When the song was performed on
Top of the Pops on its initial release, the BBC requested that MacColl's singing of "arse" be replaced with the perceived-less-offensive "ass". During a live performance on
Top of the Pops in January 1992, MacColl changed the lyric further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard". When
Katie Melua performed the song with the Pogues on
CD:UK in December 2005, ITV censored the word "arse", but left "faggot" uncensored. On 18 December 2007,
BBC Radio 1 edited the words "faggot" and "slut" from the track to "avoid offence". MacColl's mother described the ban as "too ridiculous", while the Pogues said they found it "amusing". The BBC stated, "We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive". The BBC later announced they had reversed their decision and continued to play the song uncensored. Other BBC radio stations, including the traditionally more conservative
Radio 2, had continued to play the original version throughout this period, the ban having applied to Radio 1 only. The
MTV channels in the UK also removed and scrambled the words "slut", "faggot" and "arse" from the song. In December 2018, two broadcasters on Ireland's
RTÉ 2fm pop music station caused controversy by asking for the word "faggot" to be bleeped from broadcasts of the song. RTÉ announced they would not censor the lyric. Some days later, MacGowan defended the lyrics in a statement released to Virgin Media Television's
The Tonight Show: The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character. She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate. Her dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend! She is just supposed to be an authentic character and not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable, sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty to tell the story effectively. If people don't understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible, then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don't want to get into an argument. In December 2019,
BBC Radio Solent radio presenter Alex Dyke announced on his Twitter account that he would not be playing "Fairytale of New York" on his show, calling it a "nasty, nasty song" and "an offensive pile of downmarket
chav bilge". Other journalists have also criticised the song's lyrics. In November 2020, the BBC again announced that Radio 1 would play a censored version with the words "faggot" and "slut" removed, while Radio 2 would play the original, and
6 Music presenters would each decide for themselves which version to play. In response musician
Nick Cave accused the BBC of "mutilating" the song, stating it would be "stripped of its value". However, since 2022 Radio 2 have played the radio edit supplied by the record company with the word "slut" muted and "You cheap lousy faggot" rephrased to "You're cheap and you're haggard". On 2 December 2023,
The Telegraph reported that the UK's
Boom Radio would play the uncensored version of "Fairytale of New York" after 91% of listeners who responded to a poll said they would not be offended by the lyrics. ==Releases and promotion==