It has been a difficult day. I had hoped to go out for a Christmas lunch and take advantage of the temporary A&E tent facilities for drunken city workers provided by our hard pressed NHS. It was not to be.

I got a call from the Home Secretary to ask if I could provide ‘door security’ because they had discovered an illegal (SIA cleared) working as a doorman at the Home Office. I asked if the wage was above the ‘national minimum wage”. It was. I asked if I could add a supplement of 500 quid an hour to reflect current non legal aid City rates - a figure I read about in The Sun this morning being charged by a law firm for divorce matters. This did not pose a problem.

I got my old red rope unit on a stand out. Changed into black trousers, black tea shirt, black Crombie coat, black shoes and sunglasses - and did my bit for the security of non-Schengen Britain. Had a bit of fun telling Geoff Hoon he couldn’t come in and Charles Clarke accepted my judgement on his ‘dress code’ and went off to another establishment to celebrate the last Friday before Christmas.

It was a bit more difficult explaining to that Shadowy David Davies chap, who looks as if he spends far too much time at Nicky Clarke’s hairdressing salon in Mayfair, that he could not come in because he turned up wearing his old SAS kit… and, because of the gasmask, I didn’t recognise him at first. I let him in… because he promised to change his combat boots for trainers and showed me his plans for the future of a New Britain, maps showing lots of new prison locations, prison ships moored on the South Coast, and an order form to our new friends in China for fantastic quantities of barbed wire to protect our borders against all these new Schengens who are driving all over Europe, as I write, in VW camper vans.

You must appreciate, of course, that I only do this sort of thing at Christmas - I like to help ‘The Hopeless”.

Tomorrow morning I am going to be interviewed on GMTV. I haven’t been invited - but, hey… will they know that I am not Labour government minister for Christmas?… after all, it was not that long ago that the BBC interviwed a mini-cab driver from North Africa believing him to be an expert on intellectual property law. I am pretty sure you weren’t the real IP lawyer on that occasion.

I hope you are having a Liam Donaldson (Chief Government Quack) approved evening…. a piu tarde…

I shall archive this, as with all my letters to you, in my ‘letters’ section.

I hope you are conscious for Christmas…

Charon