Let's have it straight now, which of your Christmas gifts will soon to be gracing a charity shop window or subject to bidding on e-Bay?

My ‘no clothes without my expressed permission/ approval’ rule worked wonders and thus I didn’t have to worry about disposing of a reindeer jumper outside Oxfam in the dead of night. However, I was surprised to receive a bottle of ‘Josh’ aftershave from an unknown well-wisher. Dare I use it from now on as my signature cologne or use it to defrost my windscreen in the morning?

Alas, the floodgates quite literally opened on the issue of port. I had a large bottle from someone in work (we do Secret Santa every year) while several others awaited me on Christmas morning. Great you might think, that is until I fell ill on December 28 and proceeded to groan like Jacob Marley until well after New Year’s Eve and thus miss the opportunity to consume one of my few vices (behind shooting, football, clothes, Sherlock Holmes, J.D Salinger and cheese).

Like many people, today marks the start of my new diet. In the interests of advertising I won’t tell you which grail I have decided to follow, but fortunately, game is a food I can get stuck into as often as I would like. A (very, very, very) small glass of the aforementioned red stuff is allowed, although I have promised to keep it for toasting the end of a magazine at the end of each month.

Will I stick to it, or fall by the wayside like I did last year? I hope not, I’ll be 28 soon and the thought of not being able to bound up and down the stairs without wheezing (as was the case the Monday after our Christmas party) fills me to the core with dread.