This book paints such a great picture, that old school department store decorated for Christmas. I could picture all of it, and it felt like a Willy Wonka scenario gone very wrong. Once the murder mystery part of it started, it got really interesting and I ended up really enjoying it. As the different characters started to fall into place, it was great. The only issue I have is that the big twist wasn’t quite so impactful because there was a namedrop earlier on that made it really obvious. But I still loved reading it.

I loved the Satsuma books by Bob Mortimer, and I was curious what a different story would be like. It was good, still quirky and featuring conversations with animals that you wouldn’t expect. I don’t think it quite hit the highs of the first couple of books, but if you like Bob’s style then you’ll like it. The idea was interesting, being in a building and forced to spy on your neighbours - but did we explore that enough? Not sure. It was good but I think I wanted more.

This is a lovely book, spanning generations of a Welsh family, with their own issues, relationship drama, ups and downs and and secrets. It’s very well written, easy to read, and you can quite easily get into the characters and the family. I liked this far better than the last Ruth Jones book I read, and I’m glad because I love her so much.

Back from Blackpool and everyone has been talking about their being a dip in energy, so I wasn’t expecting absolute perfection from this week’s performances. Plus there’s that new gimmick, Instant Dance, in which the couples get a dance style, a new piece of music, quick choice of clothing, ten seconds to think about it, and then go go go. It’s going to be a disaster.

I finally made it to watch Jingle Bell Heist after getting distracted by the previous film on the last attempt. This was a bit of a slow starter, it took a while to get going and to really care about these characters to any large degree - despite their situations being quite clearly shouted in your face. But as the heist activities started, it got better and better. The relationship developed, the banter improved, and the twists started coming.

So look, I’m not a particularly big fan of Prince, but after he had a dedicated theme week on Dancing with the Stars, that gave me a nudge that I should probably check out another classic album from the artist with many names. You know what? I quite enjoyed it. Obviously it starts out with a couple of proper tunes, and then the rest of the album was new to me - it definitely starts getting more widdly and experimental towards the end, but not so much that I was put off. Nice work!

Olly Murs has had some proper hits in the past but I’ve been disappointed with more recent work as it’s been quite middle-of-the-road. I didn’t have high expectations for this album but I was blown away. It’s so good and so unexpected. It’s a great mix of pop and ska, kind of like if Madness released a new album, but in the best possible way. It’s fun and scatty and honest and has good highs and lows, I loved it. It’s another year where I’ve got a super late contender for the top five list!

So I was on my merry way looking to watch Jingle Bell Heist when this popped up - I hadn’t heard of it and watched it purely on the strength of Minka Kelly being in Friday Night Lights that I loved so very much. And what a brilliant find this was! Okay, it was entirely predictable and ok the guy from Drops of God was in a film about wine that also included a wine challenge, but put those things aside and it was brilliant. The rom-com at the centre was over-dramatic and entirely wonderful, great chemistry between the two leads. The family drama was also brilliant, the big business plot set a nice backdrop and then you had the exceptional bromance brewing between Roberto and Otto. Fantastic. Plus there was a lot of French in there and it was all gloriously Christmassy. LOVE.

This has so much going for it that I should love - it’s a musical version of A Christmas Carol featuring Albert Finney and with input from Lesley Bricusse. It should be ticking all the boxes but somehow it doesn’t. Firstly, it feels pretty drawn out and long, and so much is on Albert Finney’s performance which is an acting masterclass but doesn’t really fit the rest of the film. The songs are kind of upbeat (even I Hate People is actually quite a fun number), the mood is pretty sombre, and I just wasn’t too sure where I stood with it. It’s a shame, but on the other hand, I’m very glad I watched it because I had no idea this is where Thank You Very Much came from!

I’m all for a cheesy Christmas movie, and I thought with the addition of Mayim Bialik, this might be pretty good. Sadly, it was terrible. The two leads do an okay job individually, especially given the terrible script they’re working with and how awful the characters are, but they have no chemistry and so there’s no chance they fell in love overnight. Meanwhile, the plot is bonkers, why is she so mad that he’s going to propose to his girlfriend based on one overheard conversation? Why did he go all the way to the airport and bottle it? It’s really just a bit of a mess, and Mayim deserves better.

