Christmas enemies, featuring Kirstie Allsopp and Delia Smith

Hurry up, hurry up. It’s time to write your Christmas list. No, not for cards. You should have done that in October.

And if you haven’t already written your cards, addressed the envelopes, sealed the envelopes, unstuck the envelopes, put the cards in, stuck the mangled envelopes back down with Sellotape, gone out for stamps, come back with lightbulbs and Maltesers, gone out for stamps again, stuck the stamps on the cards you meant to deliver by hand... then to be quite frank you’re far too late.

Just forget it for this year, and try to do better in 2010.

No, the kind of list you need right now is a Christmas enemies list: a list of things and people that get right up your festive nose and rattle your Yuletide cage.

The kind of thing or person you want to avoid until January 14  at worst, and forever at best.

Top of this list for any right-thinking person is the sprout.

Let’s not drag up its association with  the capital of Belgium: it only starts pedantic arguments about spelling it with a capital or lower-case “b”.

And there’s no need to constantly remind the Belgians that the sprout is their national shame. (And bad driving, but let it lie.)

The sprout is a puny excuse for a cabbage and a huge waste of culinary effort. What normal vegetable has to have a notch cut in its sprouty stalk before it can be cooked to the satisfaction of the tiny number of people who actually like it? And what normal vegetable attempts to avoid capture by disguising itself as a Morris dancer’s jingly hand bell shaker?

Enough said.

Next on the list is that Christmas DIY show on the telly. You know, the show that belittles your own festive efforts by suggesting that the only good Crimbo tree is one you’ve cut down yourself.

The show that makes you feel a failure because you don’t have the wherewithall to blow your own glass baubles for said tree.

The show that suggests, if you want to make a Christmas garland, that all you need to do is scour your “back yard” for evergreen sprigs.

Presented by Kirstie Allsopp.

Kirstie has her very own Christmas house, which  exists in some sort of time warp in the hills of Devon, its floors unsullied by children, fur-shedding pets, old video games and two-week-old copies of the TV guide.

In Kirstie’s house, everything is colour co-ordinated. In Kirstie’s house, you just have to say “I want red ribbons and evergreens. Everywhere.” And it will happen.

Kirstie’s house is a TV set. It goes on the list.

(Our house has a holly tree. With yellow berries, not red ones. Whoever planted that goes on the list too.)

Delia Smith is another one. Yes, she’s a national treasure and has her own football team. And your humble columnist risks getting drummed out of the Boys’ Brigade for saying it.

But she doesn’t half go on, especially at Christmas time.

We watched Delia’s Classic Christmas the other day. She didn’t give out the quantities: perhaps you have to buy some sort of book to find out how you actually cook all this festive fare. And the best thing that can be said about her roast collar of bacon with blackened crackling is that the kids would scream if you served it up to them, and the grown-ups would probably mutter something like  “Interesting” and not come back for seconds.

All right, we’ll leave Delia off the list. But her crackling stays on.

A hard man is good to find

The usual pre-Christmas letters are starting to arrive in the office from ladies desperate to find something fresh for their hubbies or boyfriends this festive season.
“Dear Mr D,” they invariably ask. “What can I buy for the man who has everything?”
Well, ladies, this year the solution to your present-buying problems lies in just one name: Bear Grylls.
Bear Grylls is today’s top TV hero, and he’s well hard. So hard he makes Chuck Norris look like John Sergeant, and Lemmy out of Motörhead like Little Jimmy Osmond. He makes The Professionals look like The Amateurs, and Ray Mears (of whom more later) like Bill Oddie.
Bear Grylls came into the world with two great disadvantages: (a) his first name; and (b) his second. His natural survival instincts soon kicked in, though, and after an early life struggling against adversity he became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest. A TV series followed and it, like he, is Born Survivor.
Without wishing to spoil the plot (although you could probably guess it), each programme sees Bear travelling to the world’s least hospitable regions, accompanied only by a director, a camera operator, a sound technician, a lighting gaffer, a key grip and quite probably a focus puller too.
On arrival in darkest Outer Whatsitland he sets out on foot with one aim in mind: eating the indigenous wildlife. Raw.
Such activities have earned him a place in the pantheon of TV heroes, especially among those viewers whose ideal evening’s entertainment doesn’t involve ballroom dancers with two left feet and aspiring Beyoncés with adenoids the size of Glasgow.
Success follows success, and Bear Grylls has even started his own online store selling outdoor gear – fleeces, waterproof jackets, thermal undies and the like, all emblazoned with his distinctive signature.
And now, in an exclusive deal with Mr Grylls, the Opinion desk can offer the presently perplexed woman-about-town a new range of Yuletide goodies for the hard man in her life: The Bear Grylls Festive Collection! Choose from:
Bear Grylls Tropical Socks
Look just like ordinary socks, but have special pockets filled with a thick slimy fluid which gradually oozes out into your shoes, giving you that authentic wading-through-mangrove-swamp experience as you stroll down to the shops.
Bear Grylls Matching Tie and Handkerchief
The tie unfolds into a 40ft abseiling line. The hanky is made of sandpaper. Available in practical, stain-concealing desert beige.
Bear Grylls Arctic Swim Set
An empty box, to commemorate Bear’s notorious naked televised dip in glacial meltwater.
Bear Grylls Aftershave
A classic fragrance inspired by the lifestyle of the man who drinks his own wee on telly.
Bear Grylls Scalextric
Two Land Rovers in zebra-stripe camouflage, one with a miniature plastic Bear in the driving seat, the other piloted by survival rival Ray Mears. Ray is kitted out in his trademark multi-pocketed combat jacket, Bear is stripped to the waist (as usual). This weight advantage can be evened up by putting Bear on the longer outside track. But he still wins. Every time.
Bear Grylls Electric Toothbrush
Powered by two car batteries, it comes with its own special abrasive paste to give your mouth that just-hiked-30-miles-through-the-Desert tingling freshness.
Bear Grylls Cookbook
Packed with recipes you wouldn’t really want to try at home, even if you had the ingredients. Raw snake, raw lemming, raw scorpion and raw gudgeon are among Bear’s signature dishes, and make this one of those cookery books that are good to read but tougher to digest.
And that’s it, ladies! Your present problems solved, thanks to TV’s Mister Survival.
More gift ideas next week: the Alistair Darling Investment Opportunity and the Gordon Ramsay English Dictionary. Watch this space.

This article first appeared in The Bath Chronicle on November 27 2008.