I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't I've written 14 musicals now I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

My fondest memories are generally the day after Thanksgiving. I get the total decorating Christmas itch.

I was at the vice president's Christmas party. I thought that his speech was spectacular and I knew that it was a very emotional and difficult thing for him to do but I admonished him for not waiting just one more stinking day.

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

Actually my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

My grandson sees me as Lois on TV every Christmas and that scores me points.

What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far far from it but there is no free lunch as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

I love the excess of Christmas. The shopping season that begins in September the bad pop star recordings of Christmas carols the decorations that don't know when to come down.

Christmas is a stocking stuffed with sugary goodness.