One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.

The allegedly 'classy' magazines often seem to be in an endless, undeclared competition to see who can climb furthest up the fundament of Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Lopez.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.