I loved this one. It felt like a reset of sorts, and although one of our number was put in jeopardy, thankfully there wasn’t too much to be sad about. Instead, we had a short, sharp story that introduced a new conspiracy opening up and plenty of interesting twists to think about. Also enjoyed bringing Ryan’s parents into it, they’re two very different people and will add something to the coming stories, no doubt.

We make quite a lot of fun of the build up to Blackpool but I feel bad for that now because this weekend’s Strictly Come Dancing show was spectacular and worth all the hype. You kick things off with an incredible Steps medley with professionals, contestants, extra dancers, and the judges all taking to the sprung floor, and you know you’re on to a winner. Then you have the downside of the judge’s dance. It’s terrible every week but when you add in Shirley desperately trying to get Claudia to go in the right direction and failing, well that’s next level.

I know very little about sailing but I’ve heard of Ellen MacArthur and reading about her early career was fascinating. I couldn’t believe how much hardship Ellen went through to get where she wanted to go - no money, often homeless or sleeping in cars, saving every penny on boats, and doing anything possible to reach a goal. I wish I had that kind of desire for something! And then when the sailing and races start taking off, it’s fascinating to understand that mix of desire to be out there alone but also to revel in the joy of working as a team. Fascinating read and very well written.

If you said getting a handful of celebrities and their parents and asking them questions in a quiz show, you wouldn’t think it would make a particularly good television show. But throw in the twist that the parents have to decide whether they think their child knows the answers or not, plus the joy of Romesh Ranganathan and his mother hosting, and you’ve got a hit.

I was really enjoying this book and could feel the tension and isolation as it ramped up and up, the levels of confusion building and a deep desire to know what was going on. I’ll be honest, initially I was a bit disappointed by the twist ending because it’s a trope that I’m worried is starting to be over-used and isn’t particularly sensitive to the topic. But the more I think about it, the more I think this was well done, neatly handled, and overall a really good read.

There was so little Christmas in this, I feel a bit robbed. A little montage of Christmas in London does not a festive movie make. So I was already a bit grumpy with the whole thing and when it turned out to not be very good, that was the final nail in the coffin. It’s not really a good sign that the best characters were not in the family… There was the occasional funny moment but generally it was just a mediocre spy thriller with some lazy plotting. I’m sure there’ll be a third one though - which member of the family can we drag out of the past next time?

Dream On appeared on both Dancing With the Stars and Strictly in very quick succession, so it seemed appropriate to pick this album for a classic listen. I can’t believe Dream On is on their debut album, it is SO good. I also can’t believe Aerosmith are a 70s band, that doesn’t compute! But it’s a great rock album, the right side of hard rock for my tastes, and a great kick off album for an extended career.

I was somewhat disappointed by this album but I can’t quite put my finger on why - I guess it was a bit more rock than I was anticipating, and I love rock but this didn’t quite do it for me. The guys are talented and the songs objectively are good, it just as a whole was not my cup of tea.

This was so good, I absolutely inhaled it. I really enjoyed a Man Called Ove so was expecting this would be good and it didn’t disappoint. Considering it’s a world I know very little about - that lonely foster home upbringing on one hand, and the rich superficial art world in the other - it was captivating. The characters were great, the way the stories were sort of drip fed really kept you engaged, and there were twists but they weren’t signalled or highlighted, they were genuine surprises. I loved it.

I’ve finally caught up with all Liane Moriarty novels so far, and this was probably the one that propelled her into the limelight after the TV adaptation was made. I sort of knew some bits about the story, and have watched the first episode of the show, but I don’t think I finished it because a lot of what happened was new to me. As with all Moriarty books, it’s well written, dipping back and forth in the timeline, and gradually revealing some big dramatic moment and the effect it had on everyone involved. Great stuff.

