'Happy Days' daily readings with Thora Hird

Friday 1 December: "Well that's me fully trimmed up. This year's sideboard nativity is represented by seasonal vegetables, with a parsnip for the Virgin Mary and a sprout for the baby Jesus. How lovely. Family presents wrapped too. This year it's a new truss for Scottie and a bottle of Bells for Janette. Now I've put my feet up so that I can finish reading that very interesting article about discharge in my Woman's Realm. Happy advent one and all."

Saturday 2 December: "when I was a youngster it was a tradition in our house to share a dance with the coal man on Christmas Eve. My mother would be first, then me. This went on for several years, then one year we had a different coal man and we didn't dance with him. I missed Fred the dancing coal man. He always picked out two pieces of coal for me to use for my snowman's eyes. He had very cold hands did Fred, and it took me ages to wash his black fingerprints off me, but he were a good lad!"

Sunday 3 December: "My dear friend Hettie passed away in December a few years ago, so my mind always turns to memories of her at this time of year. We nearly lost her in the Summer of that year. I remember visiting her in the care home. 'Hang on Hettie' I said, 'you can't go now, my funeral coat is Winter weight, you've got to keep going a bit longer. The last time I saw her, days before she passed over, she leant in and whispered 'there is a god Thora, I know there is because he invented morphine suppositories. RIP Hettie."

Monday 4 December: "I don't hold with all of this fancy buffet-style food at Christmas. Buffets are for funerals, and then only cold ham and pork pie. What's wrong with traditional turkey with all the trimmings? That's what they ate in Jerusalem all those years ago after all. I've always eaten turkey at Christmas, and apart from that bout of amoebic dysentery that I contracted in 1943 it's never done me any harm."

Tuesday 5 December: "I love Christmas shopping. All that liveliness and bustle, folks flitting to and fro and fairy lights lighting up little children's faces. I make a point of going to the Arndale Centre near me because it is pedestrianised and has a roof. I always enjoy my Christmas trips to the Arndale Centre. Except two years ago when I had diarrhoea outside Baker's Oven. And last year when I tripped over a tramp and broke three fingers on my left hand."

Wednesday 6 December: "I do enjoy leafing through a catalogue in the run up to Christmas. I get to pick something special out and Scottie buys it for me. Although the quality of the goods has gone off. Last year's harness gave out after six weeks. Plus it chafed me something terrible. I think I'll play safe this year and ask for some special DVDs. At least Scottie won't have any problems with the remote control. Besides, he's just given himself a groin strain opening a jar of pickled onions."

Thursday 7 December: "The winters were long and perishing when I was a lass. To keep us warm father would have a Jimmy Riddle in a bucket which he'd then pass around for us to hold for a while. We had to make our own fun. Mother invented a game called 'climbing the walls' which involved a lot of screaming. It snowed so much one Christmas that we didn't go out of the house until May. And when we did we were taken directly to the sanitarium for electric shock treatment. Memories are made of this."

Friday 8 December: "Ah carol singers, what a delight! My uncle Bernard was a keen singer in the local church choir. That was until they took his throat away and left him with an electrolarynx that ran off a car battery. When he wasn't looking, his two sons used to pinch it and play 'Daleks' in the 1960s. And their sons did the same, except they played 'Stephen Hawking!. It kept getting passed down the family. These days it comes out at Halloween for 'Horror Karaoke. It's what uncle Bernard would've wanted."

Saturday 9 December: "I've used the same sixpence in my Christmas puddings for as long as I can remember. It means a lot to me. There was only one year though when it didn't make it into the pudding mixture. I just couldn't find it so had to replace it with a piece of shrapnel that they dug out of uncle Bernard's head after his time in the trenches. The sixpence turned up soon after, I'd dropped it under the iron lung that we kept for emergencies in the back bedroom. The following Christmas it was back in the pud again. I know that because Janette accidentally swallowed it and Scottie had to give her syrup of figs to get it out of her."

Sunday 10 December: "I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens at a very young age. We had our very own 'Tiny Tim' living across the road. 'Rin Tin Too with the ten foot shoe' all the children called him, on account of him having one leg shorter than the other. One Christmas my uncle Bernard, a cobbler by trade, made him a new special shoe with a roller skate attached so that he could join in playing with all the other children. God bless us, one and all!"

Monday 11 December: "My grandparents were never around to join us for the Christmas festivities when I was young. That's because during the winters between the two world wars they used to hibernate. My father would have to pack them in a crate with some straw around October time and put them in the loft until Spring. Just before Easter every year it was my job to rub linseed oil into their shells. They both lived to a grand old age, that was until granddad was killed under the wheels of a corporation muck cart and grandma was savaged by foxes."

