It's more like Christmas you know when you get a shot in that looks great and it's exactly what you want. It's a great feeling and there's nothing like it.

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.

It's hard and sometimes it's scary. It still amazes my mother. I went home for Christmas one year and there were fans all over the front lawn hoping to see me.

And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people songwriters who are around.

What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far far from it but there is no free lunch as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.

I don't know of too many double Christmas albums so it is something that's new and hopefully will be fun and there's plenty of stuff out there to cut.

There's been a concerted effort to steal Christmas.

There's something about a Christmas sweater that will always make me laugh.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I'm bad on Valentine's Day but even worse on Christmas. I go shopping at nine o'clock on December 24th every year. Nobody else is there. I'm in Toys'R'Us all by myself. I get there five minutes before closing.

Well the album 'Intuition' is out and just went platinum officially. So I think to have the music doing what it's doing right now man it's the ultimate. Nobody is really selling records out there but we are at a million records and we dropped it at Christmas so we are just trying to get that thing to like two million you know.

I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.

There's never really been a real hood Christmas movie.

So we're considering doing a new Christmas album because there's been Christmas episodes since then and maybe finally do the version of 'The Most Offensive Song Ever' with lyrics intact.

Online there's no time. It's always Christmas.

Christmas in L.A. is weird. There's no snow. It's not even cold.

You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree.

There's a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I'll not be parting with that nor our bed - the four-poster - I'll be needing that to die in.

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.

So there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work and there's life and there's no balance.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it human and otherwise are imaginary excepting only certain of the fairy folk whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.