Opinion: You can shove those so-called festive TV '˜events'

Not that I need a reason the rest of the time, mind. I’m a regular ray of sunshine all year round.

But one thing that really sours the festive spirit for me is the idea that those cringeworthy TV adverts are somehow becoming “an event”.

They seem to go on forever, boring you with sacharine sentiments over the course of three minutes just to prove their global megacorp cares more than the rest.

So far we’ve had some truly awful attempts at trying to seem festive, from cartoon bears in wellies saving Christmas, to the oddly-questionable use of a creepy old man spying on kids from the moon.

We’ve even seen the downright offensive use of a World War One scenario – one of the most bloody conflicts in history – to sell chocolate bars. Festive indeed!

It seemed to start in 2011, when we saw an overly-long ad with a boy who buys his parents a gift from a certain department store. If that kid can afford to shop there he’s getting far too much pocket money.

The worst part is, some people actually take great pleasure in the “premiere” of these televisual monstrosities, as though there’s some sort of festive magic in an advert for overpriced junk. Adverts are there to be despised, and only occasionally tolerated at best.

Mind you, they can’t be much worse than the usual Christmas telly; they don’t even give us a Bond film anymore, and I’d put money on Channel 5 dusting off that Chaz ‘n’ Dave Special for the third year running.

Probably best if I just keep the telly switched off until January.