I was bound to read this one given my obsession with the TV show under discussion, and this is a great oral history of it, told by the creators, writers and stars. It’s in the form of a conversation, or as though they are both sitting there by the fire, telling you how everything came to be, each taking turn and adding bits here and there. I’m not sure there was anything hugely new in there but it was still joyous to read and revel in this slice of British televisual history some more.

I loved this. The sets were a bit cheap and there wasn’t enough Melissa Joan Hart, but apart from that I can’t find too much to complain about. The cast were fab, the story fun, and the rom-com element of it was really good. I thought I’d be annoyed that she didn’t end up taking the big job and moving to Boston, but actually it wasn’t too bad, because she found that she was making a difference where she was… it wasn’t all just for the guy. A lovely feel-good Christmas movie.

Hmm, in case you hadn’t realised, next week is Blackpool. I tried to count the mentions during this episode and got to 27 - half of which were within the first ten minutes of the show. A very good job I didn’t go for the drinking game I was considering! On with the pre-Blackpool show, then. Balvinder & Julian - American Smooth The technique seemed to have improved, there was good footwork and it felt nice and gentle. The lifts were either wrong, or just lacking in confidence, but the performance was good and fitted the song perfectly.

If you haven’t already started (and finished!) watching Riot Women on the BBC, then you must stop what you’re doing and do that instead. It’s absolutely brilliant TV. Of course, the elements are all there to make it magical - the cream of the crop of British female actors (of a certain age), the writing skills of Sally Wainwright, the gorgeous Yorkshire backdrop, and a story about these women putting a rock band together. The music is provided by ARXX and it’s all entirely credible and in some cases brilliant.

I’m working my way through the Elvis albums nice and slowly, so this is a very early one. It’s split into two halves, the first half being ballads, the second a bit more up-tempo. I don’t know why but particularly on this album I really felt astounded by Elvis’ talent - the voice! So deep and resonant, engaging and moving on the slow ones, but then poppy and fun on the faster tunes. It all just shone through on this. There weren’t any of his super-famous classic tunes on here but it was still a really great listen.

Like so many people, I’ve only become aware of Cat Burns since her incredible stint on Celebrity Traitors, and what a perfect time to have a new album out. I loved it. It’s got a unique style to it, bringing that singer/songwriter energy with layers of gospel, and the occasional Lily Allen talk-singing vibe. But it’s a gorgeous album, great songs on top of difficult subjects - love and grief and the intersection of both - I really think this is a top five contender.

Rounding out Alice’s trilogy of books focused on what we can find out from the bones and burials of the past, this one brings us even closer to the modern time - but also leans in to topics around illness and disease. There are obvious big topics covered, like the plague, but also very interesting insights into leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases. It’s all just tremendously fascinating, sometimes frustrating because you can only guess at what the findings mean, but also amazing at how far we’ve come in our understanding.

I’ve been getting into the Stephen King and Linwood Barclay horror books recently, and this one also featured model trains so it was definitely going to get picked up. I quite enjoyed it, although it was very, very slow to get moving. A bit like a model train, it started off slow and ramped up and up to get to a thrilling conclusion. The big bad was slightly odd, it sort of felt like the author wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but the concept was enough to propel the story. I liked it!

We’re into the last few books of this Saxon Stories series now and finally, FINALLY, Uhtred has his sights firmly set on his home castle. He’s been banging on about it for ten books and we have reached the battle to end all battles - does he manage to retake it? I won’t spoil it for you but I’m sure you can guess the answer. I enjoyed this read a bit more than some of the previous ones, and it’s great revisiting these characters and progressing the story. I’m looking forward to the next one!

We’re halfway through the series and the quality of the dancing is getting better and better each week, as you would expect. But how can we live up to the highs of last week, where we saw the first 40 of the year? Let’s find out! Lewis & Katya - Cha Cha Cha This was good, obviously, and not annoyingly good - it was completely watchable and a great dance. The technique looked pretty impressive, considering the cha cha is notoriously tricky.

