Chris Rea: how we made Driving Home for Christmas

‘The first time we played it live, we hired 12 cannons and put three feet of snow in the stalls. The clean-up cost me £12,000’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