Cake for breakfast? There are no rules at Christmas!’

For our Secret Santa, Saturday Kitchen host Matt Tebbutt, there’s only one way to start festivities…

My birthday is Christmas Eve so it all starts then. My mother always makes a delicious brandy cake – there are no rules at Christmas, obviously, so it’s the kind of thing you can eat for breakfast! It’s a simple sponge laced with sugar syrup and a shed-load of brandy, served with cream. Nobody else is really into it apart from my dad – so I eat the whole thing!

We usually go to my parents’ on my birthday. As well as the brandy cake, my mum makes a brilliant quiche. Then we all go down to the pub.

For the past few years on Christmas Day, the whole family has decamped to Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds. I go with my wife, two children, my brother and his mob, my parents and my brother’s mother-in-law. There is a little church nearby, so we go along for a jolly singalong before having mulled wine at the pub and going back to the hotel.

Christmas Day is usually about getting up early, opening presents and drinking Champagne. It’s a traditional Christmas lunch, which is very good. One year I had so much to eat, my shirt buttons popped open in a comedy moment!

I love cooking at home, but I don’t do any cooking over Christmas. I did it one year but what a thankless task it is! I went game shooting and spent a week making a really good game consommé, then we had roast goose and all of the traditional sides. But by 6pm when the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special came on, everyone left the table! I vowed at that point to let someone else cook the Christmas meal and to be very grateful to them!

I’m terrible at giving Christmas presents. My wife doesn’t like surprises and whenever I’ve tried, it’s always wrong. One year I bought her some Christian Louboutin heels but she said they made her feet look like trotters. Instead of presents we go away for a weekend later on. Because I am busy with BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, other shows and the restaurant I work with, I have to book it early so it’s there in our future.

I would love a little tabletop charcuterie slicer this year. And I’m about £800,000 short of a holiday home in Puglia… That would be nice!