<P> In his Christmas podcast, musical comedian Mitch Benn commented that "faggot" was Irish and Liverpudlian slang for a lazy person, and was unrelated to the derogatory term for homosexuals, although "faggot" is used as an insult for gay men in Ireland . </P> <P> The song was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in November 1987 and swiftly became a hit, spending five weeks at Number 1 in the Irish charts . On 17 December 1987, The Pogues and MacColl performed the song on the BBC's popular television show Top of the Pops, and it was propelled to number two on the official UK Top 75 . </P> <P> Although the song finished 1987 as the 48th best seller of the year despite only a single month's sales, it was denied the UK Christmas number one by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always on My Mind". MacGowan is said to have commented on this in his typically forthright manner, "We were beaten by two queens and a drum machine". MacColl later said that she did not feel they were really in competition with the Pet Shop Boys as they were doing a completely different kind of music . </P> <P> The song was re-released by The Pogues in the UK in 1991 (reaching #36), and again in the UK and Ireland for Christmas 2005, reaching number three in the UK . All proceeds from the latter release were donated towards a mixture of homeless charities and Justice for Kirsty, a campaign to find out the truth behind MacColl's death in 2000 . Due to the eligibility of downloads to chart even without a physical release, coupled with a more recent further boost from streaming data, the song has re-entered the Top 75 every December since 2005 . It has now made the Top 20 on fourteen separate occasions including thirteen times in successive years, and the Top 10 on five separate occasions including three times in successive years, feats that no other single can match . Its fifteen visits to the chart now total 83 weeks on the official UK Top 75 (as at w / e 4 January 2018), making it the 5th most charted song of all time . In late 2012 it was declared a UK million - seller . </P>

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