Revealed: Home Chris Rea driving to when he wrote iconic Christmas hit

This is the home Chris Rea was driving to the Christmas when he wrote his iconic festive song, The Daily Mail can reveal.

The comfortable semi in a suburb of Middlesbrough was the inspiration for the popular Yuletide ditty penned in 1978 as he was being driven 212 miles back up North from London by his wife.

Driving Home for Christmas is currently number 30 in the UK charts.

Chris, who died this week aged 74 following a short illness, lived in the house with his parents and some of his six siblings.

Other family members lived in the adjacent house - so 1978 was set to be a large Rea gathering.

A member of the Rea family told us today: 'The song was about driving to the family home in Middlesbrough. We would all always go home for Christmas, always.

'We had really, really wonderful Christmases with the family and the song, it's all about the things that happened.'

Today's owners only became aware they had bought a famous festive house after moving in.

'We moved in about two years ago and had no idea Chris Rea used to live here,' said the couple, who have a newborn baby.

'It was the neighbours who told us after we moved in.

'We had the patio done and the neighbours were telling the lads doing the work that it used to be Chris Rea's house.

'It's nice to live in a famous house, that is known about in a song, all over the world.'

Although Chris wrote Driving Home for Christmas in 1978, it was not released until 1986; and then, only as the B-side to his single Hello Friend.

In October 1988, a re-recorded version served as one of two new songs on Rea's first compilation album New Light Through Old Windows. 

It was issued as the fourth single from the album in November 1988, where it peaked at number 53 on the UK Singles Chart as the lead track of The Christmas EP.

Despite its original modest chart placement, the song has made a reappearance on the UK Singles Chart every year since 2007 when it peaked at No. 33, and is featured among the Top 10 Christmas singles. 

It reached a new peak of number ten on the UK Singles Chart in 2021. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted twelfth on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.

Chris said in interviews that Driving Home For Christmas was written in 1978.

It was shortly before Christmas and he needed to get home to Middlesbrough from Abbey Road Studios, in London.

His wife Joan had come down to drive him home in her Austin Mini to save money because it was cheaper to drive than travel by train. 

Chris was recently out of contract and the record company was unwilling to pay for the rail ticket. The inspiration for the song came as they were getting stuck in heavy traffic, while the snow was falling. 

He started looking at the other motorists, who 'all looked so miserable. Jokingly, I started singing: "We're driving home for Christmas..." Then, whenever the streetlights shone inside the car, I started writing down lyrics.'

He said Driving Home for Christmas is a 'car version of a carol', and that he wrote it for Van Morrison but did not manage to get it to him.

Chris never played the song live until 2014 at Hammersmith Odeon.

He recalled: 'The gig was on 20 December, so the road crew kept badgering me to do it. I went, "If I'm going to sing this f***ing 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.'

It was used in Christmas commercials for supermarket chain Iceland in 1997, 1998 and 2011; the last featured a cover by Stacey Solomon.