Fairytale time with Shane... and how I started the Oasis v Blur feud

IT was Christmas Eve, babe.

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Well, it was actually November, but it was December 24 on set as The Pogues filmed the video for their new single Fairytale of New York.

Stuart Bailie was there to interview the band.

"I'd never been to New York before and you're walking into this... just the craic was brilliant," he says.

Bailie is in Dublin to talk about his new book The Song Is Nearly Over, a collection of his writing on music over the last 40 years.

It's a time capsule of access-all-area lanyards, grumpy typesetters, smoke-filled offices, sweaty gigs, ghetto blasters, demo tapes, correspondence by mail and life on the road with the biggest names in music.

He's called a “c**t” by Bono, told he needs a “f**king slapping” by Paul Weller and has Noel Gallagher direct 9,000 people to boo him in Belfast.

"It was the best time of my life," he says, laughing.

Among the collection are three pieces with The Pogues, starting with that 1987 trip to New York for the old music paper Record Mirror.

Bailie is collected at JFK Airport in a car as big as a bar and driven to the Gramercy Hotel where the party is in full swing ahead of a Pogues show at The Ritz.

"Joe Strummer is knocking about. We go to the gig and Matt Dillon's there and Jim Jarmusch is there and you know there's this beautiful song that's taking them to a new level," he says.

"It was just great fun. Just gorgeous."

Bailie moved to London from Belfast in the mid-1980s at the height of The Troubles and The Pogues became the soundtrack to his new life.

A friend in lonely times and a primer for lost weekends is how he describes it.

"I didn't really consider myself Irish when I left in '85. Thought I was a sophisticated hip-hop dance person or whatever," he says.

SHARP

"And then you go there ard realise you're a Paddy."