Tuesday 12 December: "We think of the coming of the Christ Child and the miracle of birth at this time of year. I remember giving birth to Janette. It was at home, on one end of the kitchen table. Scottie was present at the birth. He was busy making sausages at the other end of the table. I told him that he didn't have to be present: 'pound to a penny Joseph was sat outside the manger doing a crossword in his paper' I told him. But he would insist on staying put. I thinking he was eyeing up my placenta - which was as big as a football by the way - because he'd just taken delivery of a sack of onions."

Wednesday 13 December: "I'm proud to say that uncle Bernard was one of those fighting Tommies who had a kick-about in no-man's land with his German adversaries during the Christmas truce on the Western front in 1914. He told me there was a disputed penalty in extra time due to an alleged handball which led to a German victory, a subsequent pitch invasion and the recommencing of hostilities. It was on the following day that he received his head injury, resulting in the metal plate. This came in useful during the Second World War when our crystal radio receiver broke; if he put his head against the bathtub we could just about pick up ITMA."

Thursday 14 December: "I've circled a few programmes in my copy of the double issue Christmas Radio Times, but honestly the festive shows these days aren't what they used to be. We got our first colour television for Christmas 1973 and I remember sitting down to watch Morecambe and Wise, Mike Yarwood, Billy Smart's Circus, the Black and White Minstrels, Jimmy Savile's Children's Hospital Visit and the annual Christmas Public Execution hosted by Leslie Crowther ,and that was all before the Queen's Speech at 3pm. I vividly recall Her Majesty talking about the grateful naked plate-lipped natives of the Commonwealth who she'd visited that year, all while wearing a lovely pink frock."

Friday 15 December: "It's nice to pamper yourself in readiness for the Christmas party season. My friend Madge and I always pay a visit to our local beauticians in December. As a matter of fact we went there for our annual spit and polish just last week. There we were relaxing with a chai latte and an Eccles cake when Madge showed me her new Brazilian. 'I don't know why they don't call it a Chilean, said I, 'on account of it being so thin. We laughed. I played safe and went for my usual signature bikini line trim, or an 'Hiroshima' as Scottie calls it, the cheeky monkey."

Saturday 16 December: "I've just finished my round-robin letter for putting inside all the Christmas cards I'm sending out this year. What do you think? - 'Season's greetings to you and yours. I'm as hale and hearty as ever, and continue to keep the ulcerative colitis successfully at bay with my regimen of charcoal biscuits and lard. I remain a martyr to my bunions though but keep smiling through excruciating pain. Scottie was crowned chief secretary of our local neighbourhood watch, and as a consequence we're confident that he'll easily brush off the accusation of worrying a bull mastiff in Asda's car park that's been level at him by Rosemary Boswell, the woman who runs the shoe shop, you know her, she's only got one leg and lives above the shop with her two sisters. Janette has gone from strength to strength since her last spell at the clinic and we're hoping that the case against her for breaking into the brewery won't stick in a court of law. With very best wishes, Thora and family xxx''

Sunday 17 December: "We had a surprise visit from the vicar on Sunday afternoon. I just had time to pick Scottie's undercrackers off the clothes horse and hide them behind the antimacassar on his armchair before the reverend entered the sitting room. 'Will you be joining us for the Christmas Day service this year Thora?' he probed. 'I'm afraid not,' said I, 'the Salvation Army has already booked me for a morning of song and sadomasochism at their citadel. Then in the afternoon I'm visiting the geriatric ward of the Dame Thora Hird Psychiatric Facility for Retired Showbusiness Folk so that I can distribute alms and show off my replacement hip by doing the splits on a coffee table. Sorry buster, you have to get up early if you want to book me for the big day. Gypsy cream with your cup of tea?'"

Monday 18 December: "I managed to manhandle the Christmas tree down from the loft earlier. Scottie normally gets it down but he had an appointment at the clinic this afternoon to get his truss calibrated. When I was up there I couldn't help noticing a pile of mucky magazines wedged under one of Scottie's demijohns. 'What d'you call these?' I asked when his lordship returned. 'Property of previous owner' Scottie replied gruffly, which I didn't believe for a minute, even though the people who had the house before us look Swedish and run a camera shop on the high street. 'We've had these baubles since Adam was a lad' he continued, rather sheepishly changing the subject by diverting conversation to the rather threadbare tinsel erection before us. Later on after we'd finished dressing the tree and we'd had our tea I put the magazines in the recycling, and because I gave him a hard stare when I did so, it's fair to say that Scottie came to bed tonight with his tail between his legs. Or perhaps that was the truss."

