Even The Christmas Tree Doesn't Want To Come.

Time for one of our annual, festive highlights and..........oh dear!

Yes, Trafalgar Square got its traditional Yuletide gift from Norway, a giant Christmas tree...........and it said as much about the state of this country as I ever could! You see, when they put up the 62ft-high Norwegian spruce they discovered the 80-year old fir was showing signs of its age. It turned out to be a tad bald, having lost almost all of its branches on one side.

Thing is, officials in Oslo who were told about the follicly challenged fir repeated what Belfast ship workers had said when they heard about the sinking of the Titanic - "Well, it was ok when it left here!"

It appears that somewhere on its 1,000 -mile journey across the North Sea the tree just started to give up, doubtless on being told it was going to London. Who could blame it?

All was not lost, however. The Telegraph reported that some "clever tree surgeons" - not three words you often see together -  took some pre-cut green branches and hammered them into place on the branch-bereft side to make it look a bit more bisymmetrical.

The annual tradition of Oslo sending a Christmas tree to London dates back around 70 years when it began as a thank you from the people of Norway for Britain's part in liberating them from the Nazis. I think the more churlish among us might conclude that, like a bottle of Old Spice or a pair of Homer Simpson socks, a manky, threadbare tree is not the best Christmas present and scarcely worthy of 384,000 combat dead. Still, it's the lack of thought that counts.