HOTSEAT I b **** y hate Christmas pud. It sits on your stomach like a weapon of mass destruction

THERE’S no way we can’t do turkey, so I’ll do that. I’ll do my porchetta. And I’ll do a goose. It’s way too much food, but they’re easy to cook.

The Italians call it an Arrosto Misto – a mixed roast. It’s their equivalent of a mixed grill. But it means that when the hordes descend the next day, you’ve got loads of leftovers left, you rattle out some salads and some cheese and some bread, and you’ve got a massive, beautiful feast.

We’ve slightly lost the art, in Britain, of cooking something big and then keeping the leftovers. IT’S basically a rolled saddle or loin of pork connected to the belly. It allows you to stuff it, so we do an amazing Italian stuffing, roast it hard, and then turn it right down low, so you get crackling and that delicious melt-in-mouth meat.

And the pasta we’re making is very accessible – it’s a large ravioli that you fill, and then pinch at the sides like a Christmas cracker. It’s a great starter, it’s a great vegetarian alternative, it looks amazing. I B **** Y hate Christmas pud. It just repeats on me. So I do my Christmas pudding, which of course I think is better than most. It has more breadcrumbs, so it’s lighter. It’s a cross between my nan’s Christmas pudding and a pound pudding. I like the idea of a Christmas pudding but it’s just so heavy. It sits in your stomach like a weapon of mass destruction. Italian food is that real love and passion for ingredients, and a real simplicity.

It doesn’t mean the Italians don’t have craft or technical ability, but there are cultures that push the technique or craft, and I find that in the modern day world, what that does is edits out a large proportion of the world.

With Italian food I feel the fundamentals of love, care, simplicity and great ingredients are there, but they’re also accessible. For me, as a dyslexic kid, learning about pasta, which is just basically wet stuff and flour, and all the different types and shapes, and then all the sauces that go with it, it was huge for me. I HAVE my holidays every year. My wife Jules isn’t a great traveller, so we tend to holiday in the UK, and actually I really like that. We’re massive fans of getting around the UK. Cornwall, Norfolk, Essex coast, Wales, and I love Scotland as well.

And we’ll nip over to France – that’s about it for the Olivers, but in my day job I’m all over the place YEAH, we do, but I like to change them. Being the kid, being the teenager, being the student, being the kid that’s left home, being the young parent, and now I’ve got a 15-year-old, and a baby, traditions change.

One thing that remains the same is that we go completely OTT.

Dressing the tree is always full of carnage and tears. We take the Instagram picture that looks like perfection, but we’ve all cut our feet stepping on baubles, or nearly electrocuted ourselves, or almost set the house on fire – that’s pretty consistent. We get into it. I’VE been cooking for 26 people for the last 10 years, but last year we just had the seven of us and did the big party on Boxing Day.

One tradition of mine is that I hack the crackers. I like to improve the jokes, and put completely inappropriate jokes into the cracker for the worst person to get them.