Simon Hoggart is the ultimate Christmas curmudgeon. Every year about this time, unwanted round robins, stuffed with news of young Chloe’s nauseating excellence at – well – everything, the announcement of Janet’s cousin’s husband’s friend’s divorce, or the details of Terry’s colonoscopy, accumulate on doormats. One day, Simon Hoggart decided to do something about it.

In 2004, he mercilessly presented the most eye-popping examples of such letters in his bestseller, The Cat that Could Open the Fridge, and followed it up with The Hamster that Loved Puccini, hoping he had put a stop to them. And yet the letters, booklets and photo-montages kept on coming. So here, to drive home his message, The Christmas Letters brings together his two collections in an anthology that will have everyone choking with laughter on their Christmas pudding.