Giles Brown
CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve made it through to another year, as well as getting through that testing time between Christmas and new year when you aren’t really sure what day it is, who you are and what you are supposed to be doing.
The only one thing that is certain, however, is that that Festive No Man’s Land period is the only time of year when it is socially acceptable to start the day with a handful of Quality Street and a large Baileys. Unless you work in media, of course.
How was it for you? For me, Christmas and new year were the usual hectic blur of visiting friends and family, with my now traditional routine of Swedish style Christmas Eve celebrations with one of my goddaughters. This includes traditional games such as ‘The Bear’ and the ‘Swedish Ring Game’. In case you were wondering, the latter involves secretly passing a ring on a piece of string between players. Just don’t try Googling it on certain search engines, trust me…
My Boxing Day bash was a little more subdued than normal. I had planned to make it a smaller affair this year with my close friends and family. The only problem was, however, that when you have friends like mine, they started celebrating at lunchtime on Christmas Eve and so by the time December 26 came along, many of them were in no fit state to move off the sofa, or were still out there! Meanwhile, those with children were unable to extract their little darlings from playing with their presents without provoking an under 10-year-old thermonuclear meltdown.
Not being ‘blessed with children’ myself, I was able to spend most of the festive season on the radio, which, along with my live Christmas morning and New Year’s Eve shows, included presenting a series of ‘Best of Giles’ shows. Being something of an oxymoron in itself, these shows mainly consisted of pressing the play button on pre-recorded interviews, throwing on a couple of songs, and then settling back with a cuppa to work heroically through a selection of mince pies, After Eight mints and the aforementioned Quality Street. It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it!
Wishing you all the best for a happy and healthy 2019!
