This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cIt has that hope and warmth to it, like all the classic Christmas songs,\u201d he said. \u201cThat and the frustration of being stuck in the motorway traffic \u2013 that\u2019s what people relate to.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s funny is that I\u2019d been banned from driving just before I wrote it, and we originally thought we\u2019d give it to Van Morrison. It was a Fifties jazz thing, like he used to do. Then the record label put it out as a B-side of mine, and a DJ started playing it. And here we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rea endured a number of health issues during his life. At the age of 33, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and eventually had his pancreas removed along with parts of his stomach and small intestine.<\/p>\n
In 2016, he had a stroke, which he later described as a \u201cvery scary moment\u201d, adding: \u201cI got it into my head that my perception of pitch had gone with the stroke. And it took a lot of convincing from people saying there\u2019s nothing wrong with what you\u2019re playing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Rea is survived by his wife Joan and their daughters Josephine and Julia. Rea named hit songs after both of his daughters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Comedian Bob Mortimer has paid tribute to his \u201clovely\u201d, \u201cbrilliant\u201d friend Chris Rea, after the \u201cDriving Home for Christmas\u201d singer\u2019s death at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1955424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2210565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Taylor-Swift-announces-new-album-Life-of-a-Showgirl-during.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2210565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210566,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210565\/revisions\/2210566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1955424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}