What makes Rudoplh so intelligent?... His well red nose...

I was generously furnished with a Marks & Spencer Christmas cracker the other day. In keeping with their insistence on remaining decidedly Anglican even here in Hong Kong, the rancid ‘joke’ contained within made absolutely no sense to the Jung-Gwoks with whom I was enjoying a delicious if experimentally butchered chicken…

The hardest outcome of the whole affair was attempting to explain the joke to my bewildered dining companions. Inasmuch as an explanation would have been easily provided, I found myself more embattled trying to overcome that ambivalent ‘Who gives a shit?” angle from which all British people approach Christmas cracker jokes.

This got me to thinking… Have the makers of Christmas crackers decided to simply parody themselves or is there a genuine scenario where meetings are held and hands are shaken to determine which rib ticklers will cheapen our Christmas dinners (and lives…) just a little on Commercial Day?

I can only deduce that the whole thing evolved from a time when Ben Elton was unwittingly employed to scribe hilarious gags. What could have been a disaster of course proved quite the opposite as the ‘jokes’ proved something of a hit with a populous already overstimulated by wrapping paper and Paxo.

This of course means that cracker companies no longer give a toss who writes the jokes. Auld Mary takes a break from dishing out Garibaldi and watery Latte’s in the central offices of Clinton’s to contribute jokes that Ken Dodd wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire. Racist Alan in accounts with the tattoos is pretty much the only person who doesn’t get the chance to stick his oar in.

As with all things evolutionary, this same phenomenon afflicts the Christmas card industry. What once may have been a heartfelt enduring message is now a collage of curls and swirls obscuring the more important matter of who sent it and whether they’ve got your house number right…

‘To all at number 7

Wishing you Christmas cheer

And warmest love for the new year

From all at number 4’

I get the feeling you could pretty much write anything in the ‘verse’ of a Christmas card and it would go largely undetected…

‘‘Dear Anne, Merry Christmas…

I’m having an affair with a woman at work called David. I’m leaving you.

Love, Dennis xx’’

Though I cannot deny it has been lovely receiving Christmas cards and gifts from home. Each one has been received and opened with a great deal of excitement and now they rest before me in my shoebox-zoo apartment reminding me that a snowy family Christmas lies over 6000 miles away.

However, we soldier on and Rachael and I are off to Thailand for a cosy and even more secular yuletide than even my God-denying family can provide. It’s just another day and nobody makes a fuss – a million milles away from being at home…

Easier to forget how good it would be to be there.

Merry Christmas everyone!

This Is... The Year That Will Be... 2011!

2010 has been a year of surprises which have rocked us to the core. It was the year we revelled in the reunion of John Nettles and his estranged son Sting. It was also the year I developed a tendency to brutally murder – cockroaches – and the Pope appeared to endorse the use of condoms by homosexuals as they “aren’t technically human anyway”. Oh wait, that one’s actually true. Anyway, it’s hard to believe that it’s almost time for the whole Gregorian farce to roll out again! So let’s stop and pre-empt the big surprises of 2011.

Possibly the most radical shift in the English language will come about in the early months of 2011 as, courtesy of a live phone in poll mix-up, the nation votes unanimously to exchange the use of the words ‘our’ and ‘fucking’. Fox UK will use its blanket coverage of the nation’s broadcast media to share Dame Judi Dench’s foul-mouthed ‘our’ outburst that ‘Fucking our stupid population brings us closer and closer to the seemingly terminal goal of intellectual extinction. The outraged nation will be flambéed to the core.

The nation will be scalded to the core by David Cameron’s new ‘shoot to kill’ policy on the unemployed. Having initially stated that no such measures will be forthcoming, Mr. Cameron will attempt to assuage his critics by outlining the social and economic necessity of such measures. Mr. Cameron, speaking whilst dropping two slugs into a now-deceased gymslip council estate parasite’s head, will be heard to remark: “Fucking people will just have to learn to accept living in fucking difficult times” whilst foaming from the mouth.

Arguably the most raping to the core moment of 2011 will be the revelation that Nick Clegg, apparent turncoat and superfluous nipple of the Conservative Party, is in fact grizzled suspected Thatcher-killer Michael Heseltine. Heseltine, who had last been seen taking potshots at the abandoned puppies of children orphaned by landmine victims with diseases, will revel publicly in his genial decision to infiltrate “Ashdown’s shower of socialist alcoholics” and his seemingly genial ability to harvest the votes of “fucking gormless students”.

Saturday evenings will be terrorist bombed to the core in 2011 as the National Lottery Live is ruthlessly replaced by Fox’s Rational Pottery Wives. Stunned viewers will have to rely on the internet for news of a rebate on their hope-tax as Fox-BBC delves into Maureen’s Pottery Barn. Viewers will become surprisingly entranced by its struggle to balance the books through streamlined clay production and the implementation of charitable schemes for children mutilated by newly incumbent Head of State, Emperor Heseltine. Viewers will subsequently vote Maureen’s catchphrase “It were all downhill after Driving School” as the most instantly recognizable between the hours of 8 and 8.15pm on Saturday June 18^th 2011.

The Wikileaks scandal will continue to petrol-bomb the nation to its core as it is revealed that the entire economy is being artificially inflated by the tears of war widows. Dark Lord Cameron will be forced into the humiliating concession on Keith Chegwin’s Naked Angle and will outline plans to wage war with every nation possessing greater military resources than Britain; Italy will be invited to engage too so they don’t feel left out.

Finally, as is traditional, we take a look forward at those who will come back from the dead this year. This follows on from our out-of-left-field prediction from 2006 that John Darwin would park up his canoe and claim to be mad as cat’s piss instead of dead. This year, it will be the turn of renowned former theme-park owner Michael Jackson to return from the murky depths of his ‘final’ resting place in the less familiar guise of his alter-ego Janet Jackson. ‘Janet’, who hasn’t performed publicly in donkeys ages recently announced a tour kicking off in Hong Kong in mid-2011.

You heard it here first… And as you would expect it’s all bollocks