Warning! Vaguely unfashionable statement ahead: proceed with caution. If you believe yourself to be the king of cool, look away now:

Ain't Christmas a fab time of year?

There's so many ingredients in the mix:

• gawking at the gaudy fairy lights in and on people's houses
• queueing in overcrowded shops (let me through, I have a pram!)
• avoiding the sweet sounds of the Now! Christmas LP
• preparing for top telly!

Even before I possessed my own VCR (may that linear stereo Akai rest in peace), one of my personal festive highlights has been buying the special double edition of the Christmas Radio Times. I've been a listings freak for ages, so those annual 200+ pages are a treat. Given the chance, and I will find the time, I'll pore over the pages for hours. An initial flick, then a more detailed perusal, and finally the felt tip emerges to circle the chosen many.

Could be films, could be one-off dramas, could be seasonal episodes, but one sure thing is that they'll all require a slice of reasonable grade VHS tape. What to watch, what to record? Short play or long play? Is there enough space on the end to tape Sons Of The Desert? Of such gut-wrenching decisions is my Christmas made. As I said, marvellous.

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else
BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4, C5:

1. you can never be too rich, too thin or have too many blank tapes
2. please write down what you've recorded
3. don't forget the TV-with-no-pictures, aka the radio

Be seeing you!

Ed