I don’t know if it is just me, but Christmas television seems to get less inspired every year. After a couple of days of illness followed by Christmas Day with two of us home alone before an offspring invasion, it was an ideal time to be a couch potato.

However, the mainstream channels seem to cater for fucking idiots and I found myself digging around iPlayer or old comedy channels for anything remotely worth watching. ‘Only Fools and Horse’ is starting to date badly, but it is still around 3 gazillion time better than ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ an alleged comedy that is so bad, it makes me want to weep.

Micky Flanagan on Sky One provided a welcome release from all the utter nonsense and I thought the BBC/Netflix adaptation of ‘Watership Down’ was good viewing but apparently, I was the only one. It felt the full force of a barrage of criticism coming from critics who hated the CGI (Computed Generated Images) and the £20 million budget.

On Christmas Day, the Queen attempted to soothe a nation broken by Brexit, which is a bit like asking a horse to perform an operation on your broke leg and hoping to be back on your feet in under six weeks. She didn’t have a chance and didn’t help matters by sitting next to a gold piano as if though she was taking the piss out of the poor.

Far more enjoyable was the alternative speech on Channel 4. It came from the limited talent of Danny Dyer, who is going through some sort of renaissance after not holding back when stating his hatred for Britain’s worst ever Prime Minister, David Cameron and having something of a star turn on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ when he discovered his DNA was linked to the aristocracy.

Perhaps the most nauseating piece of TV that I witnessed came on BBC South Today on Monday morning. The BBC took it upon themselves to create a good news story out of a nine-year-old girl who had decided from the pit of her heart, that she was to donate her pocket money to those who did not have a pot to piss in.

In full make up and bright lipstick this little charmer took small gifts to the homeless who were asked to say the obligatory line, ‘It restores your faith in human nature’ when all they really wanted was some heroin to warm them up, the poor bastards.

At what point does a girl of nine decide to give homeless people pocket money? At what point do the parents call up the BBC, splash make up on their daughter and proudly march the streets like 21^st century saints with socks?

If a 25% increase in the homeless is a pitiful example of Conservative austerity to save the bacon of unscrupulous hedge fund managers, dressing up your daughter for a fake show of human decency is a pitiful example of a 100% increase in 21^st Century narcissism.

Oh, for some sanity in the New Year.

What’s that I hear you say…a knighthood for John Redwood?