Tuesday 19 December: "I went along to my grand-niece's school nativity last night. Apart from the regulation tea towels on heads I'd say they gave a very accurate depiction, even down to having Jesus as a little brown baby. I read somewhere that in all probability the real Jesus was coffee-coloured. What we need is a great big melting pot, that's what I say. Just so long as I don't have to eat all that foreign food. Janette gave me a mouthful of curry once and I was up all night being sick into the washing up bowl. I still can't get the stains out of my Candlewick bedspread. Scottie had to practically hose me down. Jamil, my favourite taxi driver, is from Somalia. I wished him a Merry Christmas when he dropped me home after the nativity. 'I don't celebrate Christmas' he says. 'Course you do, you daft bugger' says I, 'you'll not be turning your nose up at this Christmas tip, will you?' He's a one. He carries my shopping indoors for me every week, so l'll forgive him the broken English."

Wednesday 20 December: "Sadly I've had to decline the opportunity to appear as Peter Pan in our local pantomime production. The director will have you believe I can't do it on account of the block and tackle attached to the flying harness giving out under my weight in dress rehearsal. It's true that the leather straps were playing havoc with my gusset, but in fact I've had to walk away from the production because I've landed the starring role in a new Alan Bennett play about an old woman dying in hospital. I'll take typecasting over dangling from a rope any day. I'm very good at snuffing it on cue. I sometimes pretend to pass on at home just to get Scottie to do the washing up. 'Dropping Dead' was my favourite game in the school playground. Many of my acting awards were basically for kicking the bucket really convincingly. One way or another I've been dying all my life."

Thursday 21 December: "Much as we enjoy the plethora of foods that make up the Christmas Day dinner table, both Scottie and I end up suffering as a result. Neither of us can tolerate sprouts well, we like stuffing but stuffing doesn't like us and the bread sauce has made us both martyrs to Gaviscon. But still we persist with them, in the name of tradition. I wouldn't be surprised if Rennies get a mention in the New Testament. Of course after we've eaten it can get quite unpleasant on account of Scottie's terrible flatulence. I mean I wouldn't mind but it's usually too cold on Christmas Day to open a window. When His Nibs is clearing the plates away from the table it sounds like the Neller Hall trumpeters. He usually sings along to it with the lyrics from Walking in the Air, the mucky pup. Of course I, being a Dame of the British Empire, would never pass wind whilst in company, not even in front of my husband. I usually make my excuses shortly after the meal, go upstairs to the back bedroom and let it all out. I'd like to say that even this has the thin, reedy timbre of an Il Castrato, but to be perfectly frank it often sounds like an all-in wrestler emptying a sack of hob nail boots down a disused mine shaft!"

Friday 22 December: "How I loved the toys that I received as Christmas presents when I was a child. My father was an avid whittler and fashioned me all sorts out of blocks of wood; a spinning top, cup and ball, a rocking horse, a scale model of the Houses of Parliament. You name it, he could turn his hand to anything. Except after the First World War wood was in short supply, so he would often pay a call to our local Salvation Army hostel and collect the wooden legs from deceased amputee ex-servicemen. One Christmas, after carving me an entire train set complete with dining car he had enough legs left over to knock up a lean-to porch for mother and a new set of false teeth for uncle Bernard. I'll always fondly remember that Christmas: me playing with my train set, mother sitting in her porch drinking gravy browning and uncle Bernard dying from a septic palate. Father would insist on making the coffin. You can't keep a good man down.'

Saturday 23 December: "Remember: a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. Although it was indeed Christmas Day when Nunny, my pet Jack Russell, first came into my life a few years ago. I was in the back yard, bagging up the presents I'd just received from relatives for donating to Cancer Research, when there she was, shaking like a leaf and giving me that look that says 'let me at your scraps missus or I'll rip your throat out!. I immediately warmed to her. She had a length of hairy string for a lead and a tattoo of Katie Price on her hind quarters, so I guessed straight away that she'd run away from the gypsies who were parked up on the big roundabout near to Tesco. Of course Scottie wanted to have her instantly destroyed - I might have mentioned that he favours bull mastiffs - but I decided there and then to take her in. 'Keep your hands off my Nunny!' I barked at him, and from that day forward and for many years hence she was my constant companion, until the day she was run over by a joyrider. Every Christmas Day since I light a candle and think about Nunny!

Sunday 24 December: "'So this is Christmas, and what have you done?' sang Bing Crosby all those years ago in the film 'It's a Wonderful Life!. What have I done today? Well, I've spent an hour scrubbing at Scottie's undercrackers with a yard brush, half an hour tapping the clinker off the emergency iron lung in the back bedroom, twenty minutes conducting running repairs to Janette's dialysis machine and ten minutes on the telephone to the man at the paper shop to complain about the dirty fingerprints all over my Woman's Realm. Now I'm just going to have a Jimmy Riddle, slip into my fluffy slippers and my black satin strappy chemise before settling down with a sweet sherry and a bit of Parkin to listen to my favourite Throbbing Gristle LP. A very Merry Christmas to you all - love, Thora xxx"