The late singer-songwriter Chris Rea wrote his most famous song, Driving Home for Christmas, when he thought it was "all over" for him career-wise.
The Middlesbrough-born musician, who has died at the age of 74, found fame in the late 1970s and 80s with hits such as Fool (If You Think It's Over) and Let's Dance.
Watch: Joe Caulfield reports on the life and career of Chris Rea
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The festive single was released in 1986 but was written by Rea eight years earlier while on a drive home to the north of England with his wife and childhood sweetheart, Joan.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2016, Rea said: "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.
Chris Rea travelled roads from chart hits to the blues
"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."
He described the drive with his wife and recounted how it started to snow.
Rea said he was in the passenger seat, fiddling with £220 - the only money the pair had left between them.
The singer-songwriter also mentioned that earlier that year, he had released what he felt was an unsatisfactory mix of his debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?.
During the couple's time in traffic, Rea said he was looking at the other drivers who all "looked so miserable" and started to sing: "We're driving home for Christmas."
In the interview, Rea said he would write the lyrics down whenever the streetlights shone inside their vehicle.
He said that night, he and Joan arrived at their home in Middlesbrough at 3am and saw a letter from PRS America - a US performing rights organisation - on their doorstep.
Rea told The Guardian that his song Fool (If You Think It's Over) had charted overseas, and he'd been sent a cheque for £15,000, which the couple used to buy a house.
He said that the lyrics for Driving Home for Christmas went into an "old tin of unfinished stuff", which he fished out almost 10 years later when he put the song together.
He said: "I'd never intended to write a Christmas hit.
"Initially, the song came out on a B-side."
He told The Guardian that he re-recorded the song two years after its initial release in 1986 and "loved it".
"At first, it was another radio hit - but then it started re-entering the Top 40 every year," he said.
Rea also said he had never played the track live until a performance at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 2014, as he used to be "terrified" it would affect his credibility as an artist.
Driving Home for Christmas was famously used in adverts by Iceland Foods in 1997 and 1998. It has reappeared on the UK singles chart every Christmas since 2007, peaking at number 10 in 2022.
It featured in the BBC's Christmas special of Gavin and Stacey in 2008, and it can be heard in this year's M&S Food Christmas advert, which sees comedian Dawn French sing along to the track in her car.
The song also features in a Christmas-themed album that Rea released earlier this year, which contains songs including Footsteps in the Snow and Joys of Christmas.
Source: Press Association
