"We're not heroes. We're from Finchley."

So. I have seen "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". And, amazingly, it wasn't rubbish.

Not that I have so little faith in Disney that I thought they would mses it up. Well, ok, I DO have so little faith in Disney that I thought they would mess it up, but in fact, they didn't. Yes, the English children sounded like BBC radio announcers out of the 1930s and the battle sequences were clearly trying to outwit "Lord Of the Rings", not to mention the inexplicable cockney Mr Beaver, but I liked it because, on the whole, they didn't completely change the book and end up with, say, Lucy marrying Mr Tumnus and having three children or, er, Peter indicting the White Witch and taking her back throught he wardrobe to face a War Crimes tribunal and leaving the other three there to reinstate a truly democratic system into Narnia while bombing the crap out of the unicorns and their little unicorn babies.

In fact, things you might expect them to leave out - Edmund smashing his sword on the White Witch's wand, for example, and the fawn dropping his parcels. My only problem was that Edmund, who's meant to be a bit of an evil bastard at the beginning of the book, comes across instead as a sulky little git, and Susan is a bit santimonious and, to be honest, boring. And if anyone remembers the old BBC dramatisation in the 1980s, don't you agree that Maugrim was much scarier? Or maybe that was just bcause I was five years old at the time.

Anyway, all this was forgiven because of one line: "We're not heroes, we're from Finchley."

Yes, I could see why that could be a problem.

Polly Toynbee didn't like it, of course, but then, she'd be out of a job if she didn't have something to whine about.

I went to the launch of this book and ended up having an interesting conversation with an Italian who is the proud owner of a pair of Yoko Ono's knickers. It's a good book, though. Think Alistair Cooke meets Alan Bennett meets a gay porn novel and you'v just about got it. The author is a fantastic guy to litsen to - I went to a reading of his a year or so ago - and John, the editor, is the best lecturer I ever had. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest you buy it for your Mum for Christmas, but it's worth a read.

Christmas. I hate Christmas. I hate forced jollity and the fact that you can't put up anything remotely religious at Christmas in case it offends all the non-Christians who celebrate it anyway (which incidentally I don't think it does.) I hate spending money buying people I don't like things they don't want. I hate sitting on the floor outside the toilet on a crowded train with other miserable people going half way across the country to visit people they would avoid seeing were it another time of year and they could think of an excuse. I hate that bloody awful song by Paul McCartney that VH1 keeps playing, and don't even get me started on Cliff Richard. I hate crap TV where celebrities were filmed in August pretending to have fun. I hate the fact the Radio Times has only given "The Italian Job" three stars - the same as "Ali G Indahouse". ?!!!?!?

Scrooge had the right idea. Pity he bowed to peer pressure, really.