My Place: My Christmas special
Dec 19 2009 By Karen Wilson and Hannah Davies
KAREN WILSON and HANNAH DAVIES speak to some of the My Place people we’ve interviewed over the past year to discover what they’re doing for “My Christmas”.
OLYMPIC SWIMMER CHRIS COOK
What will you be having for Christmas dinner?
This year my wife Erica and I will be hosting our parents for Christmas so the pressure is really on to deliver! We have plans to cook two meats – turkey crown and beef. I like to have the choice and variation with my meal without being wasteful.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
Christmas Eve we will be watching a Christmas carol service in Durham. It really reminds me of when I was younger singing in Christmas nativity plays or carol singing on the town hall steps in South Shields. On Christmas morning we’ll get up nice and early to walk the dog on the beach. This is done in an attempt to tire her out for the day ... though I must say that this plan rarely works.
What do you love most about Christmas? And least?
I love seeing our nieces in the family and their astonishment at opening presents. We always laugh when the presents are thrown to one side and the box becomes more interesting to play with. I suppose the thing I least like about Christmas is the over-indulgence in Christmas presents. Each year Erica and I set out to buy each other the cheapest, silliest present we can find.
What are you hoping to get for Christmas?
Snow! I love snow at Christmas and especially watching my golden retriever Summer going crazy in the snow.
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
The best would have to be returning home from Australia after a three-month training camp, 10 days before Christmas, and my wife had brought home a puppy without telling me. I was greeted by an excited puppy running out from underneath the bed – it was the best present ever. The worst would have to be the presents the puppy left behind for me to clean up for the next few weeks!
INTERIOR DESIGNER GEORGE BOND
What was your best Christmas ever?
I love spending Christmas experiencing different cultures and I would have to say that Christmas in Rio de Janeiro, staying at the Copacabana Palace was one of my favourites. The culture, while somewhat commercial, is fantastic and they really go all out at Christmas time with parades and big celebrations.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
As it’s my first Christmas in Britain for 25 years I’m going to celebrate it with lots of family and friends in Edinburgh, and my lovely aunty will be preparing the much- anticipated Christmas dinner.
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
The worst would have to be a shirt from a relative that just wasn’t me at all, not nearly as bad as a knitted reindeer jumper, but almost! The best present was definitely a round-the-world trip.
Will you be making any New Year’s Resolutions?
Every year, as most people do, I make the resolution to get back to the gym more. I’m usually quite good at it until around June time until I give up again!
COMEDIAN SIMON DONALD
What will you be having for Christmas dinner?
I’ve been a vegetarian since 1983, so I’ll be having a Greggs cheese and onion pasty! Actually I’ll be having a nut roast with the whole shebang.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
I will be with my family in north Northumberland. I spent last Christmas in Italy with my friends who live out there, so it’ll be nice to be back with my family and see all of my friends in the North East.
What do you love most and least about Christmas?
The thing I like the least is usually New Year because I often don’t know what to do. I’m very glad that this year I’m performing twice on New Year’s Eve in Gateshead and Newcastle. That sets things up nicely for me to see the New Year in without ending up in a pool of my own fluids by a war memorial.
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
A very good friend once gave me a pencil made out of a twig, which was very poor. The same friend also gave me my best present, which is a tiny thread of carpet from Elvis Presley’s Jungle Room.
Will you be making any New Year’s Resolutions?
I’m going to give up shamelessly plugging my comedy shows. But seriously, as long as I can get home safely from the Grinning Idiot gigs on New Year’s Eve in Gateshead and Newcastle with Gavin Webster and Seymour Mace I’ll be a happy man. Oh, and I shall try to sell out my one-man show on January 30 at Live Theatre in Newcastle.
BBC NEWCASTLE PRESENTER AND COMIC SUE SWEENEY
What was your best ever Christmas?
Probably five years ago when the puppy we bought for our youngest daughter Jade was delivered by Santa Claus on Christmas Day. Everyone in our street was looking out of the window. The look on her face was something I will never forget.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
At my sister’s. Her conservatory is the size of a small concert room. There will be 12 of us and my brother is a chef so he cooks and we all wash up. We party all day and we always have a good laugh, a good cry and a good sing on my karaoke.
What do you least like about Christmas?
Shopping queues. I don’t have the time to waste. However, I always seem to have a fun character standing next to me, who usually ends up as a part of my stand-up comedy show.
What was your worst Christmas present?
Anti-wrinkle cream. I thought, ’You cheeky mare!’
And your best?
Definitely my little black Jeep. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep and kept looking out of the window to make sure it was really there.
New Year’s Resolutions?
Once again to try to lose weight, once again to get fit and once again to stop buying so many shoes. I just know that once again I will fail on all three.
ACTRESS TRACY GILLMAN
What was your best ever Christmas?
When I was a kid, I curled up in a chair all day and read all of
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
With family and friends and a collection of random chairs to get them around the table.
What are you hoping to get for Christmas?
Big smiles ...
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
The worst – a glittery nylon poncho. The best – all the books I’ve ever got.
Will you be making any New Year’s Resolutions?
Yes – to get some funding for Beg Borrow Steal, my events and performance company, so we can keep on making great work in 2010.
AUDIENCES NORTH EAST DIRECTOR ALISON O’HARA
What will you be having for Christmas dinner?
I don’t know yet. As a veggie I try out whatever Christmas special there is from M&S. The one I had about five years ago was the best ever (a kind of really moist nut roast with cranberries on top) and they’ve never had it again. But I’ve already tried out this year’s M&S special and wasn’t that keen. I’ll maybe look into Waitrose options or try making something myself.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
Our daughter Rosie is desperate to go skating at Life again and to see
What do you love most about Christmas? And least?
The best time is sitting in bed on Christmas morning with the three of us opening our Christmas socks.
Thing I like least is the half-hour before Christmas dinner is ready. It’s probably the most fractious time in our house all year with cranberry sauce exploding and dishes getting broken.
What are you hoping to get for Christmas?
Some novels, Pete and I have an embargo in the two months before Christmas where we don’t allow each other to buy things that might be possible Christmas presents so I haven’t had anything to read for a while. I’m really looking forward to having a good novel to get stuck into.
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
The worst by far was a bright green, rubber bookmark shaped like a worm (from hubby!) The best was before we married when Pete lived in a block of flats in Jesmond and one year in my Christmas sock was a set of keys to his flat.
NOVELIST ANNA RALPH
What was your best ever Christmas?
The Christmas I got my first bike Bobo. It was a complete surprise and waiting for me under the tree, I was about six.
How will you be spending Christmas this year?
With my partner and one-year-old daughter Jessie.
What are you hoping to get for Christmas?
I’m not really big on material things, it’s all about spending time with your nearest and dearest – having said that I’m quite hoping to get a rowing machine.
What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever had and the best?
The worst was a Bananarama cassette from my brother.
The best was my daughter Jessie who arrived a little earlier on December 14 last year
Any New Year Resolutions?
To use the rowing machine!
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