Dom Joly gives us the 50 stages of his frenetic present buying experience ahead of Christmas

Great British Life: Last minute shopping leads to a pretty stressful experience for Dom / Photo: auremarLast minute shopping leads to a pretty stressful experience for Dom / Photo: auremar (Image: Archant)

1. Try to find the present that you bought someone for Christmas in the summer thinking that you were really smart thinking ahead.

2. Start screaming and ranting and slamming doors because you can’t find the present that you bought in the summer for someone.

3. Blame the person that you bought the present for in the summer for having moved it.

4. Slowly realise that one of the dogs is looking more guilty than usual and has probably eaten the present that you bought in the summer for someone.

5. Remember that you haven’t bought any presents for the dogs.

6. Decide that the dogs don’t deserve any presents because one of them ate the present that you bought in the summer for someone.

7. Realise that you have no presents for anybody.

8. Have a stiff drink and decide that you will start present shopping tomorrow as it’s raining.

9. Remember that tomorrow is actually Christmas Day.

10. Realise that your drink was particularly stiff. So stiff in fact that you now cannot drive into Cheltenham to buy the presents you need to buy for tomorrow.

11. Tell your wife that she must drive you into Cheltenham and wait for you while you “do stuff.”

12. Have a heated discussion with your wife as to why you can’t tell her what the ‘stuff’ is that you need to do in Cheltenham but that it is definitely more important than whatever it is she is doing.

13. Ring for a taxi.

14. Rant to anybody who will listen about how expensive taxis are in the country.

15. Realise that you are ranting to a dog and that even he is not listening.

16. Rant to the taxi driver about Christmas.

17. Ask the taxi driver whether he could stop at the pub?

18. Ask the taxi driver whether he’d like to join you for a stiff drink.

19. Remember that this is why you needed a taxi driver in the first place.

20. Get deposited on The Promenade in the middle of what appears to be a vicious riot.

21. Realise that it is not a riot. It is a large gathering of like-minded men all desperate to get all their presents in under one hour on Christmas Eve.

22. Consider going to the pub again.

23. Think through ‘thoughtful’ present options that might preclude the need for any shopping. Briefly consider charity donation, adopting a goat, something homemade…

24. Realise that divorce is a very expensive affair – far more expensive than any present.

25. Dive into the riot and wander in and out of shops aimlessly.

26. Buy some expensive perfume.

27. Buy some shoes although you are unsure of your wife’s shoe size.

28. Buy a lot of chocolate.

29. Start to lose the will to live.

30. Pop into pub to ‘use the loo’.

31. Wake up to be told that the pub is closing.

32. Ring taxi.

33. Told there are no taxis.

34. Ring wife.

35. Told that you have no wife.

36. Walk home.

37. Get home and decide that this might be the time to start complaining about how ‘commercial’ Christmas has become.

38. Realise that you have left the perfume and one shoe in the pub.

39. Cram the chocolates into the remaining shoe and wrap them very badly.

40. Announce loudly that maybe the whole family should fly somewhere hot tomorrow morning and not have a ‘boring’ Christmas.

41. Repeat this when nobody answers.

42. Realise that you are talking to the dog and that he is eating the chocolates and the shoe.

43. Find a computer and get onto Amazon.

44. Buy some stupidly expensive things and print off the order page.

45. Put the print-out of the order page into an envelope and then put it under the tree with a note saying that these things are all “coming soon”.

46. Decide that you might become a Buddhist.

47. Check that Buddhists don’t celebrate Christmas.

48. Announce that you are becoming a Buddhist.

49. Have a stiff drink.

50. Sleep with Dog on sofa.

---------------------------

For more from Dom, follow him on Twitter: @domjoly