Harry Hill shares Shane MacGowan’s festive cameo on ‘TV Burp’

nme.com:

Harry Hill has re-shared Shane MacGowan‘s festive cameo from the 2010 Christmas special of TV Burp. The late Pogues frontman appeared on the show to sing the Irish band’s Christmas classic ‘Fairytale Of New York’, but in a hilarious, quintessentially TV Burp twist, the performance ended up becoming a duet with a giant beluga whale who squeaked along in place of what would have been Kirsty MacColl‘s parts.Despite the audience being in hysterics, MacGowan plays it completely straight, carrying on with his performance as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.Hill has been posting to his Instagram account every day of December in a series of posts called ‘Mattvent’, where he shares a photo each day of a rogue mattress found in an odd place alongside old clips from TV Burp, which aired on Saturday nights between 2001 and 2012.Check out the clip of MacGowan’s appearance below:A post shared by Harry Hill (@mrharryhill)In a further Instagram post, Hill shared some extracts from his memoir Fight!

where he recounted the experience of having MacGowan on the show.Hill had come up with the idea of MacGowan singing ‘Fairytale Of New York’ with a beluga whale played by a runner, but had been told by his producer Spencer that he was “having a laugh” and that there would be “no way he’s going to say yes to that!’”In the book, he wrote: “His agent explained to Spencer that Shane got a huge number of requests every Christmas to sing his Christmas hit and that he always turned them down.

But he knew he was a fan of TV Burp — so he’d ask him.“Much to everyone’s surprise, he said yes. His fee was five hundred quid cash to the bloke who was with him and a bottle of vodka for Shane.”However, the show nearly went wrong.