ROUTLEDGE When it comes to gluttony, I’m stuffed W

I don’t think I could eat or drink another thing. Gluttony, thy name is Routledge.

Mind you, with advancing years, it’s about the only one of the seven deadly sins a man can really indulge.

And these days, Christmas is a foody feast, egged on by telly adverts urging us to eat more, more often and swilled down with booze.

Nor does gluttony seem quite so anti-social compared with the rival sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath and sloth.

Pride is pretty pointless – I’ve not much to be proud about. Greed is a waste of time. There’s only so much stuff you need.

Lust is, well, rather in the past. Envy is what the Tories accuse anybody who wants to live as well as they do of.

Wrath only makes your blood pressure shoot up, so that’s out, too. And who can be bothered with sloth?

Whereas your gluttony, your gluttony brings instant gratification. Just one more slice of turkey – the brown meat, please! And another A MILLION people worked on Christmas Day, including 100,000 nurses and 200,000 carers.

Sickness and social need are no respecters of public holidays or religious festivals.

Nor, indeed, is news. Editorial swig of wine won’t hurt, will it?

Ah, but there’s more to it than that. Isn’t there always?

St Thomas Aquinas identified five different ways of being gluttonous: eating too expensively, too daintily, too much, too soon and too eagerly.

Of these, the fifth is most serious, because it shows an addiction to food above all other social and spiritual pleasures, leading to a loss of proper judgment. staff were on duty at your Examiner throughout the festive period, bringing you stories like the power cuts in Holmfirth, trouble on the M62 and the Christmas of bionic girl Olivia Farnsworth. DEATH and Christmas go together like love and marriage. This year, it was guitarist Rick Parfitt of Status Quo, superstar George Michael and Royle Family actress Liz Smith (left). Plus the entire Red Army choir and band in a Russian plane that fell into the Black Sea. It seems like the grim reaper derives great satisfaction from reminding us of our mortality as we celebrate the birth of the saviour.

I say, hang on a minute. It was only a turkey drumstick and a glass of that electric soup my brother brought back from Spain and doesn’t drink himself.

My Christmas vice doesn’t get a good press. American writer Peter de Vries says :”Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.”

Hmmm. I’ll think about that. No need to send for the psychiatrist. Not just yet. HE hasn’t even proposed yet, much less married her, but the stuff Prince girlfriend Meghan Markle (left) wears is flying off the shelves. The latest : her royal-blue handbag – excuse me, her “£995 tote from Mulberry’s new fashion-forward collection of reinvented traditional designs.” Have you ever heard such pretentious drivel in all your born days?