I always sing Driving Home For Christmas when we're stuck in traffic jams!

Chris Rea on the 'accidental' hit he wrote for someone else and how it captured the public imagination to become a festive staple

- By John Earls

Chris in 1988 when the song was released

IF YOU GET stuck in traffic trying to make it home this Christmas, the chances are there's one festive classic you'll be humming while doing your best not to take your frustrations out on fellow motorists. Chris Rea's 1986 tune Driving Home For Christmas has become indelibly associated with those long, tedious, journeys to see family.

And there is a chance you may get to see the veteran rocker himself belting out the song as he tackles the jammed-up roads.

"I still sing it at other drivers when I'm stuck on the motorway," he reveals today. "They love that!"

His hit is rightly regarded as a standard to be played alongside other seasonal staples like Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You, Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody and Last Christmas by Wham!

Extraordinarily, Rea, 74, had no idea that Driving Home For Christmas would become such a favourite.

Indeed, the singer and guitarist initially wanted another star to record the single about the joys of British traffic jams.

Rea, who wrote it with his longtime keyboard player Max Middleton, recalls: "We thought we'd try to get it to Van Morrison, as we thought it'd be his kind of thing. That's why we wrote it in Van's key to sing - not mine.

"We only recorded it ourselves just to hear what it would sound like."

The melody was inspired by easy-listening tune A Walk in the Black Forest, composed by German pianist Horst Jankowski in 1965.

Rea says he never heard from Morrison and isn't convinced the Brown Eyed Girl singer ever got to hear about the potential Christmas hit.

He recalls: "I wrote Driving Home For Christmas in 1978 and it sat on the shelf for eight years until someone at my record label, Magnet, put it on the B-side of my single, Hello Friend.