I’ve read one Lucy Foley book before and it had that traditional modern thriller vibe where there are a bunch of people gathered together and someone is murdered and you have to figure out who it is alongside whodunit with trips back and forward in the timeline. This is exactly the same premise, a pretty good read, although I have to say none of the characters were particularly sympathetic, so I really wasn’t bothered by who it was or what they’d done by the end. But a good read nonetheless.

After loving the TV series Riot Women, a bit of research quite quickly pointed me towards ARXX, the duo behind the music. They have two albums, this is their first and it was brilliant. I really enjoyed the style, it’s a lot less raging than that of the TV series, but has the great hallmarks from it - great vocals, interesting lyrics, a great style. I enjoyed it and look forward to listening to the next one.

This is a pretty good album from Sigrid, it’s pretty much what you’d expect - nice pop, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes raging, sometimes in between. Sigrid has great vocals and the album is short and sweet and very listenable. My only real complaint is there isn’t a huge tune on there like there has been on some of her previous albums. I’m not sure how memorable this one is going to be.

This Reacher book kicks off right in the heart of the action, with the itinerant hero coming round with a broken arm, a minor head injury, chained up and no memory of what went before. We have to try and unravel the story at the same time as Reacher does, and at first it seems like a minor inconvenience but gradually becomes a far-reaching and devious plot. As always, it’s up to our protagonist and his current female sidekick to figure it out and stop the criminals. It’s pretty formulaic at this point, but I did enjoy this one.

Alice’s second book about the history of Great Britain through the lens of burials moves from ancient history to the slightly closer Roman empire and ‘dark ages’. Just like the previous book, it’s really well written and accessible for someone that doesn’t know a lot about archaeology. It’s always interesting to see what we can and can’t tell from the finds, and I love Alice’s continued warnings to try not to layer modern thinking to previous civilisation. Just endlessly fascinating.

This book was not at all what I thought it was going to be. From the description, I figured it was going to be a gentle rom-com style read about an older lady finding love again later in life after difficult circumstances. But there was a lot more to it than that and it was pretty edgy in places, with twists and turns that I wasn’t expecting at all. The dress actually doesn’t make many appearances, considering it’s the title of the book, and there are plenty of surprises as you read on.

Halloween night and the judges went all out on their costumes. I genuinely didn’t think I was going to be able to get through a whole night of looking at Shirley like that! And I saw a video afterwards of Motsi having to take that make-up off… was it worth it, I ask you?? Meanwhile, on with the spooky set of dances this week! Vicky & Kai - American Smooth They had the benefit of an incredible song, and it was a really engaging dance. I think some of the leg positions could have been more shapely, but all the lifts were great. The atmosphere was very intense, too. I loved it!

You can totally see elements that would develop into the Scream franchise in here, it’s a brilliantly scary movie with lots of horror tropes but with a unique take on them. I can’t believe it’s Johnny Depp, that tiny boy trying to save the day, but once you get over that, it’s a really solid teen slasher movie. It’s made more scary by the fact that falling asleep is one of those things you do every day, and you’re not going to want to do it after watching this!

This album popped up because we saw the Simply Red version of Air That I Breathe on the Top of the Pops replays. Well, we skipped it more than saw it, but it made me remember this much better version by The Hollies. The album is on Apple Music, but it’s all in a different order to what it should be so I had to make a specific playlist for it. It’s excellent rock and roll/pop music, very of its time, and then suddenly up pops Air That I Breathe which is a stone cold classic. It stands out from the rest, but it’s all a nice listen.

Before listening to this, I saw a few reviews raving about it so I was expecting good things. First listen through and I liked it but I thought it was a lot - there’s quite a lot of intimate detail in there, this is a breakup album like no other. Second listen through, though, I really loved it. It’s great how it tells a story from the beginning to the end of a relationship, excellent songs from start to finish, and some intense but excellent lyrical work. A top five contender, for sure.

