What next, now Christmas is over?
AH, Boxing Day! When much of the country’s workforce will snooze through Christmas TV ‘specials’ that usually turn out to be nothing special and films that haven’t been on for at least six weeks . . .
Christmas Day has been unwrapped, played with and put back in its shiny box for another year.
Don’t be sad, because on the bright side it’ll be months until you walk into a supermarket and again hear Noddy Holder screaming, “It’s Christmaaassss!”
Noddy co-wrote Merry Christmas Everybody with fellow Slade member Jim Lea in 1973 and apparently, each year, it earns them around £500,000 each.
They can afford to hire people to do their Christmas shopping and so avoid hearing their song playing in every department store from September onwards.
Another plus for saying “Tarra!” to December 25 is there won’t be any more – until next year – of those misleading adverts for “Magical Christmas Wonderlands” that often disappoint children and anger their parents when they discover how tawdry the ‘attraction’ really is . . . after they’ve paid their money and gone in through the gates.
I’m not referring to the big scale, professionally run Winter Wonderlands in places like Swansea and Cardiff and Carmarthen.
I mean the ones that offer ‘An enchanting Christmas experience at a stunning location’ that turns out to be in a field 30 miles from the nearest beaten track.
Just a few weeks ago, at one of these ‘attractions,’ the advertised ‘stunning location’ was, according to one irate parent, ‘a sea of mud’; their ‘magical woodland walk’ was a dangerously steep, hard-core path; and ‘Santa’s amazing grotto’ was a cold dark room in which the only decoration was a Christmas tree.
And . . . when Santa appeared his beard kept falling off in front of the children!
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh – if it weren’t for the fact so many people fall for these ads. I’m sure you won’t.
I’m off to write next year’s Christmas Number One.
Anyone know Mister Holder’s phone number?