There was a time, children, when you got all your Christmas crying done during Noel’s Christmas Presents. Noel Edmonds would give the perfect presents to lovely, deserving people who had been nominated by others for their loveliness and deservingness. Children who helped care for disabled siblings or relatives would get smashing bikes or great toys, but always with the message that this was just a token of how much their kindness was appreciated. Adults would get holidays or office equipment or something equally tangible for the charity they were running or the cause dearest to their hearts. Edmonds walked the line between mawkish and moving beautifully and you could count on it every year as the perfect purge for your high festive emotions.
Now you have to take what you can – via sad but uplifting seasonal stories on morning television, celebrity charity specials, the one Christmas advert that works. And then there’s The Dog House at Christmas. The Dog House is four seasons old and has a shiny coat and adorable personality. It follows the staff and canine residents at Woodgreen animal shelter in Godmanchester, which sounds like a place Victoria Wood made up but is in fact real and found in Cambridgeshire, as the former try to find homes for the latter. “Forever homes”, if you can cope with the parlance without being sick in your mouth, but I cannot so “homes” it shall be.
