Beloved Chris Rea’s Christmas ditty about being stuck in traffic is one of the nation’s most treasured festive hits.
But the tale about how ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ was written is just as incredible as the estimated £210,000 a year the hit record would bank for the rock musician and help him amass a fortune in supercars and property.
Released in 1986 as a B-side, the iconic song was penned eight years earlier when a down-on-his-luck Chris only had £220 to his name.
Dropped by his manager, and at the end of his record contract, his future wife, Joan, had travelled from Middlesbrough in their old Austin Mini to pick Chris up from Abbey Road studios.
On the way back to Teeside, with the snow beginning to fall, the couple ended up getting stuck in traffic.
Chris said he started singing ‘we’re driving home for Christmas’, laughing to himself because so many of the motorists he passed looked so miserable.
‘Then, whenever the street lights shone inside the car, I started writing down lyrics,’ he told The Guardian in 2016.
It would taken six hours to get home with the pair walking through their door at 3am. There was one letter on the mat from a US performing rights organisation letting Chris know his song Fool (If You Think It’s Over) had been a hit in the States.
The tale about how ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ was written is just as incredible as the estimated £210,000 a year the hit record would bank for Chris Rea
Chris poured some of his fortune into his passion and love for vintage cars and owned Ferraris and Lotuses
Chris pictured with his wife, Joan, in 2016, who had travelled from Middlesbrough in their old Austin Mini to pick the star up from Abbey Road Studios
‘…so there was a cheque for £15,000,’ Chris said. ‘We went from being down to our last £220 to being able to buy a house.’
The lyrics for his festive hit were stuffed in an old tin and did not reemerge until a few years later when he came up with a started messing around on a new keyboard.
Chris ‘pretended I was Nat King Cole’ and came up with a tune that fitted perfectly with ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ and it was released as B-side of his 1986 single ‘Hello Friend’.
DJs started flipping it over, and it became an instant hit with audiences across the country.
Chris said the tune was pure accidental and said ‘I’d never intended to write a Christmas hit – I was a serious musician’.
He played it live for the first time at the Hammersmith Odeon on December 21, 1986, after his road crew insisted Chris include it in the set list.
‘If I’m going to sing this f***ing song, we’re gonna do it properly,’ he said. They hired 12 snow cannons and filled the stalls with three feet of artificial snow. The venue charged Chris £12,000 to clean it up.
Recent analysis by SEO company Dark House found 53 per cent of Chris’s Spotify streams come from his Christmas hit.
Chris’ final social media post featured a car on a snowy motorway with a road sign reading: ‘Driving home for Christmas with a thousand memories’
Chris racing his 1955 Lotus Mk 6 racing car at the Silverstone Classic, Northampton, in July 2009
Chris and his Ferrari 250 Le Mans TRI61 and 156F1 replicas
Chris racing his 1955 Lotus Mk 6 racing car at the Silverstone Classics, Silverstone Circuit, Northamptonshire, in July 2011
Chris is pictured performing on stage in Latvian capital Riga in February 2008
The festive hit was certainly not a one-hit wonder due to songs such as Road to Hell helping Chris to sell 30 million records
Chris put his F355 Berlinetta Ferrari – – which Jeremy Clarkson once lauded as ‘the greatest car in the world, ever’ – up for sale in 2023 for just under £200,000
It has been used in adverts, including this year’s M&S offering featuring Dawn French, and has made a reappearance on the UK Singles Chart every year since 2007, including making number 10 in 2021.
It certainly was not a one-hit wonder due to songs such as Road to Hell helping Chris to sell 30 million records. But the much-loved Christmas hit alone made the Middlesbrough rocker more than £7million of his £15million fortune over the past 39 years.
The star closed his company Posedrive Productions last year and along with his wife Joan, 75, received a payout of almost £12.8 million, which had been held in the business.
Another company called Navybeck Limited had assets of £642,000 as of last year when it last filed accounts.
Chris and Joan had lived in the same luxury detached home near Maidenhead, Buckinhamshire, since 1989.
A neighbouring house sold for £2.6million two years ago and the Reas’s property is believed to be worth in excess of £3million.
Chris, though, always shied away from the spotlight of fame and poured his fortune into vintage cars after unfulfilled ambitions in his youth of becoming a motor racing journalist.
Chris (pictured in 1979) died on Monday in hospital, aged 74, following a short illness. He had been dogged with serious health issues including peritonitis, pancreatic cancer and diabetes
He owned Ferraris and Lotuses and his love of motors isn’t just referenced in his famous Christmas hit, but also in other songs – including ‘Road to Hell’ and ‘Daytona’.
In an interview with the RAC, the star, who suffered a stroke in 2016, revealed that he had got rid of all of the fabled Italian sports cars.
Chris died on Monday in hospital, aged 74, following a short illness. He had been dogged with serious health issues including peritonitis, pancreatic cancer and diabetes. In 2017, it was revealed he needed to inject insulin seven times a day.
A statement from his wife and their daughters Josie and Julia, read: ‘It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris. He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family.’
During his last TV appearance on the BBC’s Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing in 2020, Chris revealed that Joan was a huge support when he was diagnosed with cancer.
The hour-long special saw Bob Mortimer share how his health battles had strengthened the bond between him and his family.
Chris was quick to agree. He said: ‘It was exactly the same for me. I was in hospital and the pancreatic cancer nurse comes in and tells me ‘it’s not grade three cancer phone your wife!’
‘So I phone my wife and she pulled the car over and burst into tears.’
He added that he then left her all the royalties to his famous hit Driving Home for Christmas.
‘I gave her all the money, all the rights to all the songs, and now she won’t give them back,’ Chris joked.
