cells . Dillon, who was sober, had to intervene and reassure the police that there would be no problems . </P> <P> The chorus of the song includes the line "The boys of the NYPD choir still singing' Galway Bay"'. In reality the NYPD (New York City Police Department) does not have a choir, the closest thing being the Pipes and Drums of the NYPD's Emerald Society that is featured in the video for the song . The NYPD Pipes and Drums did not know "Galway Bay" and so sang a song that all of them knew the words to--the "Mickey Mouse March", the theme tune for The Mickey Mouse Club television series . The footage was then slowed down and shown in brief sections to disguise the fact the Pipes and Drums were singing a different song . Murray recalled that the Pipes and Drums had been drinking on the coach that brought them to the video shoot, and by the time they arrived they were more drunk than the band, refusing to work unless they were supplied with more alcohol . </P>

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