How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly was released in 1996 but has grown in popularity over the past 10 years and has now been turned into a film

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Gravy, a phone call from jail, and asking your brother not to seduce your wife: these may not sound like the makings of a Christmas song. But Christmas in Australia is different. It is usually hot, for starters: something the country’s most-loved festive song acknowledges.

“They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees, even more maybe, but that won’t stop the roast,” Paul Kelly, one of the country’s most beloved musicians, sings on How to Make Gravy, a song that plays as a phone call from Joe, who is in prison, to his brother Dan. “Who’s gonna make the gravy now? I bet it won’t taste the same.”