The Grumpy Guide To

Ronni Ancona will moan that your Jamie Oliver-inspired turkey and cranberry sauce is “basically chicken with jam”, Al Murray will tell you to “go away” when you talk to him about the joy of giving (he actually uses stronger language but I’m starting my New Year’s resolution a few days early) and Penny Smith will moan that it’s all “sentimental claptrap”. Donna McPhail will terrify your dog by declaring Christmas is “worse than a puppy because you can’t put it in a sack and drown it.” And Ozzy Osbourne will consider getting back on his quad bike to avoid the whole thing for a second time. It’s “just b******s,” he says. Oh damn, there goes my resolution already.

Meet the new breed of grumpies: a bit younger but no less embittered. With tales of seasonal Tourette's, inappropriate present-buying and the eating of reindeer, here is the latest in a long line of celebrities with hilarious tales of festive humbug. Ozzy Osbourne considers himself lucky to have missed the whole thing one year following a horrific quad bike injury; Huey Morgan would rather throw burning conifers off the roof; John Thomson likes confusing his parents by sending them anonymous cards; Neil Morrissey may elect to spend the time locked away in the loo with a portable TV, a few bottles of wine and a turkey sandwich; and Ronni Ancona thinks sprouts are the grapes of the devil. Why? Because it's Christmas again. Have a very grumpy Christmas everyone.

A cross-section of Grumps (old and young...ish) wax irritable about the decade that style, taste and decency forgot. These ten years that saw the rise of rampant consumerism, the Wicked Witch of Westminster, shoulder pads and rubbish hair were a difficult time for those of a disgruntled disposition, so expect their Filofaxes of fury to be positively bulging with caustic memos.

School days are billed as the best days of your life but were more like a prison sentence for our grumpies. We all remember the sadistic games teacher, or the unique boredom of double maths on a Monday morning. But if you are of the grumpy persuasion then School Day horrors seem to have particular resonance. Mark Radcliffe thought his school days a mix of sadism and insanity, Ronni Ancona thought her school worse than a Russian gulag, Huey Morgan was almost choked by one teacher and Mark Steel remembers experiencing the worst fart in history. Neil Morrissey pretended to be the class psycho, Shappi Khorsandi once stole Neil Kinnock's daughter's school report, whilst Al Murray remembers the horrors of being at the back with the fat kid in PE.