Chelsea Stagger

When does Santa ride a bicycle? Or climb a ladder come to that - surely he lands on roofs and goes down the chimney. So why do Christmas decorations in High Streets include St Nick cycling (and without a safety helmet I might add) and B&Q sell ones of him going up and down a ladder? I know there are more important things to rant about but this bugs me even more than perfume ads.
Who exactly came up with these ideas?
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Thought about doing one of those middle class card things this Christmas. Where you tell people you haven't seen for decades all about what the kids have been doing in the past year, as if they care. You know - little Chloe won a rosette at the gymkhana and Charlie got his first Asbo, that kind of thing.
But it's much more fun putting it on a blog, and it reminds you how nice it is to be able to embarrass your children once in a while. The eldest has already banned me from being a Facebook friend as a result.
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Went to Chelsea today for a posh festive lunch with the people we are going to be sharing an office with next year.
It's odd round here. Not a single house with a giant inflatable Homer-dressed-as-Santa attached to it and not a single cycling Santa.
Our new co-workers seem nice. They all drink, they all smoke, they all seem to be aged 30 or under and most of them are called Sophie as far as I can make out. They also wear very little, even in winter. I think I'm going to like working here.
I do feel the generation gap. I was chatting to one girl and the subject of football came up. She mentioned that her stepmother used to be married to a footballer. Someone famous? I asked. 'I've never heard of him' she answered, 'nor have any of my friends. I think he played a long time ago.'
'What's his name, try me" I replied.
'Malcolm Macdonald' she said.
Malcolm Bloody Macdonald! Supermac! Five goals for England against Cyprus (I was there, with my dad!) Did the 100 metres in some ridiculously fast time on Superstars. I mentioned all this, of course, and just got blank looks.
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I'm not a fan of The Apprentice or the contestants who, frankly, you wouldn't employ in a million years. But when I read that Sugar's pal Claude Littner had a go at Stuart Baggs for his now famous comment 'I'm Stuart Baggs the brand', I wondered: Just how many people have any idea who Littner is let alone ever remember a single thing he has ever said.
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Gillian McKeith is 51 and recommends various organic diets, holistic healing and healthy living. She looks like a hunchbacked walnut and pretends to faint all the time. Nigella Lawson is 50 and seems to eat nothing but butter, fat and cakes. She looks like the kind of woman who, if you could spend 20 minutes alone with her, you'd go in a boy and come out a man. Have you seen the way she licks a spoon?
I'd like to thank my wife for pointing this out to me.
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Kelvin Mackenzie was my editor at The Sun for six years. He gave me a bollocking most days along with everyone else at the paper. His insults were legendary. But it was the subtle ones that hurt the most. He once said to me, in an almost kindly voice: "Solly, you'd make a really good Daily Express reporter."
See ya (that's a bye-line!) - Solly