OH JOY. It's Christmas, and the season of goodwill to all men. Except for the people who sent out this round robin in their Christmas card.

"We have had a few celebrations this year, but we started on a sad note: in January the smallest and laziest member of the family passed away after spending 14 years with us."

Now at this stage I'm thinking that they've lost an obese ginger child (I don't know them; they're acquaintances of Mrs B) but no, it's much worse than that.

"Bobby has gone through the pearly cat-flap to the place where the wicked mice go."

So it's the cat that's snuffed it and is now apparently lounging on his cloud, harp in paw, while "wicked mice" dance around him. It's an image that will live with me for ever.

And all this before relentless details of the garden, the walking holiday, the chest infection, the weddings, the trials and tribulations of the children: "Sophie's second marriage didn't quite work out as planned and she's now back living at home with the five (!) children. It can get a little crowded at times and there were one or two hurtful remarks in the village post office about the yellow one and the brown one. But Christopher seems very happy in Brighton, where he seems very close to his flatmate Elton. And Neil's lawyer thinks he might be released with a Royal pardon when the King of Thailand's next birthday comes around. Let's just hope he doesn't bring back any packages for friends this time!!!"

Why do these people think that we need to know this mindless minutiae? It's utter drivel, imposed on an innocent audience who have done nothing worse than open a Christmas card. I don't want to know. Leave me alone.

  • NOW can I say that it's a great shame that five prostitutes have been murdered in Ipswich. They were all somebody's daughters, most of them were someone's mother. I hope whoever killed them gets caught and convicted.

But do we really need to undergo another bout of Dianafication? Read The Guardian or listen to the BBC this week and you'd have thought that five nuns had bought the farm. These poor "sex workers", horribly exploited by Evil Men, have suddenly become the new icons of the hairy armpit brigade.

Well excuse me if I beg to differ. Yes, they might have been mothers, but where were their children? Taken into care, that's where.

They weren't selling their bodies to put Findus Frozen Pancakes on the family table; they were selling their bodies for the next rock of crack or the next wrap of heroin. These were women so far gone that they couldn't hold down a "job" in the relative safety of a massage parlour (this country's equivalent of the legalised brothel).

So yes, it's sad. But even sadder is the fact that a tidal wave of illegal drugs continues to drag people into a life of crime and degradation.

I refer you to last week's column: give it away free on street corners. And let the weirdoes who find drug-addled skeletons sexually attractive get their kicks somewhere else.

  • TO BE fair to The Guardian, it's not all one-way traffic. There are some seriously deranged people on my side of the argument as well.

Let's just take this one message from the Daily Mail's website, shall we? Step forward, Mavis C. of Chester-le-Street, who writes: "I wonder how many men would buy sex if these harlots were not out on the streets tempting them?"

Yes, well, thank you madam for that contribution.

  • BUT back to the festivities, and the office party. Good God, I'd rather have been standing on a street corner in Ipswich. (And would have been safer.) The idea of holding it in a Greek restaurant wasn't a success. I mean, what do you know about Greek restaurants? Yes, you eat vine leaves and smash the plates.

What Colin the tea boy didn't fully appreciate was that the plates you are meant to smash are actually special "smashing plates" made of cheap earthenware that are brought out at the end of the meal for the ceremonial activity.

Thus, once the calamari starter had been dispatched, the idiot started laying waste with the finest porcelain.

Unluckily for him, he was caught over the eyebrow by a flying shard of fine china and had to go off to hospital for stitches.

Unluckily for us, he still returned in time to throw up in the toilets. Wedged in between crying secretaries and the over-emotional "bloke who hasn't been sacked because it's Christmas but who everyone knows is going in January".

Season's greetings to you all.