This movie is something else. The concept itself is pretty out there - guy buys puzzle box to look for some kind of kinky experimental situations, which he ends up getting from extra-terrestrial beings who also go around killing people. It’s gruesome from the get-go, that extended sequence of Frank coming back out of the floorboards, creepy as anything. I can see why Pinhead is the famous character that has endured, but all of the aliens were well done and disgusting in equal measure. Awful but in a good way, this is a great horror movie.

Not sure about this one, really. The main character of Simon Peake is interesting and the kind of protagonist you want to follow in a thriller like this. The first half of the book is pretty slow though, wandering around trying to get trusted working for a group of criminals. It was difficult to know how to feel about it. The story did start building to an exciting conclusion and I did want to keep reading to find out what happened but I’m not sure it was as top notch as some of the reviews suggest.

Another Matt Haig book in the series of books that are just designed to make you feel a bit better about life. It’s full of anecdotes, quotes, lists, stories, anything light and lifting. Some bits were quite eye-opening, others are tropes you’ll have heard before, but it’s always good to be reminded. It’s not a long book but it’s definitely one that’s worth dipping into every now and again.

Tom Daley is everywhere at the moment - after a far-too-brief stint on Celebrity Traitors, he’s got a new show on Channel 4 starting imminently. The series, called The Game of Wool, is one of those cosy competition styles, like Bake Off, but featuring knitting and crochet rather than oven-based larks. It’s going to be a fascinating watch… I knit so slowly I can’t really fathom anyone creating something within a set time limit.

I’m going to be honest, I really only read this because of the absolutely genius title. I know Paul mostly from Taskmaster with a vague awareness that he’s a smart one on The Chase. But actually, for a memoir of someone I really don’t know anything about, it was very interesting and written really well. It was engaging right from the start, and brutally honest about the highs and lows of a well lived, eventful life. I really liked someone finding their passion a bit later in life too, it’s good.

I didn’t necessarily want to read this one quite so in advance of Christmas, but it’s when it became available so I went with it. It’s a nice book - obviously enjoyable with the characters we love, but also because it has that Agatha Christie feel. The setup feels a bit contrived, how our detective friends end up in this big house over Christmas, and then there’s a murder, but you go with it because you want to get stuck into the mystery of it. I liked the twists and turns and that Ryan figured it all out in the end. And ooh, personal developments at the end, so moving on in the series is a must!

I was sad to read about the death of Prunella Scales today, aged 93. Every tribute and reference I’ve seen has mentioned her turn as Sybil Fawlty in the iconic Fawlty Towers, but I have to go out on a limb and say I vastly prefer her performance in After Henry. I’m mildly obsessed with this sitcom, written by Simon Brett, which started life as a radio series and made a successful move to television, featuring several of the same cast. Prunella originated the role of Sarah France on the radio, a widow who is dealing with the grief of her recent bereavement, whilst also managing having her mother in the top flat and her daughter in the basement flat - three generations of women effectively in the same house.

A sort of follow up to Reasons to Stay Alive, this book takes a similar format - notes, stories, anecdotes, quotes, etc - and applies them to the very real concept of stress and anxiety in this modern world. It’s great, it’s incredibly relatable even if you’re not having trouble with your mental health, it’s just nice to know that other people find the modern world stressful just like you no doubt do. Short, but powerful, I’ve really loved these two books.

Strictly Come Dancing this week featured an Icons theme, which I had thought was a one off last year but apparently is now an annual thing. It’s fine, a great idea, but it does lead to some questions over who is and isn’t an icon. What even makes someone an icon in the first place? Is it global superstardom? Is it just being that person for one specific contestant? Given that Vicki Patterson chose Cheryl, I think Strictly is leaning into the latter.

Lots of news this week. When the Claudia & Tess story broke, someone said to me ‘have you seen the Strictly news?’ and my immediate reaction was ‘WHAT NOW?’ This show can’t catch a break. And the presenting duo leaving overshadowed the sad news that Stefan had to withdraw from the show due to injury, a shame after he had just come back from sickness. But he achieved what he set out to do, be able to dance with his wife, so that’s a win.