Season’s greetings

’

★AJ

Odudu might have lost her

that chance to pick up

Come Dancing crown Strictly

to pull out due to after having

just before the an ankle injury

she’s one to watch. final, but and Funny, sassy, beautiful

AJ, Keep your chin up, kind.

feeling 2022 is I’ve got a going to be a great

year for you.

WELL, that s Christmas – if you can call it that – done and dusted for another year.

Let’s be honest, as much as we all tried, with so many people in isolation and kept apart from loved ones, it really wasn’t much better than the last one, was it?

But rather than focus on the negatives of this year, I decided to make my Christmas count. I didn’t bother with a tree, I didn’t cook a big meal, and I didn’t go out partying.

Sounds rather dull, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t and I’ll tell you why. I used the time I would have usually been busy doing all of the above to contact friends I’d lost touch with since the world became such a divided place.

I don’t know about you, but with things being so miserable, often I am so sick of talking about “the state we’re in” I find myself not bothering to speak to anyone outside of work.

Covid has become the new British conversation starter, like the weather.

It’s all anyone ever focuses on and, quite frankly, it’s not only depressing but it’s boring.

I don’t say that with any disrespect to those currently grieving for loved ones they’ve lost to this terrible disease but, as sad as it is, if it’s all we ever focus on and talk about, we’re in danger of losing who we used be – a fun, stoic, chatty nation which loved to talk.

So that’s what I did. I called all the people I’d really lost touch with and spent the money I would have used to make the house look like a grotto on sending surprise presents – and it was the nicest Christmas I can remember in ages.

Old arguments which had derailed long-term friendships were swept aside in the sheer joy of rediscovering memories of a life before the prison-like one we are trapped in now.

Plans to party harder than we have done in decades have been made for when this horrid era is finally behind us, and seeing smiles on the faces of long-lost friends over Facetime was better than the presents that would have been under my tree (if I’d had one).

I even reached out to some of the highprofile stars I had public spats with over the last few years (Google will tell you more about that). Watch this space – I’m hoping that 2022 will be a time of rebuiling bridges rather than burning them.