Chris Rea, singer-songwriter

The story of Driving Home for Christmas is like a classic festive story. It was 1978, coming up to Christmas. It was all over for me: I was just about out of my record contract, and my manager had just told me he was leaving me. I just needed to get home to Middlesbrough from London, but the record company wouldn’t pay for a rail ticket, and I was banned from driving.

You do some crazy things when you’re young. My wife got in our old Austin Mini, drove all the way down from Middlesbrough to Abbey Road studios to pick me up, and we set off back straight away. Then it started snowing. We had £220 and I was fiddling with it all the way home. We kept getting stuck in traffic and I’d look across at the other drivers, who all looked so miserable. Jokingly, I started singing: “We’re driving home for Christmas … ” Then, whenever the street lights shone inside the car, I started writing down lyrics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rea singing the 1988 hit, which was 10 years in the making.

We eventually got home at 3am. It was so cold inside the house that the snow tumbled on to the doormat and didn’t melt. There was one letter – from PRS America. My song Fool (If You Think It’s Over) had been a hit in the US, so there was a cheque for £15,000. We went from being down to our last £220 to being able to buy a house. The song went in my old tin full of unfinished stuff.

Some years later, my career had turned around and [keyboard player] Max Middleton and I were testing two new pianos. We started joking around, playing this Count Basie-type thing. I pretended I was Nat King Cole. Someone said: “That’s a great tune, that. You should get it down.” I went back to my tin, and the words to Driving Home for Christmas fitted perfectly.

I’d never intended to write a Christmas hit – I was a serious musician! So initially, the song came out on a B-side. Then a DJ flipped it over and started playing it, so Max suggested we re-record it and add some strings. Max played the distinctive jazzy intro, we did a classic 1950s Christmas carol-type arrangement, and loved it. At first, it was another radio hit – but then it started re-entering the Top 40 every year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I never intended to write a Christmas hit – I’m a serious musician!’ … Rea at Montreux jazz festival. Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns

I had big companies using it in adverts, and it was in a video for Shelter. I used to be terrified the song would ruin any credibility I had left, but now we have a laugh with it. If I’m ever stuck on the M25 – the Road to Hell – I’ll wind the window down and start singing, “I’m driving home for Christmas” at people in cars alongside. They love it. It’s like giving them a present.

I’d never played it live until one year at Hammersmith Odeon: the gig was on 21 December, so the road crew kept badgering me to do it. I went, “If I’m going to sing this fucking song, we’re gonna do it properly.” So we hired 12 snow cannons. When we started the song, you couldn’t hear it for the noise of the crowd, and we let go with the machines. We put three feet of artificial snow in the stalls. The venue charged me £12,000 to clean it up.

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Martin Ditcham, drummer

We recorded Driving Home for Christmas at Chris’s house near Maidenhead. He had a modest home studio – in what had been the garage, as I remember. As would often happen, I turned up for a coffee and a chinwag prior to doing something for him. The next thing I knew, I was in this little place laying down the drumbeat to this Christmassy track, even though it wasn’t Christmas. The song was already recorded and ready to go. I just overdubbed my parts: a bit of percussion, put some jingle bells in there, tucked away discreetly.

I thought it was a hooky little number, a pretty little song. I did lots with Chris, so at the time it was just another session, but it’s nice to be part of a song that’s turned out to be one of the most played Christmas singles of all time. You put on the radio or sit in the coffee bar, and it’s on. My daughter is 15. None of her friends know who the hell Chris Rea is but they know that song – as soon as it comes on, they start singing it. I’ve played with everyone from Status Quo to Talk Talk, but nothing impresses them as much as the fact that I play on Driving Home for Christmas.